It's an easy scenario to imagine. Here, a couple of lines
Jack glanced as casually as possible at Lajos Irvine. "Do you happen to have any more imagery of the two of them Lajos? Separately?"
The other man nodded. "Sure. I also put a bug in the diner, so I could monitor them further."
So, knowing this, Jack goes to the diner in disguise, or he brings a jammer-better yet, both. Lajos can't check his bug, or doesn't recognize Jack, so he doesn't warn Bardasano, meaning Jack and Herlander pull their original plan of the air car explosion, and escape with Victor and Anton aboard the Hali Sowle without ever destroying Green Pines or bringing Steph and Nancy Turner with them. A quick trip through the Visigoth Wormhole, and hey presto! They're free and clear.
-Exposure of the Detweiler's.
Jack knows that the Detweiler's are, contrary to what the vast majority of the galaxy believe, are alive and well. Jack will, at the very least, be able to expose Albrecht, Benjamin, Collin and Daniel, given how their respective fields interact with his own. He might also be able to expose Everett, Franklin and Gervais. So, in one swift swoop, the Detweiler family and their roles within the Alignment’s hierarchy are exposed. And that also gets Manty/Haven/GA intelligence looking for them and starting to model their responses.
Conversely, this will make it a lot harder for the Solarian League to swallow. Taking the canon response to the Alignment’s existence, and adding, “Oh, and the leaders of this cabal of hidden supermen with plans to conquer the galaxy and impose their vision of genetic supremacy on everyone is in fact led by the descendants of Leonard Detweiler, who everyone thought had died out centuries ago, and that’s not actually the case, cheers!”? That’s going to put a huge twist on credibility, and make even the most skeptical or suspicious Solly break out in disbelief.
-Further exposure of Mesan Alignment hierarchy.
Outside of the Detweiler’s, Jack can give names and descriptions and roles of a lot of the military/intelligence/R&D people within the Onion. Not only Isabel Bardasano, but Anastasia Chernevsky (whom his brother Zach worked under), Renzo Kyprianou perhaps, and a few others. A lot of the MA will be dragged into the scopes of intelligence agencies.
-No Green Pines Incident.
Without Scorched Earth, the Gamma Center survives, and it’s likely that Pritchard doesn’t bomb Pine Valley Park, instead carrying out his original distraction bombing by the stadium. So while the Mesans will be able to make some hay out of that, probably not as much as they could in canon.
-Bardasano Lives.
With Lajos unable to tell Isabel Jack’s gone off the deep end, she’s not in Gamma when it goes, and is therefore still a threat. While Jack’s exposure of her is going to limit her profile, she’s still an extremely dangerous opponent, and will likely be tasked by Albrecht with the termination of Jack McBryde as her top priority, no matter how it’s done.
-CyberBomb Works Better.
Jack’s cyberbomb will have the time to trash a lot more Alignment records without worrying about a nuclear detonation. This especially means that the Ballroom/Torch will be able to operate on Mesa with a lot more freedom, and it means that it’s possible that Cauldron of Ghosts with Anton/Victor both returning to Mesa might occur in the same manner.
This isn’t canon, but one thing I imagine that Jack set his attack up to strike at was the Gamma Center’s records. I bet that a lot of the records on various projects and such would have disappeared, so that the research efforts of the Alignment would have been hampered.
-Gamma Center Download?
Now, this is just speculation, but I think it’s probable. Jack has access to all of the Gamma Center’s files as Security Chief. So my guess is that if he had survived, he would have downloaded as much of that information that he could have gotten his hands on to take with him as an incentive. At the very least, I can see him downloading everything on the nanotech assassination capability, the streak drive (to help backup and validate Herlander’s testimony), the spider drive, and any other military R&D, as well as a number of other goodies to bring to the table. That would provide the Manticoran/Havenite/GA with a huge jump on how to counter MAlign operations and develop their own versions of such.
-Counterintelligence and Security.
Jack is a priceless intelligence asset. The intelligence agencies are going to look at him like gold, not only for the revelation of the Alignment, but also for a unclose, in-depth look at Mesa’s and the Alignment’s security measures. Those are going to change as soon as they figure out that Jack defected, but it will still be useful, because if you know what the defenses are, you can penetrate and defeat them that much easier. Additionally, they can ask Jack about prior Mesan operations, and get an idea of what differed Manpower’s action from Mesa’s, and what the Alignment had a hand in.
He’s also going to be protected by the best manner possible. I’m talking a treecat for him, and guards with their own treecats, and guards with treecats to guard the guards with treecats.
-Oyster Bay. Given that Anton and Victor aren’t tooling around the stars for months, it might be possible to avert Oyster Bay, or potentially set up a much earlier GA against Mesa (First Manticore is in the works already, and I don’t think it can be avoided). And Oyster Bay might not be avoidable, but at the very least Manticore knows where it’s coming from.
-Houdini.
According to Albrecht, Jack wasn’t briefed on Houdini prior to Oyster Bay, and given that Zach thought that his brother would be Houdini’d as well, it seems likely that Jack wouldn’t be affected the same way as Lajos Irvine was and die like that (unless the Mesans set it up so that the entire security apparatus was so infected, which fits in with their paranoia, but that derails my entire assumption, so I’m not going to go there). Without Green Pines, it will be a lot harder to activate and run Houdini with nukes, but I don’t doubt that the Alignment would try something like that to help “disappear” the upper echelon of the Alignment.
-Speculation as to the Factor.
Jack has no idea of the Factor’s existence, but he’s got to have heard things, speculation, and have maybe an idea of the possibility that they might be out there, so that might turn the attention of the agencies to looking?
-Torch Wormhole.
This is a negative side, but Jack “knows” that the Torch Wormhole hasn’t been mapped by Manpower/Mesa, and will tell the GA so. Meaning that Torch could be even more unprepared for an attack to come through there.
That’s sort of the basis of what I’ve worked out. Anyone else have anything to add?
