Mission of Honor
Chapter Thirteen
(Baltasar Juppé, MAlign agent POV) wrote:The truth was, he thought, the "official New Tuscan scan records" were going to pass any test anyone cared to perform. ...
It didn't really matter, though. What mattered was that they had the "records," which didn't show what the Manties' records showed. And those records were about to be authenticated by no less than Audrey O'Hanrahan. ... But there were several reasons to hand it to O'Hanrahan, as his instructions had made perfectly clear, and only one of them—though an important one—was the fact that she was probably the the most respected single investigative reporter in the entire Solarian League. Certainly the most respected on Old Terra.
It's all been worth it, he thought, still smiling at the ceiling above him. Every minute of it, for this moment.
There'd been many times when Baltasar Juppé had longed for a different assignment—any different assignment. Building his personal, professional cover had been no challenge at all for the product of a Mesan gamma line, but that very fact had been part of the problem. ...
... he thought fondly of the recording he'd made of his conversation with O'Hanrahan. It probably wasn't the only record of it, of course. He knew she had one, and despite all of the guarantees of privacy built into the League Constitution, an enormous amount of public and private surveillance went on, especially here in Old Chicago. It was entirely possible—even probable—that somewhere in the bowels of the Gendarmerie someone had decided keeping tabs on Audrey O'Hanrahan's com traffic would be a good idea. It would certainly make plenty of sense from their perspective, given how often and how deeply she'd embarrassed the Solly bureaucracies with her reporting. But that was fine with Juppé. In this case, the more records the better, since they would make it abundantly clear to any impartial observer that he'd done his very best to verify the story which had come so unexpectedly into his hands. And they would make it equally abundantly clear that O'Hanrahan hadn't known a thing about it until he'd brought it to her attention. Not to mention the fact that she was no knee-jerk anti-Manty . . . and that she'd been suspicious as hell when she heard about his scoop.
And establishing those points was, after all, the exact reason he'd screened her in the first place instead of simply very quietly delivering the information to her in person.
... now that he knew the truth, and despite the envy that still lingered, Juppé admitted to himself that he doubted he could have matched her bravura performance. Gamma line or no, there was no way he could have equaled the performance of an alpha line like the O'Hanrahan genotype.
(heavily snipped down to specifics on Audrey O'Hanrahan's introduction.)
Cauldron of Ghosts
wrote:She twisted a lock of auburn hair around one index finger, crystal blue eyes narrowed, while she contemplated her assignment here. Her real assignment, which was one of the trickiest she’d ever been given, and not her cover assignment.
Audrey O’Hanrahan had devoted thirty T-years to establishing herself as one of two or three of the Solarian League’s—perhaps even the whole human race’s—most diligent, scrupulous, and unbiased investigative reporters. Time after time, she’d demonstrated that if Audrey O’Hanrahan said something was true or false, you could count on it. In particular, you could count on her news accounts to be impartial. Like anyone, she could make an occasional mistake, but any mistake of hers was promptly acknowledged and publicly corrected. And no one who didn’t have her own ax to grind had ever seriously accused her of slanting her reports to fit some preconceived notion or allegiance.
Of course, like everyone, she reflected, there were a few private and personal facets of her personality and her life which she kept to herself. Like the minor fact that she was a Mesan alpha-line.
She smiled slightly at that thought. Her carefully designed genotype gave her certain…advantages over the pure strain humans around her, but she’d still had to put in the long, grueling hours—years and years of hours—to earn her position of trust and her reputation as a muckraker. And perhaps the most ironic part of all was that she truly was a muckraker, that she truly did live to expose hypocrisy, deceit, corruption, and the abuse of power, position, or wealth. It might have seemed odd in someone whose entire life was dedicated to the oldest, most deeply hidden conspiracy in galactic history, yet she absolutely hated the personal greed, avarice, and narcissism that lay behind so much corruption and manipulation. In fact, the genuineness of that hatred, of the passion she brought to her reportage, was one of the great strengths which had allowed her to establish her well-earned—and much feared—reputation.
And then there was the other edge of the sword, the hidden reason that made her stature as a teller of truths and slayer of giants so important to the Alignment.
As usual, her instructions had been not so much vague as…broad. Despite the security of her communications chain, her superiors hadn’t wanted to be too explicit. ... She knew the basic parameters of her assignment, and she found it interesting that she’d been given precise and specific instructions to rent a small suite in a moderately priced hotel named The Huntington Arms. Now why, she’d wondered, had they wanted her in that particular hotel? That sort of decision was usually left up to her.
The reason for the instruction was becoming clearer now, however. And she was beginning to suspect exactly why her superiors had given her the other instructions she’d received, as well.
O’Hanrahan had never been part of the plans for Operation Houdini. ... It had become obvious to her that Mesa—more precisely, the political setup on Mesa that had existed for the past several centuries—was doomed. Doomed in the near future, not in some misty, far off temporal Neverland. Given that, and what she knew about the Alignment’s ultimate objectives, even someone far less gifted than an alpha-line could have figured out that something like Houdini had to be in the offing.
(heavily snipped for brevity.)
The Cauldron of Ghosts quote is nearly the last time we see Ms O'Hanrahan. It establishes that she has orders to deviate from her well-established impartiality and that she is on Mesa when the "Mysterious (10th?) Fleet" arrives to put a stop to Houdini and Seccie unrest.
It seems obvious to me that an Interview with Adm Gold Peak will be requested and granted.
The question is: "What Happens Next" on the news and propaganda front from Ms O'Hanrahan? What Big Lie has she been ordered to promulgate, and will the arrival of 10th Fleet make any difference to what she reports?
I'll reserve my thoughts for now to see where everyone wants this topic to go.