The Grand Alliance Grand Attack

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:I don't think you would be able to identiby highly stealthed ships and yachts in or moving around/leaving the Mesa system.
That would be primarily because they would not be using said stealth gear. Why bother? All it would do is call attention to themselves from the System tactical net/SDF. They also have no reason to be slinking around. You apparently can't yet identify Streak Drive ships just from visuals and there is no reason for the Alignment to put any Spider Drive ship anywhere near the Mesa system.

Traffic to and from the Mesa system has the option of the Mesa-Visigoth wormhole or just heading out in whatever direction is best for it's next or 1st destination on whatever business it is on.
I don't recall any discripton of Visigoth actually stopping and searching ships comming through from Mesa for slaves so any of the Houdini people who are being sent on ships with slave cargos are going to be a fairly good cover, especially if you only add two or four Houdini's plus a GAUL to any given ship. Heck, if the Alignment didn't use public transport from surface to station and just used private shuttles w/o bothering to list the escapees as passengers then you can move them off world and onto a cargo ship without all that bothersome paperwork that would let them be tracked.
There have to be places that ships come from or go to on a regular basis at Mesa through hyperspace. They don't have to be on any particular schedule, just the best direction (and that changes with planetary movement) and there is no reason why a ship can't head out as if it were going to the 123 System and change course a suitable time after it enters hyperspace. If I were taking a load of slaves somewhere, that is what I would do. Who is going to check (to this point) from the government of Mesa? Freighters also can carry passengers. They probably even do it on a regular basis and at a level of more than the occasional one or two. Depends on where ships are going and, typicaly, how often other scheduled transport goes- and how it goes- to the same points. It is not unususal now for what are essentily cargo boats to carry passengers to points on Earth's oceans without regular scheduled passenger service or where that service is infrequent.
Given the amount of potential space available on your average Honorverse freighter, they could easily have room for 10 to 20 people given that they are going to have (and want to have) plenty of available environmental capacity and support such as food. If you have a bunch of somwhat shady ships calling at Mesa all the time (slave transports etc) it would be relatively easy to put several people on even a non-slaving ship just by transfering them in regular cargo/supply lighters.

We do that that the shipping pattens were detectable. In CoG we have textev that the controllers on Balescu station noted the large increase in traffic. This indicates that there is something that Anton will be able to sift out of the background.

n7axw wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:We do that that the shipping pattens were detectable. In CoG we have textev that the controllers on Balescu station noted the large increase in traffic. This indicates that there is something that Anton will be able to sift out of the background.

I agree with you that the shipping patterns will be discernable at some level. However, I also will point out that "huge increase in shipping patterns" will mean something different in a wealthy system like Mesa with a large volume of traffic coming and going than it will for Balescu station with comparatively little traffic.

I would also suggest that the routing for Houdini won't be all the same. There could be dozens of initial stops that would fold back into one final destination as a technique for making the final routing harder to trace.

Don

fallsfromtrees wrote:We do that that the shipping pattens were detectable. In CoG we have textev that the controllers on Balescu station noted the large increase in traffic. This indicates that there is something that Anton will be able to sift out of the background.

n7axw wrote:I agree with you that the shipping patterns will be discernable at some level. However, I also will point out that "huge increase in shipping patterns" will mean something different in a wealthy system like Mesa with a large volume of traffic coming and going than it will for Balescu station with comparatively little traffic.

I would also suggest that the routing for Houdini won't be all the same. There could be dozens of initial stops that would fold back into one final destination as a technique for making the final routing harder to trace.

Don

fallsfromtrees wrote:I agree that the patterns will vary. My point was that there can have been only a few routes available, or there wouldn't have been a significant uptick in Balescu station's traffic. There were undoubtedly multiple way points, and not all routes would have used all of the way points, but there probably was a single final terminus that they all culminated at, from which the individuals wer moved to Darius. I suspect that the GAULs know of the penultimate terminus, but not of Darius - their job is to get their charges to the final collection point.

JohnRoth wrote:The other point here is that Darius itself has to have established (although clandestine) routes elsewhere, otherwise it couldn't be shipping munitions like the initial loads of cataphracts (which almost certainly came from Darius) and it couldn't be the new headquarters of the MAlign.

SWM wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:The other point here is that Darius itself has to have established (although clandestine) routes elsewhere, otherwise it couldn't be shipping munitions like the initial loads of cataphracts (which almost certainly came from Darius) and it couldn't be the new headquarters of the MAlign.

I agree that there must be clandestine ships going in and out of Darius (we've seen a few). But the intial shipments of cataphracts were almost certainly not produced at Darius. They were far more likely produced at Technodyne's manufacturing plants on Mesa. Technodyne developed the missile; they have the plans and have now shared them with the League. They didn't just get these missile designs from mysterious benefactors. It is certainly possible that Technodyne received hidden assistance from the Alignment, but Technodyne had to have done genuine R&D on it. Otherwise it would imply far too many people knowing things they shouldn't--R&D staffers, managers, plant workers, administrative assistants, and so on. There has to be a paper trail showing where they came from.

The far simpler is that Technodyne really did produce the missiles in the initial shipments. That is also the easiest way to cover it up against inquisitive people like Zilwicki.

SWM wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:The other point here is that Darius itself has to have established (although clandestine) routes elsewhere, otherwise it couldn't be shipping munitions like the initial loads of cataphracts (which almost certainly came from Darius) and it couldn't be the new headquarters of the MAlign.

I agree that there must be clandestine ships going in and out of Darius (we've seen a few). But the intial shipments of cataphracts were almost certainly not produced at Darius. They were far more likely produced at Technodyne's manufacturing plants on Mesa. Technodyne developed the missile; they have the plans and have now shared them with the League. They didn't just get these missile designs from mysterious benefactors. It is certainly possible that Technodyne received hidden assistance from the Alignment, but Technodyne had to have done genuine R&D on it. Otherwise it would imply far too many people knowing things they shouldn't--R&D staffers, managers, plant workers, administrative assistants, and so on. There has to be a paper trail showing where they came from.

The far simpler is that Technodyne really did produce the missiles in the initial shipments. That is also the easiest way to cover it up against inquisitive people like Zilwicki.

A Rising Thunder, Chapter 9 wrote:He'd been surprised Technodyne was supplying anything, given the legal firestorm still swirling around the huge arms manufacturer. But then he'd examined the new order a bit more closely and discovered that the "Technodyne" shipment had actually originated in the Mesa system.

Which was odd, since there was no Technodyne manufacturing facility in that system.

Technodyne did have a corporate headquarters on Mesa, so it might have made sense for shipping orders to originate there, but there was no way the missiles themselves should be coming from that star system. Not if they'd actually been built by Technodyne at least. Unless, perhaps, they were coming out of ammunition stockpiles already amassed by someone --- someone other than the Solarian League Navy --- in the aforesaid system.

SWM wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:The other point here is that Darius itself has to have established (although clandestine) routes elsewhere, otherwise it couldn't be shipping munitions like the initial loads of cataphracts (which almost certainly came from Darius) and it couldn't be the new headquarters of the MAlign.

I agree that there must be clandestine ships going in and out of Darius (we've seen a few). But the intial shipments of cataphracts were almost certainly not produced at Darius. They were far more likely produced at Technodyne's manufacturing plants on Mesa. Technodyne developed the missile; they have the plans and have now shared them with the League. They didn't just get these missile designs from mysterious benefactors. It is certainly possible that Technodyne received hidden assistance from the Alignment, but Technodyne had to have done genuine R&D on it. Otherwise it would imply far too many people knowing things they shouldn't--R&D staffers, managers, plant workers, administrative assistants, and so on. There has to be a paper trail showing where they came from.

The far simpler is that Technodyne really did produce the missiles in the initial shipments. That is also the easiest way to cover it up against inquisitive people like Zilwicki.

JohnRoth wrote:

SWM wrote:I agree that there must be clandestine ships going in and out of Darius (we've seen a few). But the intial shipments of cataphracts were almost certainly not produced at Darius. They were far more likely produced at Technodyne's manufacturing plants on Mesa. Technodyne developed the missile; they have the plans and have now shared them with the League. They didn't just get these missile designs from mysterious benefactors. It is certainly possible that Technodyne received hidden assistance from the Alignment, but Technodyne had to have done genuine R&D on it. Otherwise it would imply far too many people knowing things they shouldn't--R&D staffers, managers, plant workers, administrative assistants, and so on. There has to be a paper trail showing where they came from.

The far simpler is that Technodyne really did produce the missiles in the initial shipments. That is also the easiest way to cover it up against inquisitive people like Zilwicki.

Not quite.

A Rising Thunder, Chapter 9 wrote:He'd been surprised Technodyne was supplying anything, given the legal firestorm still swirling around the huge arms manufacturer. But then he'd examined the new order a bit more closely and discovered that the "Technodyne" shipment had actually originated in the Mesa system.

Which was odd, since there was no Technodyne manufacturing facility in that system.

Technodyne did have a corporate headquarters on Mesa, so it might have made sense for shipping orders to originate there, but there was no way the missiles themselves should be coming from that star system. Not if they'd actually been built by Technodyne at least. Unless, perhaps, they were coming out of ammunition stockpiles already amassed by someone --- someone other than the Solarian League Navy --- in the aforesaid system.

See ToF, Chapters 50 and 58. The Cataphracts are clearly designed for the Mesan Alignment Navy (MAN), and there is no reason whatever why the MAlign would farm out manufacturing them when they've got a perfectly good arsenal planet of their own.

And if they were coming from Technodyne, why didn't the SLN know about them? The MAlign has a lot of reasons to not let the SLN know about a new generation of missiles, especially missiles that would validate the reports of the Manticoran's "impossible" powered range.

SWM wrote:I agree that there must be clandestine ships going in and out of Darius (we've seen a few). But the intial shipments of cataphracts were almost certainly not produced at Darius. They were far more likely produced at Technodyne's manufacturing plants on Mesa. Technodyne developed the missile; they have the plans and have now shared them with the League. They didn't just get these missile designs from mysterious benefactors. It is certainly possible that Technodyne received hidden assistance from the Alignment, but Technodyne had to have done genuine R&D on it. Otherwise it would imply far too many people knowing things they shouldn't--R&D staffers, managers, plant workers, administrative assistants, and so on. There has to be a paper trail showing where they came from.

The far simpler is that Technodyne really did produce the missiles in the initial shipments. That is also the easiest way to cover it up against inquisitive people like Zilwicki.

JohnRoth wrote:Not quite.

A Rising Thunder, Chapter 9 wrote:He'd been surprised Technodyne was supplying anything, given the legal firestorm still swirling around the huge arms manufacturer. But then he'd examined the new order a bit more closely and discovered that the "Technodyne" shipment had actually originated in the Mesa system.

Which was odd, since there was no Technodyne manufacturing facility in that system.

Technodyne did have a corporate headquarters on Mesa, so it might have made sense for shipping orders to originate there, but there was no way the missiles themselves should be coming from that star system. Not if they'd actually been built by Technodyne at least. Unless, perhaps, they were coming out of ammunition stockpiles already amassed by someone --- someone other than the Solarian League Navy --- in the aforesaid system.

See ToF, Chapters 50 and 58. The Cataphracts are clearly designed for the Mesan Alignment Navy (MAN), and there is no reason whatever why the MAlign would farm out manufacturing them when they've got a perfectly good arsenal planet of their own.

And if they were coming from Technodyne, why didn't the SLN know about them? The MAlign has a lot of reasons to not let the SLN know about a new generation of missiles, especially missiles that would validate the reports of the Manticoran's "impossible" powered range.

SWM wrote:Okay, you got me on the lack of factories on Mesa. But the text also tells us that Technodyne has supplied the plans for the missile to the SLN and is manufacturing more. So they had to have those plans. You'd think that someone at Technodyne would notice if they were claiming to have created plans for a missile that never went through their R&D process.

Note the phrase "Unless, perhaps, they were coming out of ammunition stockpiles already amassed by someone --- someone other than the Solarian League Navy --- in the aforesaid system." It still seems to me likely that Technodyne did build the missiles, and they have been stockpiled on Mesa, just as Filareta hypothesized.

SWM wrote:Mesa has farmed out lots of their R&D to companies they control. What do you think Manpower is? Manpower has been their biggest R&D supplier on genetics for hundreds of years.

SWM wrote:As for why the SLN didn't know about them--Technodyne is not owned by the SLN. Technodyne has lots of R&D that the SLN doesn't know about. They didn't know about the pods or extended missiles that Technodyne produced, either, and we know for sure that those came from Technodyne.

JohnRoth wrote:So what I think is that Technodyne is something they're planning on sacrificing, and the legal troubles they are in over the Monica affair is simply a contingency that Detweiller and friends foresaw and are perfectly willing to allow. They don't need Technodyne, and it's bad strategy to plan on depending on it.