Remove ads

Mission of Honor: Retold

Reader mode
There is so much here to be concerned about; honestly I cannot see this going well for anyone beside Mesa no matter how the Jupiter attack and the Crandall situation goes.
 
General Battuta said:
Silence. Then Patricia Givens moaned in pain. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Nitroglycerine headache—"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Oh, come ON, people! Honor just got back with info on the super-bio-nanotech from Eloise - check Pat, and her doctor, and literally everyone and every part in the supply chain for every part of her medical checks out, will you?

Also - and critically - they _know_ there was a leak from that room or that leak they haven't found. They CANNOT let Bolthole be known to that same group.

Also - Elizabeth hoping for an Honor Harrington miracle?

That's going to be a big-ass Havenite fleet dropping in for a regional Fleet-Ex. We'll pretend the enemy is, for instance, a bunch of Sollies. And it's not like Havenite missiles are going to have materially different odds against the Sollies than Manticoran pre-Apollo missiles, if they have a few hours to program new tactics. They may spend a few more, but since they're producing.
 
Epic Reader said:
Oh, come ON, people! Honor just got back with info on the super-bio-nanotech from Eloise - check Pat, and her doctor, and literally everyone and every part in the supply chain for every part of her medical checks out, will you?

Also - and critically - they _know_ there was a leak from that room or that leak they haven't found. They CANNOT let Bolthole be known to that same group.

Also - Elizabeth hoping for an Honor Harrington miracle?

That's going to be a big-ass Havenite fleet dropping in for a regional Fleet-Ex. We'll pretend the enemy is, for instance, a bunch of Sollies. And it's not like Havenite missiles are going to have materially different odds against the Sollies than Manticoran pre-Apollo missiles, if they have a few hours to program new tactics. They may spend a few more, but since they're producing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I think you might be overestimating Haven's capabilities rather significantly against Aegis and SLN ECM, which was doing a pretty great job fucking with Manticore missiles even with Apollo around. Worse sensors, worse guidance, worse drives-those things add up. And 'worse sensors' means that it's easier to get Uller into position against Haven to boot.

This is before whatever doctrinal and software improvements that Crandall's Aegis image get put into play.

I would not be surprised if it turns out that Manticore was overconfident-it's pretty clear from the story so far that nobody here is immune from misunderstandings of the data or overconfidence.
 
Epic Reader said:
That's going to be a big-ass Havenite fleet dropping in for a regional Fleet-Ex. We'll pretend the enemy is, for instance, a bunch of Sollies. And it's not like Havenite missiles are going to have materially different odds against the Sollies than Manticoran pre-Apollo missiles, if they have a few hours to program new tactics. They may spend a few more, but since they're producing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Is there actually a convincing reason for Haven to throw their military at the Solarians? They are still technically at war with Manticore, even if they did just suffer what people generally agree is a Eridani violation, even if it doesn't exactly break the letter of the law.
 
I was thinking about what the next terrible thing Mesa could pull out of their hat would be. And it struck me.

Henke heading to Mesa with her battle squadron would probably be readily predictable to the Alignment. They've already moved everything they really care about off Mesa. And the Solarian League's predictive models require that they be the ones to resolve the issues around Oyster Bay.

So why not stage an Edict violation against Mesa? Henke's forces would be present when the SLN response comes in, just in time to document the "retaliation" being handed out to a planet that Manticore has already openly blamed for the attack on their system.

I mean granted it might be too cold-blooded, too contrived in the sense that surely not everything the Alignment cares about could have already moved off-world, too gilding the lily to push Manticore and the Solarian League into war. But it would I assume surely accomplish that much, while destroying Manticore's moral high ground and the sense of mission around the Solarian League when it fails to prevent another violation of the Edict, setting up a future with successor states that hate Manticore without necessarily wanting to rally around the memory of the League.
 
General Battuta said:
He turned to glare at her, and caught the eye of a man sitting behind him and several rows away. This man was stupendously, spectacularly ugly, like a chunk of igneous rock that had accidentally congealed in the shape of a squat muscular person. He was not looking at Innokentiy any more. But the pressure of his regard seemed to linger, like snakebite, on Innokentiy's neck.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So I'm pretty sure that's Zilwiki. The question is, what is he doing there? I can think of several possibilities, but given that the SLN killed his daughter, he's probably not in a good headspace right now.
 
General Battuta said:
He was also last seen on planet Mesa on a covert operation which apparently went really bad!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

A Manticore intelligence operative doing a terrorism on Earth might not be quite as damaging as "IMPELLER WEDGES CAN'T MELT STEEL BEAMS" in terms of the damage to international relations and everything imploding but @Cavalier I think it'll get somewhere in the neighborhood if something like that happens...

especially if he chooses the right (or wrong) targets.
 
I promise that if I do get to it on page (which won't be in Mission of Honor Retold, it would fall into a notional A Rising Thunder Retold) it won't happen entirely offscreen, as it did in the original.
 
Also eh, I kind of want to say you're doing Harkness a bit raw but it's been too long since I read the novels to really stake an argument on his character. And I can't really say I find it totally implausible on the face of it. There's certainly a pronounced tendency in the novels to gloss over the consequences of the Manticoran Missile Massacres on the opposing force and to have the reader cheer on when the Manties get their righteous retaliation in.

But if Harkness goes through with what he's threatening then he'll be a mass murderer. A terrorist. And I don't think he can hide his responsibility, not least because what he did to Ransom is known to his closest associates including obviously Honor. So what's going to happen after he pulls the trigger? Will he turn himself in, or will his friends try to cover for him - or have to turn him in?
 
I disagree. I mean, that's part of it—this story doesn't have the incompetent enemies that the original Honor Harrington series sometimes constructs so they can be righteously humiliated, but I think that's an outgrowth of a larger artistic priority.

Namely: the core strength of this fic is its sense of interiority, not the characters' competence. We have a good sense of what the various players think, how they think, and their institutional priorities.

Sorry if this seems like splitting hairs, I have a bit of a kneejerk reaction when "competence" comes up in discussion of fiction.
 
I think there is a bit of splitting hairs there. But not in a bad way, I think I'm more meaning competence from the Solarian league, they respond in ways that a galactic super empire would to a threat pointed at the very fibre of their being. It's solid writing. Competence is the right word, at least for the league, but you expound upon what I'm getting at better than I did
 
I'm actually not 100% sure what the last chapter of the book is going to be, except a space battle? Is it going to be the League at Grayson, or Henkel and co at Mesa, or what?
 
FBH said:
I'm actually not 100% sure what the last chapter of the book is going to be, except a space battle? Is it going to be the League at Grayson, or Henkel and co at Mesa, or what?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Some new heartwrenching turn and an agonizing cliffhanger where someone we feel for dies. At least I hope.
 
Space Friend said:
Baen forum users talked him out of it
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

No, Eric Flint's stories pushed up the timeline and made it infeasible to have Nelson die at Trafalgar, as it were. The original intent was that Honor's kids would either become spacers or spies and work to uncover the Vast Transhumanist Conspiracy. Then Flint had other story proposals for Weber ...
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top