I concur that we have yet to have The Plan laid out for us in so many words, but we do have a couple of fairly firm anchor points:
The point of the RF appears to have been to provide a centre of sanity and safety in a swirling sea of chaos around which a 'new order' could coalesce. How, exactly, that was going to lead to the Secret Masters assuming their rightful place in the Universe is what we don't know, but I can think of many ways it could go.
In connection with that swirling sea, recall Aldona's brief attack of conscience before pushing the button in New Tuscany - she was laughing at herself for worrying about causing 40,000 deaths to set in motion a plan that would kill _billions_. Since I rather doubt that the intention was to wipe out all human life in Beowulf and let everybody else go on about their business, those billions must represent an awful lot of harm in an awful lot of places. Presumably so as to leave an awful lot of people scared shitless and looking for refuge.
There _is_ no swirling sea of chaos, no billions of dead, leaving the RF without much point. Worse, it's going to be tricky to come back and create one without the puppet strings being visible to those who care to look. That's rather suggestive of strategic failure; how complete a failure is what's not clear. Yet.
ldwechsler wrote:ncwolf wrote:
Hey yourself.
Well, I'm not sure how much heavy industry Beowulf has left. There were an awful lot of explosions. On the other hand, with the war with the League over, missile production may be the only need.
And I think Harrington was restrained. I think she was told (they decided together) what terms to give to Old Terra before she left Manticore, although the text doesn't state it. She didn't kill Sollies by the scores nor thousands; those first cruisers were a near thing. That may have done her some good; I think she came out of her fury (her red funk), a little bit, enough.
As far as did the Alignment get everything they wanted; definitely not. The Grand Alliance--Solarian League War is over. Now the hunt for the "rabbits" can go forward without distractions (maybe); they lost a big coupe when Anton Zilwicki figured out what was going on with the "Ballroom" explosions on Mesa. On the other hand, the Solarian Union is dissolved, in that it's shorn of the Protectorates, en masse. That alone gives the Renaissance Factor lots of room to work in.
It boils down to how long it takes the Grand Alliance to find "the hole" (Darius) into which the rabbits have fled. How many pieces of the puzzle do they have? How many pieces does Zilwicki have? Traffic leaving Mesa in a (slightly) unusual pattern. Does Zilwicki have records of the ships? Does he (or Torch) have records of the two ships that were / were almost intercepted by the Torch Navy when they attacked the slave depot station? I remember the mission commander made a special note of them. If Zilwicki (or someone else) knows when those ships left Mesa and also knows about one them blowing up (basically suicide by Torch Navy, as it were), then they might have an idea of how far they have to look. See, I don't think Darius is that far away from Mesa. I don't think we're told, but Rufino Chernyshev did go by a more direct route to Darius, and something in the conversation with his gal pal (as I recall, natch) left me with the impression that it didn't take that long--one week or two. Still, two weeks in hyper, with streak drive, does cover a lot of territory so just brute force astronomy surveys from the Mesa system probably (assuming someone were to try that) won't give a practical number of star systems to check out. (Didn't someone say this months ago? Was it I?)
Will the Grand Alliance keep looking long enough to find Darius? It could take generations, unless they stick their heads up. The Renaissance Factor has been announced, so there is that. Nothing ties them to Mesa, so far as the galaxy at large knows.
You are assuming that the Alignment really expected a total collapse. Chances are they realized there would just be a shrinking. And that would work for them because they probably have other people who can work their way into positions of power.
And having a League will hold at least some of the GA's attention. I don't know whether the RF will stay in the League or quit.
It might not be that easy to track down Darius and the rest. Houdini was obviously planned with keeping people hidden in mind.
Darius might not even be part of the "known galaxy." We know it, but does the League? Remember the destruction of the Manty explorer ship.
Also, even if someone came to Darius, would they know that Mesa's people were there? It would be easy to hide them and easier to simply have records that said that the ships involved in taking the people had moved on.
BrightSoul wrote:Hi All,
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I really wanted to see the consternation of the Detweilers when they realized that the League wasn't shattered, just shrunken. Beowulf still has all the required industry to build their share of the components Haven can't build yet. On top of this Honor was restrained and reasonable (sort of) when she took out the Mandarins.
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