Everyone's a WarCriminal: the Mil-SciFi Thread

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FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

it's worse when you know they'll be friends ten books down the line once they share the common trait of both being trillionaires

# ? Jan 12, 2020 17:25

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 22:10

The Chad Jihad: Feb 24, 2007

WHEN ARE THEY GONNA TO GET TO THE SPACE BATTLE FACTORY

# ? Jan 12, 2020 19:25

jng2058: Jul 17, 2010; We have the tools, we have the talent!

The Chad Jihad posted:

WHEN ARE THEY GONNA TO GET TO THE SPACE BATTLE FACTORY

Second to last chapter, I think? This book has one of the better battles in the Harrington series, but you have to wade through SO much poo poo to get to it. :sigh:

# ? Jan 12, 2020 20:33

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

FuturePastNow posted:

it's worse when you know they'll be friends ten books down the line once they share the common trait of both being trillionaires

Space Trillionaires, thank you! Which makes it worse as this means they're worth like a hundred times as much as they would if they were mere trillionaires.

The Chad Jihad posted:

WHEN ARE THEY GONNA TO GET TO THE SPACE BATTLE FACTORY

It starts mid-way through Chapter 30, and ends at the end of Chapter 31. That's all the action this lengthy book has.

As a taste test for that, let me quote the most infamous part of the book. At the very end of the book, right as the action is about to kick off during Chapter 29, David Weber decided to completely stop everything for what everyone loves the most: A poorly-timed infodump!

Uneditted so you can soak it in posted:

She chopped off that train of thought and made herself lean back. The timing of Sirius's departure could mean only one thing, she told herself, and Brigham's projection of her course confirmed it. Sirius was, indeed, headed for the Tellerman wave, and the Tellerman was one of the "Roaring Deeps," the most powerful grav waves ever charted. More than that, it headed almost directly towards the People's Republic of Haven. If there truly was a Peep battle squadron out here, the Tellerman would take Sirius to meet it at two and a half or three thousand times the speed of light.

Back in the early days of hyper flight, spacers would have avoided something like the Tellerman like death itself, for death was precisely what it would have meant for any starship that encountered it, but that had changed.

The original hyper drive had been a mankiller, yet it had taken people a while to realize precisely why that was. Some of the dangers had been easy enough to recognize and avoid, but others had been far more difficult to identify and account for�mainly because people who encountered them never came back to describe their experience.

It had been discovered early on that translating into the alpha band, the lowest of the hyper bands, at a velocity greater than thirty percent that of light was suicide, yet people had continued to kill themselves for centuries in efforts to translate at speeds higher than that. Not because they were suicidal, but because such a low velocity had severely limited the usefulness of hyper travel.

The translation into or out of any given band of hyper-space was a complex energy transfer that cost the translating vessel most of its original velocity�as much as ninety-two percent of it, in the case of the alpha band. The energy loss dropped slightly with each "higher" hyper band, but its presence remained a constant, and for over five standard centuries, all hyper ships had relied on reaction drives.

There were limits to the amount of reaction mass a ship could carry, and hydrogen catcher fields didn't work in the extreme conditions of hyper-space. That had effectively limited ships to the very lowest (and "slowest") hyper bands, since no one could carry enough reaction mass to recover velocity after multiple translations. It also explained why more stubborn inventors had persisted in their costly efforts to translate at higher velocities in order to maintain as much starting velocity in hyper-space as possible. It had taken over two hundred years for the .3 c limitation to be fully accepted, and even today, some hyper physicists continued to search for a way around it.

Even after one had resolved the problems of safe translation speeds, however, there was the question of navigation. Hyper-space wasn't like normal-space. The laws of relativistic physics applied at any given point in hyper, but as a hypothetical observer looked outward, his instruments showed a rapidly increasing distortion. Maximum observation range was barely twenty light-minutes under ideal conditions; beyond that, the gravity-warped chaos of hyper and its highly charged particles and extreme background radiation made instruments utterly unreliable. Which, of course, meant that astrogation fixes were impossible, and a ship that couldn't see where it was going seldom came home again.

The answer to that one had been the hyper log, the interstellar equivalent of the ancient inertial guidance systems developed on Old Earth long before the Diaspora. Early-generation hyper logs hadn't been all that accurate, but they'd at least given astrogators a rough notion of where they were. That had been far better than anything that had come before, yet even with the hyper log, so many ships never returned that only survey vessels used hyper-space. Survey crews had been small, fantastically well-paid, and probably just a bit crazy, but they'd kept hyper travel in use until, eventually, one or two of them encountered what had killed so many other starships and survived to tell about it.

Hyper space itself was best considered as a compressed dimension which corresponded on a point-by-point basis to normal-space but placed those points in much closer congruity and so "shortened" the distance between them. In fact, there were multiple "bands," or associated but discrete dimensions, of hyper space. The "higher" the band, the shorter the distance between points in normal-space, the greater the apparent velocity of ships traveling through it . . . and the higher the cumulative energy cost to enter it.

That much had been understood by the earliest theorists. What they hadn't quite grasped was that hyper space, formed by the combined gravitational distortion of an entire universe's mass, was itself crossed and crisscrossed by permanent waves or currents of focused gravity. They were widely separated, of course, but they also might be dozens of light-years wide and deep, and they were deadly to any ship which collided with one. The gravitational shear they exerted on a starship's hull would rip the hapless vessel apart long before any evasive action could even be contemplated, unless the ship happened to impact at precisely the right angle on exactly the right vector, and its bridge crew had both the reflexes and the reaction mass to wrench clear in time.

As time passed, the survey ships that survived had mapped out reasonably safe routes through the more heavily traveled regions of hyper-space. They couldn't be entirely relied upon, for the grav waves shifted position from time to time, and sticking to the safe lanes between waves often required vector changes reaction-drive ships simply could not make. That meant hyper voyages had tended to be both indirect and lengthy, but the survival rate had gone up. And as it climbed, and as physicists went out to probe the grav waves they now knew existed with ever more sophisticated instruments, observational data increased and ever more refined theories of gravity were proposed.

It had taken just over five hundred years, but finally, in 1246 P.D., the scientists had learned enough for the planet Beowulf to perfect the impeller drive, which used what were for all intents and purposes "tame" grav waves in normal-space. Yet useful as the impeller was in normal-space, it was extraordinarily dangerous in hyper. If it encountered one of the enormously more powerful naturally occurring grav waves, it could vaporize an entire starship, much as Honor herself had blown the Havenite courier boat's impeller nodes with Fearless's impeller wedge.

More than thirty years had passed before Dr. Adrienne Warshawski of Old Earth found a way around that danger. It was Warshawski who finally perfected a gravity detector which could give as much as five light-seconds' warning before a grav wave was encountered. That had been a priceless boon, permitting impeller drive to be used with far greater safety between grav waves, and even today all grav detectors were called "Warshawskis" in her honor, yet she hadn't stopped there. In the course of her research, she had penetrated far deeper into the entire grav wave phenomenon than anyone before her, and she had suddenly realized that there was a way to use the grav wave itself. An impeller drive modified so that it projected not an inclined stress band above and below a ship but two slightly curved plates at right angles to its hull could use those plates as giant, immaterial "sails" to trap the focused radiation hurtling along a grav wave. More than that, the interface between a Warshawski sail and a grav wave produced an eddy of preposterously high energy levels which could be siphoned off to power a starship. Once a ship had "set sail" down a grav wave, it could actually shut down its onboard power plants entirely.

And so the grav wave, once the promise of near certain death, had become the secret to faster, cheaper, and safer hyper voyages. Captains who had avoided them like the plague now actively sought them out, cruising between them on impeller drive where necessary, and the network of surveyed grav waves had grown apace.

There had still been a few problems. The most bothersome was that grav waves were layers of focused gravity, subject to areas of reverse flow and unpredictable bouts of "turbulence" along the interfaces of opposed flows or where one wave impinged upon another. Such turbulence could destroy a ship, but it was almost more frustrating that no one could take full advantage of the potential of the Warshawski sail (or, for that matter, the impeller drive) because no human could survive the accelerations which were theoretically possible.

Improved Warshawskis had tended to offset the first difficulty by extending their detection range and warning ships of turbulence. With enough warning time, a ship could usually trim its sails to ride through turbulence by adjusting their density and "grab factor," though failure to trim in time remained deadly, which was why Sirius's claim of tuner flutter had been so serious. A captain still had to see it coming, but the latest generation detectors could detect a grav wave at as much as eight light-minutes and spot turbulence within a wave at up to half that range. The problem of acceleration tolerance, on the other hand, had remained insoluble for over a standard century, until Dr. Shigematsu Radhakrishnan, probably the greatest hyper physicist after Warshawski herself, devised the inertial compensator.

Radhakrishnan had also been the first to hypothesize the existence of wormhole junctions, but the compensator had been his greatest gift to mankind's diaspora. The compensator turned the grav wave (natural or artificial) associated with a vessel into a sump into which it could dump its inertia. Within the safety limits of its compensator, any accelerating or decelerating starship was in a condition of internal free-fall unless it generated its own gravity, but the compensator's efficiency depended on two factors: the area enclosed in its field and the strength of the grav wave serving as its sump. Thus a smaller ship, with a smaller compensator field area, could sustain a higher acceleration from a given wave strength, and the naturally-occurring and vastly more powerful grav waves of hyper-space allowed for far higher accelerations under Warshawski sail than could possibly be achieved under impeller drive in normal-space.

Even with the acceleration rates the compensator permitted, no manned vessel could maintain a normal-space velocity above eighty percent of light-speed, for the particle and radiation shielding to survive such velocities simply did not exist. The highest safe speed in hyper was still lower, little more than .6 c due to the higher particle charges and densities encountered there, but the closer congruity of points in normal-space meant a ship's apparent velocity could be many times light-speed. Equipped with Warshawski sails, gravity detectors, and the inertial compensator, a modern warship could attain hyper accelerations of up to 5,500 g and sustain apparent velocities of as much as 3,000 c. Merchantmen, on the other hand, unable to sacrifice as much onboard mass to the most powerful possible sails and compensators the designer could squeeze in, remained barred from the highest hyper bands and most powerful grav waves and were lucky to make more than 1,200 c, though some passenger liners might go as high as 1,500.

And that brought Honor right back to Sirius, for the ship in front of her obviously had a military-grade drive and compensator. Her sheer mass meant her compensator field was larger and thus less efficient than Fearless's, but no freighter should have been able to pull her acceleration. Even a superdreadnought, the only warship class which approached her mass, could only manage about four hundred and twenty gees, and Sirius was burning along at four hundred and ten. That left Fearless an advantage of barely a hundred and ten gees, little more than a kilometer per second squared�and Sirius had a head start of just under fifteen minutes.

# ? Jan 12, 2020 20:50

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

TheGreatEvilKing and Kchama
There is no shame in abandoning your ~~humilation-play~~ commitments to Let's Read-ing different David Weber book series.
As the thread OP, I will not shame or mock either of you for doing so, the shaming and mocking of PupsOfWar re: failure to deliver their RingoManifesto will continue though. After all I have willingly read Systemic Shock by Dean Ing twice now. Systemic Shock is my forever-baseline for terrible mil-scifi, no ebook versions of it exist for good reasons.

# ? Jan 12, 2020 21:21

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

I'm gonna see how far I get. I will not promise a consistent schedule, but I can't promise interesting commentary on Safehold either.

That said, I am definitely cutting it off after Book 1. There is no reason to read the rest of the series.

# ? Jan 12, 2020 21:49

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

I'm sorry. I tried. I can't read that. My eyes just...stopped working.

# ? Jan 12, 2020 21:51

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

StrixNebulosa posted:

I'm sorry. I tried. I can't read that. My eyes just...stopped working.

The long story short of it is: Hyperspace happens to work just like the ocean circa Age Of Sail.

# ? Jan 12, 2020 23:29

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

About half of that could be omitted and put in a later book, and the rest could very easily be broken up and put literally anywhere else in this one. It would even have made a few scenes flow better, because you'd know what they were going on about.

It is even worse in context, because it is dropped in the middle of the book's climax. If you're invested in the plot, then you're going to be extremely annoyed that it suddenly comes to a screeching halt.

# ? Jan 12, 2020 23:45

Monocled Falcon: Oct 30, 2011

Kchama posted:

The long story short of it is: Hyperspace happens to work just like the ocean circa Age Of Sail.

But it doesn't... even the blatant stuff like currents only vaguely work like the ocean.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 00:09

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

About half of that could be omitted and put in a later book, and the rest could very easily be broken up and put literally anywhere else in this one. It would even have made a few scenes flow better, because you'd know what they were going on about.

It is even worse in context, because it is dropped in the middle of the book's climax. If you're invested in the plot, then you're going to be extremely annoyed that it suddenly comes to a screeching halt.

This is all 100% true and accurate. It really makes the already incredibly glacial pace of the book even more excruciating. Literally the book gets to the action starting and then just stops for page after page of COMPLETELY irrelevant infodumping. As you said, a lot of it could have been put literally anywhere else, like, you know, that time they actually go into hyperspace near the start of the book, explaining it when it was relevant rather than waiting until the book's climax to remember that he hadn't explained a thing.

He seems to be just writing and forgetting that the readers don't know the setting and only remembering suddenly that he forgot to say anything and then just hastily throwing in an infodump that doesn't really help at all.

Also, I feel like summarizing a bunch of chapters just because they're so boring.

On Basilisk Station Chapter Twenty-One

McKeon repents for being a jealous jerk and becomes a worshipper of the One True Goddess, Honor Harrington.

quote:

"I hated you." His voice was muffled, bouncing back from the bulkhead as he looked away from her. "I told myself I didn't, but I did. And it didn't get better. It got worse every day. It got worse every time I saw you do something right and realized I'd wanted you to do it wrong so I could justify the way I felt.

"And then there were the maneuvers." He wheeled to face her once more, his expression twisted. "drat it, I knew they'd handed you an impossible job after the way they gutted our armament! I knew it was impossible�and instead of digging in and helping you do it anyway, I let you carry the whole load because deep down inside I wanted you to fail. Captain, I'm a tac officer by training. Every single time something went wrong, every time another one of those goddamned Aggressor crews 'destroyed' us, something inside me kept saying I could have done better. I knew I couldn't have, but that didn't matter. It was what I felt. I tried to do my duty anyway, but I couldn't. Not the way I should have."

He came closer to the table, leaning forward to brace himself on its top and bend towards her across it.

"And then this." He raised one hand to gesture at the bulkheads. "Basilisk Station." He returned his hand to the table beside its companion and stared down at them both. "I told myself it was your fault, that you were the one who'd gotten us sent here, and that was another lie. But every time I told myself one lie, I had to tell another to justify the ones that came before it. So it was your fault, not mine, and all that nonsense about doing our duty, about meeting our responsibilities whether anyone else had ever bothered to meet theirs or not�that was crap, Captain. That was bright-eyed, runny-nosed, idealistic, Academy crap, not the real world."

He looked up at her again.

"But it wasn't, was it, Ma'am?" he said softly. "Not to you. I don't know why Young dumped this on you. It doesn't matter why he did. What matters is that you didn't cry and moan. You didn't slack off. You just dug in and�" He shook his head and straightened.

"You kicked us in the rear end, Captain. You kicked us over and over again, until we got up off our self-pitying backsides and started acting like Queen's officers again. And I knew what you were doing, and why you were doing it, the whole time, and I hated it. Hated it. Because every time you did something right, it was one more proof that you deserved the job I wanted."

He dropped into a chair, facing her across the table, and raised one hand almost pleadingly.

I'm glad they actually showed this on screen and didn't just tell us about it after the fact.

Oh, wait.

The chapter ends posted:

"Stupid, wasn't it? I don't think a kid like Cardones or Tremaine is a worthless gently caress-up just because he makes a mistake, admits a problem. But I couldn't admit that I had one. Not to you."

"Not stupid, Mr. McKeon. Just very, very human."

"Maybe," McKeon whispered, and stared down at his hands again. Honor let the silence linger for a few heartbeats, then cleared her own throat.

"But whatever the past was like, it's past," she said more briskly. "Isn't it, Mr. McKeon?"

"Yes, Ma'am." The executive officer straightened in his chair and nodded with matching briskness. "Yes, Ma'am, it is."

"Good." Honor stood and smiled at him across the table. "Because since it is, Mr. Exec, be warned! The next time I think you're slacking off, I'm going to kick your rear end so hard you'll make it all the way to Basilisk Control on pure momentum! Is that clear, Mr. McKeon?"

"Yes, Ma'am." He rose from his own chair with a grin. It looked unnatural and out of place on the face which had been a mask for so long, but it also looked completely right, somehow.

"Good," Honor repeated more softly. She hesitated for just a moment, and then extended her hand across the table. "In that case, Commander McKeon, welcome aboard. It's good to see you back."

"Thank you." He took her hand and clasped it firmly. "It's good to be back . . . Skipper."

So McKeon is now her loyal toady forever. That's the entire chapter, with not a lot cut out.

On Basilisk Station Chapter Twenty-Two

This chapter is just Politics Chat mostly. Boring.

Does this ever come up again? posted:

He turned back to the huge fireplace and added another log. He adjusted it with the poker, settling the native hemlock (which, in fact, bore very little resemblance to the Old Earth tree of the same name) into the bed of coals, then straightened and replaced the poker in its stand as he checked the wall clock again. It was twelve past comp, well into the twenty-seven-minute midnight "hour" officially called Compensate that adjusted Manticore's 22.45-hour day to permit use of Standard Reckoning time units, and his eyebrow rose again. Even allowing for the time zone difference, it was unusual for his brother to screen him this late�and even more unusual for him to specify the exact time at which he would call.

As mentioned, I don't remember Compensate ever coming up again. Also glad to know that Native Hemlock is nothing like Actual Hemlock.

Also, why do they keep calling it Old Earth? There's no New Earth as far as I can tell.

Anyways the chapter is about attempts to repeal Annexation except of course the bad guys are incompetent loser politicians and so this is actually exactly what the Good Guy Politicians want as it gives them power to amend everything to give them full power. They also manage to work out how to keep Pavel Young away for a while and it goes off perfectly. They have no issues and the chapter ends with them winning everything. Boring.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Honor finds out that every political battle being fought has been won by her side and crushingly so. The other side is discovered to be evil and terrible and did everything wrong. There's a lot of talk about the ground forces that I can't care about in the least, and that's the chapter. It's actually very long, but also basically "the losers lose" as Honor dances happily.

have a dumb quote posted:

It seemed New Kiev was feeling the heat from the financial community in general and, apparently, from the Hauptman Cartel in particular. From Dame Estelle's remarks, Honor was beginning to suspect that the big Manticoran merchant cartels had contributed rather more heavily to the Liberal Party's political coffers than she'd ever thought. The notion of an alliance between the parliamentary advocates of increased welfare spending and the captains of industry seemed a bit bizarre to Honor, but something was certainly giving them an awful lot of clout with the Opposition, for Countess New Kiev had decided to turn the screws on Dame Estelle to propitiate them.

Honor had been astounded to learn from the commissioner that New Kiev had been told in unambiguous terms to keep her hands off the Navy's operations on Basilisk Station. That must have been a rude shock for her, Honor told herself with secret delight, and it reinforced her own suspicion that someone well up the chain of command approved of her actions. It was also, she reflected, the first time since the Basilisk Annexation that the Minister for Medusan Affairs had been told�rather bluntly, she gathered�that her authority ended at the outer edge of the planetary atmosphere. It was a long overdue assertion of the Fleet's authority and responsibility, although, given the officers and ships normally assigned here, she had little faith it would last.

But it was holding for now, and New Kiev didn't like it a bit. More, it sounded as if her authority even within her own planetary bailiwick had taken a beating.

Honor hadn't quite understood the gleam in the commissioner's eye once she stopped ranting and started speculating on the political situation back home. Of course, Honor didn't understand most of the machinations that went on inside the Parliament of Manticore. She vastly preferred the Navy, where the chain of command was at least generally clear, whatever infighting went on between factions and power groups. But Dame Estelle did seem to grasp the byzantine rules of the game, and she appeared convinced that something deep, complex, and probably drastic was going on beneath the surface . . . and that whatever it was boded ill for Countess New Kiev.

Honor could follow some of her reasoning, for as Dame Estelle had pointed out, New Kiev, as one of the leaders of the Opposition, held her present post only because the Ministry for Medusan Affairs was traditionally assigned to the Liberal Party as some sort of quid pro quo left over from the original, tortuous annexation fight in Parliament. But there were limits to how far from the Government line she could stray without losing her position, and it seemed she'd reached them, for her messenger had arrived in Dame Estelle's office with "suggestions," not directives.

The commissioner hadn't cared for those suggestions at all, and as far as Honor could decipher them, they seemed to have consisted entirely of variations on a single theme. Dame Estelle should remember the commercial importance to the Kingdom of its great trading houses. She should strive to adopt a "more conciliatory tone" when dealing with them and "mediate between the Navy's overly rigorous application" of the commerce regulations and the cartels' "legitimate concerns over sudden and abrupt changes in the regulatory climate." Above all, she should "remember the transitory nature of our custodial presence on Medusa" and avoid any actions which would anger the natives or those who would someday trade with them as equals. And, of course, she should "strive to abate" the possibly over-zealous manner in which the present senior officer on Basilisk Station seemed to be wielding her powers over the remainder of the star system.

I'll end here. That should help me get back on track. And I still might skip the rest of the chapters so I can get to the actual action of the book.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jan 13, 2020

# ? Jan 13, 2020 00:30

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Monocled Falcon posted:

But it doesn't... even the blatant stuff like currents only vaguely work like the ocean.

I'm not saying the actual in-universe mechanics works like the ocean, but the out-of-universe 'working'. It's blatantly meant to replicate how sailing was in the Age of Sail.

EDIT: Like I wasn't speaking literally, but just getting across what Weber is evoking, since the actual technical aspects are dumb.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Jan 13, 2020

# ? Jan 13, 2020 00:31

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:

As mentioned, I don't remember Compensate ever coming up again. Also glad to know that Native Hemlock is nothing like Actual Hemlock.

Also, why do they keep calling it Old Earth? There's no New Earth as far as I can tell.

There's a few references to "New <earth place>" scattered about, but that's only a partial explanation - we don't talk about Elizabeth II of the House of Windsor being the Queen of Old England, or of Vicente Fox being the President of Old Mexico.

It is a very strange convention. It doesn't really hurt anything since you know what he means (as opposed to, for example, talking about a ship's sails before you tell us what the hell the sails are for), but you're right - it is odd.

Compensate is just there to acknowledge that not all planets have the same day - one of the draws of the series (to those with the right frame of mind) is that Weber at least pays lip service to a bunch of things that most works ignore - while the hemlock thing is just another example of the "analogy-the-reader-will-recognize" thing I was talking about before.

Also, your quote tag is broken.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 00:47

C.M. Kruger: Oct 28, 2013

quantumfoam posted:

Finally ended up reading a Marko Kloos book (Lines of Departure) via a local library rental.
Went in expecting a lower-ranks grunt perspective from all the positive reviews and recommendations of the Frontline series.
That didn't happen, the book (and Kloos's narrative ticks) really didn't click for me. The 1st Frontlines book probably explains everything better, however it wasn't available.
Ah well, at least it got the funk of Robert S McNamara terribleness out of my head.

The first book is the usual boot camp sequence, the protag getting sent to a peacekeeping unit on Earth, and then getting transferred to the space branch. Most of it serves to introduce him, set up how lovely life (in North America anyways) is, and set the stage for the rest of the series. (which as has been said earlier is mostly about humanity getting clowned on and the protag and his wife getting PTSD.)

I just started the first book in his new series the other night and it feels like it has a stronger opening. So far it's about a intel officer POW/convicted war criminal from the losing side being demobbed and going home, and a power armor NCO and a ship captain with the occupational forces facing a suddenly renewed insurgency.

mllaneza posted:

The Ivan and Cordelia books were amazing. She seems to be done with the series (we did get an Ekaterin novella recently) , and that's okay since I like the Penric stuff she's into now.

The series has reached a decent endpoint yes, Miles is too old and politically/dad important to go off gallivanting around any more. If there are any new stories I suspect they'll either be about other people like the Ekaterin novella, or might skip forwards a decade or two and feature their kids as characters.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 00:52

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

There's a few references to "New <earth place>" scattered about, but that's only a partial explanation - we don't talk about Elizabeth II of the House of Windsor being the Queen of Old England, or of Vicente Fox being the President of Old Mexico.

It is a very strange convention. It doesn't really hurt anything since you know what he means (as opposed to, for example, talking about a ship's sails before you tell us what the hell the sails are for), but you're right - it is odd.

Compensate is just there to acknowledge that not all planets have the same day - one of the draws of the series (to those with the right frame of mind) is that Weber at least pays lip service to a bunch of things that most works ignore - while the hemlock thing is just another example of the "analogy-the-reader-will-recognize" thing I was talking about before.

Also, your quote tag is broken.

Yeah that's why I was questioning it the Old Earth thing. It's not really a big deal but it just kind of makes you go "But why?"

And yeah I recognize that's why it's there, but the whole detail is pretty much meaningless to the scene and never comes up again so it might as well just not exist.

I ninja-editted the quote tag right before you mentioned it.. For some reason, when I paste it, it keeps dropping the final quote tag and everything after it. Dunno why.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 01:00

C.M. Kruger: Oct 28, 2013

Comedic MilSF story about all the planets that declared themselves to be Third Rome getting in a big fight.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 01:07

FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

we'll always have Nouveau Paris

# ? Jan 13, 2020 01:36

Anshu: Jan 9, 2019

Thinking on it for a minute or so, maybe the use of "Old Earth" is to signify the use of the proper noun referring to humanity's birth world, as opposed to more figurative uses of the generic word "earth". In text capitalization does the job for you, but that's not always clear in speech.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 01:37

Khizan: Jul 30, 2013

C.M. Kruger posted:

The series has reached a decent endpoint yes, Miles is too old and politically/dad important to go off gallivanting around any more. If there are any new stories I suspect they'll either be about other people like the Ekaterin novella, or might skip forwards a decade or two and feature their kids as characters.

I want a book about Byerly Vorrutyer on Jackson's Hole with the Cordona family.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 01:45

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Anshu posted:

Thinking on it for a minute or so, maybe the use of "Old Earth" is to signify the use of the proper noun referring to humanity's birth world, as opposed to more figurative uses of the generic word "earth". In text capitalization does the job for you, but that's not always clear in speech.

This is actually presolved in the setting, which is why it's baffling. They just call it Terra.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 02:18

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Does Earth not exist anymore in that universe, or is it no longer inhabitable or whatever? I can see "Old Earth" being used in that context....it's mankind's original homeworld, now lost, but the idea of it still exists to bind us together.

"Oh, wanderer,
Do you hear the cry of Old Earth?
Land of our birth now lost and forgotten.

Still my heart calls out for Terra,
home of our fathers.
though we are nomads without homes of our own"

# ? Jan 13, 2020 03:37

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

It was almost destroyed in the backstory, but in the "present" it is the capital system of the largest space country.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 03:41

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

It was almost destroyed in the backstory, but in the "present" it is the capital system of the largest space country.

Well, 'almost destroyed' is a little strong, if I remember correctly. It had a big war and lots of people died but the planet itself was fine.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 04:21

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:

Well, 'almost destroyed' is a little strong, if I remember correctly. It had a big war and lots of people died but the planet itself was fine.

Well, as fine as a planet that was ravaged by grey-goo nanotech and genetically-engineered bioweapons (not to mention the supersoldiers) can be.

Funnily enough, that's another example of "something becomes a major plot point long before Weber explains it", although that was partly Eric Flint's fault.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 04:26

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

Well, as fine as a planet that was ravaged by grey-goo nanotech and genetically-engineered bioweapons (not to mention the supersoldiers) can be.

Funnily enough, that's another example of "something becomes a major plot point long before Weber explains it", although that was partly Eric Flint's fault.

If it manages to become an economic capitol of anything, then it ended up pretty fine!

Though I'm 900% certain the grey-goo nanotech and superviruses thing was only mentioned in one of the Eric Flint books I didn't read and the only stuff mentioned before was the super-soldier fights.

I've always felt he amplifies a lot of the troubles with the books.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 09:21

FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

Gnoman posted:

It was almost destroyed in the backstory, but in the "present" it is the capital system of the largest space country.

And the capitol of both Old Earth and the Solarian League is Old Chicago. It's either implied or maybe stated that this is the biggest city that survived the Final War

# ? Jan 13, 2020 09:34

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

FuturePastNow posted:

And the capitol of both Old Earth and the Solarian League is Old Chicago. It's either implied or maybe stated that this is the biggest city that survived the Final War

Wait a sec....
Did David Weber "adopt" backstory from the live-action Buck Rogers tv series for his Honorverse setting?
Oh this is getting funny. Erin Gray and Honor Harrington look uncannily alike too.

# ? Jan 13, 2020 22:53

C.M. Kruger: Oct 28, 2013

Finished Aftershocks by Marko Kloos. More on the space opera side of things, I liked it but it was somewhat short and really just a opening act so wait if you don't like cliffhangers. My speculation is that the insurgents are either Werewolf/Gladio stay behinds, or a operation by the other planets to have an excuse to come down harder on the Gretians.

# ? Jan 16, 2020 10:07

FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

quantumfoam posted:

Wait a sec....
Did David Weber "adopt" backstory from the live-action Buck Rogers tv series for his Honorverse setting?
Oh this is getting funny. Erin Gray and Honor Harrington look uncannily alike too.

He "adopted" everything else in the story, so sure why not.

# ? Jan 16, 2020 16:49

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

FuturePastNow posted:

He "adopted" everything else in the story, so sure why not.

Pretty much.

Also I'll probably make another post tonight or tomorrow. I've just been enjoying another brief Honorverse vacation.

# ? Jan 16, 2020 19:44

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

On Basilisk Station Chapter 24

Today's chapter begins with a spot that is more or less "Everyone on the Fearless worships Honor because she is the greatest ever. The only one who doesn't is the Surgeon Commander who is a Bad Person And Lazy And Evil.

quote:

Lieutenant Samuel Houston Webster hummed to himself as he worked his steady way through the mountain of routine signal traffic. Venerable and sacrosanct tradition required every communications officer to resent the paperwork his position entailed, but Webster was guiltily aware that he failed to measure up in that respect. There were days he resented the time it used up, yet the fact that he, alone of his ship's other officers, knew as much about Fearless's information flow as the Captain tickled his ego. More than that, it was surprisingly difficult to resent anything he "had" to do for Captain Harrington.

His fingers danced over his console with practiced ease, and a small corner of his mind occupied itself with other matters even as he kept an eagle eye on the secure traffic he was breaking down into clear. The Captain was good people, he told himself. That was about the strongest accolade in his vocabulary, and very few of his superiors ever earned it. Webster wasn't vain or arrogant, but he was entirely aware that the fortunate accident of his birth meant he was almost bound to become a senior officer himself someday. As such, he'd discovered that he had a tendency to look at his superiors of the moment through two sets of eyes. One belonged to the very junior officer he was, eager to learn from their greater experience and example, but the other belonged to the future flag officer he intended someday to be, and that second set of eyes was more critical than his cheerful exterior might suggest.

He'd been very disappointed in Lieutenant Commander McKeon, for example. If anyone on board should have seen what the Captain was up to and helped her achieve it, it was her exec. But McKeon seemed to have come around, and Webster had made a very careful note of the way the Captain had avoided climbing all over him before he did. There'd been times he'd been a little upset with her for not jerking McKeon up short, but the final result she'd achieved with him had been an eye-opener.

It was funny, in a way. Captain Harrington was so quiet. The RMN had its share of characters, and Webster had known captains who could blister battle steel when they were ticked. Captain Harrington never even raised her voice, and he'd never once heard her swear. Not that her calm manner meant anyone but an idiot would ever take liberties with her. In fact, he'd been surprised to realize that her very quietness was even more effective precisely because it was so different from the fire and thunder another captain might have shown.

He admired that, just as he admired the way she maintained her distance from her subordinates, always there, always approachable, but never letting anyone forget that she was in charge. Yet at the same time, she could rattle someone's cage any time she chose�like the way she'd forced Rafe Cardones into finding the answer to that problem with the drones�and she seemed to know everything there was to know about all of them. She even knew that while Cardones liked being called "Rafe," Webster passionately hated it when people called him "Sam." He rather doubted that information was listed anywhere in their personnel jackets, and he was at a loss to figure out how she'd acquired it.

Another message flickered on his display, the jumbled symbol groups flowing magically into clear text, and he paused. His eyebrows rose in surprise, and then he began to smile as he read it through. He sat for a moment, tapping on the edge of his console in thought, then nodded to himself. This one would go into the hopper last, he decided. It was only a routine "information" message, but Webster had a keener sense than most of the infinitely polite infighting between the Navy's first families. He rather thought it would make the Captain's day�if not her week�and it would be a nice surprise to finish out the traffic.

He tapped a priority number into the terminal and brought up the next message with a grin.

It's not exactly compelling stuff.

The nextp art of the chapter is just... Honor doing boring poo poo for a while, and is more "Honor is actually highly beloved" stuff too. Not a lot of it is especially interesting or all that relevant except for one bit.

Pavel sux posted:

It was a routine dispatch from the CO of HMSS Hephaestus to Admiral Lady Lucy Danvers, Third Space Lord. Danvers was the head of BuShips, and Vice Admiral Warner's dispatch was a "regret to inform you" response to Captain Lord Young's recent request to BuShips for special refit priority. Admiral Warner's inspection teams had, it seemed, confirmed Captain Lord Young's own initial assessment and determined that heavy wear to the Warshawski sail tuners aboard Her Majesty's heavy cruiser Warlock made their replacement a matter of urgent priority. This necessary overhaul meant, unfortunately, that that vessel's refit must be extended for a minimum of eight more weeks in order to carry out the required installation and tests. Vice Admiral Warner would, of course, expedite the work in every possible way and remained Admiral Danvers's obedient servant and etc.

The next bit is more... blah blah blah blah nothing ever loving useful. The next bit is more of the same but there's one bit...

quote:

The screen was painfully bright in the dark cabin. It was also a split-image conference call, and Dame Estelle looked out of one side of it. Fearless had adjusted her shipboard day to match that of the Government Compound, and like Honor, Matsuko wore a robe over her nightclothes, but Barney Isvarian was in uniform in the other half of the image. Honor saw Surgeon Lieutenant Montoya, her own assistant physician, behind him and recognized the antiseptic cleanliness of one of the NPA's native clinics in the background.

"Sorry to wake you, Honor, but it's important." The commissioner sounded almost frightened, and Honor sat straighter as she finished belting her kimono.

Why is she wearing a kimono? It's implied that this is suppose to be the robe worn over the nightclothes, but that still doesn't make much sense. You would not be wearing a kimono in a setting like this.

Anyways Matsuko has a message from a nomad Medusan who says they were told not to go to the Delta Cities in the winter. And also a native nomad had shown up with mekoha poisoning and the ammo for a Ferguson rifle, who conveniently ties everything together with his dying babble, and also made it clear they're going to run off the Manticoreans.

Which is quite a lot to get out of someone who apparently has no motor control, and is a race whose speech requires fine motor control. Everyone obviously knows its Haven because there's literally no one else it could really be.

quote:

"That was my first thought, too," Matsuko said quietly. "But because it's the first possibility to occur to all of us, I think we'd better work on keeping an open mind about it. On the other hand, I can't think of anyone else it might be, and Haven has certainly been the most persistent in insisting that we don't have real sovereignty down here."

"True," Honor said. She rubbed the tip of her nose and frowned at the com screen. "I suppose it might be the Andermani," she said at last. "Gustav XI wouldn't mind getting a firm toehold in Basilisk, and he could figure we'd automatically jump to the conclusion that it was the Peeps. I can't quite see it, though, however hard I try. His attention is focused on Silesia right now, and he'd be worrying more about the Midgard Federation than us. Any jump this way could only antagonize us, and he doesn't need that if he's thinking about taking on the Silesians and their allies."

I'm pretty sure this is literally the only book that the Midgard Federation is ever mentioned in. I'm pretty sure Weber forgot it existed after this.

Also nobody can figure out how this plot helps Haven, and I'm inclined to agree that it doesn't make much sense.

They do guess that the nomad is from 300 klicks away because that's how far he could run before he died from drug overdose (I'm surprised they have such accurate information on that) but his tribe is from 700 miles away.

And that's the chapter. Oh boy.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Jan 21, 2020

# ? Jan 18, 2020 11:56

C.M. Kruger: Oct 28, 2013

I would not be very surprised if the kimono was because Weber read about how noted orientalist Douglas MacArthur would wear one while he was Chief of Staff, and being a example of a ur-boomer author he buys the line that MacArthur was 🙏America's Greatest General.🙏

# ? Jan 18, 2020 21:36

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

C.M. Kruger posted:

I would not be very surprised if the kimono was because Weber read about how noted orientalist Douglas MacArthur would wear one while he was Chief of Staff, and being a example of a ur-boomer author he buys the line that MacArthur was 🙏America's Greatest General.🙏

Probably. It just immediately struck me as very out of place because of the implication that it was bed-clothes or a robe to wear when getting out of bed. It's pretty much akin to wearing a three-piece-suit as pyjamas or a bath-robe.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 02:57

FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

I assume it's setting up her kung-fu prowess

# ? Jan 19, 2020 03:34

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

FuturePastNow posted:

I assume it's setting up her kung-fu prowess

I don't think that's even thought of for a few books when it becomes relevant to the book's plot.

That's kind of a thing with Honor's skills.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 03:50

Aerdan: Apr 14, 2012; Not Dennis NEDry

Kchama posted:

Probably. It just immediately struck me as very out of place because of the implication that it was bed-clothes or a robe to wear when getting out of bed. It's pretty much akin to wearing a three-piece-suit as pyjamas or a bath-robe.

There is in fact a women's loungewear concept which is referred to as a kimono despite only superficial resemblances to Japanese kimonos:

# ? Jan 19, 2020 04:09

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Aerdan posted:

There is in fact a women's loungewear concept which is referred to as a kimono despite only superficial resemblances to Japanese kimonos:

Sure, but that's explicitly not what's being used here. This is a traditional-rear end kimono with an obi (belt) and everything.

Also, On Basilisk Station Chapter 25

So this chapter starts with more of our favorite scene: Designated Villian, Once Again, Can Do No Good. It sucks, and is a perfect example of why this book is so loving boring. It only feels like it has any life or care when it's making GBS threads on someone Honor dislikes or worshipping Honor, and pretty much every scene is laser-focused on one of those. Which means that the scenes are dull and repetitive, with little of the supposed action that's suppose to be the draw to these books.

Suchong Sux posted:

Honor looked around the briefing room table at her officers. Aside from Cardones, who had the watch, every department head and acting department head was present. Ensign Tremaine sat in, as well, for Honor had wanted his input from his own experiences planet-side. Each face was tight and worried as she finished briefing them on Dame Estelle's call.

"So that's the situation," she said quietly. "For the first time, we have a clear indication that what we're up against is an off-world government's covert operation of some sort, not a domestic criminal enterprise. We don't know its ultimate objectives, nor do we know when or how it's supposed to kick off, but we know that much."

McKeon nodded, pushing a stylus around in aimless circles on the table before him while he thought. Then he raised his head.

"One thing I think we ought to consider, Ma'am, is just how reliable this dying nomad's information is. Could this mekoha have made him see and hear things that weren't there? Or misunderstand things that were?"

"A point," Honor agreed. She looked down the table at Lois Suchon. "Doctor? What's your opinion?"

"My opinion, Captain?" Suchon's voice held a note almost of petulance, and her shoulders twitched a quick, sulky shrug. "I'm a Navy doctor. I don't know anything about abo physiology."

Honor pressed her lips firmly together and gave the physician a long, level glance. Suchon's dark face flushed, but she looked back with stubborn, petty defiance. She knew she was covered, Honor thought in disgust. She'd been kept abreast of the situation and knew how important information on mekoha's effects on Medusans might become, but no one had specifically asked her to check the literature available from the NPA. Someone, Honor thought, should have. Someone like Commander Honor Harrington, who knew perfectly well that nothing short of a direct order could have gotten Suchon out of her comfortable chair to do so.

"Very well. I'll raise that point with Dame Estelle�and Lieutenant Montoya�after our conference, Mr. McKeon." Honor tapped a note into her own memo board and smiled faintly as Suchon's mouth twisted at the offhand reference to her absent junior. She met the doctor's burning gaze, and her own eyes were cool and brown, holding Suchon's until the surgeon commander looked away angrily.

I hate this book. Anyways Manticoreans are still incredibly racist and the books are incredibly cool with this.

Actually, this is one of my core complaints with Weber's writing style: He doesn't understand how to have characters sound different. Pretty much everyone talks exactly the same, even down to using the same style of slurs against everyone else. You can easily see it in the chapters of Safehold, too. In fact, I can only think of a couple of characters who legitimately sound different, and it's generally the Evil Religious People, because they actually use different terminology. For the most part, anyways.

Oh, and I guess the Evil Communist phase Havenites, who speak like generic Soviets.

So they plan on capturing the evil Medusan shaman with generically named battle armor, but they're apparently barred from doing anything major unless the ycan demonstrate direct off-world interference unless the shaman's followers use their weapons. Which doesn't make a lot of sense, as just them HAVING the weapons should demonstrate the direct off-world interference as one can be pretty sure that the Bronze-Age Medusans didn't just design a Ferguson Rifle specifically out of whole-cloth as their first ever gun.

This entire subplot is SO loving STUPID posted:

"There may be some good news mixed in with the bad, Ma'am," the Marine offered. "Major Isvarian's people should be able to develop at least a little new intelligence on the Stilties' capabilities out of this. At best, they may be able to pinpoint a target outside the Delta for us. If the major can find this shaman, we might be able to stage a quick raid in battle armor and snap up his weapons�maybe even grab him�before he ever gets close enough to the enclaves to be a threat."

"Agreed," Honor said. "On the other hand, we're going to have to be very careful about any moves we make in that direction. Dame Estelle is specifically barred from using the NPA to interfere with native religious matters, and I can't act unilaterally on the planet without her approval. If we can't demonstrate direct off-world interference, her hands�which means our hands, as well�are tied unless and until the shaman's followers actually start using their weapons."

"Understood, Captain. But just knowing where to look and what to look for makes me feel a lot better. I'd much rather catch them in open terrain that lets us use our air support, mobility, and greater weapons ranges than tangle with them inside the enclaves at pointblank."

Also apparently battle armor has trouble with Bronze Age weapons and Civil War-era rifles. Which makes me wonder how it handles the ~~bolterguns~~pulser dart guns that Honorverse gunmen normally wield. Seems like a solid 'not at all'.

They proceed to have a chat about how it clearly has to be Haven and why aren't they just assuming it's Haven and to be honest they should have just been doing this sooner.

quote:

"You know, Skipper," Dominica Santos said slowly, "I've been thinking about what you said. About all this being just a part of some overall off-world scheme." Honor cocked her head, and the engineer waved a hand.

"It seems to me the only logical suspect is Haven, Ma'am. I know we can't prove that, but I can't see anyone else who'd do something like this. And even if it isn't them, shouldn't we proceed on the assumption that it is? I mean, no one else could hurt us as badly as the Peeps, so if we assume it's them and we're wrong, we'll leave ourselves a lot less exposed. But if it is Haven and we bend over backward to keep from assuming that it is, we're likely to miss something important, aren't we?"

"A point, Skipper," McKeon agreed. "Definitely a point."

"Agreed." Honor drummed gently on the table, then looked back at her exec. "Let's assume for a moment that this is a Havenite covert op, Mr. McKeon. Do you think they'd kick off something like this and then just sit back to let it develop in isolation?"

"I don't think there's any way to know," McKeon said after a moment's thought. "My gut reaction is that they wouldn't, but without knowing their ultimate objective I just can't say."

"Captain?" The voice was hesitant and very young, and Honor gave the speaker a reassuring smile as she turned to him.

"Yes, Mr. Tremaine?"

"Uh, I just wanted to mention something, Ma'am. I noticed it a couple of days ago, but it didn't seem very important then. Now, though�" The ensign shrugged uncomfortably.

"Mention what, Mr. Tremaine?"

"Well, it's just that I've been sort of keeping an eye on the space-to-surface traffic patterns since you called me back aboard, Ma'am. Habit, I guess. And I noticed there doesn't seem to be any Havenite traffic at all, anymore."

"Ah?" Honor looked at McKeon and twitched an eyebrow. The exec looked startled for a second, then grinned wryly.

"Out of the mouths of ensigns," he said, and Tremaine blushed at the chuckle that ran around the table. Then he grinned back at the exec.

"I don't know what it means, Ma'am," McKeon went on in a more serious tone, "but he's right. There's no Havenite traffic to the surface at all. Hasn't been in almost a week."

"Now, that's interesting," Honor murmured, tapping another note into her memo board. "Have they pulled anyone out of their enclave? Any sign of a cautionary evacuation?"

"You'd have to ask Major Isvarian or the Commissioner about that, Ma'am, but I certainly haven't noticed anything to suggest it."

"They might not have to, Captain." It was Tremaine again. "Their consulate's more like a fort than most of the enclaves, and they've got an awful big security force." The ensign paused with a frown and rubbed his chin. "Still, Ma'am, they do have a couple of other enclaves�trade stations with the natives right on the edge of the Delta. They're pretty far to the north, too, now that I think of it. Wouldn't that mean they'd get hit first if this shaman really does attack the Delta?"

"How big are they?" McKeon asked, and his gray eyes were intent.

"Well, I've only overflown them, Sir," Tremaine said uncomfortably, "but they're not very big. Maybe a dozen off-worlders and a native staff in each, I'd say, but it's only a guess."

"You think their size is significant?" Honor asked Mckeon, and the exec shrugged.

"I don't know, Ma'am. But it occurs to me that if their objective is to chase us out and move in themselves, it might just suit their purposes to have a few casualties of their own. Another thing," he added in an even more thoughtful voice. "If we end up with some sort of bloodbath down there and they don't take any casualties, isn't it possible some of the other off-worlders, not just us, might wonder exactly why they were so lucky?"

"You may have a point." Honor made another note and tried to hide an inner shiver at the cold-blooded calculation McKeon's hypothesis suggested. The exec nodded very slowly, then frowned and sat straighter in his chair.

So Haven are Generic Evil-Doers who plan on killing their own officials just to allay suspicion, and this is naturally obvious since Haven is super evil.

Anyways Haven has made it obvious what they plan on doing by having the ship they plan on doing everything with be literally parked in orbit for months with a problem that literally anyone with the slightest bit of expertise could see through.

Haven can't do anything right posted:

"Wait a second, Skipper. I just thought of something." He tapped on his terminal for a moment, then nodded to himself. "I thought I remembered that." He turned back to his captain. "You remember when we were talking about the decline in Havenite traffic to Medusa?" Honor nodded. "Well, the fact is that their Junction traffic is still running at normal levels, but there are only two Peep ships in Medusa orbit right now. That courier boat of the consulate's and the freighter Sirius."

Honor frowned as something about the name Sirius jogged her memory. Then her eyes widened.

"Exactly," McKeon said. "That ship's been sitting in a parking orbit for over three months. I may be getting paranoid, but that strikes me as a mighty interesting coincidence in light of what the NPA's reporting."

"Excuse me, Skipper, but what do we know about this Sirius?" Santos asked. "Do we have any idea why she's here?"

Honor gestured at McKeon. He glanced back at his screen, then looked at Santos.

"She's big�a seven-point-six m-ton Astra-class," he said. "Captain Johan Coglin, People's Merchant Service, commanding. According to our files, she suffered an engineering casualty�or, more precisely, she's afraid she will if she moves on. Coglin reported his engineers spotted a fluctuation in his Warshawski tuners when he left hyper and declared an emergency. She's waiting for replacement tuners from home."

"She's what?" Santos twitched upright in her chair and frowned.

"A problem, Commander?" Honor asked.

"Well, it just seems awfully odd, Skipper. Of course, I don't know a lot about Havenite maintenance patterns, and a Warshawski flutter isn't anything to monkey around with. If she's really got one, Captain Coglin was probably right to declare an emergency. The only thing is that a fluctuation isn't something that usually creeps up on you. The tuners take more strain than any other sail component, so unless you're terminally dumb, you watch for the tiniest frequency kicks like a hawk. By the time you start showing actual flutter, you're normally well past the point at which they should've been pulled for routine refit, and the Haven government owns all Haven-flagged freighters. They're self-insured, too, so if they take a loss, they can't recover from anyone else on it. It doesn't sound to me like they'd be cutting maintenance corners the way some private owners do."

"Another thing." McKeon's eyes were very bright. "A flutter is something you're more likely to notice going into hyper than coming out. The power bleed when you transit downward tends to hide it."

"But what good would it do them to cook up a reason to keep a freighter in orbit?" Lieutenant Panowski asked a bit plaintively. Honor looked at him, and he squirmed a little. "I mean, they've already got a courier boat in permanent orbit, Ma'am. What would a freighter do for them that a courier boat wouldn't?"

"I don't know about that," Santos said, "but I just thought of something else odd about Sirius's story. They've got tuner flutter, right? Well, why sit here and wait for spares from home? They've already been here for three months, but unless they're way up into critical failure levels, they could pop through the terminus to Manticore. That's a short hop, with minimal tuner stress and demand, and one of the big yards there could put in a whole new sail, much less tuners, in less than two months. But even if they were afraid to transit the Junction, why not order the replacements from Manticore? It'd be a hell of a lot cheaper and faster than shipping them out from home, and we've got scads of privately-owned repair ships. If they send new tuners from Haven, they're either going to have to send their own repair ship to install them or else charter one of ours, anyway, and the time they're spending in orbit has to be costing them a lot more in lost profit than paying us for the parts would." She shook her head. "No. They've got to be up to something, Skipper. There's just no logical economic or engineering reason for the way they're going about this."

"What do we know about the ship's cargo, Captain?" Lieutenant Brigham asked. "Do we know what she's carrying or where she was supposed to be bound from here, for instance?"

"Commander McKeon just told you everything we know," Honor said wryly. "She's been on station since before we arrived. That means Captain Young cleared her."

People sat back around the table with careful nonexpressions of disgust, and despite her worries, Honor had to raise a hand to hide a smile.

"In that case, Ma'am," Ensign Tremaine said, "maybe we should make a customs check on her? I could take PO Harkness and a cutter, and�"

"No, Scotty." Honor spoke almost absently and missed his flush of pleasure as she used his nickname. "We can't do that. Sirius has already been checked by Warlock�" Someone snorted, and Honor paused to bite her tongue. Then she gave them all the closest she could come to a severe look and turned back to Tremaine.

"The point is, she's been officially cleared. We can't go back to re-inspect without some sort of hard evidence that her master lied to Lord Young. And while I think Commander Santos is right and their excuse for being here probably is bogus, we really don't have any evidence, do we?"

Tremaine shook his head unhappily, and she gave a slight shrug.

"More importantly, perhaps, if we did go back to give her a second look, we'd tip our hand. They'd know we figured something was fishy about their ship. If we are being 'paranoid'�" she flashed McKeon a tight smile "�over an innocent coincidence, that might not hurt anything. But if they're really up to something, we could scare them into backing off or finding another way to do whatever they're trying to do. A way we don't know anything about."

"There's another point, too, Skipper." McKeon sighed. "As you say, she's been cleared once. Her skipper might just refuse to let us back aboard, and without evidence that they're involved in what's happening dirt-side or that they lied to Lord Young, we wouldn't have any probable cause to justify forcing him to. We'd kick off all kinds of interstellar protests."

"That I could live with." Honor's voice was cold. "I just don't see any way to do it without giving too much away."

"You know, Skipper," Santos mused, "we might not be able to get aboard her, but it's possible a good, close external scan could tell us something." Honor looked at her, and the engineer shrugged. "I don't know what, but there could be something." She paused for a moment, and then her eyes narrowed. "For one thing, I'd really like to see how their drive compares to the specs they gave Warlock. If this Coglin cobbled up a report on a phony engineering casualty, it's possible he slipped up and built in an inconsistency."

"Such as?"

"Depends." Santos scooted down to sit on the end of her spine and plucked at her lower lip. "There might not be anything�in fact, if they're smart, there probably won't be�but if they have a genuine flutter problem, then there damned well ought to be a lot of wear on their alpha nodes. We should see at least some pitting, maybe a little outright scoring, and the main coil should certainly have a fairly old replacement stamp."

Honor nodded thoughtfully. The main gravity coils in a starship's alpha nodes were always replaced whenever the tuners were. In a sense, the coils were part of the tuner, sharing in its wear, and each of them carried a date stamp when it was installed. More to the point, the grav coil was open to space. There was an excellent chance the date stamp would be visible to a close external examination.

"If we get close enough for that, Ma'am," Webster offered, "I should be able to get a good read on her com activity, too. Maybe even tap into it." He blushed as Honor looked at him, for what he suggested was illegal under half a dozen solemn interstellar conventions. He could be severely disciplined just for making the offer.

"I like it," McKeon said suddenly. "If we turn up a discrepancy like Dominica's talking about, it might just constitute the sort of evidence you need, Skipper."

"It's not impossible for a tuner to go bad early," Santos agreed, "but it's certainly unusual. If we've got a discrepancy between observable wear on the alpha nodes and normal tuner wear, I can give you a written declaration of my own suspicions, Skipper. That's expert testimony, and expert testimony constitutes probable cause for any admiralty court."

"Any Manticoran admiralty court," Honor corrected gently, trying to hide the lump in her throat. The officers who had once been so hostile were now sticking their professional necks far out for her, and she looked down at her hands for a moment.

Also as a benefit, it means that they can get Pavel Young in trouble too! Also Everybody Loves Honor.

quote:

"Very well, ladies and gentlemen. I'll screen Dame Estelle with your comments and suggestions. In the meantime, I want our orbit shifted." She looked at Panowski. "I want us placed within two hundred kilometers of Sirius. Once we get there�" she turned her eyes to Tremaine "�I want you to take a cutter to the closest Manticoran ship. I'll give you a hardcopy dispatch for her master."

"A dispatch, Ma'am? What sort of dispatch?"

"I won't know that until we know which ship it is," she said dryly. "But I'll come up with something once we do. The point is, your trip will be our pretext for changing orbit�that's why I want you in a cutter instead of a pinnace�and also why I want you to be obvious about your trip."

"Oh." Tremaine sat back for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, Ma'am. I see."

"I'm sure you do." She turned back to McKeon. "While Lieutenant Panowski and Lieutenant Brigham plot our move, Mr. McKeon, I want you to sit down with Lieutenant Cardones. I want this all done with passive sensors. I know we won't get as much, but an active probe would be as big a tip-off as actually boarding her. We're going to need the most intensive passive scan we can come up with, though, and I want you to help Rafe set it up in advance."

"Yes, Ma'am." McKeon met her eye confidently. "We'll take care of it."

"Very good." Honor drew a breath and rose, sweeping her officers with her eyes once more. "Then we know what we're going to do, people, so let's be about it." They rose in turn, only to stop as she raised a hand.

"Before you go," she said quietly, "I just want to say thank you."

She didn't specify for what. And as she looked into their faces, she knew she would never have to.

So beyond the whole "Everyone loves Honor" aspect there's also the whole "you can turn passive sensors up more" which sounds like they're active sensors, not passive sensors. Also as far as I know they only have gravitic sensors, which detects impellar wedges, and then radar and lidar which I suspect aren't going to be the best for this sort of thing.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 04:18

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 hate this book. Anyways Manticoreans are still incredibly racist and the books are incredibly cool with this.

I still have no idea whatsoever what you're basing this on. Suchon's showing a racist attitude here, but gets slapped down.

quote:

Actually, this is one of my core complaints with Weber's writing style: He doesn't understand how to have characters sound different. Pretty much everyone talks exactly the same, even down to using the same style of slurs against everyone else. You can easily see it in the chapters of Safehold, too. In fact, I can only think of a couple of characters who legitimately sound different, and it's generally the Evil Religious People, because they actually use different terminology. For the most part, anyways.

Oh, and I guess the Evil Communist phase Havenites, who speak like generic Soviets.

You couldn't be more correct here. Almost everyone uses the exact same slang and has the exact same verbal habits (for an extremely obvious example, everyone except the Graysons and Masadans use their own pronouns when referring to an unknown officer). They even use the same military ranks terminology, which doesn't make sense even within the groups that come from English-speaking cultures, which at least two of the major powers don't.

quote:

So they plan on capturing the evil Medusan shaman with generically named battle armor, but they're apparently barred from doing anything major unless the ycan demonstrate direct off-world interference unless the shaman's followers use their weapons. Which doesn't make a lot of sense, as just them HAVING the weapons should demonstrate the direct off-world interference as one can be pretty sure that the Bronze-Age Medusans didn't just design a Ferguson Rifle specifically out of whole-cloth as their first ever gun.

Also apparently battle armor has trouble with Bronze Age weapons and Civil War-era rifles. Which makes me wonder how it handles the ~~bolterguns~~pulser dart guns that Honorverse gunmen normally wield. Seems like a solid 'not at all'.

They proceed to have a chat about how it clearly has to be Haven and why aren't they just assuming it's Haven and to be honest they should have just been doing this sooner.

So Haven are Generic Evil-Doers who plan on killing their own officials just to allay suspicion, and this is naturally obvious since Haven is super evil.

The stated justification for seeking proof before doing anything is that they have to justify their actions on the international stage as well as obeying their own "do not interfere with the natives" laws.

Nothing here suggests that battle armor is vulnerable to the "native" rifles, unless you're seeing something I'm not. They concern they voice here seems to be that of collateral damage and the threat to people that aren't in battle armor. So they want to hit the shaman where there's no non-combatants or unarmored friendlies.

As for Haven sacrificing their own people, that's far from unheard of for covert operations. For a notable example, the Soviet Union shelled one of their own villages along the Finnish border to provide justification for the Winter War in 1939.

quote:

So beyond the whole "Everyone loves Honor" aspect there's also the whole "you can turn passive sensors up more" which sounds like they're active sensors, not passive sensors. Also as far as I know they only have gravitic sensors, which detects impellar wedges, and then radar and lidar which I suspect aren't going to be the best for this sort of thing.

You're fundamentally correct here. Passive sensors involve using the radars to "listen" for emissions, and using infrared and visual cameras to look directly at the ship. To this, we can add the fictitious gravitic sensors that are so important in this setting. As you say, this isn't something that you can "turn up" very easily except by providing larger (or better designed) antennas and lenses.

You can, however, focus them on a specific target, and analyse the data you receive. This is probably what the "most intensive possible scan" is meant to be.

# ? Jan 19, 2020 05:15

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

I still have no idea whatsoever what you're basing this on. Suchon's showing a racist attitude here, but gets slapped down.

It was part of my talk about how everyone speaks fundamentally the same, including using slurs to talk about pretty much any other group of people. See: 'Stilties', which is super a slur. Also the book's problem with Suchon's attitude isn't that it is racist, but that she's being lazy because it makes her look bad when Honor asks her about what they're like.

quote:

The stated justification for seeking proof before doing anything is that they have to justify their actions on the international stage as well as obeying their own "do not interfere with the natives" laws.

Yes, but the justification is going to literally be the same whether the natives actually pull the triggers on the rifles or not, because the natives have the rifles and they have proof that they have rifles that they couldn't feasibly make themselves. It doesn't make sense as they already HAVE the proof needed to justify what they are doing.

quote:

Nothing here suggests that battle armor is vulnerable to the "native" rifles, unless you're seeing something I'm not. They concern they voice here seems to be that of collateral damage and the threat to people that aren't in battle armor. So they want to hit the shaman where there's no non-combatants or unarmored friendlies.

They specify that they don't want to 'tangle' with them in close quarters in their enclaves but instead want to be able to use air support and longer weapon ranges, as opposed to being worried about any sort of collateral damage. They never even say a word about collateral damage or non-combatants or unarmored friendlies, because the point of the scene is that they're gonna go in guns-blazing and there isn't going to be unarmored friendlies to care about, and they don't profess any worry about non-combatants.

Not a word about non-combatants or collateral damage posted:

"Understood, Captain. But just knowing where to look and what to look for makes me feel a lot better. I'd much rather catch them in open terrain that lets us use our air support, mobility, and greater weapons ranges than tangle with them inside the enclaves at pointblank."

So they are in fact worried that the battle armor troops will be in danger in a close combat battle.

quote:

As for Haven sacrificing their own people, that's far from unheard of for covert operations. For a notable example, the Soviet Union shelled one of their own villages along the Finnish border to provide justification for the Winter War in 1939.

The Soviet Union's ploy was super flimsy and wasn't really meant to actually ever hold up, and to the point that the place shelled was an isolated guard post and none of the casualties were ever confirmed, just claimed. That's afar cry from what Haven did. There's basically no reason for Haven to have established bases in places that they intended to be attacked by natives, and Honor and co even talk about how the bases are small and seem intended to be used as sacrifices from the start.

quote:

You're fundamentally correct here. Passive sensors involve using the radars to "listen" for emissions, and using infrared and visual cameras to look directly at the ship. To this, we can add the fictitious gravitic sensors that are so important in this setting. As you say, this isn't something that you can "turn up" very easily except by providing larger (or better designed) antennas and lenses.

You can, however, focus them on a specific target, and analyse the data you receive. This is probably what the "most intensive possible scan" is meant to be.

Yeah I didn't want to explain that I was pretty sure passive sensors are just 'listening' but didn't want to out myself as a complete idiot if I was wrong.

As it is, I'm pretty sure that's not what Weber meant at all, and also I'm not inclined to try and explain away his errors as a benefit of the doubt.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Jan 19, 2020

# ? Jan 19, 2020 05:58

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# ? Apr 28, 2024 22:10

The Chad Jihad: Feb 24, 2007

Weber seems to have his bad-guy characters do a lot of stuff that falls apart the second the good guys spend any time at all thinking about it. It reminds me a little bit of Elizabeth Moon, who while a better writer also has all her villains turn into spluttering morons whenever they appear "on camera"

# ? Jan 19, 2020 06:37

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

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