[Spoiler - UH] utube snippet

TangoLima wrote:Who knows that they have Harahap.
The highest levels of the SEM, Haven and Grayson,
The other side 'knows' he isn't bonded with a treecat.
Give him bioscult and keep it quiet and the MAlignment
will not have a clue. You can hide him in plain sight.
Agents go missing on operations, missing assumed dead.
I believe the is the sinmplest solution

The crew of his courier? or did he send her away when the balloon went up on the Civil War/War of Liberation/War of Independence/what ever they decide to call it?

Fox2! wrote:

TangoLima wrote:Who knows that they have Harahap.
The highest levels of the SEM, Haven and Grayson,
The other side 'knows' he isn't bonded with a treecat.
Give him bioscult and keep it quiet and the MAlignment
will not have a clue. You can hide him in plain sight.
Agents go missing on operations, missing assumed dead.
I believe the is the sinmplest solution

The crew of his courier? or did he send her away when the balloon went up on the Civil War/War of Liberation/War of Independence/what ever they decide to call it?

The courier hadn't been in the Seraphim system at all. Note this paragraph from chapter 57 of _Shadow of Victory_:

"That hadn’t been an option this time, though, so he’d left Факел and Lieutenant Yong in the Addison System, thirty-eight light-years from Seraphim, and caught one of Krestor’s shorthaul transports. He didn’t like it, and it had added the better part of a week and a half to his time in-system, but using Факел had been…contraindicated this time around."

(the local transstellar was being nervous about other transttellars ships showing up)

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:The courier hadn't been in the Seraphim system at all. Note this paragraph from chapter 57 of _Shadow of Victory_:

"That hadn’t been an option this time, though, so he’d left Факел and Lieutenant Yong in the Addison System, thirty-eight light-years from Seraphim, and caught one of Krestor’s shorthaul transports. He didn’t like it, and it had added the better part of a week and a half to his time in-system, but using Факел had been…contraindicated this time around."

(the local transstellar was being nervous about other transttellars ships showing up)

Hi guys, long time lurker here.

Actually, the first thing I started to speculate about when Damien got caught, was whether he'll direct RMN to his ship. After realizing there's no escaping this - which should take him around 30 seconds - providing his captors with a working example of Streak Drive and another MA member to interrogate would go a long way to ensure his continuing survival. It wouldn't be hard to pull off, as well.

Stiopa wrote:

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:The courier hadn't been in the Seraphim system at all. Note this paragraph from chapter 57 of _Shadow of Victory_:

"That hadn’t been an option this time, though, so he’d left Факел and Lieutenant Yong in the Addison System, thirty-eight light-years from Seraphim, and caught one of Krestor’s shorthaul transports. He didn’t like it, and it had added the better part of a week and a half to his time in-system, but using Факел had been…contraindicated this time around."

(the local transstellar was being nervous about other transttellars ships showing up)

Hi guys, long time lurker here.

Actually, the first thing I started to speculate about when Damien got caught, was whether he'll direct RMN to his ship. After realizing there's no escaping this - which should take him around 30 seconds - providing his captors with a working example of Streak Drive and another MA member to interrogate would go a long way to ensure his continuing survival. It wouldn't be hard to pull off, as well.

Stiopa, this is proof positive why an extra pair of eyes is always better. I completely missed that possibility, which can still happen. And probably has a more than fair chance of being exactly what the author is priming the pump for.

cthia wrote:***snip***
Stiopa, this is proof positive why an extra pair of eyes is always better. I completely missed that possibility, which can still happen. And probably has a more than fair chance of being exactly what the author is priming the pump for.

Actually, this possibility was discussed extensively in s thread I am far too lazy to dig out right now. IIRC , the problem was how too approach the ship with out the captain/pilot destroying it (more if those pesky nanites). At that point in time you can't just trust Damien to go on board and disable the pilot, since what is to prevent him from just attempting to sail away. You can't have any Manty ship too close, or the pilot's auto destruct kicks in.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

cthia wrote:***snip***
Stiopa, this is proof positive why an extra pair of eyes is always better. I completely missed that possibility, which can still happen. And probably has a more than fair chance of being exactly what the author is priming the pump for.

Actually, this possibility was discussed extensively in s thread I am far too lazy to dig out right now. IIRC , the problem was how too approach the ship with out the captain/pilot destroying it (more if those pesky nanites). At that point in time you can't just trust Damien to go on board and disable the pilot, since what is to prevent him from just attempting to sail away. You can't have any Manty ship too close, or the pilot's auto destruct kicks in.

Yeah, I know I devoted a few minutes thinking about it. The general conclusion was that, unless RFC pulls something we don't see coming, the RMN isn't going to get its hands on it in any shape to be analyzed.

Now, it's possible that the crew is all dirtside enjoying liberty and can't get back and transmit a destruct signal. Then Anton and Ruth pull a bunch of hacker magic and they gain entrance. Or maybe Sir Horace does the dirty deed.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

cthia wrote:***snip***
Stiopa, this is proof positive why an extra pair of eyes is always better. I completely missed that possibility, which can still happen. And probably has a more than fair chance of being exactly what the author is priming the pump for.

Actually, this possibility was discussed extensively in s thread I am far too lazy to dig out right now. IIRC , the problem was how too approach the ship with out the captain/pilot destroying it (more if those pesky nanites). At that point in time you can't just trust Damien to go on board and disable the pilot, since what is to prevent him from just attempting to sail away. You can't have any Manty ship too close, or the pilot's auto destruct kicks in.

JohnRoth wrote:Yeah, I know I devoted a few minutes thinking about it. The general conclusion was that, unless RFC pulls something we don't see coming, the RMN isn't going to get its hands on it in any shape to be analyzed.

Now, it's possible that the crew is all dirtside enjoying liberty and can't get back and transmit a destruct signal. Then Anton and Ruth pull a bunch of hacker magic and they gain entrance. Or maybe Sir Horace does the dirty deed.

Oops, I missed that thread. 'Necessity is the mother of invention.'

Would a stealthy probe capable of delivering an EMP blast at point-blank range suffice? Nah, I think ships are EMP hardened. But park a stealthy probe right up the tail pipe of a Streak Drive -- like the proverbial 'banana in the tailpipe' trick, oughta work. LOL

It'll also suffice to answer whose stealth is the best.

I'm not sure that Damien would tell the RMN about the Streak Drive ship in time for them to do anything about it. There are a couple of reasons about that.

1st, it would have meant just spilling his guts when he was first captured and Damien is a professional who's initial inclination is not to rat-out the operation.

2nd, possbily most important, is that having the Manties attempt to run a boarding/capture on the ship is probably going to be a major notice that Firebrand HAS been captured by the Manties and has brokered some kind of deal in exchange for the information about the ship. That WOULD be a conclusion the Alignment could reach because there is no other plausable reason that RMN should go after that particular ship in that particular place unless someone - Damien- told them about it. That would be sure to put a price on his head as well as let Alignment know he was captured. Not something Damien would want to initiate while out in the Verge. Having seen some of the Alignments operations and met people, his best option to survive would be to get as far away from the Alignment as possible if they decide he is a security risk.

3rd, he left the ship where it was because of the tension and mistrust between transtellars and came in other transport. RMN would have had very little to work with about how he got there even if his sucessfull rebel partners gave them all the info they had as far as transportation. Unless he was specificaly how he got there and exactly the transportaion chain with some way to check it, he would have been able to intialy that he took a series of commercial ships.

4th, the ship might not have been where he left it. I don't recall how long he had been on the planet before the actual fighting broke out but he was there for a fair amount of time there was a revolution going on in addition to various parts of the former government fighting amoung themselves. Word of this would have gotten back to the system where he left the ship and it's an open question if there was a contingency plan about him getting trapped like that. Nobody from the Alignment would have been able to get to the planet while the fighting was going on and probably for a good amount of time after it had been resolved (either a govt faction or the rebels won and then consolidated the victory). That is also a Catch-22 situation as there is unlikely any other Alignment agents close by and as his ship (and it's crew) are the only ones to know where he was and that the system was in turmoil, they would be the only -and certainly the fastest- way to let anybody higher up the opeations chain know that he was at least stranded. When they send somebody to look- and they probably will- it will be after the military and political dust settles and whomever it is will have to tread lightly. That it is the rebels who won still won't be that helpfull to the Alignment and there is no guarantee that he would have survived. It is possible that the rebels spread the word that he was killed in the last days of the fighting....not nessiary to even have a body in a grave, just a name on a list of KIA someplace messy.

5th, he actualy does have a fair amount of knowlege and observations to trade. Given who and what he is, he can probably give the class and type of the ship as well as really good info on how long it (and similar that he traveld on) took to get from place to place. It might not be the spec's ad schematics of the ship & drive but knowing relative travel times provides serioius information on it's capabilities.

Since RMN didn't kill him out of hand, and dragged him back to Manticore without anything in the way to torture or extreem interrogation, telling his intial captors about the ship might not have been particularly healthy as he might had had to hang around for a possible boarding attempt and that might let his former employers know he was alive.

We shall see.

I want to reply to the idea that O'Hanrahan can turn this against the Manties in some way.

IIRC DH was on Monica meeting with President Tyler, Aldona Anisimovna, Isabela Bardesano, and his superior officer in uniform. How is she going to spin this around on Manticore when they have him, and Tyler talking about how he was ORDERED to take those actions? Especially when TIY, Kalokainos Shipping and quite a few others were just convicted of criminal actions by the League's own courts for their parts in the scandal?

All she can do is expose more of Mesa's involvement and maybe muddy the waters. Sure, some sheep would believe her but far more people would begin to question her than believe her. It might even end up discrediting the false sensor records she published earlier. Maybe even give the Mandarins the excuse they need to save themselves.

Trust me, she'll stay away from it and focus on her Manty atrocities story on Mesa itself. The last thing she wants is to bring her credibility into question.

BrightSoul wrote:I want to reply to the idea that O'Hanrahan can turn this against the Manties in some way.

IIRC DH was on Monica meeting with President Tyler, Aldona Anisimovna, Isabela Bardesano, and his superior officer in uniform. How is she going to spin this around on Manticore when they have him, and Tyler talking about how he was ORDERED to take those actions? Especially when TIY, Kalokainos Shipping and quite a few others were just convicted of criminal actions by the League's own courts for their parts in the scandal?

All she can do is expose more of Mesa's involvement and maybe muddy the waters. Sure, some sheep would believe her but far more people would begin to question her than believe her. It might even end up discrediting the false sensor records she published earlier. Maybe even give the Mandarins the excuse they need to save themselves.

Trust me, she'll stay away from it and focus on her Manty atrocities story on Mesa itself. The last thing she wants is to bring her credibility into question.

She's a key MAlign agent. She has openly lied which means that she knows she is likely to be caught. She did it, after all, from a ship.

Take a look at politics today (not a long one unless you have a strong stomach) and you see wildly different things on different news networks and people willing to believe whatever they've been told.

There will be people who believe her. Remember that her job is NOT to help Mesa but to muddle the waters. The simple thing would have been to NOT do it but she is under orders. We don't know what they are; we can just surmise.

And, frankly, she is really walking a tightrope. She may know that she may wind up a martyr of sorts. That might suit her. If she's proven to be a liar, she can be fired. Then she can disappear and turn up on Darius.