puzzled by Cauldron of Ghosts timelines

HI

I just read Cauldron of ghosts, and I'm a bit puzzled. In Shadow of Freedom Michelle Henke starts for Mesa after Anton and Victor get home. Its mentioned in the last chapter that she "wondering about stuff since Anton and Victor got home". This is upheld by the fact that Dame Honor shows them her correspondence to Queen Bethv as well.

However, Anton and Victor are able to get full body surgery to disguise them, Berry arrives after the COURIER gets to Torch and back, then Granny El's frigate gets modified, then everyone does to Mesa and plays merry hell on ground for a couple of MONTHS. AFTER Michelle has already left for Mesa!

And after ALL that right at the end, there is a mention of a fleet coming in. It doesn't say if its Michelle Henke, Dame Honor or the Andermani or anyone else.

So am wondering of someone could clarify one of the following

1. Am I missing something?
2. Did Michelle Henke get lost in space?
3. Did Michelle and her crew decide they needed a holiday?
4. did her crew decide to PUSH the ships all the way to Mesa in skin suits....

prasad wrote:HI

I just read Cauldron of ghosts, and I'm a bit puzzled. In Shadow of Freedom Michelle Henke starts for Mesa after Anton and Victor get home. Its mentioned in the last chapter that she "wondering about stuff since Anton and Victor got home". This is upheld by the fact that Dame Honor shows them her correspondence to Queen Bethv as well.

However, Anton and Victor are able to get full body surgery to disguise them, Berry arrives after the COURIER gets to Torch and back, then Granny El's frigate gets modified, then everyone does to Mesa and plays merry hell on ground for a couple of MONTHS. AFTER Michelle has already left for Mesa!

And after ALL that right at the end, there is a mention of a fleet coming in. It doesn't say if its Michelle Henke, Dame Honor or the Andermani or anyone else.

So am wondering of someone could clarify one of the following

1. Am I missing something?
2. Did Michelle Henke get lost in space?
3. Did Michelle and her crew decide they needed a holiday?
4. did her crew decide to PUSH the ships all the way to Mesa in skin suits....

timeline
1. green pines happens
2. many months later anton and victor get home.
3. a month after #2, at about the same time, three things happen:
A. anton and victor, after going through body surgery, leave for mesa a second time.
B. a courier from beowulf stops at parmaly station and takes notice that anton and victor headed to haven instead of torch.
C. 10th fleet leaves for mesa.

even though it many hundreds of LY from beowulf to mesa in regular space, it is only 60LY through the wormhole network. Traveling in the In the theta bands (3,000 times light speed) that is 7.3 days travel for a courier.

Distances are short from parmaly station to torch and from torch to erowhon. Therefore a courier from parmaly to torch to erowhon to manticore would take less than a 2 weeks.

Quote: "Storm from the Shadows":
It's roughly three hundred and sixty-five light-years from Mesa to New Tuscany. Even for a dispatch boat, that's a forty-five-day trip, one way

Tenth fleet wouldn't travel as high in hyperspace, so traveling in the eta bank (2576 times light speed) it would be 52.4 days travel from New Tuscany to mesa

Tenth fleet wouldn't travel as high in hyperspace, so traveling in the eta bank (2576 times light speed) it would be 52.4 days travel from New Tuscany to mesa

If i remember correctly...tenth fleet left Meyers not New Tuscany, heading for Mesa which would have added more travel time to their trip.

darrell wrote:

prasad wrote:HI

I just read Cauldron of ghosts, and I'm a bit puzzled. In Shadow of Freedom Michelle Henke starts for Mesa after Anton and Victor get home. Its mentioned in the last chapter that she "wondering about stuff since Anton and Victor got home". This is upheld by the fact that Dame Honor shows them her correspondence to Queen Bethv as well.

However, Anton and Victor are able to get full body surgery to disguise them, Berry arrives after the COURIER gets to Torch and back, then Granny El's frigate gets modified, then everyone does to Mesa and plays merry hell on ground for a couple of MONTHS. AFTER Michelle has already left for Mesa!

And after ALL that right at the end, there is a mention of a fleet coming in. It doesn't say if its Michelle Henke, Dame Honor or the Andermani or anyone else.

So am wondering of someone could clarify one of the following

1. Am I missing something?
2. Did Michelle Henke get lost in space?
3. Did Michelle and her crew decide they needed a holiday?
4. did her crew decide to PUSH the ships all the way to Mesa in skin suits....

timeline
1. green pines happens
2. many months later anton and victor get home.
3. a month after #2, at about the same time, three things happen:
A. anton and victor, after going through body surgery, leave for mesa a second time.
B. a courier from beowulf stops at parmaly station and takes notice that anton and victor headed to haven instead of torch.
C. 10th fleet leaves for mesa.

even though it many hundreds of LY from beowulf to mesa in regular space, it is only 60LY through the wormhole network. Traveling in the In the theta bands (3,000 times light speed) that is 7.3 days travel for a courier.

Distances are short from parmaly station to torch and from torch to erowhon. Therefore a courier from parmaly to torch to erowhon to manticore would take less than a 2 weeks.

Quote: "Storm from the Shadows":
It's roughly three hundred and sixty-five light-years from Mesa to New Tuscany. Even for a dispatch boat, that's a forty-five-day trip, one way

Tenth fleet wouldn't travel as high in hyperspace, so traveling in the eta bank (2576 times light speed) it would be 52.4 days travel from New Tuscany to mesa

Yeah, you're missing something. Here's the real timeline. Month marks are from the books, coordination within months is pretty much guesswork.

late June 1922 - 10th fleet leaves Tillerman for Meyers.
July 1922 - Anton, Victor and crew arrive on Mesa
August 1922 - 10th fleet arrives on Meyers. Battle of Meyers.
about a month or two later - 10th fleet heads for Mesa.
October 1922 - atomic bomb attacks on Mesa
about three weeks later, 10th fleet arrives at Mesa.

On your point C, 10th fleet does not go directly to Mesa, it stops at Meyers first.

Also note that the CoG timeline is very messed up, especially once Victor and Anton are on Mesa. The book was very late being turned in. David and Eric were moving stuff around to make it fit the timeline. There are known anomalies in CoG. It could have used another month of editing, easily.

Gun Boat Diplomacy wrote:

darrell wrote:Tenth fleet wouldn't travel as high in hyperspace, so traveling in the eta bank (2576 times light speed) it would be 52.4 days travel from New Tuscany to mesa

If i remember correctly...tenth fleet left Meyers not New Tuscany, heading for Mesa which would have added more travel time to their trip.

I am not aware of anything that said how far it was from meyers to mesa, nor anything about travel time, so I went with the best information I had.

Due to the fact that when mesa was settled it was a long way from the solarian league, with visigoth being 60 LY from Beowulf, it is more likely that mesa is farther away from meyers than it is from new tuskany. That being the case, with mesa being 53 days travel time from new tuskany:

At the bare minimum, mesa must be AT LEAST 32 days travel time from Meyers in the eta band.

There is a 50% chance that mesa is somewhere between 53-67 days travel time from Meyers in the eta band. Call it 2 months plus or minus a week

At the maximum, mesa could not be more than 74 ays travel time from Meyers in the eta band.

JohnRoth wrote:late June 1922 - 10th fleet leaves Tillerman for Meyers.
July 1922 - Anton, Victor and crew arrive on Mesa
August 1922 - 10th fleet arrives on Meyers. Battle of Meyers.
about a month or two later - 10th fleet heads for Mesa.
October 1922 - atomic bomb attacks on Mesa
about three weeks later, 10th fleet arrives at Mesa.

thanks for the actual timeline. Since it is still October when 10th fleet arrives on mesa, the atomic bomb attacks must have happened in early October.

I am not aware of anything that said how far it was from meyers to mesa, nor anything about travel time, so I went with the best information I had. Mesa has to be somewhere between 32-74 days travel time from Meyers. Based on other things written, I believe that it is more likely to be further from Meyers than from new Tuscany.

Given the fact that 10th fleet arrived in late October, it had to have left Meyers sometime in late Augest or September, with early September being the most likely. That would put the timeline as:

April 1922 Victor, Anton, etc leave parmaly station. (SoF)
April 1922 Victor, Anton, etc arrive at Haven. (MoH)
May, 1922 Pritchart arrives at Trevor's star. (MoH)
June Anton and victor arrive at Beowulf.
Late June 1922 - 10th fleet leaves Tillerman for Meyers.
June or July - Queen Berry is informed by someone else's courier (Beowulf?) that Anton and Victor headed for haven, not torch.
July 1922 - Anton, Victor and crew arrive on Mesa.
August 1922 - 10th fleet arrives on Meyers. Battle of Meyers.
September: about a month or two later 10th fleet heads for Mesa.
Early October 1922 - atomic bomb attacks on Mesa
Late October, about three weeks later, 10th fleet arrives at Mesa.

Italics come from John Roth, underline are my additions.

All of this is assuming that the fleet approaching Mesa in the closing pages of CoG is 10th Fleet (or some element thereof). Has that been confirmed?

Dafmeister wrote:All of this is assuming that the fleet approaching Mesa in the closing pages of CoG is 10th Fleet (or some element thereof). Has that been confirmed?

All but.... We know 10th fleet is on it's way to Mesa, and no other GA fleet is tasked to do so. (I believe we can assume that anything major the GA knows or is doing, Honor knows, and Honor only knew about 10th Fleet's intentions).

We can assume that the IAN would have let the GA know if they had launched such an expedition on their own (either formally or informally) and unless they wanted to swim in hyper for an extra 3 months, would have used the Wormhole network to jump to Lynx, which would also let the GA know about the Expedition.

The only variable would be an interested 3rd party with wallers - perhaps an RF member like Mannerheim - who would be interested in quelling the violence on their terms - in which case 10th fleet is only days away.

However, whoever was in Charge of the fleet asked to speak to General Thandi Palane - specifically by name - So it can be assumed that it was a GA taskforce with the knowledge that she was on planet and would be taking part in any such activities as they found - as Mike is likely to know, though not specifically informed in the previous book before she left Meyers.

So while I have not seen it confirmed, there is a high likelihood it is 10th fleet.

Asking for Thandi by name isn't particularly strong evidence, since there are references to rumours of her presence earlier. By the time the last refugees are cleared through the tower, a fair number of people knew who was taking charge of the defense. [IIRC, the Mesan commander is shown wondering if she shouldn't be taking the story seriously.]

Asking for her and offering a cease-fire, OTOH, is proof positive that some Mesans know that their new guests would react _very_ poorly to them wiping Thandi out hours after their arrival in system. That doesn't completely exclude the Mannerheimers, but they are less than likely: I'd expect them to talk up the evil that Mesans do more than to impose regime change - and there's no particular reason for them to have wanted to in the first place. Or rather no new reason that would cause them to act _now_, assuming that they aren't still in head-down mode anyway.

Theemile wrote:

Dafmeister wrote:All of this is assuming that the fleet approaching Mesa in the closing pages of CoG is 10th Fleet (or some element thereof). Has that been confirmed?

All but.... We know 10th fleet is on it's way to Mesa, and no other GA fleet is tasked to do so. (I believe we can assume that anything major the GA knows or is doing, Honor knows, and Honor only knew about 10th Fleet's intentions).

We can assume that the IAN would have let the GA know if they had launched such an expedition on their own (either formally or informally) and unless they wanted to swim in hyper for an extra 3 months, would have used the Wormhole network to jump to Lynx, which would also let the GA know about the Expedition.

The only variable would be an interested 3rd party with wallers - perhaps an RF member like Mannerheim - who would be interested in quelling the violence on their terms - in which case 10th fleet is only days away.

However, whoever was in Charge of the fleet asked to speak to General Thandi Palane - specifically by name - So it can be assumed that it was a GA taskforce with the knowledge that she was on planet and would be taking part in any such activities as they found - as Mike is likely to know, though not specifically informed in the previous book before she left Meyers.

So while I have not seen it confirmed, there is a high likelihood it is 10th fleet.

Dafmeister wrote:All of this is assuming that the fleet approaching Mesa in the closing pages of CoG is 10th Fleet (or some element thereof). Has that been confirmed?

Theemile wrote:All but.... We know 10th fleet is on it's way to Mesa, and no other GA fleet is tasked to do so. (I believe we can assume that anything major the GA knows or is doing, Honor knows, and Honor only knew about 10th Fleet's intentions).

We can assume that the IAN would have let the GA know if they had launched such an expedition on their own (either formally or informally) and unless they wanted to swim in hyper for an extra 3 months, would have used the Wormhole network to jump to Lynx, which would also let the GA know about the Expedition.

The only variable would be an interested 3rd party with wallers - perhaps an RF member like Mannerheim - who would be interested in quelling the violence on their terms - in which case 10th fleet is only days away.

While Mannerheim has the largest fleet in the RF, it doesn't have "at least a dozen ships of the wall," to quote the text. Otherwise there wouldn't have been a lot of worry in that RF meeting about military power, and Detweiller's comment that, putting all the SDFs together would make a pretty decent navy. As things go, a dozen ships-of-the-wall makes a pretty decent navy all by itself.

Also, I'm pretty sure that the Mannerheim high command knows that Mesa is a sacrifice and that the MAlign is somewhere else. This is especially the case since Mannerheim, like all the RF systems, is officially on record as being absolutely, positively, totally and thoroughly against genetic slavery. There is no way they'd send a fleet to relieve Mesa, even if they had one to send.

Theemile wrote:However, whoever was in Charge of the fleet asked to speak to General Thandi Palane - specifically by name - So it can be assumed that it was a GA taskforce with the knowledge that she was on planet and would be taking part in any such activities as they found - as Mike is likely to know, though not specifically informed in the previous book before she left Meyers.

Actually, no. The person who asked to talk to General Palane was General Drescher, the Mesan general in charge of the attack. The interesting thing here is that she said "37 minutes ago...," which leads to interesting questions. Was that when the ships arrived, or when Admiral Henke opened communications, or when the General Board capitulated prior to changing their pants?

Theemile wrote:So while I have not seen it confirmed, there is a high likelihood it is 10th fleet.

I agree, for one simple reason. The meta context is that RFC wants to wrap this up in two more books, Shadow of Victory being the first. While it would be amusing for an IAN fleet to arrive a couple of days before Tenth Fleet, leading to all kinds of interesting back and forth, that would be a complication that RFC doesn't need in the rush for completion.

I assume Honor is going to dispatch a Havenite fleet to take over the Visigoth junction, thus protecting their route to Mesa and also cutting off the link to the Gupta Sector.

JohnRoth wrote:While Mannerheim has the largest fleet in the RF, it doesn't have "at least a dozen ships of the wall," to quote the text. Otherwise there wouldn't have been a lot of worry in that RF meeting about military power, and Detweiller's comment that, putting all the SDFs together would make a pretty decent navy. As things go, a dozen ships-of-the-wall makes a pretty decent navy all by itself.

We can't rule them out either. Mannerheim has a "Task Force 4" whose flagship is a DN augmenting a "Battlecruiser Squadron 6".

IMO, the worry was more about how openly they can afford to use the RF's forces, knowing that the RMN or RHN could swiftly defeat them if a connection to the MAlign were discovered.