STORM FROM THE SHADOWS – snippet 45:
"Bill is good, very good," she said. "I really wanted to go on hanging onto him, but I couldn't justify it. Or, rather, I couldn't justify doing that to him. He's been with BuWeaps ever since he was an ensign — as Vice Admiral Adcock's flag lieutenant, originally — and he's way overdue for a rotation. In fact, he's at the point where he needs a shipboard deployment in his File 210 if he doesn't want to get stuck dirt-side permanently. Besides, I know how badly he's wanted one for years, even if he didn't exactly sit around crying about it. And, as I say, he's always been very good at whatever we've asked him to do."
"That was my impression of him, too," Michelle agreed, but she was watching Hemphill's expression a bit more closely than she had been. The last three hectic days seemed to have confirmed her initial concern that Edwards was more of a techno-type than a combat officer. In many ways, that was fine, since the communications department was a lot less likely than others to find itself making tactical decisions, and there was absolutely no question of Edwards' outstanding competence where hardware and administration were concerned. Still, Michelle had continued to cherish a few concerns.
"I sometimes think Bill would have been happier in the tactical track," Hemphill continued, rather to Michelle's surprise, given what she'd just been thinking. "I think he probably would have done quite well there, in fact. The problem is that while he might have done well there, he's done outstandingly on the development side. He's nowhere near as strong on pure theory as some of my people are, and I don't think he'd ever have been happy at all on the research side of things. But where development is concerned, he has an absolute talent for recognizing possible applications and seeing what he calls 'the shooters' perspective' on what we need to be doing. In fact, he had quite a lot to do with what we're going to be discussing today. Which," she shook her head, her expression suddenly wry, "undoubtedly explains why he's being sent in the opposite direction from where the new systems are actually likely to get used!"
"I hadn't realized he was directly involved in developing Apollo," Michelle said. "He hasn't even twitched a muscle the time or two I've wandered a bit too close to mentioning it to the rest of the staff."
"He wouldn't have," Hemphill agreed. "One thing about Bill; he knows how — and when — to keep his mouth shut."
"So I've just discovered, Ma'am."
"Well," Hemphill shrugged, "I know Bill doesn't exactly come off looking like a classic warrior, Admiral. Not until you get to know him, at least. And, as I say, he knows how to keep his mouth shut, which means he's not going to be polishing his image by dropping hints about all of the wonderful things he did for the Fleet's tactical sorts while he was over here at BuWeaps. To be honest, though, he did do some pretty good things while he was here, which is why I took it upon myself to mention that to you. I'm sure he'd be upset if he found out I had, but, well . . . ."
She let her voice trail off with another shrug, and Michelle nodded once more. Much as she despised the patronage game herself, she had no problem with anything Hemphill had just said. Making certain the admiral a subordinate who'd served you well was now serving was aware of your high opinion of the subordinate in question was light-seconds away from the kind of self-serving horse-trading of favors which had so bedeviled the prewar RMN.
"I won't mention this conversation to him, Ma'am," she assured Hemphill. "On the other hand, I'm glad you told me."
"Good," Hemphill said again, then gave herself a little shake, as if to shift mental gears.
"Tell me, Admiral Gold Peak. Just how much do you already know about Apollo?"
"Very little, really," Michelle replied. "As one of Duchess Harrington's squadron commanders, I was briefed — very generally — on what the tech people were trying to accomplish, but that was about as far as it went. Just far enough to make me really nervous about the possibility of spilling something while I was the Havenites' . . . guest, you might say."
Hemphill snorted at Michelle's wry tone and shook her head.
"I imagine I'd probably have worried about the same thing myself, in your place," she said. "On the other hand, when we're done here today, you're definitely going to know enough to be nervous about 'spilling something.'"
"Oh, thank you, Ma'am," Michelle said, and this time Hemphill laughed out loud.
"Seriously, Ma'am," Michelle continued after a moment, "I'm not at all sure that giving me any sort of a detailed briefing at this point is a good idea. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm curious as hell. But like Commander Edwards, I'm headed in the opposite direction from where it's likely to get used. Do I really have the need to know any of the details about it?"
"That's an excellent question," Hemphill conceded. "And, to be honest, I'd really like to keep this whole thing closed up in a dark little cupboard somewhere — preferably under my bed — until we've actually used it. The tests we've carried out with it have made it clear we substantially underestimated the tactical implications in our original projections, and I've had more than a few bad dreams about the secret getting out. But there actually is a method to our apparent madness in briefing you fully on the system capabilities."
"There is?" Michelle tried not to sound dubious, but she suspected she hadn't fully succeeded.
"Given the possibilities offered by this summit between Her Majesty and Pritchart, it's at least possible we're going to see a cease-fire, maybe even a long-term peace agreement, with Haven," Hemphill said. "In that case, we're not going to need Apollo against the Republic. But it's entirely possible we will need it in Talbott if the situation there turns as nasty as it still could. And you, Admiral Gold Peak, are the designated commander for Tenth Fleet. So the feeling here at Admiralty House is that if we suddenly find ourselves able to begin transferring Apollo-capable ships to Talbott, it would be nice if the Fleet commander who's going to be using them was already aware of the system's capabilities."
Michelle's eyes had narrowed while Hemphill was speaking. She hadn't really thought about that possibility, because there were no ships of the wall on Tenth Fleet's planned order of battle. Her admittedly incomplete knowledge of Apollo had suggested to her that it could be used only by Keyhole-equipped ships of the wall. The Nikes and the second-flight Agamemnons were both Keyhole-capable, but their platforms were rather smaller than those of superdreadnoughts, and her impression had been that only wallers were big enough to carry the refitted, FTL-capable Keyhole platforms the new system required. Since she didn't have any wallers, it had followed that she wouldn't be using Apollo. But now she found herself nodding in understanding.
"I hadn't thought about it that way," she admitted. "Would it happen that one reason Commander Edwards found himself available for service on my staff was that same possibility?"
"It . . . had a bearing," Hemphill replied.
"And will I be authorized to fully brief the rest of my staff on it, as well?"
"You will," Hemphill said firmly, and grimaced. "The object is for you to begin familiarizing yourself with Apollo's capabilities and tactical possibilities. To do that, you're going to have to play around with those capabilities, game them out in the simulators, at the very least. You can't do that without bringing your staff, and for that matter, your flag captain and her tactical department, fully on board. And, of course," she glanced in Archer's direction for a moment, "if an admiral and her staff know about anything, her flag lieutenant probably knew about it first."
Archer's head came up and he looked quickly at Hemphill, but the admiral only chuckled and shook her head.
"Don't worry about it, Lieutenant. You're doing exactly what you're supposed to do — assuming that minicomp is as secure as I expect it is. And it's hardly going to be the only electronic record about Apollo aboard Achilles." She looked back at Michelle. "Before your squadron actually deploys, Admiral, we'll be uploading the same sims Duchess Harrington is using with Eighth Fleet to Achilles' tactical department."
"Good," Michelle said, not even trying to hide her relief. "Of course, from the little I already know, I sort of suspect that having the sims to play around with when I don't have the actual hardware is going to get just a bit frustrating. I have to admit, Admiral — you've come up with some really neat toys."
"One tries, Milady." Hemphill waved one hand modestly, but Michelle could see the comment had pleased her. Which was fair enough, given the fact that those "neat toys" of Hemphill's were one of the main reasons there was still a Royal Manticoran Navy and a Star Kingdom for it to serve.
"It's just about time," Hemphill continued, glancing at her chrono, and tapped a brief command into the conference table console. The holo imager built into the tabletop came to life, projecting the images of a dozen or so Navy officers manning a tactical simulator's command deck. The senior-grade captain in the command chair looked up as he realized the electronic conference connection had come on-line.
"Good morning, Captain Halsted," Hemphill said.
"Good morning, Ma'am."
"This is Vice Admiral Gold Peak, Captain," Hemphill told Halstead. "We're going to be giving her the inside story on Apollo this morning."
"So I understood, Ma'am," he said, and looked respectfully at Henke. "Good morning, Ma'am."
"Captain," Michelle acknowledged with a nod.
"I think, Captain," Hemphill said, "that we should start with a general description of Apollo's capabilities. Once we've done that, we can run through a couple of the simulations for the Admiral."
"Of course, Admiral." Halsted turned his command chair so his holo image was directly facing Michelle.
Looks like the high level rapprochement of the two schools of Manticoran naval thought is about to be replicated at lower and lower levels here. I guess “Bill” is going to turn out to be the integration in person? Not quite as qualified theoretically, but a high performer there, not quite as qualified tactically, but I’m sure we will see he is highly qualified there too???
there’s too many magic bullets being pulled out of Weber’s rabbit infested top hat in this set of novels for Manticore….
Yes. It’s almost like the development of tanks, rangefinding computers, nuclear weapons, monoplane fighters, and any of the other innovations introduced over the course of two conflicts ninety-odd years back.
War is proven to be a great motivation for innovation.
But you do realize of course, none of this world actually exists. The rules of combat here were gimmicked up to make sure that, as closely as possible, naval combat would replicate 18th century Nepoleanic Era naval conflict. Then when Weber got done playing with that he started poking holes in it, which was easy because he had already had to come up with six impossible justifications before breakfast just to make the setup in the first place.
From a standpoint of justifying anything, it’s a little late in the game to worry that the pace of technological innovation seems fast.
But from a dramatic standpoint, I guess it is a reasonable question to ask if he is creating too many machinae for dei to come from in order to save Manticore time after time. Weber does love his “super-technology defeats hordes of enemies” scenarios.
But really, that’s one of the lesser of his dramatic weaknesses, so if you can’t forgive that and yet you are still reading the books, then I’m a bit surprised. If this book is like Shadow, it will avoid the biggest weakness of the entire series — Honor Harrington and the way that the entire universe of trillions of people is defined by its relationship to her.
Actually Weber already said in a book signing I attended that Honor becomes more of a background character in most all future novels in his Honorverse. She’s effectively glued to higher command responsiblilities, so she really can’t be a central character that well anymore.
Also now that he’s defined his world and its issues, politics and technology…he gets to populate it with new people and flesh out old characters more.
That would be good news, IMO. He was locked into a situation where everyone evil hated Honor, everyone good loved Honor, and no one could be a complex character because this Honor factor dominated everything else. He finally started breaking out of that when he had Haven characters who were not venal and evil, because they didn’t have to define themselves based upon whether they were fans of Honor or not.
The problem with Apollo is that it is just too powerful.
Potentially, Manticore could take out the space infrastructure of the entire Republic of perfectly safely, given the capabilities described in AAC.
Method
1) Send light units in (specially engineered with Keyhole 2 capability). Use Ghost Rider to map out all Haven “static” assets. (We know, from RoH officers comments that they can’t prevent this.)
2) Manticoran wall arrives, launches Apollo from well outside hyper limit, and departs.
3) Missiles go ballistic, the stealthed light units take over control.
4) Missiles directed for final attack phase by light units. Since they will already be travelling at a substantial fraction of c, most should get through. Apollo capabilities remove chance of Eridani incident.
Mistletoe is unnecessary to kill Moriarty. If 20 our of 60 Apollo birds can get through the defences of Tourville’s 68 (damaged) SD(P)s, what chance does anything short of the Haven home fleet have to defend itself? Weber’s created a “God weapon”, and only another god weapon can defend against it.
The forge of Hephaestus does not grow cold after the making of a single blade.
Weber (through Shannon Foraker) has shown a penchant for coming up with schemes to defeat his schemes, so that he can then devise new schemes, and counter-schemes, and counter-counter-schemes….
I think its a hobby of his.
Did anyone know that the e-book is already available through webscription.net?
>>Did anyone know that the e-book is already available through webscription.net?
Actually Mistletoe is from the strategical point of view the much more powerfull weapon.
Apollo needs the ships of the wall to fire it.
It needs active guiding of Keyhole-cappable ships, wich can’t stand stealthed while using it.
Tactically against a moving fleet Apollo is without par.
But against infrastructure?
Send 1 7 Mt-freighter loaded with Mistletoe with light escort and 2 destroyers 1 lightweek away from the target system. Accellerate to arround 0.5cc. Empty the cargoholds of the freighter and let the Mistletoe-drones coast ballistical, escortet by the 2 DD’s while the rest, the freighter and its escort decellerate to go into hyper.
When the incomming attac is 2 hours out let the DD’s broadcast a warning through a carefully placed hermes buoy, wich then autodestructs.
Activate the Mistletoe-drones and let them target the infrastructure in question, and let them approach them under stealth.
It won’t be an all out concerted simultan attack all over the system, but every single target will be seeing eye to eye to 50-100 Mistletoes. The defenses see them at a distance of 100k km. They are way to fast to be stopped.
Do that 10 times with the right systems and Haven is down. And, as explained it works fine without the very expensive weapon-platforms Apollo needs.
yup, doubled.
It is interesting to read till the end, as far as it counters many arguments I have read here about the manticoran “god-like” weapons.
Without wanting to deflower the book, it appears that Mesa also has some aces in the sleeve.
Main problems about the book:
1) cliffhangers suck big time. (would almost evoke the lower organs of goats here, but there might be children reading this). DW foresaw it and we can expect the next book quite soonish after this one and not in 3+ years. From what I did read somewhere, the book is already done.
2) big spoiler and X-Reference to some events which I can only see as happening in Crown of Slaves II. Spoiler in the sense that, unless I am sorely mistaken, you know how the book ends, or at least part of it.
Anyway, can’t wait to read the next and CoS II. :)
Tony…
I to have the Webby and yes you’re spot on, but it’ll still be fun to read when it comes out. If only becuase the Crown series has most of my favorite Characters in it…
Am I the only one who thinks Anton Zilwicki and Mike O’Neal were seperated from birth? And the Helen and Cally must be cousins?
Yes. It’s almost like the development of tanks, rangefinding computers, nuclear weapons, monoplane fighters, and any of the other innovations introduced over the course of two conflicts ninety-odd years back.
War is proven to be a great motivation for innovation.
__________
well we see this in the real world too,, take for example america ..after WW 2, it took over the rest of the world in technological domination and innovation( of course the fact that other countries were massively weakened helped but ) due to the war build up and the eagerness to progress further than everyone else …
wars that involve the entire nation normally tends to mobilize countries too come out better after the war, if they are the winners of course …
@tony
From what I remember of his remarks at Bubonicon, COS II is done and in the pipeline; it got bumped in the schedule because of a scheduling conflict with the third book of his other series. There’s also an Honorverse anthology in there somewhere that he didn’t quite know the story lineup yet. I don’t believe Mission of Honor is done, but he’s scheduled working on it soon and it’s got a publication date early in 2010, so the turn-in date isn’t all that far off.
Anyway, that’s what I remember. 2009 has 4 Webers, 2010 has at least one, which is Mission of Honor. There may be better info elsewhere.
John Roth
Actually Mistletoe is from the strategical point of view the much more powerfull weapon.
Apollo needs the ships of the wall to fire it.
It needs active guiding of Keyhole-cappable ships, wich can’t stand stealthed while using it.
Tactically against a moving fleet Apollo is without par.
But against infrastructure?
Send 1 7 Mt-freighter loaded with Mistletoe with light escort and 2 destroyers 1 lightweek away from the target system. Accellerate to arround 0.5cc. Empty the cargoholds of the freighter and let the Mistletoe-drones coast ballistical, escortet by the 2 DD’s while the rest, the freighter and its escort decellerate to go into hyper.
When the incomming attac is 2 hours out let the DD’s broadcast a warning through a carefully placed hermes buoy, wich then autodestructs.
Activate the Mistletoe-drones and let them target the infrastructure in question, and let them approach them under stealth.
It won’t be an all out concerted simultan attack all over the system, but every single target will be seeing eye to eye to 50-100 Mistletoes. The defenses see them at a distance of 100k km. They are way to fast to be stopped.
Do that 10 times with the right systems and Haven is down. And, as explained it works fine without the very expensive weapon-platforms Apollo needs.
Comment by MadMcAl
If you go back to where mistletoe was introduced in use you will see it’s weakness.
Just remember that Apollo gives a temporary advantage now, doesn’t mean it will stay that way. Just like MDM’s and pod layers did for a while.