OK KZT: What's wrong with AAC?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But would she? Neither Pritchat or Theisman are stupid. They know that Capital Fleet can't withstand against Eighth Fleet equipped with Apollo. The only thing they could do is be targets. So what would they do?

The fleet and the government bolts and planets refuse to answer their calls. Passive non-cooperation. How many marines does 8th fleet have? Do they even have ANY?

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But would she? Neither Pritchat or Theisman are stupid. They know that Capital Fleet can't withstand against Eighth Fleet equipped with Apollo. The only thing they could do is be targets. So what would they do?

The fleet and the government bolts and planets refuse to answer their calls. Passive non-cooperation. How many marines does 8th fleet have? Do they even have ANY?

Possible outcome, but I doubt it. Bolting doesn't sound like Theisman and it definitely doesn't sound like Pritchart. And besides, if Honor captures the Octagon and learns the location of Bolthole, can Haven continue the war anyway?

They do have a bargaining chip: they know Operation Beatrice has been launched. And they know that if Honor is there with them, she's not home defending the MBS. And since Pritchart and Theisman now have direct access to Honor, they can communicate with someone in charge, which is what they've been trying to do all along. Remember Pritchart was going to come clean in the Torch Summit.

Depending on timing, they can even beat Tourville to the MBS and avoid unnecessary bloodshed.

So my feeling is that they neither fight nor flee, but instead negotiate. They'd ask for a temporary cease-fire, but that alone wouldn't work for Honor. She'd remember exactly how the previous work failed to solve anything. I don't know if she'd counter with the scuttling of Capital Fleet... though it's also possible the Havenites would accept it, since the Capital Fleet is possibly made of older SDs the same way that the RMN Home Fleet was and was due to be replaced with new Bolthole construction (Theisman was talking about how they were going to decommission ships for new construction basically 1-for-1).

What could they negotiate so the end result is that THeisman and Pritchart accompany Honor back to the MBS, not as hostages or captured POWs, but as envoys to sign the peace treaty?

cthia wrote:Reserve implies a bit more play in the chain and room for 8th Fleet to go on maneuvers. But! When Apollo was unveiled, it forced Haven's hand. That decision should have grounded 8th to the MBS until such time as it got the system variant of Apollo. And even if 8th Fleet went on maneuvers it should at least leave two Apollo capable ships behind. That would have been something D'Orvile could have bluffed with. He could have unloaded all of the pods from two ships at Tourville. "Should I rinse and repeat?"

Hindsight is 20-20. Clearly the planners didn't think Haven would react that strongly. For them, Apollo was just an incremental step in war capability that would be countered with a proportionate escalation on Haven's side. Though... when did the MA start realising that this was Buttercup all over again?

Anyway, two ships of Apollo-capable pod-layers wouldn't be enough. I doubt Tourville would accept a bluff. In fact, he'd see only two ships firing Apollo broods as exactly what it would be: all that D'Orville had. The presence of McKeon's ships didn't deter Tourville or Chin, after all.

BTW, are things worse than I thought? What ships from Home Fleet were sent to Monica? A significant amount of firepower? What missiles?

When were Tenth Fleet's superdreadnoughts sent? Clearly not at this time, since they weren't available for the Battle of Spindle six months later. Mike Henke with her BC squadrons would have left at around this time, but that doesn't fit the description from Honor. Maybe they did send superdreadnoughts at this time and they were holding the Lynx terminus or in Lynx, but were recalled after the Battle of Manticore.

cthia wrote:[BTW, are things worse than I thought? What ships from Home Fleet were sent to Monica? A significant amount of firepower? What missiles?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:When were Tenth Fleet's superdreadnoughts sent? Clearly not at this time, since they weren't available for the Battle of Spindle six months later. Mike Henke with her BC squadrons would have left at around this time, but that doesn't fit the description from Honor. Maybe they did send superdreadnoughts at this time and they were holding the Lynx terminus or in Lynx, but were recalled after the Battle of Manticore.

I answered this on the previous page: Vice Admiral O'Malley brought a task force of battle-cruisers from Home Fleet, as well as support ships that helped repair HMS Hexapuma. These would not be ships that could handle Apollo. Then when Henke took her force to Talbott, O'Malley returned to Home Fleet, was promoted and given a new squadron. Some other screening forces that had accompanied him were returned to guarding the wormhole. There were no SD's involved, as far as I can tell.

PS: It may be that the Queen was so angered by her presumption that Haven had killed the anbassador and tried to kill Princess Ruth and Queen Berry (apparently to scuttle the peace conference?!); that she ordered Operation Sanskrit to resume and the Admiralty Lords could not see any reason to hold back.

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But would she? Neither Pritchat or Theisman are stupid. They know that Capital Fleet can't withstand against Eighth Fleet equipped with Apollo. The only thing they could do is be targets. So what would they do?

The fleet and the government bolts and planets refuse to answer their calls. Passive non-cooperation. How many marines does 8th fleet have? Do they even have ANY?

Bolts off to the hidden base known as Bolthole, where they plot to take things over again. They keep a very heavy picket on the wormhole to it.

Well, you have to understand that the RHN fleet will capture the government and can get them to issue a surrender, or at least a stop to all combat operations. And presumably those orders are coming. OTOH, If there is nobody occupying RHN command positions they can't issue any such orders, now can they?

If 8th fleet shows up at Haven then it means the Manticore home system has been captured. And 8th fleet doesn't know that. So Haven just has to play for time.

And you can't capture the Octagon for several reasons. First, it is a radioactive crater. Second, how are you going to do that? You are going to do what with what? There are something like 20 billion people on Haven and IIRC, they pulled all the Marines off the new RMN classes.

As the Leveler fight demonstrated, there are a lot of people with very heavy weapons on the city. So if they don't want you to land, you won't be landing. At least in one piece. You could order strikes on the military command center and then, well you won't be finding out where Bolthole is, now will you?

Oops.

Let's say the location of Bolthole isn't in any databases, because someone wiped them before getting off-world.

Shannon_Foraker wrote:Let's say the location of Bolthole isn't in any databases, because someone wiped them before getting off-world.

And took all the people who knew with them.

For the sake of the plot David has far too many people in the RMN knowing where Bolthole is. There really isn't any reason for Honor or any of the characters we deal with in the RMN to know. The only people who need to know are some of the naval intel analysts (who need to understand that to evaluate potential threats) and astrogators going there. Everyone else is like teen girls sharing juicy rumors.

tlb wrote:I answered this on the previous page: Vice Admiral O'Malley brought a task force of battle-cruisers from Home Fleet, as well as support ships that helped repair HMS Hexapuma. These would not be ships that could handle Apollo. Then when Henke took her force to Talbott, O'Malley returned to Home Fleet, was promoted and given a new squadron. Some other screening forces that had accompanied him were returned to guarding the wormhole. There were no SD's involved, as far as I can tell.

I read that, but a force of battlecruisers doesn't match what Honor said about Home Fleet being understrength. Even if they had sent ALL of Home Fleet's BCs, I wouldn't call it understrength. Unbalanced, maybe.

That's why I am speculating that they had sent some SDs off Home Fleet at this time, but recalled them. Since they would never participated in any action against the Solarian League, we simply weren't told of their movement.

PS: It may be that the Queen was so angered by her presumption that Haven had killed the anbassador and tried to kill Princess Ruth and Queen Berry (apparently to scuttle the peace conference?!); that she ordered Operation Sanskrit to resume and the Admiralty Lords could not see any reason to hold back.

It might have contributed, but I don't think it was the sole or even main reason. The operation had been planned all along, I think.

kzt wrote:Well, you have to understand that the RHN fleet will capture the government and can get them to issue a surrender, or at least a stop to all combat operations. And presumably those orders are coming. OTOH, If there is nobody occupying RHN command positions they can't issue any such orders, now can they?

If 8th fleet shows up at Haven then it means the Manticore home system has been captured. And 8th fleet doesn't know that. So Haven just has to play for time.

They don't know for sure that Tourville and Chin can achieve that. Remember that the IAN wall of battle was MIA, so it's entirely possible for them to put an appearance and spoil the plans.

And play for time works for a few days, maybe a week. The return message would take several weeks, even assuming that the Alliance accepts sending a dispatch via the wormhole. Besides, what would they play for time with? They need to get Honor to stop shooting the Capital Fleet.

And you can't capture the Octagon for several reasons. First, it is a radioactive crater. Second, how are you going to do that? You are going to do what with what? There are something like 20 billion people on Haven and IIRC, they pulled all the Marines off the new RMN classes.

I thought they'd reconstructed it by this time. Where is the RHN Admiralty operating out of, if not the Octagon?

Anyway, point taken about the lack of Marines aboard ship. But that doesn't mean the RMMC was disbanded. I'd assume though that if Honor thought she had a chance of taking the system, she'd have brought Marine assault transports with her.

If we mention that Haven's forts could be an impediment, then so can Manticore's forts be an impediment for Tourville capturing the Queen. The way I see it, Honor and Tourville had roughly the same chance of capturing the flag or of holding it long-term.

Pritchart doesn't want this war. She knows that her government is dedicating a huge chunk of its budget to ship construction -- the black budget before Bolthole's existence became obvious in the order of hundreds of billions of Manticore dollars. That budget could be better put to use in improving the Havenite economy.

So how does she end it, once and for all, without a surrender?