MAlign's Houdini evacuation order?

So Operation Houdini was moved forward bc of several potential problems that the Simoes defection was going to cause. So, the originally planned, orderly evacuation as envisioned was streamlined and rushed through to get eveyone out before the wheels came off.

Now, Houdini was covered in Cauldron of Ghosts, and Shadow of Victory. In CoG we follow the initial evacuations, notably Zachariah McBride as his group are sent off in slaver ships and other slow transports. We find out in SoV that the later evacuations travel on special streak drive freighters in (presumably) much better accomodations, and more in keeping with the original unrushed plan.

Now to me, this argues that critical but less important members inside the onion went first, whearas the most important ones were able to travel as vip's.

We find out in SoV that there were two (presumably) large groups who are not able to be evacuated bc Michelle, and Lester show up before they can get away, and so, to avoid capture and questions, they and their evacuation sites are nuked. One of the things that leads me to conclude that the more important members are in this second stage is that the most important of them all, Albrect Detweiller, is also caught still onworld (and nukes himself)

So the thing that I'm wondering about is if the Alignment has taken a hit, in that a lot of the most important, critical people didn't make it out. And does this possibly mean that some of their long term plans are going to have problems or require major revisions to bring them off as per the original Operation Odyseus (MAlign's master plan for galactic domination) calls for?

Which is all good for all the rest of us normals.IMHO

So, dare we hope for additional time (and books) bc of the (hopefully) major revisions to the original plans? It seems to me that RFC has given MAlign a lot of pluses (spider drive ships, the Reneissance Factor, Darius, etc) and we all (us normals, and us readers) deserve at least a few lucky breaks.

PS Why the hell does Albrecht blow himself to kingdom come? As the number ONE guy in the Alignment, and as they are only two people (him and his wife) don't you think that it should have been easy to get them both off world without fanfare or being otherwise detected? He seems to me to be selfish and self centered enough, and have a big enough ego to have wanted to get him and his wife away. That whole blowing himself up thing is kind of out of character, and too noble and self sacrificing IMO

Mycall4me wrote:Why the hell does Albrecht blow himself to kingdom come? As the number ONE guy in the Alignment, and as they are only two people (him and his wife) don't you think that it should have been easy to get them both off world without fanfare or being otherwise detected? He seems to me to be selfish and self centered enough, and have a big enough ego to have wanted to get him and his wife away. That whole blowing himself up thing is kind of out of character, and too noble and self sacrificing IMO

The books explain that he felt it was his duty to stay until all the Onion members were evacuated. When the GA showed up before that was accomplished he and his wife pressed the button to blow up the evidence.

I think that the timetable for Houdini was moved up because the new wormhole brought Manticore much too close to Mesa. I am fairly certain the acceleration began before anyone knew the defector, Zilwicki and Cachet were alive. I am sure the most important members of the Onion (except for Albrecht) went away on earliest transports, so the ones that were blown up were less essential.

Mycall4me wrote:Now to me, this argues that critical but less important members inside the onion went first, whearas the most important ones were able to travel as vip's.

By that, we must assume only super VIPs. Even important but otherwise THAT important Onion members were sent in improvised shipping.

In any case, it appears the problem was the departure from Mesa, not the arrival in Darius or Galton. The MAlign couldn't hide a sudden uptick in transports or even freighters in Mesan orbit, even with a control of the traffic control databases. Too many other people would be around and notice things. So they had to make the extraction from Mesa with ships that would have been there anyway or, at worst, a few extras that wouldn't stand out.

In terms of extraction order, I disagree that the most important would go last, despite Albrecht being the last. The fact that they realised there was a risk in delaying implies they couldn't afford to wait to extract the most important members at all. Those would need to go as early as practical.

So the thing that I'm wondering about is if the Alignment has taken a hit, in that a lot of the most important, critical people didn't make it out. And does this possibly mean that some of their long term plans are going to have problems or require major revisions to bring them off as per the original Operation Odyseus (MAlign's master plan for galactic domination) calls for?

Which is all good for all the rest of us normals.IMHO

Yes but no.

Yes, the plans have taken a hit, there's no question about it. You'll read in TEiF that they realise this, with a musing from Benjamin Detweiler himself on the subject. But he does not ponder about missing people, but instead of other decisions that did set The Plan off the rails, some of which he was responsible for.

That's probably because the knowledge base of the Alignment secrets was distributed and compartmentalised. There was no one that was irreplaceable, not even Albrecht. Those that were extracted are going to be asked to pick up the slack on those that didn't make it, plus the native populations of Darius and (previously) Galton. They won't hit the ground running, but the MAlign probably thinks that's only a temporary setback. And it truly is.

In fact, they don't seem to have anyone that is heads-and-shoulders much brighter than everyone else. They don't have a Honor Harrington or Hamish Alexander or Sonja Hemphill or Susan Foraker, or Elizabeth Winton and Eloise Pritchart. They have a higher average, but the standard deviation seems to be fairly small.

Penny will probably disagree with my characterisation of the Alphas.

So, dare we hope for additional time (and books) bc of the (hopefully) major revisions to the original plans? It seems to me that RFC has given MAlign a lot of pluses (spider drive ships, the Reneissance Factor, Darius, etc) and we all (us normals, and us readers) deserve at least a few lucky breaks.

Given that Toll of Honor appears to be the beginning of a series of books related to giving us some background that we're lacking, yes, we probably will get just that. That seems to run counter to what RFC said last year when he said that the mainline story was a handful of books away from conclusion (I'm paraphrasing, I don't remember the exact words).

Mycall4me wrote:Why the hell does Albrecht blow himself to kingdom come? As the number ONE guy in the Alignment, and as they are only two people (him and his wife) don't you think that it should have been easy to get them both off world without fanfare or being otherwise detected? He seems to me to be selfish and self centered enough, and have a big enough ego to have wanted to get him and his wife away. That whole blowing himself up thing is kind of out of character, and too noble and self sacrificing IMO

tlb wrote:The books explain that he felt it was his duty to stay until all the Onion members were evacuated. When the GA showed up before that was accomplished he and his wife pressed the button to blow up the evidence.

Once the Second and Tenth Fleets crossed the hyperwall, he was practically trapped in the system. All traffic in and out of Mesa orbit was locked down, so no shuttle could have taken him from the surface to a ship, whether stealthed or not, once the GA had eyes on the planet. So his window of opportunity for leaving would have been a "must get out now" while recon drones were still 10 light-minutes away.

But he had to initiate the Final Flourish. And we know he wanted to cause the blame to fall on the invaders, so he waited to initiate it until they were in orbit.

He could have extracted immediately and gone to a spider ship parked a couple million km away, then sent the command from there. But given the presence of 28 SDs in orbit and however many escorts, the signal might have been traced and then cause the GA units to look back at their sensor readings for where the ship must have been, and glean something from that. That might not have been an acceptable risk. And that's even assuming there was a spider-drive yacht in the system; I actually doubt that they had such things long-term in Mesa, with all the traffic that system had.

Absent a spider ship, he couldn't get away even if he left immediately. The GA had the acceleration to run any ship down on any vector.

tlb wrote:

Mycall4me wrote:Why the hell does Albrecht blow himself to kingdom come? As the number ONE guy in the Alignment, and as they are only two people (him and his wife) don't you think that it should have been easy to get them both off world without fanfare or being otherwise detected? He seems to me to be selfish and self centered enough, and have a big enough ego to have wanted to get him and his wife away. That whole blowing himself up thing is kind of out of character, and too noble and self sacrificing IMO

The books explain that he felt it was his duty to stay until all the Onion members were evacuated. When the GA showed up before that was accomplished he and his wife pressed the button to blow up the evidence.

I think that the timetable for Houdini was moved up because the new wormhole brought Manticore much too close to Mesa. I am fairly certain the acceleration began before anyone knew the defector, Zilwicki and Cachet were alive. I am sure the most important members of the Onion (except for Albrecht) went away on earliest transports, so the ones that were blown up were less essential.

Two things. I'm currently re reading the series and I'm up to Shadow of Victory. The first time that Houdini is brought up is Mission of Honor, IIRC. Where Colin is talking to Albrect that he's just found out that Zilwicki is still alive, and all the other things that that news means, Simoes, nanotech assasins, the Alignment, etc. That is when they first start talking about Houdini, and about blaming the Ballroom for all the things that rushing Houdini is going to involve. That chapter is one of the ones that RFC puts in several of the following books as a background filler to move the major plot along for that particular book(s). I think that it's at least 3 times that that chapter is included. So no, it wasn't the Lynx terminus, at least not initially, it probably did help that decision along but the primary cause was Simoes.

Secondly, it seems more likely IMO that the initial rushed evacuations where the evacuees are smuggled out in slave ships would not have been suitable for vips and other high ranking inner onion members. In CoG the five people that the book covers are indeed inner onion members but are all (according to their background stories) all scientists and researchers in various projects, and not movers and shakers. It would seem to me to be more likely that the uppermost innermost members of the onion would turn up their noses to be whisked away in the dark of night (figuratively) in stinking slave ships. Plus they had GAUL keepers to snuff them if they were in danger of being caught. Also the trip involved multiple ship changes and round about routings with long travel times to finally get to Darius. With totally minimal luggage and belongings.

All of that would have caused the busy, self important, selfish vip's to not put up with such a thing.

The later trips as described in Shadow of Victory were all in dedicated customized streak drive freighters directly routed to Darius in comfort and luxury, much more in keeping with their lordly status as high ranking members of the inner onion.

Also in SoV the last two planned evacuations (not ships) were caught on Mesa when the good guys show up.and that's when Detweiller regretably blows them up.

So, I could be wrong about this, but I don't think it's likely.

Mycall4me wrote:The first time that Houdini is brought up is Mission of Honor, IIRC. Where Colin is talking to Albrect that he's just found out that Zilwicki is still alive, and all the other things that that news means, Simoes, nanotech assasins, the Alignment, etc. That is when they first start talking about Houdini, and about blaming the Ballroom for all the things that rushing Houdini is going to involve. That chapter is one of the ones that RFC puts in several of the following books as a background filler to move the major plot along for that particular book(s). I think that it's at least 3 times that that chapter is included. So no, it wasn't the Lynx terminus, at least not initially, it probably did help that decision along but the primary cause was Simoes.

Thanks for the refresher. It might be that Houdini had always been a plan, but it only got activated with Lynx. Its acceleration comes later, when the MAlign realises its plans have been revealed by Simões and its actions in Monica, Talbott and Madras are not giving it the time it needs. Plus, the Seccies begin their revolt on Mesa, which on one hand gives them good cover for the destruction they need to commit, but on the other increases the urgency.

It would seem to me to be more likely that the uppermost innermost members of the onion would turn up their noses to be whisked away in the dark of night (figuratively) in stinking slave ships. Plus they had GAUL keepers to snuff them if they were in danger of being caught. Also the trip involved multiple ship changes and round about routings with long travel times to finally get to Darius. With totally minimal luggage and belongings.

All of that would have caused the busy, self important, selfish vip's to not put up with such a thing.

Indeed, but that's probably a couple dozen people, maybe a hundred at most. Those probably had access to yachts anyway, so I think they extracted themselves early. They didn't wait for transport availability.

The later trips as described in Shadow of Victory were all in dedicated customized streak drive freighters directly routed to Darius in comfort and luxury, much more in keeping with their lordly status as high ranking members of the inner onion.

Please note those are the second leg of the extraction. So it's not a replacement for the extraction from Mesa in freighters and slaver ships.

tlb wrote:

Mycall4me wrote:Why the hell does Albrecht blow himself to kingdom come? As the number ONE guy in the Alignment, and as they are only two people (him and his wife) don't you think that it should have been easy to get them both off world without fanfare or being otherwise detected? He seems to me to be selfish and self centered enough, and have a big enough ego to have wanted to get him and his wife away. That whole blowing himself up thing is kind of out of character, and too noble and self sacrificing IMO

The books explain that he felt it was his duty to stay until all the Onion members were evacuated. When the GA showed up before that was accomplished he and his wife pressed the button to blow up the evidence.

I think that the timetable for Houdini was moved up because the new wormhole brought Manticore much too close to Mesa. I am fairly certain the acceleration began before anyone knew the defector, Zilwicki and Cachet were alive. I am sure the most important members of the Onion (except for Albrecht) went away on earliest transports, so the ones that were blown up were less essential.

I haven't reread that section of the story, but I'd been left with the impression that Albrecht didn't want to live with having pressed the Final Flourish button, to nuke all the remaining evacuation sites. So rather than trying to hide and slip away later he welcomed going out in another nuke blast and leaving his sons to carry out the MAlign's grand plan.

Makes sense, as he still could have taken the same exit later if found.

The books explain that he felt it was his duty to stay until all the Onion members were evacuated. When the GA showed up before that was accomplished he and his wife pressed the button to blow up the evidence.

I think that the timetable for Houdini was moved up because the new wormhole brought Manticore much too close to Mesa. I am fairly certain the acceleration began before anyone knew the defector, Zilwicki and Cachet were alive. I am sure the most important members of the Onion (except for Albrecht) went away on earliest transports, so the ones that were blown up were less essential.[/quote]
I haven't reread that section of the story, but I'd been left with the impression that Albrecht didn't want to live with having pressed the Final Flourish button, to nuke all the remaining evacuation sites. So rather than trying to hide and slip away later he welcomed going out in another nuke blast and leaving his sons to carry out the MAlign's grand plan.[/quote]

tlb wrote:I think that the timetable for Houdini was moved up because the new wormhole brought Manticore much too close to Mesa. I am fairly certain the acceleration began before anyone knew the defector, Zilwicki and Cachet were alive. I am sure the most important members of the Onion (except for Albrecht) went away on earliest transports, so the ones that were blown up were less essential.

Mycall4me wrote:I'm currently re reading the series and I'm up to Shadow of Victory. The first time that Houdini is brought up is Mission of Honor, IIRC. Where Colin is talking to Albrect that he's just found out that Zilwicki is still alive, and all the other things that that news means, Simoes, nanotech assasins, the Alignment, etc. That is when they first start talking about Houdini, and about blaming the Ballroom for all the things that rushing Houdini is going to involve. That chapter is one of the ones that RFC puts in several of the following books as a background filler to move the major plot along for that particular book(s). I think that it's at least 3 times that that chapter is included. So no, it wasn't the Lynx terminus, at least not initially, it probably did help that decision along but the primary cause was Simoes.

It may be in several books, but chapter 17 in A Rising Thunder has Albrecht saying "Well, it's not the end of the universe. And at least we've had time to get Houdini up and running" when he is first told that Herlander Simões is alive and talking about these things in the company of Zilwicki and Cachet. So Simões was NOT the reason for the start of Houdini.

PS: I cannot find mention of "Houdini" in Mission of Honor.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:I think that the timetable for Houdini was moved up because the new wormhole brought Manticore much too close to Mesa. I am fairly certain the acceleration began before anyone knew the defector, Zilwicki and Cachet were alive. I am sure the most important members of the Onion (except for Albrecht) went away on earliest transports, so the ones that were blown up were less essential.

Mycall4me wrote:I'm currently re reading the series and I'm up to Shadow of Victory. The first time that Houdini is brought up is Mission of Honor, IIRC. Where Colin is talking to Albrect that he's just found out that Zilwicki is still alive, and all the other things that that news means, Simoes, nanotech assasins, the Alignment, etc. That is when they first start talking about Houdini, and about blaming the Ballroom for all the things that rushing Houdini is going to involve. That chapter is one of the ones that RFC puts in several of the following books as a background filler to move the major plot along for that particular book(s). I think that it's at least 3 times that that chapter is included. So no, it wasn't the Lynx terminus, at least not initially, it probably did help that decision along but the primary cause was Simoes.

It may be in several books, but chapter 17 in A Rising Thunder has Albrecht saying "Well, it's not the end of the universe. And at least we've had time to get Houdini up and running" when he is first told that Herlander Simões is alive and talking about these things in the company of Zilwicki and Cachet. So Simões was NOT the reason for the start of Houdini.

PS: I cannot find mention of "Houdini" in Mission of Honor.

I think that you're right. A Rising Thunder was probably the first. Then that same chapter was repeated verbatim in Storm From the Shadows, and again in another book (don't remember which, just that it's repeated 3 total times) also you're correct that in that chapter Albrect tells Colin that Houdini was up and running or at least getting ready to be implemented, but the knowledge that Zilwicki survided and all the downsides of that, gets them talking about jumping on Houdini quickly and accelerating it.