Alignment Sleeper Agents (Spoilers and WAGs)

I can't quite stop thinking about this idea I've had for several years, now, and I figure throwing it out here for the people in this forum to point out why it can't possibly be true will let me stop thinking about it, finally.

Basically, we've got textev that The Mesan Alignment has deeply buried active and sleeper agents throughout all of known human space. Some of the ones we've seen are very small fish, others are a bit larger.

Off the top of my head, I can remember:

Colonel Jean-Claude Nesbitt, cousin to Tony Nesbitt, Havenite Secretary of Commerce

Unnamed agent discovered on Torch, deceased

Audrey O'Hanrahahn, Sollie muckraker newsie

Baltisar Juppe, Sollie financial newsie


One thing that all our heroes are aware of, since the discovery of that agent on Torch is that there's a huge problem with penetration by the Alignment. It's one of the biggest reasons for the coming treecat diaspora. Uncle Jacques is particularly looking forward to taking his treecat partner through the BSC's HQ and looking for Mesans, after all.

So, astute readers that we are, we know there's going to be other agents revealed. Personally, I'm hoping we'll get to find out the truth about who was the Mesan Alignment's agent on Crandall's flag bridge. The one whom I suspect was there to 'help' her with her suicide. Once she'd finished screwing up by the numbers.

I've also been remembering some of the textev hints for "Elaine Komandorski's" true nature that showed up at least one volume before any one noticed their importance. RFC does plot things out well in advance, and enjoys a good reveal.

So with all that background, I've been thinking about what we've been seeing in both the Alignment, and the Solarian Navy. From the Alignment's side, we know that they want and expect the Solarian League to fragment and Balkanize. Furthermore, while we've been warned time and time again that there are likely Solarian League Member System Navies that have war fighting technology comparable to Beowulf's if not Manticoran/Havenite/Anermani, it seems to me that for the fighting to truly devolve into the sort of warlordism that I believe the Alignment is counting to take advantage of to provide an excuse for their Renaissance Factor to swoop in and rescue various systems, the SLN's war fighting technology has to improve, and fast.

Technodyne is obviously part of how they're going to feed some of that tech to the SLN and former Solarian system defense forces. But I think that it would also be vital for them to have some kind of basic doctrine worked out for the new Technodyne missiles - and the be aware of the realities of facing Manticoran missiles in combat, too. Which suggests that they would want, before the fracturing of the Solarian League becomes general, to have a voice of sanity in, say, the OP AN shop of ONI, cluing in all the SLN and subordinate forces of the new realities.

In other words, that small military cabal of patriots trying to find the extent of the rot in the SLN while doing their official duties to the best of their abilities are furthering the strategic aims of the Alignment. I don't see any real reason to think that this is incorrect. But I'd welcome any contrarian reasoning.

That brings me back to Alignment agents, though. If this group is furthering the Alignment's aims, wouldn't it make sense for the Alignment to have taken steps to be sure that such a group formed and started to do exactly what we know them to be doing? It's a little risky, but one of the short-term goals of the Alignment is the utter Balkanization of the Solarian League. What better way to start kicking that off than to have genuine patriots in the middle of what's become a war to the knife discover proof that the reason for the war, and all the millions of deaths providing moral inertia to keep fighting, was because of the corruption of a few government officials? By itself, I doubt it would have that effect, but with the way the Mandarins are turning the SL's constitution into a pretzel - there's going to be a lot of high emotions on either side.

So, if the Alignment's strategic goals are advanced by having such a group, and if such a group would seem likely, or even possible, given all the balls the Alignment will have up in the air - won't they take the step to try to get someone into a position to guide such a group to the directions they want? Co-opting the opposition is a long-standing technique, and if they can influence the timing of any revelations this group makes it's probably worth the risk of fostering it, themselves, instead of letting happen organically. (Which, let us remember, was how that other group of Gendarmarie analysts got involved.)

If my logic holds any water, it seems to me that our good friend, and sorta hero in the walls of the SLN, Battle Fleet Captain Daud ibn Mamoun al-Fanudahi seems a very good candidate for being an Alignment agent.

In particular this sentence from Mission of Honor: "Daud ibn Mamoun al-Fanudahi leaned his shoulders against the wall of her cubicle and smiled as he prepared to stretch the parameters of her mind once again."

It could be exactly what it seems on first reading, an astute and loyal officer trying to do the best he can with the one person he knows will listen to his worries. But it seems to me that at this point in the story, even for OP AN's pet paranoiac, it's awfully early in the conflict for him to be giving enough credence to MDMs vs DDMs for shipboard launchers. I have no doubt he is astute enough that he could be getting to that point simply on trying to figure out worst case scenarios and working to prove they couldn't be true.

But it would also be rather simpler for him to believe in shipboard MDMs over DDMs if someone, say the Mesan Alignment's intelligence agency, were feeding him at least some of their own operational analysis.

Of course, none of this is proof. It's just a personally convincing line of thinking that seems very suggestive to me.

So, in addition to throwing this theory out there for you all to chew on, I'd like to ask does anyone have any other candidates for already known Alignment agents in the books?

Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to your thoughts.

Fairy Rat God wrote:I can't quite stop thinking about this idea I've had for several years, now, and I figure throwing it out here for the people in this forum to point out why it can't possibly be true will let me stop thinking about it, finally.

Basically, we've got textev that The Mesan Alignment has deeply buried active and sleeper agents throughout all of known human space. Some of the ones we've seen are very small fish, others are a bit larger.

Off the top of my head, I can remember:

Colonel Jean-Claude Nesbitt, cousin to Tony Nesbitt, Havenite Secretary of Commerce

Unnamed agent discovered on Torch, deceased

Audrey O'Hanrahahn, Sollie muckraker newsie

Baltisar Juppe, Sollie financial newsie


One thing that all our heroes are aware of, since the discovery of that agent on Torch is that there's a huge problem with penetration by the Alignment. It's one of the biggest reasons for the coming treecat diaspora. Uncle Jacques is particularly looking forward to taking his treecat partner through the BSC's HQ and looking for Mesans, after all.

So, astute readers that we are, we know there's going to be other agents revealed. Personally, I'm hoping we'll get to find out the truth about who was the Mesan Alignment's agent on Crandall's flag bridge. The one whom I suspect was there to 'help' her with her suicide. Once she'd finished screwing up by the numbers.

I've also been remembering some of the textev hints for "Elaine Komandorski's" true nature that showed up at least one volume before any one noticed their importance. RFC does plot things out well in advance, and enjoys a good reveal.

So with all that background, I've been thinking about what we've been seeing in both the Alignment, and the Solarian Navy. From the Alignment's side, we know that they want and expect the Solarian League to fragment and Balkanize. Furthermore, while we've been warned time and time again that there are likely Solarian League Member System Navies that have war fighting technology comparable to Beowulf's if not Manticoran/Havenite/Anermani, it seems to me that for the fighting to truly devolve into the sort of warlordism that I believe the Alignment is counting to take advantage of to provide an excuse for their Renaissance Factor to swoop in and rescue various systems, the SLN's war fighting technology has to improve, and fast.

Technodyne is obviously part of how they're going to feed some of that tech to the SLN and former Solarian system defense forces. But I think that it would also be vital for them to have some kind of basic doctrine worked out for the new Technodyne missiles - and the be aware of the realities of facing Manticoran missiles in combat, too. Which suggests that they would want, before the fracturing of the Solarian League becomes general, to have a voice of sanity in, say, the OP AN shop of ONI, cluing in all the SLN and subordinate forces of the new realities.

In other words, that small military cabal of patriots trying to find the extent of the rot in the SLN while doing their official duties to the best of their abilities are furthering the strategic aims of the Alignment. I don't see any real reason to think that this is incorrect. But I'd welcome any contrarian reasoning.

That brings me back to Alignment agents, though. If this group is furthering the Alignment's aims, wouldn't it make sense for the Alignment to have taken steps to be sure that such a group formed and started to do exactly what we know them to be doing? It's a little risky, but one of the short-term goals of the Alignment is the utter Balkanization of the Solarian League. What better way to start kicking that off than to have genuine patriots in the middle of what's become a war to the knife discover proof that the reason for the war, and all the millions of deaths providing moral inertia to keep fighting, was because of the corruption of a few government officials? By itself, I doubt it would have that effect, but with the way the Mandarins are turning the SL's constitution into a pretzel - there's going to be a lot of high emotions on either side.

So, if the Alignment's strategic goals are advanced by having such a group, and if such a group would seem likely, or even possible, given all the balls the Alignment will have up in the air - won't they take the step to try to get someone into a position to guide such a group to the directions they want? Co-opting the opposition is a long-standing technique, and if they can influence the timing of any revelations this group makes it's probably worth the risk of fostering it, themselves, instead of letting happen organically. (Which, let us remember, was how that other group of Gendarmarie analysts got involved.)

If my logic holds any water, it seems to me that our good friend, and sorta hero in the walls of the SLN, Battle Fleet Captain Daud ibn Mamoun al-Fanudahi seems a very good candidate for being an Alignment agent.

In particular this sentence from Mission of Honor: "Daud ibn Mamoun al-Fanudahi leaned his shoulders against the wall of her cubicle and smiled as he prepared to stretch the parameters of her mind once again."

It could be exactly what it seems on first reading, an astute and loyal officer trying to do the best he can with the one person he knows will listen to his worries. But it seems to me that at this point in the story, even for OP AN's pet paranoiac, it's awfully early in the conflict for him to be giving enough credence to MDMs vs DDMs for shipboard launchers. I have no doubt he is astute enough that he could be getting to that point simply on trying to figure out worst case scenarios and working to prove they couldn't be true.

But it would also be rather simpler for him to believe in shipboard MDMs over DDMs if someone, say the Mesan Alignment's intelligence agency, were feeding him at least some of their own operational analysis.

Of course, none of this is proof. It's just a personally convincing line of thinking that seems very suggestive to me.

So, in addition to throwing this theory out there for you all to chew on, I'd like to ask does anyone have any other candidates for already known Alignment agents in the books?

Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to your thoughts.

Since this post has a spoiler tag: Daud ibn Mamoun al-Fanudahi is most probably not a Mesan Alignment agent. Since:

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 31 wrote:“So, how did it go?”
Captain Caswell Gweon looked up from his martini with a smile as the extremely attractive red-haired woman slid into the chair on the other side of the small, private table.
“Fine, dear. And how was your day?” he asked with a smile.
“Boring, as usual,” she replied. “And don’t change the subject.”
“It’s known as small talk, dear,” Gweon pointed out. “The sort of thing people who are seeing one another seriously or, oh, I don’t know, engaged to each other, tend to do when they meet.”
“Point taken,” she admitted with a smile, then leaned across the table, cupped the side of his face in the palm of her right hand, and kissed him with a thoroughness which drew at least one laugh of approval from the bar’s other patrons.
“Much better!” he told her with an even broader smile of his own. He looked around the dimly lit bar, as if seeking the person who’d laughed. Nobody confessed, but several people smiled at him, and he shook his head, then waved one of the waiters over.
“Yes, Captain?”
“Would it be possible for us to get one of the private booths?” Gweon produced a credit chip which somehow magically teleported into the waiter’s hand.
“Oh, I think we can probably arrange something, Sir,” the waiter assured him with a brilliant smile. “If you and the lady would follow me, please?”
Gweon stood and pulled back his companion’s chair, then offered her his arm as they followed along in the waiter’s wake. He showed them to a large, comfortable booth in the rear of the attached restaurant—one with first-rate privacy equipment.
“Will this do, Captain?”
“It looks perfect,” Gweon said approvingly. “If you could, please let us have a few minutes before sending someone to take our order? We’ll signal”—he indicated the panel on the table—“when we’re ready.”
“Of course, Sir.”
The waiter bowed with another smile and departed.
Gweon watched him go, then ushered his companion into the booth, seated himself opposite her, and activated the privacy equipment. They were instantly enclosed in a bubble which allowed them to see the restaurant around them clearly, but prevented anyone else from seeing in. That bubble was also supposed to be impervious to any known eavesdropping equipment, but Gweon pulled a small device from his pocket, laid it on the table between them, and activated it.
“And how wise is that?” his companion asked a bit sharply, and he shrugged.
“I’m the head of one of ONI’s main sections, Erzi, and I’ll be a flag officer in another couple of weeks. Rank hath its privileges in the SLN, including the use of officially assigned anti-snooping equipment while necking with my fiancée. Trust me, nobody’s going to find this remotely suspicious unless they’re already suspicious for some reason. In which case, we’re already screwed and might as well not worry about it.”
“I hate it when you get logical this way,” she complained with a pout, and he chuckled.
He sat back, surveying her, and reflected that he could have done far worse for a control. Erzébet Pelletier was every bit as smart as she was attractive. She was also athletic and a pleasant armful in bed. Not only that, they got along well, and he knew she genuinely liked him. In fact, it might even go a little further than that, although both of them had to remember the risks of getting overly emotionally involved in their roles.
“All right,” Erzébet went on after a moment. “You told that nice young man we’d order in a few minutes, so why don’t we go ahead and get the dreary details out of the way?”
“Suits me,” he agreed.
He wished they could have held this conversation in their comfortable apartment, but it was a given that the apartment was bugged. Not very effectively—Rear Admiral Yau’s Office of Counterintelligence was pretty inept, and its bugs were no more than pro forma, since it was extraordinarily unlikely anyone in OCI cherished any suspicions where Gweon was concerned. Unfortunately, there was no good excuse for using his anti-eavesdropping equipment at home, whereas there were plenty of reasons someone might do that in public. So it actually made more sense for the two of them to exchange critical information in a “public” venue.
“First,” he told her, “there’s no sign anyone thinks there’s anything suspicious about Rajampet’s suicide.” He shrugged. “Given all that’s happened and the grilling he could expect from Kolokoltsov and the others, it’s easy to figure he had more than enough reasons to kill himself.”
“So it went off cleanly?” she asked.
“Evidently. It was his pulser, after all.” He grinned suddenly; he’d never much liked Rajampet. “It was a thoughtful of him to keep the damned thing in the same place for so many years. It was a lot cleaner and neater to have him shoot himself with a gun we knew how to find. God knows what kind of mess it would’ve made if we’d had to jump him out of a window that high, instead!”
“True.” Erzébet’s tone carried a certain delicate distaste. She hadn’t been much fonder of Rajampet than Gweon, and she was pleased by how neatly his demise tied off that particular loose end, but she didn’t share her companion’s amusement at the circumstances of the ex-CNO’s death.
Gweon sensed her reaction and grimaced an apology.
“Sorry, Erzi. Maybe I shouldn’t be so flip about it, but if you’d had to put up with that arrogant little prick as long as all of us who had the joy of working for him did, you’d probably feel like hoisting a few, too.”
“You may be right about that, and I guess I’m glad I didn’t have to put up with him. Either way, we’ve got other things to think about, and the courier’s leaving for Mesa tomorrow evening, so let’s go ahead and get the rest of your report out of the way.”
“Fine.” He nodded. “First, I’m pretty sure I’m in the process of cementing my credentials with Kolokoltsov. I’m giving him good analysis, and he knows it. Same for Kingsford, although I’ve revised my opinion of his IQ upward. I always knew he was smarter than Rajampet; I’m beginning to think he may be smarter even than I’d allowed for, and I better be a lot more cautious than I have been around him. There’s no such thing as cautious enough.
“I wasn’t present when Kingsford pitched his new strategy to Kolokoltsov, but judging from the additional analysis he asked for after leaving Kolokoltsov’s office, it sounds to me as if—”

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

Vince wrote:

Fairy Rat God wrote:I can't quite stop thinking about this idea I've had for several years, now, and I figure throwing it out here for the people in this forum to point out why it can't possibly be true will let me stop thinking about it, finally.

Basically, we've got textev that The Mesan Alignment has deeply buried active and sleeper agents throughout all of known human space. Some of the ones we've seen are very small fish, others are a bit larger.

Off the top of my head, I can remember:

Colonel Jean-Claude Nesbitt, cousin to Tony Nesbitt, Havenite Secretary of Commerce

Unnamed agent discovered on Torch, deceased

Audrey O'Hanrahahn, Sollie muckraker newsie

Baltisar Juppe, Sollie financial newsie


One thing that all our heroes are aware of, since the discovery of that agent on Torch is that there's a huge problem with penetration by the Alignment. It's one of the biggest reasons for the coming treecat diaspora. Uncle Jacques is particularly looking forward to taking his treecat partner through the BSC's HQ and looking for Mesans, after all.

So, astute readers that we are, we know there's going to be other agents revealed. Personally, I'm hoping we'll get to find out the truth about who was the Mesan Alignment's agent on Crandall's flag bridge. The one whom I suspect was there to 'help' her with her suicide. Once she'd finished screwing up by the numbers.

I've also been remembering some of the textev hints for "Elaine Komandorski's" true nature that showed up at least one volume before any one noticed their importance. RFC does plot things out well in advance, and enjoys a good reveal.

So with all that background, I've been thinking about what we've been seeing in both the Alignment, and the Solarian Navy. From the Alignment's side, we know that they want and expect the Solarian League to fragment and Balkanize. Furthermore, while we've been warned time and time again that there are likely Solarian League Member System Navies that have war fighting technology comparable to Beowulf's if not Manticoran/Havenite/Anermani, it seems to me that for the fighting to truly devolve into the sort of warlordism that I believe the Alignment is counting to take advantage of to provide an excuse for their Renaissance Factor to swoop in and rescue various systems, the SLN's war fighting technology has to improve, and fast.

Technodyne is obviously part of how they're going to feed some of that tech to the SLN and former Solarian system defense forces. But I think that it would also be vital for them to have some kind of basic doctrine worked out for the new Technodyne missiles - and the be aware of the realities of facing Manticoran missiles in combat, too. Which suggests that they would want, before the fracturing of the Solarian League becomes general, to have a voice of sanity in, say, the OP AN shop of ONI, cluing in all the SLN and subordinate forces of the new realities.

In other words, that small military cabal of patriots trying to find the extent of the rot in the SLN while doing their official duties to the best of their abilities are furthering the strategic aims of the Alignment. I don't see any real reason to think that this is incorrect. But I'd welcome any contrarian reasoning.

That brings me back to Alignment agents, though. If this group is furthering the Alignment's aims, wouldn't it make sense for the Alignment to have taken steps to be sure that such a group formed and started to do exactly what we know them to be doing? It's a little risky, but one of the short-term goals of the Alignment is the utter Balkanization of the Solarian League. What better way to start kicking that off than to have genuine patriots in the middle of what's become a war to the knife discover proof that the reason for the war, and all the millions of deaths providing moral inertia to keep fighting, was because of the corruption of a few government officials? By itself, I doubt it would have that effect, but with the way the Mandarins are turning the SL's constitution into a pretzel - there's going to be a lot of high emotions on either side.

So, if the Alignment's strategic goals are advanced by having such a group, and if such a group would seem likely, or even possible, given all the balls the Alignment will have up in the air - won't they take the step to try to get someone into a position to guide such a group to the directions they want? Co-opting the opposition is a long-standing technique, and if they can influence the timing of any revelations this group makes it's probably worth the risk of fostering it, themselves, instead of letting happen organically. (Which, let us remember, was how that other group of Gendarmarie analysts got involved.)

If my logic holds any water, it seems to me that our good friend, and sorta hero in the walls of the SLN, Battle Fleet Captain Daud ibn Mamoun al-Fanudahi seems a very good candidate for being an Alignment agent.

In particular this sentence from Mission of Honor: "Daud ibn Mamoun al-Fanudahi leaned his shoulders against the wall of her cubicle and smiled as he prepared to stretch the parameters of her mind once again."

It could be exactly what it seems on first reading, an astute and loyal officer trying to do the best he can with the one person he knows will listen to his worries. But it seems to me that at this point in the story, even for OP AN's pet paranoiac, it's awfully early in the conflict for him to be giving enough credence to MDMs vs DDMs for shipboard launchers. I have no doubt he is astute enough that he could be getting to that point simply on trying to figure out worst case scenarios and working to prove they couldn't be true.

But it would also be rather simpler for him to believe in shipboard MDMs over DDMs if someone, say the Mesan Alignment's intelligence agency, were feeding him at least some of their own operational analysis.

Of course, none of this is proof. It's just a personally convincing line of thinking that seems very suggestive to me.

So, in addition to throwing this theory out there for you all to chew on, I'd like to ask does anyone have any other candidates for already known Alignment agents in the books?

Thanks for reading this far, and I look forward to your thoughts.

Since this post has a spoiler tag: Daud ibn Mamoun al-Fanudahi is most probably not a Mesan Alignment agent. Since:

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 31 wrote:“So, how did it go?”
Captain Caswell Gweon looked up from his martini with a smile as the extremely attractive red-haired woman slid into the chair on the other side of the small, private table.
“Fine, dear. And how was your day?” he asked with a smile.
“Boring, as usual,” she replied. “And don’t change the subject.”
“It’s known as small talk, dear,” Gweon pointed out. “The sort of thing people who are seeing one another seriously or, oh, I don’t know, engaged to each other, tend to do when they meet.”
“Point taken,” she admitted with a smile, then leaned across the table, cupped the side of his face in the palm of her right hand, and kissed him with a thoroughness which drew at least one laugh of approval from the bar’s other patrons.
“Much better!” he told her with an even broader smile of his own. He looked around the dimly lit bar, as if seeking the person who’d laughed. Nobody confessed, but several people smiled at him, and he shook his head, then waved one of the waiters over.
“Yes, Captain?”
“Would it be possible for us to get one of the private booths?” Gweon produced a credit chip which somehow magically teleported into the waiter’s hand.
“Oh, I think we can probably arrange something, Sir,” the waiter assured him with a brilliant smile. “If you and the lady would follow me, please?”
Gweon stood and pulled back his companion’s chair, then offered her his arm as they followed along in the waiter’s wake. He showed them to a large, comfortable booth in the rear of the attached restaurant—one with first-rate privacy equipment.
“Will this do, Captain?”
“It looks perfect,” Gweon said approvingly. “If you could, please let us have a few minutes before sending someone to take our order? We’ll signal”—he indicated the panel on the table—“when we’re ready.”
“Of course, Sir.”
The waiter bowed with another smile and departed.
Gweon watched him go, then ushered his companion into the booth, seated himself opposite her, and activated the privacy equipment. They were instantly enclosed in a bubble which allowed them to see the restaurant around them clearly, but prevented anyone else from seeing in. That bubble was also supposed to be impervious to any known eavesdropping equipment, but Gweon pulled a small device from his pocket, laid it on the table between them, and activated it.
“And how wise is that?” his companion asked a bit sharply, and he shrugged.
“I’m the head of one of ONI’s main sections, Erzi, and I’ll be a flag officer in another couple of weeks. Rank hath its privileges in the SLN, including the use of officially assigned anti-snooping equipment while necking with my fiancée. Trust me, nobody’s going to find this remotely suspicious unless they’re already suspicious for some reason. In which case, we’re already screwed and might as well not worry about it.”
“I hate it when you get logical this way,” she complained with a pout, and he chuckled.
He sat back, surveying her, and reflected that he could have done far worse for a control. Erzébet Pelletier was every bit as smart as she was attractive. She was also athletic and a pleasant armful in bed. Not only that, they got along well, and he knew she genuinely liked him. In fact, it might even go a little further than that, although both of them had to remember the risks of getting overly emotionally involved in their roles.
“All right,” Erzébet went on after a moment. “You told that nice young man we’d order in a few minutes, so why don’t we go ahead and get the dreary details out of the way?”
“Suits me,” he agreed.
He wished they could have held this conversation in their comfortable apartment, but it was a given that the apartment was bugged. Not very effectively—Rear Admiral Yau’s Office of Counterintelligence was pretty inept, and its bugs were no more than pro forma, since it was extraordinarily unlikely anyone in OCI cherished any suspicions where Gweon was concerned. Unfortunately, there was no good excuse for using his anti-eavesdropping equipment at home, whereas there were plenty of reasons someone might do that in public. So it actually made more sense for the two of them to exchange critical information in a “public” venue.
“First,” he told her, “there’s no sign anyone thinks there’s anything suspicious about Rajampet’s suicide.” He shrugged. “Given all that’s happened and the grilling he could expect from Kolokoltsov and the others, it’s easy to figure he had more than enough reasons to kill himself.”
“So it went off cleanly?” she asked.
“Evidently. It was his pulser, after all.” He grinned suddenly; he’d never much liked Rajampet. “It was a thoughtful of him to keep the damned thing in the same place for so many years. It was a lot cleaner and neater to have him shoot himself with a gun we knew how to find. God knows what kind of mess it would’ve made if we’d had to jump him out of a window that high, instead!”
“True.” Erzébet’s tone carried a certain delicate distaste. She hadn’t been much fonder of Rajampet than Gweon, and she was pleased by how neatly his demise tied off that particular loose end, but she didn’t share her companion’s amusement at the circumstances of the ex-CNO’s death.
Gweon sensed her reaction and grimaced an apology.
“Sorry, Erzi. Maybe I shouldn’t be so flip about it, but if you’d had to put up with that arrogant little prick as long as all of us who had the joy of working for him did, you’d probably feel like hoisting a few, too.”
“You may be right about that, and I guess I’m glad I didn’t have to put up with him. Either way, we’ve got other things to think about, and the courier’s leaving for Mesa tomorrow evening, so let’s go ahead and get the rest of your report out of the way.”
“Fine.” He nodded. “First, I’m pretty sure I’m in the process of cementing my credentials with Kolokoltsov. I’m giving him good analysis, and he knows it. Same for Kingsford, although I’ve revised my opinion of his IQ upward. I always knew he was smarter than Rajampet; I’m beginning to think he may be smarter even than I’d allowed for, and I better be a lot more cautious than I have been around him. There’s no such thing as cautious enough.
“I wasn’t present when Kingsford pitched his new strategy to Kolokoltsov, but judging from the additional analysis he asked for after leaving Kolokoltsov’s office, it sounds to me as if—”

Italics are the author's, boldface is my emphasis.

He looks more like someone who is looking to expose Mesa Alliance than an agent.

Minor nit: There was also the agent who sprayed that stuff on Honor's aide that got him to do his work. And probably someone to do something to the head of the Solarian Navy. Also, there would be the need for tech people to actually make up the weapon.

So perhaps Erwhon has moles in several places who might also be Alignment agents and are feeding the same (or different or at least enhanced) information to the Alignment thought they might think they actualy are agents of a rival Syndicate?

Some place we haven't heard of yet has at least one agent and information conduit out of Beowulf for medical and business information that passes through an Alignement mole in another system passing the data in what is supposed to be "just" industrial espionage in pharmacy and medical equipment development and research? The Alignment can hate Beowulf all it wants but still want to rip them off on new research and products.

How many people connected with cargo brokerages and ships chandlers are passing information on manifests, ship routes, and observations of all ship traffic visiting inhabited systems or various wormholes to compeditors including any military traffice and observed sensor data for the same sort of commercial spying even if they don't know that the data is also being copied to the Alignment and God knows how many other interested parties?

We've been introduced to, probably, a dozen verified Mesan agents who are sleepers. It's also been mentioned that there are many blood lines which have been modified in many star systems. The League and the SLN are riddled with these agents as well.

However the Alberich's had several meetings where they discussed their penetration of various groups and Manticore was noted as being one where they have relatively little penetration. I would take that to mean either through co-oping the people there or implanting sleepers.

Audrey is one sort of agent, though I wouldn't characterize her as a muckracking reporter. My impression in the stories is that she is considered to be a very high integrity investigative reporter who does her homework most of the time.

The only actual multi-generational sleeper agent we know about is Nesbit. All the rest look like deep-cover intelligence agents that have been slipped into position. There's a comment, for example, that Captain Gweon's service record looks awfully thin.

Another pair of agents include the guy in the Gendarme who's feeding fabricated intelligence and his contact, who is almost certainly the Malign version of a Manpower pleasure slave line.

Any Erewhonese agents can't be in the ship building/weapons tech industries. The MAN and the Alignment do not have FTL Comms, Erewhon does... its part of the leg up they gave Erewhon once the treaty was signed in WoH.

JohnRoth wrote:The only actual multi-generational sleeper agent we know about is Nesbit. All the rest look like deep-cover intelligence agents that have been slipped into position. There's a comment, for example, that Captain Gweon's service record looks awfully thin.

Another pair of agents include the guy in the Gendarme who's feeding fabricated intelligence and his contact, who is almost certainly the Malign version of a Manpower pleasure slave line.

Gweon's resume may be thin because he is young. But there can be no doubt that he was born in the League and chances are that his family is part of the Onion.

That brings up another concern that I've had vaguely in the back of my mind for a while. In an organization as large as the SLN, or even just the RMN, how hard would it be to just slip some one in?

I mean, Harkness hacked BuPers and kept himself always in lock step with Tremaine's orders. How hard would it be for some one to simply and quietly slide in a new officer to the system? I'm not talking about some new fleet admiral, (though you might get away with that in the SLN!) But to add a new commander or lieutenant and get them sent to where you want them? In an organization with more than twenty million members (the RMN) one lowly Lt isn't going to make much of a ripple. Even a commander isn't a big one. Records are all digital and there has to be good odds that you'll serve with people you've never heard of and who haven't served with anyone you've ever known.

This would be many times worse in an organization as big as the SLN. Fabricate up a fictional history of obscure commands or huge commands with tons of people for some officer to get lost in the background of can't be that hard. Have the people he reported to be people who've either retired, died or otherwise are generally unreachable so references or evals can't really be verified... But hey, HQ sent the guy, right? Says so right there on his orders....

Fireflair wrote:That brings up another concern that I've had vaguely in the back of my mind for a while. In an organization as large as the SLN, or even just the RMN, how hard would it be to just slip some one in?

I mean, Harkness hacked BuPers and kept himself always in lock step with Tremaine's orders. How hard would it be for some one to simply and quietly slide in a new officer to the system? I'm not talking about some new fleet admiral, (though you might get away with that in the SLN!) But to add a new commander or lieutenant and get them sent to where you want them? In an organization with more than twenty million members (the RMN) one lowly Lt isn't going to make much of a ripple. Even a commander isn't a big one. Records are all digital and there has to be good odds that you'll serve with people you've never heard of and who haven't served with anyone you've ever known.

This would be many times worse in an organization as big as the SLN. Fabricate up a fictional history of obscure commands or huge commands with tons of people for some officer to get lost in the background of can't be that hard. Have the people he reported to be people who've either retired, died or otherwise are generally unreachable so references or evals can't really be verified... But hey, HQ sent the guy, right? Says so right there on his orders....

You could probably get away with it for a short duration mission. A long term mission would require a more detailed history. After all the agent had to go to the Academy to get his or her commission, and you would need to have some way to slide forged background checks for security clearances into the navy files.
Not saying it would be impossible, it wouldn't be. But would the effort be worth it?