Albrecht

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:He might have had to wait a few weeks, But there was really nothing to distinguish him or his people from everyone else. There would have been nothing to suspect had they showed up at the space port and played tourist.

To misquote Benjamin Franklin, three can keep a secret if all three are dead. He felt the deniability was essential. And felt it so strongly he was willing to die to ensure it.

Pushing the button was necessary. It destroyed all the installations that had evidence, including, I presume, his private yacht, the Prometheus (which had a streak drive). The previous raft of explosions took care of the people they couldn't get off planet (and, presumably, some of the physical evidence, including that final town). This was not a hurry-up job - I expect those bombs had been planted long since.

Whether he had to die in the conflagration is a different question. I sort of agree with kzt, with one very important caveat: he most likely could have escaped if he'd wanted to, but he didn't want to. Dying in the final explosion was his way of taking full responsibility for not putting the evacuation into overdrive when they learned of the Lynx terminus. Whether they could have finished it in time is questionable, but they would have gotten a lot more people out.

JohnRoth wrote:
Pushing the button was necessary. It destroyed all the installations that had evidence, including, I presume, his private yacht, the Prometheus (which had a streak drive). The previous raft of explosions took care of the people they couldn't get off planet (and, presumably, some of the physical evidence, including that final town). This was not a hurry-up job - I expect those bombs had been planted long since.

Whether he had to die in the conflagration is a different question. I sort of agree with kzt, with one very important caveat: he most likely could have escaped if he'd wanted to, but he didn't want to. Dying in the final explosion was his way of taking full responsibility for not putting the evacuation into overdrive when they learned of the Lynx terminus. Whether they could have finished it in time is questionable, but they would have gotten a lot more people out.

His Royal Authority may disagree with me, but I agree with you. He had no intention of leaving. It was his way of accepting responsibility for his final solution of The Onion. It was also his way of passing the torch to his children. Like janice Marinescue, he has too much blood on his hands to make the transition to Darius. His part of the plan was finished and he was redundant.

pappilon wrote:His Royal Authority may disagree with me, but I agree with you. He had no intention of leaving. It was his way of accepting responsibility for his final solution of The Onion. It was also his way of passing the torch to his children. Like janice Marinescue, he has too much blood on his hands to make the transition to Darius. His part of the plan was finished and he was redundant.

For the most part, I agree.
Since Oyster Bay, Albrecht seems to be having a bit of trouble developing the, "emotional scar tissue," that he needed to keep going. He wasn't letting it keep him from doing what he believed needed to be done, but he was not a Janice Marinescue that reveled in the destruction.
Which, to be honest, makes him worse than her.

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:He might have had to wait a few weeks, But there was really nothing to distinguish him or his people from everyone else. There would have been nothing to suspect had they showed up at the space port and played tourist.

To misquote Benjamin Franklin, three can keep a secret if all three are dead. He felt the deniability was essential. And felt it so strongly he was willing to die to ensure it.

I'm sure that you are right. However, the folks involved were isolated to the point where giving away secrets would have been tough. I'n not saying that getting them to their orbiting merchis, ala cruise ships would have been easy. But Albrecht doesn't seem to have considered any alternative other than the one he implemented. Nor does he seem to have planned in advance for this contingency. It just doesn't seem very resourceful to me.

Don

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n7axw wrote:He might have had to wait a few weeks, But there was really nothing to distinguish him or his people from everyone else. There would have been nothing to suspect had they showed up at the space port and played tourist.

kzt wrote:To misquote Benjamin Franklin, three can keep a secret if all three are dead. He felt the deniability was essential. And felt it so strongly he was willing to die to ensure it.

n7axw wrote:I'm sure that you are right. However, the folks involved were isolated to the point where giving away secrets would have been tough. I'n not saying that getting them to their orbiting merchis, ala cruise ships would have been easy. But Albrecht doesn't seem to have considered any alternative other than the one he implemented. Nor does he seem to have planned in advance for this contingency. It just doesn't seem very resourceful to me.

Don

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Albrecht was a master synthesizer and planner in an environment where well-planned operations that maintained secrecy were most of what was needed. The thing he wasn't was a seat-of-the-pants emergency planner like Victor Cachet.

As I said above, the only mistake he made was to try to keep Manticore out of the Talbott Sector rather than putting the transfer from Mesa to Darius into overdrive. And that would have worked except for the complete mischance of Terehkov being in the same system as a ship they'd seen before under a different name. That's where the cloak of secrecy started to unravel.

As far as advance planning was concerned, the final raft of bombs had to have been planted long in advance, especially since the Gamma Center bomb had to have been one of them. Houdini had also been planned in advance; the problem is that they planned for three years and they only had three months.

JohnRoth wrote:As far as advance planning was concerned, the final raft of bombs had to have been planted long in advance, especially since the Gamma Center bomb had to have been one of them. Houdini had also been planned in advance; the problem is that they planned for three years and they only had three months.

Given the nature of the Gamma Center it's very likely that it wired for destruction long before the final raft of bombs was planted.

Peregrinator wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:As far as advance planning was concerned, the final raft of bombs had to have been planted long in advance, especially since the Gamma Center bomb had to have been one of them. Houdini had also been planned in advance; the problem is that they planned for three years and they only had three months.

Given the nature of the Gamma Center it's very likely that it wired for destruction long before the final raft of bombs was planted.

I may have confused things. By "final raft" I meant the ones that went off when Albrecht pushed the button, not the ones in "Final Flourish." As far as I can tell, those were mostly installed as part of building the secret installation. Some may have been installed later when the installation was coopted or subverted (like the one in the orbital habitat), but the mission parameters indicate that most of them were original.

JohnRoth wrote:

n7axw wrote:He might have had to wait a few weeks, But there was really nothing to distinguish him or his people from everyone else. There would have been nothing to suspect had they showed up at the space port and played tourist.

kzt wrote:To misquote Benjamin Franklin, three can keep a secret if all three are dead. He felt the deniability was essential. And felt it so strongly he was willing to die to ensure it.

n7axw wrote:I'm sure that you are right. However, the folks involved were isolated to the point where giving away secrets would have been tough. I'n not saying that getting them to their orbiting merchis, ala cruise ships would have been easy. But Albrecht doesn't seem to have considered any alternative other than the one he implemented. Nor does he seem to have planned in advance for this contingency. It just doesn't seem very resourceful to me.

Don

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Albrecht was a master synthesizer and planner in an environment where well-planned operations that maintained secrecy were most of what was needed. The thing he wasn't was a seat-of-the-pants emergency planner like Victor Cachet.

As I said above, the only mistake he made was to try to keep Manticore out of the Talbott Sector rather than putting the transfer from Mesa to Darius into overdrive. And that would have worked except for the complete mischance of Terehkov being in the same system as a ship they'd seen before under a different name. That's where the cloak of secrecy started to unravel.

As far as advance planning was concerned, the final raft of bombs had to have been planted long in advance, especially since the Gamma Center bomb had to have been one of them. Houdini had also been planned in advance; the problem is that they planned for three years and they only had three months.

What I was saying was that there didn't seem to be any plan b if Houdini went wrong except blowing things up. That was my original point. The possibility of a Manty fleet was what Houdini was planning against so they were obviously aware of it. Good contingency planning would have come up with something to do apart from suiciding if worst came to worst.

Houdini should really been implemented prior to poking at the Manties with sharp stick. Had they left Manticore alone prior to Monica and OB,they could have evacuated Mesa without haste without all the fuss and fanfare.

Don

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JohnRoth wrote:
As I said above, the only mistake he made was to try to keep Manticore out of the Talbott Sector rather than putting the transfer from Mesa to Darius into overdrive. And that would have worked except for the complete mischance of Terehkov being in the same system as a ship they'd seen before under a different name. That's where the cloak of secrecy started to unravel.

I think I disagree with your premise. The purpose of sending Byng and Crandall out there and all the little brush fires (Kornati, Montana, and the other one that pretty much did nothing)was not to push SEM out of talbott but to provide a distraction during the war with Haven and incite a confrontation with the SL. Yes getting those BCs online and actually attacking the WHJ would be nice, getting bByng into a confrontation with the Manties, thus dragging them into a war on two fronts was all along the objective. If Crandall could push them out, all to the better, but only a bonus. After all, only a maniac would have the temerity to attack a non-aligned world like Mesa so close to the core worlds.

JohnRoth]"As I said above, the only mistake he made was to try to keep Manticore out of the Talbott Sector rather than putting the transfer from Mesa to Darius into overdrive. And that would have worked except for the complete mischance of Terehkov being in the same system as a ship they'd seen before under a different name. That's where the cloak of secrecy started to unravel.

As far as advance planning was concerned, the final raft of bombs had to have been planted long in advance, especially since the Gamma Center bomb had to have been one of them. Houdini had also been planned in advance; the problem is that they planned for three years and they only had three months.[/quote]

[quote="n7axw wrote:What I was saying was that there didn't seem to be any plan b if Houdini went wrong except blowing things up. That was my original point. The possibility of a Manty fleet was what Houdini was planning against so they were obviously aware of it. Good contingency planning would have come up with something to do apart from suiciding if worst came to worst.

Houdini should really been implemented prior to poking at the Manties with sharp stick. Had they left Manticore alone prior to Monica and OB,they could have evacuated Mesa without haste without all the fuss and fanfare.

Don

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Yes, textev said the bomb in the gamma center was part of the original installation. Houdini was planned long before. I am assuming (for lack of textev) that the bomb on Albrecht's island retreat was also built into the structure for the same reason.

No, they had no backup plan. Not sure there could be one beyond just quit sending the reset codes for everyone's nanites and blow up everything. Which is pretty much what happened. I don't think anyone could have anticipated (1) a wormhole into Spindle,(2) A captain coming across evidence of what was happening in Monica and acting on it on his own authority. (3) the few ships Terekov pulled together surviving that horde of pod launched sysdef missiles, and an attack by 3 BCs after suffering so much battle damage. Or (4) you can write it off as hubris.