Yes, I have read Beauty and the Beast and that’s not the impression I got (though it’s entirely possible I’ve repressed something, I really didn’t like the story). My sense was that Jacques was targeted purely because Manpower wanted to compromise a BSC officer – the fact that he was a Benton-Ramirez y Chou was a star-spangled bonus as far as the goons on the ground were concerned, but not the prime motivation for the operation. Alfred offering them a chance to kill him comes under the same category; he wasn’t part of the initial plan at all because they didn’t know he’d even be on Beowulf, let alone that he’d get entangled with Jacques and Alison.
Ass for Honor, I’ll say it again – her actions against the slave trade are nothing that Manticorans haven’t been doing for centuries. There’s no evidence in text that Manpower have ever mounted a retaliatory attack on an RMN fleet commander in the past, so why would they be a suspect now? What we do have textev for is characters saying that what’s been happening lately is way out of character for Manpower –the company is acting like a star nation instead of a corporation. It doesn’t make sense until they realise it’s not Manpower behind recent events at all.
