Spoilers - Toll of Honor

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Someone must have done cosmetic surgery on her, to alter her appearance from Elaine into Georgia and to remove the genetic marker. So there's at least one source in the shady, Landing City underground. That's a loose end that Georgia would have tried to eliminate because it could trace her life past to Elaine, but she may not have had the ability or opportunity to do so before the information got added to the North Hollow files. My guess is this happened before she came into their employment, because she wouldn't risk going to them before cutting those loose ends in the first place.

But once working for them, they would have helped her in cleaning up even further. At that point, their goals aligned: North Hollow wouldn't want someone to accidentally discover the truth about someone in his employment because it would serve as leverage against him. Georgia was too visible in his household. Past Pavel's death, Georgia/Elaine would have taken even further action, because having accessed those selfsame files to delete them, she would know where the links were.

So this explains why Anton Zilwicki had trouble tracking down the source: there was too little in Landing.

Chapter 14 wrote:"What that Solarian lieutenant had to tell me was that he could provide me with the link to track down—try to, anyway—the origins of the mysterious Elaine Komandorski."

chapter 50 wrote:"Meaning that I found your first biosculpt technician," Zilwicki told her very, very softly. "The one who rekeyed the genetic sequence on your tongue."
Georgia Young sat absolutely still, stunned into a realm far beyond mere disbelief. How? How could even someone with Anton Zilwicki's reputation have dug that deep? She'd buried that. Buried it where it would never see the light of day again. Buried it behind Elaine, willing even for someone to find her original criminal record because they would stop there, without going still deeper into who she'd been before Elaine.
"Of course," Zilwicki went on, "there's no law against having the number removed, is there? Most freed slaves don't have the resources to pay for it, but having it removed certainly isn't a crime. But he kept the record of the original number, Elaine. The number of a slave the Ballroom has been looking for for years. The slave who sold out an entire freighter full of escaped slaves in return for her own freedom and a half-million Solarian credits. Do you know what they intend to do with that slave when they find her?"

chapter 25 wrote:"There's no way known for that kind of genetic tongue-marker to be faked cosmetically," he said, his voice flat and hard. "Not against the kind of scanning we do, at least. There's no way to remove it that isn't both difficult and damned expensive—Manpower made sure of that, the bastards—and the thing will grow back even if you simply amputate the tongue and use regen to grow it back again. Trust me, we've already determined that both the codes in this instance are as genuine as genuine can be. Duplicates, yes; fakes, no."

tlb wrote:I thought it was very clear that the removal of the slave ID is the information Anton Zilwicki found at Smoking Frog. Note that just plastic surgery is insufficient, since the slave ID will grow back if it is merely cut out.

tlb wrote:I thought it was very clear that the removal of the slave ID is the information Anton Zilwicki found at Smoking Frog. Note that just plastic surgery is insufficient, since the slave ID will grow back if it is merely cut out.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:That doesn't mean the surgeon was in Smoking Frog. It's actually far more likely that a skilled surgeon like that was on Manticore than Smoking Frog. He's be operating with and protected by the Outfit.

That only means that Anton had to travel there to find said link. Maybe this surgeon relocated to Smoking Frog some time after the surgery on Elaine. Maybe it wasn't the surgeon himself, but some staff or someone who knew something.

Either way, it doesn't change my point that once she had access to the North Hollow files, she'd have done her best to eliminate the threads. She knew the contents of them when Dimitri was alive and, as I said, it would be in his interest that no one could re-discover the link.

tlb wrote:Zilwicki went to Smoking Frog to find "the origins of the mysterious Elaine Komandorski". Elaine is the identity after the mark on the tongue was gone. Unless this new book says specifically that this happened at Manticore, I will continue to believe that it happened before. It just makes more sense to put distance between her new life and the operation that enabled her to have that new life.

How would Rozak have information about Elaine if she didn't do business in Smoking Frog?

I am not interested in what is in the files at the moment, but Field of Dishonor makes clear that she intended to wipe all the information about herself as soon as Pavel was dead.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Because Georgia wouldn't let the link exist, especially not after she became Georgia Young and was effectively ruling the North Hollow actions.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Because Georgia wouldn't let the link exist, especially not after she became Georgia Young and was effectively ruling the North Hollow actions.

tlb wrote:Even as a grande dame on Manticore, would she have the reach to affect things in Smoking Frog? And wouldn't that action be a clue in itself?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I think so. She became Countess North Hollow sometime in the early 1910s (I don't remember when she married Stefan).

tlb wrote:The death of Pavel Young in FoD is listed as 1906 PD in the PDF timeline available from the downloads in the heading of the Forum. I expect the marriage was shortly after she cleaned out her data from the files.

However, if she was doing all the cleanup you suggest; why was Anton able to find her first biosculpt technician, who had kept a record of the original ID number which he had removed from her tongue?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Anton wasn't searching for hints of Georgia's past. Instead, what probably happened is that someone on Smoking Frog managed to connect the surgeon to that particular ex-slave that the Ballroom was searching for and turned up the name "Elaine Kommandorski." Maybe he was in addicted to gambling and got picked up in a police raid in a clandestine casino or something. Or a former associate turned on him and led the police to his data cache. Either way, either the police or some intelligence operative made the connection. That in turn piqued Anton's attention because he'd have known of the notorious criminal in the Landing City past and he may have even had an idea that this criminal had become Georgia Sakristos Young (though he couldn't prove it).

Chapter 14 wrote:"What that Solarian lieutenant had to tell me was that he could provide me with the link to track down—try to, anyway—the origins of the mysterious Elaine Komandorski."
The name obviously meant nothing to the two girls or Web. Anton would have been surprised if it had. So far as he was aware, even the woman's name was known only to a small number of Landing City's police force. And none of them had found out, as Anton had, what eventually happened to her.
"She doesn't use that name any longer. She changed identities quite some time ago. Nowadays, she's known as Lady Georgia Young, formerly Georgia Sakristos."
Both girls knew that name, even if Du Havel didn't. Berry's eyes were wide; Ruth's, as wide as saucers.
"The wife of the Earl of North Hollow," Anton continued. "And the person who is considered by many people, me included, to be the gray eminence—at least when it comes to the dirty work—behind the current government of the Star Kingdom." He gave the princess a glance. "You can add her name to Kevin Usher's on that little list of the galaxy's top spies."
Ruth stroked her throat. "She controls North Hollow's black files, doesn't she?"
Anton nodded grimly. "Yes, she does. For all practical purposes, anyway. Those damned files assembled by the old Earl North Hollow, which have been used to blackmail more of Manticore's politicians than I want to think about. And, I don't have any doubt, were all that enabled High Ridge and his cohorts to contain the damage which should have ensued after Cathy and I released the files we brought back from the Manpower Incident on Terra."
"Who was 'Komandorski'?" asked Berry.
"Elaine Komandorski, in her heyday, was one of the most notorious criminals in Landing City—among the police, at any rate, even if her name wouldn't have meant anything to most Manticoran citizens. She was no crude armed robber, you understand. She specialized in things like industrial espionage, swindling; financial crimes, essentially. Except that the police are sure she was responsible for the murder of at least two people, and had something to do with the 'suicide' of yet another, in order to cover her tracks."
"But—" Berry shook her head. "If you could prove that the current Lady Young was—"
Anton shook his head. "Not good enough. Yes, with DNA evidence it could be proved that Georgia Young and Elaine Komandorski were one and the same person. But Komandorski was never convicted of anything, despite being the subject of an amazing number of police investigations. The cops are morally certain that she committed most of the crimes she was suspected of, but they couldn't prove it.
"So"—shrugging—"the most we could get out of it, as it stands, would be publicly embarrassing the High Ridge regime. Big deal. As long as High Ridge has his hands on those black files, he can put enough pressure where it matters to keep a lid on it. Just like he did with the Manpower investigation."
Ruth's quick mind had already raced ahead. "The police, I take it, were never able to find out where Komandorski came from."
"No. Neither have I. She just . . . appeared one day, in Landing City, and with enough of a bankroll to start her scams. And they weren't piker scams, either."
"So if you could track down her origins, you might be able to break the thing wide open."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Anton wasn't searching for hints of Georgia's past. Instead, what probably happened is that someone on Smoking Frog managed to connect the surgeon to that particular ex-slave that the Ballroom was searching for and turned up the name "Elaine Kommandorski." Maybe he was in addicted to gambling and got picked up in a police raid in a clandestine casino or something. Or a former associate turned on him and led the police to his data cache. Either way, either the police or some intelligence operative made the connection. That in turn piqued Anton's attention because he'd have known of the notorious criminal in the Landing City past and he may have even had an idea that this criminal had become Georgia Sakristos Young (though he couldn't prove it).

tlb wrote:No, no, no! You didn't look at the quote; I should have given the complete text. From Crown of Slaves:

Chapter 14 wrote:"What that Solarian lieutenant had to tell me was that he could provide me with the link to track down—try to, anyway—the origins of the mysterious Elaine Komandorski."