Malign contingency Strats and Tacts

Roguevictory wrote:I still don't think the GA and friends will be able to completely destroy the Malign or the RF. Hurt the Malign badly enough it has to alter its plans maybe but IMO the RF is more important to their plans then anything else and attacking the RF systems, even if the GA can ID them would be a massive mistake because it will cause most if not all non gA or non-GA allied systems to see the GA as a new form of the bad old days of Haven. One of the key points of the RF systems is that they oppose everything Mesa appears to stand for so claiming they are secretly under Mesan control will be thought of as a blatant lie.

Well, maybe. Once they uncover the outer shell of the Mesan Alignment on Mesa, they'll discover that most of the members really, truly don't like genetic slavery. Getting the point across that the MAlign really isn't about genetic slavery as much as it's about creating a genetic superman (one gene pool to rule them all) might be a bit hard to get across, though. If they can get that across, dealing with the RF won't be seen as a significant issue.

However, I don't think they'll figure out the RF or deal with it. The RF is in a good position to ride out the storm using their existing strategic direction. So what if there are several major political groups instead of one when the dust settles. The RF is in a better astrographic position to pick up the really valuable pieces anyway; the GA is mostly in the Verge; the RF is in the Shell mostly so it has the inner position.

That might make an interesting start to a second section.

How long has the MAlign been hidden? What must their population be now? How can a budding population forever be content in a harsh star system. There's no guarantee that it's harsh, but I can't imagine their system to be a Shangri-La missed by the Honorverse at large either.

cthia wrote:How long has the MAlign been hidden? What must their population be now? How can a budding population forever be content in a harsh star system. There's no guarantee that it's harsh, but I can't imagine their system to be a Shangri-La missed by the Honorverse at large either.

The MAlign is not a planetary population. They're a sekret society where membership seems to be by invitation when the candidate is in high school. The outer husk is a group of idealists who like the idea of genetic uplift of the entire human species; the inner layers of the Onion come from that outer layer after, I presume, more testing, etc.

History shows, rather definitively, that a society based on ideological grounds will lose the ideological basis with the next generation. I'm told some of the denunciations of the original Puritans of their children for straying from the way are classics of the kind. Even in a society that gives lip service to an ideal, the proportion that will put their life, liberty and sacred honor on the line for it is minuscule.

Theemile wrote:However, they always have the option of isolating some of their sleepers now and starting another Darius in another isolated corner of the galaxy and waiting the required 5-10 generations for the current unpleasantness to become a distant memory. The rest of the current plans would unfold - now - and try their hand at success.

But they would have to do it now, before anything else happens and the sleepers expose themselves or somebody else. Would you have the RF - no, would you have a tech advantage - can't say, but possibly no, but you could try again. There definitely would not be a 3rd try, because an unsuccessful 2nd try would be followed by witch-hunts.

I don't think they can lie doggo well enough. Now that the GA knows they exist I would expect a major effort being put in to find them--they'll be scanning an awful lot of stars looking for them. Slow, but once they're not pouring the resources into war they'll have a lot of effort that could be devoted to this.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Theemile wrote:However, they always have the option of isolating some of their sleepers now and starting another Darius in another isolated corner of the galaxy and waiting the required 5-10 generations for the current unpleasantness to become a distant memory. The rest of the current plans would unfold - now - and try their hand at success.

But they would have to do it now, before anything else happens and the sleepers expose themselves or somebody else. Would you have the RF - no, would you have a tech advantage - can't say, but possibly no, but you could try again. There definitely would not be a 3rd try, because an unsuccessful 2nd try would be followed by witch-hunts.

I don't think they can lie doggo well enough. Now that the GA knows they exist I would expect a major effort being put in to find them--they'll be scanning an awful lot of stars looking for them. Slow, but once they're not pouring the resources into war they'll have a lot of effort that could be devoted to this.

Trying to settle a new system would make it easier to find them and isn't really necessary for their goals. Isn't it still supposed to be a few generations before the gene enhancement push in the RF is supposed to start?


Even if the GA identifies the sleepers it can't act against them without committing PR suicide and throwing the Harrington plan out the airlock. If the RF governments refuse to let GA agents interrogate or arrest their citizens the GA can't act against them without becoming the bullies in a bully verus underdog tale which will encourage other systems to unite against the GA.

Basically unless the Malign throws its entire plan away the GA is either going to have to not act against the RF or doom itself to another war in the near future.

cthia wrote:I don't see the GA allowing the MAlign parasite to dig back in. They're looking for them. And if our antagonists begin to hear footsteps, as in crime dramas and detective cases, they may be forced into making mistakes. Paranoid mistakes. And I can't help cheating and factoring in the author's likely wrapping it all up if there's only going to be a couple more novels.

There simply cannot be a MAlign cliffhanger at the end of this. And if that's true, the MAlign won't turn out to be the aforementioned TWATS.

And if they're not going to be the TWATS as the SLN, then they must have a more aggressive contingency plan all worked up.

Its been a while since I read the last few books. That being said, here is what I think they will do. At least its what I would do knowing what they know at this time.

1. Henke is putting them at risk of getting drawn out before they are ready. I think they will misdirect her or create a crisis in the hopes of delaying or derailing her probe. She needs to be distracted.

2. When the League collapses and the Renaissance Factor is formed they should align themselves the Grand Alliance. Keep your enemy close and try to trip them up whenever you can without tipping your hat would be their thinking. As far as I know the RF isn't aware its cover has been blown. I am also not aware the RF has heard that cats are in use everywhere, which might come as a nasty surprise for them.

3. All of this is to delay the GA so they can finish their fleet of stealth ships. I bet they are going to divert everything but the kitchen sink to get those ships built.

4. Once the ships are ready they should do a couple of real world tests. If this goes well I would bet they would go straight for Beowulf, Manticore and Haven. Maybe not in that order.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I don't think they can lie doggo well enough. Now that the GA knows they exist I would expect a major effort being put in to find them--they'll be scanning an awful lot of stars looking for them. Slow, but once they're not pouring the resources into war they'll have a lot of effort that could be devoted to this.

I don't think you understand the scale. It's like deciding to run a full lab report on every single grain of sand on the 23 miles of beaches at Daytona.

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:I don't think they can lie doggo well enough. Now that the GA knows they exist I would expect a major effort being put in to find them--they'll be scanning an awful lot of stars looking for them. Slow, but once they're not pouring the resources into war they'll have a lot of effort that could be devoted to this.

I don't think you understand the scale. It's like deciding to run a full lab report on every single grain of sand on the 23 miles of beaches at Daytona.

As does I, I think she means that the MAlign can surely not hide from the quill of the author's and the need of storyline and from the prying eyes of that demon Murphy.

kzt wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:I don't think they can lie doggo well enough. Now that the GA knows they exist I would expect a major effort being put in to find them--they'll be scanning an awful lot of stars looking for them. Slow, but once they're not pouring the resources into war they'll have a lot of effort that could be devoted to this.

I don't think you understand the scale. It's like deciding to run a full lab report on every single grain of sand on the 23 miles of beaches at Daytona.

Yeah....

Just in the 50 light year radius around Sol, there are roughly 2000 stars in ~1400 systems. If you assume that it takes 1 ship, 1 week to do a plausible, basic survey of a system, and there are 2 days travel time between systems, it would take that ship 34 years.

To put this in perspective - Beowulf lies 40 light years from Sol, and is the closest habitable planet to Sol.

Yes, you can throw 100 ships at the search and do the above search in 4 months, but that's just checking Sol's back yard.

Now, before you say "can't we sort this by stellar type" - why yes, you can, but this is the Honorverse, it is possible just to have a system with habitats and no habitable planets and still have planetary level populations, so we really need to check every system if we want to catch someone - especially if they are trying to be sneaky.

Given the same density as the region above, there are roughly 8.15 million systems in the 900 light year radius around Sol (this is roughly the distance from Sol to Basilisk).

Ignoring time to coordinate, this would take 201,000 ship years to search using the above numbers. If we're correct, that number is probably close to the sum of every hyper capable ship in the honorverse - or more.

And, were still NOT talking about boldly exploring - this is just a check inside "explored" space. To do that you'd have to push the boundary out past 900 light years.

AT 1000 light years - just 100 more, we're up to 11.2 million systems, or roughly 1/3 more than 900 light years, adding another 67,000 ship years onto our search. At this point we've hit about the width of the galaxy (~2k light years wide), but at 1200 light years, we would see 16 Million systems or ~400,000 ship years of searching.

And remember this is just a 1 week survey of systems - not rogue planets, not brown dwarfs - just systems. and 1 could argue that 1 week for a survey of a system is pretty low if you are trying to catch every sign of humanity.

Space is just big.

Who needs a star system? They could build habitats between two stars right in the middle of GA territory as long as they are out of the range of the system based scanners.