quite possibly a cat wrote:Manticore has a track record of working with the Ballroom and Ballroom's co. conspirators. While that hasn't been made widely public yet, it could be. And while we can quibble about the word "supply" Anton DID remove the security from the Green Pines nuke.
Manticore basically have several awful options:
1) Deny everything. This is awful because if anyone DOES get proof Manticore was behind any of the nukes, they've destroyed any credibility they had on the issue.
2) Ignore all questions. This is awful because there are legitimate questions, so refusing to deny it makes you look kind of guilty.
3a) Go with the truth. This is awful because the truth is they've been conspiring with the Ballroom, helping homegrown Mesan terrorists, removed the security on the Green Pines nuke and nuked Mesa. Unfortunately, this is a confession to mass murder.
3b) Go with the truth and promptly throw Torch under the bus. Say Victor and Anton were working for Torch. Hell, the CIC of the Torch military is on Mesa! At first glance this clears Manticore of all blame.
The main problem here is that Victor and co. might respond by throwing Haven and Manticore under the bus. "Why yes, we were behind Green Pines. We had very specific orders from the Queen and President. We also helped pick the targets for the orbital bombardment. The important thing to remember is that Berry and Thandi had no knowledge of our horrible atrocities." This is particularly bad because people tend to believe confessions for some ghastly reason.
Back to the main topic: If I was the Malign I would leave a trail of evidence pointing back to all of my worst enemies.
Beowulf? A bunch of documents showing how Beowulf was helping you come up with new gene mods. The slaves would try them, and if they worked out Beowulf could "rescue" the slaves, and then use those fancy genes for their "eugenics" program, while claiming they weren't inventing new synthetic genes. This would be particularly damning if you DID tip Beowulf off to selected slave ships, so you could spread superior Mesan genes to the galaxy!
Political opponents of your infiltrators? They were working with Mesa and involved in horrible criminality. Bonus points if you had pretend slave Gamma Lines seduce them, so you can put them with a "slave" that they "purchased".
Manticore? Working with the Ballroom. There is extensively documented proof. Bonus points for having it all be true and at least some be verifiable.
The truth also goes a long way. Anton and Victor did not bring in the nukes. And nukes have signatures in terms of where they are from. That could be interesting.
Second, there is not a real lot of sympathy for Mesa anywhere in terms of the public. A lot of key people quietly supported it but it's sort of hard to publicly explain why you support genetic slavery et al.
And although Cathy Montaigne does work with the Ballroom it was not considered respectable. Note that Queen Elizabeth had never met Jeremy X until Cauldron of Ghosts.
The one person claiming that Manticore and Haven ships are firing on Mesa is O'Hanrahan. Questioning her with a treecat present could be very interesting. Remember that she knows far more about the Onion than most.