Hunting the MAlignment: MWW Clue's

Weird Harold wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Does Torch have the luxury of covering against that?

Yes. The RTN has to do something to train spacers and rotating through a tour of wormhole watching provides lots of training time while keeping a cadre of capable people on hand to defend against surprise transits.

Weird Harold wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:... presumably the wormhole would have plenty economic uses, but if Manpower knew about those and didn't have some mighty compelling military reason to hide it from their secret masters, it'd've been exploited. But it's still a mystery what compelling military reason that may've been. If it's that this is the Alignment's best secret entrance near or into the Haven Sector... I'm not prepared to be impressed.

The reason for not advertising the route via the twins and Felix WHJ is that Mannerheim doesn't have clear title to the Felix system. Until there is clear title to the Felix System, it is necessary to keep the Torch wormhole's destination secret also -- for economic reasons that are at least as compelling as the military reason; that's why most people who know about the Felix WHJ think it only has two termini rather than its actual four. The routes to Darius and to Torch via the Twins can be hidden fairly easily from the Felix end, but can't be hidden at all from a successful exploration from the Torch end.

JeffEngel wrote:Thanks. So, there's a reason from the bad guys' side. Is there any reason on Torch's to suspect such a thing? How much likelihood can they assign such a possibility reasonably?

fallsfromtrees wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:OK, let's take a look at reasons why they wouldn't use the wormhole for the attack.

Reason 1. The wormhole is 64 lm from the primary. The hyper limit is 23.76 lm from the primary. For the statesec refugees to use it means they'd be a lot farther away from their target, and their wedges would be easily visible.

Reason 2. Using the wormhole tells everyone that it's not a killer wormhole. If news gets out, that blows a huge hole in several secrets.

Reason 3. Those statesec mercenaries aren't stupid. Tell them "you're going to use a super-secret wormhole to make the attack," and someone is going to think of "how are they going to keep me from talking?" The next action is going to be going over those ships with a microscope to find the scuttling charges.

So let's assume they decide to use the Sharks from Darius.

Reason 4. Wormhole transits aren't exactly quiet - the sail has to dissipate the transit energy. If anyone escapes, they've just blown two secrets: it's not a killer wormhole, and someone has an "invisible" drive.

Reason 5. The people on Darius are under the impression that they're fighting against some kind of evil empire. Now they're told to wreck a planet that, as far as they can tell, doesn't have any significant infrastructure or anything else worth bothering about. Might they be inclined to ask inconvenient questions?

Reason two is valid only if there are any survivors to tell the tale. Otherwise, the assumption is going to be that someone hypered in, and wrecked the joint. Same for Reason 4.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Reason 3 is valid only if you are using PNE or other mercenary groups.

Reason 5 - They have already staged a sneak attack on the civilian structures of another star system. The officers have to know what is going on. The actual troops manning the ships - not so much. They could still be told the same thing, we are attacking the evil empire, and have no way to verify the fact, just as they had no way to verify what happened to Manticore or Grayson.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Reason 1 is the only one that seems to not have much in the way of an objection - it would take less time to get to the planet from the hyper limit than from the worm hole.

Weird Harold wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:Reason 1. The wormhole is 64 lm from the primary. The hyper limit is 23.76 lm from the primary. For the statesec refugees to use it means they'd be a lot farther away from their target, and their wedges would be easily visible.

The StateSec (PNE) refugees did not t use the wormhole and are no longer any part of the equation.

JohnRoth wrote:Reason 2. Using the wormhole tells everyone that it's not a killer wormhole. If news gets out, that blows a huge hole in several secrets.

If the MAlign figures there is no longer a reason to stay in the shadows and it is time to go on the offensive against the "Haven Sector" they won't care if the Wormhole is no longer considered a "Killer Wormhole." Nobody else will know where the other end is and they'll have "invisible deathstars" to defend both ends.

JohnRoth wrote:Reason 3. Those statesec mercenaries aren't stupid.

Yes they were. And the operative word is "were." The question now is whether the MAlign/Renaissance Factor will use the Wormhole for some future attack.

JohnRoth wrote:So let's assume they decide to use the Sharks from Darius.

Reason 4. Wormhole transits aren't exactly quiet - the sail has to dissipate the transit energy. If anyone escapes, they've just blown two secrets: it's not a killer wormhole, and someone has an "invisible" drive.

If the Wormhole isn't guarded and the MAlign/RF has decided that it doesn't need to remain totally secret, it doesn't matter how much "noise" the arriving force generates. My the time the RTN can react and respond, the Sharks and/or Lenny Dets will have gone into stealth and moved away from the wormhole.

JohnRoth wrote:Reason 5. The people on Darius are under the impression that they're fighting against some kind of evil empire. Now they're told to wreck a planet that, as far as they can tell, doesn't have any significant infrastructure or anything else worth bothering about. Might they be inclined to ask inconvenient questions?

If the MAlign uses RF personnel to man the attack force, the sensibilities and/or ignorance of Darius natives is irrelevant. also, IIRC it is the slaves of Darius that are kept ignorant, the Star Lines in charge of Darius are mostly inside the Onion.

JeffEngel wrote:I snipped reasons not to use the wormhole with the PNE, just because I'd agree with them so strongly that it never occurred to me to consider letting those tools use it. The PNE was the alternative, or one of them. The other alternatives - in addition to (2) a pure Manpower or Thing-Behind-Manpower attack through the wormhole - would be (3) to use the PNE attack as cover for an attack through it that left no survivors, so that the galaxy could assume the RTN and PNE managed to killed each other off and Torch got whacked along the way, and (4) essentially Oyster Bay in Torch, plus planet-scouring.

So, addressing the likely variation of (3):

JohnRoth wrote:So let's assume they decide to use the Sharks from Darius.

Reason 4. Wormhole transits aren't exactly quiet - the sail has to dissipate the transit energy. If anyone escapes, they've just blown two secrets: it's not a killer wormhole, and someone has an "invisible" drive.

Properly paranoid sorts would put some weight on the possibility that the invisible drive makes invisible transits - how much weight, probably not much. I just mention it because it may be more than trivial weight. If they have the records from Manticore that indicate that the RMN did probably detect the incoming OB attackers but could not locate them and wrote it off (reasonably) as a sensor ghost, then that weight drops a lot.

So, they wouldn't do that unless they were very confident of leaving no survivors. But against Torch, well, maybe they should be.

...

Weird Harold wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Thanks. So, there's a reason from the bad guys' side. Is there any reason on Torch's to suspect such a thing? How much likelihood can they assign such a possibility reasonably?

I would say there's zero possibility for Torch to suspect such a reason; as far as they know, Manpower and/or Jessyk Combine had just never gotten around to exploring the wormhole. They might be puzzled at the lack of exploration, but with the disappearance of Harvest Joy any speculation would tend towards a similar disaster discouraging interest with the records being successfully destroyed.

Weird Harold wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:Reason 1. The wormhole is 64 lm from the primary. The hyper limit is 23.76 lm from the primary. For the statesec refugees to use it means they'd be a lot farther away from their target, and their wedges would be easily visible.

The StateSec (PNE) refugees did not t use the wormhole and are no longer any part of the equation.

SWM wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
The StateSec (PNE) refugees did not t use the wormhole and are no longer any part of the equation.

Reread the post that JohnRoth was replying to. It said that the StateSec attack should have used the wormhole.

JeffEngel wrote:

SWM wrote:Reread the post that JohnRoth was replying to. It said that the StateSec attack should have used the wormhole.

Really, no. It was discussing the possibility of Manpower or its masters using it instead of, or in addition to, the PNE attack.