Tag Archives: Department of the Interior Prime Headquarters

I Dare – Chapter 28

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Day 51
Standard Year 1393

Lytaxin
Erob’s Grounds

In which Val Con and Ren Zel are lofted away to places they didn’t intend to go.

Halfway through the book, and we’ve only just got through the first day of this plot strand. An eventful day all round, really.

Here I was, just thinking that if Pat Rin and Natesa did end up together it was fair enough, since at least they’d been living and working together three times as long as Val Con and Miri had when they declared lifemates, and here are Anthora and Ren Zel apparently determined to make Val Con and Miri look the very picture of sober forethought.

(I think the Tree and Merlin are, somehow, conspiring against them, though Anthora seems to have some idea of it and not to mind much.)

I’m intrigued by the statement that “Damning the Commander to twelve dozen hells would be futile from this distance” — does that imply that there’s a distance from which it would be more effective?

If this were Earth, which of course it isn’t, the co-ordinates Val Con gives Priscilla would describe a point in the vicinity of Baltimore. Difficult to say if that means anything; perhaps a hint as to the sort of climate and geography the authors had in mind for the surrounding area.

I Dare – Chapter 14

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Liad
Department of Interior Command Headquarters

In which Commander of Agents thinks inside the box.

I worry about the test subject, and his cha’leket. As far as I recall, we never hear of them again, and while it is not long until Korval will be taking the fight to the Department, I am not confident of their surviving even that long. The key question is perhaps whether the technicians anticipate a use for the test subject after the present project is completed to their Commander’s satisfaction. If they decide to hold on to him, there might be some chance of him living to see that rescue after all. If, on the other hand, they don’t see any need for him once they consider that they’re ready for Anthora, obviously they’re not going to just let him go.

I Dare – Chapter 8

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Day 50
Standard Year 1393

Liad
Department of Interior Command Headquarters

In which Commander of Agents moves forward on two fronts.

One of Commander of Agents’ characteristic attributes is the way he’ll casually sweep past concepts with really troubling implications. This is at least the second time his plans for Korval have taken advantage of knowledge gained from confidential medical reports. He has no apparent problem with “retraining” Val Con to betray his own family. And then there’s the box that produces “interesting reactions” in a dramliza confined inside, currently undergoing “testing”; that pretty much has to mean live test subjects, and given the Department’s track record I wouldn’t want to bet on them being informed volunteers.

It’s not quite true that Anthora’s powers have no known limits; there’s at least one known to her kin, which was hinted at in Plan B and will be explicated later in this novel. Her family seem to have kept that one to themselves, which is just as well; the Department has had the opportunity to do a horrifying amount of damage if they’d known about it.

I Dare – Chapter 3

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Day 283
Standard Year 1392

Liad
Department of Interior Command Headquarters

In which the economy demands a Korval.

Re-reading in order, we’ve already had the truth behind Pat Rin being “dismissed to a wastrel life of spoiled self-indulgence”. Even without that context, though, I’m pretty sure I could already tell the first time I read this that spoiled and self-indulgent wasn’t really what Pat Rin was like, and that he was unlikely to be as receptive to the Department’s intention as they might have hoped.

Plan B – Chapter 34

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Liad
Department of Interior Command Headquarters

In which the Commander of Agents considers his options.

The Department has a tendency to overestimate Korval’s propensity for malicious conspiracy, and I suspect this is because the Department assumes Korval is like itself. (Though, to be fair, Korval’s results probably do look a lot like the outcome of a cunning plan if one is not inclined to believe in the famous Korval Luck.) I think I’ve said that before, but this seems like an appropriate time to say it again.

Another thing this seems like an appropriate time to say, even if I’ve said it before, is that the Commander of Agents is a really unpleasant person, and the way he treats his employees doesn’t bode well for the universe if the Department ever does manage to conquer it. One gets the feeling that at least some of the Agents of Change are just as much victims of the Department as the people they’re sent to enact Change upon.

Plan B – Chapter 18

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Liad
Department of Interior Command Headquarters

In which the Commander of Agents reviews the facts.

I’m thinking about doing a post at the end of all this about Things I’ve Learned Doing This Re-Read. If I do, “reading one chapter a day works much better for books with even-sized chapters” is definitely going to be one of the Things.

Here’s another Commander to add to that confused tangle. I wonder if the position of Commander of Agents is modelled on the position of the Scout Commander. The Department doesn’t like the Scouts much, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be so, particularly since a significant number of Agents are former Scouts.

Plan B – Chapters 7 & 8

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14th Conquest Corps
Lytaxin

Liad: Department of Interior Command Headquarters

In which Nelirikk No-Troop sympathizes with a squirrel, and Lytaxin is defended by a ship orbiting Waymart.

I’m getting the idea that the Yxtrang are very concerned with saving face, to the point that they insist on appearing effective even at the expense of actual effectiveness: their response to making an error, here as at the end of Agent of Change, is to cover it up, even if that means nobody gets to learn from the situation and avoid future errors. When Nelirikk offers unsolicted advice — which, worse, turns out to be correct after the General ignores it — the General is more concerned about having his authority undermined than about finding out what other advice Nelirikk might be able to offer. And, as Nelirikk himself notes, the whole thing might have been avoided if the Yxtrang Command had chosen to learn from his previous encounter with a Liaden Scout, instead of shoving that under the carpet too.

(And then there’s the incidental business of Over-Technician Akrant, whose career is ruined because his carelessness ruined the General’s big entrance, even though the big entrance was, as far as I can see, entirely ceremonial and made no actual difference to the progress of the campaign.)

That’s an interesting detail about Yxtrang high command being situated at “Temp Headquarters”. I wonder if it’s genuinely temporary, or if by now it’s become settled and retains the name only by tradition.

It didn’t occur to me the first time it was mentioned, but here is the Department of the Interior sending Tyl Von sig’Alda out in a ship that frequently if not continually reports its status back to Headquarters by pin-beam — and, as we have been recently reminded, pin-beam is generally regarded as expensive and only for use in particularly important circumstances. So that says something about the Department’s priorities, even if the pin-beam beacon is just another of the special accoutrements attaching to sig’Alda’s special mission, like the deputy badge and the code phrase. (If all the Department’s ships are similarly equipped, that says something else again.)

Plan B – Chapter 1

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Liad
Department of Interior Command Headquarters

In which the Commander of Agents reviews the situation.

A new book. After two months with Partners in Necessity sitting by my elbow, it feels a bit weird to look down and see Plan B instead.

This first chapter is mostly recap, which makes sense for the first Liaden novel to be published in a decade, even if it’s not obviously useful to a fan who’s just finished re-reading Carpe Diem.

There is some new information slipped in amid the recap: the military action on Lytaxin was mentioned in Agent of Change when the Gyrfalks shipped out to it, but this is the first time it’s been said that it was set off by the Department in an attempt to deprive Korval of its ally Erob.

The recap also mentions that Korval has disappeared lock, stock and barrel, “ship, children, servants, and pets”; it struck me on this re-read that we’ve since had a short story about where the children went, but they didn’t have any servants or pets with them — so where did the servants and pets go?

Carpe Diem – Chapter 36

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Liad

In which Tyl Von sig’Alda gets his orders.

After the earlier chapters about Tyl Von sig’Alda being set explicitly in Envolima City, it’s worth noting that this chapter declines to be specific about where on Liad the control center of the Department is located. Except that it’s underground.

And that it is intended to “one day be the command post for a galaxy”, which doesn’t help locate it physically, but does a great deal to reveal the Department’s intentions. They’re not only interested in limited actions for the preservation of Liad; they’re out for conquest. All according to The Plan. (It’s always a bad sign when an organization is dedicated to something called “The Plan”, don’t you find?)

The other thing this chapter doesn’t say, in the midst of all this preparation for sending sig’Alda after Val Con, is how they know where to send him. Did his analysis of Val Con’s options produce that precise a result? Or maybe they don’t actually know yet, and are just putting the wheels in motion so that he’ll be ready to go at a moment’s notice when they do know where he’s going.