n7axw wrote:Except for some rather brief comments, by Simoes after they got him out of Mesa, they don't know about the spider. They do know about the sharks which Simoes was deeply involved with, but whether or not he was able to give Foraker, Hemphill, etc al. enough info to reverse engineer the shark is unknown at this time. What the Alliance does know about is the effective cloaking. However, Honor's fleet is able to detect both the old style SLN style and the more advanced MAlign cloaking on the hastas. That is at least encouraging.
Quick correction there: they know about the streak drive, which Simões was involved with, not the Sharks. The Sharks were battleship- or dreadnought-sized ships using the spider drive, so he should know absolutely nothing about them. You're probably just confusing the term.
There's also a bit of downplaying in this book. It's impossible to know for sure where RFC is going with this, short of him posting his intentions somewhere (or reading the next book!), but during MoH they were certain it was a new drive technology and Simões simply gave a name to it.
It's similar to the detection of the Hastas via bowshock. That's encouraging, but it could mean nothing. As we know, the spiders have very low acceleration, so they may never reach high enough interplanetary speeds to cause a detectable bowshock.
As for the end of the story, I think that it is safe to say that the GA is going to encounter some nasty surprises when they finally get to Darius. Going out on a limb where it could be sawed off behind me, I think this leaves room for one more book. If I am right, everything following that will be books and anthologies filling in back story.
Hmm... yes, it could be all wrapped up in a single book. It would be an UH-sized book, but it could be done. But it could be split into more than one, especially if we are to see an "A Rising Thunder" style escalation of catastrophes.
It may be that RFC thinks of wrapping up this part of the timeline and focus on the Manticore Ascendant and Star Kingdom books. One problem for long series is that new readers can't jump in at any point. That means the readership of the N+1 book should be lesser than or equal to the Nth book.