[Spoiler - UH] utube snippet

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:(concerning Damien Harahap's knowledge of the Mesa Alignment)

JohnRoth wrote:That could well be. I'm pretty sure I heard it, but I'm not going to go watch the video again to verify that.

JohnRoth wrote:I just watched the video again. He discusses Colin Detweiler - by name - beginning roughly 3:10 in for maybe 3 minutes.

That would be a serious continuity error. Even the name Detweiler was very much inner Onion which Damien wasn't.

I would guess it is far less secret than people believe. Even top spies can be careless and Firebrand listens carefully. He would figure out right from the beginning that his bosses were not at the top. Occasionally a word might drop here and there.

And the Detweiler name is well-known. His ideas became a key bedrock of Manpower, Inc.

Put some things together and a really sharp intelligent agent might well know more than anyone thinks.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:(concerning Damien Harahap's knowledge of the Mesa Alignment)

JohnRoth wrote:That could well be. I'm pretty sure I heard it, but I'm not going to go watch the video again to verify that.

JohnRoth wrote:I just watched the video again. He discusses Colin Detweiler - by name - beginning roughly 3:10 in for maybe 3 minutes.

That would be a serious continuity error. Even the name Detweiler was very much inner Onion which Damien wasn't.

You're quite right that it's a continuity error. The only time Damien meets Colin in person is in Chapter 23, right after Green Pines. Colin's name is never mentioned. There is, by the way, a second continuity error: Bardisano told Harahap about the name "Mesan Alignment," and he says in the debrief scene in the excerpt that they had never used that name with him.

JohnRoth wrote:
You're quite right that it's a continuity error. The only time Damien meets Colin in person is in Chapter 23, right after Green Pines. Colin's name is never mentioned. There is, by the way, a second continuity error: Bardisano told Harahap about the name "Mesan Alignment," and he says in the debrief scene in the excerpt that they had never used that name with him.

Probably a continuity error - RFC was reading from his first draft, wasn't he?

Unless, of course, we discover that the ever-resourceful Damien was spying on his Mesan bosses.

Damien did take the Gendarmerie as a way out of the problems on his homeworld though he is displaying a "realisitc" view of that as the best way to survive and do better for himself. That does'nt mean he is deceiving himself about what he does, just that he sees it as he best current option and no real way do change it.
Then he gets sucked into the Alignment because he is truly good at his job and a survivor. He's still a contract agent and though a valuable tool, still just a tool which can and will be discarded when and as needed. The Alignment, like OFS, does provide ways to become wealthy and powerful but becomimg a liability is quite likely to make you quickly dead. Not clear if Damien realizes just how lucky he was to have missed getting that last round of treatment at Mesa. Also not clear if he knows the Alignment does that to it's agents.

That Firebrand was working (for OFS at the time) to destablize planets which were clients of OFS needs to be parsed a but finer. The actual ruleing leadership of the several planets we saw him and others working againt seemed to be be more local grown leaders/parties with ties to various Transtellars and while OFS/FF provided some support by being potentilay usable as the steel fist, OFS was at least one or two layers removed from local control. Your local Tyrants etc at the close level and then one or more Transtellars who had economic strangle-holds on said ruler/ruling class.
My take on Firebrand and Operation Janus was that OFS was looking to cut away that remove/layers of and place themselves directly at the control of the planets and flow of wealth by replacing the local leadership with OFS Governors/managers to cut out the middleman so to speak. Why let someone elce get most of the money when you can have it for yourself and become the supplier to the Transtellars- and get the majority of the cut- as well as having the power in the system?
Janus is very much like Case Buccaneer, where FF/OFS is to provide a wave of fake piracy as pretext to bring in FF, "discover" the links to a system or two and instal an OFS Protectorate Regime (headed by an OFS Governor) in said systems to both solve the problem and make sure it doesn't happen again.

And, yes, Damian bonded to a VERY angry Treecat who has been asking himself a lot of questions about TwoLegs vs The People is going to change the dynamic. However, we have already seen a lot of changes in that dynamic in the period since the Oyster Bay attack and the Treecats bringing themselves out of their earlier posture - which was not exactly passive, just self protective and wasnting to move with glacial slowness of getting involved with humans. Of course, getting themselves bonded to the ruling house of Manticore for centuries wasn't exactly working off-camera but I'm not going to play with that plot device.

Damien is going to bring his new bond-mate a very different frame of reference than what we have primariy seen in bondings. This is probably closer to Elizabeth and her 'cat than Honor and Nimitz.
I say that because Honor had primarily been dealing with purely military situations and layers of politics (which she used to loath and now "deals with" but doesn't particularly like. She is quite good at it be approches from a more direct perspective. That fits Nimitz more traditional black & white 'cat take on the world though that is greatly understating the Treecats ability.

Elizabeth has always had to deal with the more political side of life and so many people (and politicians) who do not have her or her people's best interests at heart- and are quite accomplished at being willing and able to lie to her face about it and cloak everything in layers of cover and misdirection. She is quite good at this as well as finding (and listening to other people whom she will trust to suggest solutions and paths to take).

Damien has been living a life of keeping almost everything in his own head for so long (to survive both with his employers and in the field) that he is going to be a unique experience for Treecats. A major question is if his bond-mate is going to have any problems reading his intentions, sorting and understanding and appreciating what he is feeling vs what he is doing. There is also the question of how Damien is going to deal with having a true partner for the rest of their combined lives to whom he not only can't totaly hold himself at all distant from but whom he is going to have to explain a lot of things to- once he learns sign language

Brigade XO wrote:Damien is going to bring his new bond-mate a very different frame of reference than what we have primariy seen in bondings. This is probably closer to Elizabeth and her 'cat than Honor and Nimitz.
I say that because Honor had primarily been dealing with purely military situations and layers of politics (which she used to loath and now "deals with" but doesn't particularly like. She is quite good at it be approches from a more direct perspective. That fits Nimitz more traditional black & white 'cat take on the world though that is greatly understating the Treecats ability.

Elizabeth has always had to deal with the more political side of life and so many people (and politicians) who do not have her or her people's best interests at heart- and are quite accomplished at being willing and able to lie to her face about it and cloak everything in layers of cover and misdirection. She is quite good at this as well as finding (and listening to other people whom she will trust to suggest solutions and paths to take).

Damien has been living a life of keeping almost everything in his own head for so long (to survive both with his employers and in the field) that he is going to be a unique experience for Treecats. A major question is if his bond-mate is going to have any problems reading his intentions, sorting and understanding and appreciating what he is feeling vs what he is doing. There is also the question of how Damien is going to deal with having a true partner for the rest of their combined lives to whom he not only can't totaly hold himself at all distant from but whom he is going to have to explain a lot of things to- once he learns sign language

We should remember that there are quite a few humans who have bonded. Some have undoubtedly had checkered lives and the treecats do communicate with each other. Honor has communicated with cats who "remember" her ancestor.

The problems are more likely to come from Harahap but he might even like it. He now has someone he can be perfectly open with.

JohnRoth wrote:
You're quite right that it's a continuity error. The only time Damien meets Colin in person is in Chapter 23, right after Green Pines. Colin's name is never mentioned. There is, by the way, a second continuity error: Bardisano told Harahap about the name "Mesan Alignment," and he says in the debrief scene in the excerpt that they had never used that name with him.

Or he overheard something about Colin, and "Mesan Alignment" never got into long-term memory. Its the flip-side of the "frequency illusion".

With all respect, surely voice to text is easier than learning to sign. Amusingly I have heard discussion -- do not know if it deployed--of a voice-to-sign computer module, where you would talk and it would display hand waving on the screen. (I have a friend who became deaf. I learned the alphabet and can spell slowly, but cannot read it.) However, the friend speaks just fine. Computer camera plus sign to voice should also work with their=period technology.

Brigade XO wrote:Damien is going to bring his new bond-mate a very different frame of reference than what we have primariy seen in bondings. This is probably closer to Elizabeth and her 'cat than Honor and Nimitz.
I say that because Honor had primarily been dealing with purely military situations and layers of politics (which she used to loath and now "deals with" but doesn't particularly like. She is quite good at it be approches from a more direct perspective. That fits Nimitz more traditional black & white 'cat take on the world though that is greatly understating the Treecats ability.

Elizabeth has always had to deal with the more political side of life and so many people (and politicians) who do not have her or her people's best interests at heart- and are quite accomplished at being willing and able to lie to her face about it and cloak everything in layers of cover and misdirection. She is quite good at this as well as finding (and listening to other people whom she will trust to suggest solutions and paths to take).

Damien has been living a life of keeping almost everything in his own head for so long (to survive both with his employers and in the field) that he is going to be a unique experience for Treecats. A major question is if his bond-mate is going to have any problems reading his intentions, sorting and understanding and appreciating what he is feeling vs what he is doing. There is also the question of how Damien is going to deal with having a true partner for the rest of their combined lives to whom he not only can't totaly hold himself at all distant from but whom he is going to have to explain a lot of things to- once he learns sign language

In SoV textev bore witness to the many medical upgrades that were given to Harahap. He has the healing power that Bardasano displayed. He has thermal vision, or whatever ability the augmentation to his eyesight contains. And others. Just like spent nuclear weapons leave their own tell-tale signature from the flavor of the uranium that can be traced back to its owners, can't Manticore's medical establishment trace the gene signatures of the nanites given to Damien and come up with Detweiler? The Detweilers were the only people working on the dangerous side of the genetic fence.

IOW, there's proof in the genetic pudding that was cooked up for him.

cthia wrote:...The Detweilers were the only people working on the dangerous side of the genetic fence.

Not exactly. Leonard Detweiler left Beowuf to colonize Mesa with "like minded" people. There were several hundred, or so, people working on the dangerous side of the "genetic fence."

I'm sure that there were even more "like-minded" immigrants over the years since Mesa was colonized.

Over the centuries, enough outside DNA has been imported into "improving" the Detweiler genome that Leonard, himself, probably would qualify as a "Detweiler" by current LRPB standards.