Concepts: Today's similarities and differences to the HV

tlb wrote:She may be a clue, but we do not know yet to what. When they are introduced in ToF, all that is said is that they are part of the Mesan Alignment Navy, instead of the Mesa System Navy. But that only indicates that they are part of the Onion, without specifying their planet of origin.

So what did I miss in TEiF, that states they were not from Mesa?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:No. Zilwicki accuses her of being a member of the Alignment, but says nothing about planet or system of origin. At that point, he wouldn't know there were two.

But see the thread linked above for why I think she and Maddock had to come from the MAN of Darius, not the Galton Navy.

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).

ThinksMarkedly wrote: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.

tlb wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But Jessica Milliken was almost certainly from Darius, not Galton, because her superior officer, Capt. Gowan Maddock, was. And RFC and Eric spent way too much time in TEiF talking about her for her not to be a Chekhov's Gun.

She may be a clue, but we do not know yet to what. When they are introduced in ToF, all that is said is that they are part of the Mesan Alignment Navy, instead of the Mesa System Navy. But that only indicates that they are part of the Onion, without specifying their planet of origin.

So what did I miss in TEiF, that states they were not from Mesa?

penny wrote:When the Mesan Alignment was first introduced, I got a little confused as to whom it referred. There was Mesa. The Mesan Alignment. And the Mesan Space Navy. It seemed a no-brainer to me that Mesa and the Mesan Alignment were the same. Then we heard all about the Mesan Alignment’s projects. I even thought that Mesa was actually a secret planet of the Alignment’s and that it would be an integral part of the Renaissance Factor. I actually thought the entire Mesan government was run by the Alignment.

The problem with a conspiracy embracing a multi-century schedule, he reflected, was that nobody, however gifted at skulduggery and paranoia they might be, could operate on that scale for that long without having the occasional operational faux pas stray into sight. So the approach which had been adopted by the Mesan Alignment all those centuries ago had been to establish what one of Albrecht's direct ancestors had christened the "onion strategy."

So far as the galaxy at large was aware, the planet Mesa was simply an outlaw world, home to ruthless and corrupt corporations from throughout the Solarian League's huge volume. Not a member of the League itself, Mesa nonetheless had lucrative contacts with many League worlds, which protected it and its "outlaw" owners from Solarian intervention. And, of course, the worst of the outlaws in question was none other than Manpower Incorporated, the galaxy's leading producer of genetic slaves, which had been founded by Leonard Detweiler the better part of six hundred T-years before. There were others, some of them equally disreputable and "evil" by other peoples' standards, but Manpower was clearly the standardbearer for Mesa's incredibly wealthy—and thoroughly corrupt—elite. And Manpower, equally clearly, was ruthlessly determined to protect its economic interests at any cost. Any and all of its political contacts, objectives, and strategies were obviously subordinated to that purpose.

Which was where the "onion" came in. Although Albrecht himself had often thought it would have been more appropriate to describe Manpower as the stage magician's left hand, moving in dramatic passes to fix the audience's attention upon it while his right hand performed the critical manipulation the Alignment wanted no one else to notice.

Manpower and its genetic slaves remained, in fact, immensely profitable, but these days that was actually only a happy secondary benefit of Manpower's existence. In fact, as the Alignment fully recognized, genetic slavery had long since ceased to be a truly competitive way to supply labor forces, except under highly specialized circumstances. Fortunately many of its customers failed to grasp that same point, and Manpower's marketing department went to considerable lengths to encourage that failure of understanding wherever possible. And, possibly even more fortunately, other aspects of genetic slavery, particularly those associated with the vices to which humanity had always been prey, made rather more economic sense.

penny wrote:I thought the MA and or RF was the puppet master of Manpower and were secretly pulling the strings. I also thought a lot of the MA's early funding was from genetic slaves.

Mesa is a corrupt planet. What better place to set up shop. I thought Mesa and Manpower were in the MA's pocket and that Manpower was simply another Maytag. Laundering money.

tlb wrote:You admit that she might be recruited on Mesa. But birth records will determine whether one or both were from Mesa. However, the bulk of your argument is that she must have received training outside of Mesa. I expect that it occurred at Galton (they did have warships that would put the MSN to shame) and if so, then we do not know what she might know of Darius.

Your main argument against training at Galton is that they did not say that they were part of the Galton System Navy. But the GSN is a system defense force, which could still train other forces aligned with the Malign.

I do not understand your fixed belief that she would necessarily know Maddock's origins, in particular that he was not from either Mesa or Galton.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Maybe he had already been there training with the Galton Navy in preparation for his deployment with the MAN, but that's also an unlikely scenario. We hear the MAN is struggling to get a cadre of officers, so it doesn't seem they were using Galton for this. He'd be a security nightmare too, in case he accidentally divulged information about the MAN and Darius - he specifically was quite smug about his knowledge of the MAN, so I expect he'd have walked around with the "I know something you don't" grin and pissed off every Admiral. The Galton Navy officers and brass would be highly sceptical of him, even if they believed his story that he had been sent from Mesa... just why did Mesa need him trained? If they needed officers, pick one from those that already existed.

tlb wrote:You wonder why the MAN would be using Galton for training? They cannot use Darius (and probably not people from Darius), except for those that will be exclusively assigned to spider drive ships; since only Darius has them. So any training for wedge ships will be done at Galton, using a mixture of people from Galton and Mesa.

And why do you insist Maddock is from Darius? I would expect him to be limited to the spider corps, if true.

So maybe she does know something about Darius, a la Chekhov's Gun; but we have no evidence that either MAN officer were FROM Darius.

tlb wrote:You wonder why the MAN would be using Galton for training? They cannot use Darius (and probably not people from Darius), except for those that will be exclusively assigned to spider drive ships; since only Darius has them. So any training for wedge ships will be done at Galton, using a mixture of people from Galton and Mesa.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Yes, I do, because he knew about the spider ships and didn't seem like a good fit for training with the Galton Navy. And the Galton Navy didn't seem like the place to accept foreigners.

tlb wrote:You admit that she might be recruited on Mesa. But birth records will determine whether one or both were from Mesa. However, the bulk of your argument is that she must have received training outside of Mesa. I expect that it occurred at Galton (they did have warships that would put the MSN to shame) and if so, then we do not know what she might know of Darius.

Your main argument against training at Galton is that they did not say that they were part of the Galton System Navy. But the GSN is a system defense force, which could still train other forces aligned with the Malign..