August 27, 2000 note: This was originally posted in August 1998 (immediately before the publication of Echoes of Honor). Jim Baen had released 24 chapters of EoH over several months in an attempt (a sucessful one) to build buzz.

Operation Icarus is actually an appropriate name; this operation is dangerous. If Manticore transfers several battlesquadrons from Trevor's Star (plus additional ones from the Home Fleet) through the Junction to Basilisk, Citizen Admiral Giscard's Twelfth Fleet could get badly burned; care will be necessary. This would be especially true if many of the RMN ships had been refitted with the new multi-stage capital missiles (and the strike force has a large supply of new missile pods). August 27, 2000 note: And 3-4 battlesquadrons were transferred and one of Giscard's taskforces was totally destroyed.

It looks like Hancock Station will be right in the middle of the target zone for Operation Icarus. By the time the invasion strikes, the "Minotaur" and its LAC wing would have been exercising for months and probably would be scaling up to more ambitious exercises. I had a somewhat amusing vision. Alice Truman is given a small taskforce outfitted to be a long-distance raiding force ("Minotaur", some destroyers or light cruisers, plus some fast freighters, perhaps even a courier or two). This task force then practices raiding the area around Hancock Station. Right in the middle (better, yet, near the start) of this exercise, the PN invades. Alice Truman will most likely continue that exercise (but with live ammo). The PN is going to wonder if they have ghosts in the systems. What was amusing was some florid hardcopy I thought of to describe the "background" for the defending forces of the exercise ("technology beyond that known of any known star nation"). August 27, 2000 note: Well, it was only a raid, so this plot hook wouldn't apply.

Only if she has no couriers available (and had exhausted supplies with no replenishments avaivable) would she abandon the position and head for an Alliance held base.

Giscard knows what happened to the "Tepes" (but only because Pritchard leaked the information). Very few other PN officers know this (including everybody's favorite Peep, Thomas Edward Theisman). Unless LePic (if he even knows) has leaked the fate of the "Tepes" to Theisman, he would have spent nine months with the image of Honor being hanged in his memory. He was already drinking too much BEFORE Ransom hauled Honor away; what about now? For that matter, will Theisman realize that the report on the "Tepes" is also a lie (I am not thinking of the edit Tourville and Foraker did). There are more than two boats in any of the "Tepes's" boatbays after all; Theisman might come to the conclusion that he is seeing more Harrington sneakiness at work. August 27, 2000 note: Upon rereading, I find the "lie" reference to be a bit confusing. I was referring to the "escaping" assault shuttle, which was promptly destroyed, as the lie (Harkness's last bit of razzle-dazzle). Also, Theisman does not appear in Echoes of Honor at all and the relevant scenes in Ashes of Victory suggest that LePic never knew or did not leak if he knew. March 1, 2003 Note: I will add that IMHO, the whole incident was probably the foremost reason for his actions at the end of AoV.