(SPOILERS) Expected defeat at Beowulf.

cthia wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:You really can't treat a system as a member in fair standing of your star nation and go in and blow up their orbital infrastructure. It rather strains the shared fiction of common nationality. They're hardly a traitor system when they've not voted to be one. They may have a traitor government - if the League could go so far as to make that claim stick, when it can't call this a war - but you deal with a government by capturing the high orbitals and demanding its surrender. (In this case, you'd be doing that in order to serve as back-up for the Gendarmerie securing the planet, arresting the ringleaders, and investigating their actions against the League.)

Makes sense to me... if it were a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with that past MO. It isn't and it isn't.

Beowulf has already voted to be traitors by a show of hands when they committed that unforgivable act during a de facto state of war.

Vengeance fuels them now with a (even if it's misplaced) morbid sense of justification on their side. In the League's eyes, the Wulf is rabidly treasonous. And rabies is highly contagious with no known cure except death.

Vengeance isn't fueling a single person in the upper echelons of Solarian government or armed forces. They may be able to whip up some mobs in the streets with total BS, and they may be able to make their Assembly puppets act offended - it's what they're paid for, after all.

Mobs aren't commanding fleets though, and for the system governments and transtellars, the Mandarins have to present some sort of reasonable face. Heavy-handed, all right - if it's effective. Unconstitutional, well, that pretty much goes without saying, though it's beginning to matter to some people and it's really going to matter when they start thinking that what goes for Beowulf goes for them too.

Beowulf is exercising its sovereign rights. Anyone who matters to League decisions knows that. So it's the Mandarins who have to take care about looking like rabid animals in need of being put down, and massacres and atrocities at the Core center stage are THE way to do that. The Mandarins aren't going to invite that; Kingsford won't invite that; Alignment agents, oh yes, that's what they're paid for.

cthia wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:You really can't treat a system as a member in fair standing of your star nation and go in and blow up their orbital infrastructure. It rather strains the shared fiction of common nationality. They're hardly a traitor system when they've not voted to be one. They may have a traitor government - if the League could go so far as to make that claim stick, when it can't call this a war - but you deal with a government by capturing the high orbitals and demanding its surrender. (In this case, you'd be doing that in order to serve as back-up for the Gendarmerie securing the planet, arresting the ringleaders, and investigating their actions against the League.)

Makes sense to me... if it were a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with that past MO. It isn't and it isn't.

Beowulf has already voted to be traitors by a show of hands when they committed that unforgivable act during a de facto state of war.

Vengeance fuels them now with a (even if it's misplaced) morbid sense of justification on their side. In the League's eyes, the Wulf is rabidly treasonous. And rabies is highly contagious with no known cure except death.

JeffEngel wrote:
Vengeance isn't fueling a single person in the upper echelons of Solarian government or armed forces. They may be able to whip up some mobs in the streets with total BS, and they may be able to make their Assembly puppets act offended - it's what they're paid for, after all.

Mobs aren't commanding fleets though, and for the system governments and transtellars, the Mandarins have to present some sort of reasonable face. Heavy-handed, all right - if it's effective. Unconstitutional, well, that pretty much goes without saying, though it's beginning to matter to some people and it's really going to matter when they start thinking that what goes for Beowulf goes for them too.

Beowulf is exercising its sovereign rights. Anyone who matters to League decisions knows that. So it's the Mandarins who have to take care about looking like rabid animals in need of being put down, and massacres and atrocities at the Core center stage are THE way to do that. The Mandarins aren't going to invite that; Kingsford won't invite that; Alignment agents, oh yes, that's what they're paid for.

No vengeance reckoned or beckoned? I'll try not to laugh at that, but it'll be rather difficult. Oh, who am I fooling...

What is the first thing out of the mouth of every CO that faced off against the RMN? Even the one female freighter captain who first learned of the junction closings. "Well, even if you do have the reach that you say you do and beat us now. We'll be back." The same sentiment every time right across the board. What drove the other confrontations? Vengeance. Vengeance clouded their judgement. The MAlign pulled the strings because of the SLN CO's readily exploited pliance.

Vengeance isn't fueling a single person in the upper echelons of Solarian government or armed forces.

I don't exactly recall that these "echelons" are in control of the itinerary of their Navy. And the Navy has always wanted revenge. Every single one of them!

You're not being humanly realistic at all. You're beginning to sound a lot like Houseman. Noooo!

Mobs aren't commanding fleets though...

I always imagined every ill advised ship headed toward Manticoran space to be just that. A mob. I'll accept posse.

Luis Rozsak isn't going to be fighting GA forces. Period. In fact, I expect that by this time he's trying to decide when and how to approach them to work out mutual support [and feel really sorry for Yuri. If he thinks he's in over his head now...]

But that brings me back to something that's been twanging my antennae for several years now: Rozsak went to Congo as a Captain. Now he's a Rear Admiral. That's a jump of 2 grades, and for what? Buggering Mesa is for what. So not only was he promoted out of the zone, but he's still in command in Maya. What was his best-known previous exploit? Staging a full-dress execution of a _cat_. Complete with stake, although not a firing squad. Thereby flipping OFS the bird. And he was _put_ in command at Maya, under a governor widely detested by his OFS colleagues, in what is arguably a Commodore's slot. All those decisions would have to come from way, way up in Frontier Fleet. The promotion, at least, from the very top - in fact, I'm a bit surprised that Rajampet wouldn't have had to sign off on it, but FF may have traded freedom in its own flag appointments for access to the CNO slot. I'm pretty sure that FF's commander would have had to approve of him not being transferred somewhere else as well, even if the decision was officially made slightly lower down the ladder.

We also know that Rozsak's attitudes are widespread, although by no means universal, among officers out on the sharp end of FF ops. [I would hesitate to ascribe that to people like the officers of Byng's TF. Not enough evidence.] That is also something unlikely to have escaped the attention of the powers back at HQ. Also significant, now that I think about it, is that the Detweilers reached for a BF admiral to spearhead the cock-up at New Tuscany, which suggests that they didn't have a single FF flag officer they could count on, or instruct, to react as required.

So what on earth is going on? Where does Frontier Fleet really stand in all this? And what, if anything, are they planning to do about the situation?

Brigade XO wrote:Rozsak is unlikely to be fighting either Haven or Manticore any time soon.

Haven is supporting Torch and Manticore is supporting Torch. Rozack (along with the Maya Sector Gov) is supporting Torch.

Erwhon and Maya have vastly more than an "understanding" and Erwhon is building the ships for Maya that lets Rozsak both replace the lost ships and build up the Maya fleet. The still nominal FF ships in the area of the Maya systems are under the command of Rozsak as far as I can see and any that are just passing though are unlikely to have their command staffs invited to briefings of what is actually going on at Maya--unless, of course, it is part of a plan at some point to appropriate those transient our as yet un-cooped FF ships to add to the fleet (or just make them unavailable to FF).

Rozsak and Maya would be happy to NOT engage anybody in the GA and are unlikely to go out of their way to cause them problems. They respesent major potential tradeing partners and there is the conduit via Erwhon.

I expect that we will soon see the Maya area becomming a sink-hole for FF ships even if it isn't identified as such by the SLN for a while. Unless somebody stumbles over something, and reports back to FF or BF, it is quite possible that Maya could be used as a waypoint out to the commerce raiding in the direction of Basilisk and Manticore and those ships just don't ever report back after the head off on the missions fro the Maya area.