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Killer Terminii?

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Killer Terminii?
Post by SYED   » Wed Mar 19, 2014 2:58 am

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I am rereading ToF, and it said that there was one terminii that no one has ever returned. I just realised, we know the felix junction goes to 4 locations, the twins system, darius, and 2 verge systems. If this killer terminii was in the league, then eventually they would have forced their way through. but if this was a verge system, then it would be understandable if a terminii was not fully used.
We know that they have mannheim fleet units in felix, what if they have them there to ensure that no one uses it, either from torch or that killer terminii.
We know they will be examining the torch one, i wonder if they compare it to the killer one, would they link the two.
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Re: Killer Terminii?
Post by pokermind   » Wed Mar 19, 2014 8:21 am

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We know, some killer Terminii are protected by forts to keep privacy but, it is possible some terminus may be too close to a danger to navigation say a black hole. ;)

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Re: Killer Terminii?
Post by SWM   » Wed Mar 19, 2014 9:03 am

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There's no reason to believe that the previously known "killer terminus" has anything to do with the Alignment. I suppose it might, but nothing in the text suggests it. And if people do start linking the memory of that killer terminus with the Torch terminus, they are more likely to conclude that there is a natural hazard on the far side than to decide it is enemy action.
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Re: Killer Terminii?
Post by Jonathan_S   » Wed Mar 19, 2014 10:38 am

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Torch of Freedom wrote: He'd been honest enough when he stressed how uncommon it was—these days, at least—for ships to be lost during wormhole surveys. Statistically, the odds were very much against anything of the sort having happened to Harvest Joy. On the other hand, though, there was a reason he'd deliberately avoided getting into any details concerning the disasters that could happen to survey ships. However unlikely they might be, they could happen, and some of them were . . . gruesome. The fate of the Dublin and her crew was still something no one involved in survey work wanted to contemplate or talk about, even a century and a half later.
And there was that one wormhole no one had ever come back from . . . at all.

But that seems somewhat in contrast to what was said in War of Honor just before Harvest Joy's transit to what turned out to be the Lynx termini of the Manticoran Junction.
War of Honor wrote:hich mean Harvest Joy could pass safely through the hyper-space interface which had destroyed the probes . . . probably. Whether or not she would survive whatever lay on the other side of it was another matter, of course. After all, there were all of those deliciously terrifying, venerable legends about the rogue wormholes whose termini deposited doomed travelers directly into the heart of a black hole or some other suitably lethal destination. Not that anyone had ever actually found a wormhole where warships made transit in but never made transit out again.
Ok, maybe Captain Zachary was being pedantic, and there was at least wormhole that a survey ship hadn't come back from, but no one sent a warship. But given that she's reassuring herself before her survey ship make a first jump that seems unlikely to me...

And with less than 200 known first surveys, I don't think she'd forget the one or two that went disastrously...
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Re: Killer Terminii?
Post by Patentmike   » Wed Mar 19, 2014 5:02 pm

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And if people do start linking the memory of that killer terminus with the Torch terminus, they are more likely to conclude that there is a natural hazard on the far side than to decide it is enemy action.


I am not so sure. We have lots of talk, Cachat et al about Mesa's overt use of Verdant Vista making no sense. At some point, Verdant Vista as an anchor for the wormhole will come up.

I speculate, based on really thin textev, that the Alignment learned something from the Torch Wormhole that led them to the Streak Drive. Someone in Naval Intelligence is going to do a search that draws the correlation and voila, the wormhole becomes the focus of much scrutiny.

By the way, the really thin textev is the difference in the Torch Wormhole's profile (gravity wave profile?) from the previously utilized types.

Patentmike :D
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Re: Killer Terminii?
Post by Theemile   » Wed Mar 19, 2014 5:08 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:
Torch of Freedom wrote: He'd been honest enough when he stressed how uncommon it was—these days, at least—for ships to be lost during wormhole surveys. Statistically, the odds were very much against anything of the sort having happened to Harvest Joy. On the other hand, though, there was a reason he'd deliberately avoided getting into any details concerning the disasters that could happen to survey ships. However unlikely they might be, they could happen, and some of them were . . . gruesome. The fate of the Dublin and her crew was still something no one involved in survey work wanted to contemplate or talk about, even a century and a half later.
And there was that one wormhole no one had ever come back from . . . at all.

But that seems somewhat in contrast to what was said in War of Honor just before Harvest Joy's transit to what turned out to be the Lynx termini of the Manticoran Junction.
War of Honor wrote:hich mean Harvest Joy could pass safely through the hyper-space interface which had destroyed the probes . . . probably. Whether or not she would survive whatever lay on the other side of it was another matter, of course. After all, there were all of those deliciously terrifying, venerable legends about the rogue wormholes whose termini deposited doomed travelers directly into the heart of a black hole or some other suitably lethal destination. Not that anyone had ever actually found a wormhole where warships made transit in but never made transit out again.
Ok, maybe Captain Zachary was being pedantic, and there was at least wormhole that a survey ship hadn't come back from, but no one sent a warship. But given that she's reassuring herself before her survey ship make a first jump that seems unlikely to me...

And with less than 200 known first surveys, I don't think she'd forget the one or two that went disastrously...


There are plenty of ways to make a killer terminus without blackholes. A dense asteroid field, or a proto-planet or star are options - of course grav turbulance in the wormhole is another.

But since no one knows what happens to a ship that enters a wormhole and doesn't return, it could simply be the wormhole deposited the ship 10,000 light years away and the signature of the return locus was too faint to find. Simply no way home.
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Re: Killer Terminii?
Post by Jonathan_S   » Wed Mar 19, 2014 5:21 pm

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Theemile wrote:
Jonathan_S wrote:Ok, maybe Captain Zachary was being pedantic, and there was at least wormhole that a survey ship hadn't come back from, but no one sent a warship. But given that she's reassuring herself before her survey ship make a first jump that seems unlikely to me...

And with less than 200 known first surveys, I don't think she'd forget the one or two that went disastrously...


There are plenty of ways to make a killer terminus without blackholes. A dense asteroid field, or a proto-planet or star are options - of course grav turbulance in the wormhole is another.

But since no one knows what happens to a ship that enters a wormhole and doesn't return, it could simply be the wormhole deposited the ship 10,000 light years away and the signature of the return locus was too faint to find. Simply no way home.
Sure, but my point wasn't specific to how a ship might fail to come back; it was mostly hanging on the final sentence: "Not that anyone had ever actually found a wormhole where warships made transit in but never made transit out again."

I'd think that the thought of any wormhole from which a survey ship was known to have failed to return would have be very likely to run through Captain Zachary's mind.

In order to concern her it doesn't much matter if the ship didn't return because it's still in hyper somewhere taking the long way home, or if destroyed by what it got destroyed.

Reading ToF after WoH it really, immediately, struck me the difference in how the risks of wormhole surveying were presented. WoH had nothing more than vague scary stories. ToF had references to specific known disasters.
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Re: Killer Terminii?
Post by JohnRoth   » Wed Mar 19, 2014 8:58 pm

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Patentmike wrote:
And if people do start linking the memory of that killer terminus with the Torch terminus, they are more likely to conclude that there is a natural hazard on the far side than to decide it is enemy action.


I am not so sure. We have lots of talk, Cachat et al about Mesa's overt use of Verdant Vista making no sense. At some point, Verdant Vista as an anchor for the wormhole will come up.

I speculate, based on really thin textev, that the Alignment learned something from the Torch Wormhole that led them to the Streak Drive. Someone in Naval Intelligence is going to do a search that draws the correlation and voila, the wormhole becomes the focus of much scrutiny.

By the way, the really thin textev is the difference in the Torch Wormhole's profile (gravity wave profile?) from the previously utilized types.

Patentmike :D


It's "The Twins" that are the anomaly they learned a lot from, not Verdant Vista (Torch). As far as I can tell, the entire reason for occupying Verdant Vista was to deny that end of the hyper bridge to The Twins to anyone else.

Torch of Freedom, Chapter 5 wrote:"When it comes right down to it, Zack," Jack pointed out after a moment, "you're actually probably in a better position than me to estimate whether or not the Ballroom—or anyone else, for that matter—picked up a hint about the wormhole. I know your department was involved in at least some of the original research for the initial survey, and I also know we're still working on trying to figure out the hyper mechanics involved in the damned thing. In fact, I'd assumed you were still in the loop on that end of things."
A rising inflection and an arched eyebrow turned the last sentence into a question, and Zachariah nodded briefly.
"I'm still in the loop, generally speaking, but it's not like the astrophysics are still a central concern of our shop. We settled most of the military implications decades ago. I'm sure someone else's still working on the theory behind it full time, but we've pretty much mined out the military concerns."
"I don't doubt it, what I meant was that I'm pretty sure you'll hear sooner than I would if anybody comes sniffing around from the Verdant Vista side."
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Re: Killer Terminii?
Post by Uroboros   » Thu Mar 20, 2014 12:12 am

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This may be a case of Author-itis, otherwise known as IChangedMyMindsies. ;)
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Re: Killer Terminii?
Post by SYED   » Thu Mar 20, 2014 2:05 am

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When they fully survey a worm hole, they can geneally estimate their length, so if they do, how would the reconcile the idea that the wormhole is near a black hole, if there is not blackhole near by.
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