What next after To End in Fire

It’s highly unclear what defenses are around the planet. We know there are, in at least one version of David’s brain, some forts. I’m not sure those exist in all versions of David’s brain.

It was clearly stated that the stations had bubble shields (which were down) and some sort of point defense, which never were activated.

The chasing down of the debris is not congruent with forts around the planet. The forts would have enormous numbers of absurdly powerful PDLC as well as CMs and grasers. Not to mention large number of powerful and long ranged tractors to manage the field of missile pods.

So if there were forts around the planet they certainly would have been involved in discussing what to do. At least in how to not get blow out of space when you activate an impeller that close to the planet by a fortress that just went to weapons free.

The only forts around Manticore might still be the old single drive missile equipped Forts. Clearly they were unmanned if they still exist at all and were not scrapped. Did not exist at Original Battle of Manticore where they had hours to get them up and running so why anyone thinks they should exist at Oyster Bay is baffling to me.

OrlandoNative wrote:The only *other* spider drive units were the offensive graser head missiles used in the Yawata strike.

Didn't the graser torpedoes the MA used to "sweeten" the SLN attack on Beowulf have spider drives to maneuver into position to ambush the defensive network when the SLN came riding over the Alpha Limit?

Fox2! wrote:Didn't the graser torpedoes the MA used to "sweeten" the SLN attack on Beowulf have spider drives to maneuver into position to ambush the defensive network when the SLN came riding over the Alpha Limit?

They did.

So back to the point that there need to be some kind of plans or manufacturing installations somewhere in Galton for this type of weapon, otherwise the GA will get very suspicious.

Thank you. I have been bashing on about this for years.
With effectively free energy, access to a universes materials, why fight or argue. Just go elsewhere and use uterine replicators to breed your race of superior humans.



I agree that if the Detweilers are the excellent planners that the Board thinks that they are, then such a base should exist. Up until Darius falls, the Plan has been to take over normal human space as a way to stick their thumb into the eyes of the "fools" at Beowulf. If the solution is to build a "perfect" society without regard to the rest of the universe; then they could do that at Darius without any other contact, except with the Renaissance Factor. It is only in trying to meddle militarily with others, that their plans get subverted.

Despite the opinions of some others in the forum, I do not expect the author to build in a reign of terror to the stories; but we shall see one way or another (I hope).[/quote]


*IF* the Detwilers were logical to begin with; once they had acquired the necessary resources; they would have left the local area for another galactic arm and built their "perfect society" there... ...with little to no chance of "interference" by "normal" humans.

But no. It's not the idea of building a "perfect society" that drives them; it's the "ego trip" of *forcing* all humans into that sort of society (with them at the top of the heap) that they envision.[/quote]

Daryl wrote:*IF* the Detwilers were logical to begin with; once they had acquired the necessary resources; they would have left the local area for another galactic arm and built their "perfect society" there... ...with little to no chance of "interference" by "normal" humans.

But no. It's not the idea of building a "perfect society" that drives them; it's the "ego trip" of *forcing* all humans into that sort of society (with them at the top of the heap) that they envision.

Or, as has been argued, they'd have invested a tenth of the amount of money they spent in military and subterfuge on marketing, convincing people that uplifting humanity was actually a good thing. Which, as David has said, they were right about (up to a point).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Fox2! wrote:Didn't the graser torpedoes the MA used to "sweeten" the SLN attack on Beowulf have spider drives to maneuver into position to ambush the defensive network when the SLN came riding over the Alpha Limit?

They did.

So back to the point that there need to be some kind of plans or manufacturing installations somewhere in Galton for this type of weapon, otherwise the GA will get very suspicious.

Presumably ONI, the RHN's external intelligence service, Sword Intelligence, the SLN "Ghost Hunters", IAN Intelligence, etc., are going to take the debris of the Galton system apart to the sub-atomic particle level, and interrogate all of the survivors with tree cats. If they find some evidence of graser torpedo or spider drive manufacturing, that lessens the urgency of the hunt for another system. Failure to find such evidence causes a fork: it was there, but all destroyed during the attack, or destroyed ni the suicide of the platforms, or it was not there to begin with, and we need to look further afield for the manufacturing site.

kzt wrote:It’s highly unclear what defenses are around the planet. We know there are, in at least one version of David’s brain, some forts. I’m not sure those exist in all versions of David’s brain.

It was clearly stated that the stations had bubble shields (which were down) and some sort of point defense, which never were activated.

The chasing down of the debris is not congruent with forts around the planet. The forts would have enormous numbers of absurdly powerful PDLC as well as CMs and grasers. Not to mention large number of powerful and long ranged tractors to manage the field of missile pods.

So if there were forts around the planet they certainly would have been involved in discussing what to do. At least in how to not get blow out of space when you activate an impeller that close to the planet by a fortress that just went to weapons free.

David did say there were outer defenses around the stations that never got engaged, and all those missile pods need somewhere to install Apollo fire control in, like was happening in Gryphon during Beatrice. The forts could be a much higher orbits from the planets, and unable to intercept any debris falling from the lower stations to the planet. Ys, it's strange they were never mentioned.

David mentioned the wedge bouys in a blurb about 20 years ago. They were essentially a fusion reactor with a pair of superdreadnought rings kept at hot node state 24/7, ready to pop on and create an interlapping set of wedges like scales - just like they used freighters for at Beowulf later in the series.

8 meter grasers are really, really good at intercepting ballistic debris. They also do a spectacular job or turning ships that activate impellers inside the prohibited zone into clouds of superheated gas.

Fox2! wrote:Presumably ONI, the RHN's external intelligence service, Sword Intelligence, the SLN "Ghost Hunters", IAN Intelligence, etc., are going to take the debris of the Galton system apart to the sub-atomic particle level, and interrogate all of the survivors with tree cats. If they find some evidence of graser torpedo or spider drive manufacturing, that lessens the urgency of the hunt for another system. Failure to find such evidence causes a fork: it was there, but all destroyed during the attack, or destroyed ni the suicide of the platforms, or it was not there to begin with, and we need to look further afield for the manufacturing site.

And interrogating survivors is yet another wrinkle in the MAlign's Alamo Contingency plan.

There is going to be no one who will remember ever manufacturing those graser torpedoes. There will be no one who worked on any part of a spider drive, knows a component of it, or how things were put together.

In fact, they will remember contradictory information, because Galton celebrated the sending off of graser weapons that were not the graser torpedoes before the Yawata Strike. They thought they were responsible for the attack, but the evidence won't match. The plans for manufactoring those decoys will likely be found.