Beowulfians in the Solarian Navy?

Besides, the MAlign hand that rocks the SLN cradle is always in the nursery.

Duckk wrote:The Solarians are a lot of things - arrogant and insulated come to mind - but they are not barbarous, murderous idiots. Regardless of their flaws, they are still a professional navy, and they're not just going to shoot people out of hand for as flimsy a reason as that. The League isn't even in a declared state of war, so execution (without so much as a trial) is completely off the table.

Duckk,

You are obviously right. The disagreement with Manticore was the standard SLN way of dealing with barbarian kingdoms beyond the edge of Solarian space, being carried out with so much force that there was no danger that Manticore would do anything other than surrender...well, that was what they expected. The fleet action against Manticore -- Byng and Crandall were set up -- did not show signs of having war crimes (other than waging a war of aggression) in mind.

I would suggest that Beowulfian folks of all sorts would receive messages from whomever telling them that life was becoming unpleasant, and being in the rest of the League might be personally unsafe. Each message would be from a different source and would have different content; computers are good at that.

We do not have information that I have seen as to whether or not SLN Navy officers and men, not on the battlefield, are allowed to give their 30 days notice and quit, or quit without notice. It is a not unreasonable guess that many Beowulfian SLN people either can get a job on a civilian freighter, because Manticore has just created a huge new demand for SL-owned and registered freighters, or have the money to afford a single trip across much of known space. Recall that freighters are huge and shipping is cheap, so sending your personal possessions home is not a huge challenge.

Beowulf has a large merchant marine, and may also be making arrangements to get people home.

On the other hand, Beowulf has a very high standard of living, so working for the SLN may not have been nearly so appealing to Beowulfians as to others.

We just don't know -because it hasn't been mentioned in the books- what Beowulf has done as far as contacting any of it's citizens in other than Beowulf territory. Once the announcement was made in the SL Assembly, they probably sent a warning notice to all Embassy & Consular Stations bringing them up to speed on what was happening and that the vote would be scheduled.

As far as Beowulfians in the SLN, the SLN probably is having challanges deciding what to do. Beowulf has announced they are holding a pebecite about leaving the SL.
I suppose it comes down to how the SLN in a scenario that builds from what is being done by the Mandarins to oppose the vote/leaving.

If you pull any Beowulf citizen from the SLN into some kind of "protective custody" or just seperate them from any active duty command and bring them to some sort of holding facilities, you are guaranteed to truly annoy those from Beowulf who see themselves as working for the greater good of the SL. That will probably cause them to quit and leave - when the oppertunity is avaiable and probably legally.

If the SL Buracracy and SLN see any Beowulfians in the SLN as either imediate threats to military security or the overall secuirty of the League OR as pawns to be demonized as moles who have been working to leak information and plans to Beowulf and Manticore, then they are going to at least lock them all up right now.

Remember, the Mandarins and SLN are talking about a military operation against Beowulf and they really do need to attempt to regain some semblence of both control of the security and have scapegoats ready. SOMEBODY tipped off Beowulf about Fillerta and other SLN operations. It may have eventualy come through a Beowulf condit but it probably wasn'st from a Beowulf citizen. A spy perhaps but not someone identified as from Beowulf.

The SLN also probably wouldn't want to have any Beowufians in the navy on the ships sent to Beowulf on the not so insignifcant chance that the SL is going to "be forced to step in as the result of a flawed and rigged vote by individuals looking to seize control of Beowulf from it's inhabitants who are-and want to continue to be- Citizens of the Solarian League". Not unless you have the Beowulf equivlent of Summervale or a North Hollow in the fleet.

Killing them out-of-hand to remove them, even if you make mass accusations of long term treason against the SL isn't going to go over well in the short term. Among other things, you make the SLN, the various SL intelegence services and God knows who else look total incompetent for having missed this for probably centuries. Better to quietly releave them of duty and ship them to someplace "safe" to "avoid incedents" and sort them out after the situation with Beowulf's ridiculous threat to leave the League under pressure from Manticore is resolved.

Not sure if Beowulf would issue someting like Lacoon I but it might be prudent- and be a vast slap in the face to the Mandarins because it would have to be set in terms of concern for the safety of Beowulf Citizens being targeted for retaliation for the actions of it's sovereign government by agents of the SL to attempt to coerce Beowulf from following it's legal rights.
Very sticky

The only example I can come up with in this scenario is the U.S. Military in the months surrounding the CSA attack on Ft. Sumter. Several units in the western states disintegrated as units. IIRC the 5th Cavalry regiment operating in western Nebraska and Wyoming lost 70% of it's officers and 50% of it enlisted. You also had several northerners who stayed on and served in the CSA IIRC the Confederate commander in Vicksburg was born in Pennsylvania and had served most of his career to that point in the South.

Hans wrote:

Annachie wrote:Hell, some will retire before they even hear the news
Who knows. Given how the Solly navy has been run they'll probably be brigged as soon as possible.

What is the meaning of 'brigged'
i don't know the word and i didn't find a translation into German.

jailed in military brig

saber964 wrote:The only example I can come up with in this scenario is the U.S. Military in the months surrounding the CSA attack on Ft. Sumter. Several units in the western states disintegrated as units. IIRC the 5th Cavalry regiment operating in western Nebraska and Wyoming lost 70% of it's officers and 50% of it enlisted. You also had several northerners who stayed on and served in the CSA IIRC the Confederate commander in Vicksburg was born in Pennsylvania and had served most of his career to that point in the South.

It will not be as simple as it was before the US Civil War. The US army was very small. People were generally friends and honor was considered vital.
In this case, I think there may be some form of parole. But there are ships all over the League. What happens on an OFS ship a couple of months away? We've seen that there are places where the navy has no idea a war has started.

Things will get messy. And if there is an attack on Beowulf they are likely to get messier.

I wonder if there were any Beowulfans in Admiral Tsang's task force when she was dispatched to the Beowulf system.

I'm still interested in what Manticore could realistically do, would do, if Beowulfan officers began to be killed by the SLN? I never said that I thought the League would be so crass, murderous or idiotic. Well, I reserve the right to hold the murderous, idiotic part in abeyance. LOL

But what can be realistically done if the officers' lives were in danger after a few deaths by suspicious causes? Also a freighter full of Beowulfan officers being sent to Beowulf sounds like the kind of target that the MAlign dines on. I would imagine that a freighter full of discharged Beowulfan officers is a MAlign staple. And of course it would be set up to appear as if the SLN did it.

Aside:
Is it Beowulfian or Beowulfan?

Hi guys,

Excellent points, as usual.

The confederate resignations were on my mind, but as LDWechsler pointed out, the SLN is several thousand times bigger than the pre civil war US army.

The fact that this hasn't come up in the textev, when it should have, as part of the blame Beowulf strategy , leads me to believe there are darn few Beowulfians in the SLN, because the BSDF and BMM [Beowulf Merchant Marine] are big enough to appeal to almost all those who want interstellar careers.

The fact the mandarins overlooked such an obvious excuse or scapegoat would indicate they're even more incompetent as others have suggested; but I don't think that's the case, since no SLN officer has apparently considered or suggested it, including captain [soon-to-be-admiral] Gweon, the MAlign's spy, I think the number of Beowulfians in the SLN is almost infinitesimal.

OTOH, we already have had at least 4 other SL members put Old Chicago on notice they're withdrawing from the SL.

I suspect they didn't do that until after they had contacted the GA and received its protection, but their citizens in the SLN are probably at risk if the couple of BF SD's squadrons don't succeed in keeping them in the SL.

We could probably have a thread on just how few ships the GA would need to send to obliterate them if any wish to so amuse themselves determining just how few that might be.

OTOH, given how few SLN crewmen are likely to come from these distant, probably out of the way yet not quite out of touch systems, they will generally be far too small in number for the SLN to worry about in the time it has left.

From some of the textev, an attack on Beowulf has already occurred, less than successfully, if not quite the city destroyed by a KEW event.

Definitely interesting times.

L

ldwechsler wrote:

saber964 wrote:The only example I can come up with in this scenario is the U.S. Military in the months surrounding the CSA attack on Ft. Sumter. Several units in the western states disintegrated as units. IIRC the 5th Cavalry regiment operating in western Nebraska and Wyoming lost 70% of it's officers and 50% of it enlisted. You also had several northerners who stayed on and served in the CSA IIRC the Confederate commander in Vicksburg was born in Pennsylvania and had served most of his career to that point in the South.

It will not be as simple as it was before the US Civil War. The US army was very small. People were generally friends and honor was considered vital.
In this case, I think there may be some form of parole. But there are ships all over the League. What happens on an OFS ship a couple of months away? We've seen that there are places where the navy has no idea a war has started.

Things will get messy. And if there is an attack on Beowulf they are likely to get messier.

lyonheart wrote:because the BSDF and BMM [Beowulf Merchant Marine] are big enough to appeal to almost all those who want interstellar careers.

There is also the Beowulf Survey Corps to soak up adventurist Beowulfens. The BSC is described as an elite force and apparently contains a high percentage of freed slaves, but "small" is a relative term so even a "small" elite force could absorb the relatively "small" number that crave interstellar adventure.