The Two General's Problem

tlb wrote:It appears that the ship came in from outside sensor range and traveled about 4 days to get to the platform at Hancock, then talked about about another 4 days to get out of sensor range before making the transit to hyperspace (which is an error, since the sensors do not see a transit out of normal space).

tlb wrote:It appears that the ship came in from outside sensor range and traveled about 4 days to get to the platform at Hancock, then talked about about another 4 days to get out of sensor range before making the transit to hyperspace (which is an error, since the sensors do not see a transit out of normal space).

Jonathan_S wrote:I'm far less confident that Napoleon only needed 4 days to get into position. Do you have some text-ev specifically on that?


Also it might not entirely be an error that they'd need time to get clear. The text does mention (when discussing Alexander's need to flee) that "The hyper generators would take a little longer—the trace signature from a standby translation field was simply too powerful to damp out" [SVW]

The Napoleon was close to (or even deep within) the "known Manty sensor arrays"; those seeding the outer system. And it was specifically those known arrays that it was going to take 94.8 hours to get sufficiently clear of. While we know that translating up doesn't produce any signal a FTL grav sensor can see; but I don't think we know with 100% certainty that it doesn't have some detectable light-speed signature if you're close enough. But even if the translation up is totally invisible to all sensors, if you're close enough to the out-system platforms they'd detect the hyper generator's fields as it powered up until ready to translate the ship up. (And from offline that's going to take over 30 minutes; so if close enough to detect the field the platforms are going to have plenty of time to confirm it wasn't a transient ghost signal)

Four days does seem an excessive amount of time to get clear from that presumably short-range signal. But we don't know how many shells of platforms the Manties seeded the outer system with; so that might be plausible -- even if the translation itself is undetectable to any sensor.

Jonathan_S wrote:But that seems contradicted by the inline quote I provided in my follow-up post (here's the expanded version)

Short Victorious War wrote:I think it's another indication he doesn't know about Argus, Ma'am," Captain Holcombe offered. She raised an eyebrow at him, and he shrugged. "If he's not in Hancock, he almost has to be picketing the Alliance systems in the area. Assuming that to be the case, I believe he uncovered Hancock precisely because he feels we can't know he's done it. After all, one of Argus' primary objectives was to cut down normal scouting ops to make Manty commanders overconfident in hopes they'd make mistakes just like this."

I don't think that a steady stream of Peep ships detected probing the outer system is consistent with the statement that a primary objective of Argus was to lure the RMN into a false sense of security by reducing the scouting they were seeing.

The text we have seems to all lean heavily on the idea that neither the platforms nor the ships that were picking up their data were intended to be seen; and further that nobody on the RMN side did see them until a lucky destroyer out on stealth wargame maneuvers ended up close enough to pick up the tight beam communication between an undetected ship and an undetected platform.

Jonathan_S wrote:The text we have seems to all lean heavily on the idea that neither the platforms nor the ships that were picking up their data were intended to be seen; and further that nobody on the RMN side did see them until a lucky destroyer out on stealth wargame maneuvers ended up close enough to pick up the tight beam communication between an undetected ship and an undetected platform.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The above is what the Peeps think, it doesn't mean it's reality. Clearly they weren't meant to be detected; that doesn't mean they weren't.

If the RMN knew the platforms were there and could detect the ships coming, they could use that to feed misinformation. Never shut down an information pipeline unless you have to. Monitor it, instead. Instead of luring the RMN into a false sense of security, it would the PN lured in a false sense of confidence.

And we know Parks uncovered Hancock because he wanted the Peeps to attack early.

"Agreed, Sir, but I'm not suggesting this was an authorized technology transfer. The League's organized on an awful loose, consensual basis, and some of its member planets resent how hard we pushed for the embargo. It's possible one of them, or even a rogue defense contractor or a bribable League Navy officer, would be willing to violate it."

"Zero may be right, Sir," Captain Hurston put in, "but I don't think how they did it is as important just now as the fact that they have done it." The ops officer ran a hand through his hair, and his voice was worried. "And, of course, there's the question of where else they've done it. Yorik isn't anywhere near as critical as other Alliance systems, which suggests that it wouldn't have had overriding priority. Which, in turn, suggests—"

"That they've done it all along the frontier," Parks finished grimly, and Hurston nodded.

The admiral tipped his chair back and scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, wishing he could believe Hurston was wrong. But he couldn't. If the Peeps had bugged Yorik with their damned invisible sensor platforms, then they'd done it elsewhere, as well.

He clenched his jaw and swore silently. Manticore had gotten too confident of its technical edge, refused to contemplate the possibility that the Peeps, equally aware of the differential, might take steps to redress it. And he himself had been as blind as anyone else.

"This changes everything," he said finally. "Our—my—belief that Admiral Rollins couldn't know we'd pulled out of Hancock no longer applies. Which," he forced himself to make the admission in a level voice, "means Admiral Sarnow was right all along."

He drew a breath and shook himself, then popped his chair upright, lowered his hands, and spoke crisply.

"All right, people. I screwed up, and it's time to try to fix it. Mark," he looked at Hurston, "I want you to tear every one of our contingency plans apart. Crank in the assumption that the Peeps have been watching our deployments all along the frontier for at least the last six months and find any spots in the plan that need adjustment in light of that capability. Zeb," he turned to the intelligence officer, "I want you to take charge of the relay Tribeca's bringing in. Strip it completely. Find out all you can about it—not just how it works, but anything you can tell me about the components and who made the damned thing initially. And see to it that Tribeca knows I intend to commend him strongly for his initiative."

tlb wrote:And we know Parks uncovered Hancock because he wanted the Peeps to attack early.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And we know Parks uncovered Hancock because he wanted the Peeps to attack early.

I don't recall the details of how the RMN came to the conclusion this would work -- there's something about the pattern of how messages were going back and forth, indicating centralised command and control -- but the result of this is that the PN knew Parks had uncovered Hancock and Parks knew they'd know it. At this point, the RMN had uncovered one of the Argus networks, so extrapolating to conclude other systems had it too was a logical step, but could they take it to the bank?