Battle of Manticore - am I the only one?

Jonathan_S wrote:
But at the time of the assassination attempts again Admiral Weber and Honor neither were making direct actions that clearly and immediately threatened the viability of the genetic slave trade. (And eliminating them wouldn't change Manticore's basic anti-slavery stance or enforcement)


Sure, if Weber had been agitating for an "quarantine" of Mesa to forcibly inspect all outbound ships for slaves, or slaving equipment, then people might immediately suspect Manpower of orchestrating his assassination. But he wasn't. Nor was Honor openly advocating, nor carrying out, any specific anti-slavery actions.

Small typo here. Not even Mesans would be daft enough to kill Weber. Webster, on the other hand. . . .

Rob
edited to remove an attempt at colored text.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:
But at the time of the assassination attempts again Admiral Weber and Honor neither were making direct actions that clearly and immediately threatened the viability of the genetic slave trade. (And eliminating them wouldn't change Manticore's basic anti-slavery stance or enforcement)


Sure, if Weber had been agitating for an "quarantine" of Mesa to forcibly inspect all outbound ships for slaves, or slaving equipment, then people might immediately suspect Manpower of orchestrating his assassination. But he wasn't. Nor was Honor openly advocating, nor carrying out, any specific anti-slavery actions.

Small typo here. Not even Mesans would be daft enough to kill Weber. Webster, on the other hand. . . .

Rob
edited to remove an attempt at colored text.

How do you know, that the Mesaians wouldn't kill Weber. After all every one in the explored galaxy knows that the Mesains are the scum of the galaxy.

saber964 wrote:

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:Small typo here. Not even Mesans would be daft enough to kill Weber. Webster, on the other hand. . . .

Rob
edited to remove an attempt at colored text.

How do you know, that the Mesaians wouldn't kill Weber. After all every one in the explored galaxy knows that the Mesains are the scum of the galaxy.

Well that would be one (meta) way to stave off their inevitable defeat

Hi Jonathan_S,

I love it!

Thanks for making me smile guys.

L

Jonathan_S wrote:

saber964 wrote:*quote="Armed Neo-Bob"*
Small typo here. Not even Mesans would be daft enough to kill Weber. Webster, on the other hand. . . .

Rob
edited to remove an attempt at colored text.*quote*
How do you know, that the Mesaians wouldn't kill Weber. After all every one in the explored galaxy knows that the Mesains are the scum of the galaxy.

Well that would be one (meta) way to stave off their inevitable defeat

Dafmeister wrote:

n7axw wrote:

I respectfully disagree. Manpower has been into asassinations up to its ears for as long they have been in business. I would have to scrounge a bit for the textev, but one specific incident that comes to mind is that incident in Beauty and the Beast that Jacques and his BSC team broke up that upset Manpower so bad they went after Alison. I'll give you that the nanotech bit was new. But the Alignment under it's Manpower cover has been "tieing up loose ends" that way all along. Remember the attempt on Cathy Montaign that Zilwikie thwarted?

Elizabeth may well have focused down on Haven for completely understandable reasons. But She would have been under no illusions at all about Manpower and its reputation.

Don

Yes, Manpower have used assassination for a long time, but:

1) So has Haven.

2) Manpower has never (so far as is known) targeted a star nation is this way, as opposed to a personal opponent. Cathy and Anton are deeply involved with the Anti-Slavery League and the Audubon Ballroom, so they fall squarely into the second category.

3) Webster was attacking the Mesan corporations as part of Manticore's PR campaign after the Battle of Monica, i.e. to defend the Star Kingdom against the charge that the nasty imperialist neobarbsm, not content with subjugating the whole of the poor, defenceless Talbott cluster, had now brazenly attacked the poor, defenceless Republic of Monica. He wasn't saying anything about the transtellars that hadn't been said a million times before by a million other people, and most people who paid attention to such things would know that he was using his attack on them as code for attacking OFS - as far as anyone knew, the transtellars were acting as OFS proxies at the time, because no-one knew that OFS was (unknowingly) working for the MA. Therefore, so far as Manticore knew, Manpower had no particular reason to go after Webster any more than to go after countless others before him.

4) Webster was also working very effectively in the PR battle between Manticore and Haven, so Haven definitely had motive for killing him.

5) It was 'known' that Haven was behind the assassination attempt on Honor, because who else would have reason to attack her? She hates genetic slavery and has attack the slave trade before, but so have thousands of other RMN officers, so why would Manpower target her? Haven, on the other hand, had every reason to want her dead. Therefore, it would be reasonable to assume that Haven was behind any similar attacks, especially if there was a plausible motive for Haven to want that target dead.

Dealing with your number 1. We need to be a bit more precise here. The Legislaturists were known for assassination. The Committee was known for assassination. The reborn Republic? Not at all. Now it is understandable that Manticore might be conflating the three, especially at that point. But Honor was capable of making the distinction, iirc. He understood the logic of Haven attacking her, but she also understood the possibility of alternates. Also, Haven's preferred methods in the previous regimes were aircar accidents and pulsers. Nanites? Not so much.

Your number two. Remember that story in Beauty and the Beast? IIRC, it was a Beowulf representative that was being targeted on Old Sol. That's an attack on the representative of a state. I doubt that they were making those sorts of distinctions. If you were in the way and threatening Manpower in some way, you could make their hit list regardless of who you were or who you had represented. Remember that conversation between Bardasano and Detweiler when he asked about he possibility of a hit on either Elizabeth or Prichard? Her response: the security is too good. If it could have been done it would have been done.

Your number three:
What Webster was doing was attacking Manpower. He probably was attacking Haven some, but the emphasis in the text ev is on Manpower. I think that is the clue we are given. Manpower was a lot more on the front burner in the League than Haven in the aftermath of Monica.

Your number four: For me the thing that gives it away is that the individual used was the Havenite ambassador's driver. Come on, surely someone with Haven's skills and sinister reputation could have come up with something a bit less transparent than that??? IIRC that one even got called into question by the Alexander government and they are focused on Haven.

Your number five: The mutual antipathy between Honor and Manpower goes much further than how effective she's been against them. Think of her mother's maiden name: Benton Ramierz y Chow. Think of her brother Jacques and the BSC... Her ancestors: big advocates of the Chartwell Convention... The opportunity to strike against THAT family would have motivated Albrecht at least as much as anything Honor herself might have done. Everybody involved on both sides of that would have been fully aware of the implications including the Alexander government.

From my perspective, Dafmeister, there was more than enough reason to look at Manpower rather than Haven. In fact, taken as a whole, I think that it's compelling.

However, for reasons with I find completely understandable, yes even with which I am sympathetic, Elizabeth was focused on Haven with her suspicions so strong that they constituted tunnel vision. Remember how hard it was to convince Elizabeth to go to the Torch summit? The same was true for the Alexander government as a whole. Without that tunnel vision they would probably have not canceled the Torch summit and they most assuredly would have been seriously considering a broader range of possibilities than they actually did.

Thank you for your post and the courtesy you displayed in laying it out.

Don

n7axw wrote:Also, Haven's preferred methods in the previous regimes were aircar accidents and pulsers. Nanites? Not so much.

Haven has assassinated someone by sabotaging the compensator on a ship they were on, killing thousands.

Haven has assassinated someone by sabotaging the grav ski they were using.

Haven has assassinated someone by using stealth missiles, killing thousands.

Haven has assassinated someone by blowing up the entire complex they were in, killing thousands.

Those are just the ones I can think of off-hand, there are probably other assassinations or attempted assassinations I'm forgetting. Haven has proven pretty damn flexible in how they murder people, and in how many people get killed along with the target.

So no, I don't think anything about the method seems to point any fingers away from Haven.

n7axw wrote:Dealing with your number 1. We need to be a bit more precise here. The Legislaturists were known for assassination. The Committee was known for assassination. The reborn Republic? Not at all. Now it is understandable that Manticore might be conflating the three, especially at that point. But Honor was capable of making the distinction, iirc. He understood the logic of Haven attacking her, but she also understood the possibility of alternates. Also, Haven's preferred methods in the previous regimes were aircar accidents and pulsers. Nanites? Not so much.

Your number two. Remember that story in Beauty and the Beast? IIRC, it was a Beowulf representative that was being targeted on Old Sol. That's an attack on the representative of a state. I doubt that they were making those sorts of distinctions. If you were in the way and threatening Manpower in some way, you could make their hit list regardless of who you were or who you had represented. Remember that conversation between Bardasano and Detweiler when he asked about he possibility of a hit on either Elizabeth or Prichard? Her response: the security is too good. If it could have been done it would have been done.

Your number three:
What Webster was doing was attacking Manpower. He probably was attacking Haven some, but the emphasis in the text ev is on Manpower. I think that is the clue we are given. Manpower was a lot more on the front burner in the League than Haven in the aftermath of Monica.

Your number four: For me the thing that gives it away is that the individual used was the Havenite ambassador's driver. Come on, surely someone with Haven's skills and sinister reputation could have come up with something a bit less transparent than that??? IIRC that one even got called into question by the Alexander government and they are focused on Haven.

Your number five: The mutual antipathy between Honor and Manpower goes much further than how effective she's been against them. Think of her mother's maiden name: Benton Ramierz y Chow. Think of her brother Jacques and the BSC... Her ancestors: big advocates of the Chartwell Convention... The opportunity to strike against THAT family would have motivated Albrecht at least as much as anything Honor herself might have done. Everybody involved on both sides of that would have been fully aware of the implications including the Alexander government.

From my perspective, Dafmeister, there was more than enough reason to look at Manpower rather than Haven. In fact, taken as a whole, I think that it's compelling.

However, for reasons with I find completely understandable, yes even with which I am sympathetic, Elizabeth was focused on Haven with her suspicions so strong that they constituted tunnel vision. Remember how hard it was to convince Elizabeth to go to the Torch summit? The same was true for the Alexander government as a whole. Without that tunnel vision they would probably have not canceled the Torch summit and they most assuredly would have been seriously considering a broader range of possibilities than they actually did.

Thank you for your post and the courtesy you displayed in laying it out.

Don

Hi Don,

Good points all. I'd reply as follows:

1) I agree that the Republic of Haven didn't have a track record of assasinating people. However, it also didn't have a track record of not assasinating people. There were only six years between Saint-Just's death and the attack on Honor; that's not enough time to establish much of a track record of anything. Someone predisposed to be suspicious of Haven, such as most Manticorans, could easily believe that Haven had been playing good-guy for the galaxy at large and was now reverting to type when Eighth Fleet started landing some damaging blows.

2) I'd put Beowulf in a special category here, given that they've effectively been at war with Manpower for centuries. I'd also point out that Jacques was an officer of the Biological Survey Corps, which would make him a priority target for an attack on Beowulfan soil.

3) Webster was certainly givin Manpower both barrels, I won't deny that. However, I don't think that's a particularly unusual state of affairs and isn't the sort of thing that, on its own, would be likely to trigger an assasination attempt.

4) This is a very valid point, and it left people in-universe scrambling to find reasons for why Haven would use one of their own people. IIRC, one suggestion was that there were biological requirements for the nanotech which may have forced them to use the driver, while someone else suggested it was a double-bluff, trying to convince the galaxy at large that it must have been someone else because Haven wouldn't be that stupid. None of those arguments were considered to be terribly convincing, but Haven still seemed the only logical suspect.

5) Honor's ancestry is irrelevant to assigning blame for the attack on her, for one simple reason - no-one on Manticore knew that Albrecht Detweiler or the Mesan Alignment even existed at that time, so they couldn't ascribe the attack on Honor to a vendetta on his part. Also, she's hardly going to be the only descendant of the Bentons, Ramirezes and Chous - there are probably hundreds, if not thousands. None of the others are being targeted, so why would Honor?

We need to remember how the characters in the stories have reacted to the revelation of the Alignment's existence. None of them had a clue that it existed or that it was connected to Mesa and Manpower, and the actions it has been undertaking are wildly out of character when compared to Manpower's M.O. Attacks on ambassadors, fleet commanders and peace conferences simply aren't what Manpower does. The Alignment isn't Manpower; Manpower is the stalking horse, a front to focus all the antipathy directed at Mesa onto itself and away from the Alignment's actual operations. Manpower's support for the terrorist groups in Talbott and the government of Monica are the first hints that the galaxy's view of Manpower is wrong, and it takes time for that idea to penetrate; after centuries of seeing Manpower as an outlaw corporation, everyone has a fixed thought pattern about Manpower and Mesa which they can't shake off in a few weeks or months, especially when they're distracted by a major war.

Dafmeister wrote:

n7axw wrote:Dealing with your number 1. We need to be a bit more precise here. The Legislaturists were known for assassination. The Committee was known for assassination. The reborn Republic? Not at all. Now it is understandable that Manticore might be conflating the three, especially at that point. But Honor was capable of making the distinction, iirc. He understood the logic of Haven attacking her, but she also understood the possibility of alternates. Also, Haven's preferred methods in the previous regimes were aircar accidents and pulsers. Nanites? Not so much.

Your number two. Remember that story in Beauty and the Beast? IIRC, it was a Beowulf representative that was being targeted on Old Sol. That's an attack on the representative of a state. I doubt that they were making those sorts of distinctions. If you were in the way and threatening Manpower in some way, you could make their hit list regardless of who you were or who you had represented. Remember that conversation between Bardasano and Detweiler when he asked about he possibility of a hit on either Elizabeth or Prichard? Her response: the security is too good. If it could have been done it would have been done.

Your number three:
What Webster was doing was attacking Manpower. He probably was attacking Haven some, but the emphasis in the text ev is on Manpower. I think that is the clue we are given. Manpower was a lot more on the front burner in the League than Haven in the aftermath of Monica.

Your number four: For me the thing that gives it away is that the individual used was the Havenite ambassador's driver. Come on, surely someone with Haven's skills and sinister reputation could have come up with something a bit less transparent than that??? IIRC that one even got called into question by the Alexander government and they are focused on Haven.

Your number five: The mutual antipathy between Honor and Manpower goes much further than how effective she's been against them. Think of her mother's maiden name: Benton Ramierz y Chow. Think of her brother Jacques and the BSC... Her ancestors: big advocates of the Chartwell Convention... The opportunity to strike against THAT family would have motivated Albrecht at least as much as anything Honor herself might have done. Everybody involved on both sides of that would have been fully aware of the implications including the Alexander government.

From my perspective, Dafmeister, there was more than enough reason to look at Manpower rather than Haven. In fact, taken as a whole, I think that it's compelling.

However, for reasons with I find completely understandable, yes even with which I am sympathetic, Elizabeth was focused on Haven with her suspicions so strong that they constituted tunnel vision. Remember how hard it was to convince Elizabeth to go to the Torch summit? The same was true for the Alexander government as a whole. Without that tunnel vision they would probably have not canceled the Torch summit and they most assuredly would have been seriously considering a broader range of possibilities than they actually did.

Thank you for your post and the courtesy you displayed in laying it out.

Don

Hi Don,

Good points all. I'd reply as follows:

1) I agree that the Republic of Haven didn't have a track record of assasinating people. However, it also didn't have a track record of not assasinating people. There were only six years between Saint-Just's death and the attack on Honor; that's not enough time to establish much of a track record of anything. Someone predisposed to be suspicious of Haven, such as most Manticorans, could easily believe that Haven had been playing good-guy for the galaxy at large and was now reverting to type when Eighth Fleet started landing some damaging blows.

2) I'd put Beowulf in a special category here, given that they've effectively been at war with Manpower for centuries. I'd also point out that Jacques was an officer of the Biological Survey Corps, which would make him a priority target for an attack on Beowulfan soil.

3) Webster was certainly givin Manpower both barrels, I won't deny that. However, I don't think that's a particularly unusual state of affairs and isn't the sort of thing that, on its own, would be likely to trigger an assasination attempt.

4) This is a very valid point, and it left people in-universe scrambling to find reasons for why Haven would use one of their own people. IIRC, one suggestion was that there were biological requirements for the nanotech which may have forced them to use the driver, while someone else suggested it was a double-bluff, trying to convince the galaxy at large that it must have been someone else because Haven wouldn't be that stupid. None of those arguments were considered to be terribly convincing, but Haven still seemed the only logical suspect.

5) Honor's ancestry is irrelevant to assigning blame for the attack on her, for one simple reason - no-one on Manticore knew that Albrecht Detweiler or the Mesan Alignment even existed at that time, so they couldn't ascribe the attack on Honor to a vendetta on his part. Also, she's hardly going to be the only descendant of the Bentons, Ramirezes and Chous - there are probably hundreds, if not thousands. None of the others are being targeted, so why would Honor?

We need to remember how the characters in the stories have reacted to the revelation of the Alignment's existence. None of them had a clue that it existed or that it was connected to Mesa and Manpower, and the actions it has been undertaking are wildly out of character when compared to Manpower's M.O. Attacks on ambassadors, fleet commanders and peace conferences simply aren't what Manpower does. The Alignment isn't Manpower; Manpower is the stalking horse, a front to focus all the antipathy directed at Mesa onto itself and away from the Alignment's actual operations. Manpower's support for the terrorist groups in Talbott and the government of Monica are the first hints that the galaxy's view of Manpower is wrong, and it takes time for that idea to penetrate; after centuries of seeing Manpower as an outlaw corporation, everyone has a fixed thought pattern about Manpower and Mesa which they can't shake off in a few weeks or months, especially when they're distracted by a major war.

Hi Dafmeister,

Most of this stuff can be argued either way; glass half empty, glass half full sort of thing.

On your number one, I've already granted that the Legislaturists, the Committee, and the Republic could be conflated in Manticoran minds, especially the queen given the amount of loss she had suffered. But that's part of the problem, part of the tunnel vision.

Your point on number two is cogently made. Beowulf was a special case. But even eliminating that, we still have that comment by Bardasano that were it not for the tightness of the security they would have wiped the heads of state in both Manticore and the Republic.

On number three, Webster was not lambasting Manpower on general principles or simply trying to get the League to enforce its own rules on genetic slavery. He was hitting them on Monica and to good effect which had created a firestorm.

On number four, your response really reinforces what I said. That is exactly what happened. I am only saying that they should have worked harder at getting to the bottom of the matter before assuming that Haven was the answer.

On five, I think this is your weakest response to my comments. It is irrelevant to my point that no one knew about the Alignment prior to Zilwicke/Cachat getting home. The point is that Honor's family on Beowulf had been in a longstanding feud with Mesa/Manpower going all the way back to Mesa's beginnings. That made Honor a natural target, regardless of her personal record against Mesa. Honor herself would have been aware of that. Further, as close as she was to the queen and the Alexander government, I have difficulty believing that they wouldn't have made those connections. And if they didn't one of the functions of an intel service is to make those sorts of connections.

My argument is not intended to rule out Haven as a suspect, Dafmeister. Of course Haven was going to be a suspect. After almost 20 years of war, it would be nuts to think anything else. But what we are doing here is sort of a fantasy post-mortum on events that occur in the story line of a fantasy universe in the hope that in the future enough might be learned to prevent those sorts of mistakes. My contention is that there was enough out in the open since Monica to move Mesa/Manpower to the top of the suspect list for the Webster assassination and the attempt on Berry from that point on. Instead the focus is on Haven to the point where Mesa's moves against it's interests in the Quadrant are almost factored out of the equation. This was true to the point that Honor scolds the Queen to knock her off top top dead center.

Don

Hi Don,

I'll strip the quotes out this time, before we end up using a page per post

1) Tunnel vision is definitely part of the problem. What we seem to disagree about is whether that tunnel vision was understandable, which is driven by the rest of the discussion. So...

2) What Bardasano thinks isn't really pertinent here. We're not discussing what the Alignment would have done had they been able to do, we're discussing whether or not Manticore should have viewed Manpower (not the Alignment) as a suspect in the assasination of Webster, the attempt on Honor and the attack on Torch. For that, we have to restrict ourselves to what Manticore knew at the time, and they didn't know the Alignment existed, or that Bardasano was a senior member of it.

3) I agree that Webster was going after Manpower over Monica/Talbott, but again, I don't see that it was anything unusual. Manpower, Jessyk, Technodyne etc have done that sort of thing before, often as proxies for OFS. It's in that context that Webster is going after them - it's just the latest example of criminal behaviour by Manpower and its corporate cronies. Nothing the galaxy hasn't seen a dozen times before.

4) I don't the the Manticoran government assumed Haven was the culprit; they defaulted back to Haven, in spite of the oddities you've raised, for lack of a credible alternative. One of the things I like about the Honorverse is that sometimes people do things for reasons that other people don't understand, and the Manticoran government understands that; the fact that they don't understand why Haven would do something doesn't mean that Haven wouldn't do it. After all, they didn't understand why Haven would have tampered with the prewar diplomatic correspodence, but they 'knew' that Haven had done just that.

5) Your argument would make sense here if we had any textev of such a feud existing, but we don't (unless I've missed something). The nearest we have is Allison's kidnapping, and that was an attempt to subvert a BSC officer - the fact that he was a Benton-Ramirez y Chou was icing on the cake, not the cake itself. I don't recall seeing anything in the text of there being a history of Manpower/Mesan attacks on the descendants of those three families.

Dafmeister wrote:3) I agree that Webster was going after Manpower over Monica/Talbott, but again, I don't see that it was anything unusual. Manpower, Jessyk, Technodyne etc have done that sort of thing before, often as proxies for OFS. It's in that context that Webster is going after them - it's just the latest example of criminal behaviour by Manpower and its corporate cronies. Nothing the galaxy hasn't seen a dozen times before.

Webster's assassination was only part of the logical failures of the Manticoran response; The attack on Queen Berry used nano-tech and a binary poison gas. Elizabeth couldn't come up with a reason other than 'They're Peeps!" for Haven sabotaging the Summit Meeting and completely ignores the Manpower and Mesa animosity to the Kingdom of Torch.

Taken individually, either the attack on Torch or the Assassination of Webster could arguably point either way, but taken as
Simultaneous attacks with clear evidence that Haven's dirty tricks department had suddenly lost all semblance of competence if they are behind the attacks, the Manpower connection should have stood forth with spotllights illuminating it.