The Alamo Contingency has already failed

From Cauldron of Ghosts (and several other books) …

In Chapter 19, we have the scene where Benjamin tells Albrecht about Zilwicki and Cachet’s revelations, specifically – “They’re talking about virus-based nanotech assassinations, the streak drive and the spider drive …”

Each of these are important, if not essential, tools for the Alignment, and the Alamo Contingency must address the existence of each of these. After capturing Galton, the Grand Alliance will (a) find their existence and development history, (b) find no records or materiel, or (c) witness a repeat of the Mesa nukes to suggest destruction of records and materiel. To End in Fire reports no cases of (c) beyond the orbital fortresses.

Spider Drive

From Shadow of Victory – In Chapter 36, we are told that the Manticoran liquid gas tanker Bernike had a close encounter with Alignment graser torpedoes. One hit Bernike’s wedge. One went down the throat and out the kilt at less than 70 kilometres. Since the sensor watch officer spotted them before either of these events occurred, the tanker’s logs will have recorded both indents. The story narrative tells us that the graser torpedoes were accelerating at the time, so RMN technical experts will be able to determine this fact (which the reader has been told) in the post-Yawata analysis. As multiple sensors throughout the system reveal no impellers, the Spider drive has been proven to be in production, and the RMN have commercial sensor records of its characteristics. (And the characteristics are inconsistent with subsequent Galton-designed graser-Hastas.)

Streak Drive

From To End in Fire – In the chapter headed “February 1924 Post Diaspora,” we are told that (even if the evidence from Simoes is considered insufficient) the deduction of Galton’s location is based on logic that requires the Alignment’s courier ships use the Streak drive. Manticore finding Galton confirms there is a starship drive faster than any known technology.

Virus-based Nanotech

The existence of this has been proved beyond doubt. Assassination actions in the Anderman Empire, Republic of Haven, the Star Kingdom and on Sol. Anti Counter-intelligence deaths in Maya, Sol the Star Empire and Sol. Regarding the Alamo Contingency, the death of Lajos Irvine (Cauldron of Ghosts, Chapter 56) suggests that suicide triggers must have been readied for many, if not all, Alignment members on Mesa as soon as Houdini was ordered, and must either be deactivated on arriving at Galton, or have a facilities on Galton to reset the nanites.

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Despite Zilwicki and Cachet’s revelations, the Alignment has withheld any trace of the Spider Drive from Galton (throughout To End in Fire). Specifically, they did not allow any use of the graser torpedoes, their most powerful weapon. Yet the Detweilers want the universe to believe that Galton was the Alignment’s last stand. Would any god or demigod fight Ragnarok with his hands bound with Glepnir? If it is your last stand. You would use every weapon you have.

Ergo this was not the Alignment’s last stand. The Alamo Contingency has failed.

(This analysis ignores the fact that Zach MacBride is not on Galton. Both Arianne MacBride and Damien Harahap have expressed an intent to find him. Once Ruth and Anton start tracing Alignment evacuees on Galton, the existence of Dalton will become obvious. I may pursue this in future)

Might have a point. What about all those great big forts galton had? They obviously had industrial capacity, so as you say where are all their grazer torpedos?

Puidwen wrote:Might have a point. What about all those great big forts galton had? They obviously had industrial capacity, so as you say where are all their grazer torpedos?

They did have graser heads on missiles - where what was a stripped light cruiser graser mount (at ~1.5Ktons) powered by a full up ship fusion reactor(3.5-5Ktons) in the Graser torpedo, suddenly got shrank to 20-30Tons and mounted to the front of a "super" Cataphract missile which could stealthy go 60% of light speed with no one noticing until the last second.

Of course the whole point of the graser torp is that the beam can stay on for 3 whole seconds, allowing the small graser beam to loiter and burn through defenses. Of course flying past at c fractional speeds does not allow much time for a beam to loiter... which defeats the original purpose of the device. and if you shrink by a factor of 100+, how much output power is it really going to have?

Sorry, I find the whole plot of "To End in Fire" contrived at this point. I find no interest in arguing over the fine points, because there is so much handwavium here, just to move the plot along to the right point (whatever that is), and the logic just feels twisted to the point of breaking.

It’s obviously a retcon to try to salvage something. I have no idea what the point is or why it was a problem. But the RMN has clearly demonstrated they do not believe that the spide drive and the stealth system it supports are real. Which to me is akin to Admiral Nimitz deciding on January 1 1942 that IJN carrier aircraft are not a threat to the USN.

One thing is i suspect that everything will be examined with more suspicious eyes then usual, because i think it's obvious to everyone at this point that the alignment prefers sneaky/subtle plots.

The information from the tanker Bernike (which we presume survived Oyster Bay as we were NOT told it was damaged or destroyed might provide some information on the spider drive. Might. This appears to be an in-system tanker and so has not anywhere the sensor capacity of a warship or even a modern RMN LAC.
I would suppose the Bernike would have filed a report- eventually- with Astro Control so the report PROBABLY did not get vanished when the orbital station was destroyed. While the range was very close, ONI might be able to determine that the Object in question was accelerating when it went through the ship's sensor envelope and so probably the rate of accretion. We have no idea if 70km was close enough to get enough of a read on the GT's emissions to tell anything about its drive. We do know -from the internal thoughts of the Captain of the Ghost- that the Alignment hadn't been able to get reads off the Spider drive in testing.....but at what distances were they doing that testing.
70k is really really close in terms of ships and clearly it was NOT an impeller drive of Bernike would have suffered at least serious if not catastrophic damage from the GT's drive. The sort of thing that happened when a very smart Admiral used Ghost Rider drones to destroy the TUFT cargo ships being used as SLN ammunition ships.
So any reading of what could be engine/drive emissions is a major clue.

The Alignment keeps using what comes very close to scorched earth tactics to erase its trail. There is at two major incidents - Mesa and Galton- and then the stealth self destruct stuff they infect ships like the PRHN in Exile. Messy, sloppy.

Brigade XO wrote:The information from the tanker Bernike (which we presume survived Oyster Bay as we were NOT told it was damaged or destroyed might provide some information on the spider drive. Might. This appears to be an in-system tanker and so has not anywhere the sensor capacity of a warship or even a modern RMN LAC.
I would suppose the Bernike would have filed a report- eventually- with Astro Control so the report PROBABLY did not get vanished when the orbital station was destroyed. While the range was very close, ONI might be able to determine that the Object in question was accelerating when it went through the ship's sensor envelope and so probably the rate of accretion. We have no idea if 70km was close enough to get enough of a read on the GT's emissions to tell anything about its drive. We do know -from the internal thoughts of the Captain of the Ghost- that the Alignment hadn't been able to get reads off the Spider drive in testing.....but at what distances were they doing that testing.
70k is really really close in terms of ships and clearly it was NOT an impeller drive of Bernike would have suffered at least serious if not catastrophic damage from the GT's drive. The sort of thing that happened when a very smart Admiral used Ghost Rider drones to destroy the TUFT cargo ships being used as SLN ammunition ships.
So any reading of what could be engine/drive emissions is a major clue.

The Alignment keeps using what comes very close to scorched earth tactics to erase its trail. There is at two major incidents - Mesa and Galton- and then the stealth self destruct stuff they infect ships like the PRHN in Exile. Messy, sloppy.

It makes no sense that the graser torps didn’t just evade the ship. It’s nor like it was subtle.

kzt wrote: graser torps didn’t just evade the ship. It’s nor like it was subtle.

It sort of makes sense if the GTs are on a preprogramed course to intercept -whatever, in this case perhaps the orbital station- but has no active sensors and the dust shroud has not yet been ejected from the sensor receptors. It's going faster and accelerating. Since it's target is a very large orbital habitat and manufacturing center/shipyard/military base in a stable (and maintained by station keeping thrusters) which has been well mapped by the Ghosts, it is getting there as fast as it can. That being the case, it would need to make turnover and decelerate so as to end up "close" to the station and perhaps loitering a bit before taking a final - PASSIVE- look at the target and then having made whatever adjustments required- lights up the grazer to start slicing station for as long as the power will last and then self destructing.
Active sensors would have been basically yelling "I'M HERE, LOOK AT ME" which you want to avoid. The odds of hitting much more than really find dust- hence the sensor shroud- is very tiny so most of what needs to be done is get the weapon to where it needs on-time at whatever the best Zero-Zerop is for the target. The Alignment is very sure the spider weapon isn't going to be spotted by its drive.

On the other hand, perhaps those two object are only warheads which were launched from Sharks and then used chemical or gas thrusters to put them into ballistic trajectories---again, at targets in well know and stable orbits-- and are going to eject the sensor shrouds at a point that would the non-impeller thrusters fine-tune to hit the target with a laser warhead.

Which ever they were, they did NOT have a wedge to wedge incident with the tanker. Of course that means that one went down the throat and out the tail of the tankers wedge and the other missed interacting with the tanker's wedge at all.

Wonder what they did hit and has those two hits been correlated with the tanker's report of the objects?.

Active sensors? The ship has a civilian wedge up, at under a LM. It could be more easy to detect if it worked very hard, but you probably can’t increase the signature by more then a few %.

Brigade XO wrote:It sort of makes sense if the GTs are on a preprogramed course to intercept -whatever, in this case perhaps the orbital station- but has no active sensors and the dust shroud has not yet been ejected from the sensor receptors. It's going faster and accelerating. Since it's target is a very large orbital habitat and manufacturing center/shipyard/military base in a stable (and maintained by station keeping thrusters) which has been well mapped by the Ghosts, it is getting there as fast as it can. That being the case, it would need to make turnover and decelerate so as to end up "close" to the station and perhaps loitering a bit before taking a final - PASSIVE- look at the target and then having made whatever adjustments required- lights up the grazer to start slicing station for as long as the power will last and then self destructing.
Active sensors would have been basically yelling "I'M HERE, LOOK AT ME" which you want to avoid. The odds of hitting much more than really find dust- hence the sensor shroud- is very tiny so most of what needs to be done is get the weapon to where it needs on-time at whatever the best Zero-Zerop is for the target. The Alignment is very sure the spider weapon isn't going to be spotted by its drive.

On the other hand, perhaps those two object are only warheads which were launched from Sharks and then used chemical or gas thrusters to put them into ballistic trajectories---again, at targets in well know and stable orbits-- and are going to eject the sensor shrouds at a point that would the non-impeller thrusters fine-tune to hit the target with a laser warhead.

Which ever they were, they did NOT have a wedge to wedge incident with the tanker. Of course that means that one went down the throat and out the tail of the tankers wedge and the other missed interacting with the tanker's wedge at all.

Which is what may have been avoided. We know it was a close call, but we don't know why or if the GT was manoeuvring. It's entirely possible it did, but trying to evade something at relativistic speeds, or even half-light, is very difficult. We know (even if the RMN doesn't) that the spider drive's acceleration is limited by the number of tractors and thus it's limited by the length of the object in question upon which to mount tractor heads. So by what we've been told, the GT has low acceleration. At 30 gravities, it would be sluggish in evading the Bernike.

Evasion is even more difficult when the other side can't reciprocate to evade you. Since the GT was stealthy, the Bernike wouldn't know it was there and could keep accelerating towards where the GT was trying to go, unintentionally. The Bernike had no reason to be accelerating in unexpected directions, but the GT may not have been programmed to evade that. It's obvious in hindsight it should have, but until it has happened, it may not occur to the programmers (like the Japanese moon probe that recently developed an accumulation error and thought it had reached the surface when it hadn't, so it kept trying to land when it was still hundreds of meters up, until it ran out of fuel and then crashed). The RMN and the other nearby navies had all sorts of past knowledge of what to program their missiles with but the MAN wouldn't. Plus, all that programming wouldn't do a thing for stealth weapons that can't be seen because the reaction of your target would be different.