"Why are you still alive?"

Brigade XO wrote:What I wonder is why the Alignment doesn't (we haven't been told they have) any hyper-capable warships at least at a slight edge beyond the best of the SL though perhaps with upgrade of most recent builds including Streak Drive?

Well we don't really know what they had because they just died to overwhelming Apollo fire. But in addition to the forts and other fixes system defenses Galton did have some conventional SD(P)s (what was it; a couple squadrons?)

Just by being podlayers they should be well beyond the best of the SL. And hopefully by being designed (self-evidently) after the advent of pod based MDM combat they presumably have at least somewhat more useful point defense against modern missiles.

Though those being, ultimately, cats paws they probably didn't have streak drives; as the MAlign wouldn't want that advanced hyper generator tech exposed if they had to sacrifice Galton.

I see no reason why Commander Milliken must be aware of the existence of either Galton or Darius. If recruited on Mesa, she might not yet had a reason to know. Her superior, Captain Maddock might had known (but since he was KIA, it doesn't matter).

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:I see no reason why Commander Milliken must be aware of the existence of either Galton or Darius. If recruited on Mesa, she might not yet had a reason to know. Her superior, Captain Maddock might had known (but since he was KIA, it doesn't matter).

Yes, it's possible she was a Mesan-recruited officer. She'd be able to confirm that Maddock wasn't, though. In any case, because the GA controlled Mesa and is now aligned (pun intended) with it, they can peruse the citizen records and confirm whether Maddock or Milliken were from there.

But it's not likely. How would she have had naval and officer training, if the MAN had no other officer corps in Mesa there? She'd have needed to be aboard some ships to learn the ropes and the MSN wasn't it.

So she was either trained in Darius or in Galton. If the latter, then she can confirm that Maddock wasn't from Galton.

Either way, I think she'd at least know about Galton. The upgrades and missiles came from somewhere to Hole in the Wall.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:I see no reason why Commander Milliken must be aware of the existence of either Galton or Darius. If recruited on Mesa, she might not yet had a reason to know. Her superior, Captain Maddock might had known (but since he was KIA, it doesn't matter).

Yes, it's possible she was a Mesan-recruited officer. She'd be able to confirm that Maddock wasn't, though. In any case, because the GA controlled Mesa and is now aligned (pun intended) with it, they can peruse the citizen records and confirm whether Maddock or Milliken were from there.

But it's not likely. How would she have had naval and officer training, if the MAN had no other officer corps in Mesa there? She'd have needed to be aboard some ships to learn the ropes and the MSN wasn't it.

So she was either trained in Darius or in Galton. If the latter, then she can confirm that Maddock wasn't from Galton.

Either way, I think she'd at least know about Galton. The upgrades and missiles came from somewhere to Hole in the Wall.

I admit that I have a feeling that somehow Milliken has access to a very important piece of the puzzle. Or else why would the author introduce her and the possibility of Ruth turning her. Plus the fact that that entire bag of worms was obviously left as a cliffhanger for the next book.

But, ultimately, Robert may be right and our suspicions may be no more than an educated hunch. Consider that "Why are you still alive?" is a question that could also have been put to Harahap, who was actually recruited by the MAlign.

And the answer could simply be that she missed her appointment to be fitted, or she has a scheduled appointment coming up, as Harahap had, etc. And remember, even though Harahap was recruited by the MA, he never got close enough to smell the Onion, Galton or Darius.

The MA doesn't make those kinds of mistakes. You can bank on the fact that before anyone becomes privy to classified information, they are fitted with nanites. It is like the chicken and the egg. Before you become a rat for us, we give you the worms. (nanites) And before you are recruited further inside the Onion you must go through initiation to prove yourself worthy. I got the feeling that that takes years. More like decades.

The only light at the end of the tunnel is a question I asked long ago. Are people who are as deep inside the Onion as you can get spared from the nanites? Are they known to be so fanatical, are so indoctrinated, that they would choose death by the "suicide tooth" on their own. Cachat was so inclined. Detweiler chose to kill himself.

Are the Detweilers fitted? Anyone from the LRPB or Board of Directors? At any rate, it is difficult to believe such a paranoid entity would leave too significant of a loose end dangling.

Maddock could have been her recruiter, therefore handler. And also the one who refreshes her nanites, if they have such a need. But even if they do need refreshing, not enough time had elapsed that Milliken would be immune.

Besides, the answer to the query might simply be, "Because you haven't asked the right questions yet."

Almost forgot. Her naval training could have come from any other navy in the Galaxy. Are former naval officers from other navies above being recruited? It still doesn't mean she saw Galton or Darius. I think the possibility is high that you are correct, but, do take note of Brigade XO's remark elsewhere about Alice in Wonderland.

cthia wrote:I admit that I have a feeling that somehow Milliken has access to a very important piece of the puzzle. Or else why would the author introduce her and the possibility of Ruth turning her. Plus the fact that that entire bag of worms was obviously left as a cliffhanger for the next book.

Well, there is a perfectly good reason for David to have introduced her and dangled her in front of us: misdirection.

He's done that before. Quod vide Esther McQueen.

But, ultimately, Robert may be right and our suspicions may be no more than an educated hunch. Consider that "Why are you still alive?" is a question that could also have been put to Harahap, who was actually recruited by the MAlign.

It was. And they did come to a conclusion: because as part of the Gamma Centre's destruction, Jack McBryde scrambled a lot of records, so the fact that he never got his nanite injection was missed. He wasn't that important for people to keep mental track of him, and the MAlign's compartmentalisation worked against them.

And the answer could simply be that she missed her appointment to be fitted, or she has a scheduled appointment coming up, as Harahap had, etc. And remember, even though Harahap was recruited by the MA, he never got close enough to smell the Onion, Galton or Darius.

Indeed, but we also got the answer in TEiF: naval officers aren't outfitted with involuntary suicide nanites because battle conditions could trigger them prematurely. You wouldn't want crew people dropping dead during battle. At least, this was Cachat's conjecture.

In any case, that's not the point. She was clearly an agent of the Alignment and one that clearly had naval training. The only two places where she could have got it would be either a hidden navy (Galton's or Darius') or with a third party navy like Mannerheim. Either way, she knows something.

Are the Detweilers fitted? Anyone from the LRPB or Board of Directors? At any rate, it is difficult to believe such a paranoid entity would leave too significant of a loose end dangling.

I think they are, but those nanites may be in voluntary control, not independently armed. If any of them were caught and questioned, they may choose to end their own lives rather than reveal any secrets.

Like Jack McBryde. He was deep enough that his attempt at defection didn't trigger the nanites. Either he didn't have it or they weren't armed. Since we know Gail has nanites that weren't armed, I'm going to guess it's the latter.

So the question would be why Milliken didn't have nanites under voluntary control, such that she could choose to activate them. But if she's turning, that's also moot: she can choose not to activate them.

Maddock could have been her recruiter, therefore handler. And also the one who refreshes her nanites, if they have such a need. But even if they do need refreshing, not enough time had elapsed that Milliken would be immune.

Sorry, that doesn't make sense. It's been years since the Second Battle of the Congo. If Maddock needed to refresh Milliken's nanites, she'd be dead. She's still alive, so either the nanites aren't present and have never been, they aren't present because they've expired, or they're under her control and she's choosing not to activate them.

And Maddock couldn't have brought this specialised equipment with him aboard the PNiE ships. The OpSec risk would be too great. Unless the equipment was his own nanites, of course, but either way that's moot.

Besides, the answer to the query might simply be, "Because you haven't asked the right questions yet."

She'd been thoroughly questioned and was even more so after they realised just who she was. She isn't dead.

And besides, you're arguing against the evidence. She's still alive. It doesn't matter why she's alive, only that she is and what it means about what she might know.

Almost forgot. Her naval training could have come from any other navy in the Galaxy. Are former naval officers from other navies above being recruited? It still doesn't mean she saw Galton or Darius. I think the possibility is high that you are correct, but, do take note of Brigade XO's remark elsewhere about Alice in Wonderland.

Hmm... it's possible, but also unlikely. There aren't many good enough navies out there that the MAN would send people to train with or recruit from. The best ones are the ones they're fighting against. That leaves only forces we know to be weaker than the RF's, Galton's and Darius'. So Occam's Razor applies: if the MAN wanted to find skilled people to send with the PNiE, ensure that the planet was retaken, but that the Peeps died in the process, they'd have recruited from their own ranks.

Brigade XO wrote:What I wonder is why the Alignment doesn't (we haven't been told they have) any hyper-capable warships at least at a slight edge beyond the best of the SL though perhaps with upgrade of most recent builds including Streak Drive?

Why do you think they don't? There were mobile forces at Galton, they just couldn't do anything other than increase the fortress defense.

We are missing something quite large here.

1) I think they do have mobile forces. They'll have forces sufficient to ensure no pirate gets away alive. There's no point in more than that--they couldn't stand up against the SLN, their defense had to be stealth.

2) I think they're letting perfect be the enemy of good. Rather than field stuff similar to the GA they delayed until they could field spider ships. It wouldn't have made much difference anyway--Galton doesn't have the economy to support a fleet that could go toe-to-toe with what the GA can bring.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
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Hmm... it's possible, but also unlikely. There aren't many good enough navies out there that the MAN would send people to train with or recruit from. The best ones are the ones they're fighting against. That leaves only forces we know to be weaker than the RF's, Galton's and Darius'. So Occam's Razor applies: if the MAN wanted to find skilled people to send with the PNiE, ensure that the planet was retaken, but that the Peeps died in the process, they'd have recruited from their own ranks.

OK, guys what am I missing here - Millikin stated she was a member of the "Mesan System Navy" - the MSN was probably in the 50 largest fleets in the Galaxy (having 25 BCs and who knows how many CAs, Cls and DDs of modern SL design does that for you). Why can't she have been simply a trained part of the Mesan System Navy - Why pull her from some other navy?

Mesa was known as a clearing house for Mercenaries - with state sponsored rating and ranking systems, and that requires trained, knowledgeable oversite. Mercenaries on missions having an MSN observer was probably a normal situation (as in there is probably an entire division of the MSN dedicated to it) and a perfect place to concentrate MSN members to coordinate the actions of the mercenaries off the books.

The last statement was just an inference, but the PNiE didn't bat an eye when the MSN officers were assigned to the mission.

And a MSN trained MAN officer doesn't necessarily need to know about either Darius or Galton - she's just making sure the orders are followed to pick up missiles at an out of the way, clandestine rendezvous and the assault against Torch is followed. (she doesn't have to be that far into the Onion to be a rabid Mesan patriot and want to make sure the slaves on Torch atone for the atrocities they committed there, and re-acquire Mesan property.)

Theemile wrote:OK, guys what am I missing here - Millikin stated she was a member of the "Mesan System Navy" - the MSN was probably in the 50 largest fleets in the Galaxy (having 25 BCs and who knows how many CAs, Cls and DDs of modern SL design does that for you). Why can't she have been simply a trained part of the Mesan System Navy - Why pull her from some other navy?

I didn't get the impression they were that big. I assume you checked, so I'll take your word for it, but either way it's irrelevant.

Why not take her from the MSN? Because the MSN was ecplicitly a joke, concerned with looking good, beholden to the corporate interests of Manpower and Jessyk, and probably corrupt like the SLN. It was made that way by the Alignment to distract any spies from the real navies the Alignment fielded, the ones at Galton and Darius. The same chapter I took Maddock's musings for the OP actually starts by discussing the MSN.

Mesa was known as a clearing house for Mercenaries - with state sponsored rating and ranking systems, and that requires trained, knowledgeable oversite. Mercenaries on missions having an MSN observer was probably a normal situation (as in there is probably an entire division of the MSN dedicated to it) and a perfect place to concentrate MSN members to coordinate the actions of the mercenaries off the books.

The last statement was just an inference, but the PNiE didn't bat an eye when the MSN officers were assigned to the mission.

Good point. It is an inference and one I'm not inclined to believe, but the second paragraph is definitely true. However, the PNiE might not have had any experience with the MSN up until this point -- whatever you may want to say about the PN, they did fight slavery -- so they had no expectation. If an officer from the MSN was thrust on them as a condition for Manpower's help, they were powerless to disagree, however unusual that may have been anyway.

And besides, if the the MSN was in the business of loaning officer-mercenaries this way, it's also something the professional navy at Galton might have wanted to infiltrate and use as a pipeline of information for decades. That doesn't make the MSN trustworthy for the Alignment's needs. In fact, I'd argue the opposite: if the MSN was known for loaning officers to mercenaries, I'd expect there to be divided loyalties, something the Alignment would not abide.

And a MSN trained MAN officer doesn't necessarily need to know about either Darius or Galton - she's just making sure the orders are followed to pick up missiles at an out of the way, clandestine rendezvous and the assault against Torch is followed. (she doesn't have to be that far into the Onion to be a rabid Mesan patriot and want to make sure the slaves on Torch atone for the atrocities they committed there, and re-acquire Mesan property.)

Correct, she doesn't. It's possible she was a simple MSN officer that didn't know the real reason, while Maddock did. But that's unlikely. And we know she hasn't protested too much after being accused of being an Alignment agent, which tells me she actually was such.

She could also have been a simple Mesan national member of the Malignant Alignment, but that's even less likely, because she had naval training somewhere.

Galton is a really questionable anomaly.

A system that is massively militarized and is manufacturing some stupendous amount of military hardware- but its export business is so far only seems to be doing things like outfitting the People's Republic of Haven Navy in Exile to commit an EE on Torch.
Possibly some time in the next few years, it MAY come out that Galton was the actual produces of all those "updated" cataphracts (they didn't come from Technodyne or Mesa) to Raging Justice.

We have been told of NO Galton SDF (or whatever you want to call them) hyper-capable warships that were either in any other system nor, for that matter, escaped and ran from the defeat and apparent mass suicide with the forts etc at Galton. Why?

In the only two instances we have of Galton products being exported it's the 1) transshipment to that people (hired at Hole in the Wall) who take them to where they get loaded on ships to the
Torch attack outfitting area and 2) Filiarta gets held at the start of Raging Justice to receive all those missiles -and he does't believe where the paperwork says they came from but they are now in hand and there was essentialy NO conversation with anybody on the delivering freighters.

Galton has not been out flogging -that we have been told- any military equipment elsewhere. Not "SLN" type, Technodyne stuff, not super secret "The other guys"/invisable spaceship stuff, nothing.......nothing at all.
Perhaps we will "discover" that much of the "SLN" equipment that was distributed by the operations people like Firebrand were associated with was actualy illegal copies of SLN equipment made by and at Galton but it still would have needed to be moved. Heck, even if that kind of arrangement was less expensive in the long run that typical ArmsDealer stuff stealing (but still having to pay for) legitimate SLN arms, what did Galton get for it in return? Credits- to spend where? Food- they had a nice usable planet under what sounded like genetic slave labor to produce all the food they needed. So what is the deal?

In the same idea of "Where are the hyperspace warships?" , where has the mountains of productions from Galton been going if not to some clandestine storage area out in the Big Dark not close to any star of trade route?

And NOBODY seems to know anything about Galton.....no suppliers, no customers, no shipping companies. Way too many dead ends.

Brigade XO wrote:Galton is a really questionable anomaly.

A system that is massively militarized and is manufacturing some stupendous amount of military hardware- but its export business is so far only seems to be doing things like outfitting the People's Republic of Haven Navy in Exile to commit an EE on Torch.
Possibly some time in the next few years, it MAY come out that Galton was the actual produces of all those "updated" cataphracts (they didn't come from Technodyne or Mesa) to Raging Justice.

I do think we will find Galton is the source of most MAlign ships and weapons dating back quite some time. It's easier to not have to make things disappear from their proper locations in the first place.

We have been told of NO Galton SDF (or whatever you want to call them) hyper-capable warships that were either in any other system nor, for that matter, escaped and ran from the defeat and apparent mass suicide with the forts etc at Galton. Why?

There were warships present. Whether hyper or not was immaterial--they couldn't have survived to the hyper limit in the first place.

And NOBODY seems to know anything about Galton.....no suppliers, no customers, no shipping companies. Way too many dead ends.

The records should have been in those facilities that were almost always destroyed rather than captured. I do think we will find stuff in that one that was taken intact. However, I don't expect to see much--Galton was supposed to be hidden, there will be no more mention of it than there was of Bolthole. While people will know there was a source of supply very few will know "Galton" or it's coordinates and there shouldn't be any survivors amongst this group that weren't extracted by Houdini.