An entry with a Bang! - A BT roundrobin II

[Tyrchon]

Originally Posted by Magni

It wasn't. The guy has written that diary himself. It contains what infos he managed to get first hand. It's basically his alibi, together with a few simple preparations. If someone intercepts the message, he can make it look as if someone made a copy without him knowing, which could turn him getting shot for treason into him only getting fired for breaching security.

Okay, thanks for the clarification on that. However, my objections, comments, and concerns regarding other aspects still stand.

[Vianca]

Originally Posted by hyzmarca

If you stare at an orange juice container because it says, "CONCENTRATE" then you might be a nobleman.

I stared for quite a while at the container, but I didn't hear a word.

[StarSpawn]

Originally Posted by Tweeky

Does anyone else here think that quietly eliminating House Liao or at least arranging for the obviously certifiable members of House Liao to have "Fatal accidents" courtesy of CSN and GDI should be arranged?

You are suggesting that we waste our best 'black op' groups on trying to assassinate some of the most paranoid and security consious humans in the IS, incl one that would have harden killers crying in their sleep just knowning she were on the same continent as themself? (A cookie if you can guess who)

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by StarSpawn

You are suggesting that we waste our best 'black op' groups on trying to assassinate some of the most paranoid and security consious humans in the IS, incl one that would have harden killers crying in their sleep just knowning she were on the same continent as themself? (A cookie if you can guess who)

Natasha Kerensky?

[evilauthor]

Okay, here's a slightly revised version with added lines for context:

MIIO Headquarters
Avalon City, New Avalon
Crucis March, Federated Suns
16 January 3022

“So, you’ve completed the research project I assigned you?” Quintus Allard asked.

“Yes, sir,” the young woman replied. She was young, intelligent, beautiful, and from the nobility. In other words, she was a near perfect new recruit for the MIIO, bright with promise and youthful enthusiasm. The project he had assigned her was ostensibly her ‘written final exam’, and not an analysis of a possible enemy. It wouldn’t do to have people – especially political enemies – thinking that he was taking silly rumors seriously. “It was fascinating… but not exactly what I expected when I joined up.”

“In our profession, one must learn to deal with the unexpected all the time,” Quintus observed. “However, I’m glad you enjoyed the work. It won’t always be the case.”

“Of course, sir,” the young woman said.

“Now, why don’t you tell me what you’ve learned?” Quintus asked.

“Of course, sir,” the woman said. She pulled a rather thick binder – it must have been stuffed full with a stack of paper around ten to twenty centimeters thick – and dropped it onto Quintus’ desk with a hearty thunk. “Here’s my full report, sir, a full analysis of the political and technological situation of early Twenty-first Century Terra.”

“Good lord!”

“I’ll admit that it’s a bit much, sir,” the woman said nervously. “But I did have four and a half months to put it together and thought I should do a thorough job. In some ways, Terra of a thousand years ago is every bit as complicated as the whole of the Inner Sphere today.”

“Yes, yes, well done,” Quintus reassured her quickly. Meanwhile, his mind was searching for the names of analysts to examine this document. He certainly didn’t have the time to personally read all this! “Ah, perhaps you can summarize?”

“Oh, of course, sir,” the woman said. “A thousand years ago, humanity was of course all confined to one planet, fusion power was just being invented, and space travel was done expending absurd amounts of chemical fuel to toss ships on ballistic trajectories to other worlds. And for much of the century prior to that, Terra had been dominated by two rival power blocs instead of the five we have today.” She looked wistful for a moment. “In some ways, this era was actually more a Golden Age than the Star League.”

“Oh, how so?”

“I know everyone says that the Star League was the pinnacle of human development, and it some ways it was,” the woman told him. “But the twenty-first century was when humanity changed from a planet bound species to an interstellar one. It was a time of dizzying change. Technological advancement proceeded at a pace that was pretty much never matched in later eras, even by the Star League. Every technology perfected by the Star League was invented in some form or another during or before this time period: holographic matrix computers, fusion drives, KF drives, even the Industrialmechs that would later be turned into Battlemechs. Trust me on this, sir. I did the research in depth and I don’t think our archived literature of the time does more than hint at what it was truly like.”

“Ah, so what were the politics of the time like?” Quintus asked.

“Hard to say, sir,” the woman answered. “I’m not being facetious. It’s just that the early years of the Twenty First Century was a time of major political change. The Cold War had ended with the Russian Civil War that eventually drew in the Western Alliance. In 2014, the Western Alliance emerged victorious and would be the dominant political power until James McKenna created the Terran Hegemony in 2315. They were for all intents and purposes the planetary government for this time period, and a democratic one at that. Offices and positions of political power were filled anyone who could convince the majority of the people that they were competent…”

“I know what a democracy is,” Quintus interrupted.

“Of course, sir,” the woman said. “The point was that for a while, democracy worked, at least for a couple centuries. Of course, the reason it worked was because it was confined to one world where today’s communication lags and bottlenecks don’t exist. And it worked for a world that was more populated than any world in the Inner Sphere is today.

“But in any case, the Western Alliance had emerged victorious and become the single most powerful government humanity had yet seen to date. And the next century was largely peaceful barring the need to incorporate the ‘Third World’ – essentially that era’s version of the Periphery powers – and raise them to the Western Alliance’s standard of living.”

“And what were they like militarily?” Quintus asked thoughtfully.

“Militarily… it was just insane,” the woman replied. “The nations of the time fielded huge armies for their given population sizes. Each of the major nations of the Cold War could each field armies to rival any of today’s House armies. And this was during peacetime! At the end of the Russian Civil War, the Western Alliance had an army that could have given Aleksandr Kerensky’s Star League Army trouble.”

“Surely you’re exaggerating,” Quintus said.

“I wish I were, sir,” the woman said fervently. “Oh sure, they were primitive technologically, but they weren’t all that far behind. In their day, it wasn’t the tank that was the King of the Battlefield, it was artillery. And what I’ve read is that their artillery was far more accurate than any artillery since then, and the artillery weapons haven’t changed all that much in the intervening centuries.” She paused and looked thoughtful. “Of course, it helped that they were confined to one planet and didn’t have to deal with things like variant surface gravity and planet rotational speed; the literature seems to indicate that you need to take those into account to get accurate artillery fire, and each artillery unit carried around a small library of books just to deal with all the variables.”

“So let me present a hypothetical scenario,” Quintus said. “Suppose through some magical or natural phenomenon, early Twenty-first Century Terra was displaced in time to the present day. How much force would be needed to take it?”

“Take it?” the woman said skeptically. “Sir, I don’t think it’s possible. The armies of the time were made up with citizen soldiers. The civilian populations were loyal to their governments and willing to fight to an unbelievable degree. Even assuming you could defeat the field armies – no guarantee there short of stripping the entire Inner Sphere of ALL its military forces and the Jumpships and Dropships to move them – you’d be presented with guerilla fighting on a planetary scale. I’m sorry, but it would be completely impractical to conquer any such world. You could try to destroy them with orbital bombardment, but we don’t have anything that can do that short of breaking out the nuclear weapon stockpiles. And I wouldn’t trust that would work either.”

“Why not?”

“Because the Western Alliance would have nuclear weapons too… and a lot more of them,” the woman answered. “At the Cold War’s height, there were enough nuclear weapons on Earth – and the missiles to launch them – to render any ten worlds uninhabitable. And I wouldn’t be surprised if my estimate is low. Luckily, they were never used, otherwise you and I wouldn’t be here talking about it.”

“Well, then, I’m glad that it’s impossible for whole planets to time travel,” Quintus said thoughtfully.

“Of course, sir,” the woman agreed with a laugh. “Still, it shows how far we’ve fallen when even a ‘primitive’ Terra can outgun a Successor State.”

“Hmm, you do good work,” Quintus told her. Now, if only the little fact finding mission he had sent out found nothing, he could relax and go back to living in a relatively sane universe that didn’t have time traveling planets in them. “So, Miss Sorenson, how would you like an assignment on Antallos?”

FSJS Leonardo Da Vinci
Interstellar Space
Grantville Cluster

“This can’t be possible!” Donna Madigan, navigator of the Jumpship Da Vinci, swore vehemently.

“What’s the matter, Donna?” asked William Duvall, the Jumpship’s captain. “Figure out what went wrong and why we’re not in a star system?”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Skipper,” Donna snarled. “The damn stars aren’t where they’re supposed to be!”

“Well, the old Star League survey charts that we’re using are a few centuries old…” Duvall again.

“But not by this much!” Donna told him. “None of the stars around here match up to the charts at all. Not their positions, nor their spectrographic signatures, nothing!”

“Maybe the Star League faked the original survey to hide something?” Duvall suggested, recalling his instructions for this mission, the very secret instructions that he couldn’t even tell his crew about unless absolutely necessary. When the head of the MIIO gave you instructions personally, you followed them to the letter.

“I thought about that too,” Donna told him in an ‘I’m not an idiot’ tone of voice. “But the actual stars I’m looking at look like the fakes, not the survey data.”

“How so?”

“I’m getting a match for them all right, but they’re a match for the stars around Terra,” Donna told him. “But we didn’t misjump into the center of the Inner Sphere because I can still see the stars we jumped from which is nowhere near there!”

“Huh,” Duvall said, floored. When he had been briefed about this mission, neither he nor the man who briefed him had actually expected to find something like this. But his instructions did cover such a find and they had been very explicit. “Alright, Donna, start plotting more jumps, say three or four. I want to do a survey of the Cluster and see exactly how much of it matches the core of the Inner Sphere. Just one thing.”

“Yes?”

“Avoid Terra – or this Cluster’s version of it – and any other known inhabited systems,” Duvall told her. Oh yes, his instructions had been VERY specific. It was after all hard to report what you found if you were captured or nuked by paranoid locals. “Once that’s done, we’re going home.”

Explorer Corps Regional Headquarters
<Need Planet, System, and surrounding Nation name>

Precentor Margaret Grey cursed she read another negative report. The First Circuit back on Terra had been slowly turning up the pressure on her to find this ‘Motherload’ or ‘Third Earth’ or whoever these new Periphery upstarts were. Unfortunately, she only had so many Jumpships that could only recharge their KF drives so fast, even using their fusion reactors to so fed by capacious fuel tanks. Grey had basically told the First Circuit as much. The First Circuit took her at her word and started shifting assets from other Explorer Corps regions to her command. So for the past year, Explorer Corps jumpships had been drifting into the system at irregular intervals, but that was still only a drop in the very very large bucket that was the Periphery.

The current report on the screen in front of her was on the last former Outworlds Alliance planet on a certain checklist. The ravages of the Succession Wars had shrunk the Alliance, making them pull back from and abandon their outer Periphery holdings in order to stave off their neighbors. This particular planet was the last of those holdings to be surveyed and had turned out to be inhabited by people regressed to barely steam age levels of technology and almost certainly not ‘Motherlode’. That meant that the theory that ‘Motherlode’ was an ex-Alliance world would have to be tossed into the trash.

It also meant that Grey needed to come up with a new search.

“Precentor?” Grey’s secretary called, interrupting her thoughts. “The Jumpship Outbound Light has jumped in system. They say they’ve been reassigned to us.”

“Thank you, Adams,” Grey acknowledged. “Start getting supplies ready for them. I’ll have their search assignment shortly.”

“Yes, Precentor.”

Let’s see, Grey thought. Since the old Outworlds Alliance territories were checked off, it was time to start spreading out. There was the Grantville Cluster right next to it…

No. That Cluster had been rather thoroughly surveyed by the Explorer Corps only sixty years before and found nothing. The head of station at the time had been convinced that there was a hidden Star League facility there but nothing had been found, certainly no habitable worlds; those were a bit difficult to hide. Better to look elsewhere.

[bluepencil]

Yeah, but then it sounds as if you're pulling things out of some dark place. I suggest you tone down Kym a tad and make her sound as if she actually memorized things of worth.

Instead of "Militarily... it was just insane... etc" (as doesn't she know of WW2, which makes those numbers puny by comparison?)

how about...

"Militarily... they fielded huge armies for their given population sizes. The Russian Civil saw intercine conflict between forces intended against the Western Alliance, with millions of troops maneuvering around a region only about as big as (some place in New Avalon). They had ten million troops fighting each other in a region around twenty million square miles! We can already take several worlds with that amount of troops." She shook her head. "It was insanity. It went on for months."

So what if people complain? Information and analysis is depth. We really do need it.

[Kerrus]

I think you need to name Sorenson at the start of the segment, not at the end. It's an infodump and it feels like an infodump. Every reference to her is "The Woman" repeated a good five times, and it's really off putting. Ether some variation, or use of her name and maybe a brief description would help liven it up a bit and not read like Allard is talking to himself.

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by bluepencil

Yeah, but then it sounds as if you're pulling things out of some dark place. I suggest you tone down Kym a tad.

Instead of "Militarily... it was just insane... etc" (as doesn't she know of WW2, which makes those numbers puny by comparison?)

how about...

"Militarily... they fielded huge armies for their given population sizes. The Russian Civil saw intercine conflict between forces intended against the Western Alliance, with millions of troops maneuvering around a region only about as big as . They had ten million troops fighting each other in a region around twenty million square miles!" She shook her head. "It was insanity. It went on for years."

So what if people complain? Information is depth. We quite need it.

Given the sparsity of info about BT's Russian Civil War, the Western Alliance could very well have fielded armies of size comparable to those in WWII.

But I like you addition. I think I'll incorporate it. Here's the modded section (part in red being stuff from blue):

“Militarily… it was just insane,” the woman replied. “The nations of the time fielded huge armies for their given population sizes. Each of the major nations of the Cold War could each field armies to rival any of today’s House armies. And this was during peacetime! The Russian Civil War alone saw internecine conflict between forces intended against the Western Alliance, with millions of troops maneuvering around a region only about as big as . They had ten million troops fighting each other in a region around twenty million square miles!" She shook her head. "It was insanity. It went on for years and then the Western Alliance threw in their millions of troops to restore order. At the end of it, the Western Alliance had an army that could have given Aleksandr Kerensky’s Star League Army trouble.”

“Surely you’re exaggerating,” Quintus said. “At they had much more primitive equipment than Kerensky.”

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by Kerrus

I think you need to name Sorenson at the start of the segment, not at the end. It's an infodump and it feels like an infodump. Every reference to her is "The Woman" repeated a good five times, and it's really off putting. Ether some variation, or use of her name and maybe a brief description would help liven it up a bit and not read like Allard is talking to himself.

I wanted to keep her identity a mystery with a surprise punch at the end. But if people feel it takes away from the piece, I can fix it.

[Kerrus]

I think you can keep her identity a secret if you vary your pronouns. I'll illustrate.

“Yes, sir,” the young woman replied. She was young, intelligent, beautiful, and from the nobility. I

“Of course, sir,” the young woman said.

“Of course, sir,” the woman said. She pulled a rather thick binder – it must have been stuffed full with a stack of paper around ten to twenty centimeters thick – and dropped it onto Quintus’ desk with a hearty thunk. “Here’s my full report, sir, a full analysis of the political and technological situation of early Twenty-first Century Terra.”

“I’ll admit that it’s a bit much, sir,” the woman said nervously. “But I did have four and a half months to put it together and thought I should do a thorough job. In some ways, Terra of a thousand years ago is every bit as complicated as the whole of the Inner Sphere today.”

“Oh, of course, sir,” the woman said. “A thousand years ago, humanity was of course all confined to one planet, fusion power was just being invented, and space travel was done expending absurd amounts of chemical fuel to toss ships on ballistic trajectories to other worlds. And for much of the century prior to that, Terra had been dominated by two rival power blocs instead of the five we have today.” She looked wistful for a moment. “In some ways, this era was actually more a Golden Age than the Star League.”

“I know everyone says that the Star League was the pinnacle of human development, and it some ways it was,” the woman told him. “But the twenty-first century was when humanity changed from a planet bound species to an interstellar one. It was a time of dizzying change. Technological advancement proceeded at a pace that was pretty much never matched in later eras, even by the Star League. Every technology perfected by the Star League was invented in some form or another during or before this time period: holographic matrix computers, fusion drives, KF drives, even the Industrialmechs that would later be turned into Battlemechs. Trust me on this, sir. I did the research in depth and I don’t think our archived literature of the time does more than hint at what it was truly like.”

“Hard to say, sir,” the woman answered. “I’m not being facetious. It’s just that the early years of the Twenty First Century was a time of major political change. The Cold War had ended with the Russian Civil War that eventually drew in the Western Alliance. In 2014, the Western Alliance emerged victorious and would be the dominant political power until James McKenna created the Terran Hegemony in 2315. They were for all intents and purposes the planetary government for this time period, and a democratic one at that. Offices and positions of political power were filled anyone who could convince the majority of the people that they were competent…”


“Of course, sir,” the woman said. “The point was that for a while, democracy worked, at least for a couple centuries. Of course, the reason it worked was because it was confined to one world where today’s communication lags and bottlenecks don’t exist. And it worked for a world that was more populated than any world in the Inner Sphere is today.

“Militarily… it was just insane,” the woman replied. “The nations of the time fielded huge armies for their given population sizes. Each of the major nations of the Cold War could each field armies to rival any of today’s House armies. And this was during peacetime! At the end of the Russian Civil War, the Western Alliance had an army that could have given Aleksandr Kerensky’s Star League Army trouble.”

“I wish I were, sir,” the woman said fervently. “Oh sure, they were primitive technologically, but they weren’t all that far behind. In their day, it wasn’t the tank that was the King of the Battlefield, it was artillery. And what I’ve read is that their artillery was far more accurate than any artillery since then, and the artillery weapons haven’t changed all that much in the intervening centuries.” She paused and looked thoughtful. “Of course, it helped that they were confined to one planet and didn’t have to deal with things like variant surface gravity and planet rotational speed; the literature seems to indicate that you need to take those into account to get accurate artillery fire, and each artillery unit carried around a small library of books just to deal with all the variables.”

“Take it?” the woman said skeptically. “Sir, I don’t think it’s possible. The armies of the time were made up with citizen soldiers. The civilian populations were loyal to their governments and willing to fight to an unbelievable degree. Even assuming you could defeat the field armies – no guarantee there short of stripping the entire Inner Sphere of ALL its military forces and the Jumpships and Dropships to move them – you’d be presented with guerilla fighting on a planetary scale. I’m sorry, but it would be completely impractical to conquer any such world. You could try to destroy them with orbital bombardment, but we don’t have anything that can do that short of breaking out the nuclear weapon stockpiles. And I wouldn’t trust that would work either.”

“Because the Western Alliance would have nuclear weapons too… and a lot more of them,” the woman answered. “At the Cold War’s height, there were enough nuclear weapons on Earth – and the missiles to launch them – to render any ten worlds uninhabitable. And I wouldn’t be surprised if my estimate is low. Luckily, they were never used, otherwise you and I wouldn’t be here talking about it.”

“Of course, sir,” the woman agreed with a laugh. “Still, it shows how far we’ve fallen when even a ‘primitive’ Terra can outgun a Successor State.”

[santtu1976]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

The Russian Civil War alone saw internecine conflict between forces intended against the Western Alliance, with millions of troops maneuvering around a region only about as big as . They had ten million troops fighting each other in a region around twenty million square miles!" She shook her head. "It was insanity. It went on for years

I thought IS uses metric system.

[vIsitor]

The nearest Explorer Corps headquarters is Baliggora. Come to think of it, I believe its the EC's base of operations for the entire spinward region.

For frame of reference, Baliggora is in the OWA, roughly halfway between Antallos and the Mica Majority. That said, its rather uncomfortably close (good thing the Grantville Cluster is listed as uninhabited!).

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by santtu1976

I thought IS uses metric system.

D'oh! That's what I get for direct copying and pasting. Bad bluepencil!

Okay, I guess I better fix that. Do square miles translate into square km directly with a 1.6 multiplier or do I need a more exotic equation.

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by vIsitor

The nearest Explorer Corps headquarters is Baliggora. Come to think of it, I believe its the EC's base of operations for the entire spinward region.

For frame of reference, Baliggora is in the OWA, roughly halfway between Antallos and the Mica Majority. That said, its rather uncomfortably close (good thing the Grantville Cluster is listed as uninhabited!).

Finally! Thanks!

[walkir]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

D'oh! That's what I get for direct copying and pasting. Bad bluepencil!

Okay, I guess I better fix that. Do square miles translate into square km directly with a 1.6 multiplier or do I need a more exotic equation.

It's times 1.6², so 20 million square miles are 51.2 million square kilometers.

[Tyrchon]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

Okay, here's a slightly revised version with added lines for context:

The corrections and new lines you've inserted have made it much better. However, I do have a few concerns still, some of which have already been expressed. These mainly focus on Kym Sorenson.

Originally Posted by bluepencil

Yeah, but then it sounds as if you're pulling things out of some dark place. I suggest you tone down Kym a tad and make her sound as if she actually memorized things of worth.

Instead of "Militarily... it was just insane... etc" (as doesn't she know of WW2, which makes those numbers puny by comparison?)

how about...

"Militarily... they fielded huge armies for their given population sizes. The Russian Civil saw intercine conflict between forces intended against the Western Alliance, with millions of troops maneuvering around a region only about as big as (some place in New Avalon). They had ten million troops fighting each other in a region around twenty million square miles! We can already take several worlds with that amount of troops." She shook her head. "It was insanity. It went on for months."

So what if people complain? Information and analysis is depth. We really do need it.

Originally Posted by Kerrus

I think you need to name Sorenson at the start of the segment, not at the end. It's an infodump and it feels like an infodump. Every reference to her is "The Woman" repeated a good five times, and it's really off putting. Ether some variation, or use of her name and maybe a brief description would help liven it up a bit and not read like Allard is talking to himself.

As both bluepencil and Kerrus have noted the way you have Kym portrayed is a little awkward. She definitely feels a little too smart in her analysis. I would agree with bluepencil that you should make it seem more like she memorized facts and then added some analysis and perhaps is pointing to historical analysis that was available to her when she began the project. Also, like kerrus points out, it does feel like there is an info dump when you reveal her to be Kym Sorenson. If you want to keep her name hidden until the end then you need to do a better job of describing her when she speaks and avoid simply using 'the woman' almost every time.

For my part, I am still slightly concerned with using Kym on a mission to Antallos. She plays a pretty important role in canon, so unless you are planning on butterflying away those events or are planning on having Kym back in time to paricipate in those events as she needs to, then I would suggest using someone else. Also, in canon it is noted that Kym was mainly an analyst before getting the assignment to shadow/reinforce Justin's cover during his stint on Solaris. If you are going to use her maybe you should have her be an analyst for a little while before having her move into actual 'field' work. Maybe have Quintus put her in the analysis department regarding the Outworlds Alliance and then later have her begin noticing odd coincidences as the CSN and GDI start making inroads with the Alliance, coincidences that she recalls are similar to what she had learned when completing her 'final exam'. However, that still leaves the problem of her not being there for canon events that she needs to be there for, so you'd need to figure out a way around it all.

Finally, there was one typo in a sentence that I noticed disrupted the entire flow of the sentence. Here in the green:

Precentor Margaret Grey cursed she read another negative report. The First Circuit back on Terra had been slowly turning up the pressure on her to find this ‘Motherload’ or ‘Third Earth’ or whoever these new Periphery upstarts were. Unfortunately, she only had so many Jumpships that could only recharge their KF drives so fast, even using their fusion reactors to so fed by capacious fuel tanks. Grey had basically told the First Circuit as much. The First Circuit took her at her word and started shifting assets from other Explorer Corps regions to her command. So for the past year, Explorer Corps jumpships had been drifting into the system at irregular intervals, but that was still only a drop in the very very large bucket that was the Periphery.

I think you are just missing some connecting words towards the end of that sentence, between 'using their fusion reactors' and 'fed by capacious fuel tanks'. That or you forgot to remove the 'to so'.

Other than these things I think you did a great job clarifying these sections and making the segment better.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Tweeky

Does anyone else here think that quietly eliminating House Liao or at least arranging for the obviously certifiable members of House Liao to have "Fatal accidents" courtesy of CSN and GDI should be arranged?

As long as all in-story precautions are made to insure that it cannot be traced back to C-Earth, yes.

[Tweeky]

Originally Posted by Gosu

Like,
"Most of Terra's nations could quickly mobilize up to ?ten? percent of their entire population within days, where we only have standing armies with a maximum of 0.small percent of our population."?

IIRC during WWII the total size of the US armed forces (all branches and including non-combat personnel) peaked at ~13 million personnel! I don't know what the figure for imperial forces were though.

[JonBerry]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

MIIO Headquarters
Avalon City, New Avalon
Crucis March, Federated Suns
16 January 3022

You really should lampshade the 'fact' that this is pure research into the archives and literature. A far cry from analyzing a living culture.

Originally Posted by evilauthor

FSJS Leonardo Da Vinci
Interstellar Space
Grantville Cluster

“Huh,” Duvall said, floored. When he had been briefed about this mission, neither he nor the man who briefed him had actually expected to find something like this. But his instructions did cover such a find and they had been very explicit. “Alright, Donna, start plotting more jumps, say three or four. I want to do a survey of the Cluster and see exactly how much of it matches the core of the Inner Sphere. Just one thing.”

“Yes?”

“Avoid Terra – or this Cluster’s version of it – and any other known inhabited systems,” Duvall told her. Oh yes, his instructions had been VERY specific. “Once that’s done, we’re going home.”

"Oh, and if you encounter a large portion of space that looks like it could be the center of the Inner Sphere in a place where we have no real reason to suspect anything of the sort, do a survey of it anyways while avoiding the center of this region of unknown size and... what? Why are you calling me Batman? Huh? Because he has the power of plot on his side to be prepared for anything? Now that's silly."

Originally Posted by evilauthor

Explorer Corps Regional Headquarters
<Need Planet, System, and surrounding Nation name>

But wouldn't it be a good idea to pass through an uninhabited region (The Cluster) to shortcut to farther regions? Espescially if Motherlode is Coreward of Antallos?

[Tweeky]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

D'oh! That's what I get for direct copying and pasting. Bad bluepencil!

Okay, I guess I better fix that. Do square miles translate into square km directly with a 1.6 multiplier or do I need a more exotic equation.

To convert from square statute miles to kilometres multiply the number in square miles by 2.593.

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by Tyrchon

As both bluepencil and Kerrus have noted the way you have Kym portrayed is a little awkward. She definitely feels a little too smart in her analysis. I would agree with bluepencil that you should make it seem more like she memorized facts and then added some analysis and perhaps is pointing to historical analysis that was available to her when she began the project. Also, like kerrus points out, it does feel like there is an info dump when you reveal her to be Kym Sorenson. If you want to keep her name hidden until the end then you need to do a better job of describing her when she speaks and avoid simply using 'the woman' almost every time.

Truth be told, it is an infodump. I guess I should just hide it better.

For my part, I am still slightly concerned with using Kym on a mission to Antallos. She plays a pretty important role in canon, so unless you are planning on butterflying away those events or are planning on having Kym back in time to paricipate in those events as she needs to, then I would suggest using someone else. Also, in canon it is noted that Kym was mainly an analyst before getting the assignment to shadow/reinforce Justin's cover during his stint on Solaris. If you are going to use her maybe you should have her be an analyst for a little while before having her move into actual 'field' work. Maybe have Quintus put her in the analysis department regarding the Outworlds Alliance and then later have her begin noticing odd coincidences as the CSN and GDI start making inroads with the Alliance, coincidences that she recalls are similar to what she had learned when completing her 'final exam'. However, that still leaves the problem of her not being there for canon events that she needs to be there for, so you'd need to figure out a way around it all.

She was an analyst before Solaris? Okay, I could have her stay an analyst for the immediate future. I can change things to have Quintus put her in a new section that dedicated to the CSN and GDI.

But the thing is, I don't want to religiously follow canon BT events. There will be butterflies and things will change. Shuffling around minor characters like Kym and things like the Outbound Light specifically highlights that there are being butterflied. The divergence can only increase.

But if you really want things to go "on track", then feel free to write other characters filling the roles left void by canon characters getting shuffled elsewhere.

Finally, there was one typo in a sentence that I noticed disrupted the entire flow of the sentence. Here in the green:

D'oh! Misedit. There's actually too many words there. It should read:

Unfortunately, she only had so many Jumpships that could only recharge their KF drives so fast, even using their fusion reactors fed by capacious fuel tanks.

[Tweeky]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

As long as all in-story precautions are made to insure that it cannot be traced back to C-Earth, yes.

How about in these precautions that it's set up so if they do succeed in finding out the origin of the assassinations, CEarth leaves a red-herring, namingly C*, so C* ends up taking the blame if the precautions fail.

[evilauthor]

Originally Posted by JonBerry

But wouldn't it be a good idea to pass through an uninhabited region (The Cluster) to shortcut to farther regions? Espescially if Motherlode is Coreward of Antallos?

Hmm, good point. But the general idea was to get across to the reader than Comstar's not going to be looking at the Grantville Cluster first without getting to deeply into the mechanics of it.

Okay, so here's another revision:

MIIO Headquarters
Avalon City, New Avalon
Crucis March, Federated Suns
16 January 3022

“So, you’ve completed the research project I assigned you?” Quintus Allard asked.

“Yes, sir,” the young woman replied. Kym Sorenson was young, intelligent, beautiful, and from the nobility. In other words, she was a near perfect new recruit for the MIIO, bright with promise and youthful enthusiasm. The project he had assigned her was ostensibly her ‘written final exam’, and not an analysis of a possible enemy. It wouldn’t do to have people – especially political enemies – thinking that he was taking silly rumors seriously. “It was fascinating… but not exactly what I expected when I joined up.”

“In our profession, Miss Sorenson, one must learn to deal with the unexpected all the time,” Quintus observed. “However, I’m glad you enjoyed the work. It won’t always be the case.”

“Of course, sir,” Sorenson said.

“Now, why don’t you tell me what you’ve learned?” Quintus asked.

“Of course, sir.” She pulled a rather thick binder – it must have been stuffed full with a stack of paper around ten to twenty centimeters thick – and dropped it onto Quintus’ desk with a hearty thunk. “Here’s my full report, sir, a full analysis of the political and technological situation of early Twenty-first Century Terra.”

“Good lord!”

“I’ll admit that it’s a bit much, sir,” Sorenson said nervously. “But I did have four and a half months to put it together and thought I should do a thorough job. In some ways, Terra of a thousand years ago is every bit as complicated as the whole of the Inner Sphere today.”

“Yes, yes, well done,” Quintus reassured her quickly. Meanwhile, his mind was searching for the names of analysts to examine this document. He certainly didn’t have the time to personally read all this! “Ah, perhaps you can summarize?”

“Oh, of course, sir,” she said. “A thousand years ago, humanity was of course all confined to one planet, fusion power was just being invented, and space travel was done expending absurd amounts of chemical fuel to toss ships on ballistic trajectories to other worlds. And for much of the century prior to that, Terra had been dominated by two rival power blocs instead of the five we have today.” She looked wistful for a moment. “In some ways, this era was actually more a Golden Age than the Star League.”

“Oh? How so, Miss Sorenson?”

“I know everyone says that the Star League was the pinnacle of human development, and it some ways it was,” Sorenson told him. “But the twenty-first century was when humanity changed from a planet bound species to an interstellar one. It was a time of dizzying change. Technological advancement proceeded at a pace that was pretty much never matched in later eras, even by the Star League. Every technology perfected by the Star League was invented in some form or another during or before this time period: holographic matrix computers, fusion drives, KF drives, even the Industrialmechs that would later be turned into Battlemechs. Trust me on this, sir. I did the research in depth and I don’t think our archived literature of the time does more than hint at what it was truly like.”

“Ah, so what were the politics of the time like?” Quintus asked.

“Hard to say, sir,” Sorenson answered. “I’m not being facetious. It’s just that the early years of the Twenty First Century was a time of major political change. The Cold War had ended with the Russian Civil War that eventually drew in the Western Alliance. In 2014, the Western Alliance emerged victorious and would be the dominant political power until James McKenna created the Terran Hegemony in 2315. They were for all intents and purposes the planetary government for this time period, and a democratic one at that. Offices and positions of political power were filled anyone who could convince the majority of the people that they were competent…”

“I know what a democracy is,” Quintus interrupted.

“Of course, sir,” she said. “The point was that for a while, democracy worked, at least for a couple centuries. Of course, the reason it worked was because it was confined to one world where today’s communication lags and bottlenecks don’t exist. And it worked for a world that was more populated than any world in the Inner Sphere is today.

“But in any case, the Western Alliance had emerged victorious and become the single most powerful government humanity had yet seen to date. And the next century was largely peaceful barring the need to incorporate the ‘Third World’ – essentially that era’s version of the Periphery powers – and raise them to the Western Alliance’s standard of living.”

“And what were they like militarily?” Quintus asked thoughtfully.

“Militarily… it was just insane,” Sorenson replied. “The nations of the time fielded huge armies for their given population sizes. Each of the major nations of the Cold War could each field armies to rival any of today’s House armies. And this was during peacetime! The Russian Civil War alone saw internecine conflict between forces intended against the Western Alliance, with millions of troops maneuvering around a region only about as big as . They had ten million troops fighting each other in a region around fifty one million square kilometers!" She shook her head. "It was insanity. It went on for years and then the Western Alliance threw in their millions of troops to restore order. At the end of it, the Western Alliance had an army that could have given Aleksandr Kerensky’s Star League Army trouble.”

“Surely you’re exaggerating,” Quintus said. “At the very least they had much more primitive equipment than Kerensky.”

“I wish I were, sir,” Sorenson said fervently. “Oh sure, they were primitive technologically, but they weren’t all that far behind either. In their day, it wasn’t the tank that was the King of the Battlefield, it was artillery. And what I’ve read is that their artillery was far more accurate than any artillery since then, and the artillery weapons haven’t changed all that much in the intervening centuries.” She paused and looked thoughtful. “Of course, it helped that they were confined to one planet and didn’t have to deal with things like variant surface gravity and planet rotational speed; the literature seems to indicate that you need to take those into account to get accurate artillery fire, and each artillery unit carried around a small library of books just to deal with all the variables.”

“So let me present a hypothetical scenario, Miss Sorenson,” Quintus said. “Suppose through some magical or natural phenomenon, early Twenty-first Century Terra was displaced in time to the present day. How much force would be needed to take it?”

“Take it?” Sorenson said skeptically. “Sir, I don’t think it’s possible. The armies of the time were made up with citizen soldiers. The civilian populations were loyal to their governments and willing to fight to an unbelievable degree. Even assuming you could defeat the field armies – no guarantee there short of stripping the entire Inner Sphere of ALL its military forces and the Jumpships and Dropships to move them – you’d be presented with guerilla fighting on a planetary scale. I’m sorry, but it would be completely impractical to conquer any such world. You could try to destroy them with orbital bombardment, but we don’t have anything that can do that short of breaking out the nuclear weapon stockpiles. And I wouldn’t trust that would work either.”

“Why not?”

“Because the Western Alliance would have nuclear weapons too… and a lot more of them,” Sorenson answered. “At the Cold War’s height, there were enough nuclear weapons on Earth – and the missiles to launch them – to render any ten worlds uninhabitable. And I wouldn’t be surprised if my estimate is low. Luckily, they were never used, otherwise you and I wouldn’t be here talking about it.”

“Well, then, I’m glad that it’s impossible for whole planets to time travel,” Quintus said thoughtfully.

“Of course, sir,” the young woman agreed with a laugh. “Still, it shows how far we’ve fallen when even a ‘primitive’ Terra can outgun a Successor State.”

“Hmm, you do good work,” Quintus told her. Now, if only the little fact finding mission he had sent out found nothing, he could relax and go back to living in a relatively sane universe that didn’t have time traveling planets in them. “So, Miss Sorenson, how would you like an assignment on Antallos? This CSN have a mania for using obscure historical references and I’m sure the ambassadorial staff there could use an analyst of your caliber.”

FSJS Leonardo Da Vinci
Interstellar Space
Grantville Cluster

“This can’t be possible!” Donna Madigan, navigator of the Jumpship Da Vinci, swore vehemently.

“What’s the matter, Donna?” asked William Duvall, the Jumpship’s captain. “Figure out what went wrong and why we’re not in a star system?”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Skipper,” Donna snarled. “The damn stars aren’t where they’re supposed to be!”

“Well, the old Star League survey charts that we’re using are a few centuries old…” Duvall again.

“But not by this much!” Donna told him. “None of the stars around here match up to the charts at all. Not their positions, nor their spectrographic signatures, nothing!”

“Maybe the Star League faked the original survey to hide something?” Duvall suggested, recalling his instructions for this mission, the very secret instructions that he couldn’t even tell his crew about unless absolutely necessary. When the head of the MIIO gave you instructions personally, you followed them to the letter.

“I thought about that too,” Donna told him in an ‘I’m not an idiot’ tone of voice. “But the actual stars I’m looking at look like the fakes, not the survey data.”

“How so?”

“I’m getting a match for them all right, but they’re a match for the stars around Terra,” Donna told him. “But we didn’t misjump into the center of the Inner Sphere because I can still see the stars we jumped from which is nowhere near there!”

“Huh,” Duvall said, floored. When he had been briefed about this mission, neither he nor the man who briefed him had actually expected to find something like this. But his instructions did cover such a find and they had been very explicit. “Alright, Donna, start plotting more jumps, say three or four. I want to do a survey of the Cluster and see exactly how much of it matches the core of the Inner Sphere. Just one thing.”

“Yes?”

“Avoid Terra – or this Cluster’s version of it – and any other known inhabited systems,” Duvall told her. Oh yes, his instructions had been VERY specific. It was after all hard to report what you found if you were captured or nuked by paranoid locals. “Once that’s done, we’re going home.”

Explorer Corps Regional Headquarters
Baliggora, Outworlds Alliance

Precentor Margaret Grey cursed she read another negative report. The First Circuit back on Terra had been slowly turning up the pressure on her to find this ‘Motherload’ or ‘Third Earth’ or whoever these new Periphery upstarts were. Unfortunately, she only had so many Jumpships that could only recharge their KF drives so fast, even using their fusion reactors fed by capacious fuel tanks. Grey had basically told the First Circuit as much. The First Circuit took her at her word and started shifting assets from other Explorer Corps regions to her command. So for the past year, Explorer Corps jumpships had been drifting into the system at irregular intervals, but that was still only a drop in the very very large bucket that was the Periphery.

The current report on the screen in front of her was on the last former Outworlds Alliance planet on a certain checklist. The ravages of the Succession Wars had shrunk the Alliance, making them pull back from and abandon their outer Periphery holdings in order to stave off their neighbors. This particular planet was the last of those holdings to be surveyed and had turned out to be inhabited by people regressed to barely steam age levels of technology and almost certainly not ‘Motherlode’. That meant that the theory that ‘Motherlode’ was an ex-Alliance world would have to be tossed into the trash.

It also meant that Grey needed to come up with a new search.

“Precentor?” Grey’s secretary called, interrupting her thoughts. “The Jumpship Outbound Light has jumped in system. They say they’ve been reassigned to us.”

“Thank you, Adams,” Grey acknowledged. “Start getting supplies ready for them. I’ll have their search assignment shortly.”

“Yes, Precentor.”

Let’s see, Grey thought. Since the old Outworlds Alliance territories were checked off, it was time to start spreading out. There was the Grantville Cluster right next to it…

No. That Cluster had been rather thoroughly surveyed by the Explorer Corps only sixty years before and found nothing. The head of station at the time had been convinced that there was a hidden Star League facility there but nothing had been found, certainly no habitable worlds; those were a bit difficult to hide. Better to look elsewhere.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Tweeky

How about in these precautions that it's set up so if they do succeed in finding out the origin of the assassinations, CEarth leaves a red-herring, namingly C*, so C* ends up taking the blame if the precautions fail.

I like that. Better yet, multiple red herrings, leading to C*, the FWL, the 'Minnesota Tribe', the Illuminati, and the Lost Army of Kerensky.

[Tyrchon]

Originally Posted by evilauthor

Given the sparsity of info about BT's Russian Civil War, the Western Alliance could very well have fielded armies of size comparable to those in WWII.

......

A small typo at the end of the sentence. You have 'as big as' meaning you intend to compare the subject to something. However, you do not actually make a comparison. You either need to make a comparison or you need to rewrite it slightly to fit.

Originally Posted by Kerrus

I think you can keep her identity a secret if you vary your pronouns. I'll illustrate.

Yes, exactly. Use the descriptions of her rather than simply referring to her as 'the woman'. Say instead:

the young blonde woman said

the young analyst remarked

the blonde analyst replied

etc.

or describe what she is doing when or after she talks:

she remarked, brushing a loose lock of her blonde hair back behind her ear.

the young lady noted, her blue eyes sparkling slightly with a feeling of accomplishment.

etc.

This will make the character feel more 'real' and help you avoid overusing terms and pronouns.