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MAlignment and forward command

Join us in talking discussing all things Honor, including (but not limited to) tactics, favorite characters, and book discussions.
Re: MAlignment and forward command
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Mon Jul 19, 2021 11:13 am

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cthia wrote:But only after OB was it glaringly obvious that it was NOT Haven. And again, the color of rage only made Manticore think of bases, planets, where they could send a squadron or two. Mesa was the perfect place to hide in plain sight. It certainly didn't warrant a squadron at the time.


Well, yes, because Honor was on Haven, with Pritchart and Theisman, discussing the very friendly terms for cessation of hostilities. The Harrington Plan was already in effect and being applied to the closest, big neighbour (considering San Martin was part of the Old Star Kingdom, a neighbour surrounding an enclave of the SEM).

But it was also glaringly obvious at this point that it had to be a state actor. So it couldn't be Manpower as a company.

BTW, the one thing all of the victims have in common is support for the Beowulf Code. In no way is it obvious, and the SL as a victim skews the data since they have unscrupulous elements that patronized slavery. So the fact was well hidden in the data. But, wading through the mire is the job of the best psychological profilers.

But again, compiling a psyche profile for the likes of the MA should be a copper-plated Cordelia Ransom. But, the HV should have the use of extremely capable AIs. There was an abundance of crimes of passion. OB was a crime of passion. And the attempted assassination of Queen Berry was a key nugget.


Haven did have a support for the Beowulf Code and the Cherwell Convention, and yet Haven was not struck. And Beowulf itself was not struck, not at this time. It couldn't have been. In fact, from what we're told most civilised systems included support for the Beowulf Code, including the SL itself.

So I don't think your profile is very good there. It doesn't limit enough.

No, the highest correlation instead was opposition to Haven. Do remember the fact that the mind-control attack on Harrington and on Webster bore a lot of similarities to the Hofschulte Incident attacking Prince Huang Anderman. With OB, all of the big Haven-opposing nations had been attacked.

Before OB, what should have been the give-away was that the Operation Rat Poison attack on Queen Berry was clearly an attack on Queen Berry, not an attack on Manticore. Assassinations were used by the State Sec before, but attacking Queen Berry did not advance Haven's agenda. They were in fact supporting Torch and competing with Manticore in that. With no clear successor who would favour Haven, removing Queen Berry wouldn't have helped Haven at all.

Moreover, OSJ, if he were coordinating that attack, would have waited. There's too little (or nothing!) to gain in attacking Queen Berry alone; but had he waited a little, he would have got Queen Elizabeth or at least some of her high-ranking advisors who would have come for the peace summit. The attack on Berry made Beth stay at home, turtle and direct her anger at Haven. It was completely counter-productive for Haven.

cthia wrote:Indeed! When a murder occurs in a family, family members become natural suspects. OB was responsible for the murder of many family members. So naturally, family is suspected first. In this case it is the "family of natural enemies." The normal suspects simply have to be ruled out first. They are the closest to the crime, statistically. It is the age-old childish prank. If you are standing third in a line of students and you reach around and smack the back of the head of the person standing first in line, who is he naturally going to suspect when he turns around? That is why the MA chose this tactic. It is older than Methuselah and as effective as penicillin. How can you suspect someone who doesn't exist? And how can you suspect someone of committing a crime with advanced weaponry who can't possibly have access to such advanced weaponry? And, what motive would Mesa or Manpower have to commit such an atrocity?


Exactly!

By the way, you forgot the most obvious suspect: the butler.
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Re: MAlignment and forward command
Post by cthia   » Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:40 pm

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
cthia wrote:But only after OB was it glaringly obvious that it was NOT Haven. And again, the color of rage only made Manticore think of bases, planets, where they could send a squadron or two. Mesa was the perfect place to hide in plain sight. It certainly didn't warrant a squadron at the time.


Well, yes, because Honor was on Haven, with Pritchart and Theisman, discussing the very friendly terms for cessation of hostilities. The Harrington Plan was already in effect and being applied to the closest, big neighbour (considering San Martin was part of the Old Star Kingdom, a neighbour surrounding an enclave of the SEM).

But it was also glaringly obvious at this point that it had to be a state actor. So it couldn't be Manpower as a company.

BTW, the one thing all of the victims have in common is support for the Beowulf Code. In no way is it obvious, and the SL as a victim skews the data since they have unscrupulous elements that patronized slavery. So the fact was well hidden in the data. But, wading through the mire is the job of the best psychological profilers.

But again, compiling a psyche profile for the likes of the MA should be a copper-plated Cordelia Ransom. But, the HV should have the use of extremely capable AIs. There was an abundance of crimes of passion. OB was a crime of passion. And the attempted assassination of Queen Berry was a key nugget.


Haven did have a support for the Beowulf Code and the Cherwell Convention, and yet Haven was not struck. And Beowulf itself was not struck, not at this time. It couldn't have been. In fact, from what we're told most civilised systems included support for the Beowulf Code, including the SL itself.

So I don't think your profile is very good there. It doesn't limit enough.

No, the highest correlation instead was opposition to Haven. Do remember the fact that the mind-control attack on Harrington and on Webster bore a lot of similarities to the Hofschulte Incident attacking Prince Huang Anderman. With OB, all of the big Haven-opposing nations had been attacked.

Before OB, what should have been the give-away was that the Operation Rat Poison attack on Queen Berry was clearly an attack on Queen Berry, not an attack on Manticore. Assassinations were used by the State Sec before, but attacking Queen Berry did not advance Haven's agenda. They were in fact supporting Torch and competing with Manticore in that. With no clear successor who would favour Haven, removing Queen Berry wouldn't have helped Haven at all.

Moreover, OSJ, if he were coordinating that attack, would have waited. There's too little (or nothing!) to gain in attacking Queen Berry alone; but had he waited a little, he would have got Queen Elizabeth or at least some of her high-ranking advisors who would have come for the peace summit. The attack on Berry made Beth stay at home, turtle and direct her anger at Haven. It was completely counter-productive for Haven.

cthia wrote:Indeed! When a murder occurs in a family, family members become natural suspects. OB was responsible for the murder of many family members. So naturally, family is suspected first. In this case it is the "family of natural enemies." The normal suspects simply have to be ruled out first. They are the closest to the crime, statistically. It is the age-old childish prank. If you are standing third in a line of students and you reach around and smack the back of the head of the person standing first in line, who is he naturally going to suspect when he turns around? That is why the MA chose this tactic. It is older than Methuselah and as effective as penicillin. How can you suspect someone who doesn't exist? And how can you suspect someone of committing a crime with advanced weaponry who can't possibly have access to such advanced weaponry? And, what motive would Mesa or Manpower have to commit such an atrocity?


Exactly!

By the way, you forgot the most obvious suspect: the butler.

Haven wasn't attacked, directly. But they were certainly being attacked by proxy and by patsy. The RMN were the patsies. :D

But I agree that even with those data points it still might have been a stretch for less than the most accomplished profilers. Which I why I said that the attempt on Queen Berry was the key nugget. In fact, I thought the MA took a big chance with that assassination attempt because of its similarity to the Andermani assassination. And others.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: MAlignment and forward command
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Mon Jul 19, 2021 6:47 pm

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cthia wrote:Haven wasn't attacked, directly. But they were certainly being attacked by proxy and by patsy. The RMN were the patsies. :D

But I agree that even with those data points it still might have been a stretch for less than the most accomplished profilers. Which I why I said that the attempt on Queen Berry was the key nugget. In fact, I thought the MA took a big chance with that assassination attempt because of its similarity to the Andermani assassination. And others.


Well, yes. Haven certainly knew they weren't responsible for the attacks on Honor, on Adm. Webster, and on Queen Berry. And moreover they knew that someone had been attacking their own citizens using the same technique. So they knew there was a third party involved long before anyone else suspected. They just didn't know who that was.

I completely agree that the attack on Queen Berry was the key nugget. The inner onion ordered Rat Poison executed as a knee-jerk reaction to losing Verdant Vista to emancipated slaves. They were angry and made decisions coloured by emotion, instead of a cold calculation. They even discussed the fact that overusing the mind control technique could eventually backfire and so it did.

They did have reasons to attack Torch. Two come to mind: first, the wormhole. If Torch kept on exploring the wormhole to The Twins, they might have got lucky and got through when no one from Mannerheim was there waiting. Or they may get lucky and find information on some data banks that weren't properly scrubbed (probably because the classified information shouldn't have been copied there in the first place, but humans are humans and will write down their passwords on post-it notes and attach to their screens).

The second was the intensification of the Ballrooom's campaign against Manpower and Jessyk, upgraded to all-out war executed by a state Navy with the best technology available. That could have seriously disrupted the MAlign operations at a critical moment (and I predict they actually did just that, to be seen on To End in Fire later this year).

Those reasons remained even after Rat Poison, as seen by the attack by the People's Navy in Exile on the Congo System later the same year.

So they had reason to strike at Torch and they needed to force hostilities to resume between Haven and the Alliance. But they chose the wrong tool for the job. They were lucky that Beth was angered enough to cloud her own judgement.
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Re: MAlignment and forward command
Post by Galactic Sapper   » Tue Jul 20, 2021 10:34 am

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
munroburton wrote:But they did look and ended up going there - twice. The Mesa system was the Alignment's forward command post, with Darius being its true headquarters.


And I'm sure the intelligence agencies did consider other possibilities, but nothing was forthcoming. Harrington did mention that the attacks did not bear the usual MO of the Havenites or Peeps. The use of a known Haven citizen to kill Ambassador Webster was way too obvious, and the technology used to strike at Queen Berry was not something the Havenites were known or expected to possess.


And most of the rationale for dismissing "other possibilities" was the travel time. Something that could have been sidestepped by Mesa having a forward command post.

But the problem as I said is that there were no other, better alternatives. Who were they going to suspect? Who had anything to gain from a continued war? Until Zilwicki returned from Mesa, there was no reason to suspect that Manpower was anything beyond the corrupt transstellar involved in slavery. So Occam's Razor applied to everyone.


The reason for the first trip to Mesa was that Anton and Victor already suspected Manpower was something beyond a corrupt transstellar. They went seeking proof of something both of them were already convinced was true.

Joat42 wrote:I think it's even mentioned by Zilwicki(?) in one of the books how odd the timing was for some MAlign agent/operation until they realized that everything needed clearance from somewhere else.


I'd need to see some textev to support that, primarily because the reason Mesa was discounted as a potential culprit was because there hadn't been time for a courier to get to Mesa with news of the peace conference and get back with orders to do something about it.

What you're probably thinking of is the provocations coming from Haven in the lead up to the first war beginning in SVW. There was a distinct pattern of attacks, the pacing of which too-conveniently matched the transit times between the areas of the attacks and the Peep forward command at Barnett. And of course the reason Parnell had moved command to Barnett was to shorten the incident-response loop by up to 5 weeks per cycle.
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Re: MAlignment and forward command
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Tue Jul 20, 2021 1:52 pm

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Galactic Sapper wrote:And most of the rationale for dismissing "other possibilities" was the travel time. Something that could have been sidestepped by Mesa having a forward command post.


True, but anyone can have forward command posts. If you assume the decisions were made by someone on either Manticore or Haven or somewhere nearby, then you don't eliminate anyone.

What this does is say that travel time cannot be a reason for elimination. It can be a strong indicator to say it isn't someone, but it can't be used to rule anyone out.

The reason for the first trip to Mesa was that Anton and Victor already suspected Manpower was something beyond a corrupt transstellar. They went seeking proof of something both of them were already convinced was true.


And do remember that the pair paid a visit to Honor aboard HMS Invictus at Trevor's Star before going to Mesa. I'm trying to find out whether this happened before Rat Poison or after, but the wiki is not being forthcoming. The Green Pines incident, which is when they left Mesa, was November 1921, so after Rat Poison and Sanskrit. I'll open the books later to make a text search.

Given travel times, it's likely this was before Rat Poison, so Honor already knew they suspected Manpower of operating as a state agent by the time they had to figure out who was responsible for Rat Poison.

I'd need to see some textev to support that, primarily because the reason Mesa was discounted as a potential culprit was because there hadn't been time for a courier to get to Mesa with news of the peace conference and get back with orders to do something about it.

What you're probably thinking of is the provocations coming from Haven in the lead up to the first war beginning in SVW. There was a distinct pattern of attacks, the pacing of which too-conveniently matched the transit times between the areas of the attacks and the Peep forward command at Barnett. And of course the reason Parnell had moved command to Barnett was to shorten the incident-response loop by up to 5 weeks per cycle.


No, I think Joat is right that there was some discussion on this. If you know that all decisions are top-down and centralised, but there hadn't been time to get marching orders, you can probably discount that central authority from being involved.

But you have to assume some enterprising field agent took the opportunity into their own hands, knowing there wasn't time to get orders back and forth. The commander in any AO is expected to do that. And it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

The problem is that there was time to get orders from Mesa, only that the attack would have been later. There's no reason that the assassination had to happen when it did happen. We know that because Pritchart was telling Theisman when discussing launching Beatrice that that was the day she should be leaving for Torch, so there had been enough time to get the news from Torch all the way to Manticore, for Sanskrit to launch, for the Battle of Lovat to happen, and the information to reach the Nouveau Paris. That should have curbed any field agent from taking the matters on their own hands, knowing that there was time to consult their superiors.
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Re: MAlignment and forward command
Post by Galactic Sapper   » Wed Jul 21, 2021 9:44 am

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ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Galactic Sapper wrote:And most of the rationale for dismissing "other possibilities" was the travel time. Something that could have been sidestepped by Mesa having a forward command post.


True, but anyone can have forward command posts. If you assume the decisions were made by someone on either Manticore or Haven or somewhere nearby, then you don't eliminate anyone.

What this does is say that travel time cannot be a reason for elimination. It can be a strong indicator to say it isn't someone, but it can't be used to rule anyone out.

And that's really my point. It seems almost everyone ruled out Mesa due to travel time, when motive and other considerations indicated they still should have been suspected.


And do remember that the pair paid a visit to Honor aboard HMS Invictus at Trevor's Star before going to Mesa. I'm trying to find out whether this happened before Rat Poison or after, but the wiki is not being forthcoming. The Green Pines incident, which is when they left Mesa, was November 1921, so after Rat Poison and Sanskrit. I'll open the books later to make a text search.

Given travel times, it's likely this was before Rat Poison, so Honor already knew they suspected Manpower of operating as a state agent by the time they had to figure out who was responsible for Rat Poison.

That was immediately after Rat Poison. Victor's reason for talking to Harrington was that his nation was getting blamed for something (Rat Poison) he knew damn well it didn't do and so it was his duty to pass that information to the most senior Manty he had access to before going to Mesa to look for evidence of their involvement.

That was also immediately before Lovat, as Honor had just enough time after talking to Victor to discuss that with Willy Alexander, then return to 8th Fleet and launch Sanskrit.

No, I think Joat is right that there was some discussion on this. If you know that all decisions are top-down and centralised, but there hadn't been time to get marching orders, you can probably discount that central authority from being involved.

But you have to assume some enterprising field agent took the opportunity into their own hands, knowing there wasn't time to get orders back and forth. The commander in any AO is expected to do that. And it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

The problem is that there was time to get orders from Mesa, only that the attack would have been later. There's no reason that the assassination had to happen when it did happen. We know that because Pritchart was telling Theisman when discussing launching Beatrice that that was the day she should be leaving for Torch, so there had been enough time to get the news from Torch all the way to Manticore, for Sanskrit to launch, for the Battle of Lovat to happen, and the information to reach the Nouveau Paris. That should have curbed any field agent from taking the matters on their own hands, knowing that there was time to consult their superiors.

No, there wasn't enough time for a courier to get all the way to Mesa and back between the time the conference was announced and Rat Poison. That was why no one believed Mesa could have been involved. IIRC the possibility was raised of the information having been leaked at the Manticore, Haven, or even Erewhon ends, giving the hypothetical courier time to get to Mesa and back in time for Rat Poison, but at no point was the possibility of a decision maker located closer than Mesa ever raised. And that decision maker could have been your "enterprising field agent" as much as it could have been some sort of formal command post. It's not like Mesa needed some sort of fleet base or anything; in fact that would probably be counter productive. All they really needed was someone pretty far inside the onion - perhaps on Bardasano's level - keeping an eye on the intelligence data being gathered in the MBS with orders to guide the war in ways the MAlighment wanted it to go.
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Re: MAlignment and forward command
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:50 am

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Galactic Sapper wrote:No, there wasn't enough time for a courier to get all the way to Mesa and back between the time the conference was announced and Rat Poison. That was why no one believed Mesa could have been involved. IIRC the possibility was raised of the information having been leaked at the Manticore, Haven, or even Erewhon ends, giving the hypothetical courier time to get to Mesa and back in time for Rat Poison, but at no point was the possibility of a decision maker located closer than Mesa ever raised. And that decision maker could have been your "enterprising field agent" as much as it could have been some sort of formal command post. It's not like Mesa needed some sort of fleet base or anything; in fact that would probably be counter productive. All they really needed was someone pretty far inside the onion - perhaps on Bardasano's level - keeping an eye on the intelligence data being gathered in the MBS with orders to guide the war in ways the MAlighment wanted it to go.


I know there wasn't time for when Rat Poison actually happened. That's not the point.

The point is that Rat Poison didn't have to happen when it did happen. The conference itself was scheduled for much later. As I said, Pritchart wouldn't have started her trip to Torch until the day that she actually green-lit Beatrice and that was many weeks later because Beatrice happened as a result of Sanskrit, which happened because of Rat Poison.

So whoever the attackers were, they didn't have a time pressure. They could have struck any time in those weeks. Which means that there was likely enough time to send a regular-speed courier boat to Mesa to get confirmation, but whoever that was didn't take the time. That's why I am saying that the intelligence agencies could legitimately lower the confidence that it was someone tied to Mesa: because there was no need for an enterprising field agent to take matters into their own hands.

Another aspect is the communication for the attack on Adm / Amb. Webster. That attack was the same characteristics as the attack on Torch, so they had to consider that a central authority authorised both, with all the travel times necessary. I don't know what the timing of all of this leads to, though. One other option is that the two were a coincidence and no one should make that assumption.

Or... that the attacks were authorised before the Torch Summit was agreed upon. If you think it could be Manpower and you don't think Manpower has a reason to want the war to continue, you don't need to see the attack on Queen Berry as a reason to prevent the summit in the first place. But Manpower did have reasons to attack Queen Berry, so that and Manticore's help in the founding of the Kingdom of Torch would have been sufficient reason for both attacks.
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Re: MAlignment and forward command
Post by Brigade XO   » Mon Aug 09, 2021 5:23 pm

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One thing that bothered Zilwicki and Victor -aside from the business model of Manpower and that bothered people like Hamish about the people who committed Oyster Bay- is the odd quickness of reaction times and changes of (or variation in operations) of the various goings on in Talbot etc.
If this all was some as-yet-unknown star nation running the operations plus all that brand new tec in OB, who and where could it be?
Haven pulling OB would have been about 2 hours behind the attack with everything capable of dropping on Manticore and Grayson in order to capture the systems.
SLN had already lost copies of it's alternative operations plans for pushing Office of Frontier Sercurity and FF to take over systems but SLN clearly didn't have anything like the weapons and the definitive delivery systems do do that so it wasn't SLN
Who and where are they..........nobody had any inkling of something called a Streak Drive ship till Herlander was brought back and then he was not in the hardware end. Thing is, if you believe Herlander was working on IMPROVING something that was a massively faster hyperspace drive (and he provided some speed range for the potential "improved" version, suddenly that lightning fast swapping of plans makes sense. Sense even if you have to also believe that the vary devious and clearly capable of manipulating the SLN into doing their bidding "other guys" also seem to have a very large portfolio of operational plans for creating havoc where they want to apply pressure.
The next question is: What are they looking to do. Getting the SLN to crush Manticore- and clearly get itself at least decimated in the process- doesn't make a lot of sense without a reason of "to what end"

In the long run, the Detweiler Plan as implemented by the Alignment was more in line with causing havoc and bleeding (morally, as well as politically bankrupting) and killing off anybody that got in their way while promoting their cats's paws. They don't care at the amount of blood and lives lots by normal humans, only how vulnerable the rest of Humanity ends up when Civilization [ the League] destroys itself in both civil war and attacking anything remotely capable of being more successful than the SL.

So running everything from Mesa and the anticipated absolute worst that could happen- in the Detweiler's minds- before the burned Mesa after having removed to Darius, would be even greater havoc and destruction at the places of their intended targets which ultimately would make things easier in the end and was not going to come back in real-time because there were too many cut-outs and cats-paws doing the dirty work. Really? A self created race of genetic superhuman manipulating both the League and Haven and God only knows how many Transtellars and other organizations throughout known space? What have you been smoking?

I rest my case.
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Re: MAlignment and forward command
Post by Jonathan_S   » Tue Aug 10, 2021 11:19 am

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It strikes me that anybody in the Honorverse trying to reverse engineer where coordination of a given set of activities is coming from faces enough challenges to make it nigh impossible. Even if you ruled out (even subconsciously) the possibility of faster hyper travel, not only do you have to consider the possibility that command has been delegated to a forward base but also the possibility that they've got access to at least one unknown wormhole.

Either of those two would distort any time/distance plots you'd try to put together so badly they're likely meaningless.
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Re: MAlignment and forward command
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Tue Aug 10, 2021 5:23 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:It strikes me that anybody in the Honorverse trying to reverse engineer where coordination of a given set of activities is coming from faces enough challenges to make it nigh impossible. Even if you ruled out (even subconsciously) the possibility of faster hyper travel, not only do you have to consider the possibility that command has been delegated to a forward base but also the possibility that they've got access to at least one unknown wormhole.

Either of those two would distort any time/distance plots you'd try to put together so badly they're likely meaningless.


It seems to me they're also ignoring the possibility of an unknown wormhole. No one raised that during the discussions we've been told, at least.

Wormholes are usually an economic boon to anyone who controls them, so they're not expected to remain hidden. You can't make money off transit fees if no one is transiting. So it hasn't occurred to them that someone would keep a wormhole hidden for tactical and strategic advantages (and they'll think it's crazy to do so for over a T-century!).

Lacoön did confer a military tactical advantage to the GA, but it was primarily an economic warfare tactic.
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