The end of the mesan alignement

Found nothing like this here, so, what do you think how will the Story end with the Alignement? Will they be defeated? Will they survive?

Someone wrote here in the Forum, that DW want to close the Story with 2 books, not much in my eyes.

My guess is, that the slaves at Darius are the key for the end of the Alignement! The Alignement moved from Mesa to Darius and took all needed People with them. But in my eyes the have one Problem: Their security personal is very limited, so, if they don´t have something like the control chips that the mesan Agent has who was interviewed by Cachat, i would bet a slave Rebellion will Change the control of Darius. And if they take over a corier ship and jump into allied space like torch to lead the alliance to Darius, you can imagine the rest.

Given that Manticore is not 'genocidal', I don't know that certain aspects of the alignment "end" or not. That said, I don't see the Detweilers, Anismova, or some of the other key players surviving. As characters go a long, tortured vicious death would be well deserved but RFC isn't going to do that. Blinding flash of fusion powered buh-bye, more likely, or the end of a rope or shredded by pulsar darts, mebbe.

The tougher plot questions: "you have a liberated planet (Mesa) that was gills deep in genetic slavery', and Torch... So those have a subplot to be dealt with then you have Darius which might as well be considered the Detweiler's blitzkrieg stash -- which has to get whacked by the Space Navies, but not all of the 2 billion inhabitants are on the ships, nor are they necessarily bad people But they are genies with distorted morals, so I don't know the answer for the rest of them.

Leaving the 25,000 or so members of the Onion, the leaders of the new "Renaissance Factor" whose constitution the Detweiler's have activated, etc. Those folks have to be defeated militarily and politically, and I don't think we'd be satisfied with a WWI-WWII setup where they get kinda smashed but could be back in 30 T-years, etc.

'T will be interesting, yes?

Maldorian wrote:Found nothing like this here, so, what do you think how will the Story end with the Alignement? Will they be defeated? Will they survive?

Someone wrote here in the Forum, that DW want to close the Story with 2 books, not much in my eyes.

My guess is, that the slaves at Darius are the key for the end of the Alignement! The Alignement moved from Mesa to Darius and took all needed People with them. But in my eyes the have one Problem: Their security personal is very limited, so, if they don´t have something like the control chips that the mesan Agent has who was interviewed by Cachat, i would bet a slave Rebellion will Change the control of Darius. And if they take over a corier ship and jump into allied space like torch to lead the alliance to Darius, you can imagine the rest.

Two points. First, that slave rebellion on Darius isn't going to happen. RFC has made it fairly clear that the background for a rebellion (maltreatment, etc.) just isn't there. See p.527 of the hardcover of MoH. If you've got an electronic version, find "Darius System's total population". Darius is supposed to be the MAlign's poster child for how such a society can actually work with everyone being at least moderately content with their lot.

In addition, the slave population is incapable of setting up a government. Some of the lines are scary smart, like the entertainers and tech lines, but most of them would have trouble doing the equivalent of putting their shoes on the correct feet consistently outside of the specialty they were bred for.

Second, it depends completely on how RFC wants to tie it off. Is he going to have Sherlock Holmes fall off of Reichenbach Falls with Prof. Moiarty, or is he going to leave the MAlign somewhere else so he can pick up the series several decades down the road as he mooted a while back? (Granted, he's said more recently that he has no intention of doing that.)

SharkHunter wrote:Given that Manticore is not 'genocidal', I don't know that certain aspects of the alignment "end" or not. That said, I don't see the Detweilers, Anismova, or some of the other key players surviving. As characters go a long, tortured vicious death would be well deserved but RFC isn't going to do that. Blinding flash of fusion powered buh-bye, more likely, or the end of a rope or shredded by pulsar darts, mebbe.

The tougher plot questions: "you have a liberated planet (Mesa) that was gills deep in genetic slavery', and Torch... So those have a subplot to be dealt with then you have Darius which might as well be considered the Detweiler's blitzkrieg stash -- which has to get whacked by the Space Navies, but not all of the 2 billion inhabitants are on the ships, nor are they necessarily bad people But they are genies with distorted morals, so I don't know the answer for the rest of them.

Leaving the 25,000 or so members of the Onion, the leaders of the new "Renaissance Factor" whose constitution the Detweiler's have activated, etc. Those folks have to be defeated militarily and politically, and I don't think we'd be satisfied with a WWI-WWII setup where they get kinda smashed but could be back in 30 T-years, etc.

'T will be interesting, yes?

Mesa and Darius (pop. 3.9 billion, btw.) are very different problems. Mesa is a political nightmare that has a lot of very deeply ingrained divisions where contempt is reciprocated by hatred; a lot of its wealth comes from off-planet commerce that Admiral Henke is going to cut off and cauterize.

Darius has a functional society where most of the people of all four levels (alpha, beta, gamma and slaves) buy into the current system. It's almost got to have a command economy since a great deal of its economic output is going into military weaponry that doesn't return any economic gain. One possible solution there would be to simply blow its orbital infrastructure to space gas and threaten to drop a KEW on anything that looks like a space facility.

I don't think they'll do that, though. Since I think it's a weird hybrid of a participatory democracy (for the alphas, at least) and a top-down dictatorship, it'll probably get stuck with a transition board to evolve the situation in the direction of being a reasonable galactic citizen.

The question of dealing with Darius is actually fairly easily from a certain perspective because they are all on one planet. Once Darus is found and occupied (which even though the Alignment has never said so is likely to be quite easily done given the GA's tech advantages) the population can be largely kept there and eventually re-educated over however long it needs.

The best way I can think of to stamp out the Alignments plans too uplift the human race is this. Take copies and samples of all the Alignments genetic research, upgrades, biotechnology, and records (even ripping it out other their bone marrows if needed), and then dump it all out into the Galaxies Extranet for free. This way, even if the Alignment destroys all their records and all the Deitweilers commit suicide, or if the Reniassence Factor is a success and establishes itself as the Leagues legitimate and most popular successor state, it will not be able to deliver its uplift plan.

Remember the Alignments goal is to seize the reigns of power, create a super-state that answers too them, put in place the new uplift and genetic enhancement for humanity as a whole (or at least the ones they consider worthwhile), and cull off the rest buy out-breeding them, quietly replacing them, secretly uplifting them, or mass-genocide them. What happens too their ability to do that (or to profit off it), when anyone and their grandmother can grab up any enhancement they want, see where it has come from, and most important "choose to accept or reject it" of their own will. Would you accept a medicine or genetic treatment that made you a "better" human, if it said on the side of the bottle "this was created and tested off the bodies of Mesan genetic slaves". The Deitweilers dream and goal is to remake all of humanity, the worst kick in the teeth would be to shut that dream down. The great irony being that (as Jacques pointed out in CofG) since the presence of genetic slavery is the main reason the prejudice against genies still exists after 500 years, that same prejudice they have enabled will cause people to reject their uplifts out of hand when the Factor cannot slowly and quietly insert them in.

This method also has the advantage of eventually showing up all the enhanced people seeded into other cultures. What is a family or politic dynasty to do when its suddenly revealed that is popular and remarkably gifted group is proved to have hidden enhancements that curiously match up with these strange Mesa sourced bio-enhancements? It might not happen very quickly but slowly their own self created "pedigrees" will likely see them lynched (in various ways) by their own populations.

I'd be happy if the investigation into Honor's Flag Lieutenant's murder could come to some sort of conclusion whilst wrapping up the Mesa story. Other than that, I think Mesa or the RF survives but only in the way North Korea survived their conflict; intact but diminished and exposed.

We don´t know if there is another hidden planet like darius, so, if DW want a backdoor he can bring darius down but show us a backup somewhere else who are stepping back into the planning Phase.

Remember the short story as ruth´s mother train to handle a space ship on a simutator? What is, if a slave do that, hide that, take over a corier ship whithout knowledge of everyone on Darius? If he appear in allied space the allice would have a working mesan hyperdrive and the Location of darius.

I think that is one of the keypoints, to find darius.

Another way would be the whormhole at torch. If the alliance imagine that the first ship could be destroyed by humqan Hands, they probably send a SD there and if such a ship pass the whormhole and find the second whormhole, the second one lead do darius, or? Or the capture one of the Guardian vessels at the whormhole almost intact to find astrogation data in their Computers.

However DW will handle it, I can´t wait to read it!

Maldorian wrote:Another way would be the whormhole at torch. If the alliance imagine that the first ship could be destroyed by humqan Hands, they probably send a SD there and if such a ship pass the whormhole and find the second whormhole, the second one lead do darius, or? Or the capture one of the Guardian vessels at the whormhole almost intact to find astrogation data in their Computers.

Nope. They just get cut to ribbons too. It's been extensively discussed by David. It's pretty much impossible to force a fortified WH. And there exists at least one other WH that nobody has ever survived, so it is perfectly possible that this is just another such example, which means throwing more forces at it just means more people and material destroyed by the black hole or whatever is on the far end.

kzt wrote:

Maldorian wrote:Another way would be the whormhole at torch. If the alliance imagine that the first ship could be destroyed by humqan Hands, they probably send a SD there and if such a ship pass the whormhole and find the second whormhole, the second one lead do darius, or? Or the capture one of the Guardian vessels at the whormhole almost intact to find astrogation data in their Computers.

Nope. They just get cut to ribbons too. It's been extensively discussed by David. It's pretty much impossible to force a fortified WH. And there exists at least one other WH that nobody has ever survived, so it is perfectly possible that this is just another such example, which means throwing more forces at it just means more people and material destroyed by the black hole or whatever is on the far end.

Well, if Manticore learns that the Torch wormhole isn't a blackhole and that it leads to a hidden Mesan Alignment base, before the MAlign learns that Manticore knows it's doable.


Normally, you're entirely right attacking through a fortified wormhole is nothing more than a quick death, however Manticore's warfighting technology is so ridiculously far ahead of Mesan tech. As long as Mesa doesn't learn in time to reinforce the mere two battlecruiser squadrons (16 BC's), that 25-30ish Invictii with point defense on computer operated could force a beachead.

The Mesan battlecruisers are afterall, sitting out at missile range, not beam range, exactly as standard doctrine puts wormhole defenders. That coupled with much lower acceleration rates, they couldn't possibly get into beam range of a 30 SD Manticoran force in time to stop them from going fully combat effective.

Somtaaw wrote:The Mesan battlecruisers are afterall, sitting out at missile range, not beam range, exactly as standard doctrine puts wormhole defenders. That coupled with much lower acceleration rates, they couldn't possibly get into beam range of a 30 SD Manticoran force in time to stop them from going fully combat effective.

Can I suggest you reread that section of the book?

And that was then, I suspect there is a rather sophisticated highly stealthy minefield there now.