Houdini/MA

Sigs wrote:Ultimately though my point is that Houdini was absolutely unnecessary, they had 600 years to set up the plan, they had Darius for at least 50-100 years and most importantly they held the timetable. Waiting to pull off Houdini till the last minute is unnecessary especially considering they knew they will have to do it anyway at some point. So weather they spend the money 20 years before, raise no suspicions, keep your secret a secret and keep all your people alive or wait until the last minute, blow your cover, kill a bunch of your people and then destroy all the evidence which is evidence all by itself by the way is possibly the dumbest way to do things.

They probably needed some pulling the strings on Mesa to keep the transtellars playing their stalking goat role, and keeping them from doing something to disrupt the time table.

They may even have wanted some people tied into the genetic modification efforts, because the genetic slave trade let them 'stress test' modifications to see how they fared in more varied and rougher conditions than on Darius. (And you don't risk alienating your friendly Darius slaves by killing off their kids in high risk experiments).

But there was a lot of work in the research centers that should have been transferred long before. They might have needed as many as a couple thousand people on Mesa to use it as they wanted, but it seems they had multiple tens of thousands - most of which appear to have no truly compelling reason to still be there.

There'd have been some disruption as you moved people over, because it wouldn't be a 1-shot mass migration. But with a couple centuries to go in the master plan you can afford disruption of research to get better security.
I'd say when prolong because available that should have spurred them to start moving people - prolong means the new people are going to be around for a long time as if you move good prpospects while they're still young enough to get prolong it'll probably be before they settle down and raise a family and about the time they'd be likely to move away for a new job. So fairly easy to cover slipping them off to Darius. But that lets you let many of the current staff retire and die off of natural causes but doesn't lock you in to multi-century extended families the new prolonged workers will eventually have, when the time comes to pull the Houdini trigger.

Think how deep and intertwined the family structures might be given another century when you might have 1st gen prolong great, great, great, great grandparents still in the prime of their life and interacting with all the follow-on generations. Moving many of those people would be way more noticeable - but if you don't (and don't kill them) they're a potential security threat (if Mesa is captured) for at least another century. Better, to my mind, to sidestep that complication and send all but the most dedicated and necessary prolong recipients directly off to Darius where their tendency to form families doesn't make Houdini any more complicated.

Jonathan_S wrote:They probably needed some pulling the strings on Mesa to keep the transtellars playing their stalking goat role, and keeping them from doing something to disrupt the time table.

They may even have wanted some people tied into the genetic modification efforts, because the genetic slave trade let them 'stress test' modifications to see how they fared in more varied and rougher conditions than on Darius. (And you don't risk alienating your friendly Darius slaves by killing off their kids in high risk experiments).

But there was a lot of work in the research centers that should have been transferred long before. They might have needed as many as a couple thousand people on Mesa to use it as they wanted, but it seems they had multiple tens of thousands - most of which appear to have no truly compelling reason to still be there.

There'd have been some disruption as you moved people over, because it wouldn't be a 1-shot mass migration. But with a couple centuries to go in the master plan you can afford disruption of research to get better security.
I'd say when prolong because available that should have spurred them to start moving people - prolong means the new people are going to be around for a long time as if you move good prpospects while they're still young enough to get prolong it'll probably be before they settle down and raise a family and about the time they'd be likely to move away for a new job. So fairly easy to cover slipping them off to Darius. But that lets you let many of the current staff retire and die off of natural causes but doesn't lock you in to multi-century extended families the new prolonged workers will eventually have, when the time comes to pull the Houdini trigger.

Think how deep and intertwined the family structures might be given another century when you might have 1st gen prolong great, great, great, great grandparents still in the prime of their life and interacting with all the follow-on generations. Moving many of those people would be way more noticeable - but if you don't (and don't kill them) they're a potential security threat (if Mesa is captured) for at least another century. Better, to my mind, to sidestep that complication and send all but the most dedicated and necessary prolong recipients directly off to Darius where their tendency to form families doesn't make Houdini any more complicated.

I think ultimately this is a case of "look how naughty and clever we are"... the MA thought that they can control everything around them and they can control what others did.

I wonder if any of the people they killed in Houdini had close family in Darius... it would be interesting to see the reaction of those on Darius.

We know they shipped some people to Darius using slavers but they would never trust them with such a location. So how would they move people from them. They would send alignment ships, ships most likely to have key navigational data concerning, Felix, Darius, the twins and the Unknown terminii.

SYED wrote:We know they shipped some people to Darius using slavers but they would never trust them with such a location. So how would they move people from them. They would send alignment ships, ships most likely to have key navigational data concerning, Felix, Darius, the twins and the Unknown terminii.

They were transferred to another ship later that was trusted to get to Darius.

We know that GAULs were sent with the first groups to be relocated as some of the people in those groups were deemed to be suspect at going through with the relocation, but were there enough GAUL operatives to cover all the groups and especially the last few groups to leave?

It seems to me that absent a GAUL operative on board to make sure the ship blows up, there is a possibility that a ship with the location for Darius might be compromised at the transfer point where it is supposed to meet the ship coming from Mesa.

SYED wrote:We know they shipped some people to Darius using slavers but they would never trust them with such a location. So how would they move people from them. They would send alignment ships, ships most likely to have key navigational data concerning, Felix, Darius, the twins and the Unknown terminii.

They'd have to know how to get to Darius. That doesn't mean they'd have anything on board that would compromise anything else. In particular, if they weren't going to use the Felix wormhole, then they wouldn't have anything about it on board. These people seem to have raised secrecy to a high art.

What is more likely revealing Darius real space location, or the data to traverse the junction to Darius? One of the reason they picked Darius as it is far from any human outpost. I doubt many ships would travel to unknown space unprepared. There is always the risk the ship could escape and leak the data. The junction data while riskier allows them greater control of ships entering and exiting the system.

George J. Smith wrote:We know that GAULs were sent with the first groups to be relocated as some of the people in those groups were deemed to be suspect at going through with the relocation, but were there enough GAUL operatives to cover all the groups and especially the last few groups to leave?

It seems to me that absent a GAUL operative on board to make sure the ship blows up, there is a possibility that a ship with the location for Darius might be compromised at the transfer point where it is supposed to meet the ship coming from Mesa.

Every trusted member of the alignment has so for been seen has died before talking. Exactly how has varied, but I have pretty high confidence that the people trusted with the biggest secrets of the MA are not going to talk about them.

Note that the RMN captured several hundred thousand of RHN crew on hundreds of RHN ships that had all been built and trained up at bolthole. And they captured them with their computers intact. And thy learned essentially NOTHING about where bolthole is or how to find it.

I strongly suspect that Darius does not get found in the last book.

kzt wrote:I strongly suspect that Darius does not get found in the last book.

Probably not. I'm expecting Prometheus to be launched, even if e don't see anything more than the MA fleets sorting their home systems.

I guess it is possible that Darius will not be found in the current book series, but I think the twins and Felix would be found. From there they could locate other terminii but it takes time and effort. So the alignment would be preparing an invasion that could happen any time soon.

Those people they are sending to Darius. There are two option travel via normal means or terminii. If wormhole travel is on the table, they have three options, travel to the twins or one of the two unknown terminii of the Felix junction. They could go to Felix directly, but if it is truly a stealth mission, it makes sense to head into the verge rather than the core.

I believe the Felix junction will be fought over in the books. It is clear the Mesa forces were trying to hide something about the torch wormhole bridge. They did not want anyone using it. This is clearly something a tramstellar would not do, so the alignment is behind it. Those ships at the twins must have data on Felix, leading the alliance there, and potentially to Darius in the the future. The alignment can't risk an enemy star nation holding torch, as it is similar to when haven held Trevor's star. They would have to dedicate a military force to ensure no invasion is viable.