Can we get a real threat to Ceres for once?

Ceres is wealthy because it has a lot of useful and easy to get at resources and had no prior occupants to cause trouble for any corps that moved into harvest them.
The anarchists we see? They're effectively parasites feeding off the bodies of these corps. Well maybe symbiotes since they no doubt provide services to the corps.
In the belt the corps are the law and like any corporate entity they don't give a tug of a dead dogs cock about what happens so long as their profits continue to go up. So the corps build and maintain the infrastructure and maintain just enough law and order as is profitable for them while the anarchists get to prance around safely and launch into spiels about how awesome they are when in reality they're nobodies.
It's like anarchists in the real world. They sit around enjoying all the comforts of society while saying it is terrible and awful every day. If someone breaks into their home you can bet they'll call the police, if they have a need to they will use the courts to sue someone and you can dam well bet they will make use of any nationalised infrastructure or services.

In other words the UW is looking at the wrong entity. They think the anarchists are worth bothering with when in reality they need to talk to the corps about their property.

But Ceres is in the midst of WWII!  WWI was the "Harris incident", and WWII is the "Christmas War".  They are small wars, but, Ceres is a small, small, world after all.  

Damn! I think you have nailed the (un)official anthem for Ceres!

The lyrics are a little off, but I bet someone on this Forum can fix that. (Gun fondling is optional):

It's a world of freedom,
A world of fun;
It's a  world where ev'ryone
has a gun.
It's a  world ruled by ZAP
not that government crap --
Its a small world, after all.

 

You have missed your calling (unless you do write lyrics). I especial like rhyming "ZAP" with "government crap." 

I'm so excited, I'm vigorously fondling my gun just to meet Holt's kinky expectation. Does it make you horny, Hoplophobe Holt?

(Ah yes, I remember those days of wine and roses when my girlfriend and I would put all our guns and gold coins on the bed and roll around among them while we made hot, hot, hot love. Talk about aphrodisiacs.... Those were the days. Girls, gold and guns, a perfect combination.)

Well if I wanted to annoy you I could just go buy a gun that's classed as a destructive device in the USA. After so long as its bolt action it's perfectly legal here.

There's going to be things they simply can not make. Either due to a lack of materials, skills, equipment or just a lack of knowledge. All those industries on Mars are obviously selling to someone and the Cereans are selling resources not manufactured goods so it's safe to assume that the Cerean industrial capacity is negligible if any exists at all.

Continually repeating your assumptions and assertions does not make them any more true.

These people are in the freaking ASTEROID BELT, a virtually endless supply of everything needed for a technological civilization from volatiles on the carbonaceous chondrites to heavy metals on the nickel-iron nuggets. Not to mention that they're already halfway to the largest storehouse of volatiles in the system, Jupiter. The skills required simply to live in this environment make developing techciv infrastructure, at least eventually, inevitable; an embargo by the UW would just jump start the process. Sure there would be some initial shortages as the system ramps up, but that would be only temporary.

Food. Organic compounds. These are going to be the things that Ceres has to import. Barring handwavium magic there is no way Ceres can be self sufficient in terms of feeding itself.
Medical supplies are also extremely unlikely to be made in the region since pharmaceuticals require organic compounds.

Continually repeating your assumptions and assertions does not make them any more true.

They're sitting on a freaking ice planet. Asteroids. Jupiter.

Mind you the author seems to be like a lot of the American fringe right wing and thinks that medicine is the government trying to replace your brain with a computer or something equally ludicrous.

Speaking of ludicrous, where the hell did you come up with that one?

Fuel? Also something I doubt they'll have a lot of out there. Mind you we don't really know much about what they fuel their ships with.

Hydrogen/oxygen electrolyzed from Cererean ice?

It's a world of freedom,
A world of fun;
It's a  world where ev'ryone
has a gun.
It's a  world ruled by ZAP
not that government crap --
Its a small world, after all.

Two thumbs up.

Well if I wanted to annoy you I could just go buy a gun that's classed as a destructive device in the USA. After so long as its bolt action it's perfectly legal here.

My stepfather had a Boys rifle; what a monster (in a GOOD way). I think his cousin got it when he passed.

Holt: Well if I wanted to annoy you I could just go buy a gun that's classed as a destructive device in the USA. After so long as its bolt action it's perfectly legal here.

Just out of curiosity, why should you buying a gun bother anyone here?

Holt, extrapolating from your writing, you're a British Subject and a shining example of England's public or private school systems.

I've access to firearms and other tools which range from up close and personal to:  when I see my target I can make the shot at some extreme distances.   Since many of these are semiautomatic with high capacity magazines, I would expect a life sentence for possession in England.  Especially if they were used in self-defense.

Wait, I forgot myself, the British government does not recognizance the individual's right of self-defense.  So your thugs invade your homes and take what ever they want.  Your government dug itself such a deep hole they've been falsifying their annual crime reports for years and you "Subjects" have been letting your "Betters" get away with it.

Your beliefs are yours and you are welcome to them.  We will have to agree to disagree. 

Holt: Well if I wanted to annoy you I could just go buy a gun that's classed as a destructive device in the USA. After so long as its bolt action it's perfectly legal here.

Just out of curiosity, why should you buying a gun bother anyone here?

I'd buy one he can't buy and fondle it, goading him over the fact that in comparison anything he can own is naught but a pea shooter.

Holt, extrapolating from your writing, you're a British Subject and a shining example of England's public or private school systems.

Egads a yank capable of sarcasm. Quickly someone call a museum!

I've access to firearms and other tools which range from up close and personal to:  when I see my target I can make the shot at some extreme distances.   Since many of these are semiautomatic with high capacity magazines, I would expect a life sentence for possession in England.  Especially if they were used in self-defense.

Life sentence? Nah. Maybe if you went out of your way to repeatedly shoot people. Even that farmer who used a shotgun in self defence didn't get that long. What was it five years? and even then he got out early.

Wait, I forgot myself, the British government does not recognizance the individual's right of self-defense.  So your thugs invade your homes and take what ever they want.  Your government dug itself such a deep hole they've been falsifying their annual crime reports for years and you "Subjects" have been letting your "Betters" get away with it.

Awful lot of "don't take mah guns or else people will riot!" here. Yes our self defence laws are messed up. Mostly as a result of the last few governments being insane on a level you typically only see in US politics. Mind you the coalition changed it so that reasonable force is permitted, depending on the situation this could be argued as permitting lethal force. However we're unlikely to see laws like in the USA where you can just go "he was on my property therefore I shot him". Mostly because we're more social than you and less "rah everyone leave me alone!"

As for the falsifying crime statistics....that's blatant bullshit. Quite why they'd be falsifying rises in things like gun crime is beyond me. Oh right it's all part of some big evil government plan where they'll replace our teeth with cameras.

Your beliefs are yours and you are welcome to them.  We will have to agree to disagree. 

Well at least I can honestly say I'm not an irrational paranoid like yourself.

At this point, it's interesting to speculate on what comes next.

Obviously, the best thing to do in a hostage situation is to stage a successful rescue mission. That, though, would mean that this story line would function only as entertainment, and not make a point about how AnCap works. So I'm assuming that this won't be possible.

Still, they are going to avoid the alternative of sacrificing one individual versus surrendering their whole society to slavery. They must do that, and yet they need to do it in a way that doesn't seem like a cheat to the reader.

Embedding a hidden message in the provocation somehow that negates it at a later time is one clever possibility.

Another is to give them their provocation - and then defeat the subsequent full-scale military assault on the Belt. But if they can do that, the main source of suspense in the story all along was pointless.

And the thing about kidnappers, too, is that you can't really trust them to release their hostages unharmed.

Now, if the Black Mamba were really a worthy adversary...

she would have lied about where Kate is being held, and the staged provocation would be misdirection, just to torture as well as distract Ed and the other Belters. The real provocation that's going to be televised on Earth is the attempted rescue mission against the runabout!

But I think the Belters are smart enough to consider possibilities like that in their plans.

If the black mamba was worth the time it takes to read her lines then the belters would have attacked first because they wanted to.

If the black mamba was worth the time it takes to read her lines then the belters would have attacked first because they wanted to.

I'm beginning to see . . . Holt is setting up a 'true Scotsman' situation. Any threat to Ceres or Cerereans which can be dealt with BY Cerereans - is not a 'real' threat.

I'm beginning to see . . . Holt is setting up a 'true Scotsman' situation. Any threat to Ceres or Cerereans which can be dealt with BY Cerereans - is not a 'real' threat.

Show me a situation they can loose. Then show them triumph by actually being clever. As it stands all we've really seen is stupidity and derpderpderp on the part of the UW.

This seems to me like a complete no brainer.  In a hostage situation, you should never pay for release of hostages, as this will only result in more hostage taking.  So if you can, you rescue the hostages, if you cannot, then you stall, and if stalling does not work, then you kill the hostage takers once they are out of hostages.

This seems to me like a complete no brainer.  In a hostage situation, you should never pay for release of hostages, as this will only result in more hostage taking.  So if you can, you rescue the hostages, if you cannot, then you stall, and if stalling does not work, then you kill the hostage takers once they are out of hostages.

I agree.

Solution A: Ed gets Rhonda fired up enough to do something stupid. Maybe Ed could tell her that their conversation had been recorded. She would demand the recording and he would demand to talk to the girl to make sure that she was all right. He would record that conversation, and voila! evidence.

Solution B: Guy is involved in some way. He knows the UW best and is aware of what they are capable of. He would have the smarts to record the conversation in the first place or keep track of all the UW team members. I doubt that Rhonda can be certain that all the cameras were pointing the other way.

Solution C: Guy can finally use that UW bugged communicator to communicate a false message, communicate with Chang, something. Then Chang would stop it.

Solution D: Guy would be the one to kick the hell out of the UW troop. They would record that, then, when they release the girl, he would inform them that he is from the UW, thereby ruining the message the UW needs.

Food. Organic compounds. These are going to be the things that Ceres has to import. Barring handwavium magic there is no way Ceres can be self sufficient in terms of feeding itself.

No handwavium is required.

If the spectroscopic evidence is correct, there are plenty of hydrocarbons and volatiles in the Belt.  Folks who follow space science for real have known since the 1994 Clementine mission that bodies without a significant atmosphere can still harbor large quantities of frozen H2O.   According to data from NEAR Shoemaker even a small asteroid like 433 Eros can have water frozen in the surface fractures.  Given water, hydrocarbons and volatiles, food crops can be grown either hydroponically or in a mixture of soil made from asteroid material and composted organic waste.  The available evidence does not support any assertion the Cereans cannot feed themselves.

Medical supplies are also extremely unlikely to be made in the region since pharmaceuticals require organic compounds. Mind you the author seems to be like a lot of the American fringe right wing and thinks that medicine is the government trying to replace your brain with a computer or something equally ludicrous.

Once the structure is known, synthesizing most pharmaceuticals is not difficult. A lot of then are made using genetically modified yeast working on plain old glucose.  In fact, it will be easier to manufacture extremely high purity medicines in a micro gravity environment.  As the gray market in medical drugs illustrates, the only real impediment to duplicating any modern medicine is intellectual property law.  Whether some equivalent of that exists in Mr. Sandfort's universe is unclear.

Fuel? Also something I doubt they'll have a lot of out there. Mind you we don't really know much about what they fuel their ships with.

The space craft as described do have some magical properties.  However if you are referring to so-called "fossil fuels" then the "tarry" hydrocarbons known from meteorite and spectral evidence to exist in the belt can be de-polymerized and separated just like here on Earth.  You will need a centrifuge.