What's Next?

fallsfromtrees wrote:There was a very large subplot in CoG that didn't really go anywhere - that ofvthge escape of Zach to MAlign planet. I suspect that they forgot that the increased traffic though one station is going to be a pointer to their new planet. The only question is when the GA will put the pieces together.

Which station are you referring to? Balescu Station? At the moment, the perception of 'increased traffic' that we know of is in the minds of 2-3 station traffic controllers. Who will NOT be returning to Torch with the raiding force.

There MIGHT be an anomaly in traffic detectable from a detailed analysis (Anton deep) of the stations complete traffic control database, going back a year or more for comparison. However, we have no reason to believe that the raiding force is going to take the time to attempt to vacuum the station's databases. Such an effort is not mentioned in textev.

The force commander only mentioned getting all the data available on the one destroyed ship, which by itself would not give any indication of the traffic blip. The data on that ship WOULD probably provide an indication that it gained three extra passengers at Balescu, but it probably would not give any indication that those passengers were 'split' from a larger group. The Torches will NOT know, EVER, however, that those three passengers were key to the scuttling, and NOT evacuated into the small craft that were destroyed.

The passenger source info MIGHT be derivable, IF the raiders seized all of the passenger manifests of all recent ships at Balescu, and IF the Houdini handlers were unbelievably sloppy or arrogant, but that's a lot of IF's. Further, we don't know whether Balescu Station defenders did any data scrubs when attacked. We do know that is standard practice in the Honorverse, and we know that the raid commander DID NOT make any specific demands that station databases be preserved and turned over.

Even if the passenger source, small-group-split-to-smaller-groups data can be derived, Belescu is something like the 3rd cutout in this particular evac chain. Not data on what happened, and who came from where at the earlier transition points will be available or traceable. No reliable data on where the departing slaver ships would be next calling will be available - or at least it certainly wouldn't be if I were a slaver captain.

I just don't see where anything available at Belescu Station gives even a sharp analytical team like Anton, Victor, and Ruth enough data to surmise anything stronger than "I wonder if that ship that blew up was related to the Mesa situation. Guess we'll never know." That's leaving aside the weeks and months that are going to pass before Anton and his suspicions are going to get together with Ruth and any data from the Belescu Raid.

No, I very strongly believe that the way that musket hits the floor with a bang is by Zack and Gail breaking out of the evac chain and ending up in the hands of one our (more or less) good guy factions.

dreamrider

If they hadn't appointed trigger happy COs, then Torch would have a bunch more detail. But they did and they don't.

dreamrider wrote:snip

No, I very strongly believe that the way that musket hits the floor with a bang is by Zack and Gail breaking out of the evac chain and ending up in the hands of one our (more or less) good guy factions.

dreamrider

upon reflection, I think that you are right. The subplot was basically to get rid of the GAUL, so that Zach and (new?) girl friend will end up in the hands of the GA.

Another person I was surprised didn't end up dead was Audrey Hanrahan. I thought that when she was given a precise hotel assignment on Mesa, that it was to make sure that she was in the zone for one of the bombs, not to make sure she wasn't. She knows of the existence of the onion, even if she doesn't know anything about Houdini, so she is a potential leak of information about the onion, which was what Houdini was supposed to cover up completely. May be something there - RFC has invested a lot to book time to her.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

dreamrider wrote:snip

No, I very strongly believe that the way that musket hits the floor with a bang is by Zack and Gail breaking out of the evac chain and ending up in the hands of one our (more or less) good guy factions.

dreamrider

upon reflection, I think that you are right. The subplot was basically to get rid of the GAUL, so that Zach and (new?) girl friend will end up in the hands of the GA.

Another person I was surprised didn't end up dead was Audrey Hanrahan. I thought that when she was given a precise hotel assignment on Mesa, that it was to make sure that she was in the zone for one of the bombs, not to make sure she wasn't. She knows of the existence of the onion, even if she doesn't know anything about Houdini, so she is a potential leak of information about the onion, which was what Houdini was supposed to cover up completely. May be something there - RFC has invested a lot to book time to her.

Houdini was supposed to cover up the existence of the Alignment on Mesa, which they knew was about to come under close scrutiny for such evidence. Houdini left in place all other members, agents, and contacts thoughout the galaxy. Hanrahan is not a Mesan, and not a suspect. Her job is not over yet.

kzt wrote:If they hadn't appointed trigger happy COs, then Torch would have a bunch more detail. But they did and they don't.

If you are talking about the death of Captain Brandt and the crew of the Luigi Pirandello, I would have to disagree with you. If you've told your opponent exactly what to do to surrender and the consequences of not doing it, and then lose a significant percentage of your personnel (and hundreds of innocent people) to what could only be their (the surrendering crew) doing,it would be very, very hard for any commander not to have opened fire.

Or to put it in Honorverse terms, if a Manty captain had persuaded a PRH (or even a RH) ship carrying Manty POW's to surrender on the same terms as the RTN did, and had the ship blown up the same way, would they have held fire?

I just can't see it, I'm afraid.

And otherwise the Torches we've seen in action have tended to stay in the rules (they didn't massacre the Balcescu Station personnel, albeit it was a close-run thing).

Just my two dirhams worth.

They are in a frigging lifeboat. Machine-gunning the survivors is typically frowned upon. It is particularly a bad idea when your second though was "hey, that didn't make any sense!".

dreamrider wrote:I think it highly unlikely at this point that Zack McBride will EVER arrive at Darius.

Recall that the captain of the quasi-independent slaver he is on does not know the rest of Zack's multiple cutout evac route, in fact does not even know that it is an "evac" trip. He probably doesn't even know who Zack's next conductor is supposed to be, just a destination...maybe. He may only know that Zack's 'minder' was going to take them off at one of the slaver's stops...unspecified.

Further recall that at this point it is highly unlikely that Zack and his companion even WANT to continue to their original intended destination.

They probably don't know with clarity what that destination is, other than "new Mesan Alignment center of operations" or "Mesan Alignment secret relocation base". From context we can be pretty sure that THEY do not know who their next contact/conveyance on their 'underground railway' is supposed to be.

They probably DO have a pretty good sense of what will happen to them if they are ever handed off to any MAlign rep with any authority within the evac plan. They have to figure, once they come down from gibbering, that just the fact that their original minder had decided that they were now disposable is likely to be a continuing dead warrant.

And they will be right. Any MAlign security op overseeing portions of the evac will consider that just the fact that their passage plan was so corrupted/screwed up is inherently a threat to the overall op. Heck, they killed hundreds of thousands (millions?) of minor 'friendlies' to make the cover of this op impenetrable. Since they will not have perfect knowledge of what exactly went down with this scrap of the plan, they will burn off the dangling threads ruthlessly.

If that slaver ship is not interned somewhere (like Parmlee Station, perhaps?), it is going to have a fatal accident after its next port of call. I am waiting to see just how Zack and Gail get off the ship, if they do, and whether they end up on Parmlee, Beowulf, Erewhon, Torch, or Smoking Frog.

dreamrider

I agree with this. I would add that depending on who picks him up Zach could end up being debriefed by GA intelligence, and depending on what he knows perhaps fill in some holes on what the GA knows about the MAlignment and its tech.

Don