Cirys superzorcher (n.): A hypothetical weapons system in which the various elements of a Cirys swarm (q.v.) are equipped to function as the radiative elements of a phased-array laser. Such an array, with an effective aperture equal to the diameter of the swarm, would theoretically be able to deliver a substantial portion of the total solar output of the contained star in a single beam against targets located at interstellar distances.
Occasional peaceful uses for such beams have been mooted, including laser sail propulsion (although it should be noted that there is little call for such craft on a larger scale than existing propulsion arrays – which have the advantage of being mobile – can handle, and the ability to build a laser-sail craft capable of surviving such propulsion is questionable), long-distance, including extragalactic, communications (a matter of great interest to the Elsewhere Society), and even remote power generation and delivery.
However, while condemned by Cirys Aendyr himself – who is said to have wept when this application of his concept was brought to his attention – the most common proposal is to use the Cirys superzorcher as the weapons system implied by its name. The ability to place so much power on target (a figure of the order of 108 exawatts for a Hearth-class star) across interstellar distances, capable of vaporizing lithic worlds and severely damaging gas giants and stars, is peculiarly attractive to certain types of mentality, especially when it is considered that the purely photonic beam of a superzorcher is substantially more difficult to detect than a typical RKV, and cannot be practically intercepted or recalled.
As such, while the Cirys superzorcher requires a high degree of technological advancement and autoindustrialism to produce (a potential currently limited to the Empire and certain other Core Markets) and is in any case a prohibited weapons system (classified as a Tier I star-killer under the Ley Accords), an informal consensus exists among the Presidium powers that the construction of such a device by any polity, within or without the Worlds, may be reasonably interpreted as notice of intent to commit gigacide, and as such is a legitimate cause for preemptive defense of the highest order.
…so. One of the few useful applications of the Cirys-superzorcher-in-an-autoindustrial-box is to induce CASE SKYSHOCK RED and wreck the Worlds by autoimmune fratricide. Not useful to the Worlds, but useful to their neighbours, if their neighbours were desperate enough.
I’m not clear on whether the Republic has the necessary technical base to set up a couple of dozen superzorchers inside the Worlds and frame the eldrae for it. But I’m not clear that they don’t.
On the one hand, autoindustrialism is one of those concepts that makes the Republic a mite… twitchy… given their attitudes towards a variety of technologies.
And on the same hand, in the above comments are the reasons why doing this even once without (a) leaving a trail pointing back to you that can be followed by anyone equipped with eyeballs, and (b) being caught at it by rather obvious changes in the astronomy of the target star is extremely impractical, never mind doing it more than once.
And further on the same hand is that a convincing frame job requires at least a vaguely plausible motive.
And even further on that hand is that the Republic, despite its sundry issues, is not in fact run by psychotic mass-murderers.
But even leaving aside those things, the chief problem with such a plan is that it is a plan basically isomorphic to China, say, or France, or Australia, in the middle of the Cold War deciding that what they really ought to do is frame one of the superpowers for launching a massive nuclear first-strike on the grounds that after triggering Armageddon, they can sit back and relax in the assurance that they’ll come out ahead and the bad consequences will only happen to other people.
As such, any Republic admirals likely to come up with such a plan are transferred without delay to St. Dymphna’s Home for the Dangerously Deranged and kept on a strict diet of antipsychotic drugs and severely restricted visitor permissions for the rest of their lives.
The real Operation Northwoods, unlike the version in Stross’s Merchant Princes books, wasn’t proposing a nuclear false flag (that anyone’s admitted, anyway!), but it was close enough.