Battle of Manticore - am I the only one?

SWM wrote:Manpower had a grudge against thousands of people on Manticore. While you can make a case for Manpower trying to take out the Torch leadership, there is no obvious reason for Manpower to try to take out Honor and Webster at that particular time--both of them were busy with other things and hadn't had time to bother Manpower for years.

Manpower also had absolutely no reputation for committing assassinations. That wasn't Manpower's style. Haven did have that reputation. There was no reason to suspect Manpower of trying to assassinate Honor and Webster. The only obvious suspect for Honor's assassination was Haven. By association, the obvious suspect for Torch and Webster was also Haven.

Suggesting that Elizabeth should have suspected Manpower is presuming knowledge that the readers have and the characters didn't. Manpower was believed to be just a big corporation with lots of sleazy connections. It was not a covert operations network capable of deep undercover assassinations like this. That simply isn't the way anyone thought of Manpower, not even Manticore.

Hi SWM,

I'm afraid I have to disagree. Manpower did more or less routinely resort to assassination and although I'm not sure how far their reputation extended, I can come up with several right off the top of my head: the attempt that Al Harrington as a Marine Sgt spiked, refered to in Beauty and the Beast; and in the same story he stops an attempt on both Alison and Jacques. Then there was their attempt on Cathy Montaign. With the nano-tech, they try on Emperor Gustaf's brother and kill his nephew instead, the attempt on Honor, providing the tool for Giancola to get rid of his buddy, kill Jim Webster using the Havenite ambassador's driver, then try to kill Berry on Torch.

Some of these were Alignment and not Manpower, to be sure. But it is only after Zilwicki and Cachet get home from Mesa that anyone really understands that there is a difference. And we are talking about reputation, after all.

Finally, Manpower and the Alignment have longstanding grudges not just against Honor, but against her family on the Beowulf side. Jacques has a been an effective operative against them. Further, Honor's ancestors were prominent successful advocates of the Chartwell convention.

So, I doubt that anyone truly aware of what has been going on has any doubts that Manpower and the Alignment both use assassination when suits their purposes if they think they can get away with it.

Further, I suspect that Elizabeth is fully aware of this. She is just so narrowly focused on Haven when she cancels the Torch summit that Manpower doesn't break over her horizon. It should have. But it didn't.

Don

There was also the murder of most of the first honest government that the confederacy had, though that was a few hundred years ago.

Commodore Oakius wrote:I am not saying Pierre was a great man in what he did, I am not disagreeing that he took actions that are wrong, I am saying that I feel that he didn't want to go that far, and wouldn't have if he had the option.

And yet somehow Pritchart seems to be governing Haven quite effectively without a reign of terror, and even the Legislaturalists were far less brutal than the Committee.

n7axw wrote:
So, I doubt that anyone truly aware of what has been going on has any doubts that Manpower and the Alignment both use assassination when suits their purposes if they think they can get away with it.

Further, I suspect that Elizabeth is fully aware of this. She is just so narrowly focused on Haven when she cancels the Torch summit that Manpower doesn't break over her horizon. It should have. But it didn't.

Don

Your points are well-taken. Mesa/Manpower do use assassination but how many of those examples does Elizabeth/Manticore know were done by the Mesans? Some they do (i.e. the attack on Cathy) but some are still in the "parties unknown" category. Most of Manticore's and Elizabeth's experience with assassinations has been courtesy of the Havenites.

And while Manpower/Mesa does hate Honor and her family there was absolutely no reason at that time for Elizabeth and her analysts to think that Manpower was behind the attack on Honor. There were no hints that it could have been them for Manticore to pick up on (and at that time I don't believe they even knew that it was a nanotech that was used so they couldn't possibly trace that back to Manpower). It did suit Mesa's purposes to go after Honor but no one else had any way of knowing that. From Elizabeth's perspective it did suit Haven's purposes. Honor's Eighth Fleet had already completed Cutworm II and inflicted more damage to the Republic. There were more compelling reasons to focus on Haven.

Elizabeth and her analysts could have considered Manpower/Mesa as a suspect in Honor's attack but given what they knew at the time there was no evidence for them to conclude that Manpower had done it.

drothgery wrote:

Commodore Oakius wrote:I am not saying Pierre was a great man in what he did, I am not disagreeing that he took actions that are wrong, I am saying that I feel that he didn't want to go that far, and wouldn't have if he had the option.

And yet somehow Pritchart seems to be governing Haven quite effectively without a reign of terror, and even the Legislaturalists were far less brutal than the Committee.

I doubt that Theisman and Pritchart could have successfully reformed Haven without the intervening reign of terror by Pierre and the CPS. Even with the reforms pushed through by Pierre, they still have problems with old-school politicians like Giancola.

Amaroq wrote:
Your points are well-taken. Mesa/Manpower do use assassination but how many of those examples does Elizabeth/Manticore know were done by the Mesans? Some they do (i.e. the attack on Cathy) but some are still in the "parties unknown" category. Most of Manticore's and Elizabeth's experience with assassinations has been courtesy of the Havenites.

And while Manpower/Mesa does hate Honor and her family there was absolutely no reason at that time for Elizabeth and her analysts to think that Manpower was behind the attack on Honor. There were no hints that it could have been them for Manticore to pick up on (and at that time I don't believe they even knew that it was a nanotech that was used so they couldn't possibly trace that back to Manpower). It did suit Mesa's purposes to go after Honor but no one else had any way of knowing that. From Elizabeth's perspective it did suit Haven's purposes. Honor's Eighth Fleet had already completed Cutworm II and inflicted more damage to the Republic. There were more compelling reasons to focus on Haven.

Elizabeth and her analysts could have considered Manpower/Mesa as a suspect in Honor's attack but given what they knew at the time there was no evidence for them to conclude that Manpower had done it.

There was even less evidence to conclude that Haven would launch an attack on Torch.

Amaroq wrote:

n7axw wrote:
So, I doubt that anyone truly aware of what has been going on has any doubts that Manpower and the Alignment both use assassination when suits their purposes if they think they can get away with it.

Further, I suspect that Elizabeth is fully aware of this. She is just so narrowly focused on Haven when she cancels the Torch summit that Manpower doesn't break over her horizon. It should have. But it didn't.

Don

Your points are well-taken. Mesa/Manpower do use assassination but how many of those examples does Elizabeth/Manticore know were done by the Mesans? Some they do (i.e. the attack on Cathy) but some are still in the "parties unknown" category. Most of Manticore's and Elizabeth's experience with assassinations has been courtesy of the Havenites.

And while Manpower/Mesa does hate Honor and her family there was absolutely no reason at that time for Elizabeth and her analysts to think that Manpower was behind the attack on Honor. There were no hints that it could have been them for Manticore to pick up on (and at that time I don't believe they even knew that it was a nanotech that was used so they couldn't possibly trace that back to Manpower). It did suit Mesa's purposes to go after Honor but no one else had any way of knowing that. From Elizabeth's perspective it did suit Haven's purposes. Honor's Eighth Fleet had already completed Cutworm II and inflicted more damage to the Republic. There were more compelling reasons to focus on Haven.

Elizabeth and her analysts could have considered Manpower/Mesa as a suspect in Honor's attack but given what they knew at the time there was no evidence for them to conclude that Manpower had done it.

To be sure, hard evidence was missing. Certainly it is understandable that along with Alexander's government, the queen was focused on Haven.

But I submit that in terms of motivation, Manpower should have been moved to the top of the list of suspects well before Zilwicke and Cachat returned from Mesa. Whose operatives were caught supplying arms to terrorists in the Quadrant? Mesa.
Who got caught engineering the business with Monica? Mesa. Who had Webster been pounding on before he was assasinated? Mesa. Finally who lost the Torch system and had more than enough reason to go after Berry? Mesa.

Honor, Mike Henke, Cachat, Zilwicke, were all smelling something rotten with Manpower well before the queen or the government were willing to seriously consider it. That was the reason Cachat and Zilwicke went on their expedition to Mesa to start with. And if you want to consider hard evidence, where was the hard evidence to implicate Haven? The use of the driver of the Havenite ambassador's driver to take out Webster? Ha! That was so transparently an obvious setup as to be rediculous.

No, the real thing that happened here with both the Queen and the government was that the experience of being at war with Haven for nearly 20 years had them so strongly focused on Haven as the enemy that it created what we might call tunnell vision where all they could see in the cross hairs was Haven to the exclusion of other possibilities. Remember Honor's conversation with Willie Alexander after Zilwicke and Cachat visited her flagship? He was completely unwilling to truly listen...as was the queen.

Don

n7axw wrote:
To be sure, hard evidence was missing. Certainly it is understandable that along with Alexander's government, the queen was focused on Haven.

But I submit that in terms of motivation, Manpower should have been moved to the top of the list of suspects well before Zilwicke and Cachat returned from Mesa. Whose operatives were caught supplying arms to terrorists in the Quadrant? Mesa.
Who got caught engineering the business with Monica? Mesa. Who had Webster been pounding on before he was assasinated? Mesa. Finally who lost the Torch system and had more than enough reason to go after Berry? Mesa.

Honor, Mike Henke, Cachat, Zilwicke, were all smelling something rotten with Manpower well before the queen or the government were willing to seriously consider it. That was the reason Cachat and Zilwicke went on their expedition to Mesa to start with. And if you want to consider hard evidence, where was the hard evidence to implicate Haven? The use of the driver of the Havenite ambassador's driver to take out Webster? Ha! That was so transparently an obvious setup as to be rediculous.

No, the real thing that happened here with both the Queen and the government was that the experience of being at war with Haven for nearly 20 years had them so strongly focused on Haven as the enemy that it created what we might call tunnell vision where all they could see in the cross hairs was Haven to the exclusion of other possibilities. Remember Honor's conversation with Willie Alexander after Zilwicke and Cachat visited her flagship? He was completely unwilling to truly listen...as was the queen.

Don

True, she did have tunnel-vision where Haven was concerned and she shouldn't have made a decision based solely on that. She's a monarch and a leader but also a human being. She didn't make the right choice, obviously, but I don't think that she should be raked over the coals for it as much as she has been. None of her advisers and analysts disagreed with her and went along with the decision and we know that they have had calming influences on her before and would step up if they felt she was in the wrong. The final decision was hers, as queen, but there a lot of other people who contributed to it.

Hard evidence for any of the assassinations was lacking except for the Havenite driver and the money trail from the Webster attack. You are correct in that there was no evidence to really implicate anyone. That lack of evidence towards Haven also applied towards Mesa. Manpower/Mesa may have been brought up (I believe they were) but without anything more that was as far as Elizabeth would or could go. Her focus on Haven as the more immediate threat given what was happening at the time is understandable but also incomplete. However, without anything more to go on aside from supposition and circumstantial evidence I don't believe that her and her analysts should've focused more on Manpower/Mesa over Haven.

I may also be getting timelines mixed in my head. Did the Webster attack happen before or after Mesan complicity in Monica and Talbott was uncovered?

Amaroq wrote:

n7axw wrote:
To be sure, hard evidence was missing. Certainly it is understandable that along with Alexander's government, the queen was focused on Haven.

But I submit that in terms of motivation, Manpower should have been moved to the top of the list of suspects well before Zilwicke and Cachat returned from Mesa. Whose operatives were caught supplying arms to terrorists in the Quadrant? Mesa.
Who got caught engineering the business with Monica? Mesa. Who had Webster been pounding on before he was assasinated? Mesa. Finally who lost the Torch system and had more than enough reason to go after Berry? Mesa.

Honor, Mike Henke, Cachat, Zilwicke, were all smelling something rotten with Manpower well before the queen or the government were willing to seriously consider it. That was the reason Cachat and Zilwicke went on their expedition to Mesa to start with. And if you want to consider hard evidence, where was the hard evidence to implicate Haven? The use of the driver of the Havenite ambassador's driver to take out Webster? Ha! That was so transparently an obvious setup as to be rediculous.

No, the real thing that happened here with both the Queen and the government was that the experience of being at war with Haven for nearly 20 years had them so strongly focused on Haven as the enemy that it created what we might call tunnell vision where all they could see in the cross hairs was Haven to the exclusion of other possibilities. Remember Honor's conversation with Willie Alexander after Zilwicke and Cachat visited her flagship? He was completely unwilling to truly listen...as was the queen.

Don

True, she did have tunnel-vision where Haven was concerned and she shouldn't have made a decision based solely on that. She's a monarch and a leader but also a human being. She didn't make the right choice, obviously, but I don't think that she should be raked over the coals for it as much as she has been. None of her advisers and analysts disagreed with her and went along with the decision and we know that they have had calming influences on her before and would step up if they felt she was in the wrong. The final decision was hers, as queen, but there a lot of other people who contributed to it.

Hard evidence for any of the assassinations was lacking except for the Havenite driver and the money trail from the Webster attack. You are correct in that there was no evidence to really implicate anyone. That lack of evidence towards Haven also applied towards Mesa. Manpower/Mesa may have been brought up (I believe they were) but without anything more that was as far as Elizabeth would or could go. Her focus on Haven as the more immediate threat given what was happening at the time is understandable but also incomplete. However, without anything more to go on aside from supposition and circumstantial evidence I don't believe that her and her analysts should've focused more on Manpower/Mesa over Haven.

I may also be getting timelines mixed in my head. Did the Webster attack happen before or after Mesan complicity in Monica and Talbott was uncovered?

After. It happened just prior to the attack on Torch. In fact Monica was one of the things Webster had been ragging about and his effectiveness is what drew Bardasano and the Detweiler's attention to him.

I don't see us disagreeing very much. In fact, I am a fan of Queen Elizabeth. But even so, as understandable as the focus on Haven was, what happened, happened. As we look for the causes of that, the breakdown of the Torch Summit was in large measure due to Elizabeth's inability to look past the conflict with Haven to other possibilities suggested by things that were right out in the open for due consideration.

Don

n7axw wrote:After. It happened just prior to the attack on Torch. In fact Monica was one of the things Webster had been ragging about and his effectiveness is what drew Bardasano and the Detweiler's attention to him.

I don't see us disagreeing very much. In fact, I am a fan of Queen Elizabeth. But even so, as understandable as the focus on Haven was, what happened, happened. As we look for the causes of that, the breakdown of the Torch Summit was in large measure due to Elizabeth's inability to look past the conflict with Haven to other possibilities suggested by things that were right out in the open for due consideration.

Don

Agreed. What was the original focus of this topic again? Lol.

What I'm waiting for is for the nanotech to actually fail or blow-up in Mesa's face during an operation. It's been successfully used in every operation so far (in the sense that even if the target wasn't killed the nanotech itself was never discovered afterward nor predicted ahead of time). That perfect track record can't keep up forever.