A waaaaay out of order snippet

Dilandu wrote:

PeterZ wrote:
Ships hide in the Honorverse in the immensity of space.

There is no stealth in space (c) In Honorverse, the usual "hide" is hope that opposing side would not bother to scan everything thoroughly and from several points.

Very true. From how many points is this snippet able to be scanned? Once we get closer, we can get scanned readings from different directions.

runsforcelery wrote:Sometimes it really is a cigar.

Other times, of course . . . .

You, sir, are despicable /said with Daffy Duck accent/. And evil. And we love it.

Question about snarcs:

Does Merlin have the tech existing to kill the sisters before they talk?

Would it be able to operate that close to the Temple?
Would it leave suspicious tell tale signs?

Killing them is not ideal but maybe be the least bad alternative

Yes, it would leave very suspicious signs. Merlin once considered dropping a SNARC remote into someone's ear, but wrote off the idea because it would have been a way too obvious, unexplainable cause death.

Alistair wrote:Question about snarcs:

Does Merlin have the tech existing to kill the sisters before they talk?

Would it be able to operate that close to the Temple?
Would it leave suspicious tell tale signs?

Killing them is not ideal but maybe be the least bad alternative

It could operate within Zion by not communicating with anything else - that's how Merlin's spying on people in the city - but mysterious death at the most opportune moment is quite the last thing you want to give people who suspect you of being a demon. Not to mention that the SNARC remotes can't operate within the Temple proper, which is likely where she's being taken.

Kakai wrote:

Alistair wrote:Question about snarcs:

Does Merlin have the tech existing to kill the sisters before they talk?

Would it be able to operate that close to the Temple?
Would it leave suspicious tell tale signs?

Killing them is not ideal but maybe be the least bad alternative

It could operate within Zion by not communicating with anything else - that's how Merlin's spying on people in the city - but mysterious death at the most opportune moment is quite the last thing you want to give people who suspect you of being a demon. Not to mention that the SNARC remotes can't operate within the Temple proper, which is likely where she's being taken.

I recall that he "killed" the young girl and her family in HFQ by injecting them with stasis drugs. There is no reason he could not do the same with either stasis drugs or the real thing in this situation.

Keith_w wrote:I recall that he "killed" the young girl and her family in HFQ by injecting them with stasis drugs. There is no reason he could not do the same with either stasis drugs or the real thing in this situation.

The circumstances are way different. Stephanie and her family were in a concentration camp, and thus already weakened by privation. It's a very small step from there to "succumbing" to starvation, disease, or the elements. Furthermore, they were simply one of many prisoners unimportant, not someone under the many watchful eyes of the Inquisition. It was trivial to sneak out the bodies because they weren't important enough to care about.

The two Sisters who are the highest valued prisoners the Inquisition has, and they just happen to die despite being in perfect health and surrounded by guards? Clearly a sign of demonic intervention. And even if they could somehow pull it off, what then? They still have to get the body out of Zion (or even worse, the Temple), and you can be sure that the bodies will be very closely watched as they try to figure out what happened.

Duckk wrote:

Keith_w wrote:I recall that he "killed" the young girl and her family in HFQ by injecting them with stasis drugs. There is no reason he could not do the same with either stasis drugs or the real thing in this situation.

The circumstances are way different. Stephanie and her family were in a concentration camp, and thus already weakened by privation. It's a very small step from there to "succumbing" to starvation, disease, or the elements. Furthermore, they were simply one of many prisoners unimportant, not someone under the many watchful eyes of the Inquisition. It was trivial to sneak out the bodies because they weren't important enough to care about.

The two Sisters who are the highest valued prisoners the Inquisition has, and they just happen to die despite being in perfect health and surrounded by guards? Clearly a sign of demonic intervention. And even if they could somehow pull it off, what then? They still have to get the body out of Zion (or even worse, the Temple), and you can be sure that the bodies will be very closely watched as they try to figure out what happened.

You are very probably right (did you get a sneak peek?), but I was simply responding to the suggestion that sticking a remote in someone's ear (ala the Hektor suggestion) and exploding it was not a good idea with the thought that there were other things you could do that have been done with the remotes.

Duckk wrote:

Keith_w wrote:I recall that he "killed" the young girl and her family in HFQ by injecting them with stasis drugs. There is no reason he could not do the same with either stasis drugs or the real thing in this situation.

The circumstances are way different. Stephanie and her family were in a concentration camp, and thus already weakened by privation. It's a very small step from there to "succumbing" to starvation, disease, or the elements. Furthermore, they were simply one of many prisoners unimportant, not someone under the many watchful eyes of the Inquisition. It was trivial to sneak out the bodies because they weren't important enough to care about.

The two Sisters who are the highest valued prisoners the Inquisition has, and they just happen to die despite being in perfect health and surrounded by guards? Clearly a sign of demonic intervention. And even if they could somehow pull it off, what then? They still have to get the body out of Zion (or even worse, the Temple), and you can be sure that the bodies will be very closely watched as they try to figure out what happened.

It would be an unhappy option, but actually poisoning them might well be doable. Rayno already appreciates that the Inquisition may well have been penetrated and worries about how deeply. Fist of God agents are known to take poison to evade capture alive. If they die of poison in captivity then 'Some traitor slipped it to them, right under our noses' is a much more rational explanation than 'demonic intervention'. It's not as if the Inquisition have CCTV they can check over to prove nobody gave it to them. To outsiders 'Demonic intervention' will just look like the Inquisition trying to cover their own posteriors, unless said outsiders are so tied to the Temple POV that the facts are irrelevant anyway.

Randomiser wrote:It would be an unhappy option, but actually poisoning them might well be doable. Rayno already appreciates that the Inquisition may well have been penetrated and worries about how deeply. Fist of God agents are known to take poison to evade capture alive. If they die of poison in captivity then 'Some traitor slipped it to them, right under our noses' is a much more rational explanation than 'demonic intervention'. It's not as if the Inquisition have CCTV they can check over to prove nobody gave it to them. To outsiders 'Demonic intervention' will just look like the Inquisition trying to cover their own posteriors, unless said outsiders are so tied to the Temple POV that the facts are irrelevant anyway.

That is a good point, especially if Merlin managed to give the sisters the same poison they were carrying in their necklaces. The problem, however, is that the sisters are more likely than not to be held in the Temple proper, which is a place SNARC remotes can't enter. Poisoning would only be possible if Merlin was quick enough to serve the poison to the sisters in the narrow window between their capture and their imprisonment in the Temple. As this is happenning in Zion, he might not learn about the whole thing until either one of the remotes leaves the city to send in a report, or Nynian gets information from her spies.