cthia wrote:Which brings me to my new concern. If ships in hyper can see what is in n-space, but certainly ships in n-space cannot see into hyper. What prevents ships in n-space from hypering right into oncoming traffic?
tlb wrote:What makes you think that ships in hyperspace can see into normal space? I believe that I may have seen suggestions that ships in hyperspace can see the disturbance caused by objects that create hyper-limits (because you need to transit outside of the hyper-limit); but I do not recall seeing a suggestion that anything smaller than that can be seen.
cthia wrote:Well, I wasn't sure. Because a lot of things didn't add up. I did say nagging me?
At any rate, in AAC, Honor and Tourville were trying to out wait each other before hypering in. I got the impression that Honor was looking at the melee as it was happening. She could see the entire tactics play out, which made her say something like "This doesn't make sense. There has to be another shoe that is going to drop." And she was right. If she had hypered in she would have been mousetrapped. How could she see that much detail?
Plus! How could she order Theophile Kgari(?) to put her so many kilometers from a specific Fleet?
If you are talking about the action in chapter 35 of At All Costs. the reason that Honor can see all the action is that she had already moved to normal space:
"Sir, they're crossing the limit," Bibeau said. "Present velocity two-point-six-one thousand KPS. Range to Arthur ten-point-two light-minutes. Tracking makes their current accel four-point-eight-one KPS squared."
"They're staying concentrated? No detachments?"
"Pretty much, Sir. It looks like they're leaving their carriers behind with three cruisers and a LAC security patrol, but all the rest of them are headed in-system."
Durand nodded, not without a flicker of disappointment. Not that he was really surprised. He'd always thought the Merlin pods were unlikely to suck them in, but it had been worth a try. And they'd needed something to camouflage the Tarantula platforms, anway.
"Time to Arthur?" he asked.
"Assuming a zero/zero intercept and constant accelerations, approximately three hours and seventeen minutes, Sir. They'll make turnover niner-one-point-eight million klicks out in ninety-four minutes."
"Very good. Communications!"
"Yes, Sir?"
"Send Lieutenant Bibeau's data to Tarantula and instruct Lieutenant Sigourney to execute his orders."
"Aye, Sir."
* * *
"Their superdreadnoughts are starting to stir, Your Grace."
Honor broke off her conversation with Mercedes Brigham at Jaruwalski's announcement. Her own force had been headed in-system for thirty-seven minutes. Her velocity relative to the system primary was up to 13,191 KPS, and she'd come just over seventeen million kilometers since crossing the hyper limit . . . which meant she had a hundred and sixty-six million still to go.
She glanced at the plot, and noted the vector arrows which had appeared next to the tiny defensive force in orbit around Arthur. As Jaruwalski said, the starships—escorted by the swarm of LACs—were beginning to move. She studied their vector for a moment, then frowned.
"Odd," she murmured.
"Ma'am?" She looked up. Brigham stood at her elbow, where she'd been gazing at the same display, and the chief of staff arched one eyebrow as their eyes met.
"I said that's odd." Honor indicated the icons of the accelerating defenders. "They're coming to meet us, which is odd enough on its own. I would have expected them to wait for us as deep into the envelope of their system defense pods as they could. If they keep accelerating at that rate, they'll be right at the very fringe of their pods' effective range when we engage, which means accuracy will be even lower than usual. By the same token, the range to their ships will be lower for us, which means our accuracy will be greater. But not only are they coming to meet us, but from these acceleration numbers, they don't have many, if any, pods of their own on tow."
"Your Grace, I know that expression," Brigham said quietly as Honor and Nimitz rejoined her.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said I know that expression. May I ask what's provoking it this time?"
"I don't know, really." Honor shrugged. "There's just . . . something wrong. It's like they're going off in all directions at once—panicky evacuation of their orbital platforms, ships heading out to meet us without even bringing along heavy pod loads, no effort to communicate with us at all, and now this FTL message traffic."
"Maybe they really are going off in all directions at once, Your Grace," Brigham suggested. "It's one thing to know the other side is scouting your system; it's another to see a force this powerful coming down on you."
"I know, I know." Honor snorted. "Maybe I'm simply being paranoid! But I just can't shake the feeling that there's something out of kilter."
"Well, Ma'am, even if Arthur is talking to someone out at Merlin, it's not like either of them were close enough to pose any sort of threat to us. For that matter, Merlin's on the entirely wrong side of Solon!"
"Exactly. So why—"
Honor broke off abruptly, her eyes suddenly widening.
"Your Grace?" Brigham asked sharply.
"Sidemore," Honor said. "They're taking a page from Sidemore!"
Brigham looked blank for a moment, then inhaled deeply.
"They'd have to have accurately predicted our objectives," she said.
"No reason they couldn't have," Honor replied almost absently, eyes intent as she stared into the depths of her tactical plot. "Not in a general sense, at least. Deciding what sorts of targets we'd be likely to hit wouldn't be that hard. Picking the exact, specific targets would probably come down to a guessing game, but it looks like someone guessed right."