cthia wrote:They did know. Detweiler even discussed the possibility with Galton. And he apologized because it was their actions which had led to the breech. It was the first time that I recall a Detweiler admitted to being human. The MA didn't know for certain which system had been compromised, but they knew either Galton or Darius was going to be attacked.
No, sorry, I disagree with you.
They didn't know that sufficient knowledge about Galton's location in the Galaxy had been gathered. Therefore, they didn't know the timeline for Honor's visit. What they knew was that they had shown that an Alignment / The Other Guys did exist and was manipulating multiple polities.
Do note that they had turned Galton into a cut out more than a century ago. They definitely did know no one hostile to them knew its location at that point. So the Alamo Contingency's existence is not proof that the location had been compromised.
In any case, I am not proposing either that the Detweilers may be given a chance to lash out. Just like Galton, the GF may show up unannounced without so much bothering to phone in advance to see if they were home. If that happens and they aren't prepared to repel that offensive yet, they will go down without being able to send however many LDs may be operational to cause havoc.
If they do manage to repel the offensive but are now faced with an industry left in tatters in their system and the GF returning within 2 months, they could decide to lash out.
Which is why I think the former will happen.
In the future, Audrey O'Hanrahan will warn them. Did anyone notice that O'Hanrahan was allowed to communicate with the outside world while she was aboard Imperator? Am I wrong about that?
Her communication was monitored (like everyone's aboard a military ship under an OpSec plan is). It was made quite clear to her that she would not be allowed to divulge any military secrets and the way to ensure that was to simpl read her material before it was sent via courier.
It's possible of course she could have coded phrases that someone would pick up on. But this won't happen, for several reasons:
First, I don't think she would warn anyone, if she were brought aboard for a new offensive. If that were to happen, she'd have been made privy to the fact that the evil Alignment was not completely based on Galton, so the evil-doers of the Yawata and Beowulf Strikes were the ones being sought out. She could would not take the chance of tipping those guys off. Even if she thinks it's not her Alignment, she can't take the chance that the malignant one hasn't infiltrated her team and knows her codewords.
Second, there's the comm delay. If she's aboard Imperator, she's likely depending on RMN's own courier service to send messages out. If they're out training on somewhere unseen, those messages will take (say) a week to get to Manticore, then a week from Beowulf to Sol. Then you add another week from Sol to Warner and a week from Mannerheim to Darius. The GF may arrive before her message does and, even if it doesn't, what can they do with the limited time left? Which is also why I think she'd reason that there's no point in trying to send a message, in case she's wrong. And in case she's right about her Alignment, she would not want to compromise her position and her ability to intercede on their behalf because she could get caught.
Third, there's a simple expedient to avoid a leak: full comms blackout, except for high-level military matters. Once you are read in, you get no comms out under the OpSec plan. No lowly enlisted, no chief petty officer, no ensign, and no mere captain can send an unauthorised message off-site, and definitely not a civilian who is not even a citizen of the polities represented there. How do you avoid the fact that tens of thousands of navy personnel suddenly became a black hole? Before you institute the blackout, before you read anyone in, and possibly even before the ships are gathered for the final joint training, you start inserting multi-day delays into the comm queues, on top of what usually takes. That way, when the blackout kicks in, there are still undelivered messages in the queue, so the Navies can slowly parcel them out to the destinations.