capturing Alignment agents

zuluwiz wrote:I think there would be many differences between the code words needed to set off the nanites in various agents. Of course, you say. but what about the differences between the levels of agent? Do Alpha lines have different nanites from Beta lines or Gamma lines? And every agent will have different methods of being eliminated. This might well mean that anyone captured would have to interrogated in a different manner from every other agent, and this when you're not certain that the prisoner you're trying to interrogate without killing is even an agent. And so this would seem (to me) that just setting off the nanites is all the information you're going to get from these prisoners. It's a pity that you can't obtain any usable information, but just the fact that they dropped dead while being interrogated would have to be sufficient.

I wasn't thinking of genetic lines, but there may be a correlation between that and the work the agent was expected to perform. A few examples:

• Audrey O'Hanrahan knows she's acting for some organisation, but from all we've been told, she doesn't know exactly what it is or what its objectives are. We haven't seen her do much more than choose stories to cover based on what her handlers ask of her. She's an Alpha line.
• Captain / Rear Admiral Caswell Gweon is doing more than that, he's actually feeding the SLN information he knows is either false or obtained from side sources (he may not know which one is which). He's actually committing treason. And he knows his information and orders come from Mesa.
• Firebrand was an operative and knew a lot about the Alignment, its plans and its technology. He'd visited the Gamma Centre.

We know Gweon had nanites and Firebrand was supposed to. We don't know about O'Hanrahan, but she probably doesn't have since she's expected to survive. Gweon was a mid-level operative and from what we've seen of him, he wasn't trained in spycraft. We know he dropped dead quite quickly. So it's possible that if he got suddenly, critically injured and was put under, his nanites might have killed him. It would be a loss of investment by the Alignment, but they probably had other operatives in the SLN whom they could prop up when needed (not without a cost, obviously).

But Firebrand was trained. He'd have known how to avoid being captured and how to escape from an ambulance. Operative like him and his handler probably counted on their nanites to keep them awake long enough to make good on that escape. That's probably also true for the two operatives sent to Smoking Frog, only more so since they knew what their nanites did for them.

zuluwiz wrote:It has just occurred to me that Rajampet's death, done in the manner that it was, was a mistake. Having him pull out his pistol and shoot himself was a clear indicator that the Manties had been telling the truth about their opponents' use of "mind-control". Had he received that call then had a "heart attack", the indications would have been much less clear to the investigators.

Sorry, but the fact that the Mandarins, Kingsford and others who knew Rajampet didn't bat an eye at his suicide would indicate they thought it entirely possible he'd do that. Moreover, the Alignment could probably count on the corrupt subordinates being all to eager to ignore the circumstances of the death in the effort to profit from it.

We know Kingsford, who wasn't (that) corrupt didn't begin to suspect anything until Gweon dropped dead in front of him.

Gweon wasn't "mid-level". He was highly placed,was being used as a conduit to feed the SLN information and was expected to craft the reports and narrative to deliver the information, guide policy and push the SLN into doing things that were both bad for it and to damage the Alignment's enemies. And he was highly skilled in trade-craft.

Rajampet's death is perhaps a bit more odd. It appears to have counted on him both being at home and being next to the draw with the pulsar when he got the call. The most Senior officer in the SLN isn't likely to routinely be carrying a pulsar or any weapon at work so he apparently was going to have to be at home. Ok, "everybody" knew he had secrets and possibly big problems he didn't want anyone to know about but we don't get to see anybody looking to see what those were. Perhaps not the most thorough investigation of the CNO's suicide but then, this is the SLN and League high end politics. On the other hand, it would have been much more effective- from the standpoint of not getting anybody actualy looking for a reason- to have the nanites give him an aneurysm. This was a man with a lot or pressure and he had a bunch of work problems. Besides, nobody was going to find him until he either didn't show up for work the next day (his driver got no response when he came to pick him up) or his cleaner walked in an finds him crumpled on the floor. Say 5 hours after death.

zuluwiz wrote:It has just occurred to me that Rajampet's death, done in the manner that it was, was a mistake. Having him pull out his pistol and shoot himself was a clear indicator that the Manties had been telling the truth about their opponents' use of "mind-control". Had he received that call then had a "heart attack", the indications would have been much less clear to the investigators.

This is my point. It was Rajampet's suicide that made the original ghost hunters believe that the Manties story about people being controlled was plausable. Surprised that no one else believed it, but once again, the Sollies mindset was if we didnt invent it, then it cant be real.

In UH, when the Malign agents in Smoking Frog died, they had a look of intense concentration before suffering their anurisms. Wether voluntary or involuntary, this could have been the self destruct trigger. Gewon's death didnt have quite the same description, but it could have been a similar protocol.

Brigade XO wrote:Gweon wasn't "mid-level". He was highly placed,was being used as a conduit to feed the SLN information and was expected to craft the reports and narrative to deliver the information, guide policy and push the SLN into doing things that were both bad for it and to damage the Alignment's enemies. And he was highly skilled in trade-craft.

Rajampet's death is perhaps a bit more odd. It appears to have counted on him both being at home and being next to the draw with the pulsar when he got the call. The most Senior officer in the SLN isn't likely to routinely be carrying a pulsar or any weapon at work so he apparently was going to have to be at home. Ok, "everybody" knew he had secrets and possibly big problems he didn't want anyone to know about but we don't get to see anybody looking to see what those were. Perhaps not the most thorough investigation of the CNO's suicide but then, this is the SLN and League high end politics. On the other hand, it would have been much more effective- from the standpoint of not getting anybody actualy looking for a reason- to have the nanites give him an aneurysm. This was a man with a lot or pressure and he had a bunch of work problems. Besides, nobody was going to find him until he either didn't show up for work the next day (his driver got no response when he came to pick him up) or his cleaner walked in an finds him crumpled on the floor. Say 5 hours after death.

My point was that Gweon was at the end of a chain of information: it came from Mesa from the financial advisor, then through his fiancée. He was highly placed and doing very important work for the Alignment, which is all the more reason for him to have several layers of cut-outs. Compared to Firebrand, he knew way less than half of the Alignment's objectives.

Another point for Rajampet's death was that the Alignment probably wanted him to know he'd been controlled before he died. Knowing he was home wouldn't be difficult at all, a couple of spies would know he'd been driven home and hadn't left, a couple of others would know his calendar had no further meetings.

kzt wrote:wavelength. Nanites are small, so their receiving area is small. And short wavelengths are typically absorbed by water in the body.

You beat me to it.

You can protect most electronics by simply unplugging them so they are not connected to the electrical grid which acts as an antenna.

Somtaaw wrote:
Similar triggers for Tim Meares when he tried to kill Honor, the Havenite driver gunning down Webster on Earth, the Solarian perfume guy going for Berry who had to visually see her before it took over; all of them complex triggers.

The trigger for Meares was more complex. He and Honor had to be alone with a single Armsman (or other armed person) who Tim could get close enough to without arousing suspicion, and be able to get the guard's gun without triggering their weapons retention training. He then had to kill the Armsman, and go into spray and pray mode. If Honor had not killed him, I suspect he would have killed himself after killing her. The Havenite driver just had to have an unobstructed field of fire to Admiral Webster, I wonder if the Torch audience room assassin was both Controlled and nanited. He had a much longer period of action, including forgetting where he had gotten the sample case, before being triggered to set off the binary toxin by the sight of Berry.

Brigade XO wrote:Gweon wasn't "mid-level". He was highly placed,was being used as a conduit to feed the SLN information and was expected to craft the reports and narrative to deliver the information, guide policy and push the SLN into doing things that were both bad for it and to damage the Alignment's enemies. And he was highly skilled in trade-craft.

Rajampet's death is perhaps a bit more odd. It appears to have counted on him both being at home and being next to the draw with the pulsar when he got the call. The most Senior officer in the SLN isn't likely to routinely be carrying a pulsar or any weapon at work so he apparently was going to have to be at home. Ok, "everybody" knew he had secrets and possibly big problems he didn't want anyone to know about but we don't get to see anybody looking to see what those were. Perhaps not the most thorough investigation of the CNO's suicide but then, this is the SLN and League high end politics. On the other hand, it would have been much more effective- from the standpoint of not getting anybody actualy looking for a reason- to have the nanites give him an aneurysm. This was a man with a lot or pressure and he had a bunch of work problems. Besides, nobody was going to find him until he either didn't show up for work the next day (his driver got no response when he came to pick him up) or his cleaner walked in an finds him crumpled on the floor. Say 5 hours after death.

Your assessment of Gweon is accurate. As far as the suicide goes, he was being dragged in by Kolokoltsov iot explain 1) why the Sollie Admiral at Beowulf acted the way she did; 2) why fleets were so conveniently located in Madras and the Verge nearest Manticore; 3) why their "intel" insisted the Manties' defenses had been decimated, and their morale was at the bottom of a well --when they weren't and it wasn't. Rajampet was not looking forward to the meeting.

However, he lived in a fancy penthouse in Old Chicago. He was a politician who spent almost no time in space; and he had served his purpose. The plan to kill him using his own weapon, as a false suicide, would have been easy to plan--he may have been their tool for years, or someone they already considered replacing (as they did with Gweon's former boss).

Regards, Rob

TFLYTSNBN wrote:

kzt wrote:wavelength. Nanites are small, so their receiving area is small. And short wavelengths are typically absorbed by water in the body.

You beat me to it.

You can protect most electronics by simply unplugging them so they are not connected to the electrical grid which acts as an antenna.

True, but just like radio telescopes, a networked set of nanites can function as a large receiver the length of the separation between the units. So if you have nanites in your feet and your your head, you can receive transmissions up to 3 meters and some in wavelength (receiver is has to be half the wavelength), which translates to 100 MHz. That's ye old regular radio, with a very large depth penetration. More likely, it would be something with a higher frequency, though not so high as get fully absorbed by the skin.

That's not assuming nanites on the skin. A receptor with an unobstructed outside view could get transmissions in the high terahertz range. Especially if they also used your body for that. We have, after all, a dedicated sensory organ capable of receiving transmissions from ~500 to 1000 THz. A pair of them, in fact (and you're using likely them to read this).