SPOILER_ Damien Harahap

So...the guy is one of Himselfs worst villans. He's responsible for the deaths of millions, most of them civilians (kinetic strikes on at least two worlds). And untold suffering where the rebellions that he armed, failed. And yet-if there is a "main" character in this book-it's him. His crimes are of such magnitude that he deserves a pulser dart-NO MATTER- what intel he possesses.

I do not understand why Himself gave this guy so much face time.

Bah. He's fun.

Actually, I have some sympathy for the guy. He is born on a planet subject to the tender mercies of OFS and the transtellars, betters his lot by taking the only option available to him by joining the Gandarmie (sp), carries out the missions assigned to him flawlessly, narrowly avoids being assassinated by his superiors, again takes what seems to be the only option from his own point of view by going to work for Mesa.

What we are looking at here is a hardscrabble struggle to survive and even thrive by a man who never really finds his place, always vulnerable to superiors who regard him as a tool to be disposed of when needed.

I am not condoning a single thing he has done and firmly agree that he deserves whatever penalty is exacted against him.

But the universe has not been kind to Damien Harahap and his view of life is both cynical and grim. He at least deserves consideration from a three demensional point of view rather than the pasteboard cutout of a villian.

Don

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n7axw wrote:Actually, I have some sympathy for the guy. He is born on a planet subject to the tender mercies of OFS and the transtellars, betters his lot by taking the only option available to him by joining the Gandarmie (sp), carries out the missions assigned to him flawlessly, narrowly avoids being assassinated by his superiors, again takes what seems to be the only option from his own point of view by going to work for Mesa.

There's a non-trivial chance that the assassination of his boss and attempt on him were in fact part of the Alignment's plan to recruit him, though with Bardassano dead we'll probably never know. Which is fine.

drothgery wrote:There's a non-trivial chance that the assassination of his boss and attempt on him were in fact part of the Alignment's plan to recruit him, though with Bardassano dead we'll probably never know. Which is fine.

I thought so, but comments later suggested they were in fact going to recruit his boss, but she was dead by the time they arrived.

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Don wrote

But the universe has not been kind to Damien Harahap and his view of life is both cynical and grim. He at least deserves consideration from a three demensional point of view rather than the pasteboard cutout of a villian.


Besides the Alin, any other individuals with a greater body count of innocents? (and his is in the millions-) (I can't get past that.)

Well, they should shoot him for terrible tradecraft. Firebrand? Again?

And there was no reason to bring him as far into the conspiracy as they did. Then again, the guy who recruited him knew far more than he needed to know.

tootall wrote:His crimes are of such magnitude that he deserves a pulser dart-NO MATTER- what intel he possesses.

I'm with n7 here, Damien's actions however repugnant, are merely those of someone trying to survive however he can. He's got a lot in common with our favorite "super woman" Thandi Palane, both of them came from OFS administered dumps and entered service with whatever Solarian League branch they could, simply because as bad as THAT is/was, it's better than staying on their homeworld.

And keep in mind here, Thandi was a Solarian Marine, which honestly weren't much better than the Gendarmerie, and were essentially uniformed 'thugs' themselves.

A Rising Thunder, Ch 30 wrote:“I know you’re aware Marine Intelligence is under the ONI umbrella, Natsuko,” he said. “What you may not be aware of, since we don’t exactly advertise it, is that we’re a pretty independent outfit. There are a lot of reasons for that, but, frankly, the main one is that we got dropped in the crapper once too often by faulty Navy intelligence. We got tired of taking it in the neck because a bunch of Navy pukes—no offense, Daud and Irene—didn’t know their asses from their elbows where ground operations were concerned. Things work a lot better with us handling our own intel functions, and Frontier Fleet got behind us and supported us because they’re the ones who usually have to carry the can from the Navy side
-snip-
“I know you’re aware of the kind of shit the Gendarmerie gets involved in out in the Protectorates. Trust me, what the Corps gets handed can be even worse, and sometimes the poor SOB theoretically in command of the ground op doesn’t have any idea what kind of snake pit he’s about to drop his Marines into. What with transstellars in bed with OFS, local collaborators eager to sell out for the best price they can get, and poor damned bastards too dumb to realize they can’t fight, it can turn into a cluster fuck in nothing flat. Because of that, one of the things we try to do is keep track of as many players as possible. In fact, for the last fifteen or twenty T-years, Brigadier Osterhaut’s been keeping track of as many Navy players as possible. An awful lot of senior flag officers have crawled into bed with the rest of the bottom feeders, and she likes to be able to give our Marine expeditionary force COs at least an unofficial, ‘we-never-had-this-conversation’ heads-up if one of the senior Navy officers involved in his operation has irons of his own in the fire.”

We don't know exactly what Thandi has done in the Marines, just that some of it was distasteful. We do know that Luis Rozsak was on Boniface, under the general authority of OFS and personally executed even the dogs and cats, because his orders dictated that very point.[quote is in Crown of Slaves] Admittedly, he only did it as a mocking insult to his 'commander' at the time, but he still did it, and at a time when he was also a known 'rising star' in the Solarian Navy and still had to get his hands dirty, so what Thandi would have had to do as a "filthy verge worlder" would guaranteed be worse, and she personally caused any deaths she may had done while under orders.



Damien Harahap, on the other hand, while encouraging other people into rebellions and promising all manners of 'support', has a direct kill count in perhaps the hundreds. And even he doesn't like doing what he does, but as far as he could see it was both the only game in town, and that "everybody else was doing it, or worse". And the Solarian League hadn't been challenged yet, so emigrating somewhere else after whatever 'mandatory' service was only a step-down from working for what amounts to the Solarian Federal Government. Assuming of course, he wasn't retired with extreme prejudice anyways.

I expect Harahap got a lot of facetime because he's going to be an important player in the ongoing Mesa storyline. He's clearly going to have some role in Manticore and Haven's ongoing investigations into Mesa.

Plus, he doesn't need a Pulser dart, Mesa installed that suicide nanotech in him so his days are pretty well numbered.
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kzt wrote:Well, they should shoot him for terrible tradecraft. Firebrand? Again?

And there was no reason to bring him as far into the conspiracy as they did. Then again, the guy who recruited him knew far more than he needed to know.

Yeah, using the same handle basically every place he worked was pretty damn stupid. Must've been an ego thing.