Spoilers - Toll of Honor

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Anton wasn't searching for hints of Georgia's past. Instead, what probably happened is that someone on Smoking Frog managed to connect the surgeon to that particular ex-slave that the Ballroom was searching for and turned up the name "Elaine Kommandorski." Maybe he was in addicted to gambling and got picked up in a police raid in a clandestine casino or something. Or a former associate turned on him and led the police to his data cache. Either way, either the police or some intelligence operative made the connection. That in turn piqued Anton's attention because he'd have known of the notorious criminal in the Landing City past and he may have even had an idea that this criminal had become Georgia Sakristos Young (though he couldn't prove it).

What I am trying to point out to you is that Anton was precisely searching for "hints of Georgia's past", in total contradiction to that first line. He had already exhausted the sources on Manticore for the information on Georgia Sakristos Young, who he knew had first appeared as Elaine Komandorski. He would not have abandoned the young women, just to get information on a common criminal; unless he thought it would help combat the North Hollow files.

tlb wrote:What I am trying to point out to you is that Anton was precisely searching for "hints of Georgia's past", in total contradiction to that first line. He had already exhausted the sources on Manticore for the information on Georgia Sakristos Young, who he knew had first appeared as Elaine Komandorski. He would not have abandoned the young women, just to get information on a common criminal; unless he thought it would help combat the North Hollow files.

Ok, that's a good point. Though my point remains that Anton didn't go digging Smoking Frog up out of the blue. There must have been a hint that evidence was to be found there and not on Maya or Erewhon or Hypatia or any of the thousands of other systems. Therefore, some third party must have come across that hint or evidence and made that known to Anton or to his network of sources.

So revising my story line:

Elaine comes into existence on some third planet in the hands of this surgeon. She pays him well and he promptly disappears and moves elsewhere. Whether he knew what she had done to et that money is unknown, but he'd have figured out escaped slaves don't usually have a couple million Solarian credits to their name, so he was right to be wary.

Once she's on Manticore, she begins erasing the links to her past. She's discovered by Dimitri Young, Earl North Hollow, and brought into his service. He reveals a bit of what he knows about her past to keep her in line and promises that he'll erase the files once she's proven herself. But as I said before, it's in both of their interests that she not be discovered by accident, so North Hollow helps erase the evidence that could still be found in Landing of both of her past lives.

At some point in the future, North Hollow trusts Georgia enough to give her read & append rights to the files. At point, she knows that her files contain more than her Landing City past. At a minimum, it must contain some believable hint that Elaine Komandorski was an ex-slave. North Hollow also promises that he'll erase this file.

He does no such thing and Georgia only learns about it after the files have transferred to Pavel. She begins plotting his death, also aided by the fact that he's a sociopath, amoral, despicable and had been "convincing" her to have sex with him for a while. Honor helps along in the duel; Georgia as executor of the North Hollow state has a window of opportunity to delete the files and does. She then marries Stefan Young and becomes Countess North Hollow.

At this point, I don't think anything in the files pointed to Smoking Frog. There's no reason to believe it did. Georgia may have sent someone to the place she had her surgery, but the trail to the surgeon is now at least a decade old.

Then, later, someone on Smoking Frog made the connection from the ex-slave to Elaine Komandorski. Knowing that this name had shown up in the LCPD files, they passed word to Anton. This person and their intermediaries probably didn't know about her later identity as Georgia Sakristos Young. But Anton did, so he goes to Smoking Frog to see the evidence for himself or because the contact wouldn't divulge too many details over interstellar distances or because they required payment.

tlb wrote:What I am trying to point out to you is that Anton was precisely searching for "hints of Georgia's past", in total contradiction to that first line. He had already exhausted the sources on Manticore for the information on Georgia Sakristos Young, who he knew had first appeared as Elaine Komandorski. He would not have abandoned the young women, just to get information on a common criminal; unless he thought it would help combat the North Hollow files.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Ok, that's a good point. Though my point remains that Anton didn't go digging Smoking Frog up out of the blue. There must have been a hint that evidence was to be found there and not on Maya or Erewhon or Hypatia or any of the thousands of other systems. Therefore, some third party must have come across that hint or evidence and made that known to Anton or to his network of sources.

So revising my story line:

Elaine comes into existence on some third planet in the hands of this surgeon. She pays him well and he promptly disappears and moves elsewhere. Whether he knew what she had done to et that money is unknown, but he'd have figured out escaped slaves don't usually have a couple million Solarian credits to their name, so he was right to be wary.

Once she's on Manticore, she begins erasing the links to her past. She's discovered by Dimitri Young, Earl North Hollow, and brought into his service. He reveals a bit of what he knows about her past to keep her in line and promises that he'll erase the files once she's proven herself. But as I said before, it's in both of their interests that she not be discovered by accident, so North Hollow helps erase the evidence that could still be found in Landing of both of her past lives.

At some point in the future, North Hollow trusts Georgia enough to give her read & append rights to the files. At point, she knows that her files contain more than her Landing City past. At a minimum, it must contain some believable hint that Elaine Komandorski was an ex-slave. North Hollow also promises that he'll erase this file.

He does no such thing and Georgia only learns about it after the files have transferred to Pavel. She begins plotting his death, also aided by the fact that he's a sociopath, amoral, despicable and had been "convincing" her to have sex with him for a while. Honor helps along in the duel; Georgia as executor of the North Hollow state has a window of opportunity to delete the files and does. She then marries Stefan Young and becomes Countess North Hollow.

At this point, I don't think anything in the files pointed to Smoking Frog. There's no reason to believe it did. Georgia may have sent someone to the place she had her surgery, but the trail to the surgeon is now at least a decade old.

Then, later, someone on Smoking Frog made the connection from the ex-slave to Elaine Komandorski. Knowing that this name had shown up in the LCPD files, they passed word to Anton. This person and their intermediaries probably didn't know about her later identity as Georgia Sakristos Young. But Anton did, so he goes to Smoking Frog to see the evidence for himself or because the contact wouldn't divulge too many details over interstellar distances or because they required payment.

Okay, I mostly agree. The one remaining point is that we know exactly who sent Anton to Smoking Frog from the text I have already posted out of CoS: Rozsak and the SLN intelligence in that sector.

tlb wrote:Okay, I mostly agree. The one remaining point is that we know exactly who sent Anton to Smoking Frog from the text I have already posted out of CoS: Rozsak and the SLN intelligence in that sector.

The SLN intelligence officer came across the reports from Manticore when doing a routine keyword match against police reports and that that matched "Elaine Komandorski." Or maybe this intelligence officer had a reason to investigate the surgeon for his shady past. The SLN had probably flagged that this name was of interest to Manticore Intelligence.

Roszak gets to know this because it was his AO (and he was really looking into becoming more than just the SLN CO). He passes it on to the Manticore intelligence operative he meets: Zilwicki.

tlb wrote:Okay, I mostly agree. The one remaining point is that we know exactly who sent Anton to Smoking Frog from the text I have already posted out of CoS: Rozsak and the SLN intelligence in that sector.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The SLN intelligence officer came across the reports from Manticore when doing a routine keyword match against police reports and that that matched "Elaine Komandorski." Or maybe this intelligence officer had a reason to investigate the surgeon for his shady past. The SLN had probably flagged that this name was of interest to Manticore Intelligence.

Roszak gets to know this because it was his AO (and he was really looking into becoming more than just the SLN CO). He passes it on to the Manticore intelligence operative he meets: Zilwicki.

Is this your invention or is it in the new book? Nothing was ever proved against Elaine, so I do not know if she would be on a list from Manticore.

CoS makes clear that they had this information, but had no use for it; until it could be used to get Anton out of the way for a good amount of time. They wanted him out of the way, because they were involved in some gray to black operations that they not want him to know about:

Chapter 8 wrote:"To be honest, though, I'm reluctant to do it. Yes, it would probably distract Zilwicki long enough—what the hell, that's a trip all the way to Smoking Frog and back again, even leaving aside the time he'd have to spend there finding his way through the thicket. But . . ."
Rozsak barked a laugh. "God help us, we're all starting to think like spooks. But you hate to waste a so-called 'asset,' right? Even though neither you nor I nor anyone in this room has any idea right now what else we'd do with it."
The jocular tone made it clear the words were not a barb. So Manson just smiled and nodded his head, acknowledging a friendly hit.
"That's pretty much it, Sir. As you said, I have no idea what we'd do with that tantalizing tidbit. I just hate to give it up, just for the sake of taking someone out of the picture we'd never counted on being there in the first place. Seems a waste, somehow."
For the first time that night, the other Marine officer in the room spoke up. "I swear to God," growled Lieutenant Colonel Huang, "—any god, too, I don't much care—I wish we were all back on Boniface. Even thirty percent casualties is better than this . . ."
His thick hands made a swimming motion in front of his face. "This stinking murky muddled mess."

tlb wrote:]
Is this your invention or is it in the new book? Nothing was ever proved against Elaine, so I do not know if she would be on a list from Manticore.

Yes, that was my conjecture.

CoS makes clear that they had this information, but had no use for it; until it could be used to get Anton out of the way for a good amount of time. They wanted him out of the way, because they were involved in some gray to black operations that they not want him to know about:

No contradiction there, it only says that Roszak had known for longer but had no use for the information, which in turn means he couldn't connect Elaine Komandorski to Georgia Young. That actually makes more sense than what I had initially written based on what we know of SLN spooks: they wouldn't share with Manticore. Instead, they'd hoard the information for some future use.

Roszak turned out to be far more moral than CoS made it look like. At this point in the series I wouldn't have blinked at him using this information to extort something from Manticore. He instead used it at this time in a way that was actually completely legit, despite the ulterior motives.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:it only says that Roszak had known for longer but had no use for the information, which in turn means he couldn't connect Elaine Komandorski to Georgia Young. That actually makes more sense than what I had initially written based on what we know of SLN spooks: they wouldn't share with Manticore. Instead, they'd hoard the information for some future use.

Okay, but I feel that he could connect Elaine Komandorski to Georgia Young. The point being, as I said before, that Anton is not going to run off to search for information on some random person. So Roszak had to be sure that this was a exciting tidbit for him to hunt. If Elaine Komandorski was just a shady person that has aroused Manticoran suspicions, then he might not go. It is only because she became Georgia Young that he left.

It is true that Anton would have gone if he was just told Elaine Komandorski; but there is no reason for Roszak to know that, without knowing the connection between Elaine and Georgia.

Precisely what else is a SLN officer in the Maya sector to do, when he has dirt on the wife of a Manticoran Lord? I do not see that it gains him anything.

tlb wrote:Okay, but I feel that he could connect Elaine Komandorski to Georgia Young. The point being, as I said before, that Anton is not going to run off to search for information on some random person. So Roszak had to be sure that this was a exciting tidbit for him to hunt. If Elaine Komandorski was just a shady person that has aroused Manticoran suspicions, then he might not go. It is only because she became Georgia Young that he left.

It is true that Anton would have gone if he was just told Elaine Komandorski; but there is no reason for Roszak to know that, without knowing the connection between Elaine and Georgia.

Precisely what else is a SLN officer in the Maya sector to do, when he has dirt on the wife of a Manticoran Lord? I do not see that it gains him anything.

That's true too: why did Roszak think Zilwicki would run off to Smoking Frog with just the tidbit about Elaine? Maybe he did have a notion that Elaine was Georgia and that would make Zilwicki far more likely to go than not. It's not necessary, though: Zilwicki could have put out the word he was looking for the origins of Elaine without saying why and that may have been enough for Roszak to think Zilwicki would go investigate.

I don't entirely agree that a spook in the Maya sector would have no use for the connection of the three identities. They may not have been a resourceful enough spook to make use of it, but the use was there: the Ballroom had let it be known they wanted this, so they may pay the spook some fee for the identity. Likewise, they could attempt to extort the North Hollows for some money in exchange for turning over the evidence. Though both options carried a risk, because both involved making deals with ruthless killers.

More importantly, I don't think the Georgia-Elaine connection was known, even to Roszak. Georgia and the North Hollows had been very careful to eliminate said links: remember that in FoD, this is what Pavel had threatened to reveal that would destroy her. Having some random spook in the Maya sector know this would imply it's known to a lot of people, which I don't think is likely. And at this point, the Elaine identity was very much a cold case, as she hadn't been heard of for at least 15 T-years. Plus, the Georgia identity hadn't existed in Smoking Frog; that was clearly created in Landing City.
So there's little reason for spooks across the Galaxy to have a file on Elaine, except if Zilwicki had caused them to, and he wouldn't have included the connection to Georgia.

Instead, there are other ways to entice Zilwicki into going. For example, the spook may have said it was a time-limited offer because he had lined up other buyers.

So in my mind, I think it's possible but unlikely Roszak knew the connection, but the chance that the low-level spook knew all three identities is remote.

One major problem that I have with this whole episode, is that CoS makes it clear that the Audubon Ballroom is said to have a major presence in Smoking Frog. So it would not be a likely spot for the slave that became Georgia to have the ID removed (I rationalize this as a difference between then and now) and might be a good place for the surgeon to take refuge. On the other hand, it then needs to be explained why the Audubon Ballroom did not already have the information that Anton was sent to ferret out. If the SLN already knew it and Anton was able to find it; then why was the Ballroom in the dark? This is the part that makes my head hurt.

Anyway, I doubt that Anton had ever published that he was looking for information on either Elaine or Georgia; so I doubt that was why the SLN knew he was interested.

tlb wrote:Anyway, I doubt that Anton had ever published that he was looking for information on either Elaine or Georgia; so I doubt that was why the SLN knew he was interested.

That was my original thought, but the quote from CoS says Roszak knew he was after something.