What if McQueen's coup worked?

What if McQueen's coup worked?

1. "Oops." would only happen if the SS forces got upset at the new management.
2. McQueen survives longer. As a skilled tactician, she's a risk to Honor, though.

IIRC, Hamish mainly beat her at Trevor's Star due to position and more ships, and maybe slightly better skill, right?

I think McQueen would treat PoWs better than Ransom.

IEH Chapter 24 wrote:"Very well, Citizen Chairman," she sighed finally. "I still think this is a serious mistake, but the decision is ultimately a political one. If you and Citizen Committeeman Saint-Just both feel it would be . . . inadvisable to override Citizen Committeewoman Ransom, the judgment is yours to make."
***
But at least it wasn't my decision, she reminded herself. I really did argue against it—and not solely out of expediency, either. Funny. For the first time in years, I can honestly say "my hands are clean" . . . and it doesn't change a damned thing.



She punched for an elevator car, then folded her arms while she waited for it.



On the other hand, there may actually be a silver lining to all this, she mused. Not immediately, no, but the execution was Ransom's idea, and Pierre and Saint-Just refused to override her, now didn't they? And the officer corps is going to know that as well as I do. For that matter, the Manties will know it, too. That could just make the whole thing a card worth playing when the time comes. After all, I'll be acting out of moral outrage over the excesses of State Security and the Committee, won't I? Of course I will.

3. If McQueen mentors her, Shannon could become a ship-handling flag officer (Can't you see that happening, with a more ruthless Shannon, though still a tech nerd? I know I can, once she's been mentored into ship handling,and if a good flag officer mentors her (someone like McQueen, Tourville or Theisman), she'd be likely able to be even better (and maybe make it onto a best Havenite tacticians list (If she isn't on it in canon for "Oops", Adler and spotting the SDs at Grayson.)). Only problem is if you lose her, you lose your best (but not only (from some David Weber pearl, IIRC)) tech dev person, and risk losing faster due to tech issues.)
4. Honor might end up dead in a McQueen planned (or maybe led, like the warrior kings of old) attack. I don't see McQueen losing her skill just because of becoming a government leader. After all see textev below (she's Sec of War in Nightfall)

McQueen replied. "Of course, you're not stupid enough to believe me if I do. No, Citizen Commissioner. I don't believe I trust your cupidity enough to attempt to bribe you with the offer of a platform from which to intrigue against me in turn. What I'm offering you is a chance to sign on for the record, with the understanding that afterward you will be provided the opportunity to slip away into quiet and obscure retirement on some nice Solarian planet of your choice with a comfortable pension tucked away in some Solarian bank. I believe you know me well enough to know that I'll keep my word about allowing you to retire . . . as long as you do retire. And that if you don't retire, I won't make the mistake Saint-Just did and leave you alive to make problems in the future."

Yes, she's smart.
5. No more "Citizen Rank" and People's Commissioners for Shannon to worry about.

One way or the other, no one in this room would ever use that stupid, sycophantic "Citizen" crap again, and it felt unspeakably good to put on the persona of an admiral once more instead of wearing the ill-fitting, quasi-civilian mask of secretary of war.

Yes! A naval officer, back as a true officer, in my mind, once more, instead of the "ill-fitting, quasi-civilian mask of secretary of war", as McQueen says herself.
I think this would be a good question for roseandheather, and some other Havenite fans to give me some ideas on, if you want, as I know how much you love Haven, rose.
I thought about this what-if while rereading Nightfall while listening to Soldiers of the Clouds (makes a dark story really hit you).

What do you think?

Shannon_Foraker wrote:What if McQueen's coup worked?

By that point in the war it's irrelevant how capable she is, how good the Peep navy could be if freed from the oversight of People's Commissioners, or what kind of research or industrial miracles her chosen people might be able to work. There's simply no time for it to matter. Her failed coup was only a week before Manticore unleased the fruits of Project Gram in Operation Buttercup.

Nothing Haven had in December of 1914 could stand up against White Haven's 8th fleet of CLACs and SD(P)s carrying the first MDMs.

She'd probably have still been on Haven trying to reestablish control of the government post coup, and root out the remains of Statesec when 8th fleet begins their unstoppable drive on Haven. And by early March they were ready to strike at Lovat, the final significant system before Haven itself. Just a couple of months isn't enough time to overcome the massive technological advantage that Manticore now enjoyed.

And the only way McQueen could have won would have been to kill Saint-Just and behead State Sec. But with Saint-Just dead there would be no Operation Hassan, Cromarty wouldn't die, his government wouldn't fall, and thus Manticore would have no reason to stop the war for anything short of complete surrender. So I've no doubt that a successful coup would simply mean that McQueen got to preside over the defeat and surrender of Haven.

Storyline seems to imply quite heavily that McQueen and Hamish came to blows, fought like cats and dogs, beat each other black and blue.

I don't know who he thinks he is, but the author said they never met. It tore my imaginary world about that battle asunder.


And if you are wondering about my imagination. Well, remember the scene in Kill Bill when Uma Thurman beat that young samurai kid's ass with her sword.

Before the author had to go and ruin my wet dreams, I imagined McQueen bending Hamish over her lap. Taking a captured mess dress sword, and emphasizing every syllable ...

"Didn't. Your. Momma. Tell. You. Not. To. Mess. With. Su-pe-ri-or tac-ticians!"

And one really big whack at the end.

"GO HOME TO YOUR MOTHER!"


.

It did work. McQueen failed because she launched it prematurely, based upon a partially overheard conversation between Saint-Just and her citizen watchdog. When Theisman picked up the parts of her plan which failed to engage(and somehow survived Saint-Just's purge), it all worked out more or less perfectly.

Jonathan_S wrote:So I've no doubt that a successful coup would simply mean that McQueen got to preside over the defeat and surrender of Haven.

Yes, that. We know Pierre's economic reforms were just about to pay off quite handsomely, allowing the core of the Republic to massively outproduce the bloated People's Republic, so she might have managed to remain in charge of something.

With Bolthole there is a danger she'd go straight back into the old-fashioned expansionism, though.

cthia wrote:Storyline seems to imply quite heavily that McQueen and Hamish came to blows, fought like cats and dogs, beat each other black and blue.

I don't know who he thinks he is, but the author said they never met. It tore my imaginary world about that battle asunder.


And if you are wondering about my imagination. Well, remember the scene in Kill Bill when Uma Thurman beat that young samurai kid's ass with her sword.

Before the author had to go and ruin my wet dreams, I imagined McQueen bending Hamish over her lap. Taking a captured mess dress sword, and emphasizing every syllable ...

"Didn't. Your. Momma. Tell. You. Not. To. Mess. With. Su-pe-ri-or tac-ticians!"

And one really big whack at the end.

"GO HOME TO YOUR MOTHER!".

RFC specifically corrected your imagining in this thread:
Battle of Trevor's Star

runsforcelery wrote:Did anyone miss the fact that throughout the last third of OBS Honor was doing the worst thing she possibly could have done There she is, frantically trying to stop this much more powerful Q-ship, getting her crew slaughtered with the utmost courage and gallantry . . . and all the Peep skipper is trying to do is to get to the rendezvous to call the operation off. The problem was that she had to go with the info she had and a worst-case assumption. She did that with perfect intelligence (as in smarts) and supreme dedication and she never, ever learned that so many of her crew were killed (in real terms) for nothing. In fact, her very success is what guaranteed that the Peep task force that eventually stopped by for a "courtesy call" didn't simply turn around and go home without ever putting in an appearance.

GregD wrote:Yeah, I've always scored that as a failure by the Peep skipper. He could have called her up, and offered to hang out inside the hyper limit limit for 2 - 3 days, and then left.

This would have given Home Fleet enough time to get out there, and given hm enough time to stop the Peep fleet from showing up.

Win-Win

Except, then Honor doesn't get her launch to fame, and the book doesn't get it's needed big battle.

cthia wrote:But then, Eloise didn't want to go back to war. Neither did Beth. They both acted on what they thought they knew. And what they definitely did know could and most definitely would happen.

Lots of good people dying all for nothing was a recurrent theme. But dammit, White Haven kept getting his head handed to him each and every time he visited Trevor's Star. He knew what was gonna happen. He was simply not welcome there. Insanity expecting different results.

I mean, it isn't like Esther kept it a big fat secret. She used a few tricks on him, yea, but she was always nice enough to supply the mirrors so he could see himself getting whipped.

"See the smoke? Some of it is streaming from your butt!"

Since White Haven was the best at the time but still kept getting sent home without his panties - even though Esther was unsupported - I shutter to think what she would have done to someone else. Or accomplished had she been properly supported.

"Please! Why do they keep sending in these kids!"

runsforcelery wrote:You know, I don't really understand why you think White Haven made repeated costly attempts on Trevor's Star and got handed his head over and over again. He didn't, and I don't believe it says anywhere in the books that he did. For that matter I don't know why you think McQueen was "unsupported." Trevor's Star and DuQuesene Base were the Peeps' two most important forward fleet bases and staging areas. They were supported to the max, even after the Coup. That was one of the problems freeing up forces for Operation Stalking Horse in FIE. The striking forces had to be made up to weight with BBs because the surviving wallers were tasked to defend critical systems (like, oh, Trevor's Star).

He did make an attack that was turned back with losses, and he did reflect that the Peeps were getting their second wind while the Manticoran Alliance had overextended itself and needed to rethink, and he did reflect on the fact that McQueen was really, really good and had proven no one could take liberties with her.

But he also extricated his forces from the ambush which had been carefully prepared for him with only moderate losses. And after he did that, he went away and evolved a strategy that continued the attritional whittling down of the PRN (and picking off good junior officers before they became good senior officers) and succeeded in sucking the Peeps completely off balance so he could close in and take a star he should not have been able to take. And, trust me, it didn't really matter that McQueen wasn't still in command when he sprang the trap. She'd been in command every meter of the way while he was setting the trap, and he still pulled it off.

The fact is that she was good, but she wasn't as good as he was. She had the advantage of the defensive position (not to be sneered at, especially in pre-pod combat days) and she was ruthless and tough minded enough to use everything she did have to best advantage, but if she'd still been in command when White Haven launched the attack he'd spent all that time setting up, there never would have been an Admiral Cluster Bomb back in Nouveau Paris because Citizen Admiral McQueen would either have been dead or having tea in a POW camp somewhere in the SKM.

Shannon_Foraker wrote:What if McQueen's coup worked?

Jonathan_S wrote:By that point in the war it's irrelevant how capable she is, how good the Peep navy could be if freed from the oversight of People's Commissioners, or what kind of research or industrial miracles her chosen people might be able to work. There's simply no time for it to matter. Her failed coup was only a week before Manticore unleased the fruits of Project Gram in Operation Buttercup.

Nothing Haven had in December of 1914 could stand up against White Haven's 8th fleet of CLACs and SD(P)s carrying the first MDMs.

She'd probably have still been on Haven trying to reestablish control of the government post coup, and root out the remains of Statesec when 8th fleet begins their unstoppable drive on Haven. And by early March they were ready to strike at Lovat, the final significant system before Haven itself. Just a couple of months isn't enough time to overcome the massive technological advantage that Manticore now enjoyed.

And the only way McQueen could have won would have been to kill Saint-Just and behead State Sec. But with Saint-Just dead there would be no Operation Hassan, Cromarty wouldn't die, his government wouldn't fall, and thus Manticore would have no reason to stop the war for anything short of complete surrender. So I've no doubt that a successful coup would simply mean that McQueen got to preside over the defeat and surrender of Haven.

I think that McQueen's failure marks the point where RFC made the biggest swerve from "Hornblower in Space", since she was the closest thing to RFC writing in Napoleon; Theisman is more of a Washington, which is the wrong war.

Note that she could have nothing to do with Honor's treatment as a POW; since Cordelia Ransom was on the spot, and in control. Honor's escape from the Tepes (with the death of Cordelia) occurred before the coup attempt.

Shannon_Foraker wrote:What if McQueen's coup worked?

1. "Oops." would only happen if the SS forces got upset at the new management.

Is there any chance they wouldn't be? They had been given a lot of freedom up until that point, up to and including their own SDs. They had the power to override any admiral or captain on the ships they were aboard. Would any organisation simply allow its power to be taken away without a fight, especially an organisation made up mostly of bullies?

If McQueen had succeeded, she'd have done the same thing that did happen: dismantle the StateSec. The question for "oops" is whether she'd have succeeded in getting her orders to the PN before the StateSec ships did, or the other way around. Shannon wouldn't have pushed a button if all the Navy SDs had raised sidewalls and weapons powered on the StateSec ones. Or she might, simply because the alternative is to let them fight and a fight there would be. Then again, the StateSec SDs only got close enough to be a thread because of the failed coup in the first place...

2. McQueen survives longer. As a skilled tactician, she's a risk to Honor, though.

Risk, sure. Definitely a different risk, which means things would have worked out differently and the consequences would be different too.

But more of a risk than the alternative? No, because that alternative was Tom Theisman, who actually knew Honor and wasn't so supremely confident of his own abilities to have underestimated her. I think that McQueen, as good as she was (and possibly better than Theisman) was also more likely to make mistakes (as she actually did) in the name of expediency.

IIRC, Hamish mainly beat her at Trevor's Star due to position and more ships, and maybe slightly better skill, right?

The quote from RFC above makes it clear that wasn't the case. White Haven was better than McQueen and he set up the operation to turn the trap around her forces.

And Honor is better than White Haven, at least on MDM-era fighting.

I think McQueen would treat PoWs better than Ransom.

There's no doubt about that. Practically all the PN would, because they knew they were the ones getting captured in droves by the RMN & Alliance, and they wanted to be sure they were treated decently if captured.

3. If McQueen mentors her, Shannon could become a ship-handling flag officer (Can't you see that happening, with a more ruthless Shannon, though still a tech nerd? I know I can, once she's been mentored into ship handling,and if a good flag officer mentors her (someone like McQueen, Tourville or Theisman), she'd be likely able to be even better (and maybe make it onto a best Havenite tacticians list (If she isn't on it in canon for "Oops", Adler and spotting the SDs at Grayson.)). Only problem is if you lose her, you lose your best (but not only (from some David Weber pearl, IIRC)) tech dev person, and risk losing faster due to tech issues.)

I can't see a more ruthless Shannon happening because of Shannon. I don't see her accepting to become that in the first place.

I again don't see much of a deviation from what actually happened in this scenario where the coup worked. McQueen was not stupid and she'd have listened to whomever was commanding Shannon at the time, be it Theisman, Tourville or whoever. They'd have made the same recommendation they actually did: get her out of the front-lines and somewhere safe she can actually put her brilliant mind at work.

4. Honor might end up dead in a McQueen planned (or maybe led, like the warrior kings of old) attack. I don't see McQueen losing her skill just because of becoming a government leader. After all see textev below (she's Sec of War in Nightfall)

I don't see McQueen having a chance. See Jonathan's reply.

Jonathan_S wrote:And the only way McQueen could have won would have been to kill Saint-Just and behead State Sec. But with Saint-Just dead there would be no Operation Hassan, Cromarty wouldn't die, his government wouldn't fall, and thus Manticore would have no reason to stop the war for anything short of complete surrender. So I've no doubt that a successful coup would simply mean that McQueen got to preside over the defeat and surrender of Haven.

Even if McQueen retained the StateSec mostly intact after beheading it, which is extremely doubtful, I don't see her launching Operation Hassan. She did try a coup against her own government, so a decapitation strike against the enemy is not out of the question, but I don't think she'd have used Masadans for that. They're too unreliable and she'd know that.

The most likely scenario is that she'd have purged StateSec, since that was a parallel power organisation that could challenge her. She might eventually discover the Operation Hassan planning documentation, but probably not soon enough. OSJ knew it well and knew it was a possibility, McQueen wouldn't until far too late.

On the other hand, she'd have a much more honest assessment of the war-fighting capability of her Navy. Prior to the unveiling of Project Gram, she probably thought the chances of winning were even or better than that. As a Commissioner, she would probably have been privy to the fact that the Pierre reforms were actually working. So her planning would have been to hold on just long enough to outproduce the Alliance.

After the first battles from Operation Buttercup happened, she'd also have seen the writing on the wall, as well as White Haven's own thoughts: her ships weren't ships any more, they were targets. There was no way to win.

Would she have sued for peace or a negotiated surrender? Without Hassan, Cromarty is still in power, and there would be no cease-fire without a surrender. The question for McQueen is whether she would have accepted a surrender where she didn't retain power. Or, in other words, would she have thought of her people first or herself first? There's little chance that she'd have remained the sole power: the occupation government would be that power for the first decade, then transition to a civilian one; the PN/RHN wouldn't be allowed to retain more than a token force, so even if she remained the Navy Fleet Admiral, it would be a much smaller force.

She didn't have much choice, though. Without High Ridge, White Haven wouldn't have stopped until reaching orbit above Nouveau Paris. The only question is how many Havenite spacers died in the process.

tlb wrote:

Shannon_Foraker wrote:What if McQueen's coup worked?

Jonathan_S wrote:By that point in the war it's irrelevant how capable she is, how good the Peep navy could be if freed from the oversight of People's Commissioners, or what kind of research or industrial miracles her chosen people might be able to work. There's simply no time for it to matter. Her failed coup was only a week before Manticore unleased the fruits of Project Gram in Operation Buttercup.

Nothing Haven had in December of 1914 could stand up against White Haven's 8th fleet of CLACs and SD(P)s carrying the first MDMs.

She'd probably have still been on Haven trying to reestablish control of the government post coup, and root out the remains of Statesec when 8th fleet begins their unstoppable drive on Haven. And by early March they were ready to strike at Lovat, the final significant system before Haven itself. Just a couple of months isn't enough time to overcome the massive technological advantage that Manticore now enjoyed.

And the only way McQueen could have won would have been to kill Saint-Just and behead State Sec. But with Saint-Just dead there would be no Operation Hassan, Cromarty wouldn't die, his government wouldn't fall, and thus Manticore would have no reason to stop the war for anything short of complete surrender. So I've no doubt that a successful coup would simply mean that McQueen got to preside over the defeat and surrender of Haven.

I think that McQueen's failure marks the point where RFC made the biggest swerve from "Hornblower in Space", since she was the closest thing to RFC writing in Napoleon; Theisman is more of a Washington, which is the wrong war.

Note that she could have nothing to do with Honor's treatment as a POW; since Cordelia Ransom was on the spot, and in control. Honor's escape from the Tepes (with the death of Cordelia) occurred before the coup attempt.

I think I messed up some timelines trying to figure stuff out. My other idea was having her delay the coup (maybe she gets a more accurate message or none at all). Could this still lead to the death of the PM at Grayson, and thus the HR government, which accepts a peace treaty?

Shannon_Foraker wrote:I think I messed up some timelines trying to figure stuff out. My other idea was having her delay the coup (maybe she gets a more accurate message or none at all). Could this still lead to the death of the PM at Grayson, and thus the HR government, which accepts a peace treaty?

Maybe? Without the coup then Rob Pierre doesn't die and remains in control and he had been against launching Operation Hassan.

But that was while they weren't losing. It's hard to know whether or not Haven's impending military defeat might have changed his mind and caused him to authorize Saint-Just's pet assassination attempt. (Though of course, even if he does permit it if the timing of the authorization changed them so might the results)




Of course if he did, and it did succeed is getting Haven its ceasefire then Saint-Just would almost certainly immediately move to purge McQueen -- he was only willing to keep someone that dangerous around because they needed her skills as Secretary of War to turn their navy into one that would win the war. And then the question is whether or not she got good intel on the postponed purge attempt -- if she get's blindsided he might succeed in taking her out; if she still gets a heads up then, thanks to a few more months of preparation, she might well totally succeed in her coup. (Though what impact a military coup would have on the ceasefire and negotiation attempts is another unknown)