November 13, 2005 Note: This was originally posted on Baen's Bar sometime in late June 2005, a few days after the snippets for chapter 2 of At All Costs was posted there. Some editing was done, for example, the original introductary paragraph has been deleted.

I had been thinking over chapter 2 of AAC with its revelations that Manpower and the Mesa corporations in general, are playing a much deeper game than Weber had previously shown. In previous stories, Mesa sounded like the Honorverse version of Bujold's Jackson's Whole (Manpower resembled somewhat a fusion of Houses Bharaputra and Ryoval); however, that appears to be their disquise. They are really an evil Cetaganda (the Mesa elite are more ambitious than the Haut, but with less taste - yes, Isabel Bardasano, I am speaking of you).

Albrecht Detweiler, who appears to be the Mesa All-Highest, is described as the wealthiest single individual in the explored galaxy. This surprised me; I would have thought that a Solarian League magnate would have that honor. Either he posseses a surprisingly large ownership percentage of the Mesa corporations, or those corporations are substantially larger than I had assumed (I had assumed that Mesa's economy, including the off planet operations, was less than the total SKM economy (including the extensive outsystem operations of the SKM cartels). I wonder if Manpower owns, via similar cutouts that conceal its ownership of other Mesa corporations, a number of very large Solarian League operations (entirely legitimate companies with no involvement in genetic slavery and with upper management whose official biographies hold no hint of Mesan connections).

Another piece of evidence that Mesa could control more resources than the SKM is the fact that Detweiler appears to believe that a direct military confrontation with the SKM to be potentially winnable by Mesa (especially if they can get samples of modern Manticoran hardware). Of course, this assumes that the SKM doesn't enjoy an immense growth in its resource base. He also mentions the Mesan plan to derail the SKM annexation of the Talbot cluster (see Shadows of Saganami), but only gives it a 30% chance of success. I suspect that grabbing samples of Manticoran technology was in the list of possible returns for their rather large investment. I have wondered what possible failures he expected (I would have expected that Monica's attempted Coup de Main would fail because of either (1) there was too strong of a RMN presence in the system (purely "coincidental"), (2) the forts were finished and active, or (3), the wormhole would start disgorging superdreadnoughts before Monica could secure the terminus).

For that matter, I have been thinking over the ending of Shadows of Saganami and I believe it is possible that a good deal of observational data could have been radioed to Monica from the active battlecruiser division before it was destroyed. Anybody who has read AAC (November 13, 2005 Note: read via the eArc, this speculation appears to have come to nothing) should start a thread in the Sneakers Conference if they wish to address this speculation.

If Mesa thinks they could defeat the RMN, they need warships to do it. But, where are they? It appears that the Mesan navy doesn't have that force. It takes decades to build a navy, so where have they been doing it? My best guess is that several supposedly independent worlds are really Mesa proxies (and have navies substantially larger than commonly known).

For example, there is Mannerheim which Detweiler is planning to use to retake Torch (but why would anybody do Manpower's dirty work for them? Yes, I know, money; but considering that Erewhon is close by and has a free fleet to intervene, wouldn't the risks be a bit high?). Also, there is the question on where the Congo/Torch wormholes go. Detweiler's comments implies that he knows, and at least one location is dangerous to Mesa (or its plans).

Darling Isabel reveals that the Hofschulte affair that was mentioned in War of Honor was a Mesa hit and used something rather extraordinary (which appears to be similar to instant adjustment). I wonder if a less extreme version could be mass-produced and spread throughout human space in order to "encourage" a more pliant population ("I Love Big Brother" - A Mesa Corporation). After all, if they intend to take over human space, they are going to need to control the hands on all of the power levers and I don't think there is enough members of the Mesa elite to do it themselves. November 13, 2005 Note: It appears that it is not instant adjustment and is probably not applicable to mass brainwashing. But I fear that they have a plan to rule.