Yeah FTL space travel by whatever means its achieved and time travel usually do not pop up together outside of lets say 40k where its a part of how screwed up the setting by allowing imperium fleets to show up to attack a planet before it actually revolted or centuries after the revolt was already put down or unless its s specific plot point like in a few star trek episodes as well as Star Trek movies like the voyage home and first contact.
That doesn't keep authors from either ignoring the issue, or simply stating that FTL doesn't allow time travel. And the subject doesn't even come up as a theoretical possibility in the Honorverse.
So no, they don't in fact "have to", and usually don't.
I think they meant that authors "have to" block time travel out of their stories (either by ignoring it or by explicitly declaring that they don't have it), because of the aforesaid principle:
"If your story contains or allows time travel, your story will end up being about time travel."
I will note that there IS one genre that's an exception to this principle: comedy. Comedy can do time travel and go back to not being 'only' a time travel story... But that's because as a rule, comedy doesn't take anything too seriously, including the internal logic of its own plot.
To back up to the assassination-attempt against Mayhew for a moment, I'd just like to point out that based on the description of the sonic disruptor's 'distinctive' aural signature, I am morally certain that Weber was, if not outright directly cribbing those particular weapons from Star Trek: TOS (where they prominently featured in the episodes A Taste for Armageddon and Errand of Mercy), at the very least 'taking inspiration' from the OG of SF TV.
But then again, so was almost everybody of his generation, so can we really hold it against him?
To back up to the assassination-attempt against Mayhew for a moment, I'd just like to point out that based on the description of the sonic disruptor's 'distinctive' aural signature, I am morally certain that Weber was, if not outright directly cribbing those particular weapons from Star Trek: TOS (where they prominently featured in the episodes A Taste for Armageddon and Errand of Mercy), at the very least 'taking inspiration' from the OG of SF TV.
But then again, so was almost everybody of his generation, so can we really hold it against him?
Considering that Weber fairly regularly has control consoles explode during starship battles Star Trek style, I find it very plausible he partially used that show for inspiration.
Considering that Weber fairly regularly has control consoles explode during starship battles Star Trek style, I find it very plausible he partially used that show for inspiration.
I was just re-reading Shadow of Saganami for example, and one of the Monican Navy personal gets knocked flat when his console blows up in the climatic battle.
In fairness to Weber and post-TOS Star Trek, those ships have a LOT of very high-powered electrical equipment. And battle damage sounds like the kind of thing that can easily cause unexpected shorts or power surges in the ship's electrical systems. All that electrical energy powering a shield generator or a phaser/graser/laser/whatever has to go somewhere if the generator is blown up in battle.
Some infinitesimal fractions of it managing to fry a control console or three, while indicative of a safety design that needs work, is far from implausible.
"Explode" is an informal term for what happens when there's a "bang" and sparks fly out and the console panel shatters.
And yes, you'd LIKE there to be plenty of circuit breakers and safety systems in place. What I'm getting at is that being in a ship capable of sustaining kiloton/second or megaton/second levels of power output, while it takes fire from weapons that operate on those energy levels, is the kind of thing that makes a mockery of a lot of the assumptions of normal safety procedures in electrical engineering.
There may be a practical limit on how reliably the safety systems can prevent low-order 'kabooms,' much as there may be a practical limit on how well the artificial gravity/inertial compensator reacts to sudden impacts that rock the ship unexpectedly.
The surge breakers trigger just fine; it's just that with the kind of energies involved "triggering" means "they explode too with a bigger boom". What reaches the consoles is what has managed to arc across multiple exploding surge control systems.
There's also the simple narrative reason, which is that you need a way to signify damage that sits in between "direct hit : all characters obliterated" and "Damage Report : Some offscreen characters got obliterated".
A control console should not need components that would even allow for that large a surge without the wires melting first before you get to a point where a panel can harm the user, even assuming you are not using optic wire to get information to and from the console.
I understand the narrative reason, and i don't mind seeing it in fiction, i just find it baffling from a design point of view.
The surge breakers trigger just fine; it's just that with the kind of energies involved "triggering" means "they explode too with a bigger boom". What reaches the consoles is what has managed to arc across multiple exploding surge control systems.
What I'm getting at is that being in a ship capable of sustaining kiloton/second or megaton/second levels of power output, while it takes fire from weapons that operate on those energy levels, is the kind of thing that makes a mockery of a lot of the assumptions of normal safety procedures in electrical engineering.
This is kind of literally not how this works from either a Watson or a Doyle standpoint. The blowing up console thing has always been a reference to battleshorting as done by the USN circa WW2 where, due to the need to not have a system go out in action being greater than the risk of it melting itself or catching fire, you replace the physical circuit breaker in the breaker board with a copper cylinder. This can cause some impressive fireworks...at the breaker board, not the machinery it powers. Star Trek adopted it for narrative reasons but it's never really made sense for anything on the bridge because the bridge is not going to be on a circuit capable of handling that much energy because there's nothing up there worth it. Power for the lights isn't as important as power for the weapons, and they sure don't draw the same voltage, so there's no way to put them on the same circuit even if you wanted to, which you really wouldn't anyways. You'd actually want to physically isolate your highest-power electrical circuits from the others specifically for damage-control purposes; they represent a hazard and if they need repairs you don't want to go digging for them.
Exploding consoles is a good idea if you're dealing with a military that doesn't take a lot of combat casualties these days and you need to bump off the odd crewman to keep spots open, keep fresh recruits moving through the system, and keep the fuckers on their toes.
Especially if you're like Manticore and you have rampant nepotism to account for. Minimum casualty quotas can help work against that.
This is kind of literally not how this works from either a Watson or a Doyle standpoint. The blowing up console thing has always been a reference to battleshorting as done by the USN circa WW2 where, due to the need to not have a system go out in action being greater than the risk of it melting itself or catching fire, you replace the physical circuit breaker in the breaker board with a copper cylinder. This can cause some impressive fireworks...at the breaker board, not the machinery it powers. Star Trek adopted it for narrative reasons but it's never really made sense for anything on the bridge because the bridge is not going to be on a circuit capable of handling that much energy because there's nothing up there worth it. Power for the lights isn't as important as power for the weapons, and they sure don't draw the same voltage, so there's no way to put them on the same circuit even if you wanted to, which you really wouldn't anyways. You'd actually want to physically isolate your highest-power electrical circuits from the others specifically for damage-control purposes; they represent a hazard and if they need repairs you don't want to go digging for them.
My own thought has been that when battle damage starts going around, the isolation partially breaks down, that is to say, you cannot prevent all the energy released by failures caused by battle damage from going places you don't want it.
My own thought has been that when battle damage starts going around, the isolation partially breaks down, that is to say, you cannot prevent all the energy released by failures caused by battle damage from going places you don't want it.
You can, however, protect the controls by simply making them work from different powersource and using only non conductive information transmission between controls and the thing being controlled.
Also, nothing in the controls should be capable of ccreating enough force to actually harm the person using them.
It's not that exploding (or sparking) control consoles and stuff are impossible, but they are very unlikely and speak of shoddy design, by the time controls start to go, the ship should already be exploding anyway.
Pump enough energy through a system, and you can get anything to cross-short in ways it's not supposed to...
...but as already noted, these should be physically isolated systems, and 'enough energy' at that point is enough to cause serious damage to major ship components, leaving the fact that some bridge systems blew up just a side note to 'hey, the ship isn't working anymore'.
My own thought has been that when battle damage starts going around, the isolation partially breaks down, that is to say, you cannot prevent all the energy released by failures caused by battle damage from going places you don't want it.
When I say isolated I mean that the wires are in insulation-wrapped, insulation-stuffed three-quarter-inch-thick piping that is at minimum three feet apart from each other on the opposite sides of a passageway ceiling and there's the overhead fire suppression system and water piping between them that's much more likely to ground an arc first. The physical generators are colocated at the power plant, in the sense that they're both in the same section of the ship, but they're definitely more than three feet apart.
At that point, if you're having crossconnect between your highest-draw circuits and your normal ones, then the best case is they've made contact somewhere inside of a tangled mass of wreckage and the real issue isn't going to be about any particular console getting too much power because you have microseconds before your generators themselves ground out into the hull and hopefully don't fry themselves in the process while the whole ship goes dark.
Exploding consoles is a good idea if you're dealing with a military that doesn't take a lot of combat casualties these days and you need to bump off the odd crewman to keep spots open, keep fresh recruits moving through the system, and keep the fuckers on their toes.
Pump enough energy through a system, and you can get anything to cross-short in ways it's not supposed to...
...but as already noted, these should be physically isolated systems, and 'enough energy' at that point is enough to cause serious damage to major ship components, leaving the fact that some bridge systems blew up just a side note to 'hey, the ship isn't working anymore'.
Well, it happens in the power room, not the bridge, so it's possible some lines got crossed due to damage.
The scene in question:
Power surges cascaded through her systems, starting in Impeller One and Laser Three. Automatic circuit breakers stopped most of them, but three of the breakers themselves had been knocked out. Rampant energy surged past them, and a broadside graser's superconductor ring blew, shattering internal bulkheads and adding its own massive power to the surge.
The surge that came roaring down the graser's main feed trunk and straight into Power One.
The untamed torrent of energy thundered into the compartment, and an already nervous petty officer leapt back as his control panel blew up. He fell to the decksole on the seat of his pants as electrical fires danced through the control runs, and an alarm began to scream.
Well, we're at Chapter 23, about two thirds of the way through the book. We may face infodumps and irritating cat antics in this chapter, but I've got a cup of tea, Turkish delight, and some Mazafati dates so BRING IT!!!
The chapter opens with Thomas Theisman (his parents must have liked alliterative names), who's freaking out over some incoming impeller signatures:
"Oh, fuck." Theisman shoved himself erect and wished he'd never left the People's Republic. "What kind of signatures? Harrington's?"
"No, Sir."
"I'm in no mood for bad jokes, Al!"
"I'm not kidding, Skipper. We don't see her anywhere."
"Damn it, there's no way the Graysons would come after us alone! Harrington has to be out there!"
"If she is, we haven't seen her yet, Sir."
"Goddamn it." Theisman massaged his face, trying to knead some life back into his brain. Captain Yu was forty hours overdue, the reports coming up from moon-side were enough to turn a man's stomach, and now this shit.
Is it just me, or do the Havenite characters tend to swear a lot more than the Manticorans do?
Theisman's subordinate, Lietenant Hillyard, says that they're picking up some kind of "discrete gravity pulses." Which I'm sure is just some natural stellar phenomenon and NOT a new system of FTL communication or anything like that.
"Skipper," he said hesitantly, "tell me if I'm out of line, but have you heard anything about what's happening ground-side?"
"You are out of line!" The lieutenant recoiled, and Theisman grimaced. "Sorry, Al. And, yes, I've heard, but—" He slammed a fist explosively into the bulkhead beside him, then jerked to a stop and swung to face his exec.
"There's not a goddamned thing I can do, Al. If it was up to me, I'd shoot every one of the sons-of-bitches—but don't you breathe a word of that, even to our people!" He held Hillyard's eyes fiercely until the exec nodded choppily, then rubbed his face again.
"Jesus, I hate this stinking job! The Captain never figured on this, Al. I know how he'd feel about it, and I made my own position as clear to Franks as I can, but I can't queer the deal for the Captain when I don't know how he'd handle it. Besides," he smiled crookedly, "we don't have any Marines."
"Queer the deal"? Now there's a phrase I've never heard before! At first I thought it was a misprint, but no, it's an actual phrase. I also find Theisman acting hilariously bitchy here extremely funny for some reason...as is Weber using the adverb "explosively" to describe him slamming his fist into the bulkhead. It makes me think of him literally making things explode with his fists.
Cut back to our heroine, and once again we lead off with...cat stuff:
She missed Nimitz. The back of her command chair seemed empty and incomplete without him, but Nimitz was tucked away in his life-support module. He hadn't been any happier at being parted than she was, yet he'd been there before, and he'd settled down without demur when she sealed him in. Now she put the lonely feeling out of her mind and studied her plot.
A solid wedge of LACs led her ship, its corners anchored by Grayson's three surviving starships, while Troubadour and Apollo were tucked in tight on Fearless's port and starboard quarters. It was scarcely an orthodox formation, especially since it put the best sensor suites behind the less capable Grayson units, but if it worked the way it was supposed to . . .
You know, up until now I'd never actually looked up any artistic depictions of what LACs are supposed to look like. So here they are:
These, of course, continue the tradition of the Honorverse having ridiculously dorky-looking ships. I'm also curious as to why they're not called fighters or starfighters, since that's clearly what they are. I guess maybe the word "starfighter" doesn't sound all proper military-like or something.
Anyway, Commander Brentworth is feeling a bit of out of place on the bridge, having nothing do. And that's all we really learn in this little digression before cutting back to Theisman, who's still wondering what exactly is going on with all these approaching impeller signatures:
But if Harrington hadn't learned about Blackbird, then something must've slipped on the Grayson end. The original base predated Haven's involvement, and the Masadans had always been mighty cagey about how they'd put it in. Yet they almost had to have recruited local assistance to build it, so whoever their assistant had been might have spilled the beans.
And if that were the case, the Graysons still might not realize who was waiting for them here. Or, he amended sourly, who ought to be waiting for them if the Captain weren't so long overdue. Damn, damn, damn! He could feel the wheels coming off, and there was no way to find out what the Captain would want him to do about it!
He ruminates for a bit about what Harrington might be planning, and reckons she'd do something sneaky like making them think she was there while she was actually somewhere else entirely. He gets on the link with admiral Franks and tells him that Harrington is coming after them, but he's dismissive, stating that, even if he weren't full of shit, the defences on Blackbird are more than capable of handling her.
"I don't believe she's back there!" Franks snapped. "Unlike you, I know precisely what data could have fallen into Apostate hands, and I'm not running from ghosts! This is a probe to examine little more than wild tales someone heard from someone who heard it from someone else, and they wouldn't dare pull the infidel bitch's ships off Grayson to chase down rumors when they can't know Thunder won't pounce on the planet in her absence."
Franks plan is to wait behind Blackbird, wait until the base's defences engage the attackers, and then have the fleet mop up the survivors. This is kind of a terrible plan (since their initial firepower will be halved), and Theisman reaches the same conclusion, but there's nothing he can do about it.
Well, it turns out his fears were justified, because Honor IS with the incoming fleet.
t was Harrington . . . and she was just as good as ONI said she was, damn it! Even as he watched, her ships were sliding forward through the Grayson wall, spreading out into a classic anti-missile pattern and deploying decoys while the Graysons vanished behind them.
We have a brief scene with Admiral Matthews, who muses that the enemy missiles can accelerate to an "incredible 117,000 KPS." That's over a third the speed of light, and at that speed you'd probably get far more energy from a simple kinetic impact than any kind of warhead. Speaking of which, perhaps it's explained in a later novel (or already HAS been and I'm simply so scatterbrained I forgot), but I'm curious as to why kinetic weapons don't seem to be used on starships in this setting.
Four missiles from the first salvo broke through the middle intercept zone, and lights blinked on Fearless's tactical panels. Her computers were working overtime, already plotting solutions for her own missiles on the third salvo even as they targeted Apollo's and Troubadour's missiles on the second and brought all three ships' lasers to bear on the remnants of the first, and Honor felt a fierce stab of pride in her squadron as the last missile of the first flight blew apart thirty thousand kilometers ahead of Fearless.
Meanwhile, Theisman is still cursing Frank's ineptitude, thinking he should have waited until the enemy was closer before launching their salvo, which would have given them far less time to react. Back on Honor's ship, they're relieved that there wasn't a fourth barrage, but suddenly three missiles appear out of nowhere. Two of them are destroyed, but the third detonates off their port side:
Her port sidewall caught a dozen lasers, bending most of them clear of her hull, but two struck deep through the radiation shielding inside her wedge. The composite ceramic and alloys of her heavily armored battle steel hull resisted stubbornly, absorbing and deflecting energy that would have blown a Grayson-built ship's titanium hull apart, but nothing could stop them entirely, and damage alarms screamed.
"Direct hits on Laser Two and Missile Four!" Honor slammed a fist into her chair arm. "Magazine Three open to space. Point Defense Two's out of the loop, Skipper! Damage Control is on it, but we've got heavy casualties in Laser Two."
Meanwhile, Theisman has decided to take the initiative (fearing that Franks might blow him out of the sky if he thinks he's cutting and running), and prepares for what seems like a suicide attack. The Grayson forces mop the floor with the Masadan fleet, but Honor wonders where the Havenite ships are. Well, she soon gets her answer as Theisman approaches them from astern:
Theisman snarled in triumph, yet under his snarl was the bitter knowledge that his triumph would be brief. He could finish the cruiser with another salvo, but he'd already crippled her. The Captain would finish her off; his job was to damage as many Manticorans as he could before Thunder came back.
"Take the destroyer!" he barked.
"Aye, Sir!"
Principality slewed to starboard, presenting her reloaded port broadside to Troubadour, but the Manticoran destroyer saw her coming, and her skipper knew his business. Theisman's entire body tensed as the Manticoran fired a laser broadside three times as heavy as his own into him, then snapped up to present the belly of his wedge before the missiles could reach him. Principality heaved in agony, and the plot flickered. Two of his birds popped up, fighting for a look-down shot through Troubadour's upper sidewall, but her point defense picked them off, and Theisman swore as the Manticoran rolled back down with viperish speed to bring her lasers to bear once more.
So now we've got some hot ship-on-ship action: Theisman gets a shot in at the Troubadour, but suddenly Fearless comes around and gives his ship with a beating with its energy weapons. Realising he's beaten, Theisman orders his ship to "strike the wedge," the universal signal for surrender (obviously based on the Age of Sail custom of "striking your colours"). Of course, if the enemy isn't in the mood for surrender, well...
Fortunately for him, the chapter ends with Fearless locking a tractor beam on his ship and hailing them.
These, of course, continue the tradition of the Honorverse having ridiculously dorky-looking ships. I'm also curious as to why they're not called fighters or starfighters, since that's clearly what they are. I guess maybe the word "starfighter" doesn't sound all proper military-like or something.
Those LACs are the fancy Manticoran wunderwaffen, not the normal kind which look more like the capital ships. In any case they still have a crew of a dozen or more so they are closer to PT boats than fighters.
Speaking of which, perhaps it's explained in a later novel (or already HAS been and I'm simply so scatterbrained I forgot), but I'm curious as to why kinetic weapons don't seem to be used on starships in this setting.
The impeller wedges and sidewalls would make short work of purely kinetic projectiles. Further, the wedges are MUCH larger than the ships that generate them. It's be a nightmare to sneak a shot through that.
Those LACs are the fancy Manticoran wunderwaffen, not the normal kind which look more like the capital ships. In any case they still have a crew of a dozen or more so they are closer to PT boats than fighters.
LAC stands for Light Attack Craft and have been around for a very long time not a new Manticoran weapon. The comparison to PT boats is quite apt and a big reason they are not called fighters.
