Will the RF really be all that hard to find?

Any genocide will be incidental to their plans to geneticly uplift humanity. Best bet would be viruses that rewrite DNA to a superior coding, unfortunately the process has a high mortality rate.

SYED wrote:I figured that at some point, they would think to check the wormhole in torch with warships, and deal with the mannerheim force getting their computers.

Why would they send warships to an unknown fate? The have no idea why Harvest Joy didn't return, and no clue that she was deliberately destroyed.

Also, you need to (re)read the Pearl about how long a ship is totally defenseless after a wormhole transit. Assault through a defended wormhole is suicidal.

SYED wrote: But then in one of the books, it was mentioned a Spider drive ship was being sent to the torch area to keep watch, possibly to deal with the dynamic spy duo.
if detected and caotured, its computer would show the twins, felix, darius, and all sort of data.

If Torch should happen to capture or destroy a spider-drive scout in their system, they'd still have to prevent the computers from being dumped and any remaining anti-tampering safeguards to get any information. The necessary chain of improbable events rises to Deux x machina levels

SYED wrote:Any genocide will be incidental to their plans to geneticly uplift humanity. Best bet would be viruses that rewrite DNA to a superior coding, unfortunately the process has a high mortality rate.

It does? Is there textev?

We don't have that problem with genetic modification methods now, and one might hope that there have been advances since.

JohnRoth wrote:Personally, I think Audrey is toast, at least if she's still on Mesa when Mike gets there and asks for an interview. There's one key question from Mike to Audrey: "Who sent you here?" If she tells the truth, they know she's an Alignment mole, if she doesn't, they know she's lying, so she's probably an Alignment mole.

Why would that question cause any problem? Audrey can truthfully say that her news service sent her to Mesa. No lying involved.

lyonheart wrote:Hi KNick,

I didn't say they wouldn't be treated differently than any other leader.

But when a GA TF visits, the head of state typically invites the CO to dinner or be invited aboard the flagship for a tour if they're curious [being a distinguished former naval officer], only to run into a treecat among the CO's guard aboard or on the surface, or just one of the RF's MAlign/GAUL type guards' reaction to the treecat triggers a fiasco that reveals far too much.

Where do you get the idea that the head of state typically invites the CO of a foreign task force to dinner? The only times we have seen that happen in the text, there have been very specific reasons for such an invitation. Most of the time, there has not been any text evidence of such a dinner invitation.

By the way, Lyonheart, you've been using a very odd abbreviation that I haven't figured out. What do you mean by HA-H?

SYED wrote:Any genocide will be incidental to their plans to geneticly uplift humanity. Best bet would be viruses that rewrite DNA to a superior coding, unfortunately the process has a high mortality rate.

There is no evidence that the Alignment intends to spread uplifted genetics by a virus. If that were the plan, there would be no need for them to destroy the Solarian League.

SWM wrote:By the way, Lyonheart, you've been using a very odd abbreviation that I haven't figured out. What do you mean by HA-H?

Honor Alexander-Herrington. Its her new name.

phillies wrote:

SYED wrote:Any genocide will be incidental to their plans to geneticly uplift humanity. Best bet would be viruses that rewrite DNA to a superior coding, unfortunately the process has a high mortality rate.

It does? Is there textev?

We don't have that problem with genetic modification methods now, and one might hope that there have been advances since.

The last time I heard about using genetic modification in the real world today*, it wasn't all that successful (only partially) in human beings. (Unwanted side effects, or just didn't do what it was intended in a lot of cases.)

Has the success rate increased?

* Use of retroviruses to replace genes that aren't present or working to produce proteins that either aren't being produced, or are defective.

SYED wrote:Any genocide will be incidental to their plans to geneticly uplift humanity. Best bet would be viruses that rewrite DNA to a superior coding, unfortunately the process has a high mortality rate.

phillies wrote:It does? Is there textev?

We don't have that problem with genetic modification methods now, and one might hope that there have been advances since.

Vince wrote:The last time I heard about using genetic modification in the real world today*, it wasn't all that successful (only partially) in human beings. (Unwanted side effects, or just didn't do what it was intended in a lot of cases.)

Has the success rate increased?

* Use of retroviruses to replace genes that aren't present or working to produce proteins that either aren't being produced, or are defective.

Yes. CRISPR allows fixing the actual defective bit of DNA, rather than simply splicing something into a random location, which is what the virus-based approaches did.

While it's a vast improvement, it's still nowhere near perfect.