The Manpower Files

SWM wrote:Tracking what Manpower is doing now will not lead to the Alignment. The Mesan Alignment has severed all ties to Manpower, and to Mesa, so anything the planet or corporation do from here on is their own doing. They have served their purposes for the Alignment, and the Alignment has set them loose. Their only purposes now are to provide distraction from what the Alignment is really doing.

Investigating the records and history of Manpower might be fruitful, but their current activities are just noise that investigators should tune out.

Except that the directive is to submit any and all information regarding Mesa, the MAlign or anything even remotely associated. We shall not exercise mental laziness or make the mistake of Lt. Meares' original investigator who failed to bring to the table an open mind. Current business dealings and operations of Manpower may not directly lead to the MAlign but may inspire other more fruitful areas of research. We shall assume nothing. We shall operate in the manner of the legendary Patricia Givens and leave no stone, no pebble, no grain of sand unturned.

As SWM has stated, Manpower has served their purpose and the MAlign has cut them loose. But we here at ONI realize that even the MAlign are human. Even the smallest mistake - the smallest detail - the smallest connection overlooked or forgotten or mistakenly underestimated could lead us to the fire from the smoking gun. Their arrogance shall bite them in their hidden orifice after we expose it. The same arrogance that has already yielded Herlander Simoes.

It was a huge and rather ambitious operation that the MAlign conducted. And human beings, being human, don't ever precisely conform to directives or orders. Someone may have talked to someone. Someone may have overheard something. Someone may have operated outside of assigned parameters. Or simply, some important aspect of design may have been flawed. Again, Herlander Simoes.

The MAlign was running a huge operation on Mesa and throughout the Honorverse and for them to just up and run and think that no frayed threads were left behind is a bit arrogant. And since they didn't kill everyone on Mesa or the galaxy at large, we here at ONI are confident that something somewhere is dangling. We're just pointing our lenses at Manpower on Mesa for starters.

I'm presently looking into the shipping of Manpower and the MAlign which appear to be extensive. Business dealings should be closely inspected. The MAlignment was also known to be associated with the Visigoth Wormhole. Is it possible that their hideout could be related to it?

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Theemile wrote:

SWM wrote:Detweiler was not the Chairman of Manpower, nor even a member of the Board of Directors. Detweiler worked from behind the scenes; he did not exert visible control on Mesa. There were very few people outside of the inner Onion who had even heard of Detweiler.

Well, they all know of Leonard Detweiler...

Most believe the Detweiler line died several generations back. Only a small, small handful knew it still exists, until the Onion was activated.

SWM wrote:Yes, sorry, I was talking about the current Detweiler, not the original Founder.

Do we know who the Chairman was, any hints given? Who seemed to be in charge at a distance? What corrupt political officials on Mesa was involved in any manner?

cthia wrote:Do we know who the Chairman was, any hints given? Who seemed to be in charge at a distance? What corrupt political officials on Mesa was involved in any manner?

I believe it was probably mentioned in Cauldron of Ghosts - gotta go look and see.

A couple of thoughts to add to the pot.

First off Manpower is the now discarded maskirovka of the Mesan Alignment. I would expect that the most thoroughly cleaned up data prior to departure was Manpower's. Those databases are probably nuclear slag.

The first place I'd be hunting would be Jessyk Combine's shipping manifests and records, both planetoid and orbital (shipboard or on station) for hints to their shipping routes. At that point I get a list of systems to search for more data. Catch a few Jessyk ships in Operation Laocoon nd you may get the leads on the escape routes used.

Also there are quite a few records within the league tied to Jessyk. Recall the discussion about how Jessyk was working through the League's legal system to secure the rights to the Felix wormhole. Looking into Jessyk's accounts and records within the league systems that they can reach or covert assets can reach would be a pretty good starting point for the search.

Heck, I wonder if Gustav is going to be interested in taking care of the covert research into Jessyk within the League since he's not at war with the SLN.

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:Do we know who the Chairman was, any hints given? Who seemed to be in charge at a distance? What corrupt political officials on Mesa was involved in any manner?

I believe it was probably mentioned in Cauldron of Ghosts - gotta go look and see.

SWM wrote:Detweiler was not the Chairman of Manpower, nor even a member of the Board of Directors. Detweiler worked from behind the scenes; he did not exert visible control on Mesa. There were very few people outside of the inner Onion who had even heard of Detweiler.

****** *

This is recorded directly into Manpower's file...

Unknown even to most Mesans, this chairman was a member of the Detweiler family, which secretly controlled Mesa during all of its history.

Not Detweiler? Would he yield Chairman and that level of control to another family member?

Current file amassed on Mesan shipping.

Pyramid Shipping Service.
Voyages Unlimited.

The Magellan was a luxury ocean liner travelling the oceans of the planet Mesa.
Operated by Voyages Unlimited, it was the first floating passenger vessel to be used on Mesa for centuries.

It was destroyed in mid-1922 PD as part of Operation Houdini, covering the secret removal of a number of prominent members of the Mesan elite. Of the 2,744 passengers and 963 crewmembers aboard, only 855 survived. (CS3)

Operation Houdini merits further sieving.

Axelrod Transtellar was a Mesan business conglomerate in the 20th Century PD.[1] (CS3)
It is unknown if it was in any way related to the Solarian Axelrod Corporation of the 16th Century PD.

The Axelrod Corporation was a Solarian transstellar business conglomerate based on Earth.

They were among the first to recognize the significance of wormholes following their initial discovery in 1447 PD, and the Axelrod Astro Survey Division went looking for the gravitic markers indicating wormholes in all previously surveyed star system. Various wormhole termini were uncovered within the territory of the Solarian League and outside it, including in the Manticore Binary System.

Axelrod financed an attempt by the Volsung Mercenaries to seize the system and the recently discovered Manticore Wormhole Junction with a mercenary-manned fleet before the wormhole was even surveyed. A Royal Manticoran Navy force under Admiral Carlton Locatelli was able to thwart that plan. The takeover was unsuccessful, but was still used as a warning example by Manticorans, including King Roger III, in the centuries to come. (Companion, HHA6.2: ACTA)

How long has Detweiler been planning his little surprise party? And how long did the MAlign know of its current hidey hole, Darius? Did the MAlign have anything to do with the Axelrod Corporation then or much more recently? Did they acquire certain data amassed by the Corporation which led them to Darius, or data they were able to suppress - regarding Darius?

As another officer noted, the Jessyk Combine merits further study.

cthia wrote:This is recorded directly into Manpower's file...

Unknown even to most Mesans, this chairman was a member of the Detweiler family, which secretly controlled Mesa during all of its history.

Not Detweiler? Would he yield Chairman and that level of control to another family member?

Yes, he would. I already said that Detweiler works behind the scenes. He is not publicly known. He does not wield visible power. He doesn't need it. Besides, Mesa was only yet one more blind that the Alignment hid behind. By themselves, the Mesan government and Manpower, Inc. were only small pieces of what the Alignment was doing. They were tools--useful tools, but only tools. Detweiler was busy working the real sources of Alignment power. He was too busy to be acting as a public figure on Mesa.

cthia wrote:This is recorded directly into Manpower's file...

Unknown even to most Mesans, this chairman was a member of the Detweiler family, which secretly controlled Mesa during all of its history.

Not Detweiler? Would he yield Chairman and that level of control to another family member?

SWM wrote:Yes, he would. I already said that Detweiler works behind the scenes. He is not publicly known. He does not wield visible power. He doesn't need it. Besides, Mesa was only yet one more blind that the Alignment hid behind. By themselves, the Mesan government and Manpower, Inc. were only small pieces of what the Alignment was doing. They were tools--useful tools, but only tools. Detweiler was busy working the real sources of Alignment power. He was too busy to be acting as a public figure on Mesa.

I wholeheartedly agree. By the nature of his clandestine plans, he wouldn't be visible. I wasn't questioning that. Actually, I wasn't questioning anything. (We need all input.) What I was originally thinking was that he utilized some other body as a figurehead to act as Chairman though he himself would be pulling the strings. What little exposure we had of him presented him as someone with total control. Who met failure with execution. At the time previous to flying-the-coup to Darius, Manpower and Mesa were important pawns. Pawns that had a specific purpose. I personally didn't think Detweiler would have yielded that type of control, except under his overall umbrella with predetermined directives. Because the slightest phuckup could prematurely ejaculate their plans and expose them. On-the-spot emergency decisions I'm sure were anticipated and allowed, albeit even then Detweiler was so sure of himself that the need of contingency plans was somehow the fault of the field agent. (I thought Anisimovna would be executed (I think that was her name))

At any rate, what really surprised me was the fact that Chairman was actually someone in the Detweiler family. I really didn't think he'd use someone in his family - for the same reasons he chose to remain invisible himself - less exposure of the Onion better guaranteed anonymity when later executing the hibernation phase of their plans.

But this assembling of the MANPOWER FILES brought that fact to my attention. Yet, not until that post had I detected that fact for certain. I was, surprised.

Regardless, for our purposes it doesn't matter who acted as Chairman and/or who actually wielded ultimate control. We're just arranging the pieces upwind and trying to get a sniff of any Malignant tumors.

Moreover, when Detweiler and the Onion split, to cause less tears from a split Onion I assume reigns were formally turned over to someone else? And our question here at ONI is who is acting Chairman now?

How many of the governing class in the Renaissance Factor are M'Align Star Lines? In ToF the comment is made that there is a lot of commonality in the genetics of Mesan slaves and Mesan Citizens, the slaves were the test bed for gating in DNA to the Star lines, there is a lot of overlap.

Mannerheim hosted a meeting, a summit meeting with many high powered people, is there traffic control records of their ships in orbit? Were the traffic control workers "Houdini"-ed?

Just suggested places to look.....

Maybe someone could send two marine intelligence infiltration specialists to check it out....

kenl511 wrote:How many of the governing class in the Renaissance Factor are M'Align Star Lines? In ToF the comment is made that there is a lot of commonality in the genetics of Mesan slaves and Mesan Citizens, the slaves were the test bed for gating in DNA to the Star lines, there is a lot of overlap.

I think there may be a bit of confusion about what "star line" means. As far as I can tell, it's simply the term they use for the best Mesan Alpha lines, and is not a separate group of genetic lines. In other words, top performing lines. There may even be "star lines" among the beta, gamma and specialty groups.

How they manage the genetic manipulation outside of Mesa is a bit of a mystery, but I wouldn't think there would be "star lines" out there. It would be too hard to keep track.

kenl511 wrote:Mannerheim hosted a meeting, a summit meeting with many high powered people, is there traffic control records of their ships in orbit? Were the traffic control workers "Houdini"-ed?

Just suggested places to look.....

Maybe someone could send two marine intelligence infiltration specialists to check it out....

This is a chicken and egg problem - you'd have to suspect Mannerheim first to warrant digging through their traffic control records - there are simply too many planets to dig through everything.

One place that does warrant checking is the traffic control records of major nodes to see if they can spot ships that are going from here to there too rapidly. That is, a search for streak drive couriers.