Honor Harrington/WMG

Manticore and Haven will team up to take on Mesa and the Solarian League

Everything points to this happening, and it would be awesome. The two best navies in the galaxy going up against the biggest one? Honor Harrington and Thomas Theisman commanding a joint attack on the Mesa system? Shannon Foraker gets her hand on Manticoran EW systems? Tester, let it be so!

• That's not even a guess -- that's what more or less was explicitly said to happen in the books to come. Only MWW likes to be coy and tease the reader in his snippets only to take some shocking swerve later, so there might be some surprises.
• As of Mission of Honor it's confirmed. Also, given that transit time from Gregor to Potsdam is not that large, I doubt that anybody would beat around the bush and not get Gustav XI involved.
  • I expect the Andermani will get involved (again) eventually, but it's going to be a tough sell. Of course, they also had an improbable assassin that fits with the known assassins altered by the Alignment.
    • Not that tough, IMNSHO. These guys might be somewhat self-serving, but stupid they aren't. Their self-serving nature is actually advantageous to Manticore at this point -- they "love" League no more their neighbors do, so alliance against Sollies is salable by the same logic as against Peeps. If they were willing to risk fighting one conqueror encroaching on their turf, why they should cop out when the other one appears? BTW, remember Benjamin musing about Solly reaction to the Grayson personnel aboard Manticoran warships when the shit hits the fan? Andies are basically in the same position.
    • Word of God has been really vague on this point and refused to answer questions about the Sillies or Andies.
    • As of later books, the Silesian Confederacy is no more. Now what was the Confederacy is parts of the Anderman Empire and the SEM.
    • And amusingly, the Andermani have not formally joined the Grand Alliance only because Manticore and Haven asked them not to; if the Andermani are not part of the alliance, then they are not at war with the Solarian League. And if they're not at war with the Solarian League, they're perfectly free to sail through Solarian space and declare war on another officially non-Solarian planet. Named Mesa.
      • Although as it turns out, Admiral Henke just decided to do that on her own initiative without even bothering with the neutrality figleaf.

Manticore will begin incorporating treecats into its military

If nothing else, it will provide them with additional numbers against the Solarian League. To start, treecats who have bonded with naval officers will undergo special training courses and receive officers' commissions, while sign language becomes mandatory among the RMN. They will then be assigned postings on warships, freeing up human officers for other postings. The ultimate end result, of course, is elite units of treecats used for infiltration... and Nimitz becoming Admiral Nimitz.

• Sorry to disappoint, but if This Troper remembers correctly, Weber is personally against the idea, at least for now. And to further complicate the matter, 'cats themselves do not generally care for the organized warfare. However good fighters they could be, their very society is not well suited to the regular military. And most of them are rather ambivalent to space (Nimitz notwithstanding). If one could really organize 'cats they'd make fantastic Marines, but I couldn't imagine putting a 'cat through The Crusher.
  • This Troper is of the opinion that treecats would make very poor marines. Excellent infiltrators and bodyguards definitely but not marines. Their primary advantages over humans are their built in weaponry, empathic abilities and the fact that people tend to ignore them. These are all useful in small encounters in enclosed spaces against unarmored opponents but in a large battle against well equipped troops who know they're around these abilities are pretty much neutralized. At which point the fact that humans have a much higher body mass (and can therefore carry larger guns and more equipment) shifts the advantage firmly in the humans direction. A custom built warship crewed entirely by treecats would offer some advantages though. Primarily in the fact that treecats would presumably have significantly lower volume requirements for life support and living quarters.
    • We seem to have a conflict of definitions here. In modern understanding, or at least usage, under which you seem to be laboring, marines are essentially a rapid reaction army units, not dissimilar to paratroopers etc -- a relatively small and lightly armed, but highly trained force specialized in small-to-mid-scale, high-intensity conflicts, and they are used accordingly. I couldn't remember any real large-scale amphibious landings for at least three last decades, anyway. In Honorverse, on the contrary (or, at least, it seems so to me), marines are less these elite infantry units and more special forces -- there are relatively few of them on each ship, and all real Marine action we see in the novels are quick commando-style operations, not securing a beachhead or something like that. And as for efficiency of 'cats as commandos -- I think the novels speak for themselves. ;)
    • There are several examples of Marines used as regular military units. The best examples off the top of my head are the fight against the native Medusans in the first book and the attack on Blackbird Base in the second. Additionally it's mentioned in a few places that the marines are providing garrison forces for captured Peep planets (and Masada). While cats might work reasonably well as infiltrators sneaking in to plant explosives, gather intelligence or possibly assassinate someone in a stand up fight against an armored human the Treecat would almost certainly lose.
    • But what about armored treecats? ;)
    • Building effective power armor for something the size of a treecat would be quite difficult; by historical standards the job of design would most likely take years. Even then, the 'cats lose all but one of their advantages over unprotected humans in combat: all that's left is their telepathy. It's just not worthwhile, especially when the total treecat population is so low (they're hunter gatherers) and the vast majority of their population has no experience with technology.
    • Paul Tankersley had built several skinsuits for Nimitz essentially as a hobby project in his spare time, and officers don't have much of it, really. ;) And there are two major Powered Armor types in Honorverse -- one is essentially a souped-up skinnie, with some protective plates and muscle fibers added, so it's neither difficult to produce (see above), nor would it limit 'cat's mobility etc. Heavy PA (read Astartes/Elemental type) is another kettle of fish, and adapting it for 'cats would indeed need a major design effort, but why should it limit their effectiveness I really don't see. Remember, we're talking about the civilization, that routinely defends against massive RKV attacks -- which would require FTL computing, to be realistic. Why couldn't this civilization built a PA for the species with slightly quicker reaction than humans -- I don't get. And from pure engineering standpoint, the shorter the limb the easier are quick and accurete movements, so designing a quick-acting PA for 'cats should be actually easier than for humans.
    • The problem is what advantage does a power armored Treecat have over a power armored human in a fight? Defeating power armor requires quite heavy weaponry and the extra size of the human means he can carry significantly more and larger weaponry than the cat. The two primary advantages cats have over unarmored humans are that they are hard targets to hit and they have built in weaponry. The power armor essentially negates these advantages. Their claws are (obviously) useless and the computer support in the power armor would negate their ability to dodge shots. They would have a small stealth advantage (smaller power signature and all) but that wouldn't compensate for the fact that they would need to carry smaller guns and would probably have less ammo for them than humans. This means that they would have a much harder time killing a power armored human (due to less powerful weapons) and a shorter combat duration. There would be some benefit to have Treecat crewed starships (less mass for life support = more mass for weapons) and Treecats would obviously make excellent infiltrators but realistically infantry is one of the places where size matters a lot (heck, one of the characters says as much in the short story "The Hard Way Home").
  • No, what they should do is just automatically give 'cats the same rank as their person. Nimitz still gets to be an admiral, and everybody wins.
• Collateral damage from the Mesan attack wiped out an entire treecat clan - one percent of all treecats in the universe. The 'cats might just declare war on their own.
  • Remember, 'cats have two categories of enemies: those that have been properly dealt with, and those that are still alive. Ten bucks says that when Honor and Eighth Fleet show up at Mesa for their Roaring Rampage of Revenge, they'll have a colony of treecats with them. And after that colony gets dropped, any forces following to mop up are going to need literal mops.
• Confirmed by Word of God. The cats will not necessarily be bonded, but will be integrating in to the service after the Colony Drop convinced them on the need to integrate to survive and their chief role will be initially searching for modified humans. Also will be on Havenite ships!
  • More specifically, in A Rising Thunder, Sorrow Singer tells Honor that the treecats have just as much of an interest in wiping out the perpetrators of Oyster Bay/the Yawata Strike as the humans do. To that end, unbonded treecats will now make themselves available as a kind of "early warning system" against any humans that have been programmed by Mesa's mind-control nanovirus. They can't sense such programming when it's dormant, but the instant the programming kicks in the affected human's mindglow will show definite signs that the 'cats can detect. It will probably provide only a couple of seconds' warning at best.

Pritchart and Theisman get adopted by treecats

The 'cats are smart, insightful and very pragmatic, plus they've shown an ability for long-term thinking--extremely long-term. They're already setting up colonies on other planets (smart of them, given the events of Mission of Honor). Pritchart and Theisman are decent human beings, with extremely powerful "mind glow". It is possible, if not likely, that they will be visiting the actual Manticoran planets--where there are treecats. I therefore speculate that either or both the Head of State and Chief Military Officer of a nation that has been at war with Manticore for over twenty years... will get adopted by small, furry, adorably cute and incredibly lethal aboreals. The 'cats gain access to an entire star nation (with dozens of human-compatible planets) that they can start colonizing in the long term. Pritchart and Theisman get little furry lie detectors that prefer to get paid in celery and petting. And the Manticorans get a direct, albeit non-official link to the Havenite President's Office. The only people that don't get a win-or-lose condition out of this are Pritchart's public relations people; they're going to have to explain to the paranoid populace that, no, the two of them have not had their brains washed, pressed, and dry-cleaned by Manticoran monsters.

• For starters, Havenite population is not paranoid. And they are just as tired of that damn war as Manties are, if not more. And as for 'cats -- well, they do have their names for the pair already, and given their regard for the two (Theisman's name is Dreams of Peace, for Gods's sake!) -- that might be a more that possible development. But we still have to wait a couple of years more.
• Why not Shannon Foraker? If anyone deserves a treecat, she does. She's almost as cute as they are, in a nerdy geek-girl sort of way.
  • Treecats don't choose their adoptees for their cuteness.
• 1 will, 1 will not While Shannon gets a Love Interest and a Cat and a new friend in Hempril.
• Confirmed and Jossed. Neither are adopted and bonded, but the treecats decide to work as a bodyguards for important human allies as a way of becoming partners in the war against those who killed the Black Rock Clan. Theisman, Pritchart, and Tourville all get non-bonded companions who match their personalities well -- Springs from Above, Sharp Claw, and Lurks in Branches.

Protector Benjamin is a Time Lord.

• Why is it that every WMG page gets infected by people being cute with crossover ideas? It'd be nice to save them for things that conceivably could be true. Grumble grumble.
  • Needless to say, his greenhouse is his TARDIS.
    • But Wesley Matthews has been inside it too and he said nothing - unless he's his Companion?

Honor Harrington is a Dawn Caste.

This is why she is so very, very good at all things combat-related. She's very careful about only using personal essence when using Charms to pull off the impossible, which is why nobody else knows.

Board Chairman Joan Kubrick is chairwoman of Beowulf's Board of Directors

She's the only member of the Alignment's heads of state that doesn't have their home system identified. We know Beowulf is run by a Board of Directors, there's no one the Mesans are more likely to keep an eye on, and having Beowulf as a founding member of the Renaissance Factor would be a surefire way to proof themselves from any accusation of being Mesan puppets.

Detweiler also, I'm sure, appreciates the irony of using their old nemesis as a cornerstone of Mesa's eventual triumph over Beowulf.

The largest reason Manticore had to go was because it was an alternative to the Factor for Beowulf; when the League falls apart, with the Manticoran Alliance still a going concern, Beowulf will just sign onto that, assuming it doesn't just go whole hog and request annexation by the Star Empire; with the way things are going, it's possible that Beowulf joining with Manticore will be the beginning of the League's collapse.

Word of God is Honor's distant cousin is the Director of Beowulf. That doesn't Joss it though because it means Honor herself might have Mesan roots but is unlikely since her family has ties to the secret war against Mesa.

• Doesn't work out that way. Penetrating Beowulf that deep 1) takes too much effort and resources that may be used elsewhere more efficiently, and Alignment works more on a indirect approach, rather than on such hands-on ideas, and 2) it takes too much time. It's very difficult to ensure a proper succession of a sleeper agent to his kids -- who just don't feel the need to be a spies or agents against what for all intents and purposes is their homeland. Which, actually, was discussed in more or less the same language in Torch of Freedom. And, 3) penetration of that depth is possible only if Beowulf does not possess anything remotely resembling a functional counter-intelligence agency (which, judging by the efficiency of their intelligence agencies, it most emphatically does possess), and even then it runs too high a risk of blowing the cover.
  • Are those their real names? Wouldn't those alone blow any "cover" by suggesting a pre-existing connection? ... "No, no... see it was the other way round. First we were an intergalactic club of people with 20th-century movie director names - then we got interested in politics."
    • The Theme Naming, I believe, is just a Flint's Author Appeal -- after all, it was Flint who made Kevin Usher a movie buff. ;) And it's explicitly said to be a rare and peculiar hobby, so to make this connection alone would require a rather unorthodox mind and a great deal of luck. And the point of problems with deep penetration still stands, I think.
  • Seriously? The Alignment's biggest strength is that they're running one of the longest games in fiction outside Dune. It's very hard to detect an agent who is in place decades or more before they're tasked with doing anything. The biggest stumbling block, admittedly, is the problem of skirting the line between having kids that come across as Draco Malfoy vs. having the kids swallow the opposition's dogma.
    • And that's exactly why I'm not buying it. If you want to successfully indoctrinate a kid, you must do it openly. Kids are pretty uncomplicated, really, and all fancy stuff you can use with adults, like subversive media, hints, indirect speech, etc. tend to fly over their heads pretty high above. Another problem, that it has to be done fairly early -- teens are already too late. But if you tell your preschool kid that you're really a foreign spy and (s)he will be too, in future, you may rest assured that anyone in the kindergarten or primary school will know about at by the next day. Oops.
      • Remember that the Alignment has access both to adjustment technology and to context-sensitive suicide rigs. Its not really a mystery as to how they keep people from talking. So much as mentioning the word "onion" to Victor Cachat in a context that made it plain he was talking about the Mesan Alignment caused Lajos Irvine to have a stroke right on the spot.
  • Apparently jossed, if you read the Dramatis Personae list at the end of Mission of Honor. Kubrick is listed as being the board director of the "Maxwell Association." Whether that system has any ties with Beowulf or not is, of course, up for debate.
  • In addition to that, it is specifically stated that all of the Renaissance Factor systems are in the Verge. Beowulf is, of course, a Core World.
  • Aaand, Jossed again. The Chairman of the Beowulf Planetary Board of Directors is finally given a name in A Rising Thunder -- Chyang Benton-Ramirez.

The Alphanes were a massively genocidal race of xenophobic pricks and/or ran right smack against the Great Filter

Let's do the math, here: There are 1000 F, G, and K class stars within 100 light-years of Earth, meaning that there would be 1,000,000 within one thousand--the radius of the explored galaxy in the Honorverse. In that volume there are "about a dozen" known sentient species. About 10% of stars in the galaxy are these classes, so if we take a conservative estimate of the number of stars in the galaxy, 100,000,000,000/10*12/1,000,000=120,000. There should be 120,000 sentient species in the Honorverse' Milky Way. Yes, they can "only" go some 40,000 times the speed of light, but still, we should have bumped up against someone more advanced than we are by now. Did the Alphanes kill them all? Or is whatever happened to the Alphanes the fate that awaits all sentient life in the Honorverse? (When I brought this up at the honorverse wiki, someone said that there were more than a dozen sapient species in the honorverse--which, if true, only makes things worse!)

• Although there are "about a dozen" sentient species within a thousand light-years of Sol, only one of those species (the nuke-wielding apes from Planet III) have actually built interstellar spacecraft. There are doubtlessly other sentient aliens out there, but none of them have ever left home.

Mesa will use the Manticorian Threat for their own ends, doing acts in the name of Manticore to force them into decisions

You know it, baby!

Nimitz (or some other treecat) will get elected into parliament!

Somewhat building on the above: Treecats will get humanity help them draft a formal declaration of war on Mesa.

• Treecats have been gradually becoming a more active part of galactic society. Not quite to the point of election to Parliament, mind you. But then, their adoptions by powerful people make them almost Almighty Janitors in a sense, anyway. They could get humans, like Elizabeth or Honor, to help them draft a formal declaration against the perpetrators of the Oyster Bay attacks. Maybe even a formal alliance with the rest of the Manticoran Alliance and/or Torch.
  • 'Cats don't need any such pesky details like declarations and other useless paperwork. ;) They are direct, uncomplicated people. If they decide that they need Alignment dead, they'll see to that, plain and simple.
    • Death by a thousand cats!
    • You're probably right, but imagine the look on Albrecht Detweiler when he reads the declaration.
      • Hiss, Hiss, Hiss, Screech... purr." - Nimitz
  • This is effectively confirmed as of A Rising Thunder. While not put down on paper, Sorrow Singer negotiates to make the entire treecat race bodyguards for potential targets of Mesa's assassin nanotech, as they can detect the emotions of a person when it activates.

Mesa will get caught in the crossfire of the war they manipulated

Well, it's not that far off from the Talbott cluster or the Solarian League, if a massive Manticoran fleet were to "accidentally" end up in their system and a few hundred missiles "just happened" to impact Mesa...

• No, no, no, no, NO! If Manticore's going to do it, they'll do it proper. Which leads to...

Shit's about to hit the fan and get WIERD!

OK, not really a WMG for the title...more like "writing on the wall". Actual WMGs:

• The SLN fleet heading to Manticore won't even pause to realize that the folks defending the system aren't all the same folks that own the system...but will get curbstomped just the same.
• Shannon Foraker will get access to Manticoran R&D - after the week-long nerdgasm, she'll start improving on Apollo (much to Sonja Hemphill's chagrin). Haven's production lines will start churning out the joint designs just as existing stocks run out.
• Haven goes after the Sollies for the deaths of their servicemembers killed in the Second Battle of Manticore. Meanwhile, Eigth Fleet goes for Mesa's jugular - along with a clan or three of treecats.

Hmmm. I better stop. The drool's starting to threaten to spatter on my keyboard.

• What I like to see (and I think will be seeing) is Renaissance Factor rearing its head with all the fanfare, only to be stomped to dust by Haven, as they steamroller the entire Solarian League. If anybody has the technology, population, industry and the will to do it post-Oyster Bay, it is the Republic, and Tom Theisman would probably gleefully dismantle every single plan Mesa had ever concocted and every hope they had.
  • MWW most probably won't let him. ;) If you read his infodumps at Baen's Bar, you can see for yourself that he's a sneaky bastard and abhors the concept of a magic bullet with a passion. So Haven might try, but they most definitely will stumble into some unintended consequence of the RF plans, or will have some another block, whatever. After all, who kills a gold egg-laying goose? ;)
  • The problem there is that Manticore and Haven are unlikely to realize that the Renaissance Factor are a part of the Alignment (at least initially). The Alignment's strategy is based around discarding Mesa and creating a new splinter state that has absolutely nothing to do with those murderous Mesan bastards. While Haven and Manticore have some information about the Alignment's long term strategy and goals they probably don't have any specific information about the more short term aspects so from their point of view once the League starts unraveling there isn't any obvious differences between the Renaissance Factor and other splinter states that may form (of which the Maya sector is likely to be one).
• The Mesan alignment intends to destabilize the Solarian union and grow it's Renaissance Factor out of the chaos to take its place. Manticore's plan, as proposed by Honor, is to destabilize the Solarian union into smaller forces which could be dealt with individually (either diplomatically or militarily)in order to avoid being squished by the sheer mass of the unimaginably larger Solarian union as a whole. I strongly suspect we will see the SU fracture, with some groups more closely allied with Mesa and some with Manticore. Then they will fight it out.

Wix and Kare will develop a Spider Drive detector

1) Wormholes have been described as holes between hyperspace and normal space. 2) Spider-drive ships punch holes from normal space into hyperspace to move. 3) Manticore has the galaxy's most experienced team of wormhole detectors on staff. 4) Said team was very conspicuously kept alive when Harvest Joy was lost.

• So you're saying they'll develop some sort of Spider-Sensor?
  • Yes. And it will tingle.

Beowulf will join the Star Empire.

Given the fact that the united Havenite/SEM Force will propably utter Curb Stomp Battle the Solarians in the Second Battle of Manticore the League will use this to officially declare war (instead of a police action) and scare the hell out of the Assembly to do so. Beowulf will object (and veto) and in response gets kicked out of the League (it is an option, according to Worlds Of Honor). Then the SLN will try to take over the Beowulf junction (which the Beowulf System Defense Force controlls) only to find out that the BSDF has the same toys as the RMN, while the Board of Directors negotiates to join the Star Empire as "Beowulf Quadrant"...in the end supporting Mesas plans to fracture the League.

• Confirmed. This is the major story arc of A Rising Thunder. All of the above pretty much happens, with a few minor details off. They aren't starting a "quadrant" or joining the Empire itself, but they are leaving the SLN and several neighbors are considering leaving with them. And they are all but stated to have joined the Grand Alliance.
• One more small difference: not only BSDF have all the latest Manticoran toys (which they prefer not to advertise having, though), but the Sollies coming to get them meet the RMN itself. Luckily for the people involved, their commander was smarter than Byng and Crandall, and, unlike Filareta, her ship didn't have Mesan agents.

Queen Elizabeth is a Mesan deep-cover agent

For one thing, we already know she's a Genie, like all of the members of the Alignment are. Also, she has proven quite effective in the past at screwing things up exactly in Mesa's favor. And as of Torch of Freedom and Mission of Honor, it seems like every other person in the galaxy is a Mesan deep cover agent at this point, so why shouldn't she join the club too?

• • Wait, no, she's bonded with a Treecat. So unless the Treecats are in on it too, nevermind.

Everybody is a Mesan deep-cover agent

It is a Kansas City Shuffle the likes of which has never been seen, and everybody is playing a part in the same grand Mesan plot and have no idea that they are all on the same side.

Honor and Nimitz are going to end up in a hand-to-hand fight with Albrecht Detweiler

And he will prove to be far more of a handful than they could have expected, thanks to his various augmentations. Possibly he will have assistance from his Alphabetically Aligned offspring.

• He'll need it. Treecats go through unarmored humans like a hot chainsaw through butter.
  • If they can get to them without getting shot first. Remember what happened to the treecat who tried to take out the programmed assassin on Torch.

Honor got the note added to Scotty's personnel file

In book 12, a personnel officer finally reveals that they're well aware of the tricks Scotty and Harkness have been pulling to get assigned to the same ship and they were unnecessary since there is a note on his file to keep them together. At the end of book 1, Honor asks Andreas Venizelos whether he has fixed an unspecified crew list mix-up, to which he replies that BuPers has accepted the fault and it should be all sorted out. In book 6 she is aware of the kinds of tricks they employ and wonders to herself whether they're even necessary. Finally, in book 1 they were treated almost as heroes, albeit mostly because they were the ones bringing in the high bounties for intercepting smugglers and thus making the entire crew comfortably wealthy.

• But how do we know that it wasn't Harkness who added the note, just in case...?
  • Because BuPers were well aware of his hacking and still considered the note to be genuine, indicating they either checked its authenticity, or simply went to someone senior with Scotty and Harkness' records and decided to let the note stand as their performance justified it anyway.
• In Ashes Of Victory, after getting knighted and awarded Manticore's highest honour Harkness mentions that he has spoken with someone high up about reforming in exchange for being let off over certain past indiscretions. Reading between the lines, the deliberately vague mention of BuPers could mean that he simply asked nicely while he was in their good graces.

"Charles" works for Beowulf Intelligence

"Charles" the supposedly rogue arms dealer has shown up in two short stories trying to scam the Peeps by selling them flashy, but ultimately useless, military hardware. Given that he could likely make just as much money selling useful military hardware to the peeps and a few hints in the second story that he is more than he appears he is presumably not a rogue arms dealer. So who is he working for? Beowulf Intelligence would seem to be the logical choice. Beowulf is known to have a good intelligence agency and a willingness to clandestinely act in Manticore's interests.

• It is, of course, also possible that he was a Mesan Alignment agent who was making sure that the Manties and Havenites stay balanced in order to keep either one from consolidating control in the Haven Quadrant.
  • The problem with that idea is that the stuff he was selling the peeps was not particularly useful and them adopting it would actually help Manticore since they'd be wasting resources.

The Mesan Alignment was not expecting the Haven-Manticore Alliance

And thus, their carefully-plotted plots are about to very quickly unravel beyond their control. They wanted a war between the Manties and the Sollies to destabilize the League and give them an opportunity to make their power grab, using their secretly developed technology to give them a foot up on any League loyalists, and to serve as a rude surprise to the Manties and their friends. They did not want Haven and Manticore to realize what they were up to, have key information on some of their new technology land in their laps, and team up to form a united front against the Sollies and Mesans.

They want the League to disintegrate amidst an atmosphere of general chaos, with the Manties fighting major wars against both the League and the Republic. Having the Republic and the Empire join forces not only means the Manties are not fighting a two-front war, but it also means they have received significant reinforcements, and they all know who their real enemies are. Assuming the more bloodthirsty Manties and Havenites can be kept in line, of course. There's nothing to say the Mesans can't try to fervent some revolutionary fervor amidst the Havenites against their government. It's not like that'd be a new development for Haven.

• You do enjoy playing Captain Obvious, don't you? ;)

The Honorverse is an Alternate Universe of Mass Effect without the Mass Relays

The basic principles of both universes' technology line up in that the main thing that they run on is gravity manipulation. Some other things like tactics for dreadnoughts and fighters/LACs match up as well, being long range slugfests and swarming respectively.

• Unless my memory fails me completely, HH predates Mass Effect. Also, Mass Effect very much still uses reaction drives for primary thrust - remember that the Tantalus (? - the gravity-only drive the Normandy uses) drive isn't in general use as it's too freaking expensive to use up that much eezo.
• OP here. It's not perfect but the basic premise is the same, just developed in different directions. And Mass Effect could be an alternate universe of HH too. Anyways, the idea was too awesome to pass up.

Mesa will be occupied very quickly

While they aren't quite aware of the Alignment, Haven and Manticore are aware that Mesa is a threat. Once they start pushing into League space, they will have no reason not to take Mesa as soon as possible. Of course, by this point, the Alignment will have moved to other worlds, and part of the plot will be finding their base of operations.

• Entirely likely. Mesa is only about 150 lightyears (Less than a month's travel for current Manticorian/Haven warships) from the Lynx terminus.
• Don't forget that the wormhole, which the Harvest Joy was destroyed studying, is heavily implied to lead to the secret Alignment homeworld. That's probably a major Chekhov's Gun.
• Entirely likely. In the only chapter focusing on Mesa in A Rising Thunder, they prepare to put into operation a plan called "Houdini" which will involve vanishing several core onion members. They discuss the use of additional nukes on their own capitol to cover up more disappearances. It seems likely that the Mesan Alignment planned to abandon Mesa from the beginning.
• Admiral Henke just brought a Manticorean fleet into the Mesan solar system at the end of Cauldron of Ghosts, so the planetary occupation is set to begin. However, the Alignment has already executed Houdini, to the point of tacnuking targets in their own cities (and blaming it on 'Ballroom terrorists') to hide the disappearances of Detwiler and key Alignment personnel.

OTP Contenders

Forget Honor and Hamish, Eloise and Javier or even Elizabeth and Justin. The true one true pairing of the series, the romance that was meant to be and will be beautiful to behold is to be between Shanon Foraker and Thomas Theisman.

• I prefer Shanon and Scotty. The hot-shot "fighter" pilot and the tech-geek :).
• Shanon is David Weber's wife name and a homage to her. Now the first author avatar was Hamish. It turns out David Weber has said there's a second one Herlander Simões
• Shannon Foraker x Herlander Simões. A dream team on multiple levels.
  • They could make it a three-way with Sonja Hempill....
    • Word of God is Shanon and Sonja do become instant BFFs...
• Shanon Foraker, Launcher of a Thousand Ships.

Sandra Crandall was not shot by a Mesan operative

She was fragged the old fashioned way by one of her surviving officers who blamed her for having gotten 1/3 of their personnel killed in a Curb Stomp Battle. That, or she was delusional enough to suggest trying to overwhelm and take down the Manticoran boarding team, and someone shot her before she could get anyone else killed.

• You silly goose, you don't really believe Sandra Crandall was as dumb as she liked to portray herself, do you? She was clearly a Mesan plant who knew her purpose in life was to get herself killed while delivering the Solarian League a resounding defeat. She expected her Flag Bridge to get destroyed in the battle, but because it wasn't, she killed herself and made it look like an assassination attempt.
• Jossed: There is a discussion between Detwiler and Bardasano in Storm From The Shadows about the feasibility of aborting the Talbott Cluster operation, before making the decision to go ahead. In that discussion Detwiler outlines the necessity of killing Crandall and Filareta anyway to keep them from telling anyone about their original arrangements with Mesa, which would not be necessary if Crandall were a loyal Mesan agent.