Mesan Alignment - Back on Balance

It's not too late for that.

Please remember, you are going up against Alphas. At this point, what the MA can do is orchestrate some sort of a Machiavellian plan of misdirection.

If I were them, I'd unleash Lenny's Pets along with the Spiders and everything else and along with the kitchen sink, in a total assault on the galaxy. They've got to be brutal and completely destroy infrastructure, even at the expense of an accidental Edict violation. This should be sufficient enough to frighten many systems. Let alone pretty much unprotected League systems. Then, the MA should equip the RF with tech that can fight them off. Supposedly. Systems will be beating down their door for protection. The MA can even falsely attack RF planets, as part of the misdirection.

IOW, raise unholy hell in the galaxy on a scale that's never before seen.

These are Alphas! Are they living on Gamma?

tlb wrote:The whole purpose of the plan was to put the Renaissance Factor into position to become the largest collection of people in inhabited space.

tlb wrote:The whole purpose of the plan was to put the Renaissance Factor into position to become the largest collection of people in inhabited space.

cthia wrote:Please remember, you are going up against Alphas. At this point, what the MA can do is orchestrate some sort of a Machiavellian plan of misdirection.

If I were them, I'd unleash Lenny's Pets along with the Spiders and everything else and along with the kitchen sink, in a total assault on the galaxy. They've got to be brutal and completely destroy infrastructure, even at the expense of an accidental Edict violation. This should be sufficient enough to frighten many systems. Let alone pretty much unprotected League systems. Then, the MA should equip the RF with tech that can fight them off. Supposedly. Systems will be beating down their door for protection. The MA can even falsely attack RF planets, as part of the misdirection.

IOW, raise unholy hell in the galaxy on a scale that's never been seen.

These are Alphas! Are they living on Gamma?

That is a plan, but it is not the Detweiler Plan. However after long hard thought about what to do next, maybe that is what they will decide. We will just have to wait to see what happens in the next book(s) with Eric Flint.

Tlb, who's to say what the Detweiler Plan really was, ultimately, and totally? What if the plan was much more encompassing than we give it credit for (like it most certainly is), superior to the Harrington Plan in every way?

How do you know there wasn't a contingency plan for this exact situation? Again, we are dealing with Alphas, they are accustomed to looking many chess moves into the future. And they had centuries to sit around camp fires while cooking their plan over the open flame - 'til desired doneness - and speaking clandestinely to the faces reflecting in the fire, contemplating their opening moves, and the End Game. If you haven't realized it, the MA are heavily into real estate. They're Real Estate Developers. They must know how to close a deal. They simply must, considering the business they're in. LOL

Anisimovna can easily write the final chapter. She gets my nod. And she's ruthless enough to make the call.

What Malign entity do you give the nod to to write the final chapter, like Harrington?

Have you given up on the OFS vs SLN thread that you started intending to show that the Office of Frontier Security should have been the salvation of the League navy?

tlb wrote:Have you given up on the OFS vs SLN thread that you started intending to show that the Office of Frontier Security should have been the salvation of the League navy?

Not quite done with that thread, no.

I can't say, for certain, that I'll ever be done with any thread, for certain.

cthia wrote:What Malign entity do you give the nod to to write the final chapter, like Harrington?

I do not want any Malign entity to write the final chapter, because that implies they survived to the end.

I hope that RFC will write the final chapter. Clearly he is not writing just for me, but I will be disappointed if he choses the course of action that you have described.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:What Malign entity do you give the nod to to write the final chapter, like Harrington?

I do not want any Malign entity to write the final chapter, because that implies they survived to the end.

I hope that RFC will write the final chapter. Clearly he is not writing just for me, but I will be disappointed if he choses the course of action that you have described.

You mean you really wouldn't want the MA to turn out to be a formidable foe? Formidable enough to make the Peep's notion of a Short Victorious War sound even more like a joke?

How else are they going to last long enough to give Honor's offspring a go at them, like what most of you are predicting? RFC isn't actually advancing the timeline a lot these days. Perhaps he's at that stage in the series. For now, anyway.


P.S. Disappointment is the MA turning out to be a patsy.

tlb wrote:I do not want any Malign entity to write the final chapter, because that implies they survived to the end.

I hope that RFC will write the final chapter. Clearly he is not writing just for me, but I will be disappointed if he choses the course of action that you have described.

cthia wrote:You mean you really wouldn't want the MA to turn out to be a formidable foe? Formidable enough to make the Peep's notion of a Short Victorious War sound even more like a joke?

How else are they going to last long enough to give Honor's offspring a go at them, like what most of you are predicting? RFC isn't actually advancing the timeline a lot these days. Perhaps he's at that stage in the series. For now, anyway.

P.S. Disappointment is the MA turning out to be a patsy.

I do not expect the story to last to Honor's children, I thought much of that timeline was changed by the response to Eric Flint's contribution. The Malign have already been a formidable foe, considering that they have been the hidden reason behind the fighting that we have read about in all these books.

I want the last chapter to be the cleanup after the Malign is gone.

P.S. Disappointment is that the SLN turned out to be a patsy.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:I do not want any Malign entity to write the final chapter, because that implies they survived to the end.

I hope that RFC will write the final chapter. Clearly he is not writing just for me, but I will be disappointed if he choses the course of action that you have described.

cthia wrote:You mean you really wouldn't want the MA to turn out to be a formidable foe? Formidable enough to make the Peep's notion of a Short Victorious War sound even more like a joke?

How else are they going to last long enough to give Honor's offspring a go at them, like what most of you are predicting? RFC isn't actually advancing the timeline a lot these days. Perhaps he's at that stage in the series. For now, anyway.

P.S. Disappointment is the MA turning out to be a patsy.

I do not expect the story to last to Honor's children, I thought much of that timeline was changed by the response to Eric Flint's contribution. The Malign have already been a formidable foe, considering that they have been the hidden reason behind the fighting that we have read about in all these books.

I want the last chapter to be the cleanup after the Malign is gone.

P.S. Disappointment is that the SLN turned out to be a patsy.

But. The SLN was never trotted out as anything, but. So they really didn't disappoint in that regard. It would be akin to being surprised that Plasma Stream ends up in the midst of a battle streaming, of all things . . . plasma.

The MA are Alphas. Alphas. That's got to count for something. The idiots in the SLN were certainly never portrayed as Alphas. Not even close. They made themselves out to be 800# gorillas, but I think they were really Epsilons. LOL

The Ma hasn't been a formidable foe toe-to-toe. They've been hitting below the belt and throwing uppercuts right to the chin, and hitting from behind the back. They've been deviant. Covertly ruthless. And sneaky. But never mano a mano. IOW, I wanna see the Lenny Dets hold their own.

tlb wrote:I do not expect the story to last to Honor's children, I thought much of that timeline was changed by the response to Eric Flint's contribution. The Malign have already been a formidable foe, considering that they have been the hidden reason behind the fighting that we have read about in all these books.

I want the last chapter to be the cleanup after the Malign is gone.

P.S. Disappointment is that the SLN turned out to be a patsy.

cthia wrote: The SLN was never trotted out as anything, but. So they really didn't disappoint in that regard. It would be akin to being surprised that Plasma Stream ends up in the midst of a battle streaming, of all things . . . plasma.

The MA are Alphas. Alphas. That's got to count for something. The idiots in the SLN were certainly never portrayed as Alphas. Not even close. They made themselves out to be 800# gorillas, but I think they were really Epsilons. LOL

The Ma hasn't been a formidable foe toe-to-toe. They've been hitting below the belt and throwing uppercuts right to the chin, and hitting from behind the back. They've been deviant. Covertly ruthless. And sneaky. But never mano a mano. IOW, I wanna see the Lenny Dets hold their own.

Being an Alpha only means that they think they are in charge. The natural variation among humans means there are more alpha capable individuals among the general population than ever came out of the Malign labs. This is extracted out of From the Highlands in Changer of Worlds:

The man spoke. His voice was soft and low. "I used to be a biologist, Kennesaw, before I decided to concentrate on my art. What you're seeing here is an illustration of the fallacy of Platonic thinking applied to evolutionary principles."
The words were pure gibberish. Something of Kennesaw's confusion must have shown, because the face emitted a slight chuckle.
"It's sometimes called 'population thinking,' Kennesaw. A pity you never learned to apply those methods. Instead, you made the classic mistake of categorizing people into abstract types instead of recognizing their concrete variations."
Gibberish. Another chuckle.
"You're only a 'superman,' Kennesaw, if you compare the average of the Sacred Band to the average of the rest of humanity. Unfortunately, you're now in the hands of two men who, in different ways, vary quite widely from the norm. Partly because of our own genetic background, and partly due to training and habit."

For many of the early books the Solarians were presented as the biggest power in inhabited space. It was not that long ago that you preferred to call them the 800 pound gorilla. Then we finally got to the action and they were the 100 pound weakling instead; so much so that it cheapened the Manticoran victory.

PS. I have no idea what Plasma Stream might be.