Houdini/MA

SYED wrote: I believe the Felix junction will be fought over in the books. It is clear the Mesa forces were trying to hide something about the torch wormhole bridge. They did not want anyone using it. This is clearly something a tramstellar would not do, so the alignment is behind it. Those ships at the twins must have data on Felix, leading the alliance there, and potentially to Darius in the the future. The alignment can't risk an enemy star nation holding torch, as it is similar to when haven held Trevor's star. They would have to dedicate a military force to ensure no invasion is viable.

Except the Alliance doesn't know there were ships at the twins. All they know is that their exploration ship didn't return. (It seems, always subject to correction in the next book, that Simones didn't know anything about the twins, or about a wormhole connection to Mesa)

All the Alliance has is vague hints:
1) The Mesan transtellar that used to control Torch did not economically exploit the wormhole there.
2) There were rumors that it was a small junction (though Manticoran survey showed that at least at the Torch end it was a single terminus)
3) Someone financed and equipped the People's Navy in Exile to go try and commit genocide on Torch.
4) There were some small unexplained signals (the kick) sensors could pick up from the wormhole
5) The experience wormhole survey ship and crew has not (yet?) returned.

Sure for #3 the likely suspect is a Mesan transtellar (or group of them) trying to maintain deniability while hurting the ex-slaves who declared war on them - but that doesn't necessarily point any fingers at the wormhole.
And yes point #1 is odd - the wormhole rumors had been around long enough that it seems clear the transtellar knew about it for some period of time - but never sought to take advantage of it. But that doesn't point at Felix, but at least might make people ask if there was a good longer term reason to forgo the immediate economic benefits of exploiting the wormhole. (OTOH point #5 must now make them consider that the wormhole wasn't exploited because Mesa lost a survey ship as well and buried their failure)

But I don't see how those little staws in the wind could lead back to Felix, nor to Mannerheim (who actually provided the ships - though most of their government and navy is unaware of that fact). That's a cold trail - at least from the Torch end.


It is of course possible that the security measures on Mesa didn't work as well as expected and something about the wormhole or guard operation will come to Manticore's attention there. Or some of the Mannerheim sailors might talk out of turn and rumors hinting at their ambush of the Harvest Joy might start seeping out - giving intel a string to run down from that angle.
But finding the far end of the Torch wormhole baring an intel leak, is a needle in a haystack problem.

Jonathan_S wrote:
(snip re: Congo Bridge)

Except the Alliance doesn't know there were ships at the twins. All they know is that their exploration ship didn't return. (It seems, always subject to correction in the next book, that Simones didn't know anything about the twins, or about a wormhole connection to Mesa)

All the Alliance has is vague hints:
1) The Mesan transtellar that used to control Torch did not economically exploit the wormhole there.
2) There were rumors that it was a small junction (though Manticoran survey showed that at least at the Torch end it was a single terminus)
3) Someone financed and equipped the People's Navy in Exile to go try and commit genocide on Torch.
4) There were some small unexplained signals (the kick) sensors could pick up from the wormhole
5) The experience wormhole survey ship and crew has not (yet?) returned.

(Snip)
It is of course possible that the security measures on Mesa didn't work as well as expected and something about the wormhole or guard operation will come to Manticore's attention there. Or some of the Mannerheim sailors might talk out of turn and rumors hinting at their ambush of the Harvest Joy might start seeping out - giving intel a string to run down from that angle.
But finding the far end of the Torch wormhole baring an intel leak, is a needle in a haystack problem.

There is one more item that the Grand Alliance knows:

6) The Congo terminus is faint and in a very unusual location. So much so, that Dr. Kare (the Manticorean expert) was puzzled on how it ever was discovered (see chapter 13 of _Torch of Freedom).

IMHO, it is obvious that the terminus was discovered from the Twins side.

Threads that do not have the word spoilers should not have spoilers!

Loren Pechtel wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:The final problem is that the outer layer, the "Mesan Alignment" rather than the MAlign, is where they get most of their recruits. The original plan, to leave stealthily over a period of several years and then presumably trigger a slave revolt to cover the disintegration of governmental and other systems when the puppet masters are no longer there, was something they should have started a lot earlier. At the minimum, they should have started it the minute they heard of the Lynx terminus being discovered. That would have given them at least another year to pull people out vewy, vewy qwietly.

Even then it doesn't work because when the GA comes knocking they find no evidence of the Oyster Bay stuff. If it really had been Mesa behind it they should find the tech there.

I made a thread about this before. Houdini is fundamentally flawed in that by the time they could see the need to initiate it it's too late to cover all their tracks. Removing all the relevant people doesn't address the issue of what the GA doesn't find. It could only be successful if initiated when nobody is looking--but why would the initiate it then?

It succeeds in covering exactly what is there but at the same time it points with big neon letters that there was something to be covered up and it was not mesa that did it and it sure as hell was not the seccies or manticore. So in the end they gain some utility but it also sort of confirms to anybody looking at it that the manties were onto something all along.

Felix is said to be owned by multiple corpArations, want to bet they are ones under alignment control/influence. It might be a cover for operations, but I doubt they would ever risk loosing control of the junction.

Would terminii navigational data be stored in just one location? So it could be recoverable.

SYED wrote:Felix is said to be owned by multiple corpArations, want to bet they are ones under alignment control/influence. It might be a cover for operations, but I doubt they would ever risk loosing control of the junction.

Would terminii navigational data be stored in just one location? So it could be recoverable.

ToF, Chapter 50, p.452 of the hardcover, says that there are four corporations that have a legal claim on it, and Mannerheim is moving very cautiously in acquiring all four claims to avoid tipping anyone off that there's something interesting in the system.

Colonization rights were purchased 500 years before story tine; the Felix junction was discovered only 200 years before story time.

So no, the MAlign is not behind those claims. Otherwise they would have been transferred to Mannerheim without any fuss and bother.

JohnRoth wrote:

SYED wrote:Felix is said to be owned by multiple corpArations, want to bet they are ones under alignment control/influence. It might be a cover for operations, but I doubt they would ever risk loosing control of the junction.

Would terminii navigational data be stored in just one location? So it could be recoverable.

ToF, Chapter 50, p.452 of the hardcover, says that there are four corporations that have a legal claim on it, and Mannerheim is moving very cautiously in acquiring all four claims to avoid tipping anyone off that there's something interesting in the system.

Colonization rights were purchased 500 years before story tine; the Felix junction was discovered only 200 years before story time.

So no, the MAlign is not behind those claims. Otherwise they would have been transferred to Mannerheim without any fuss and bother.

I thought the Malign liked the ownership of Felix stalemated the way it is. At the medium-high level on Mannerheim, the answer to "so, why aren't we exploiting our wormhole junction?" is "we don't own it yet." But that leaves the risk that one of the corps might take an active interest in the Felix System, or alternately, take whatever offer Mannerheim's making for it. The Malign could avoid that if they controlled the corps through other agents.

Say manticore does discover Felix, they could locate the competing trans tellers and offer them a deal, they won't be targeted in exchange for the deed to the system. That would screw with Mesa plans.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:The final problem is that the outer layer, the "Mesan Alignment" rather than the MAlign, is where they get most of their recruits. The original plan, to leave stealthily over a period of several years and then presumably trigger a slave revolt to cover the disintegration of governmental and other systems when the puppet masters are no longer there, was something they should have started a lot earlier. At the minimum, they should have started it the minute they heard of the Lynx terminus being discovered. That would have given them at least another year to pull people out vewy, vewy qwietly.

Even then it doesn't work because when the GA comes knocking they find no evidence of the Oyster Bay stuff. If it really had been Mesa behind it they should find the tech there.

I made a thread about this before. Houdini is fundamentally flawed in that by the time they could see the need to initiate it it's too late to cover all their tracks. Removing all the relevant people doesn't address the issue of what the GA doesn't find. It could only be successful if initiated when nobody is looking--but why would the initiate it then?

One of the main problems is that, even though the Mesan Alignment were moving into the Final Stage they expected that they would literally have years still before they needed to begin the final evacuation. In this case Albrecht Detweiller's decision to launch Oyster Bay early & his mistake in not allowing for the human factor is what caused their plans to start unravelling: (He did not allow for Cachat & Zilwicki surviving, for Pritchart's reaction & decision to ally with Elizabeth or for the Manticoran reaction to the discovery of Operation Janus).