SWM wrote:Vince caught my post before I managed to edit and correct it.
He also somehow found yet another mention of a grav wave in HoTQ. I'm very confused and uncertain how my search of the text didn't find that one. Ah well.
In any case, yes, there is a grav wave, and in fact Grayson appears to be in a grav wave. So perhaps the movie will show a grav wave transit after all.
A grav wave apparently extends from
near Manticore to
near Yeltsin's Star. Similar to the Tellerman Wave being near the Basilisk system in On Basilisk Station.
When Honor is discussing sending for help from Manticore, the argument against sending
Troubadour is that the ship will take too long to get back to Manticore, due to the loss of the forward Warshawski sail:
The Honor of the Queen, Chapter 15 wrote:HMS Troubadour had no warning at all. Lasers are light-speed weapons; by the time your sensors realize someone has fired them at you, they’ve already hit you.
Each of the Masadan LACs mounted a single laser, and if Troubadour’s sidewalls had been up, the crude, relatively low-powered weapons would have been harmless. But her sidewalls weren’t up, and Commander McKeon’s face went whiter than bone as energy fire smashed into his ship’s starboard bow. Plating shattered, damage and collision alarms shrieked, and Troubadour lurched as the kinetic energy bled into her hull.
The Honor of the Queen, Chapter 16 wrote:“How bad is it, Alistair?”
“Bad enough, Ma’am.” Alistair McKeon’s face was grim. “We’ve lost Missile Two and Radar Three. That leaves point defense wide open on the starboard beam. The same hit carried through into the forward impellers—Alpha Four’s gone, and so is Beta Eight. The second hit came in right on Frame Twenty and carried clear back through sickbay. It took out the master control runs to Laser Three and Missile Four and breached Magazine Two. The magazine’s a total write-off; Laser Three and Missile Four are on line in local control, and we’re repressurizing and rigging new runs to them now, but we lost thirty-one people, including Dr. McFee and two sick berth attendants, and we’ve got wounded.”
His voice was harsh with pain, and Honor’s eyes were dark as she nodded, but for all that, they both knew Troubadour had been incredibly lucky. The loss of one of her forward missile tubes and an entire magazine had hurt her offensive capability, and Radar Three’s destruction left a dangerous chink in her anti-missile defenses. But her combat power was far less impaired than it might have been, and the casualties could have been much, much worse. She’d been lamed, and until the alpha node was replaced she couldn’t generate a forward Warshawski sail, but she could still maneuver and fight.
The Honor of the Queen, Chapter 22 wrote:“Well, Sir, as you know, we’ve evacuated our own noncombatants aboard our freighters.” Garret nodded, and Honor shrugged. “Commander Truman’s report included an urgent request for reinforcements. I’m certain that request will be granted, but those are slow ships, Sir. I’d have preferred to send one of my warships, but I can’t spare Apollo if we may be facing two modern cruisers, and Troubadour’s node damage would restrict her to impeller drive. More, she couldn’t get much above the gamma band without reliable Warshawski sails. If one of your hyper-capable ships could be sent—?”
The fact that
Troubadour could be considered to be sent off in hyper with the message to Manticore, without Warshawski sail capability, albeit at a cost of reduced effective speed (gamma band or thereabouts), indicates that
Yeltsin's Star does not lie directly in a grav wave.
If Yeltsin's Star lies directly in a grav wave,
Troubadour could not even be considered to be sent, because if
Troubadour had translated to the alpha band from normal space at Yeltsin's Star, it would have been immediately destroyed, because it couldn't generate the Warshawski foresail due to the loss of an alpha node when the Masadan LACs attacked Honor's ships when they returned to Yeltsin's Star.
The Honor of the Queen, Chapter 21 wrote:“So we’re all there is for now,” Honor said even more slowly than her damaged mouth required. “What’s the status on Troubadour’s alpha node?”
“The Grayson yard people confirm Alistair’s original estimate,” Truman replied. “It’s completely gone, and they can’t repair it. Their Warshawski technology’s even cruder than I thought, and their components simply won’t mate with ours, but their standard impellers are a lot closer to our levels, and Lieutenant Anthony got with their chief shipwright before I sent Troubadour off with the freighters. By the time she gets back, the Graysons should have run up jury-rigged beta nodes to replace the damaged beta and alpha nodes. She still won’t have Warshawski capability, but she’ll be back up to five-twenty gees for max acceleration.”
For what happens to a ship that doesn't have Warshawski sail capability when it translates from normal space to hyperspace into a gravity wave in the alpha band:
Hyper translationand
At All Costs, Chapter 35 wrote:"I suppose part of it could just be the fact that Solon lies right in the middle of a gravity wave," she continued aloud. "I always get a sort of uncomfortable feeling between my shoulder blades in a case like this."
Jaruwalski nodded. No flag officer really liked attacking a star system which lay in the middle of a hyper-space gravity wave—not unless she was totally confident she'd brought along enough firepower to take the system outright—for a very simple reason. A starship could not enter a gravity wave and survive without functioning Warshawski sails, and no ship could produce a Warshawski sail if it had lost an alpha node out of one of its impeller rings. Which meant a single unlucky hit could leave a warship with otherwise trifling damage unable to withdraw into hyper if the rest of its task force or fleet had to run for it.
All quotes: Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.