Out of order snippet? WHAT out of order snippet?

Eagleeye wrote:Substitute Ballroom with a Torch representative - say, General Palane - and that special poisoned arrow flies straight into the faces of the Mandarins or the MAlign. After all - Palane is official as hell (uniformed CO of the military forces of Torch, iIrc) and Torch is a star-nation that is officially at war with Mesa. And outside the Manticore-system the treecats are regarded only as pets. If O'Hanrahan should know something more or different about these "pets" and refuses to talk with Henke while a treecat is in the same room, then that alone could be a strong hint that she's not the snowwhite reporter she pretends to be. After all (as far as we know, at least) she never visited Manticore or Sphinx, so she couldn't make firsthand-experiences with treecats.

I don't think knowing about treecats would be a sign of anything nefarious. Treecats are pretty interesting and have the only(?) known psychic powers in all of existence! They are associated with Manticore's royals, etc. etc.

General Palane would be pretty bad too. Torchians have a very, very strong reason to hate Mesa and so would be the type with motive. Another possible problem is Palane was just on Mesa fighting, while posing as a civilian. I'm not sure how much of a no-no that is in the Honorverse though.

That said, I don't see O'Hanrahan refusing an interview because of the presence of a cat. The problem is Treecats aren't mind readers, and O'Hanrahan is basically what she appears to be. She's a reporter trying to who wants to find a huge scandal. Maybe the treecat will notice something about her mind glow, and it could certainly be used to get a look at her DNA and you would find she's a genetically engineered superwoman. So is Henke. Still they could convince themselves that O'Hanrahan is a baddie.

So then they... watch her go about doing almost exactly what a normal reporter would do? Or do they grab her with all that would entail? More to the point, none of this will actually help clear the name of the GA.

Which get's back to my original point: the GA needs some help to clear their name. They need another suspect for these bombings.

quite possibly a cat wrote:
Which get's back to my original point: the GA needs some help to clear their name. They need another suspect for these bombings.

What they need is a plausible story for the final set of bombings. They've got one for the first set. They're not going to convince anyone that doesn't want to be convinced anyway, all they need is something that doesn't contradict the known facts.

JohnRoth wrote:What they need is a plausible story for the final set of bombings. They've got one for the first set. They're not going to convince anyone that doesn't want to be convinced anyway, all they need is something that doesn't contradict the known facts.

Their story for the first set of bombs is "Well, so we removed the safeties from a nuke and gave the untraceable nuke to a guy who we knew was unstable and sent him off by himself to create a distraction by setting it off. How can it possibly be our fault that he set if off in a park full of kids?"

Well, currently their story is not saying anything because no one really believes the Mesan story. I'm assuming that either O'Hanrahan will change that with a stunning news report or Henke will change that by not realizing Manticore is guilty. Or maybe it will be a team effort.

Manticore has generally gone about their "propaganda" efforts by openness and honesty. Unfortunately, if they come out and say:

kzt wrote: "Well, so we removed the safeties from a nuke and gave the untraceable nuke to a guy who we knew was unstable and sent him off by himself to create a distraction by setting it off. How can it possibly be our fault that he set if off in a park full of kids?"

They'll look guilty as sin and trying to pin the other nukes on a shadowy ancient conspiracy of which no trace can be found just sounds like a bad lie.

quite possibly a cat wrote:It hadn't really occurred to me, but this is probably going to be how the bad guys snatch defeat from the jaws of victory isn't it? They've basically won. The League will disintegrate and Manticore/GA is gonna look like the ones responsible for the nukes. That reporter should have no trouble spinning a story that makes Manticore/GA the only one who could fit.

Um, no.

That was actually, pardon my language, the stupidest part of the last book. The fact that NO ONE had any records showing a missile delivering that nuke, combined w/ all the nukes that happened before the Manties showed up, makes it pretty much impossible for any rational person to believe that the Manties did that final nuke

GregD wrote:That was actually, pardon my language, the stupidest part of the last book. The fact that NO ONE had any records showing a missile delivering that nuke, combined w/ all the nukes that happened before the Manties showed up, makes it pretty much impossible for any rational person to believe that the Manties did that final nuke

The earlier ones are obviously the secies, supported by the ballroom and Torch. Who else could it be? Almost certainly relying on the tricks provided by that Manticoran spy.

GregD wrote:

quite possibly a cat wrote:It hadn't really occurred to me, but this is probably going to be how the bad guys snatch defeat from the jaws of victory isn't it? They've basically won. The League will disintegrate and Manticore/GA is gonna look like the ones responsible for the nukes. That reporter should have no trouble spinning a story that makes Manticore/GA the only one who could fit.

Um, no.

That was actually, pardon my language, the stupidest part of the last book. The fact that NO ONE had any records showing a missile delivering that nuke, combined w/ all the nukes that happened before the Manties showed up, makes it pretty much impossible for any rational person to believe that the Manties did that final nuke

Ah, tell me again exactly who has those records . . . and access to every sensor in the star system, thanks to the surrender?

Oh, yeah! It's the Manties! The guys who conveniently claim that they didn't detect any incoming missile traces. Oh, not! Not them! No, sirree, Bob! And you can take that to the bank!

(And put it in your safety deposit box, right beside the magic beans.)

And, as has been pointed out. Mesa has already pinned the Houdini explosions on Manticore-enabled Ballroom and Seccy terrorists. And the one major reporter questioning that --- lady by the name of O'Hanrahan --- is now, regretfully, coming to the conclusion that the Mesan claims may actually have been accurate, given what Tenth Fleet clearly did from orbit!!!

Seriously, you expect anyone to take Manticore's word for it when all they're offering is an absence of evidence in records which they --- and only they --- control?

To be honest, some people will reject the notion that Manticore did it. You want to bet on whether or not they'll be the majority?

I have a question, what was the source of the nukes that was set off?

I doubt that protocols for tracking nuke material has lapsed very much compared to the techniques used today - I would suspect the reverse is true, so why can't they use isotopic fingerprinting on the fallout to determine the origin of the nukes?

Of course, this hinges on that the source of material is known.

If the nukes where produced by some company in the SL (for example Technodyne) there would be a very good chance that the isotopic fingerprint exists in some database somewhere which means it's possible to trace them.

Joat42 wrote:If the nukes where produced by some company in the SL (for example Technodyne) there would be a very good chance that the isotopic fingerprint exists in some database somewhere which means it's possible to trace them.

I wouldn't put it outside the MAlign to buy the nukes from someone like the Manticoran Hauptmann Cartel. Or some enterprise in the (Peoples) Republic of Haven. Not as MAlign, of couse, but if you put enough layers between the original buyers and the MAlign-controlled enterprise who actually put the nukes there they exploded ...

Joat42 wrote:I have a question, what was the source of the nukes that was set off?

I doubt that protocols for tracking nuke material has lapsed very much compared to the techniques used today - I would suspect the reverse is true, so why can't they use isotopic fingerprinting on the fallout to determine the origin of the nukes?

Of course, this hinges on that the source of material is known.

If the nukes where produced by some company in the SL (for example Technodyne) there would be a very good chance that the isotopic fingerprint exists in some database somewhere which means it's possible to trace them.

The Houdini explosions --- that is, those used to cover the extraction of personnel prior to 10th Fleet's arrival --- relied on nukes "stolen" from Mesan sources. After all, that was what those murderous bastards used when they blew up Green Pines, wasn't it?! That was especially true of the "terrorist bombs" which were specifically designed to squib and be found by the investigators.

The sources for the nukes used after 10th Fleet's arrival was the Darius System, which no one outside the Alignment has a clue even exists. Be a bit difficult for fingerprints on anything from that system to be in any data bases.

On the other hand, Honorverse nukes don't use fissionables at all. They induce fusion either with lasers or with gravitic compression. (Outside places like Grayson, humanity got leery of handling radioactive materials any more than they had to, once controlled fusion was successfully achieved.) So there's not really a handy file of isotopic fingerprints for any nuclear explosions.

Trust me, I --- I mean, the Alignment ---considered that possibility when I --- I mean, the Alignment --- set out to create Mike's dilemma.