Houdini/MA

Weird Harold wrote:
They were using Manpower Inc as a cover for their genetic improvements on their Prime Lines. They needed Manpower's supply of genetic slaves for testing and refining their Ubermensch genetics. Manpower could do all sorts of unethical, Illegal, and inhuman modifications and testing because "everyone knew" Manpower was evil and inhumane; there would be no hint of the MAlign influence and direction in Manpower's activities because "everyone knew everything they needed to know" about Manpower.

Here is my problem with that, as long as there was no secret system for them to do the research it would be fine to use Manpower as cover but the second you have that system fully up and running you have no need to cover your research with Manpower.

They have a whole system, hell they can set up another secret facility away from Darius for all of their less than humane genetics research, they wouldn't need Manpower. It's obvious that money was not an issue so setting up all of your research and development on Darius or another secret base makes more sense then tying your research and development in with corporations that everyone knows about and everyone hates on a planet that has few friends. Setting up so much of their research and development as well as leadership and organization on Mesa is asking for trouble.

If nobody knows you exist and you have a base of operations that no one knows exists you don't have to cover your tracks. Keeping a few people tapped into Manpower and other corporations whose research you are interested in makes sense, tying in your research into those corporations does not make sense to be on Mesa to do their job, I am talking about the people that worked in the Gamma center and all such institutions in Mesa that dealt exclusively with MA affairs and research.

Weird Harold wrote:Mesa was the starting point for the Detweiler's Grand Plan and they had a couple of centuries before the Felix Wormhole was discovered. At that point, much of the inner core of the Onion did move to Darius. (Once slaves had made it habitable and established the comforts of civilization, that is.) But much of the outer layers of the Onion were already established on Mesa and depended on interaction with the greater civilization for testing and confirmation that the Malign Primes were indeed superior to "normals." Those outer layers didn't need to know about Darius but they were useful cogs in the overall organization.

Keeping the Gamma center in Mesa would be the dumbest thing anyone could do, as good as your security is things go wrong, so it would in my opinion be better for those things to go wrong in a place like Darius where it is a controlled environment than places like Mesa where the enemy can get a hint of something going on.

Weird Harold wrote:Without Mesa as a cutout, the MAlign would have to conduct any business with "Normals" via the Felix Wormhole and/or a long voyage through Hyper. That would leave far more traces pointing to Darius than routing everything through Mesa -- all traces of malign movements would point to the known villains instead of the secret puppet-masters.

Using systems that no one has heard of and no one knows exist takes away from the danger of using Mesa as a staging point.

JohnRoth wrote:I'm seeing the opposite problem: how do they maintain their C&C loop from Darius without it being detected? Before leaving Mesa, they could hide everything except messages that actually needed a special courier in the usual traffic of Manpower and Jessyk to and from Mesa.

If no one is there to witness it what is the problem?

JohnRoth wrote:The final problem is that the outer layer, the "Mesan Alignment" rather than the MAlign, is where they get most of their recruits. The original plan, to leave stealthily over a period of several years and then presumably trigger a slave revolt to cover the disintegration of governmental and other systems when the puppet masters are no longer there, was something they should have started a lot earlier. At the minimum, they should have started it the minute they heard of the Lynx terminus being discovered. That would have given them at least another year to pull people out vewy, vewy qwietly.

They can artificially grow their recruits and anyone they want to get from outside can be brought to Darius. There is no reason for anyone to be outside of Darius unless their Job specifically requires it.

Sigs wrote: They can artificially grow their recruits and anyone they want to get from outside can be brought to Darius. There is no reason for anyone to be outside of Darius unless their Job specifically requires it.

And extremely few of these needs to have any idea where Darius is. And Haven showed with bolthole, it's perfectly possible to have entire fleets train up in a system and have nobody leak the secret as to where they were even when the entire fleet gets captured.

Darius is either the only termini with a habitable planet, or furthest from any potential discovery from other human nations. It might be terraform able which is why it was chosen.
I have to wonder if these unknown verge termini are ever used. It limits e traffic in the core, but the ships might be seen in system.

Sigs wrote:Keeping the Gamma center in Mesa would be the dumbest thing anyone could do, as good as your security is things go wrong, so it would in my opinion be better for those things to go wrong in a place like Darius where it is a controlled environment than places like Mesa where the enemy can get a hint of something going on.

You presume the MAlign has endless coffers. Something like the Gamma Center (and by implication the Alpha and Beta centers) isn't cheap and quite probably predates the discovery and terraforming of Darius (or Darius-forming of the colonists.)

Please forgive my thick-headedness, but I simply don't get it. So what if it was noisy?

It could not have been as noisy as Oyster Bay!

cthia wrote:Please forgive my thick-headedness, but I simply don't get it. So what if it was noisy?

It could not have been as noisy as Oyster Bay!

Ah... but now that the Oyster Bay operation woke up the rest of the galaxy (out side of MAlign) to the existence of the alignment, people are looking under rocks and in dark corners for the brain behind the plan.
Things have been moved ahead of schedule and there is more of a chance that something will slip.

A very noisy event, and especially one closely timed to the Oyster Bay and the Green Pine event is likely to draw investigators to the conclusion that Detwiler never intended them to reach.

I wonder if the reporter (with the reputation for integrity) will dig into that since she seemed to be putting 2 + 2 together about where they wanted her to be when things blew up.

I guess I have to consider re-reading ghosts with an eye to that.

C. O. Thompson wrote:

cthia wrote:Please forgive my thick-headedness, but I simply don't get it. So what if it was noisy?

It could not have been as noisy as Oyster Bay!

Ah... but now that the Oyster Bay operation woke up the rest of the galaxy (out side of MAlign) to the existence of the alignment, people are looking under rocks and in dark corners for the brain behind the plan.
Things have been moved ahead of schedule and there is more of a chance that something will slip.

A very noisy event, and especially one closely timed to the Oyster Bay and the Green Pine event is likely to draw investigators to the conclusion that Detwiler never intended them to reach.

I wonder if the reporter (with the reputation for integrity) will dig into that since she seemed to be putting 2 + 2 together about where they wanted her to be when things blew up.

I guess I have to consider re-reading ghosts with an eye to that.

But see, since Oyster Bay, it would seem that it shouldn't matter whether it was noisy or not. Oyster Bay had already alerted the significant players, the GA, that there was a new kid on the block. Let's face it, the League wouldn't know an Onion if you peeled it and shoved it in their eye. And in the aftermath of that strike, it would only be important that the MAlign bolted without a trace. It doesn't matter if their exit left contrails, as long as the contrails ended in the Mesa system. The cat and his bag of tricks was already out of the bag, no need to play coy. Just safe.

My take on it is that they should have pulled a Houdini prior to Oyster Bay. But since the monkey Murphy was riding with the GA, the monkey threw a wrench in their plans and made them expedite. Again, no matter if it was noisy at that point, because nothing could have been noisier than Oyster Bay. That particular Warshawski had already sailed. It only matters that the noise was all white noise and unable to be filtered.

Even Houdini himself never cared that one knew he had been there, just not know where he'd disappeared to - which would lead to his secret. And as long as no one can produce a smoking gun then all's well that ends well. The League is dumber than a box of pop rocks. No issue there.

cthia wrote:Please forgive my thick-headedness, but I simply don't get it. So what if it was noisy?

It could not have been as noisy as Oyster Bay!

The whole point of Houdini was to vanish without anyone realizing they were gone. That requires absolute quiet.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:Please forgive my thick-headedness, but I simply don't get it. So what if it was noisy?

It could not have been as noisy as Oyster Bay!

The whole point of Houdini was to vanish without anyone realizing they were gone. That requires absolute quiet.

Yes, of course. But they knocked all of the dishes over in a quiet kitchen with Oyster Bay.

It only makes sense before Oyster Bay. Unless they think that the GA will think Mesa has tech enough to pull that off? Which is preposterous.

I'm thinking that the original plan was to pull Houdini after their Navy was complete. Then set the GA and the League at each other's throats. Then initiate OB to give the League a chance. Mutual destruction.

It reminds me of the US's attempts to find Saddam Insane's weapons of mass destruction. They went into Iraq to do it. They knew what to look for. They didn't find what they thought they would, but they did find many a smoking gun.

The day for quiet is over. Their cat is out of the bag. The GA does not have the IQ of the 800# gorilla. A plan to disappear without anyone knowing they were gone after OB is also as insane as Saddam. IMO.

I'm thinking that the revised plan of Houdini was to disappear without anyone knowing that they were in the act of disappearing, NOT that they had disappeared. That would be quite obvious enough.

The unforeseen developments in the Haven sector made them readjust the time table on their centuries old plan. That revised timetable was the nexus responsible for the shock waves which altered their missive and final objective and disposition of Houdini.

They can't possibly hope to leave an impression that they hadn't disappeared, but could only hope that they were not noisy enough to get caught in the act.

IOW, the jig was up, flee. Quietly, or noisily, the necessity became to simply flee. W/O leaving tire tracks that lead anywhere.

IMO.

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