Wither the Ballroom?

Just was browsing through Cauldron of Ghosts and ran across this conversation. Rather than put it in the passages thread, I thought it might be worth a bit of discussion.

The passage is between (ex) SGT Suprakit X and a rescued slave.

...“I don’t recommend it myself, as a matter of fact.” He made a gesture, indicating his uniform. “There’s a reason I quit and joined the Marines. The Ballroom…Well, let’s just say they’re going through an identity crisis. It ain’t pretty to watch, believe me.”

“Really?”

“Well, yeah, sure. The Ballroom’s whole purpose pretty much got the legs cut out from under it once Torch was created. It didn’t help any that Jeremy quit also, of course. But even if he’d stayed in charge I think the Ballroom would be having a rough time.”

He drained the coffee out of his cup. “What do they do now? Keep shooting slavers one at a time? Or in small batches, at best? Even with explosives they can’t do as much damage as a warship or a Marine battalion.”

.......

“So what will they do now?” she asked.

“Don’t know. And since I didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out, I joined the Marines as soon as they started recruiting.” Supakrit paused for a moment, thinking. “I figure they’ll wind up doing one of two things. The dumb thing to do would be to keep up the terror campaign. The smart thing would be to dissolve the Ballroom and reconstitute it as a political party.”

And given the ending of Cauldron and the storyline in Shadows of Freedom, it is even more interesting.

What do terrorists do when the object of their terrorism is gone?

Jeremy X is one example, but let's face it, he may be murderous but he is also quite intelligent. There is no guarantee that all Ballroom members are. Left without purpose but with one undeniable skill, they may end up scattered abouot the Galaxy, either still hunting Manpower folks who have gone to ground or as 'sell-swords' using their skill at mayhem for the highest bidder.

Most will not end up like Jeremy, however--ruthless killers normally do not play well in 'civil' society, once said society is up and running.

So what do you do with the Audubon Ballroom?

This has been the question of the ages. The revolutionaries in America could have been considered terrorists, from the right point of view, but then they were fighting for political freedoms and then stopped fighting.
The Ballroom is fighting for revenge. Revenge is never truly sated. The truly blood thirsty ones will neve find the peace they seek with the terror campaigns and the other more idealist will eventually leve the Ballroom proper for "civilization."

All in my opinion

Commodore Oakius wrote:This has been the question of the ages. The revolutionaries in America could have been considered terrorists, from the right point of view, but then they were fighting for political freedoms and then stopped fighting.
The Ballroom is fighting for revenge. Revenge is never truly sated. The truly blood thirsty ones will neve find the peace they seek with the terror campaigns and the other more idealist will eventually leve the Ballroom proper for "civilization."

All in my opinion

One of two things will happen the Ballroom could break-up with multiple factions all claiming to be the 'real' Ballroom much like the PIRA RealIRA the NewIRA and the INLA in N. Ireland or like Supakit said turn into a political party. The could also be recruited into the RT Military and be sent to Mesa as part of the occupation.

Interesting Hutch. I'm thinking there is no reason the Ballroom cannot take up the mantle of others wronged. They could become the A-Team of the Honorverse.

A for Audubon.

I imagine some of them will become like the people who hunted Nazi refugees from WW2. After the Alignment is taken down, anyone not dead at that point could wind up looking over their shoulder for the rest of their lives.

David talked about this on the Bar several years ago. I posted the messages here, but they got purged when the server crashed.

Anyhow, the Ballroom is not a cohesive, centrally directed movement. There is a central organization with actual resources, but that isn't the total of if, or even apparently the majority of it. The Ballroom is essentially a bunch of tiny groups of people with similar ideas doing violent things to people who they think deserve it. If you call yourself part of the ballroom you are for all practical purposes.

David "predicted" that a not-insignificant percentage of the people who consider themselves members will be really annoyed with the "sell-outs" who want to stop the terror campaigns and won't stop. IIRC, he "predicted" that they would claim all the terror attacks on Mesa that the MA did as Ballroom attacks.

kzt wrote:David talked about this on the Bar several years ago. I posted the messages here, but they got purged when the server crashed.

Anyhow, the Ballroom is not a cohesive, centrally directed movement. There is a central organization with actual resources, but that isn't the total of if, or even apparently the majority of it. The Ballroom is essentially a bunch of tiny groups of people with similar ideas doing violent things to people who they think deserve it. If you call yourself part of the ballroom you are for all practical purposes.

What happens to Manpower operations off Mesa will have a lot to do with what happens to the Ballroom. As I've said elsewhere, Torch doesn't have the reach to go after all the Manpower operations, The GA has more pressing priorities, so they're only going to go after Manpower stations as targets of opportunity.

There's going to be a lot of opportunity for mopping up Manpower operations for a while; many of the slavers are simply going to turn pirate, for instance. There are also apparently whole planets that have a genetic slave base; Mesa isn't the only one. It's just the one that's in the wholesale export business and is the MAlign's catspaw.

kzt wrote:David "predicted" that a not-insignificant percentage of the people who consider themselves members will be really annoyed with the "sell-outs" who want to stop the terror campaigns and won't stop. IIRC, he "predicted" that they would claim all the terror attacks on Mesa that the MA did as Ballroom attacks.

I can definitely see some fragmentation, but as long as Manpower's off-Mesa operations don't simply turn up their toes and die after Admiral Henke cuts off the head at Mesa, they'll have "legitimate" targets for a while.

As far as comparing the operation to the Jewish pursuit of ex-Nazi people who were involved with the death camps, remember the anti-Nazi operation is based in a legitimate society with millions of people and generally through legal channels, not a clandestine terrorist operation. That's a Torch type operation, not a Ballroom type operation.