Royal (Imperial) Manticore Army

Dafmeister wrote: A very reasonable point. I have one thing to say in rebuttal:

Desperation breeds credulity.

Can't argue that--but overly credulous rebels also tend to be dead ones at the hands of their own indigenous security forces, so I would suspect (and indeed we have seen) a fair amount of...skepticism...from the movements to date.

n7axw wrote:One further point. This thing is going to damage Manticore's reputation. No way is Manticore going to discover all of the places where Alignment has made promises in Manticore's name which nmeans that some of those promises are going to be broken.

Don

While true, remember that the MAlignment has deliberately set up 'contacts' so that the movements can reach out to the Manties once they are ready to revolt. The MAlignment figures that they can't lose: either the SEM ignores it, with the resultant loss of life (and trust) or they respond, which spreads out and stretches SEM forces to the max (Mike's rapid response and riposte may have come as an unpleasant surprise to the Onion).

But I really can't see if the 'liberation movements' cannot make contact with Manticore to tell them the jumpoff date, then it will be hard to blame the Manties for not supporting them (see Loomis in the first couple of chapters of Shadows of Freedom and boy I hope that SL ship comes to a Bad End).

The best thing would be Firebrand saying he would be the conduit to bring Manticore in (and then doesn't, but the movement doesn't know that), but if he's working several systems that is probably impractical, not to mention that they probably don't trust him all that much (see SoF and the Allenby's).

Still, it does make for what could be amost interesting next book, doesn't it?

Hutch wrote:While true, remember that the MAlignment has deliberately set up 'contacts' so that the movements can reach out to the Manties once they are ready to revolt. The MAlignment figures that they can't lose: either the SEM ignores it, with the resultant loss of life (and trust) or they respond, which spreads out and stretches SEM forces to the max (Mike's rapid response and riposte may have come as an unpleasant surprise to the Onion).

No, they didn't arrange this, the rebels choose to open another channel without any help from the MA.

Hutch wrote:While true, remember that the MAlignment has deliberately set up 'contacts' so that the movements can reach out to the Manties once they are ready to revolt. The MAlignment figures that they can't lose: either the SEM ignores it, with the resultant loss of life (and trust) or they respond, which spreads out and stretches SEM forces to the max (Mike's rapid response and riposte may have come as an unpleasant surprise to the Onion).

As Kzt said, Firebrand did not set up contacts that the movements could use to get in touch with Manticore. In fact, he didn't want them to be able to get in touch with Manticore. He deliberately arranged it so that he was the only contact the rebels had. He set the rebels up to LOSE, and the information would get out that Manticore funded the rebellion and then didn't follow through. Firebrand will be very upset when he discovers that the rebels did contact Manticore; it messes up the whole plan.

We saw one planet where this almost happened. The rebels ended up being slaughtered. However, if I recall correctly, the information that pointed blame at Manticore was lost in the battle, so it never came out.

H8i KZT,

Yup, Mobius and the Seraphim brother and sister were acting far more intelligently and rationally than Firebrand and the MAlign expected, which shouldn't have been a surprise.

"Trust but verify" would seem to be just one of the motto's to live by in the 20th century PD.

Given how often the OFS has used agent provocateurs, one would think the various resistance movements would be more cautious and provide itself independent confirmation before they sell themselves for a pitiful handful of weapons; they're to start a planet wide revolution with only a battalion or two's worth of weapons?

The MAlign is either expecting a great deal or knows they're obviously too stupid to succeed in the first place.

Granted Firebrand has the skill to suck people into his intended view of the galaxy, and the locals are very flattered by the attention they're finally receiving, but hopefully enough others are urging proper caution.

Hutch reminded us the SKM would have been setting up embassies and consulates ever since Lynx was discovered back in mid-1919 if there weren't any before, so they've had up to 3 years to integrate themselves locally, and given how cheap hyper travel is, I'd expect every SL connected system within 400 LY to have one or the other.

While that seems like a lot, if you check the maps that doesn't cover all that many star systems.

L

kzt wrote:

Hutch wrote:While true, remember that the MAlignment has deliberately set up 'contacts' so that the movements can reach out to the Manties once they are ready to revolt. The MAlignment figures that they can't lose: either the SEM ignores it, with the resultant loss of life (and trust) or they respond, which spreads out and stretches SEM forces to the max (Mike's rapid response and riposte may have come as an unpleasant surprise to the Onion).

No, they didn't arrange this, the rebels choose to open another channel without any help from the MA.

lyonheart wrote:Hutch reminded us the SKM would have been setting up embassies and consulates ever since Lynx was discovered back in mid-1919 if there weren't any before, so they've had up to 3 years to integrate themselves locally, and given how cheap hyper travel is, I'd expect every SL connected system within 400 LY to have one or the other.

While that seems like a lot, if you check the maps that doesn't cover all that many star systems.

L

I doubt that very much. There is absolutely no indication that Manticore has set up such embassies in the Protectorates. And Firebrand would not have operated on or anywhere near a system that had a Manticoran embassy, for fear that the rebels would talk to a real Manticoran agent. The entire plan was that Firebrand would be the sole point of contact between the rebels and the supposed Manticoran suppliers.

SWM wrote:

lyonheart wrote:Hutch reminded us the SKM would have been setting up embassies and consulates ever since Lynx was discovered back in mid-1919 if there weren't any before, so they've had up to 3 years to integrate themselves locally, and given how cheap hyper travel is, I'd expect every SL connected system within 400 LY to have one or the other.

While that seems like a lot, if you check the maps that doesn't cover all that many star systems.

L

I doubt that very much. There is absolutely no indication that Manticore has set up such embassies in the Protectorates. And Firebrand would not have operated on or anywhere near a system that had a Manticoran embassy, for fear that the rebels would talk to a real Manticoran agent. The entire plan was that Firebrand would be the sole point of contact between the rebels and the supposed Manticoran suppliers.

Excuse me, SWM, but you are plain wrong. Yes, there is no textev to that specific effect, but there IS textev that the Star Kingdom was expanding her intel-gathering operations in the Talbott Sector as quickly as possible - I cannot give you chapter and page, but it was mentioned in a meeting between Elizabeth and her closest advisors in, I think, 'Shadow of Saganami'. There is plenty of precedent in history that one of the most basic operational tactics wrt intel-gathering is for intelligence agents to go undercover as trade attaches. We do not NEED textev to assume that Manticore would have established trade offices throughout the Talbott Sector to represent her interests and those of her merchant marine.

SWM wrote:

Hutch wrote:While true, remember that the MAlignment has deliberately set up 'contacts' so that the movements can reach out to the Manties once they are ready to revolt. The MAlignment figures that they can't lose: either the SEM ignores it, with the resultant loss of life (and trust) or they respond, which spreads out and stretches SEM forces to the max (Mike's rapid response and riposte may have come as an unpleasant surprise to the Onion).

As Kzt said, Firebrand did not set up contacts that the movements could use to get in touch with Manticore. In fact, he didn't want them to be able to get in touch with Manticore. He deliberately arranged it so that he was the only contact the rebels had. He set the rebels up to LOSE, and the information would get out that Manticore funded the rebellion and then didn't follow through. Firebrand will be very upset when he discovers that the rebels did contact Manticore; it messes up the whole plan.

We saw one planet where this almost happened. The rebels ended up being slaughtered. However, if I recall correctly, the information that pointed blame at Manticore was lost in the battle, so it never came out.

And I think Firebrand thought that his 'colleague that was in charge of arranging the Loomis revolt had done badly and they had 'jumped the gun' before they should have.

But you and kzt are correct, I misremembered (albeit Firebrand didn't discourage it, he merely gave them bogus 'codewords' and made sure he wasn't going to be around when the balloon went up.

Guess I'll have to reread the book now as penance...

Of course, using Steve Westman as the contact point in the Talbott Quadrant is another way to make sure it fails to bring help.

Hutch wrote:

Dafmeister wrote: A very reasonable point. I have one thing to say in rebuttal:

Desperation breeds credulity.

Can't argue that--but overly credulous rebels also tend to be dead ones at the hands of their own indigenous security forces, so I would suspect (and indeed we have seen) a fair amount of...skepticism...from the movements to date.

n7axw wrote:One further point. This thing is going to damage Manticore's reputation. No way is Manticore going to discover all of the places where Alignment has made promises in Manticore's name which nmeans that some of those promises are going to be broken.

Don

While true, remember that the MAlignment has deliberately set up 'contacts' so that the movements can reach out to the Manties once they are ready to revolt. The MAlignment figures that they can't lose: either the SEM ignores it, with the resultant loss of life (and trust) or they respond, which spreads out and stretches SEM forces to the max (Mike's rapid response and riposte may have come as an unpleasant surprise to the Onion).

But I really can't see if the 'liberation movements' cannot make contact with Manticore to tell them the jumpoff date, then it will be hard to blame the Manties for not supporting them (see Loomis in the first couple of chapters of Shadows of Freedom and boy I hope that SL ship comes to a Bad End).

The best thing would be Firebrand saying he would be the conduit to bring Manticore in (and then doesn't, but the movement doesn't know that), but if he's working several systems that is probably impractical, not to mention that they probably don't trust him all that much (see SoF and the Allenby's).

Still, it does make for what could be amost interesting next book, doesn't it?

IIRC, Firebrand doesn't want the liberation movements to contact Manticore. He wants them to think is their contact with Manticore. The one who did contact Manticore, Mobius, did that on their own.

The really scarey thing about this is that we don't know how many "Firebrands" there are out the making promises Manticore knows nothing about.

Don

hanuman wrote:

SWM wrote:I doubt that very much. There is absolutely no indication that Manticore has set up such embassies in the Protectorates. And Firebrand would not have operated on or anywhere near a system that had a Manticoran embassy, for fear that the rebels would talk to a real Manticoran agent. The entire plan was that Firebrand would be the sole point of contact between the rebels and the supposed Manticoran suppliers.

Excuse me, SWM, but you are plain wrong. Yes, there is no textev to that specific effect, but there IS textev that the Star Kingdom was expanding her intel-gathering operations in the Talbott Sector as quickly as possible - I cannot give you chapter and page, but it was mentioned in a meeting between Elizabeth and her closest advisors in, I think, 'Shadow of Saganami'. There is plenty of precedent in history that one of the most basic operational tactics wrt intel-gathering is for intelligence agents to go undercover as trade attaches. We do not NEED textev to assume that Manticore would have established trade offices throughout the Talbott Sector to represent her interests and those of her merchant marine.

I stand by my statement--there is no indication that Manticore set up embassies among the Protectorates.

First of all, trade offices are not embassies. Second of all, there are no Protectorates in the Talbott Sector. The Protectorates are quite some distance away from Talbott. Increasing intelligence-gathering in the area around the Talbott Cluster does not mean that Manticore has set up embassies in the Protectorates.