Collin's assassination list

Oh no, not the CAASAP list. Who else might be on it?

There was a reason Sonja Hemphill and Shannon Foraker were right at the top of Collin’s Assassinate As Soon As Possible list.

Honor? Pat Givens may have been.

cthia wrote:Oh no, not the CAASAP list. Who else might be on it?

There was a reason Sonja Hemphill and Shannon Foraker were right at the top of Collin’s Assassinate As Soon As Possible list.

Honor? Pat Givens may have been.

Honor is Enemy #1, #2 and #3.

Pat Givens and the other Lords, as well as the Havenite Ministry of War staff, must have been too.

cthia wrote:Oh no, not the CAASAP list. Who else might be on it?

There was a reason Sonja Hemphill and Shannon Foraker were right at the top of Collin’s Assassinate As Soon As Possible list.

Honor? Pat Givens may have been.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Honor is Enemy #1, #2 and #3.

Pat Givens and the other Lords, as well as the Havenite Ministry of War staff, must have been too.

Is Honor even as high as Anton Zilwicki or Victor Cachet? The war with the Solarian League is over and it may take decades to get it going again, so any purely military figure may only be of secondary importance. Certainly the Renaissance Factor cannot try direct conflict, since they are equipped with ships roughly equivalent to the SLN and the core worlds would see no advantage to leaving the League and joining them.

tlb wrote:Is Honor even as high as Anton Zilwicki or Victor Cachet? The war with the Solarian League is over and it may take decades to get it going again, so any purely military figure may only be of secondary importance. Certainly the Renaissance Factor cannot try direct conflict, since they are equipped with ships roughly equivalent to the SLN and the core worlds would see no advantage to leaving the League and joining them.

Public Enemy #1 is the figurehead. You're right she's not going to be very influential for the next few years or decade, as she takes a step back from politics and the Navy. But if she does get assassinated, it's PR.

The Assassination List is a different thing. It's meant to achieve a tactical advantage. The majority of Solarian, Manticoran or Havenite people have probably never heard of Foraker or Hemphill, or even the Barony of Low Delhi. Reports of their demises (not even greatly exaggerated) would not be useful in the media.

tlb wrote:Is Honor even as high as Anton Zilwicki or Victor Cachet? The war with the Solarian League is over and it may take decades to get it going again, so any purely military figure may only be of secondary importance. Certainly the Renaissance Factor cannot try direct conflict, since they are equipped with ships roughly equivalent to the SLN and the core worlds would see no advantage to leaving the League and joining them.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Public Enemy #1 is the figurehead. You're right she's not going to be very influential for the next few years or decade, as she takes a step back from politics and the Navy. But if she does get assassinated, it's PR.

The Assassination List is a different thing. It's meant to achieve a tactical advantage. The majority of Solarian, Manticoran or Havenite people have probably never heard of Foraker or Hemphill, or even the Barony of Low Delhi. Reports of their demises (not even greatly exaggerated) would not be useful in the media.

There have been four major assassination attempts by the Malign that we know about: the attempt on the Andermani heir, the attempt on Honor, the attempt on Queen Berry and the successful attempt on the ambassador to the League. We know of at least three others prior to UH: the death of the Solarian Naval head, the death of the superior that advanced Gweon's career in the League navy and the elimination of Haven's ambassador to the High Ridge government to hide the manipulation of the correspondence. The latter three were tactical successes and the attacks on the Manticoran ambassador and Queen Berry were successes because they restarted the fighting with Haven. So far the Malign have not been big on assassination to achieve publicity (the attack on Honor was to help the Havenite war effort), but have had tactical success when using it as a method of infiltration for their agents or enforcing secrecy. However even those raised questions ultimately, particularly when suspects died on first arrest.

I do not believe you are wrong to suggest that Honor could be the subject of another assassination attempt, only that there are many truly tactical targets that would have priority as the Malign leadership tries to rebuild its intelligence infrastructure.

I figure that Honor is Top 10. I'm thinking someplace around 6 or 8.

Not only has she been instrumental in foiling their long term plan, but she's also from a lost Alpha line. Colin seems to have taken offense to that fact and is caught up in what might have been if it hadn't happened.

Black Victor and Anton have done more to shine a light on their actions than anyone else and they haven't stopped looking. That makes them Top 5.

I can see the heads of states of Grayson, Haven, Manticore and the Andermanni Empire also ranking higher than Honor, too.

The first 3 have been actively leading the charge against them. In Gustaf's case, they know that he's not going to give up getting even for their attack on the line of succession.

Foraker and Hemphill are dangerous because they have been able to advance the GA tech base beyond their own in many cases. Taking them out slows the new development projects down and gives the Alignment a chance to catch up.

Then, there's Uncle Jacques and Kevin Usher.

jtg452 wrote:I figure that Honor is Top 10. I'm thinking someplace around 6 or 8.

Not only has she been instrumental in foiling their long term plan, but she's also from a lost Alpha line. Colin seems to have taken offense to that fact and is caught up in what might have been if it hadn't happened.

Black Victor and Anton have done more to shine a light on their actions than anyone else and they haven't stopped looking. That makes them Top 5.

I can see the heads of states of Grayson, Haven, Manticore and the Andermanni Empire also ranking higher than Honor, too.

The first 3 have been actively leading the charge against them. In Gustaf's case, they know that he's not going to give up getting even for their attack on the line of succession.

Foraker and Hemphill are dangerous because they have been able to advance the GA tech base beyond their own in many cases. Taking them out slows the new development projects down and gives the Alignment a chance to catch up.

Then, there's Uncle Jacques and Kevin Usher.

I didn't consider that lost Alpha line bit, which makes it a bit personal. I have always agreed that Honor was certainly in the top five, but it wasn't personal. You just may have identified a reason that makes it personal.

Anton and Victor are personal. Also, Jeremy X.

Just how effective is the list going to be at this point? Sure, the Alignment would like to kill Harrington, Queen Elizabeth, Anton and Victor but then you are going to have to add Mike to that and others. That is only looking at the highest profile people (not counting White Haven or the current head of the SLN or Honor's uncle on Beowulf.

At this point, starting an assassination plot is going to be just a bit more difficult than it was before the wheels came off the Alignment plans. Why?

Among other things, they are loosing imbeded people in at least the SL, Manticore, and way out there in the Maya Autonomous Region. They didn't seem to have much depth left at Haven or the Andermani, Erwhon and not a wisper so far about any at Grayson though there is probably enough already going on there. Everybody in the GA, and now the SL (SLN and Justice Dept at least) plus Grayson Andermani and Erwhon are going to get the word from Manticore about the fastest way to trip these people up--and then they just die.

The Alignment has snipped so many lines of communications and killed off so many of the people (one way or another) that were conduits and agents via the Mesa connections that their resources are getting thing. The RF probably has a number of things running but they are probably concentrating on sucking more systems into the new alliance of systems and not sending out teams to generate hits on people who are way down on their list of "would like to see die".
I would agree that Collin and his clone brothers (and others ) might not sated their current need to spell oceans of blood over the blocking of their plans and other things but they are going to need to work on reestablishing their conduits out into the political and business interests around the known galaxy. Remember that now everything has to run out through that wormhole that Mannerheim is keeping secret and defended so there is a certain amount of problems with that as a bottleneck.
How many agents do they have in other, less noteworthy locations that they can put into play. We don't know.
We also don't know what the replacement to the orignial Detweiler Plan is going to look like beyond "assisting" Mannerheim and the RF become a power and an offset to the possibly SL 2.0. At this point the Alignment does know that at least the League (primarily the SLN and Justice Dept plus Manticore are apparently rolling up the Alignment agents in place. And that doesn't begin to break out any difference between those who know they are Alignment agents and those who don't know who they are really being used by. I'm sure that before the various security services get through, a lot of otherwise unrealized connections in many places will show up as people start dying because of the nanites.

It is always possible that Collin & Co will try and set up some very back-door attempts through more traditional means (like hireing hit-persons though various cutouts and work at making it look like politics or criminal activity or angry transtellars. Certainly there are going to be a lot of OFS and other peoples agents who might take iffy jobs and not have a clue who they are really working for. But, at this point, they have a lot more to worry about and work on than trying to finally kill Harrington.

Brigade XO wrote:At this point, starting an assassination plot is going to be just a bit more difficult than it was before the wheels came off the Alignment plans. Why?

Among other things, they are loosing imbeded people in at least the SL, Manticore, and way out there in the Maya Autonomous Region. They didn't seem to have much depth left at Haven or the Andermani, Erwhon and not a wisper so far about any at Grayson though there is probably enough already going on there. Everybody in the GA, and now the SL (SLN and Justice Dept at least) plus Grayson Andermani and Erwhon are going to get the word from Manticore about the fastest way to trip these people up--and then they just die.

The Alignment has snipped so many lines of communications and killed off so many of the people (one way or another) that were conduits and agents via the Mesa connections that their resources are getting thing.

Good point. Even nanite driven assassins require you have to people with enough access to:
a) determine a less protected person with routine and ongoing access to the target to make your assassin.
b) surreptitiously acquire a DNA sample of that proto-assassin
c) get it to a MAlign lab able to use that into to customize the nanites and get the nanites back to the action team/person.
d) have the action team/person intercept the proto-assassin and administer the nanites.

None of those is crazy difficult; this is probably the easiest and lowest risk reasonably likely to succeed assassination method. But it does require in-place people able to do those things. Still it's less people, and less highly placed people than needed for reasonable probability of success using more conventional assassination techniques.

(Of course Colin, et al, would only think the nanite method reasonably likely to still succeed if they're unaware of the widespread deployment of treecats around likely GA targets specifically as a last line of detection and defense against that kind of attack)

The assassination trick worked when nobody knew about the MAlign and would blame someone else.

Nowadays it would just backfire. The GA, and even the League, is aware of the MAlign's existence. If one of their high ranking personnel or agents now dies under mysterious circumstances, the Done Thing is to double down on whatever they were doing that might have made the MAlign nervous or unhappy.

Cut off a head and another, more pissed-off head grows in its place. Similar to what happened when Haven assassinated Roger III. They ended up with Elizabeth III, who definitely doubled down on her father's naval policies.