Hunting the MAlignment: MWW Clue's

JeffEngel wrote:

n7axw wrote:I don't see how I am relying on reader knowledge rather than what would be available to the characters in the story.

Secondly, we know from textev that the computers on Torch that might have contained the records of wormhole exploration were destroyed during the uprising. I find it highly unlikely that the wormhole was not explored by Mesa/Alignment. As for whether or not it gets exploited commercially depends on what the discovers' vital interests are. It is almost certain that Mesa claimed Verdant Vista in order to control and claim ownership to the system with the wormhole itself.

For me at least I don't understand minimizing the risks here. You have a system in which Mesa has possessed in the past, an attempt to depopulate the planet and a wormhole in which an exploration ship has disappeared fate unknown. Just what is it about this whole picture that fails to excite a properly suspicious minister of defense when the Alignment is being portayed both here on the forums and in the books as the galaxy's most seious threat?

Don

Priorities, mostly. However much suspicion a person has, they can't allocate resources to allay all of it. Heck, the more suspicion you've got, the harder it will be to cover it.

Verdant Vista had two notable resources: a trove of pharmacological potential, and a wormhole. Either could account for interest, and that interest could have been a function of the total package as well. Me, I'll agree with you that the wormhole probably had the priority there, but there's at least that step there to lower the possible importance of the wormhole in Manpower's view, or that of their puppetmasters.

If they were much interested in the wormhole, it's still possible they hadn't explored it yet. Competent wormhole explorers aren't in the phonebook, and not everyone will work for Manpower. Again, I'll grant chances are better than even that they would have handled that already, but it's another step down for the wormhole being confirmed useful and valuable for the enemy.

Suppose, on behalf of Torch, that Manpower and/or the sinister force behind it had explored the wormhole. So has Torch. It ate their explorers. So either it's a natural killer wormhole; it's got a bunch of killers behind it who killed Manpower's explorers too; or it's got a bunch of killers behind it that is allied with them. That last is the only possibility that makes this a definite threat (though the prior one is kinda disturbing too), but you have to make a long list of assumptions (some of them aren't wild, granted, merely questionable). So you've got a likely scenario - assuming Manpower got around to the wormhole exploration at all - in which Manpower finds the wormhole is actually useless, but still has a built-in market for replacement slaves working the plantations. You get Verdant Vista appearing exactly as the Ballroom and company found it.

If you get to the point where you figure there are Manpower-friendly killers on the far side of an otherwise useful wormhole, you have to account for Manpower or the Dark Lord not using that wormhole, if they control the far end, to retake or burn Verdant Vista. Heck, if you suppose the same Dark Lord is behind Oyster Bay, they could have done so without anyone knowing, at such time that the wormhole on Torch's end was not well watched. No messing about with the PNE - or if they had to, it could have been mere cover.

So since they didn't, there's more reason to think that that is not a well-explored wormhole with forces of the Dark Lord behind it - unless it is somehow more important to keep it a deeper, darker secret for some future nefarious purpose. And then stick a large portion of Torch's tiny navy out there in hopes that it would suffice to stop that. A detachment that, incidentally, could be picked off in detail easily, and would be unavailable to defend Torch itself in case of sudden attack.

OK, let's take a look at reasons why they wouldn't use the wormhole for the attack.

Reason 1. The wormhole is 64 lm from the primary. The hyper limit is 23.76 lm from the primary. For the statesec refugees to use it means they'd be a lot farther away from their target, and their wedges would be easily visible.

Reason 2. Using the wormhole tells everyone that it's not a killer wormhole. If news gets out, that blows a huge hole in several secrets.

Reason 3. Those statesec mercenaries aren't stupid. Tell them "you're going to use a super-secret wormhole to make the attack," and someone is going to think of "how are they going to keep me from talking?" The next action is going to be going over those ships with a microscope to find the scuttling charges.

So let's assume they decide to use the Sharks from Darius.

Reason 4. Wormhole transits aren't exactly quiet - the sail has to dissipate the transit energy. If anyone escapes, they've just blown two secrets: it's not a killer wormhole, and someone has an "invisible" drive.

Reason 5. The people on Darius are under the impression that they're fighting against some kind of evil empire. Now they're told to wreck a planet that, as far as they can tell, doesn't have any significant infrastructure or anything else worth bothering about. Might they be inclined to ask inconvenient questions?

JohnRoth wrote:

n7axw wrote:I don't see how I am relying on reader knowledge rather than what would be available to the characters in the story.

Secondly, we know from textev that the computers on Torch that might have contained the records of wormhole exploration were destroyed during the uprising. I find it highly unlikely that the wormhole was not explored by Mesa/Alignment. As for whether or not it gets exploited commercially depends on what the discovers' vital interests are. It is almost certain that Mesa claimed Verdant Vista in order to control and claim ownership to the system with the wormhole itself.

For me at least I don't understand minimizing the risks here. You have a system in which Mesa has possessed in the past, an attempt to depopulate the planet and a wormhole in which an exploration ship has disappeared fate unknown. Just what is it about this whole picture that fails to excite a properly suspicious minister of defense when the Alignment is being portayed both here on the forums and in the books as the galaxy's most seious threat?

Don

JeffEngel wrote:Priorities, mostly. However much suspicion a person has, they can't allocate resources to allay all of it. Heck, the more suspicion you've got, the harder it will be to cover it.

Verdant Vista had two notable resources: a trove of pharmacological potential, and a wormhole. Either could account for interest, and that interest could have been a function of the total package as well. Me, I'll agree with you that the wormhole probably had the priority there, but there's at least that step there to lower the possible importance of the wormhole in Manpower's view, or that of their puppetmasters.

If they were much interested in the wormhole, it's still possible they hadn't explored it yet. Competent wormhole explorers aren't in the phonebook, and not everyone will work for Manpower. Again, I'll grant chances are better than even that they would have handled that already, but it's another step down for the wormhole being confirmed useful and valuable for the enemy.

Suppose, on behalf of Torch, that Manpower and/or the sinister force behind it had explored the wormhole. So has Torch. It ate their explorers. So either it's a natural killer wormhole; it's got a bunch of killers behind it who killed Manpower's explorers too; or it's got a bunch of killers behind it that is allied with them. That last is the only possibility that makes this a definite threat (though the prior one is kinda disturbing too), but you have to make a long list of assumptions (some of them aren't wild, granted, merely questionable). So you've got a likely scenario - assuming Manpower got around to the wormhole exploration at all - in which Manpower finds the wormhole is actually useless, but still has a built-in market for replacement slaves working the plantations. You get Verdant Vista appearing exactly as the Ballroom and company found it.

If you get to the point where you figure there are Manpower-friendly killers on the far side of an otherwise useful wormhole, you have to account for Manpower or the Dark Lord not using that wormhole, if they control the far end, to retake or burn Verdant Vista. Heck, if you suppose the same Dark Lord is behind Oyster Bay, they could have done so without anyone knowing, at such time that the wormhole on Torch's end was not well watched. No messing about with the PNE - or if they had to, it could have been mere cover.

So since they didn't, there's more reason to think that that is not a well-explored wormhole with forces of the Dark Lord behind it - unless it is somehow more important to keep it a deeper, darker secret for some future nefarious purpose. And then stick a large portion of Torch's tiny navy out there in hopes that it would suffice to stop that. A detachment that, incidentally, could be picked off in detail easily, and would be unavailable to defend Torch itself in case of sudden attack.

OK, let's take a look at reasons why they wouldn't use the wormhole for the attack.

Reason 1. The wormhole is 64 lm from the primary. The hyper limit is 23.76 lm from the primary. For the statesec refugees to use it means they'd be a lot farther away from their target, and their wedges would be easily visible.

Reason 2. Using the wormhole tells everyone that it's not a killer wormhole. If news gets out, that blows a huge hole in several secrets.

Reason 3. Those statesec mercenaries aren't stupid. Tell them "you're going to use a super-secret wormhole to make the attack," and someone is going to think of "how are they going to keep me from talking?" The next action is going to be going over those ships with a microscope to find the scuttling charges.

So let's assume they decide to use the Sharks from Darius.

Reason 4. Wormhole transits aren't exactly quiet - the sail has to dissipate the transit energy. If anyone escapes, they've just blown two secrets: it's not a killer wormhole, and someone has an "invisible" drive.

Reason 5. The people on Darius are under the impression that they're fighting against some kind of evil empire. Now they're told to wreck a planet that, as far as they can tell, doesn't have any significant infrastructure or anything else worth bothering about. Might they be inclined to ask inconvenient questions?

Reason two is valid only if there are any survivors to tell the tale. Otherwise, the assumption is going to be that someone hypered in, and wrecked the joint. Same for Reason 4.

Reason 3 is valid only if you are using PNE or other mercenary groups.

Reason 5 - They have already staged a sneak attack on the civilian structures of another star system. The officers have to know what is going on. The actual troops manning the ships - not so much. They could still be told the same thing, we are attacking the evil empire, and have no way to verify the fact, just as they had no way to verify what happened to Manticore or Grayson.

Reason 1 is the only one that seems to not have much in the way of an objection - it would take less time to get to the planet from the hyper limit than from the worm hole.

When you launch from a light-month out you have no idea what happens in a few months, no to mention not knowing what the actual target is. You simply achieve the proper vector and release the pods. Who has to know where they are aimed.

Heck, only the senior officers and nav team needs to know where they are.

kzt wrote:When you launch from a light-month out you have no idea what happens in a few months, no to mention not knowing what the actual target is. You simply achieve the proper vector and release the pods. Who has to know where they are aimed.

Heck, only the senior officers and nav team needs to know where they are.

But if you are going to launch from a light month out, you won't be using the worm hole.

JohnRoth wrote:Reason 1. The wormhole is 64 lm from the primary. The hyper limit is 23.76 lm from the primary. For the statesec refugees to use it means they'd be a lot farther away from their target, and their wedges would be easily visible.

The StateSec (PNE) refugees did not t use the wormhole and are no longer any part of the equation.

JohnRoth wrote:Reason 2. Using the wormhole tells everyone that it's not a killer wormhole. If news gets out, that blows a huge hole in several secrets.

If the MAlign figures there is no longer a reason to stay in the shadows and it is time to go on the offensive against the "Haven Sector" they won't care if the Wormhole is no longer considered a "Killer Wormhole." Nobody else will know where the other end is and they'll have "invisible deathstars" to defend both ends.

JohnRoth wrote:Reason 3. Those statesec mercenaries aren't stupid.

Yes they were. And the operative word is "were." The question now is whether the MAlign/Renaissance Factor will use the Wormhole for some future attack.

JohnRoth wrote:So let's assume they decide to use the Sharks from Darius.

Reason 4. Wormhole transits aren't exactly quiet - the sail has to dissipate the transit energy. If anyone escapes, they've just blown two secrets: it's not a killer wormhole, and someone has an "invisible" drive.

If the Wormhole isn't guarded and the MAlign/RF has decided that it doesn't need to remain totally secret, it doesn't matter how much "noise" the arriving force generates. My the time the RTN can react and respond, the Sharks and/or Lenny Dets will have gone into stealth and moved away from the wormhole.

JohnRoth wrote:Reason 5. The people on Darius are under the impression that they're fighting against some kind of evil empire. Now they're told to wreck a planet that, as far as they can tell, doesn't have any significant infrastructure or anything else worth bothering about. Might they be inclined to ask inconvenient questions?

If the MAlign uses RF personnel to man the attack force, the sensibilities and/or ignorance of Darius natives is irrelevant. also, IIRC it is the slaves of Darius that are kept ignorant, the Star Lines in charge of Darius are mostly inside the Onion.

fallsfromtrees wrote:But if you are going to launch from a light month out, you won't be using the worm hole.

Well, sure. If you are going to use the best stealth ships in the universe to stage a sneak attack it would be pretty silly to arrive with lights and sirens running by using the wormhole.

Hutch wrote:Jeff, I think I have to agree with Don here; not because your arguments are invalid, but because of one minor factoid I think will make the difference.

Jeremy X is the Minister of War for Torch.

Think about it; a man who has been the prime target for Manpower for decades does not stay alive (and active) without a fanatical dedication to security. And now he is responsible for the security of a society that he helped in no small way to bring about, and which has suffered one attempted genocide.

And he has a 'mystery' wormhole in his system; moreover, one that a spaceship with among the best-trained wormhole-exploring crew disappeared into.

Yes, the scientists have explained all the possible things that might have gone wrong, and that the likelyhood of some hostile force being on the other side is quite illogical....

But this is Jeremy X, and he doesn't like to take chances.

I think he's rotating a frigate out there, along with any FTL capability that the Manties (or even the Havenites or Erewhonese) have sent him.

So--just because it's Jeremy X.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

He doesn't like to take chances. Very good - it's a sound attitude. He's crazy-prepared too, which may be crazy but then it can do a lot of helping too.

But this is war, and something must always be left to chance. He's got to suck it up. If he tries to cover against every possibility, he - the RTN, specifically - will be spread too thin, and not covered against the probabilities.

I'll grant that having Jeremy X there will make the difference between complacently assuming it's merely a killer wormhole and acknowledging the possibility that it's really well-covered by an Alignment force that nevertheless has never used it to retake Torch, even when they likely could have done so with impunity and anonymity, even covered by some other explanation for what happened, for reasons about which Torch can only speculate wildly. But after acknowledging that possibility - how much of Torch's tiny military resources should be stuck out there? Which Manpower slave centers get to continue in operation because Jeremy needed to keep a frigate out there just in case it could stop an attack by unknown forces in unknown strength with unknown capabilities that probably do not exist and if they do, do not seem willing to use the wormhole anyway for reasons unknown?

Does Torch have the luxury of covering against that?

I snipped reasons not to use the wormhole with the PNE, just because I'd agree with them so strongly that it never occurred to me to consider letting those tools use it. The PNE was the alternative, or one of them. The other alternatives - in addition to (2) a pure Manpower or Thing-Behind-Manpower attack through the wormhole - would be (3) to use the PNE attack as cover for an attack through it that left no survivors, so that the galaxy could assume the RTN and PNE managed to killed each other off and Torch got whacked along the way, and (4) essentially Oyster Bay in Torch, plus planet-scouring.

So, addressing the likely variation of (3):

JohnRoth wrote:So let's assume they decide to use the Sharks from Darius.

Reason 4. Wormhole transits aren't exactly quiet - the sail has to dissipate the transit energy. If anyone escapes, they've just blown two secrets: it's not a killer wormhole, and someone has an "invisible" drive.

Properly paranoid sorts would put some weight on the possibility that the invisible drive makes invisible transits - how much weight, probably not much. I just mention it because it may be more than trivial weight. If they have the records from Manticore that indicate that the RMN did probably detect the incoming OB attackers but could not locate them and wrote it off (reasonably) as a sensor ghost, then that weight drops a lot.

So, they wouldn't do that unless they were very confident of leaving no survivors. But against Torch, well, maybe they should be.

I wonder though - perhaps Jeremy's reputation for paranoia is such that he (Jeremy, and/or Thandi for that matter) can assume that well-prepared attackers will assume that Torch has quiet, concealed ships with adequate sensors or connection to other sensors, such that they will too probably get away from Torch to report atrocities that would otherwise leave no witnesses. Such a unit could be cheap in terms of resources (cash and people), so it's on the table. And even the threat of it may keep attackers kinda honest.

Is there anything in the PNE's attack to suggest that the planners would not have gone through with that if they'd suspected such a hidden witness? I ask because I do not recall.

Reason 5. The people on Darius are under the impression that they're fighting against some kind of evil empire. Now they're told to wreck a planet that, as far as they can tell, doesn't have any significant infrastructure or anything else worth bothering about. Might they be inclined to ask inconvenient questions?

As others have noted, presumably the Alignment (at least thinks it) is prepared to avoid those questions or offer suitable answers. And if you have suicide devices to eliminate PNE witnesses and needn't confront serious RTN opposition, the shipping requirements are small enough that the smaller number of officers and crews more fully inside the onion may suffice - especially if you didn't count on Maya Sector forces there too.

Okay, a point contrary to my general argument: Oyster Bay suggests that the bad guys could snuff Torch whenever they care enough to without using the wormhole. That would mean not having used it means less. But what sort of surprise they are retaining it for may be a real mystery. Torch is not that close to Manticore or Haven directly; you need a few (known, used) wormhole transits for the short route. It's close to Erewhon, and presumably the wormhole would have plenty economic uses, but if Manpower knew about those and didn't have some mighty compelling military reason to hide it from their secret masters, it'd've been exploited. But it's still a mystery what compelling military reason that may've been. If it's that this is the Alignment's best secret entrance near or into the Haven Sector... I'm not prepared to be impressed.

JeffEngel wrote:Does Torch have the luxury of covering against that?

Yes. The RTN has to do something to train spacers and rotating through a tour of wormhole watching provides lots of training time while keeping a cadre of capable people on hand to defend against surprise transits.

JeffEngel wrote:... presumably the wormhole would have plenty economic uses, but if Manpower knew about those and didn't have some mighty compelling military reason to hide it from their secret masters, it'd've been exploited. But it's still a mystery what compelling military reason that may've been. If it's that this is the Alignment's best secret entrance near or into the Haven Sector... I'm not prepared to be impressed.

The reason for not advertising the route via the twins and Felix WHJ is that Mannerheim doesn't have clear title to the Felix system. Until there is clear title to the Felix System, it is necessary to keep the Torch wormhole's destination secret also -- for economic reasons that are at least as compelling as the military reason; that's why most people who know about the Felix WHJ think it only has two termini rather than its actual four. The routes to Darius and to Torch via the Twins can be hidden fairly easily from the Felix end, but can't be hidden at all from a successful exploration from the Torch end.