Mission Of Honor – Snippet 38
The four-week communications loop between the Spindle System, the capital of the newly organized Talbott Quadrant of the Star Empire of Manticore, and the Manticoran Binary System was the kind of communications delay any interstellar naval officer had to learn to live with. It was also the reason most successful navies simply assumed flag officers on distant stations were going to have to make their own decisions. There just wasn’t time for them to communicate with their governments, even though everyone recognized that the decisions they made might have significant consequences for their star nations’ foreign policy. But however well established that state of affairs might be, the potential consequences for Michelle Henke this time around were rather more significant than usual.
“More significant than usual.” My, what a fine euphemistic turn of phrase, Mike! she thought sourly.
It didn’t seem possible that it was one day short of two months since she’d destroyed a Solarian League battlecruiser with all hands. She hadn’t wanted to do it, but Admiral Josef Byng hadn’t left her much in the way of options. And, if she was going to be honest, a part of her was intensely satisfied that the drooling idiot hadn’t. If he’d been reasonable, if he’d had a single functioning brain cell and he’d stood-down his ships as she’d demanded until the events of the so-called First Battle of New Tuscany could be adequately investigated, he and his flagship’s entire crew would still be alive, and that satisfied part of her would have considered that a suboptimal outcome. The arrogant bastard had slaughtered the entire complements of three of Michelle’s destroyers without so much as calling on them to surrender first, and she wasn’t going to pretend, especially to herself, that she was sorry he’d paid the price for all those murders. The disciplined, professional flag officer in her would have preferred for him (and his flagship’s crew) to be alive, and she’d tried hard to achieve that outcome, but only because no sane Queen’s officer wanted to contemplate the prospect of a genuine war against the Solarian League. Especially not while the war against Haven was still unresolved.
But Elizabeth, Baron Grantville, Earl White Haven, and Sir Thomas Caparelli had all approved her actions in the strongest possible language. She suspected that at least some of that approval’s firmness had been intended for public consumption, both at home in Manticore and in the Solarian League. Word of the battle — accompanied by at least excerpts of Elizabeth’s official dispatch to her, approving her actions — had reached Old Terra herself via the Beowulf terminus of the Manticoran Wormhole Junction a month ago now. Michelle had no doubt Elizabeth, William Alexander, and Sir Anthony Langtry had given careful thought to how best to break the news to the Sollies; unfortunately, “best” didn’t necessarily equate to “a good way to tell them.”
In fact, Michelle had direct evidence that they weren’t even remotely the same thing. The first wave of Solarian newsies had reached Spindle via the Junction nine days earlier, and they’d arrived in a feeding frenzy. Although Michelle herself had managed to avoid them by taking refuge in her genuine responsibilities as Tenth Fleet’s commanding officer. She’d retreated to her orbiting flagship and hidden behind operational security and several hundred kilometers of airless vacuum — and Artemis’ Marine detachment — to keep the pack from pursuing her.
Agustus Khumalo, Baroness Medusa, Prime Minister Alquezar, and Minister of War Krietzmann had been less fortunate in that regard. Michelle might have been forced to put in appearances at no less than four formal news conferences, but her military and political superiors found themselves under continual siege by Solarian reporters who verged from the incredulous to the indignant to the outraged and didn’t seem particularly concerned about who knew it. From her own daily briefings, it was evident that the flow of newsies — Manticoran, as well as Solarian — was only growing. And just to make her happiness complete, the insufferable gadflies were bringing their own reports of the Solarian League’s reaction to what had happened along with them. Well, the Old Terran reaction, at least, she corrected herself. But the version of the “truth” expounded on Old Terra — and the reaction to it on Old Terra — always played a hugely disproportionate part in the League’s policies.
And it was evident that Old Terra and the deeply entrenched bureaucracies headquartered there were not reacting well.
She reminded herself that all of her information about events on the League’s capital world was at least three T-weeks old. She supposed it was remotely possible something resembling sanity had actually reared its ugly head by now and she just hadn’t heard about it yet. But as of the last statements by Prime Minister Gyulay, Foreign Minister Roelas y Valiente, and Defense Minister Taketomo which had so far reached Spindle, the League’s official position was that it was “awaiting independent confirmation of the Star Empire of Manticore’s very serious allegations” and considering “appropriate responses to the Royal Manticoran Navy’s destruction of SLNS Jean Bart and her entire crew.”
While Roelas y Valiente had “deeply deplored” any loss of life suffered in the first “alleged incident” between units of the Solarian League Navy and the Royal Manticoran Navy in the neutral system of New Tuscany, his government had, of course, been unable to make any formal response to the Star Empire’s protest and demand for explanations at that time. The Solarian League would, equally of course, “respond appropriately” as soon as there’d been time for “reliable and impartial” reports of both the “alleged incidents” to reach Old Terra. In the meantime, the Solarian League “sincerely regretted” its inability to respond directly to the “purported facts” of the “alleged incidents.” And however deeply the foreign minister might have “deplored” any loss of life, he’d been very careful to point out that even by Manticoran accounts, the Solarian League had lost far more lives than Manticore had. And that that Solarian loss of life had occurred only after “what would appear to be the hasty response of a perhaps overly aggressive Manticoran flag officer to initial reports of a purported incident which had not at that time been independently confirmed for her.”
All of which had clearly amounted to telling the Star Empire to run along and play until the grown-ups in the League had had an opportunity to find out what had really happened and decided upon appropriate penalties for the rambunctious children whose “overly aggressive” response was actually responsible for it.
On the surface, “waiting for independent confirmation” sounded very judicial and correct, but Michelle — unlike the vast number of Solarians listening to the public statements of the men and women who theoretically governed them — knew the League government already had Evelyn Sigbee’s official report on what had happened in both the “New Tuscany Incidents.” The fact that the people who supposedly ran that government were still referring to what they knew from their own flag officer’s report was the truth as “allegations” was scarcely encouraging. And the fact that they were considering “appropriate responses” to Jean Bart’s destruction by an “overly aggressive Manticoran flag officer” and not addressing even the possibility of appropriate responses to Josef Byng’s murder of three Manticoran destroyers and every man and woman who’d served upon them struck her as even less promising. At the very least, as far as she could see, all of that was a depressing indication that the idiots calling the shots behind the smokescreen of their elected superiors were still treating this all as business as usual. And if that really was their attitude . . . .
At least the fact that Manticore was inside the Sollies’ communications loop meant Old Terra had found out about Admiral Byng’s unexpected demise even before Lorcan Verrochio. In theory, at least, Verrochio — as the Office of Frontier Security’s commissioner in the Madras Sector — was Byng’s superior, but pinning down exactly who was really in charge of what could get a bit slippery once the Sollies’ dueling bureaucracies got into the act. That was always true, especially out here in the Verge, and from her own experience with Josef Byng, it might be even truer than usual this time around. It was entirely possible that everything which had happened in New Tuscany, and even his decision to move his command there in the first place, had been his own half-assed idea.
Which doesn’t mean Verrochio was exactly an innocent bystander, she reminded herself. He sure as hell wasn’t last time around, anyway. And even if it was all Byng’s idea — this time — Verrochio had to sign off on it under the Sollies’ own regulations, officially, at least. And then there’s always the Manpower connection, isn’t there?
She frowned and suppressed an almost overpowering temptation to gnaw on her fingernails. Her mother had always told her that was a particularly unbecoming nervous mannerism. More to the point, though, as far as Michelle was concerned, she doubted her staff and her flagship’s officers would be especially reassured by the sight of their commanding officer’s sitting around chewing on her fingernails while she worried.
“Last week, in the Talbott Quadrant….”
Isn’t it about time for that Destroyer to get back from its uncompleted mission, followed closely by Adm. Crandall?
This does seem like DW’s standard calm-before-a-surprise-attack passages.
J
Well at this rate there will be no covering up the RMN’s utterly devastating a Sollie TF with over seventy of the Wall, provided the missile pods hold out. I wonder if those numbers are going to be as deceptive as the Russian Battleship numbers at Tsushima Strait. I.E. Adding older, less capable forces to the mix actually lowered their combat power vs leaving them at home, since it tied more advanced ships to a lower performance to keep the fleet together?
@4 Jeremy. Good analogy. The Japanese success was certainly a result of bad tactics and a crappy force structure by the Russians, but also better technology: the Japanese battleships had more powerful guns and were therefore able to engage at a range which the Russians could not match. And the situation here is similar.
@3 If by surprise attack you mean OB, then yes. I am sure that the battle (Battle of Spindle? or wherever it takes place) will not happen until after OB, and if it is anything like Weber’s more recent books it will be near the end of the book.
@5, Actually looking it up Robert the IJN had better rangefinders (more range), which gave them half again the range, 4000 vs 6000 yards. Also the Russians were hanging off on thee d of a very long supply line, which hampered their performance, while the Japanese were close to their own supply bases. And finally the Russians were entering their first serious combat (for this fleet)while the Japanese were bloodied by prior battles.
And despite the heavier weight of metal only three ships (a cruiser and two destroyers) broke through to a friendly port, the rest were sunk, scuttled, captured, or interred when they fled to neutral ports. There is a reason the British at the time called it the “Trafalgar of the East”.
@5: I’ve read the e-ARC, and concerning your predictions about the timeframe for OB and the battle against Crandall … think about that: Amazon says, the book has 864 pages – and the snippets are now somewhere around page 200 or so. Do you really think, the battle against Crandall will be at the end of the book?
@7 Karsten
It doesn’t really take reading the e-arc. The scene where the dispatch boat sees Crandall’s fleet is in Storm from the Shadows, and we know from there that Crandall was going to leave for whatever she was going to do (presumably hit Spindle) within a couple of days. So this is the right time for that.
Of course the Invincible SLN is a model of efficiency, so Admiral Crandall doubtless will have left ahead of schedule.
@5 In addition, the Russian Admiral did not regroup his squadrons by speed, so the speed issue was systematic.
I have been assured that the Russian ships had been carefully supplied with Imperial Russian Tropical-Grade ammunition, which (as was also seen during the Kronstadt rebellion) had an unfortunate technical fault. It did not explode on or after impact. Indeed, I gather that the Japanese Admiral noted that his ship had been struck more than 30 times but by some miracle, almost all rounds were duds.
One might however wonder the the RMN will figure out after Byng that they are using too many missiles per target, and that they would wreck the enemy more quickly by spreading their fire more, noting that two thoroughly wrecked targets is better than one target reduced to plasma.
@9 George.
If the aim is to defeat a military force, not merely kill people, then a show of superior force causing as few deaths as possible is a good thing–if the enemy surrenders or quits the field. As at New Tuscany. I think the latest silly term was shock and awe, but despair and hopeless work. Also, Crandall has SDs not BCs as the late Adm. Byng had. So it may be that the RMN needs to be sure of winning and also to take the measure of the SL defenses (the SL missiles are of no consequence given the range disparity). I would think so anyway.
@5 Oh Karsten! Can it be true? Weber’s big battle is not at the end of the book? Don’t say anymore–you will ruin it for me.
@8 There was a lot of speculation before it all apparently got eARCed, about where Crandall was going. Many thought that the wormhole junction might be her target. And why would she expect Henke to be at Spindle instead of still at New Tuscany or running for home from the big bad SL? Hunting the Quadrant for Henke could take a few more weeks, right? And Many of those 800+ pages are bound to be casts of characters (so many names, so many pages) and a few maps (one hopes) and some authorial notes on the secret Mesan ship drives (unlikely, but still…). So now we know that the Battle is soon. So what is the rest of the book about? Please don’t tell.
@9 George
Actually, I expect that Crandall does know how long it’s going to take her fleet to get organized to leave wherever she’s parked. That’s something they do frequently enough so inefficiency would be noticed and remarked on. You know, the troops make a great showing at parade.
@10 Robert, replying to me
Well, since I was one of the people stirring up the confusion, I can say now that I did know where she was headed. I laid out alternatives to get some discussion going. I don’t know that the next few snippets will be Crandall’s defeat, but it seems entirely reasonable given David’s writing habits and the time sequence.
Remember that Crandall is not entirely stupid; she’s just got a completely incorrect appreciation of what she’s facing. She won’t head for New Tuscany because there’s no point sending her whole force there. Attacking either the wormhole forts (which she probably doesn’t know about) or taking the cluster piecemeal (which would probably work) won’t occur to her because she thinks that showing up at the political center of the cluster (Spindle) with close to a hundred of the wall and yelling “Boo!” will get them to fall over. She doesn’t see any reason to plan for a long campaign.
I’ve been avoiding giving anything more than very veiled hints, none of which seem to have been picked up. There’s more to come, including, um, tum-te-tum-tum and also [redacted].
@11 John. Point taken. I was being ornery. I posted that she was heading for Spindle and anything else was yada yada. And here I am yada yadaing. And shhhh. Please. I haven’t eARC’d and there is still nearly 2 months until I get my copy.