"Why are you still alive?"

tlb wrote:Enhanced interrogation (ie torture) does not work as well as actually turning the subject, when that is possible. If she could be gotten to the point of actually volunteering information; then she will be much more useful to the Grand Alliance, than a defiant enemy who might reveal a few bits under coercion.

Even though she does not have the nanites, she still will have been given the standard treatments that naval officers receive to resist drugs and rough usage. Mission of Honor, chapter 40:

"And assuming there's any way to verify that what he's telling us is the truth," Trenis observed. They all looked at her, and she shrugged. "All our critical naval personnel are supplied with anti-interrogation protection. It's effective against every drug therapy we know about, but we've always recognized there are likely to be therapies we don't know about. I think we have to assume the Mesans are at least as aware of that as we are—I mean, let's remember where all their traditional expertise is focused."

I'm not suggesting torture. I'm suggesting regular yet determined interrogation. She's a naval officer, not a spy, so it's not her expertise to resist interrogation. Given enough time, she could break.

Those therapies might also have an expiry date. She's been a POW for 2 years now. I'd assume that an anti-interrogation treatment lasts as long as the information in that subject's head is also valid, maybe a bit more. After that, the information isn't of tactical or strategic value any longer. But if she is from Darius, then THAT information has a shelf life of decades. Drugging her wouldn't work.

So... are we saying that turning her is actually the best way to get information?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I still think the best bet for the GA to find Darius itself, not just Felix, is through Milliken. Assuming she's from Darius and moderately intelligent, her recollections of the starscape, as inaccurate as memories are, might be enough to feed into a search system and narrow down to a portion of the Galaxy where such stellar features are visible to naked eye and/or sensors.

So why are Cachat and Ruth taking this roundabout way?

Milliken is probably being treated as an actual Prisoner of War, even though no war had been officially declared and she was caught in the act of attempting to commit an Eridani Edict violation. Her captors did not have to treat her as a legal POW. If they had instead treated her as a terrorist, they could have subjected her to interrogation. As a POW, they can't, so they have to turn her to have her volunteer information.

Why don't they change her status? They now know she doesn't have nanites.

tlb wrote:Enhanced interrogation (ie torture) does not work as well as actually turning the subject, when that is possible. If she could be gotten to the point of actually volunteering information; then she will be much more useful to the Grand Alliance, than a defiant enemy who might reveal a few bits under coercion.

Even though she does not have the nanites, she still will have been given the standard treatments that naval officers receive to resist drugs and rough usage. Mission of Honor, chapter 40:

"And assuming there's any way to verify that what he's telling us is the truth," Trenis observed. They all looked at her, and she shrugged. "All our critical naval personnel are supplied with anti-interrogation protection. It's effective against every drug therapy we know about, but we've always recognized there are likely to be therapies we don't know about. I think we have to assume the Mesans are at least as aware of that as we are—I mean, let's remember where all their traditional expertise is focused."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I'm not suggesting torture. I'm suggesting regular yet determined interrogation. She's a naval officer, not a spy, so it's not her expertise to resist interrogation. Given enough time, she could break.

Those therapies might also have an expiry date. She's been a POW for 2 years now. I'd assume that an anti-interrogation treatment lasts as long as the information in that subject's head is also valid, maybe a bit more. After that, the information isn't of tactical or strategic value any longer. But if she is from Darius, then THAT information has a shelf life of decades. Drugging her wouldn't work.

So... are we saying that turning her is actually the best way to get information?

Certainly they can ask her questions with a tree-cat present, it is permitted to ask questions of POW's. What is not permitted is to punish them, when they refuse to answer; refuse to give more than name, rank and serial number. It was not clear what you were suggesting; particularly when you wanted her treated as a terrorist, which could be taken to mean that punishment or drugs were justified.

tlb wrote:Certainly they can ask her questions with a tree-cat present, it is permitted to ask questions of POW's. What is not permitted is to punish them, when they refuse to answer; refuse to give more than name, rank and serial number. It was not clear what you were suggesting; particularly when you wanted her treated as a terrorist, which could be taken to mean that punishment or drugs were justified.

I meant treat her as a regular terrorist, not POW. She was caught in the act of committing an act of terror.

But what we're saying now is that not only would that not have yielded no information, it would have been counter-productive to the state we're at right now. She's (apparently) beginning to turn, which can only happen because she was well-treated on Torch. If she'd been subject to extensive interrogation and punished by being thrown at a small prison cell instead of a POW camp, she'd be bitter and much more unwilling to sympathise with her captors.

Does this make sense?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But what we're saying now is that not only would that not have yielded no information, it would have been counter-productive to the state we're at right now. She's (apparently) beginning to turn, which can only happen because she was well-treated on Torch. If she'd been subject to extensive interrogation and punished by being thrown at a small prison cell instead of a POW camp, she'd be bitter and much more unwilling to sympathise with her captors.

Does this make sense?

That does appear to be the direction that the story is taking. I will be very surprised if it leads immediately to Darius, but that would offer a shortcut to skip the effort that would otherwise be needed (if they want to wrap up the story quicker).

tlb wrote:That does appear to be the direction that the story is taking. I will be very surprised if it leads immediately to Darius, but that would offer a shortcut to skip the effort that would otherwise be needed (if they want to wrap up the story quicker).

There are many clues that could lead to the Junction -- given enough expert systems and more data -- but I can't think of any other ways that could lead to Darius itself.

It won't be easy because she won't have the galactic coordinates for the system. That's probably never been in the databases of any ships aside from high security couriers. But the trip from Darius Gamma to the terminus needs some astronavigation, so an experienced ship handler would notice patterns.

The other question is whether the GA needs to go to Darius via hyperspace. A wormhole assault seems to be off the table, but there are other ways to compromise a wormhole other than a direct assault.

Gail knows that a lift (it may or may not have been called an evacuation) was run on Mesa of people -who were Alignment members- where were deeply involved in a lot of very sensitive research. She watched and almost experienced what would happen to anyone (and any ship involved doing the lifting) discovered by outsiders in that process. She has had no information about anything to do with Mesa since she left...and neither has anyone else other than the security people in the Alignment still dealing with things outside of Darius as their actual work. Zero information.
She does't know about the last spasm of destruction at the close of the final group of evacuees and certainly not Final Flourish where all those built-in nuclear weapons vaporized both anyplace the Alignment had been hiding on Mesa but a lot of what had been over or around them.
But she does know that System Alpha was 1) not permitted to have the latest in Alignment weaponry and that it would fall. That its leadership was basically designed and ordered to inflict the maximum casualties on an attacker (and that wonderful violation of the Laws of Warfare of the massive launch after surrender) and then suicide - taking what was designed to be the locations of almost all of the information about Galton up in flames.
2) the system was going to fall and it was ...shall we say odd... that such a butt load of weapons would be held back till really late in the cycle of what was going to happen.
So, where was System Alpha....nobody on Darius other than the people tasking her with the analysis and formulation of defensive tactics and those who were her sources in the process know anything they can or will reveal. If it was that important, why was the defensive posture deliberately short changed? Was there anyone even considering moving people and "stuff" out of System Alpha if the Alignment was so sure it was going to be attacked. And that seemed to me that she was pushed to get this done really fast...almost as if there was a credible chance that this arsenal was going to be struck by a GA fleet sooner rather than later.....so why was it treated like that.....and what else is the Alignment ready to see destroyed for cover.?

Brigade XO wrote:Gail knows that a lift (it may or may not have been called an evacuation) was run on Mesa of people -who were Alignment members- where were deeply involved in a lot of very sensitive research. She watched and almost experienced what would happen to anyone (and any ship involved doing the lifting) discovered by outsiders in that process. She has had no information about anything to do with Mesa since she left...and neither has anyone else other than the security people in the Alignment still dealing with things outside of Darius as their actual work. Zero information.
She does't know about the last spasm of destruction at the close of the final group of evacuees and certainly not Final Flourish where all those built-in nuclear weapons vaporized both anyplace the Alignment had been hiding on Mesa but a lot of what had been over or around them.
But she does know that System Alpha was 1) not permitted to have the latest in Alignment weaponry and that it would fall. That its leadership was basically designed and ordered to inflict the maximum casualties on an attacker (and that wonderful violation of the Laws of Warfare of the massive launch after surrender) and then suicide - taking what was designed to be the locations of almost all of the information about Galton up in flames.
2) the system was going to fall and it was ...shall we say odd... that such a butt load of weapons would be held back till really late in the cycle of what was going to happen.
So, where was System Alpha....nobody on Darius other than the people tasking her with the analysis and formulation of defensive tactics and those who were her sources in the process know anything they can or will reveal. If it was that important, why was the defensive posture deliberately short changed? Was there anyone even considering moving people and "stuff" out of System Alpha if the Alignment was so sure it was going to be attacked. And that seemed to me that she was pushed to get this done really fast...almost as if there was a credible chance that this arsenal was going to be struck by a GA fleet sooner rather than later.....so why was it treated like that.....and what else is the Alignment ready to see destroyed for cover.?

I think it is most important to emphasize that she knew that System Alpha would fall to the Grand Alliance, even if it had an abundance of every weapon of which she had knowledge.

She does not necessarily know about the final suicide option at Galton; there was no need to inform her about that.

I do not understand why the latest cover story has not been published to the people of Darius; that they are the good guys and Galton was "evil" (with a wink and a nod to those that know better). Are they waiting for a report on the fall? Couple that with a few private words to the group that worked on Galton's defense, something about "loose lips" leading to bad performance reviews (although it was stupid for anyone at Darius to work on Galton's defense). Then Gail is only a security risk if she talks to outsiders about her work.

tlb wrote:I do not understand why the latest cover story has not been published to the people of Darius; that they are the good guys and Galton was "evil" (with a wink and a nod to those that know better). Are they waiting for a report on the fall? Couple that with a few private words to the group that worked on Galton's defense, something about "loose lips" leading to bad performance reviews (although it was stupid for anyone at Darius to work on Galton's defense). Then Gail is only a security risk if she talks to outsiders about her work.

Would that work? Presumably there's some level of communication between the free people on Darius and that includes MAN officers. OpSec would demand they talk little about what the spider is and does, but it would get back to the general populace that those people did participate in Oyster Bay, wouldn't it? Their families would know they were gone for months around that time.

tlb wrote:I do not understand why the latest cover story has not been published to the people of Darius; that they are the good guys and Galton was "evil" (with a wink and a nod to those that know better). Are they waiting for a report on the fall? Couple that with a few private words to the group that worked on Galton's defense, something about "loose lips" leading to bad performance reviews (although it was stupid for anyone at Darius to work on Galton's defense). Then Gail is only a security risk if she talks to outsiders about her work.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Would that work? Presumably there's some level of communication between the free people on Darius and that includes MAN officers. OpSec would demand they talk little about what the spider is and does, but it would get back to the general populace that those people did participate in Oyster Bay, wouldn't it? Their families would know they were gone for months around that time.

But once everyone "knows" that Galton was responsible; they just need an additional cover story, such as spying on Galton, to cut down on gossip. After all, Galton has taken credit for Oyster Bay and the attacks on Beowulf. The Grand Alliance should be able to find ample documentation for this in the captured databases (otherwise what was the point?).

But to make this work, it seems to make the Leonard Detweiler ships superfluous. They cannot be used to attack anyone, because then the sacrifice of Galton is undone.

Brigade XO wrote:and then suicide - taking what was designed to be the locations of almost all of the information about Galton up in flames.

There's no reason for her to know about the suicide plans.