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cthia
Fleet Admiral
Posts: 14951
Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2014 1:10 pm
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Eagleeye wrote:cthia wrote:I keep coming back to this, when remembering Honor's attempt to lead the Havenites into a trap in the aftermath of Hancock Station, I always thought that systems could be seeded with a sea of ambush pods similar to what was setup by Henke's last stand.
Then, upon desperation like what Honor was under at Hancock, they could...
"Helm, Are we close enough to an ambush station?"
Isn't that - in a nutshell - what Mycroft is intended to do?
MYCROFTHonestly, I wasn't quite sure what Mycroft is. Textev in SoV has enlightened me a bit... just a bit, mind you. It probably has a myriad of undocumented potential uses before Honor analyzes it. “Yes.” Imbesi nodded vigorously. “I’m not sure I understand Mycroft fully, and I’m damned sure Tomas doesn’t. I’m not positive about Alessandra, but I think it’s probably what tilted her towards the ‘yes’ side of the vote.”
“They want to keep the hardware tightly held, at least for now, and I can certainly understand that,” Roszak said, stirring the wok’s simmering contents. “But they’ve been pretty good about sharing the system’s capabilities, and as I understand them, it should provide pretty good security against another Yawata Strike. Essentially, what they’ve done is to take the networked system-defense platforms and missile pods Foraker came up with for the Havenites, couple them with God’s own holy horde of additional sensor platforms, add FTL transmission to the sensor and fire control net, and replace the regular missile pods with those God-awful FTL-commanded MDMs.” He grimaced. “Believe me—nothing their sensors get a whiff of is going to last long enough to launch any missiles, Walter.”
“It was my impression that their thinking is that the missiles themselves were deployed quite some distance—possibly several light-minutes—from their actual targets and came in unpowered on ballistic profiles,” Imbesi pointed out.
“And that’s undoubtedly what happened.” Roszak nodded and removed the wok from the heat. “I don’t care how good their super-secret drive technology is, they would not have wanted a fleet capable of firing that many missiles swanning around the Manticore Binary System. Way too much chance of something getting picked up, no matter how hard to see their drive is. But one or two small, very stealthy ships with the same sort of drive would be a very different proposition, and they have to’ve gotten some sort of targeting array in-system. Something had to update those birds after that long a ballistic flight. In fact, the Manties detected an encrypted transmission from what was almost certainly exactly that sort of array just before the attack missiles came into attack range. They think—and I agree—that the transmission was most likely from an unmanned platform that self-destructed after serving its purpose, and they’ve nailed down a pretty firm locus for where it was transmitting from. But as I just said—and as Admiral Givens pointed out to me when we discussed this—getting that sort of platform into position required them to penetrate the system in the first place. They may’ve gotten away with it using one or two ships when no one knew to be watching for them; they won’t find it very easy to do a second time.”
He began ladling the pad Thai onto the plates laid out on the bar.
“Something else she pointed out to me was that the Yawata Strike was so overwhelmingly successful only because no one saw it coming. They’ve analyzed the actual number of missiles—including those ‘graser torpedoes,’ or whatever the hell we decide to call them in the end—and the Alliance could have launched several times that many birds from a single squadron of SD(P)s. If the Manties’ defenses had been active, or if they’d even had time to interpose the impeller wedges of their standby freighters to protect the space stations, the way doctrine specified, the damage would’ve been enormously lighter. So their thinking is that with the additional warning their new, denser short-range sensor shell’s likely to provide, and with the higher readiness state they’ve adopted—permanently—for their antimissile defenses, any future attack using the same technique would be relatively ineffectual. And if the bad guys want to come dance with them in an attack that doesn’t incorporate that lengthy ballistic flight, they’ll be just as delighted as hell to set up the dance floor. Trust me, they want these people.”
“And they’re prepared to supply that—all of it, including the sensor shells—to us?” Imbesi asked.
“They are.” Barregos picked up his chopsticks as Roszak set the wok aside and settled back onto his own stool. “They won’t be able to provide it immediately. They’re still in the process of emplacing it in Beowulf. For that matter, they don’t have it fully in place even in Manticore. But Beowulf and Haven are churning out the platforms in enormous numbers. Admiral Givens’ estimate is that they can have their own capital systems outfitted with the all-up Mycroft within the next sixty T-days or so, and Erewhon, Maya, and Torch could be covered in another couple of T-months, given how their production rate’s ramping up. They’ll be able to provide similar protection to all of the other star systems in the Maya Sector within an additional four T-months. And, as she pointed out, it’s highly unlikely the Alignment has a ‘ghost fleet’ strike force already organized to go after you or us. It’ll take time for them to decide we might be worth hitting, and coupled with the relatively lower priority they’d give to hitting us as opposed to the Alliance, the threat to our infrastructure and populations has to be minimal, Walter.”
“I don’t think anyone in Erewhon’s especially happy about even minimal chances of something with the casualty totals the Yawata Strike produced,” Imbesi said somberly. “Despite which, I’ve been authorized to sign on the dotted line if you can convince me the risk is manageable.”
Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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