What next after To End in Fire

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
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.

David didn’t just go through this ridiculous retcon to have it not work.

kzt wrote:David didn’t just go through this ridiculous retcon to have it not work.

But why would he do that? I agree it seems ridiculous, because the plot of the storyline barely advanced with TEiF: aside from Zach McBryde on Darius, everything ended like it started.

But it wouldn't be the first time he sets up for something else. We know he has a plan -- though again it wouldn't be the first time he rewrote his plan (q.v. Honor still being alive).

There are too many inconsistencies in the MAlign's story for it to work. We know also the good guys have to win. So why create a situation where the MAlign successfully hide? That would postpone the conclusion by at least half a dozen books, but we know there are about 3 or 4 left only (and the one from next year doesn't appear to advance the plot in any way either).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

kzt wrote:David didn’t just go through this ridiculous retcon to have it not work.

But why would he do that? I agree it seems ridiculous, because the plot of the storyline barely advanced with TEiF: aside from Zach McBryde on Darius, everything ended like it started.

But it wouldn't be the first time he sets up for something else. We know he has a plan -- though again it wouldn't be the first time he rewrote his plan (q.v. Honor still being alive).

There are too many inconsistencies in the MAlign's story for it to work. We know also the good guys have to win. So why create a situation where the MAlign successfully hide? That would postpone the conclusion by at least half a dozen books, but we know there are about 3 or 4 left only (and the one from next year doesn't appear to advance the plot in any way either).

The Detweilers made one mistake at Galton. The production platforms and habitats should also had been mined. If the death of Galton was going to serve as the MAlign's final onion shell, let's make sure that the death is complete.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I agree it seems ridiculous, because the plot of the storyline barely advanced with TEiF: aside from Zach McBryde on Darius, everything ended like it started.

But it wouldn't be the first time he sets up for something else. We know he has a plan -- though again it wouldn't be the first time he rewrote his plan (q.v. Honor still being alive).

There are too many inconsistencies in the MAlign's story for it to work. We know also the good guys have to win. So why create a situation where the MAlign successfully hide? That would postpone the conclusion by at least half a dozen books, but we know there are about 3 or 4 left only (and the one from next year doesn't appear to advance the plot in any way either).

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:The Detweilers made one mistake at Galton. The production platforms and habitats should also had been mined. If the death of Galton was going to serve as the MAlign's final onion shell, let's make sure that the death is complete.

The Malign did NOT want total destruction at Galton, because they wanted all the information that they had planted to be uncovered by the Grand Alliance. The information that "proved" that the center of the Onion had been found and defeated.

The mistake at Galton was the lack of the spider drive, which the GA knew was deployed. A more minor inconsistency was the GA discovering partial lists of the people moved by Houdini, which included people that did not arrive at Galton.

tlb wrote:The Malign did NOT want total destruction at Galton, because they wanted all the information that they had planted to be uncovered by the Grand Alliance. The information that "proved" that the center of the Onion had been found and defeated.

The mistake at Galton was the lack of the spider drive, which the GA knew was deployed. A more minor inconsistency was the GA discovering partial lists of the people moved by Houdini, which included people that did not arrive at Galton.

Look at what the Manties do. Are they acting like dozens of weapons that can get close enough to burn through SD sidewalls might appear at any moment? If say 300 graser torps had shown up, what would that have done to the fleet all nicely clustered for easy destruction at the Beowulf WH or the assembled forces at Galton? They would have been butchered.

How do you evade the risk of undetectable weapons that have low acceleration and hence take a long time to arrive? Did the Manties etc do any of that?

Or are they behaving like this is not a risk? They have not taken any of the measures that says they believe that this threat exists. So either they are all again smoking crack or they have accepted a very carefully considered analysis by ONI that there is no spider drive or stealth system. Which makes more sense to you?

So no, the fact that this won’t be found is meaningless because they don’t think it exists.

tlb wrote:The Malign did NOT want total destruction at Galton, because they wanted all the information that they had planted to be uncovered by the Grand Alliance. The information that "proved" that the center of the Onion had been found and defeated.

The mistake at Galton was the lack of the spider drive, which the GA knew was deployed. A more minor inconsistency was the GA discovering partial lists of the people moved by Houdini, which included people that did not arrive at Galton.

kzt wrote:Look at what the Manties do. Are they acting like dozens of weapons that can get close enough to burn through SD sidewalls might appear at any moment? If say 300 graser torps had shown up, what would that have done to the fleet all nicely clustered for easy destruction at the Beowulf WH or the assembled forces at Galton? They would have been butchered.

How do you evade the risk of undetectable weapons that have low acceleration and hence take a long time to arrive? Did the Manties etc do any of that?

Or are they behaving like this is not a risk? They have not taken any of the measures that says they believe that this threat exists. So either they are all again smoking crack or they have accepted a very carefully considered analysis by ONI that there is no spider drive or stealth system. Which makes more sense to you?

So no, the fact that this won’t be found is meaningless because they don’t think it exists.

I understand your point, however the force did send out large numbers of recon drones. The drones did give warning about the stealth attack that did occur. If you prefer, we can say that the discrepancies in the evacuation lists were the biggest mistakes.

In any case the Malign did not want total destruction at Galton, because they wanted the GA to think the Onion was done based on the supporting information left there.

Where are/were all the retirees from Galton? You know, the Alpha, Beta, Gamma Star Lines, not the (we would guess) lesser lines that may die really really early like normal humans?

If they are on the habitats (which did not self destruct) there would be all sorts of people who should KNOW SOMETHING about weapons development, logistic organization & operations, manufacturing. So how many hundreds of thousands of people with information are still alive- and not fitted with nanite assassins?

It is possible that the various false trails left behind with Galton will point to ALL of the spider drive and graser torpedo development and construction was supposedly on one or two of the major stations which did a very good job of self-destructing (timed simultaneous containment failure on multiple station fusion reactors would do nicely) and so NO specs or plans or physical copies of the ships/drives remain. BUT, where are the ships that hit Grayson and Manticore? Odd that they were not engaged at Galton.

So many loose ends for us as the readers. Like the other bits of the hidden wormhole network that Darius is part of.

And how likely is it that ALL of the Houdini people who went to Galton were only kept on stations that were either directly destroyed in the fighting or were self-destructed? No mention I can remember of what- if anything- happened to that off-limits enclave on the planet's surface, so what and who would still be there?

Too many questions for us. Too many, we are supposed to believe, for the GA as they sift though Galton's debris and surviving inhabitants.

Theemile wrote: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.

I think ranges have been opened considerably by MDMs. I don't think there are any forts around Manticore anymore.

The thing is forts draw fire and an errant missile could smack the planet. It would be safer to put them a few million miles away--but that's outside the Hill sphere, they're orbiting the star, not the planet. Yes, it means they can't provide point defense fire for the planet--but nobody should be shooting at the planet in the first place.

Loren Pechtel wrote:
I think ranges have been opened considerably by MDMs. I don't think there are any forts around Manticore anymore.

The thing is forts draw fire and an errant missile could smack the planet. It would be safer to put them a few million miles away--but that's outside the Hill sphere, they're orbiting the star, not the planet. Yes, it means they can't provide point defense fire for the planet--but nobody should be shooting at the planet in the first place.

I though so too, but someone (no longer remember who) pointed out that David explicitly says there are still forts in a relevant book. So they exist in one version of David’s brain Not sure if they existed in the version in use where he blew the stations up.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I think ranges have been opened considerably by MDMs. I don't think there are any forts around Manticore anymore.

The thing is forts draw fire and an errant missile could smack the planet. It would be safer to put them a few million miles away--but that's outside the Hill sphere, they're orbiting the star, not the planet. Yes, it means they can't provide point defense fire for the planet--but nobody should be shooting at the planet in the first place.

kzt wrote:I though so too, but someone (no longer remember who) pointed out that David explicitly says there are still forts in a relevant book. So they exist in one version of David’s brain Not sure if they existed in the version in use where he blew the stations up.

Actually, there is mention in one of your favorite books (At All Costs):

Chapter 62 wrote:The solution wasn't perfect, of course. For one thing, the move left Manticore-B and its inhabited planet of Gryphon more exposed than it had been when Home Fleet was stationed at the Junction, since D'Orville would now have to get clear of the zone before he could hyper out to the system's secondary component. But the extra danger wasn't very great, now that Sphinx was within eight light-minutes of the zone's boundary. And more vulnerable or not, Gryphon had the smallest population and industrial base of any of the Star Kingdom's original inhabited worlds. If something had to be exposed, cold logic said Gryphon was a better choice than the other two planets, and the Admiralty had compensated as best it could by assigning the buildup of Manticore-B's fixed defenses a higher priority than Manticore-A's. In fact, Manticore-B's forts and space station were already refitting with Keyhole II and would begin deploying the first of the system-defense Apollo pods within the next three weeks, on the theory that it would need them worse since it couldn't call as readily on Home Fleet's protection.
And once Manticore-B's defenses were fully up to speed, Sphinx would receive the next highest priority, despite the fact that the planet of Manticore had the largest population and the greatest economic and industrial value of any of the binary system's worlds. Like Manticore-B, Sphinx was simply more exposed than Manticore.

Chapter 65 wrote:More LACs were still streaming towards Second Fleet from the inner system, as well, and it was obvious the Havenites had no desire to tangle with Sphinx's fixed defenses, at least until they could get their own damages sorted out and reammunition. Second Fleet was changing course, crabbing away from Sphinx as it shepherded its cripples protectively out of harm's way.

Honor eventually ordered Sphinx's defenses to hold fire to keep the Havenites from firing in that direction.