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Mission of Honor: Retold

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Septentrion said:
Possible, but I don't see it as that, to me this is the beginning of a Holy War. The sleeping giant has awoken and it is screaming.
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That's the thing though isn't it? Battuta has chosen to go with the trendline of modern social media behavior where most users drift into their own cosseted reality bubbles, so for most of the League member states, the death of faraway Mesa is as something one can easily be convinced is just doctored footage. Do you really believe a Star Empire of Manticore was hit by ultra-precision attacks on their orbitals they - the most militarist neobarbs in known space - somehow didn't see coming, and responded by cracking a planet of slave manufacturers like an egg? Do you really believe that Battle Fleet, lavishly equipped in the most advanced technology humanity has to offer, was defeated by a few battlecruisers? All this at a time when the appropriations budget for the League fleet is up for review in the next budget cycle and the poll numbers have been terrible for the League gov's poll numbers? Do you really not see how plainly convenient that is? Pleeeeease.
 
Oh that's an all-time, intergalactic-scale bad look to redefine the term 'optics' for all time.
 
FBH said:
I meant the alignment not the now sterilized planet.
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But is anyone, even VEDA, fully aware of the extent to which "Mesa" refers to something above and beyond the now-defunct planetary system?

By frying their own planet, the Alignment not only further destabilizes the League/Manticore situation, but removes "actually, Mesan slavers did it!" as an explanation for anything within the foreseeable future.
 
100thlurker said:
That's the thing though isn't it? Battuta has chosen to go with the trendline of modern social media behavior where most users drift into their own cosseted reality bubbles, so for most of the League member states, the death of faraway Mesa is as something one can easily be convinced is just doctored footage. Do you really believe a Star Empire of Manticore was hit by ultra-precision attacks on their orbitals they - the most militarist neobarbs in known space - somehow didn't see coming, and responded by cracking a planet of slave manufacturers like an egg? Do you really believe that Battle Fleet, lavishly equipped in the most advanced technology humanity has to offer, was defeated by a few battlecruisers? All this at a time when the appropriations budget for the League fleet is up for review in the next budget cycle and the poll numbers have been terrible for the League gov's poll numbers? Do you really not see how plainly convenient that is? Pleeeeease.
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The Eridani Edict is not something they can ignore though, it's near religion in my read. Remember that the Honorverse went through some bad times and the current era could be considered a Golden Age by many many billions of people. They won't ignore this, they'll feel threatened then scared then angry that someone shattered a core pillar of their prosperity.
 
I mean, I think what FBH was saying was that if VEDA figured out that the Alignment exists and is responsible for this that is a bad thing for the Alignment.
Space Friend said:
But is anyone, even VEDA, fully aware of the extent to which "Mesa" refers to something above and beyond the now-defunct planetary system?

By frying their own planet, the Alignment not only further destabilizes the League/Manticore situation, but removes "actually, Mesan slavers did it!" as an explanation for anything within the foreseeable future.
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100thlurker said:
All this at a time when the appropriations budget for the League fleet is up for review in the next budget cycle and the poll numbers have been terrible for the League gov's poll numbers? Do you really not see how plainly convenient that is? Pleeeeease.
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This is nonsense the destruction of a planet and the murder of 6 billion people will not go ignored. Certainly not by social media which will be blanketed by Mesan videos (in both senses), immediately.

Crilltic said:
I mean, I think what FBH was saying was that if VEDA figured out that the Alignment exists and is responsible for this that is a bad thing for the Alignment.
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Only for so long, covert to invulnerable. Mesa has already begun building its empire.
 
I saw this coming, but oof.

I just wasn't sure how they could pin the blame on Manticore. Now I once again find myself frustrated that deploying hundreds of thousands of pods in secret is a thing people do.

Missiles are too god damned easy in this setting. :V


... Even so, they must have left SOME physical evidence. That pod cluster was just one of a bunch that had been seeded, the one closest to the fleet, so there's zillions more pods all either floating out there or self destructing. I think??
 
Space Friend said:
But is anyone, even VEDA, fully aware of the extent to which "Mesa" refers to something above and beyond the now-defunct planetary system?

By frying their own planet, the Alignment not only further destabilizes the League/Manticore situation, but removes "actually, Mesan slavers did it!" as an explanation for anything within the foreseeable future.
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Maybe.

Like, this was a good plan by Mesa but it's not without flaws.

First, it's a great PR weapon but I wonder how long it'll actually convince a team of analysts. Unless VEDA doesn't get any idea what the hell happened, then it isn't that hard to figure that this wasn't a Manticorian strike. The missiles came in from a very different vector from the fleet, the Manticorians fired on their own missiles at the incoming wave and were transmitting targetting telemetry.

If you're a panicky, traumatised frontier fleet or Mesan system navy officer who gives a fuck. You see what you want to see, but while VEDA lives through the trauma of an EE violation and are definitely kind of a cult about it, they're also an intelligence agency. Once they actually start looking at the footage like analysts, it's shouldn't be that hard to tell it's a frame job. From there, the question then becomes "if not manpower who?"

And from there, "Look, this is definately a conspiracy."

This probably won't save Manticore from them. Blood is on the ground and a line must be drawn or everyone will be doing this shit.

But the alignment has now committed a full edict violation and it is going to be on. In the longer term that's not something they can wiggle out of.
 
Crilltic said:
I mean, I think what FBH was saying was that if VEDA figured out that the Alignment exists and is responsible for this that is a bad thing for the Alignment.
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Oh yeah, I don't actually see the Alignment's plan having any chance of success. VEDA and similar groups are likely to survive societal collapse, and they'll relentlessly hunt the ones responsible. I've always seen the Alignment as something hilariously weak against someone using similar tactics and strategies to themselves, if exposed.

And even if they dodge that bullet, there's no guarantee that there are going to be any survivors beyond some isolated polities ala Grayson and Masada. I think they were going for "get the successor states working toward glorious utopia". But I might be wrong.

Bad things for the Alignment is not equal to good things for everyone else, sadly.
 
spitballing - if planetary strikes are on the table, I wonder if Warshawski sails can be used for blocking? We know you can raise 'em in realspace just fine.

A Warshawski is, iirc, hundreds or thousands of kilometers across in comparison to a regular wedge's dozens of kilometers, so you might actually be able to screen off a hemisphere-sized diameter with a feasible number of ships.

the ships themselves would be made vulnerable, but they're such tiny targets relative to their sails that it might be doable against dumb impactors.

probably wouldn't have helped Mesa in this case, since they were dealing with MDMs that could use a latter drive stage to maneuver past any blocking field, but in general maybe it's an option
 
Elizabeth II: I need to sound like a hard woman making hard decisions in my speech. I know, I'll say we'll be just as merciless as the people who attacked us!
Mesa: *stops existing*
Elizabeth II:
 
Space Friend said:
spitballing - if planetary strikes are on the table, I wonder if Warshawski sails can be used for blocking? We know you can raise 'em in realspace just fine.

A Warshawski is, iirc, hundreds or thousands of kilometers across in comparison to a regular wedge's dozens of kilometers, so you might actually be able to screen off a hemisphere-sized diameter with a feasible number of ships.

the ships themselves would be made vulnerable, but they're such tiny targets relative to their sails that it might be doable against dumb impactors.

probably wouldn't have helped Mesa in this case, since they were dealing with MDMs that could use a latter drive stage to maneuver past any blocking field, but in general maybe it's an option
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I think they fry wedges (and themselves) on contact, but can't actually stop anything passing through. But technical solutions aren't really going to solve the issue of people burning planets, unless the technical solution is so complete is makes it too difficult to try. Ala star wars planetary shields, but even there you have death stars or just bombing it till it fails.
 
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Honor-verse is a bit unique in that planet-wiping violence isn't just cheaply possible with the settings technology - lots of sci-fi settings don't explicitly construct a setting where it isn't - but it explicitly makes the fact planet-wiping violence is cheaply possible a setting element. One forgotten about later, when the League becomes an enemy, but still.
 
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FBH said:
Maybe.

Like, this was a good plan by Mesa but it's not without flaws.

First, it's a great PR weapon but I wonder how long it'll actually convince a team of analysts. Unless VEDA doesn't get any idea what the hell happened, then it isn't that hard to figure that this wasn't a Manticorian strike. The missiles came in from a very different vector from the fleet, the Manticorians fired on their own missiles at the incoming wave and were transmitting targetting telemetry.

If you're a panicky, traumatised frontier fleet or Mesan system navy officer who gives a fuck. You see what you want to see, but while VEDA lives through the trauma of an EE violation and are definitely kind of a cult about it, they're also an intelligence agency. Once they actually start looking at the footage like analysts, it's shouldn't be that hard to tell it's a frame job. From there, the question then becomes "if not manpower who?"

And from there, "Look, this is definately a conspiracy."

This probably won't save Manticore from them. Blood is on the ground and a line must be drawn or everyone will be doing this shit.

But the alignment has now committed a full edict violation and it is going to be on. In the longer term that's not something they can wiggle out of.
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The way I look at it is that Mesa probably hasn't planned this all out linearly, but rather just has a few sets of rules and priorities they base their decision-making on, and set up contingencies that they can fire off whenever it seems like they will further those priorities

so they probably had the "let's blow up Mesa" contingency set up a while ago, just knowing that they were going to divest from Mesa and Manpower eventually, but didn't decide when and how to do it until Spindle went the way it did and the Yawata strike succeeded.

the story definitely won't withstand scrutiny for long (in fact, since the League has smart people and good tech in this version, it might fall apart as soon as any SLN analysts get a look at that Frontier Fleet patrol's sensor data), but it'll last long enough to generate opportunities for someone on one-or-another side of the League-Manticore standoff to make a rash decision, which is within that list of priorities.

If Manticore or Grayson blows up another Solarian fleet, or if the League starts raiding Manticoran targets in Silesia or Talbott, the shooting war will be past the point of no return regardless of what anyone concludes about the Mesa mundicide. The Alignment will consider that a total success and, since they view themselves as the vanguard of historical and genetic inevitability, are probably unconcerned with whether VEDA agents track down Detweiler and co. in a century or so. Probably they assume they (or at least their ideological legacy) will have irrevocably taken hold of the destiny of the Diaspora by then.
 
also, there are any number of ways in which the waters can remain muddy even given perfect analysis of the attack.

"Manticorans must have deployed stealth pods from arsenal ships on a weird vector", etc etc

what will enable this is that there aren't...really any other suspects that the League public or the SLN know about

so, it almost has to have been Manticore, or, if not them, one of the other Verge powers who have been violently at odds with Mesa in the past, most of whom Manticore is allied with
 
Look, people, check out the positive side of it all:

When the fallout from the war between Space Britain WITH CATS! and the Liberated State of Elon Muskistan will topple the United Space States of Please Don't Nuke Shit From Orbit, the resulting power vacuum will allow Eloise to claim her birthright as a distant heir to the storied Bonaparte line, and crown herself the Emperor. As she will do so while still the President, she will bring together the imperial and republican tradition, thus fulfilling the long prophesied Heglian synthesis of Frenchness: the Final Empire-Republic, and liberty, egality and siblinghood for all.

This, I choose to believe, is the real meaning of Honor Harrington.
 
Gargulec said:
Look, people, check out the positive side of it all:

When the fallout from the war between Space Britain WITH CATS! and the Liberated State of Elon Muskistan will topple the United Space States of Please Don't Nuke Shit From Orbit, the resulting power vacuum will allow Eloise to claim her birthright as a distant heir to the storied Bonaparte line, and crown herself the Emperor. As she will do so while still the President, she will bring together the imperial and republican tradition, thus fulfilling the long prophesied Heglian synthesis of Frenchness: the Final Empire-Republic, and liberty, egality and siblinghood for all.

This, I choose to believe, is the real meaning of Honor Harrington.
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Honor Harrington will be incredibly sad for a while but then Eloise will offer to step on Honor and everything will be fine
 
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