Everyone's a WarCriminal: the Mil-SciFi Thread

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Everyone's a WarCriminal: the Mil-SciFi Thread

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

StrixNebulosa posted:

Has the plot advanced at all? It's like she got to Basilisk Station and now the plot is suspended while she grinds loot and reputation off the easy mobs.

Not really. For the most part it's been about stopping the smugglers and everyone talking how great she is and also dunking on the Villain Characters. All the stuff with figuring out what the smugglers are up to is severely undercut by the fact that Weber decided to spell it all out as the prologue, so even though technically the plot would be moving forward a little bit, it hasn't because we already know what's really going on. And it's not done in a way that the tension is the gap between the reader's knowledge and the characters' knowledge, because there's no danger to it.

So yes, it's currently grinding.

# ? Dec 30, 2019 04:00

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# ? Apr 29, 2024 08:16

Larry Parrish: Jul 9, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

cultureulterior posted:

I really like the RCN series, although it is funny that every single person on every other planet they go to is so hilariously incompetent- feels kinda like D&D in space where everyone else has a npc class

It's so, so, much better than you'd think if someone told you 'Aubrey and Marturin in space'

# ? Dec 30, 2019 06:41

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Honestly I think I'm revising my score of 'medicore' for On Basilisk Station to 'bad'. The entire book so far has been boring Honor worship. There hasn't even been any action of any sort in this supposed space battle book. Even the Fleet Problem scene just more or less skipped past all the actual action to talk about what happened instead of showing it. And the prologue ruined any mystery the book could have.

And there's been very little to no exposition on things the reader REALLY needs to know about. Hell, the prologue had more exposition on the state of the setting than the entire rest of the book combined.

# ? Dec 30, 2019 20:10

Patrat: Feb 14, 2012

If this series made any sense and catching a bajillion smuggers was:

1) Easy enough that one light cruiser can do it.

and

2) A way for the captain to make fat stacks of cash from prize money.

Then this implies that the station would be an absolute prime posting given to picked captains whom the power that be wanted to reward with personal enrichment. The only other alternative would be that the people doing the smuggling are very successfully bribing the admiralty/government/whomever to not catch smuggling.

So Honour should be immediately told to lay off and potentially shitcanned, or the prizes should be contested in court and her stripped of the money then in trouble, or legbreakers should make her an offer she cannot refuse then kidnap her parents and return them in small boxes if she attempts to regardless.

Obviously none of these interesting things happen.

# ? Dec 30, 2019 22:59

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Patrat posted:

If this series made any sense and catching a bajillion smuggers was:

1) Easy enough that one light cruiser can do it.

and

2) A way for the captain to make fat stacks of cash from prize money.

Then this implies that the station would be an absolute prime posting given to picked captains whom the power that be wanted to reward with personal enrichment. The only other alternative would be that the people doing the smuggling are very successfully bribing the admiralty/government/whomever to not catch smuggling.

So Honour should be immediately told to lay off and potentially shitcanned, or the prizes should be contested in court and her stripped of the money then in trouble, or legbreakers should make her an offer she cannot refuse then kidnap her parents and return them in small boxes if she attempts to regardless.

Obviously none of these interesting things happen.

Pretty much. Weber REALLY wanted Honor to have a primo post where she makes a ton of money and fame by doing what would make it a primo post, but cast it as a punishment so she can have a 'underdog rising up' narrative despite her being given the plummest post in the entire universe, but for some reason the Manticore government has designated it Siberia despite the opposite.

Maybe it's because he wanted her to meet Pavel Young too, and was afraid that if he had been in a plum position he might seem competent or make it clear that nepotism is really bad in Manticore. And Weber is extremely adverse to making villains seem competent in any way, with them pretty much all being idiotic losers that Honor ridicules over and over if she even knows who they are.

It would be very interesting if her actions here had that kind of response, but it's a couple/few books before she even has real domestic issues.

# ? Dec 30, 2019 23:32

Jack2142: Jul 17, 2014; Shitposting in Seattle

You could probably re-write On Basilisk station to be more compelling with some moderate changes like that, but alas what would be the point.

# ? Dec 30, 2019 23:34

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Jack2142 posted:

You could probably re-write On Basilisk station to be more compelling with some moderate changes like that, but alas what would be the point.

It'd require me to add some actual plot, as it's extremely thin on relevance. The whole smuggler plot isn't even fully related to Haven. Good ole Denver Summervale of the next chapter is another dumb evil nobility.

Relatedly, I love the dichotomy that nobility is bad, but royalty is good.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 00:00

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

I believe Pavel Young is one of the few Manticore commanders Haven is allowed to win against.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 00:42

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

I believe Pavel Young is one of the few Manticore commanders Haven is allowed to win against.

This is not really because she's worse then them, though. It's always because of events conspiring against her so she's a perpetual underdog at all times.

EDIT: While I'm getting my post for tonight together, I wanted to mention something from the previous chapter that is a trope that always annoys me. Let me repaste the relevant quote.

�Bait� posted:

"Don't feel too bad. Instead, tell me why the computer didn't nail you?"

"Ma'am?" Cardones looked back at the display and frowned. "I don't know, Ma'am. The beam window was wide enough."

"Maybe, maybe not." The Captain tapped the readouts again. "The human factor, Lieutenant. Always remember the human factor. The tac computer's programmed to assign a response time to your supposedly flesh-and-blood opponent, and this time�this time, Guns�you were lucky. The range was long enough your opponent had less than three seconds to see the opening, recognize it, and take it, and the computer decided he hadn't reacted quickly enough to get the shot off. I expect it was right, too, but don't count on that when it's for real. Right?"

Namely, the idea that computers are always predictable and that humans can outdo computers simply by not always being predictable. Anyone who has ever played a video game can probably tell you that unless you have some extreme understanding of a simple AI involved to the point that you know how to manipulate it, this isn't going to be the case. Bugs and errors in programming cause all sorts of unusual AI behavior all the time. And this idea that AI is always simple and predictable is dumb.

Anyways, the post will be up in an hour or so.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 00:56 on Dec 31, 2019

# ? Dec 31, 2019 00:49

Khizan: Jul 30, 2013

Kchama posted:

Pretty much. Weber REALLY wanted Honor to have a primo post where she makes a ton of money and fame by doing what would make it a primo post, but cast it as a punishment so she can have a 'underdog rising up' narrative despite her being given the plummest post in the entire universe, but for some reason the Manticore government has designated it Siberia despite the opposite.

Maybe it's because he wanted her to meet Pavel Young too, and was afraid that if he had been in a plum position he might seem competent or make it clear that nepotism is really bad in Manticore. And Weber is extremely adverse to making villains seem competent in any way, with them pretty much all being idiotic losers that Honor ridicules over and over if she even knows who they are.

It would be very interesting if her actions here had that kind of response, but it's a couple/few books before she even has real domestic issues.

All he really had to do was make it an honestly poo poo-tier post where she catches one single ship that's worth a metric fuckton of prize money. Make it a fluke that she legitimately only catches through diligence, instead of having every third loving ship smuggling ivory to the point where any quarter-assed attempt at customs enforcement should have been catching ships left and right.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 01:26

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Khizan posted:

All he really had to do was make it an honestly poo poo-tier post where she catches one single ship that's worth a metric fuckton of prize money. Make it a fluke that she legitimately only catches through diligence, instead of having every third loving ship smuggling ivory to the point where any quarter-assed attempt at customs enforcement should have been catching ships left and right.

Weber actually has it both ways. She's constantly catching ships AND the ones she catches are worth huge prize money.

And it's time! Last time, on On Basilisk Station Chapter 13 I previewed this chapter! So I�ll just skip that part as it�s boring anyways. Anyways, Denver Summervale is a Bad Man. And is doing drug-running and smuggling.

�There�s not a lot to say, so I�ll put it all at the bottom� posted:

Summervale took one look at the face on his com screen, then nodded curtly to the duty operator. The man departed without a word, and Summervale seated himself in the chair he'd abandoned. Long habit drew his eyes to the panel, double-checking the scrambler circuits, before he looked up at the man on the screen.

"What?" he asked without preamble.

"We may have a problem," his caller said carefully. The man's Sphinxian accent was pronounced�possibly too pronounced, Summervale thought yet again. It had an almost theatrical quality, as if it were a mask for something else, but that was fine with Summervale. Its owner paid well for his services; if he wanted to maintain an extra level of security, that was his business.

"What problem?"

"The NPA's spotted the new mekoha," his caller replied, and Summervale's mouth tightened.

"How?"

"We're not certain�our informant couldn't tell us�but I'd guess it's a side effect of Harrington's operations. She's freed up a lot of NPA manpower, and they're extending their patrols."

Summervale's eyes flashed at the name "Harrington," and his tight mouth twisted. He'd never met the commander, but he didn't have to meet her to hate her. She represented too many things out of his own past, and he felt the familiar heat tingle in his nerves. Yet he was a professional. He recognized the danger of visceral reactions, however pleasant they might be.

"How much do they know?" he asked.

"Again, we're not certain, but they've been running analyses of the stuff they've brought in. The odds are pretty good they'll figure out it's not Stilty-produced. In fact, they may have already. One of my other sources tells me Harrington's pulled one of her pinnaces off the customs assignment."

"To run orbital sweeps," Summervale said flatly.

"Probably," his caller agreed.

"Not probably�certainly. I told you it was risky to make the stuff so pure."

"The Stilties prefer it that way."

"drat the Stilties." Summervale spoke almost mildly, but his eyes were hard. "You're paying the freight, so the decision's yours, but when one of these bucks gets hopped on a pipeful of our stuff, he turns into a nuke about to go critical."

"No skin off our nose," his employer said cynically.

"Maybe. But I'll lay odds that's what attracted the NPA's attention. And the same elements that give it the kick will prove it wasn't made by any Stilty alchemist. Which means it was either shipped in or made somewhere on-planet. Like here." The man on the screen began to say something else, but Summervale raised a hand. Again, it was an oddly courteous gesture. "Never mind. Done is done, and it's your operation. What do you want me to do at this end?"

"Watch your security, especially the air traffic. If they're making overflights, we can't afford to attract their attention."

"I can hold down the cargo flights. I can even reduce foot traffic around the complex," Summervale pointed out. "What I can't do is hide from Fleet sensors. Our power relay will stick out like a sore thumb, and once it draws their attention, we'll leak enough background energy for them to zero us despite the wall shields. You know that."

He chose not to add that he'd argued against a beamed power relay from the beginning. The extra cost in time and labor to run a buried feeder cable would have been negligible beside the investment his employers had already made, and it would have made the entire operation vastly more secure. But he'd been overruled at the outset. And while he had no intention of allowing his caller to saddle him with full responsibility for concealment at this point, there was no point rubbing the man's nose in it.

"We know that," the man on the screen said. "We never expected to have to face Fleet sensors"�Summervale knew that was as close to an apology as he was likely to get�"but now that we do, we don't expect you to work miracles. On the other hand, I doubt you'll have to. Remember, we have people on the inside. Maybe not high enough to tap into Matsuko's office or communications, but high enough to let us know if the NPA starts assembling anything big enough to come after you. We'll try to get inside Harrington's information channels and keep an eye on her recon reports, but even if we can't, we should be able to give you a minimum of six or seven hours' warning before anything local heads your way."

Summervale nodded slowly, mind racing as he considered alternatives. Six hours would be more than enough to get his people away, but anything less than a full day would be too little to get even a tithe of the equipment out. And that didn't even consider the meticulous records his employer had insisted he keep. He couldn't fault the man for wanting to track every gram of mekoha the lab produced�nothing could be better calculated to arouse Estelle Matsuko's fury than finding off-worlders peddling dream smoke to the Stilties, and if one of his people had set up as a dealer on his own time the odds of detection would have gone up astronomically�but maintaining complete hardcopy backups was stupid. The increase in vulnerability far outweighed the advantages, but there, again, he had been overruled.

He shrugged internally. That was his employer's lookout, and he'd made damned sure his own name never appeared anywhere in them.

"How do I handle the hardware?" he asked after a moment.

"If there's time, take it with you. If there's not�" His caller shrugged. "It's only hardware. We can replace it."

"Understood." Summervale drummed on the edge of the console for a moment, then shrugged, physically this time. "Anything else?"

"Not right now. I'll get back to you if something else breaks."

"Understood," Summervale repeated, and killed the circuit.

Besides the use of �circuits� for multiple things like it�s a buzz word for him, this is more or less just reiterating everything we know but from the other side, beyond that Denver Summervale and his client exists and there�s a mole in the NPA. Oh yeah, also I�m pretty sure he doesn�t know what a tithe is, as he uses it to mean �ten percent�, and I�m drat sure it means �a tenth of your annual earnings taken as Church tax� or giving a tax church. Whereas �a tithe of the equipment out� is totally wrong usage.

Also by the way, Dever Summervale apparently does everything evil, because he�also an assassin for hire for Manticore�s amazing system of duelling. Yes, duelling. It�s literally only there so Honor can legally kill her domestic foes. The next bit of the chapter is basically Denver Summervale spelling things out for the readers. He actually has a lot of backstory spelled out for someone who isn�t very important on the whole of things. Basically he doesn�t understand why his boss doesn�t care about his operations being destroyed and wants to push super-violent drugs specifically. HMMM, who is obviously behind this? It�s Haven.

He then flashes back to when he got drummed out of the Navy (anyways shouldn�t this be the Spacey? It�s all space-side) in a court-martial, for the crime of being evil.

�EVIL!� posted:

He dropped back into the chair before the com terminal, grinning dangerously at the blank screen. His father had been there, too, he recalled. His pious, noble father, clinging to the fringes of the Summervale glory despite his poverty. What had the high and mighty family ever given them, that they should ape its manners and honor its name? Their branch had none of the wealth, none of the power, that clung to the direct line of the Dukes of Cromarty!

Summervale's hands clenched in his lap, and he closed his eyes. His own flesh and blood sat in the prime minister's chair. Even then, the precious Duke of Cromarty had been Lord of the Exchequer, second in seniority in Her Majesty's Government, and had he raised a hand to help his distant cousin? Not he! Not that noble, proper, sanctimonious bastard.

But that, too, was all right. He made his hands relax, savoring the thought of the gossip and sidelong glances his disgrace must have brought upon the noble Duke and treasuring the look on his father's face as his sword snapped. All his life, his father had preached to him of duty and responsibility, of the glorious role his family had played in the history of the Kingdom. But duty and responsibility hadn't paid his debts. Family history hadn't won him the respect and fear it won the "true" line.

No, those things he had earned himself, earned on the "field of honor" while he laughed at their pretensions.

He opened his eyes once more, staring at his reflection in the com screen, remembering the dawn quiet and the weight of a pistol. Remembering the seconds and the master of the list's stern expression as he stared across thirty meters of smooth grass at a pale-faced opponent. It had been . . . Bullard? No. That first time had been Scott, and he shivered as his palm felt again the shock of recoil and Scott's white shirt blossomed crimson and he fell.

He shook himself. It had been a business transaction, nothing more, he told himself, and knew he lied. Oh, it had been business, and the money his secret sponsor had slipped him had cleared his debts . . . for a time. Until the next time. But the sensual thrill of knowing, even as Scott crumpled, that his bullet had blown his target's aristocratic heart apart�that had been his true reward. And the reason it had been so easy to accept the next assignment, and the next.

Yet in the end, the very people he hated with all his soul had won. "Professional duelist," they'd called him, when all the time they'd meant "paid killer." And they'd been right. He admitted that here in the quiet, empty room. But he'd killed too many of them, even when his sponsors would have been willing to settle for a wound. The blood taste had been too sweet, the aura of fear too heady, and finally the Corps had had enough.

He'd killed a "brother officer"�as if the uniform a dead man wore should matter! He wasn't the first serving officer to do so, but there were too many bodies in his past, too many families that owed too many debts. They couldn't try him for murder, for duels were legal. He'd faced his opponent's fire, and they couldn't prove he'd accepted money for it. But they'd all known the truth, and they could bring up his entire record: his gambling, his women, the adulterous affairs he'd used to lure targets onto the field, the arrogance he'd let color his relations with senior officers as the terror of his reputation grew. And that had been enough to find him "unfit to wear the Queen's uniform" and led to that bright, hot morning and the slow, degrading tap of the drums.

And it had led here, as well. Here where the money was good, but even here the money was only part of it. Only the means to an end that let him sneer at their self-proclaimed nobility of purpose and avenge himself upon them again and again, even if they never knew it.

His nostrils flared, and he pushed himself up out of the chair.

All right. He'd been warned that the operation was in jeopardy, and its security was his responsibility. So be it. There were too many records, too much evidence, in this facility, and as his employer had said, the lab was only hardware.

There were ways to evacuate, and there were ways to evacuate, he thought with a slow, hungry smile. If he had to leave the equipment behind, then he could at least abandon it in a way that would give him personal satisfaction.

So this whole duelling thing is another thing taken from the Horatio Hornblower books and done super bad and dumb.

That by the way is the chapter. It furthers really nothing except �we have a villain�.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 02:01

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

Spacy, not Spacey, but yes. It should be Spacy.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 02:17

Khizan: Jul 30, 2013

Kchama posted:

Namely, the idea that computers are always predictable and that humans can outdo computers simply by not always being predictable. Anyone who has ever played a video game can probably tell you that unless you have some extreme understanding of a simple AI involved to the point that you know how to manipulate it, this isn't going to be the case. Bugs and errors in programming cause all sorts of unusual AI behavior all the time. And this idea that AI is always simple and predictable is dumb.

This isn't that at all. She's not saying "You need to be more unpredictable to be better than the computer" or anything of that sort. She's saying "The AI assigns the enemy a randomly determined human-speed reaction time, and you were lucky that it missed the window. A fast enough opponent could have made that shot."

That's a fairly common things with AI opponents in games. The AI has the potential for literally inhuman reaction times and precision, which is why they're programmed to react at human-manageable speeds. That's why sniper bots don't drill you 12 frames after you step into LOS, etc.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 02:26

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Khizan posted:

This isn't that at all. She's not saying "You need to be more unpredictable to be better than the computer" or anything of that sort. She's saying "The AI assigns the enemy a randomly determined human-speed reaction time, and you were lucky that it missed the window. A fast enough opponent could have made that shot."

That's a fairly common things with AI opponents in games. The AI has the potential for literally inhuman reaction times and precision, which is why they're programmed to react at human-manageable speeds. That's why sniper bots don't drill you 12 frames after you step into LOS, etc.

Well, yes, but she talks about the 'human element' which is always code that 'the computer is predictable'. I cut it out but she mentions that she used this to actually beat the computer in the exact same sim he lost in, because it turns out that the computer had its predictable 3 seconds to react but humans can react faster than a predictable ole computer.

It's also a longer theme in the entire series. There's a Pearl of Weber about how in the background there's AIs that do a lot of the stuff that he portrays people doing in the books, but that they're strictly inferior to actually having people working it because of said human element. An 'expert software's' point-defense is predictable and easily defeatable by any skilled human operator.

Also in a 'Manticore is better than you' thing, Manticore ships have the best AI in the universe.

What's that, you say? This sort of thing never comes up in the books? Silly, it's because Weber doesn't believe in telling you anything!

David Weber posted:

There's not what I think of as fully developed artificial intelligence in the Honorverse. What there is might be thought of as highly developed "expert" software packages. At the same time, there's an enormous amount of what would probably be called AI (although not strictly correctly so, as I understand the term) which is subsumed. As you know, I tend to assume that a lot of the standard science-fiction high-tech goodies are going to be so much a part of the background and infrastructure of the characters in my novels that I let them sort of disappear into the background. It seems to me that someone living in Honor's time would spend as much time thinking about nanotechnology, let's say, as someone in our own time spends thinking about the technology used in bringing us frozen or freeze-dried food products. It's just there, doing its thing very quietly in the background, without attracting a great deal of notice.

90s Cringe Rock posted:

Spacy, not Spacey, but yes. It should be Spacy.

Yeah, I always typo it, thanks.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Dec 31, 2019

# ? Dec 31, 2019 02:30

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

All the bitching and moaning about seemingly everyone + their space-cats smuggling goods in On Basilisk Station that even a quarter-assed attempt at customs enforcement should have been catching ships left and right was the 2nd thing I found believable and realistic in OBS.

If anything, think Weber toned down how nakedly rapacious and corrupt the East India Company was regarding India(Medusa) and China/East Indies (Basilisk Station).
Man just realized the East India Company as an unofficial-official trade arm of the UK was directly responsible for so many loving wars and revolutions in the world.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 03:05

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

Kchama posted:

Oh yeah, also I�m pretty sure he doesn�t know what a tithe is, as he uses it to mean �ten percent�, and I�m drat sure it means �a tenth of your annual earnings taken as Church tax� or giving a tax church. Whereas �a tithe of the equipment out� is totally wrong usage.

He's using the term correctly, albeit in a use that's fairly uncommon.

Dictionary.com posted:

noun
1. (often plural) Christianity a tenth part of agricultural or other produce, personal income, or profits, contributed either voluntarily or as a tax for the support of the church or clergy or for charitable purposes

2. any levy, esp of one tenth

3. a tenth or very small part of anything

As for the smuggling, there's historical precedent. The British colonies in North America were under heavy trade restrictions before the War of Independence, leading to huge amounts of smuggling that the Royal Navy mostly ignored for various reasons, for one thing.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 05:29

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

He's using the term correctly, albeit in a use that's fairly uncommon.

As for the smuggling, there's historical precedent. The British colonies in North America were under heavy trade restrictions before the War of Independence, leading to huge amounts of smuggling that the Royal Navy mostly ignored for various reasons, for one thing.

Maybe he should put away his thesaursus, geez.

I never questioned the historical precedent, just the attitude that it was Political Siberia despite being a very easily lucrative post if you put any effort into it at all.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 05:36

Larry Parrish: Jul 9, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

It's totally bizzare because in every single book about sailing I've ever read, everyone is insanely thirsty for any posting where prizes are a reasonable possibility and yet somehow the Manticoran Navy does the prize system and not even random enlisted sailors give a poo poo.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 06:57

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

Kchama posted:

I never questioned the historical precedent, just the attitude that it was Political Siberia despite being a very easily lucrative post if you put any effort into it at all.

The thing is that the only reason that it is so lucrative to smuggle there is the fact that nobody puts any effort into it. The smugglers are doing business there because they realized that lax policing made it easy to operate there. There's no particular in-system reason why they're doing it there - as is amply demonstrated when most of the smugglers pack up and leave later in the book.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 07:03

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

The thing is that the only reason that it is so lucrative to smuggle there is the fact that nobody puts any effort into it. The smugglers are doing business there because they realized that lax policing made it easy to operate there. There's no particular in-system reason why they're doing it there - as is amply demonstrated when most of the smugglers pack up and leave later in the book.

I mean, that's just the smuggling to Medusa. There's no way most of the smugglers quit the system, though. Why? Because it's one of the main ways to Manticore. So it's always going to have smuggling. And hell, Manticore's biggest trade firm smuggles through that terminus. That's why it's a plum posting. You either make a ton of money doing something not terribly difficult, or you have an easy posting because doing the easy stuff scared off all the work.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 07:17

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

I'm pretty sure you're reading it wrong. Let me pull up the ebook real quick.

quote:

"During my own tenure, however, that situation has changed, not so much because of trade with the Medusans as because of the growing volume of traffic through the terminus here. I suppose it was inevitable that an orbital warehousing and distribution network should spring up, particularly since cargoes can be transshipped here without paying the higher duties and wages incurred in Manticore. There are, of course, other incentives," she added dryly, and Honor's lips twitched unwillingly.

.....

"Oh, it's not really as bad as I sometimes feel it is," Dame Estelle said judiciously. "The physical restriction of the enclaves to a single central location here in the Delta, coupled with my authority to control the use of off-world transport outside them, limits the physical reach of the trade networks. It doesn't stop off-worlder-to-off-worlder smuggling, if in fact there is any, and it can't completely stop the flow of off-world goods to the Medusans, but it slows it and means that most of them trickle through native merchants before they reach more distant destinations. And, truth to tell, concerned as I am about the impact on the Medusans, I'm even more concerned�as the Crown's local representative�by what else may be going on under the surface."

quote:

She let her eyes drift back to the main maneuvering display, pondering the ships in orbit around Medusa. Fearless had been on station for almost a full Manticoran month now, and there were far fewer than there had been when she arrived five weeks before; a direct result, she suspected, of Ensign Tremaine's campaign against illegal traffic. Medusa was no longer a good place to transship prohibited goods, and the word was getting around.

Much of the traffic in the system is using the orbital warehouses. A freighter comes in, offloads their cargo, picks up what's waiting for them, and sails off. This reduces the amount of ships that have to pay to use the Junction, reducing the fees that Manticore can charge them. Because nobody's policing this system, smugglers are using the same setup to traffic in contraband. The setup isn't explained, but if it follows realistic patterns then the Mandragoran would have offloaded their illegal cargo onto the warehouse, picked up other goods already scheduled for it, then proceeded onward. Other ships would have then loaded the illegal cargo onto and carried it to the buyers.

This works extremely well, as long as nobody's opening the cargo boxes and just relying on a check of the cargo manifest and a check of the customs seals. Once people start opening the boxes, it becomes a "we can't go there anymore!" situation.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 07:40

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

I'm pretty sure you're reading it wrong. Let me pull up the ebook real quick.

Much of the traffic in the system is using the orbital warehouses. A freighter comes in, offloads their cargo, picks up what's waiting for them, and sails off. This reduces the amount of ships that have to pay to use the Junction, reducing the fees that Manticore can charge them. Because nobody's policing this system, smugglers are using the same setup to traffic in contraband. The setup isn't explained, but if it follows realistic patterns then the Mandragoran would have offloaded their illegal cargo onto the warehouse, picked up other goods already scheduled for it, then proceeded onward. Other ships would have then loaded the illegal cargo onto and carried it to the buyers.

This works extremely well, as long as nobody's opening the cargo boxes and just relying on a check of the cargo manifest and a check of the customs seals. Once people start opening the boxes, it becomes a "we can't go there anymore!" situation.

I was more getting at that even when the Medusan smuggling dries up, there's still smuggling through the wormhole to the parts it connects through and back. The orbital warehouses are just part of it but smuggling isn't just going to dry up because the easy mode where nobody checked ever stops happening. But again, that's part of why this is such a plum position that we're saying. A single light cruiser cleaned up smuggling and made a mint doing so, because being in charge of this station means being in charge of one of the biggest trading lanes MAnticore has, which is MONEY CENTRAL.

EDIT: Like, for example, Panama Canal is a lot easier to police on the whole, and smuggling still happens in it rampantly. And here you get paid super handsomely for finding smugglers! And if Weber thinks that this will clean up smugglers for good, then he's naive. They'll just change their tactics rather than not even bothering with the slightest bit of deception.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 08:40 on Dec 31, 2019

# ? Dec 31, 2019 08:34

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

I don't think that he's trying to imply that smuggling ceases, just that a lot of it moves elsewhere because it is no longer easy.

Let me use a different analogy. Picture the system as a park in the middle of the city. For the last several years, the city hasn't spent much on police, and the PD has only assigned a couple of officers to patrol the park at night. The ones that do get assigned there are older cops who no longer care, and just sit at the donut shop or nap in their patrol cars. So the place becomes an open-air drug marketplace, with dealers not even trying to hide what's going on because they know the cops aren't going to bother them.

Then a new hotshot comes in and decides that he's not going to be a slacker. He comes in, makes a few high-profile busts, and gets all kinds of attention. So dealers stop blatantly using the park, with some going elsewhere and others being careful enough to avoid attention. Doesn't do anything to stem the total trade, doesn't even keep drugs out of the park. But it does make the whole thing a lot less visible.

That's basically the situation here. Harrington's crews made some big busts, primarily from people who weren't expecting to be inspected at all - note that Mondragon's officers start panicking as soon as Tremaine announced an intention to do a physical check - he knew full well that they weren't going to slip by.

This strongly suggests that, under any other circumstances, the smuggling would be both lower in volume, and much better concealed. This would make it much harder to make much prize money by nabbing contraband without going too far in harassing merchants.

Now, you're focusing on how much prize money acts as an incentive. The rate mentioned is that .5% goes to the ship, which is then divided among the crew. Dipping outside the text, the wiki sets the crew of a Courageous-class cruiser at 200. If shares are equal, that means that each crewmember would receive .5% of what the ship gets, making each crewman's share .0025%‬‬.

That means that, in order for a crewman to receive $1 in prize money, the ship would have to take $40000 in contraband. Traditionally, shares in prize money are not equal, with more going to the officers than to the ordinary crew, but Weber doesn't break this down, so we'll go with that figure. In this case, they're taking huge volumes of high-value stuff, so the money's pretty good. $1.5 billion (the figure quoted without Mondragon's value) equals a nice $37,500 each.

Now, let us assume that Young had been as industrious and seized the same cargo. Warlock is a Star Knight class cruiser, which the wiki states has a crew of 925. Skipping the math, that works out to only $8100 per share, just by substituting a bigger ship.

If you start adding in the multiple ships the book says should be in the system, or drop the value of what's seized to account for the "we're actually bothering to hide what we're doing" factor, the value plummets.

Or, rather, the station's only lucrative because the money's being given to a very small ship, and the smugglers are making themselves really easy to catch.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 09:35

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

I don't think that he's trying to imply that smuggling ceases, just that a lot of it moves elsewhere because it is no longer easy.

Let me use a different analogy. Picture the system as a park in the middle of the city. For the last several years, the city hasn't spent much on police, and the PD has only assigned a couple of officers to patrol the park at night. The ones that do get assigned there are older cops who no longer care, and just sit at the donut shop or nap in their patrol cars. So the place becomes an open-air drug marketplace, with dealers not even trying to hide what's going on because they know the cops aren't going to bother them.

Then a new hotshot comes in and decides that he's not going to be a slacker. He comes in, makes a few high-profile busts, and gets all kinds of attention. So dealers stop blatantly using the park, with some going elsewhere and others being careful enough to avoid attention. Doesn't do anything to stem the total trade, doesn't even keep drugs out of the park. But it does make the whole thing a lot less visible.

That's basically the situation here. Harrington's crews made some big busts, primarily from people who weren't expecting to be inspected at all - note that Mondragon's officers start panicking as soon as Tremaine announced an intention to do a physical check - he knew full well that they weren't going to slip by.

This strongly suggests that, under any other circumstances, the smuggling would be both lower in volume, and much better concealed. This would make it much harder to make much prize money by nabbing contraband without going too far in harassing merchants.

Now, you're focusing on how much prize money acts as an incentive. The rate mentioned is that .5% goes to the ship, which is then divided among the crew. Dipping outside the text, the wiki sets the crew of a Courageous-class cruiser at 200. If shares are equal, that means that each crewmember would receive .5% of what the ship gets, making each crewman's share .0025%‬‬.

That means that, in order for a crewman to receive $1 in prize money, the ship would have to take $40000 in contraband. Traditionally, shares in prize money are not equal, with more going to the officers than to the ordinary crew, but Weber doesn't break this down, so we'll go with that figure. In this case, they're taking huge volumes of high-value stuff, so the money's pretty good. $1.5 billion (the figure quoted without Mondragon's value) equals a nice $37,500 each.

Now, let us assume that Young had been as industrious and seized the same cargo. Warlock is a Star Knight class cruiser, which the wiki states has a crew of 925. Skipping the math, that works out to only $8100 per share, just by substituting a bigger ship.

If you start adding in the multiple ships the book says should be in the system, or drop the value of what's seized to account for the "we're actually bothering to hide what we're doing" factor, the value plummets.

Or, rather, the station's only lucrative because the money's being given to a very small ship, and the smugglers are making themselves really easy to catch.

I don't think we're disagreeing in the least.

Though I will note that the share Honor is stated to be getting was 500k, so you can probably figure out how it is from there. So for the captains it's pretty lucrative, since it's assumed they can just demand a big enough share that no matter what they're getting lots of money, and it's the captains who are going to be finding it the plum position, not the crewmen. Because even with if Honor only got one or two big hauls a year, she'd be sitting at a cool million in Manticore bucks, which is stated to be worth more a hell of a lot more than money anywhere else.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Dec 31, 2019

# ? Dec 31, 2019 10:19

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

Kchama posted:

I don't think we're disagreeing in the least.

Though I will note that the share Honor is stated to be getting was 500k, so you can probably figure out how it is from there. So for the captains it's pretty lucrative, since it's assumed they can just demand a big enough share that no matter what they're getting lots of money, and it's the captains who are going to be finding it the plum position, not the crewmen. Because even with if Honor only got one or two big hauls a year, she'd be sitting at a cool million in Manticore bucks, which is stated to be worth more a hell of a lot more than money anywhere else.

At some point, I think I forgot the point I was trying to make and was focusing too much on finding other ways to explain it.

There is something else I wanted to comment on - the segment you're talking about here:

Kchama posted:

Namely, the idea that computers are always predictable and that humans can outdo computers simply by not always being predictable. Anyone who has ever played a video game can probably tell you that unless you have some extreme understanding of a simple AI involved to the point that you know how to manipulate it, this isn't going to be the case. Bugs and errors in programming cause all sorts of unusual AI behavior all the time. And this idea that AI is always simple and predictable is dumb.

Relying on a human to "pull the trigger" in a situation as simple as this is ludicrous - spotting a clear line of sight and firing is extremely simple for a computer. Having it be a "the computer cannot fire unless this button is depressed" safety measure would make sense, but if Weber wanted to focus on a "the human element matters" notion this is a stupid way to do it.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 10:35

mllaneza: Apr 28, 2007; Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952

Gnoman posted:

Relying on a human to "pull the trigger" in a situation as simple as this is ludicrous - spotting a clear line of sight and firing is extremely simple for a computer. Having it be a "the computer cannot fire unless this button is depressed" safety measure would make sense, but if Weber wanted to focus on a "the human element matters" notion this is a stupid way to do it.

There aren't any edge cases in space combat in this setting where you wouldn't just have the firing button taped down. Weber has accidentally created a situation where having expert crew doesn't loving matter because the AI can get shots off faster and in narrow windows that a human tac officer might not have seen.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 10:57

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

mllaneza posted:

There aren't any edge cases in space combat in this setting where you wouldn't just have the firing button taped down. Weber has accidentally created a situation where having expert crew doesn't loving matter because the AI can get shots off faster and in narrow windows that a human tac officer might not have seen.

Exactly. For the task of taking a shot, the computer is best. Keeping a human in the loop to ensure that the computer doesn't shoot at the wrong time (either because you don't want to risk it identifying a civilian or damaged friendly as a valid target, or because you want to ensure your guns are ready at a specific time) makes sense, but that's not what's being depicted.

That's a general problem in the series as a whole. He makes a big deal out of crew quality, and makes the effort to show significant differences in outcome between a bad crew and a good one, but rarely actually shows how that comes about.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 11:13

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

At some point, I think I forgot the point I was trying to make and was focusing too much on finding other ways to explain it.

There is something else I wanted to comment on - the segment you're talking about here:

Relying on a human to "pull the trigger" in a situation as simple as this is ludicrous - spotting a clear line of sight and firing is extremely simple for a computer. Having it be a "the computer cannot fire unless this button is depressed" safety measure would make sense, but if Weber wanted to focus on a "the human element matters" notion this is a stupid way to do it.

It's cool. I understand you're here, keeping me honest and making sure I don't gently caress up. I just figured out that which is why I had to bluntly tell you we weren't disagreeing rather than let the misunderstanding continue.

As for the second paragraph: Yeah. I was making that point but it came out kind of clumsy because I forgot I left out some relevant details because they had annoyed me.

Gnoman posted:

Exactly. For the task of taking a shot, the computer is best. Keeping a human in the loop to ensure that the computer doesn't shoot at the wrong time (either because you don't want to risk it identifying a civilian or damaged friendly as a valid target, or because you want to ensure your guns are ready at a specific time) makes sense, but that's not what's being depicted.

That's a general problem in the series as a whole. He makes a big deal out of crew quality, and makes the effort to show significant differences in outcome between a bad crew and a good one, but rarely actually shows how that comes about.

Double agreed.

That's why I pointed out the Pearl of Weber because it claims that there's a huge level of automation in the background but at the same time, per the written word, the ships have people doing everything anyways so the automation ends up unused and redundant in a bad way. The Pearl actually goes on to say that ship 'expert packages' degrade in quality as a ship takes damage, causing poor performance even when this wouldn't make sense. They specify this as a weakness of MAnticorean ships as they are very automated, whereas apparently Haven ships are less automated and therefore do not have as much of a degrade in performance as a ship is damaged which... what?

# ? Dec 31, 2019 12:31

Larry Parrish: Jul 9, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

it's also weird because like 95% of the space combat in the entire series is swarms of missiles which get some minor programming from humans but are otherwise entirely AI controlled. so clearly they impact the setting significantly.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 12:49

FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

Kchama posted:

That's why I pointed out the Pearl of Weber because it claims that there's a huge level of automation in the background but at the same time, per the written word, the ships have people doing everything anyways so the automation ends up unused and redundant in a bad way. The Pearl actually goes on to say that ship 'expert packages' degrade in quality as a ship takes damage, causing poor performance even when this wouldn't make sense. They specify this as a weakness of MAnticorean ships as they are very automated, whereas apparently Haven ships are less automated and therefore do not have as much of a degrade in performance as a ship is damaged which... what?

Probably just Weber thinking of it as narrative around a pen & paper wargame.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 12:52

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Kchama posted:

Relatedly, I love the dichotomy that nobility is bad, but royalty is good.

That is another thing Weber uses to make Manticore "Britain, but in Space!", as the power struggle between royals and nobility is a huge part of British history.

In essence, every monarchy before Absolutism was invented (and every non-absolutist monarchy after), was in a constant power struggle between the nominally independent nobility and the ruling monarch. If the monarch wins, you get an absolutist monarchy like in Prussia or France, if the nobles win, you get disasters in waiting like the Noble-republic of Poland.

The only thing I would change about this in Weber's books is making it clearer that this struggle is a thing which happens in the setting, instead of hoping your modern audience has read more then just SF-novels and knows their history. :v:

mllaneza posted:

There aren't any edge cases in space combat in this setting where you wouldn't just have the firing button taped down. Weber has accidentally created a situation where having expert crew doesn't loving matter because the AI can get shots off faster and in narrow windows that a human tac officer might not have seen.

I think there is a scene in a later book where Havenite raiders manage to drop out of hyperspace right next to a superdreadnought, and realize they're utterly hosed, since they know they can't possibly to more than a bit of inconsequential damage before the totally surprised, helpless super-capital ship next to them uses their automated defenses to just delete them from the universe.

And then the superdreadnought indeed wipes them out before its crew even has the chance to really notice what is going on.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 14:43

Monocled Falcon: Oct 30, 2011

Wouldn't the purpose of pinnacles and drones on a light cruiser be to set up a custom enforcement network or something similar?

Everything, even the station keeping modifications are standard issue gear and it seems like Honor is arbitrarily insisting on an exhausting pace.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 15:04

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Monocled Falcon posted:

Wouldn't the purpose of pinnacles and drones on a light cruiser be to set up a custom enforcement network or something similar?

Everything, even the station keeping modifications are standard issue gear and it seems like Honor is arbitrarily insisting on an exhausting pace.

Yes. A light cruiser's internal stocks of drones and small ships for the most part were sufficient enough to set up a custom enforcement network.

FuturePastNow posted:

Probably just Weber thinking of it as narrative around a pen & paper wargame.

I won't deny that this is likely the case.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 16:31

Patrat: Feb 14, 2012

Kchama posted:

I don't think we're disagreeing in the least.

Though I will note that the share Honor is stated to be getting was 500k, so you can probably figure out how it is from there. So for the captains it's pretty lucrative, since it's assumed they can just demand a big enough share that no matter what they're getting lots of money, and it's the captains who are going to be finding it the plum position, not the crewmen. Because even with if Honor only got one or two big hauls a year, she'd be sitting at a cool million in Manticore bucks, which is stated to be worth more a hell of a lot more than money anywhere else.

The captain's share of the prize money is probably the same regardless of the size of the ship, meaning that nobody cracking down on the smuggling makes even less sense. It does not matter how lazy the captains you are posting here are if they can earn 10x their salary if they are even moderately active in pushing their crew to catch smugglers and do their job. There is no evidence they were being bribed to look the other way (nobody tries to lean on Honour at all) and the admiralty up the chain seem thrilled with things (no pressure from there), so the only possibly answer is that they were all preemptively lobotomised through divine intervention in order to make Honour look good and get rich.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 20:49

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Patrat posted:

The captain's share of the prize money is probably the same regardless of the size of the ship, meaning that nobody cracking down on the smuggling makes even less sense. It does not matter how lazy the captains you are posting here are if they can earn 10x their salary if they are even moderately active in pushing their crew to catch smugglers and do their job. There is no evidence they were being bribed to look the other way (nobody tries to lean on Honour at all) and the admiralty up the chain seem thrilled with things (no pressure from there), so the only possibly answer is that they were all preemptively lobotomised through divine intervention in order to make Honour look good and get rich.

It's pretty great that the admiralty is all "Man it sure is good someone is doing something about On Basilisk Station, it sure is everyone but our's fault". Especially since I'm pretty sure that they could send people to clean it up if they REALLY wanted to, since Hemphill was able to send Honor there, so it isn't just people who are on Janacek's personal poo poo-list.

Also, it seems to very much say that they have literally never spent any money to make it a proper place border crossing/cargo shipping lane inspection point, when Honor's actions make it pretty clear that for a price you'd think the admiralty would be willing to pay they could safeguard their borders and one of the few ways their economy even works (if you accept that anyone else in the entirety of Manticore sees all the money that a couple of firms earn, since the reason why Manticore is so rich is from taxing goods going through their wormhole and not direct trading that Manticore does itself).

It was stated to cost less than 300m Manticore Bucks to set up the makeshift and probably extra expensive system they had going on.

FuturePastNow posted:

Probably just Weber thinking of it as narrative around a pen & paper wargame.

Also to add to this as to WHY I think that's the case and it not just being a dismissive joke, a lot of Honorverse is specifically based on a tabletop game that Weber was the designer of. Which is why Manticore's entire economy is based on trading in some form (because economy in the game he designed was entirely based around trading) and why the ship classes work the way they do, being entirely based on relative size as opposed to other features, which is... the same as his tabletop game, right down to the class names of the ships themselves.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 22:23

FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

Kchama posted:

Also to add to this as to WHY I think that's the case and it not just being a dismissive joke, a lot of Honorverse is specifically based on a tabletop game that Weber was the designer of. Which is why Manticore's entire economy is based on trading in some form (because economy in the game he designed was entirely based around trading) and why the ship classes work the way they do, being entirely based on relative size as opposed to other features, which is... the same as his tabletop game, right down to the class names of the ships themselves.

OBS also came right after he finished the second Starfire novel which is literally the novelization of a wargame campaign. So he had it on the brain. More than usual, that is.

E: Crusade also has a character named Hannah who is a battlecruiser captain until she rules-lawyers her way into declaring martial law over a colony behind enemy lines, defending it and ruling it as a military dictator until it gets liberated by friendly forces, and her face gets hosed up in the final battle. By the fourth Starfire novel, she's been promoted to Sky Marshal.

David Weber doesn't have very many characters. He just likes a few specific ones.

FuturePastNow fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Dec 31, 2019

# ? Dec 31, 2019 23:11

Khizan: Jul 30, 2013

Kchama posted:

It was stated to cost less than 300m Manticore Bucks to set up the makeshift and probably extra expensive system they had going on.

She made it out of missiles, and the book said that the missiles are a million plus spacebucks even without the warheads and whatnot. Using actual proper beacons and whatnot would probably be cheaper by a couple of orders of magnitude.

# ? Dec 31, 2019 23:14

Larry Parrish: Jul 9, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

FuturePastNow posted:

OBS also came right after he finished the second Starfire novel which is literally the novelization of a wargame campaign. So he had it on the brain. More than usual, that is.

E: Crusade also has a character named Hannah who is a battlecruiser captain until she rules-lawyers her way into declaring martial law over a colony behind enemy lines, defending it and ruling it as a military dictator until it gets liberated by friendly forces, and her face gets hosed up in the final battle. By the fourth Starfire novel, she's been promoted to Sky Marshal.

David Weber doesn't have very many characters. He just likes a few specific ones.

Blaze Ward's CS-405 series is basically the behind enemy lines but in space concept except executed way better. Highly recommend

# ? Dec 31, 2019 23:50

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Time for On Basilisk Station Chapter Fifteen! They really should have just cut out the Prologue and let an expanded version of this be the introduction to Haven. Also this is our first real experience with the actual villains, halfway through the book. That prologue was pretty awful, considering that this is a much better scene to introduce Haven on. It�s still not all that good, but it�s a drat sight better than the �We�re evil and here�s our exact plans� prologue.

�Evil, hard eyes� posted:

The well-dressed man looked vaguely out of place in the luxurious office's comfortably cushioned chair and his civilian clothing, despite his expensive tailoring. His face was dark and lean, the sort of face which has been trained to say only what its owner wants it to say, and his eyes were hard as he accepted the chilled glass and sipped. Ice rattled like brittle music as he lowered the glass, and his host sank into a facing chair and tried not to look anxious.

"I was sorry to hear about your . . . unanticipated problems, Mr. Canning." The visitor's voice was deep and well-modulated, almost gentle, but his host shifted uncomfortably. "I trust," the visitor went on, "that they aren't of such a nature as to interfere with our timetable?"

Wallace Canning, the People's Republic of Haven's consul on the planet Medusa, felt sweat bead his forehead. His guest might be in civilian clothes, but every time Canning looked at him he saw the uniform he ought to have been wearing�the green and gray uniform of a rear admiral in the People's Navy with the hourglass and sword of Naval Intelligence.

"I can't say for certain," he said at length, picking his words with caution. "Everything is too up in the air and unsettled. Until we know what this Harrington is going to do next, the best we can do is guess and double-check our potential vulnerabilities."

"I see." The business-suited admiral leaned back in his chair, swirling his drink in his hand and listening to its icy tinkle, and pursed his lips. Canning tried not to twitch under his level regard.

"It seems to me," the admiral resumed after a moment, "that there's been some sloppy execution at this end, Mr. Consul. We were assured the situation was under control. Indeed, I expected this to be a routine visit to receive your final readiness report, and now I hear that you can only 'guess' about what the opposition is going to do next." He shook his head. "Any covert operation has a built-in risk factor, but we've put too much time into this one, and Operation Odysseus is too important for guesswork or field operations that can be completely overturned by a single new factor."

"It can't be helped, and it's no one person's fault, either here or in the field," Canning said, choosing to assume the role of a man defending his subordinates and not himself. "And the 'single factor' you refer to was a complete wild card no one saw coming, here or on Haven. We couldn't see it coming, Adm�Sir, because there was absolutely no way to predict that we'd get someone like this lunatic assigned to Basilisk Station after all these years."

"I am aware of that. In fact, Mr. Canning, I was the one who chose the original timing for Odysseus's activation when Pavel Young was assigned here."

Pavel Young is so useless that even the bad guys know he�s a useless gently caress and planned everything around him being the Weber Bad Guy of the book.

�Villain Chat� posted:

"Yes. Well, things were moving exactly according to plan until she turned up. Since then�" Canning broke off and shrugged, raising one hand, palm uppermost.

"I understand the change in circumstances, Mr. Canning." The admiral spoke with the patience of one addressing a very small child, his eyes deceptively mild, and the consul writhed internally but knew better than to protest.

"Moreover, unlike you, I have a dossier on Commander Harrington," the admiral continued. "I'm sorry to say it isn't as extensive as I'd like. As you may know, NavInt seldom builds an in-depth package on anyone who hasn't yet made list, unless they come from a particularly prominent family. All we have on her are the standard clippings and her public record, but even those are enough to indicate that she's an entirely different proposition from an over-bred cretin like Young. And, all in all, I would be forced to agree that Harrington is scarcely the sort of officer one might reasonably have expected that oaf Janacek to assign to his own private little hellhole out here."

Canning relaxed a tiny bit, only to tense anew as his guest smiled thinly.

"Nonetheless, Mr. Canning, I can't escape the conclusion that you've taken your security too lightly. From the very beginning, you seem to have relied not on your own precautions but almost solely on the RMN's inefficiency. Granted," he waved a hand gently, "that inefficiency was part of our original planning, but you shouldn't have relied on its continuation. Certainly it should have been evident that your arrangements required a drastic reevaluation as soon as Harrington started shaking things up."

"I�" Canning stood and crossed abruptly to the liquor cabinet. He poured himself a martini with hands that trembled slightly, took a swallow, then turned back to the admiral.

"I have taken some precautions, Sir, whatever you may think. Admittedly, they were long-term, routine measures, and I'll concede I was slow to realize what was happening and adjust to Harrington's presence, as well. But I've been here over six local years, and this is the first Manticoran officer who's even bothered to check manifests against canister numbers in all that time."

"If that were all she were doing, Mr. Canning, or even if she were just arresting smugglers, I would be far less concerned," his guest said with deadly precision. "But that isn't all she's doing, is it? She's actively supporting Matsuko and the NPA. The local manpower she's released from customs and space control duties alone would constitute a major threat to operational security. When you add the overflights she's ordered to what your informants are reporting�" He shook his head sadly, and Canning took another long swallow of his drink.

�said with deadly precision� just had me have to pause and laugh, wow.

�This is all this chapter is, is villain chat� posted:

"We're not exactly completely naked, Sir," he said. "I know it's only a matter of time before her recon flights hit pay dirt, but as I've said, and despite any overconfidence on my part, we do have a multi-level cover in place against exactly that eventuality. And despite her activities in space, she hasn't even come close to bothering Captain Coglin. As for the rest of her actions," he added a bit more defensively, "I've done everything I can to get her recalled. I've lodged over twenty individual protests, now, and I'm using my contacts with other off-world merchant factors to generate more of them. The Manticoran Admiralty has to be feeling the heat, particularly in light of the political ramifications."

"I know about the protests, Mr. Canning. But while you're no doubt correct about the pressure they're placing on their admiralty, have you considered the fact they've no doubt also given her superiors ample confirmation that she's doing something we don't like?"

Canning flushed, and the first slow flickers of anger burned through his anxiety. All very well for the admiral to waltz in here after the fact and criticize, but what else did he expect Canning to do? drat it, protests were the only offensive weapons he had! And, he thought resentfully, if he hadn't lodged them, the admiral would be chopping his ears off for that!

"Well, so much for spilt milk." The admiral sighed, setting his glass on a small table and rising. "Why don't you tell me what's gone right, instead?"

He crossed to Canning's desk and bent over the unrolled map spread across the blotter. The paper chart was far less detailed and much more difficult to manipulate than a holo map would have been, but it had never entered the consulate's electronic data base, either. And, unlike an individual holo map reader, it could be rolled up and shoved into a vault with a thermal-destruct security system. Those were considerations that made any incidental inconvenience unimportant.

Now the admiral frowned down at the map, tracing terrain features with a fingertip. Unlike the majority of his naval contemporaries, he was as comfortable with planetary maps as with star charts, for his particular nameless branch of NavInt was more concerned with Trojan Horses than open warfare. Now he tapped the map and looked up at Canning.

"The lab here on the plateau. It has a direct up-link to our orbital collector?"

"No, Sir." Canning crossed to the desk and managed his first smile of the interview. "It relays through ground stations here and here�" he indicated two mountain peaks in the Outback "�and the initial ground station doesn't link to our collector at all." He met the admiral's inquiring gaze, and his smile turned into something like a grin. "We've been tapping into Dame Estelle's own backup collector."

"You mean you're drawing your power from the Manticoran grid?"

"No, Sir. It never enters the grid. This is their secondary collector, for use only if the main goes down for maintenance or repairs. Aside from their regular demand tests, we're the only station on it. Even if they find our tap, it won't tell them who set it up, and trying to figure out how it got there should point their attention in some very . . . interesting directions."

"I see." The admiral nodded with the first, faint signs of approval. "But, of course, if they do find it, they'll also find the ground station it feeds, won't they?"

"Yes, Sir, they will, but that's where the cover plan I mentioned comes in. Colonel Westerfeldt has operational responsibility for the field activities, and he's done an excellent job of hiding our tracks and planting red herrings. In fact, we want them to find the ground stations�and the lab�if they look hard enough."

I�m tempted to cut something from this, but it�s pretty much a solid wall of exposition. It means I can probably cut out Weber inevitably repeating it later.

This is also a very short chapter, notably. It�s just this one short scene.

�Villain Chat More� posted:

The admiral raised his eyebrows, and Canning felt himself smile almost naturally as he continued.

"We've set up a fallback lab that uses its own hydro generators, and if they do find this one, it won't tell them much�unless they pick up some of our personnel, of course. But even if they do, none of the equipment was made in the Republic. In fact, most of it was built by . . . a certain Manticoran merchant cartel, shall we say?" He paused, and this time it was the admiral's turn to smile faintly in understanding. "More importantly, the local security man and the techs operating it are also Manticoran, and they have no idea they're working for us. They believe they're working for a domestic criminal syndicate. We've had to bring in some of our own people to operate the backup lab if it comes to that, but even there, almost all the equipment was manufactured in Manticore. Finally, we've had our Manticoran fall guys maintaining a meticulous set of books for their fictitious employers. If the NPA hits the lab, they'll find records the people working in the lab fully believe to be genuine and which point directly away from us."

"I see," the admiral repeated. His finger drew idle patterns on the map, and his smile faded as he frowned down at it. Then he tapped a spot far south of the vast plateau. "And the main site?"

"Completely secure, Sir," Canning said confidently. "Every bit of it's underground, and there's never been any direct contact between it and either of our lab facilities, even by air. Every shipment's routed through this staging area�" his own finger tapped a spot well to the west "�and shipped in from there on the ground using Stilty caravaneers. In addition, Colonel Westerfeldt's on-site personnel were all very carefully chosen for deniability, even if the NPA should stumble right over them. Unlike our backup lab techs, all of them are Manticorans with long criminal records, and none of them knows exactly whom the colonel is working for."

"Indeed." The admiral cocked his head, then allowed a fresh smile, much stronger than the first, to cross his own face. "I may, perhaps, have been overly pessimistic, Mr. Canning. You seem to have built in more security than I'd anticipated."

"It wasn't all my doing," Canning replied. "As I say, Colonel Westerfeldt's our field man here, and your own people, picked an excellent cover for Coglin's presence. And, of course, Ambassador Gowan has actually coordinated most of the operation from Manticore." He hid an inner smirk as the admiral nodded. Gowan was a very big fish, a retired Dolist manager with powerful friends back home on Haven. It never hurt to spread the credit (and any potential blame) over broader shoulders than one's own, and even NavInt would hesitate to antagonize Gowan.

"So," the admiral said after a moment, crossing back to his chair to reclaim his drink. He sipped thoughtfully, staring out the office windows into the night and the floodlit brightness of the consulate's grounds. "Your ground-side security is in better shape than I'd feared, but that still leaves the orbital side wide open, and that's where this Harrington can hurt us worst."

"Yes and no, Sir." Canning moved up to stand at the admiral's shoulder and gaze out into the grounds. "It's too late for her to intercept any of the really critical shipments. Everything we need is already down and in place, except for the mekoha we're still manufacturing, and I canceled the last two off-world shipments on my own initiative when I realized what was happening. I'd really prefer to have them down here, but we can live without them, and having them spotted in transit would be far too revealing. As for Coglin, he should be completely secure as long as he just sits tight aboard ship. If there's no contact with the surface, Harrington will have neither cause nor justification for interfering with him at all."

"Good." The admiral sounded markedly less hostile, and Canning let himself relax a bit further. But then the admiral pursed his lips again. "Still, even if everything else goes perfectly, Fearless's mere presence in Medusa orbit could derail the entire operation when it kicks off. I don't like how tightly Harrington is integrating her own operations with the NPA. She's got the better part of a company of Manticoran Marines up there, with enough combat equipment to make a real difference."

As much as Weber characters suck, this is actually the most interesting chapter in the book, because it�s not all Honor-praise OR dunking on ineffectual villains. These guys actually aren�t completely useless punching bags!

Completely, that is.

�Close to last quote� posted:

"With all due respect, Sir, I think that's unlikely. They'd have to know what was coming and lay contingency plans ahead of time to affect the actual operation in any material way. Oh, I don't deny they can probably limit the damage, but I don't see any possible way that they could limit it enough to make a real difference. As long as they can't stop it entirely, we still have our opening, and not even a full company of Marines already in place in the enclaves can do that."

"Perhaps." The admiral rocked on his toes for a moment, rubbing the rim of his glass with a fingertip. "And perhaps not. What do your sources in Manticore have to say about Young?"

"He's got his ship at Hephaestus, and our network's a lot weaker on the military side, but all the indications are that he realizes he's screwed up. I'd guess�but it's only a guess, of course�that he's making every effort to get back here before Harrington makes him look any worse."

"It would be difficult," the admiral observed with a cynical smile, "for anyone to make Pavel Young look worse than he is."

He rocked in silent thought for a few more seconds, then nodded to himself.

"Find out how long he's going to be there, Mr. Canning. I have no doubt his first action on returning here will be to send Harrington as far away from Medusa as the limits of Basilisk Station permit, and I'd far rather have him in Medusa orbit when the penny drops. If he'll be back in less than�oh, another Manticoran month or so�I want the operation delayed until he returns."

"That may be difficult," Canning said cautiously. "We've got almost everything in place, and our shaman is primed. I'm not positive he can hold them in check that long. The actual H-hour has always been rather indeterminate, you know. Then, too, there's probably a limit to how long Coglin can sit up there without someone like Harrington getting suspicious."

"Perhaps. But, as I say, I don't want Harrington close to the planet when it kicks off. If at all possible, I want her several hours away, far enough for us to get the running start we need. As for Coglin, I think his cover will hold a while longer, and I can arrange to hold our other assets on station for up to three or four Manticoran months if I have to."

"I'll see what I can do, Sir." Canning still sounded doubtful, and the admiral smiled.

"I'm sure you will, Mr. Canning. And, in the meantime, I'll see what we can do to . . . redirect Commander Harrington's energies."

"I've pretty much exhausted the diplomatic options, Sir," Canning pointed out.

"No, Mr. Consul. You've exhausted Haven's diplomatic options." The admiral turned to face him with a much broader smile, and Canning's eyebrows rose.

"I'm not sure I see what you're driving at, Sir."

"Oh, come now! Haven't you just been telling me how hard you've worked to provide the Manticorans with a culprit closer to home? Well, what use is a cat's-paw if you don't use it?"

"You mean�?"

Now, you may be thinking, �Oh, this is where they sent people in Manticore to threaten Honor in a way that she can�t fight back from, to make her stand down....

�Well, you�d be...� posted:

"Of course, Mr. Canning." The admiral actually chuckled. "I'm quite certain Harrington has irritated the Manticoran merchant cartels as badly as she has us. From what you've reported about her operations, she's already cost them a bundle, and that doesn't even consider the humiliation she's no doubt inflicted by catching them with their hands dirty. I suspect most of them are just as eager as we are to see her teeth pulled, wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes," Canning agreed with a slow smile. "Yes, I imagine they are. But by the same token, Sir, doesn't it seem likely they've already put all the pressure they can on the Government and Admiralty?"

"Perhaps. But I was thinking about something a little more direct than that," the admiral said unpleasantly, "and I've been studying our dossier on Commander Harrington since I learned of the situation here. As I say, it's not as complete as I might wish, but it does offer some potentially useful information. For example, did you know that her father and mother are both doctors?" Canning shook his head. "Well, they are. In fact, they're both senior partners in Duvalier Medical Associates on Sphinx. It's an excellent outfit, with a high reputation in neural and genetic surgery . . . and it just happens that seventy percent of Duvalier Medical's public stock is held by Christy and Sons, which, in turn, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Hauptman Cartel." The admiral smiled almost dreamily. "I always knew keeping an eye on Hauptman would be useful some day, even before this operation came up."

"But does Hauptman even realize it, Sir?"

"Perhaps not yet, but I'm sure we can call it to their attention�discreetly, of course. But, then, we've already called several items to Hauptman's attention, haven't we?"

"Yes, Sir, we have," Canning agreed. He furrowed his brow as he considered ways and means. "My regularly scheduled courier to Ambassador Gowan leaves tomorrow morning," he said thoughtfully.

"An excellent suggestion, Mr. Canning." The admiral nodded and raised his glass in a toast. "To Commander Harrington, may she have other things to concern herself with very shortly," he murmured.

Wrong, they�re just having Hauptman register a formal complaint.

# ? Jan 1, 2020 00:16

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# ? Apr 29, 2024 08:16

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

I see everyone's New Year's Resolution was to abandon the Mil-Scifi Fiction thread.

Wise posters, one and all.

# ? Jan 1, 2020 10:32

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Everyone's a WarCriminal: the Mil-SciFi Thread

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