Jonathan_S wrote:tlb wrote:To be clear, we know that both the Shark class and the Ghost class can manage hyperspace transitions; so the only additional unknown is whether they mount sails. Although we do not know how far away from inhabited space Darius is, we do know that there is a wormhole that connects it. We know that the only experimental part of the equipment for these ship classes was the spider drive (and maybe the streak drive). So the question is whether the Malign would build a warship that cannot use either wormholes or gravity waves in hyperspace.
Though there is the one other indication that Ghosts and Sharks should be able to handle grav waves; and that's a relatively passing description, way back in HotQ, of Honor's little convoy arriving under sail.
SpecificallyHonor of the Queen wrote:“Mark!” DuMorne said crisply, and the normally inaudible hum of Fearless’s hyper generator became a basso growl.
[snip] readouts flashed steadily downward as the entire convoy plummeted “down” the hyper space gradient.
Fearless hit the gamma wall, and her Warshawski sails bled transit energy like an azure forest fire. Her velocity dropped almost instantly from .3 C to a mere nine percent of light-speed, [snip]
DuMorne’s calculations had allowed for the energy bleed, and their translation gradient steepened even further as their velocity fell. They hit the beta wall four minutes later, and Honor winced again—less violently this time—as their velocity bled down to less than two percent of light-speed. The visual display was a fierce chaos of heaving light as the convoy fell straight “down” across a “distance” which had no physical existence, and then they hit the alpha bands and flashed across them to the n-space wall like a comet.
[snip]
Stephen had done his usual bang-up job, and Fearless and her charges floated twenty-four light-minutes from Yeltsin’s Star, just outside the F6’s hyper limit.
So, at a very minimum, there's a grav wave in the Delta bands basically right up to Yeltsin's hyper limit. And assuming RFC remembered than brief mention all those books later when writing Oyster Bay he'd have had to account for the spider ships' ability to deal with that wave.
Though I guess, despite the convoy keeping sails up all the way to n-space, that the wave might not reach down into the Alpha bands. (Since we know grav waves don't always cover all accessible hyper bands). If it didn't, then ships unable to navigate a wave could drop 'under' it and slip up on Grayson through the Alpha bands without needing to interact with the 'wave. Alternatively if the Yeltsin system was on the absolute edge of the wave they might be able to avoid it by making a detour through normal space to avoid it -- though that'd be very slow.
So this isn't a slam dunk confirmation that the Ghosts and Sharks can handle grav waves; but it is another indication that they likely can. (But of course we don't know any tech details)
For Grayson, the wave is only about a light month wide at Yeltsin. So if you are making a translation a light month+ out to spoof the sensors, you can easily choose a hyper locus beyond the grav wave and (like they did at Manticore) accelerate in n-space for the last month or so to make the attack. For the Malign's proposes for Oyster Bay, the Yeltsin Grav wave was just a footnote.