A copper-plated moral decision for the 'Cats . . .

cthia wrote:And so we come back around full circle. If a Treecat is sitting atop his person when he falls under compulsion and he is about to slit his two-leg's throat, would another Cat who is within reach slit his throat first? What if it is the better part of a bonded pair? Could Samantha slit Nimitz' throat if he is about to slit Honor's? Killing ones mate should be a tall order to expect out of a bonded pair.

Question: Since Nimitz is mind-blind, he should not be able to detect another Cat falling under compulsion, right?

And vice versa.

Since Nimitz is mind-blind, another Cat (let's say Samantha) shouldn't be able to detect when he falls under compulsion.

Nimitz isn't mind-blind though, he's only mind-mute. His transmitter is down, but he can still hear from other cats, and still senses emotions, we saw and got that from the first scene involving Honor, Nimitz and Sam upon returning from Hades, circa Ashes of Victory.

So he can still sense mind-glows, from first-hand experience, if someone else is Compelled nearby. But he'd have trouble warning relaying to other cats without direct LOS, because the mind-voice seems to have a distance of a few kilometers, more distance if it's a particularly strong mind-voice, or Memory Singer.

But that raises the question of whether or not a cat could still use their mind-glow if nanite compelled? So far no Human has spoken in scene while Compelled, but there's lots of evidence that the victim is blocked from saying what they'd want to say. Tim Meares would have screamed on Honor's Flag Bridge, or Rajampet wanted to gibber before he ate his pulser for two examples.

But the mind-voice is totally different, it doesn't seem to be a 'muscle' that needs to flex like a mouth+tongue+vocal cords need to. So a treecat that were Compelled, if Alignment could get around the whole 6-limb and multiple dispersed brains issues, may still be able to scream to other cats telepathically. Which could cause other cats, who may or may not also be infected, to all suddenly jump away from their VIPs in order to put distance between their claws and Humans.


Due to how hard it was to teach Nimitz to use pulsers, then Sam and Firewatch, we can be almost certain that no treecat would be 'Compelled' to use a pulser in an assassination. Takes too much unique muscle work, that the Alignment cannot possibly figure it out in order to force a cat to use them. Which makes Humans pretty safe from any Compelled cat so long as they stay out of arms-reach, which returns to whether or not you can still telepathically call out to other cats to move off shoulders or chairbacks in order to protect everybody else nearby.

I believe the humans who used pulsars under compulsion had all been trained (or learned - not the same thing) how to use them in the past and were failure with HOW to use them. Even Rajampet- who would have undergone small arms training really early in his career- would have "known" how to use a pulsar even if the conscious part of his mind didn't want to do what he was being compelled to do. It is unlikely that someone who has never used a longsword would be able to pick one up and be able to do more than just try and stab or swing it rudely in some direction....no working knowledge of sword fighting or the muscle memory of how to do that.

Brigade XO wrote:I believe the humans who used pulsars under compulsion had all been trained (or learned - not the same thing) how to use them in the past and were failure with HOW to use them. Even Rajampet- who would have undergone small arms training really early in his career- would have "known" how to use a pulsar even if the conscious part of his mind didn't want to do what he was being compelled to do. It is unlikely that someone who has never used a longsword would be able to pick one up and be able to do more than just try and stab or swing it rudely in some direction....no working knowledge of sword fighting or the muscle memory of how to do that.

The point of the nanite compulsion is that it carries with it the muscle memory; so the victim does not need to have trained with a weapon for the nanites to get them to use it. The problem with someone who has not trained with a sword, is that they might lack the muscle strength to do it properly; so it is simpler to use a pulser which does not require any particular strength.

That points out a problem with a nanite attack on a cat, as Somtaaw mentioned, the Malign has no way to find what the proper "muscle memory" would be for anything that they want them to do.

Brigade XO wrote:I believe the humans who used pulsars under compulsion had all been trained (or learned - not the same thing) how to use them in the past and were failure with HOW to use them. Even Rajampet- who would have undergone small arms training really early in his career- would have "known" how to use a pulsar even if the conscious part of his mind didn't want to do what he was being compelled to do. It is unlikely that someone who has never used a longsword would be able to pick one up and be able to do more than just try and stab or swing it rudely in some direction....no working knowledge of sword fighting or the muscle memory of how to do that.

Himself has a mildly bad habit that people on both sides of supersecrets tend to suddenly use the same terms within a book of each other. The Alignment started describing itself (internally) as an onion, and less than a book later both Manticore and Haven were also doing it. Haven finally naming their super-secret shipyards Bolthole, and Manticore suddenly calling it the exact same name is another example. Other similar situations abound, where names, places, or things get named in one area (even in total secrecy) and then suddenly everybody in the entire galaxy are using the same labels.

When Honor was discussing the nanites, when she said it was Alfred's opinion that it's transferred muscle memory we can be fairly certain that's how it actually works. The nanites are "trained" by an Alignment host, and then setup in the insertion method (pills, liquid spray, etc) and the victim could have zero training at all.

For something like the Rajampet suicide, some Alignment geek/operative/other, would be "infected" by nanites and start from a variety of positions near a communication screen and a working copy of Rajampet's desk.

Standing near the desk, sitting at the desk, probably covering a few other positions like leaning totally over the desk from the far side. And that "trainer" would teach the nanites to grasp the pulser no matter which direction it might be facing, lifting it up and putting it into his own mouth, flicking the safety off and then pulling the trigger. They'd probably spend days, or maybe even weeks doing the same actions, over and over and over, multiple times per hour.

The 'program' would be downloaded from the trainer's nanites, and then uploaded into the nanites grown from your victims DNA. Even if they'd never even seen a pulser except on their version of TV or movies, they'd still be able to do the actions because it's not their muscles (or skills) doing anything, it's the transferred actions of the "trainer".

The same teaching would work even for sword-fighting, YOU aren't doing anything but providing the muscles to actually carry out what the 'trainer' taught the nanites to do. Of course you'd have to do it without moving your feet, which probably means you are terribly off-balance, but you'd still be able to pull off Grand-Master level swordplay with your arms. At least until the nanite program either ends or otherwise burns out (insufficient data, no Compelled have ever not died by end of program) or your muscles could no longer continue moving the sword at the required elevations or speeds (again, insufficient data).

Honor's swordfighting win against Steadholder Mueller at the end of Flag in Exile, theoretically the Alignment could program someone else to perform that same backhand stroke that opened Mueller's torso from hip to opposite shoulder into a decapitation strike. Even Someone who'd never picked a sword up a day in their life could do the same movements, but due to (probably) not having Honor's enhanced musculature they'd only actually get the torso slice and maybe slash the throat instead of a full decapitation "head leaping off the shoulders in a gush of blood" finale.


Overall it should work on just about any human that doesn't have inorganic limbs. The mind to prosthetic limb interface may do something funky with signals, so Honor could very well be perfectly immune from the Alignment trying to use her own pulser finger against her. But that's a purely theoretical hypothesis from me, insufficient data on limitations and exactly how it works.

Somtaaw wrote:Himself has a mildly bad habit that people on both sides of supersecrets tend to suddenly use the same terms within a book of each other. The Alignment started describing itself (internally) as an onion, and less than a book later both Manticore and Haven were also doing it. Haven finally naming their super-secret shipyards Bolthole, and Manticore suddenly calling it the exact same name is another example. Other similar situations abound, where names, places, or things get named in one area (even in total secrecy) and then suddenly everybody in the entire galaxy are using the same labels.

There is a reason for that, it is called intelligence gathering. Both "Bolthole" and "Onion" were closely guarded secrets that got loose.

War of Honor, chapter 18:

"We don't know," Benjamin admitted, "but we have two straws in the wind, as it were. One is the existence of some top-secret project, one that was apparently launched under the Committee as much as several years before the McQueen Coup but which has been continued under Pritchart and Theisman. All we know about it for certain is its codename: 'Bolthole.' That, and the fact that Pierre and Saint-Just funneled huge amounts of money into whatever it is even at the height of the war and despite their worst financial problems. We don't have confirmation that Pritchart and Theisman have continued the same level of funding, but the discrepancy between what their revenues ought to be and what they're reporting certainly seems to suggest that some 'black project' is continuing to siphon off an awful lot of cash.
"That's straw number one. Straw number two is the name of the one officer our sources have been able to identify as being closely associated with whatever 'Bolthole' is since Theisman's little revolution. I believe you know her."
"I do?" Honor was startled and it showed.
"Oh, indeed you do," Benjamin said with something almost like grim amusement. "Her name is Vice Admiral Shannon Foraker."

Torch of Freedom, chapter 49:

Anton and Victor now knew a lot more about the true nature of Mesa's political system than they had when they landed on the planet, or than any other Manticorans or Havenites still knew. Jack McBryde had been cagey about imparting information to them, in each of the secret meetings they'd had since the initial contact. He'd peeled off that data much like the onion he used to depict the centuries-old strategy of the shadowy conspiracy he'd introduced to them as "the Alignment." Being as sparing as possible, each time, in the hopes of bargaining for a better deal.

tlb wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Himself has a mildly bad habit that people on both sides of supersecrets tend to suddenly use the same terms within a book of each other. The Alignment started describing itself (internally) as an onion, and less than a book later both Manticore and Haven were also doing it. Haven finally naming their super-secret shipyards Bolthole, and Manticore suddenly calling it the exact same name is another example. Other similar situations abound, where names, places, or things get named in one area (even in total secrecy) and then suddenly everybody in the entire galaxy are using the same labels.

There is a reason for that, it is called intelligence gathering. Both "Bolthole" and "Onion" were closely guarded secrets that got loose.

That's Mesa finding out it's called Bolthole through intelligence. Haven built it long before Ashes of Victory possibly as far back as IEH but it was never named on-screen by anybody. But the moment it was officially named by Haven, Manticore is using exactly the same name. Pat Givens or Manticoran ONI had suspicions about such a shipyard, but they never gave that project a placeholder codename of any kind. But within chapters of Haven officially naming it Bolthole, suddenly Pat Givens and the rest of the Manticoran Admiralty (including Honor) magically knew it, that's not military intelligence that's galaxy-range telepathy.


As for the onion thing, Manticore was using that description almost as far back as the Monica/New Tuscany incidents. Both of which predate Simoes defecting. Nobody truly had a sniff of what Mesa was truly doing until Simoes got to Haven and then Pritchart rushed him to Manticore, but while Simoes was kicking his heels on the broken down ship post-escape, Manticore already magically knew and was using onion comparisons. How can they know the name before the records of Simoes questioning even got dropped off at the Ballroom themepark battle station?


But here's another one, the "Silver Bullets" the ultra-secret weapon Alignment employed at Beowulf, and Hamish was calling them the EXACT SAME THING within minutes? He was still stuck on a maintenance boom of Beowulf Alpha, stuck due to a broken elevator. How could Hamish have possibly gotten a military intelligence briefing on what the weapons name was, or how it worked while the missiles were still flying? Pat Givens was a really good spook, but she wasn't that good to telepathically acquire Program Names out of the Detweilers residing on Darius, while she was in Beowulf.

That's what I mean when I said you can have a meeting 'under four eyes' discussing your latest top-secret, and less than a full book later, suddenly half the galaxy knows and uses the very same codenames for the weapon/location/operation. Nobody has any spies inside the Alignment yet, there is zero military intelligence gathering of anything remotely 'recent' but whenever the Alignment name something, the GA knows names pretty damned quick afterwards.

Somtaaw wrote:Himself has a mildly bad habit that people on both sides of supersecrets tend to suddenly use the same terms within a book of each other. The Alignment started describing itself (internally) as an onion, and less than a book later both Manticore and Haven were also doing it. Haven finally naming their super-secret shipyards Bolthole, and Manticore suddenly calling it the exact same name is another example. Other similar situations abound, where names, places, or things get named in one area (even in total secrecy) and then suddenly everybody in the entire galaxy are using the same labels.

tlb wrote:There is a reason for that, it is called intelligence gathering. Both "Bolthole" and "Onion" were closely guarded secrets that got loose.

Somtaaw wrote:That's Mesa finding out it's called Bolthole through intelligence. Haven built it long before Ashes of Victory possibly as far back as IEH but it was never named on-screen by anybody. But the moment it was officially named by Haven, Manticore is using exactly the same name. Pat Givens or Manticoran ONI had suspicions about such a shipyard, but they never gave that project a placeholder codename of any kind. But within chapters of Haven officially naming it Bolthole, suddenly Pat Givens and the rest of the Manticoran Admiralty (including Honor) magically knew it, that's not military intelligence that's galaxy-range telepathy.


As for the onion thing, Manticore was using that description almost as far back as the Monica/New Tuscany incidents. Both of which predate Simoes defecting. Nobody truly had a sniff of what Mesa was truly doing until Simoes got to Haven and then Pritchart rushed him to Manticore, but while Simoes was kicking his heels on the broken down ship post-escape, Manticore already magically knew and was using onion comparisons. How can they know the name before the records of Simoes questioning even got dropped off at the Ballroom themepark battle station?

As for "Bolthole", you are absolutely WRONG; that is not the Detweilers talking to Honor, that is Protector Benjamin.

I need you to provide text on the "Onion", the only references that I could find were internal to the Malign until McBryde talked to Anton and Victor (obviously it took time for them to get that information back). I searched through Mission of Honor, since that is the limit of my searchable text, but after that Anton and Victor have returned with their news.

"Silver Bullet" is just a standard phrase for a thing that targets something specific. So it need not be an example of people guessing a code name; they would still have said that, if the code name had been "Poppy Seed". So blame the Malign for picking a bad code name.

tlb wrote:As for "Bolthole", you are absolutely WRONG; that is not the Detweilers talking to Honor, that is Protector Benjamin.

I need you to provide text on the "Onion", the only references that I could find were internal to the Malign until McBryde talked to Anton and Victor (obviously it took time for them to get that information back). I searched through Mission of Honor, since that is the limit of my searchable text, but after that Anton and Victor have returned with their news.

"Silver Bullet" is just a standard phrase for a thing that targets something specific. So it need not be an example of people guessing a code name; they would still have said that, if the code name had been "Poppy Seed".

I admit I skimmed the Bolthole quote a little quickly, Honor's name literally didn't come up until the 2nd to last sentence. If you'd snipped it just a little shorter, that looks awfully close to the briefing Benjamin Detweiler gave to Albrecht.

For onion, you do realize there's lots of timeline shenanigans? the mainstream books incorporate information from the side-books that can't possibly have made it into the main books yet.

That's kinda the problem in writing sideplots in totally different books. Sometimes you forget that although your main plot is in 1923, you're writing a sidebook that's covering other events & actions back in 1921 and certain events can't possibly have happened yet. But people do know about them happening, because the timeline has gotten horribly screwy in the 1921-1922 range.


As an example, since we're already involving Anton & Victor so much. At the very end of ToF, the final chapter which even has a nice date.... April 1922, has Ganny telling Victor about how he's no longer a spy. So we have absolute confirmation that Anton and Victor were on Parmley as of April 1922.


BUT, we also absolutely KNOW that Anton & Victor (plus Simoes) were arriving in Haven as of April 1922 (A Rising Thunder, Ch6 gave the date, Ch9 has Anton on the bridge of the DB arriving in Haven). They had to arrive in Haven with enough time so Pritchart had time to travel to Manticore, get a peace treaty between Haven & Manticore, and then offer the military alliance to deal with Filareta before his scheduled arrival in Manticore which was set to (plus or minus) 11 June 1922.

Datapoints on travel times:

1. Anton & Victor arrived on Parmley on or around April 1922 (hard confirmation)
2. Anton heard about Haven attacking Manticore, the news over 2 months old on Parmley (BoMa was June 1921, which subtracting 2 months from the above arrival means it took ~8 months for such huge news to hit Parmley, even though Torch Manticoran contingent would have passed it along)
3. Havenite news of Honor ARRIVING in Haven took less than 3 months to arrive to Parmley, which was also the source of the dispatch boat Victor commandeers
4. Anton & Victor commandeered said HAVENITE dispatch boat to get from Parmley to Haven, (hard confirmation) which means it cannot use Manticoran Junction (probability, cannot confirm)
5. it would have taken Pritchart 4 months to go from Haven to Torch, which is said to not be overly far from Parmley. A DB could shave some time off that, but not that much time (soft confirmation)
6. it's only about 2 weeks from Manticore to Torch (Elizabeths travel time for the Torch Peace Summit)
7. Anton & Victor arrive Haven in April 1922 briefing Pritchart, who then immediately departs for Manticore to offer peace & military alliance
8. it takes roughly a month to 6 weeks for a fleet to go from Trevor's Star to Haven
9. Filareta arrives in Manticore and gets his ass blown away in June 1922.

Somehow Anton, Victor & Simoes are in upwards of 2 different locations simultaneously. In April 1922 alone, they were placed... arriving at Parmley Station, AND just arriving in Haven hoping to find Honor's peace summit.

So how/when the whole Onion thing could ACTUALLY have gotten to Manticore or Haven is incredibly fuzzy. Anton & Victor practically teleported directly from Parmley to Haven, and then again from Haven to Manticore.


I couldn't find any actual (non-Alignment) uses of the word onion prior to Simoes getting to either Haven or Manticore, and the word didn't appear at all prior to AAC. From AAC onwards, that one word tends to appear with alarming frequency both internally to the Alignment and externally. But it also tends to be wide-spread, Michelle was pretty damned quick to using Mesa=onion when she was pardoned by Haven and then deployed to Talbott, and that was prior to Battle of Manticore (July 1921).


Too many bits of screw information that in one source says happens on XYZ date, but in another source was on YXZ date. But it does give either the illusion or fact, that code names & events are spreading much faster than just explaining it as 'military intelligence' learning and distributing that knowledge.


On the bright side, although the 1921-1922 and early 1923 dates are awfully screwy, the timeline should be straightening out now. The Honorverse gets a chance to breath, and figure things out without the frantic pacing for about oh... 20 T-years? Honor's kids have to grow up before things get complicated again.

Somtaaw wrote:Somehow Anton, Victor & Simoes are in upwards of 2 different locations simultaneously. In April 1922 alone, they were placed... arriving at Parmley Station, AND just arriving in Haven hoping to find Honor's peace summit.

So how/when the whole Onion thing could ACTUALLY have gotten to Manticore or Haven is incredibly fuzzy. Anton & Victor practically teleported directly from Parmley to Haven, and then again from Haven to Manticore.

I couldn't find any actual (non-Alignment) uses of the word onion prior to Simoes getting to either Haven or Manticore, and the word didn't appear at all prior to AAC. From AAC onwards, that one word tends to appear with alarming frequency both internally to the Alignment and externally. But it also tends to be wide-spread, Michelle was pretty damned quick to using Mesa=onion when she was pardoned by Haven and then deployed to Talbott, and that was prior to Battle of Manticore (July 1921).

Too many bits of screw information that in one source says happens on XYZ date, but in another source was on YXZ date. But it does give either the illusion or fact, that code names & events are spreading much faster than just explaining it as 'military intelligence' learning and distributing that knowledge.

On the bright side, although the 1921-1922 and early 1923 dates are awfully screwy, the timeline should be straightening out now. The Honorverse gets a chance to breath, and figure things out without the frantic pacing for about oh... 20 T-years? Honor's kids have to grow up before things get complicated again.

I certainly agree that having multiple books repeating things made it difficult to keep track of events (both by the readers and the authors) after Mission of Honor. I hope that you are correct that what follows will stay closer to chronological order.

The thing that I wondered in the Benjamin and Honor conversation is whether he is telling information that was held jointly by Grayson and Manticore; because I could not see how Grayson would have a good intelligence capability in Haven.

tlb wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Somehow Anton, Victor & Simoes are in upwards of 2 different locations simultaneously. In April 1922 alone, they were placed... arriving at Parmley Station, AND just arriving in Haven hoping to find Honor's peace summit.

So how/when the whole Onion thing could ACTUALLY have gotten to Manticore or Haven is incredibly fuzzy. Anton & Victor practically teleported directly from Parmley to Haven, and then again from Haven to Manticore.

I couldn't find any actual (non-Alignment) uses of the word onion prior to Simoes getting to either Haven or Manticore, and the word didn't appear at all prior to AAC. From AAC onwards, that one word tends to appear with alarming frequency both internally to the Alignment and externally. But it also tends to be wide-spread, Michelle was pretty damned quick to using Mesa=onion when she was pardoned by Haven and then deployed to Talbott, and that was prior to Battle of Manticore (July 1921).

Too many bits of screw information that in one source says happens on XYZ date, but in another source was on YXZ date. But it does give either the illusion or fact, that code names & events are spreading much faster than just explaining it as 'military intelligence' learning and distributing that knowledge.

On the bright side, although the 1921-1922 and early 1923 dates are awfully screwy, the timeline should be straightening out now. The Honorverse gets a chance to breath, and figure things out without the frantic pacing for about oh... 20 T-years? Honor's kids have to grow up before things get complicated again.

I certainly agree that having multiple books repeating things made it difficult to keep track of events (both by the readers and the authors) after Mission of Honor. I hope that you are correct that what follows will stay closer to chronological order.

The thing that I wondered in the Benjamin and Honor conversation is whether he is telling information that was held jointly by Grayson and Manticore; because I could not see how Grayson would have a good intelligence capability in Haven.

It couldn't had been information held jointly because under Janacek, Jurgensen, his 2nd Space Lord, had cut the Graysons off completely. It is possible that the GSN had picked up a dropped connection because somebody was too much a Patricia Givens loyalist.