[SoV Spoiler] Houdini, what's the point??

He would have been part of the operation. The really high-temperature and pressure part.

kzt wrote:He would have been part of the operation. The really high-temperature and pressure part.

Even if that be the case, he would not have known this - he would have been told that he was disappearing.

Peregrinator wrote:

kzt wrote:David explicitly told us that not only does he not know where Darius is, he also has no idea that it exists or that the twins exist. Which to me is pretty clear indication he's setting up that everyone on Darius is going to live happily ever after.

I find it hard to believe that Simões would not have been part of Operation Houdini. And if he is a part of it, I doubt that a man of his intelligence would not have deduced the existence of a secret planet, even though he doesn't know what it is named or where it is.

Simoes may have been a future candidate for Houdini, but he would not have been briefed until at least Oyster Bay, just like every other scientist.

Except by that time, he'd been freaking out because of his daughter, which was reducing his functionality (and thus utility) rapidly. Which led to Jack being appointed to oversee him, and keep him functional, at least to the end of his current project, where severance pay would have been either a pulser dart (normally), or simply blown up with a nuke and most probable a dart, followed by "him broadcasting a manifesto" before detonating a nuke. Remember, he'd personally threatened various Mesan scientists, so the MAlign could have used that as part of their nuke accelerated Houdini, so they would have used a nominal negative (insane, enraged scientist behind them), into a net positive (enraged scientist, who'd issued death threats over his dead daughter, detonates nuke as revenge).

Weird Harold wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:You're missing the point. The whole point of Houdini was to disappear tracelessly. That can't happen as the GA will not find at Mesa things they know exist. This proves there's another world somewhere--and thus it's not traceless.

Simply shipping the people out (don't use spider ships in Mesa but you can transship to them nearby) leaves a lot more evidence they ran but that's irrelevant--so long as there is evidence of another world it doesn't matter how much evidence there is.

How does Houdini prove there is another world somewhere? Why not assume there was a dispersal of the MAlign instead of a "migration."

The only thing evidence of Houdini proves is that the core of the Onion is no longer on Mesa and they destroyed as much of the outer layers as possible on the way out. There's no evidence whatever that everyone evacuated to the same place.

How do you keep control if most of your people aren't in the same place you are? The Audubon Ballroom is a dispersed operation; Jeremy X is its acknowledged leader, but he's hardly in control the same way Albrecht Detweiller is (or was) in control of the MAlign.

The fact that they all went somewhere specific is, I think, blatantly obvious. The question I have is how they manage to keep their C&C (command and control) operation working from Darius without anyone being able to trace it, now that people are looking for it.

JohnRoth wrote:How do you keep control if most of your people aren't in the same place you are?

The same way that the MAlign has kept control of uncountable alpha lines (and others) on uncounted worlds. There were actually very few inner core members of the Onion on Mesa compared to the apparent dispersal of MAlign members and agents.

Dispersal to the 12 members of the Renaissance Factor worlds or even to worlds scheduled for early assimilation by the RF would be just as effective in removing all trace of the MAlign from Mesa -- and an easier deduction for type of evacuation if not specifics on the RF Worlds.

The lack of examples and information on the Spider Drive and Streak Drive ships, might suggest a "bolthole" arms factory, but I can't see any obvious trail to an entire MAlign world with 200 years of post-colonization history.

Reader knowledge would make Darius the obvious destination for the Onion Core, but in-universe no one knows or suspects the possibility of Darius other than as a secret R&D shipyard.

Loren Pechtel wrote:You're missing the point. The whole point of Houdini was to disappear tracelessly. That can't happen as the GA will not find at Mesa things they know exist. This proves there's another world somewhere--and thus it's not traceless.

Simply shipping the people out (don't use spider ships in Mesa but you can transship to them nearby) leaves a lot more evidence they ran but that's irrelevant--so long as there is evidence of another world it doesn't matter how much evidence there is.

Almost all of the dangling threads are due to a single bad turn; the defection of Herlander Simões, and the related teaser info Jack McBryde leaked before he failed to escape. Without that Manticore has no clue that the Spider Drive tech used in Oyster Bay has anything to do with Mesa -- so if/when they took the system they'd wouldn't have any reason to be surprised that there weren't yards (or the remains of yards) able to build it.

Without the info from McBride and Simnoes the only link I can think of between Oyster Bay and Mesa is that Oyster Bay used Cataphracts. Mesa is known to at least distributed those; as they gave them to both Filareta and the PNE (for their failed attack against Torch)

But those were ostensibly Technodyne designed and built, and Technodyne does have corporate headquarters on Mesa. So presumably there's paperwork there showing that Manpower bought those Cataphracts for the PNE and that the SLN ordered them for Raging Justice -- and shipping orders showing them shipped through Mesa rather than built there. (Or alternatively "Technodyne" could have licensed the local manifacturing rights out to some Mesa company that did build missiles). So that is slightly suspicious, but not the kind of red flag that that missing Spider yards will be.

So even with as suspicious as Cachat and Zilwicki were about Mesan transtellers not acting plausibly, I think it was only the massive good luck of the defection that totally screwed up Houdini. But once that info was out there wasn't anything I can think of that would have caused the trail to dead-end at Mesa.



Though I guess the two potential benefits of even the modified Houdini are: a) Besmirching Manticore with more of the League's citizen by attempting to link them with direct or indirect responsibility of many of the nukes (or claimed bombardments)
b) Denying them hard evidence of the MAlign they could show to League worlds.
Manticore will know to keep looking, but trying to sell a bunch of 'terrorist' nukings as just part of a massive conspiracy get you dismissed as a crazy person. Pointing out thousands of the best and brightest in jobs scattered across many companies around the world all dropping everything to board a massive fleet of transports that just disappear is the kind of truly bizzare thing that does hint there's something big and previously unseen to account for it.

Weird Harold wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:You're missing the point. The whole point of Houdini was to disappear tracelessly. That can't happen as the GA will not find at Mesa things they know exist. This proves there's another world somewhere--and thus it's not traceless.

Simply shipping the people out (don't use spider ships in Mesa but you can transship to them nearby) leaves a lot more evidence they ran but that's irrelevant--so long as there is evidence of another world it doesn't matter how much evidence there is.

How does Houdini prove there is another world somewhere? Why not assume there was a dispersal of the MAlign instead of a "migration."

The only thing evidence of Houdini proves is that the core of the Onion is no longer on Mesa and they destroyed as much of the outer layers as possible on the way out. There's no evidence whatever that everyone evacuated to the same place.

So what? It's a planned evacuation, that means they are still a force somewhere. Why should the GA think they gave up because of one setback???

Weird Harold wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:How do you keep control if most of your people aren't in the same place you are?

The same way that the MAlign has kept control of uncountable alpha lines (and others) on uncounted worlds. There were actually very few inner core members of the Onion on Mesa compared to the apparent dispersal of MAlign members and agents.

Dispersal to the 12 members of the Renaissance Factor worlds or even to worlds scheduled for early assimilation by the RF would be just as effective in removing all trace of the MAlign from Mesa -- and an easier deduction for type of evacuation if not specifics on the RF Worlds.

The lack of examples and information on the Spider Drive and Streak Drive ships, might suggest a "bolthole" arms factory, but I can't see any obvious trail to an entire MAlign world with 200 years of post-colonization history.

Reader knowledge would make Darius the obvious destination for the Onion Core, but in-universe no one knows or suspects the possibility of Darius other than as a secret R&D shipyard.

I'm not saying that it points to Darius in particular, but that it shows that the MAlign has a substantial offworld base. Trying to hide all the traces of Houdini doesn't change this basic piece of knowledge and thus it does nothing for the MAlign.

Jonathan_S wrote:Almost all of the dangling threads are due to a single bad turn; the defection of Herlander Simões, and the related teaser info Jack McBryde leaked before he failed to escape. Without that Manticore has no clue that the Spider Drive tech used in Oyster Bay has anything to do with Mesa -- so if/when they took the system they'd wouldn't have any reason to be surprised that there weren't yards (or the remains of yards) able to build it.

True--but the leak did happen. They pulled Houdini because they knew the GA would be coming to Mesa. The GA had talked enough about what they knew that the MAlign should know that the GA will be looking for specific tech when they come--and thus if they don't find it they know they missed much of their real target.

So even with as suspicious as Cachat and Zilwicki were about Mesan transtellers not acting plausibly, I think it was only the massive good luck of the defection that totally screwed up Houdini. But once that info was out there wasn't anything I can think of that would have caused the trail to dead-end at Mesa.

The original Houdini plan might have worked--but if they were undetected then there would be no need to use it, either. I have a hard time picturing it ever working, it was certainly impossible after the leak.

b) Denying them hard evidence of the MAlign they could show to League worlds.

Pulling their people out and blowing a few labs would do the same thing--and save at least 20% of the MAlign forces that were lost this way.

Manticore will know to keep looking, but trying to sell a bunch of 'terrorist' nukings as just part of a massive conspiracy get you dismissed as a crazy person. Pointing out thousands of the best and brightest in jobs scattered across many companies around the world all dropping everything to board a massive fleet of transports that just disappear is the kind of truly bizzare thing that does hint there's something big and previously unseen to account for it.

I don't think the GA is going to get anyone else actively involved in the hunt anyway.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I'm not saying that it points to Darius in particular, but that it shows that the MAlign has a substantial offworld base. Trying to hide all the traces of Houdini doesn't change this basic piece of knowledge and thus it does nothing for the MAlign.

There is a substantial difference between and "off world base" and an "off world organization." There is a good bit of evidence that the MAlign had a large, well-coordinated organization outside of Mesa, but I don't seen a lot of evidence that they have anything but a secret "Bolthole" style R&D establishment even before Houdini.

Houdini was carefully arranged to send no more than a half-dozen, or so, inner onion-core members on any one ship and every contingent took a different route (with several ship changes) to (presumably) Darius. We don't actually have any hard evidence that everyone evacuated under Houdini went to Darius, that is just a forum assumption. To even a detailed analysis of the data available on Mesa should show "Rats deserting a sinking ship" and scattering to the "six corners of the galaxy."

The lack of spider-drive and/or streak drive ships in Mesa orbit points to a secret shipyard complex somewhere else. It does NOT point to an entire planet of MAlign star lines.