Angels2200

Oooh Captain Rob is mad and she is not gonna take it anymore.


But then why doesn't she just tell everyone on the ship what the Forsetti info is right now?

Uhh... the good captain is getting mutinous...

Her reasons better be good. Actually her reasons do not matter much, unless she has a HUGE deal off pull with someone REALLY important, or the info on the Forseti file is truly something the higher-ups do not want leaked out to the public, she's looking at jail time. Cherensky will relieve her of command pending an investigation, and unless the majority of the crew wishes to revolt with the captain and is prepared to forcefully overpower any loyalists onboard, it's over.

Perhaps the reason why Cap'n Rob is considered 'not ready for front-line duty' is becoming clearer.

So what exactly did the Forseti file contain? Something really bad, apparently, to make a captain forsake her duty AND believe she can get away with it and talking like that to an admiral. Just the knowledge that this was a suicide mission with very little chance of them walking out alive doesn't really cut it, those have been aplenty in all wars.

Probably something along the lines of who is really responsible for most of the human males in the universe doing the Dead Parrot Sketch, and how it got blamed on the Colonists.

... okay, that might qualify.

But if it is a case of solid, incontrovertible proof, then why haven't the colonials broadcasted it to all and sundry by now? If it's enough to convince a professional soldier that she's fighting the wrong war for the wrong reasons, then surely it can convince the average Jill on the street?

Possibly due to the whole propaganda angle and folks not wanting to believe what the "enemy" tells them.

Contrast this with the Captain, who was specifically told not to review the files.

To make it a comparison. If the NVA or VC were to have talked about My Lai, no one would've believed them, even if it was the truth.

But because it was some US enlisted personal who made waves about it, the story broke through.

Meaning that if the Captain starts to talk to the media, that the brass is really going to have to hurry with trying to bury her reputation and branding her a traitor, else they're going to have a PR disaster on their hands.

Well, whatever the information is, it sounds like it's gonna go over like a 20 Megatonne bomb when everyone finds out!

Certainly, but I'm not convinced that a Terran Navy Captain would be easier for an enemy to convince than an ordinary civilian.

An average person would be more inclined to believe their own government over what the other side might tell them. A ranking professional officer, while perhaps aware that their government is less than perfect, is even more aware of the value of misdirection, deception, and trickery employed in war to confuse and mislead an enemy. Captain Kurosawa has read one file and had a chat with an enemy commander, and I assume she has had no opportunity to verify the information gained from either source. Yet she takes it at face value, even confronting her superior about it. It seems there is no doubt in her mind that the information is accurate and the enemy isn't lying and pulling off a ruse-de-guerre. The proof must be iron-clad to have convinced her so. Why do the enemy not present such proof to the general public, then? Every paying subscriber has lost someone in the plague, and if such dead solid proof were to reach the eyes of the press, don't you think there'd be an increase in readership and a few Pulitzer prizes on offer?

As to the Captain receiving direct orders not to decode and read the Forseti file, the Outcast did not transmit the file to Fleet Command, so how would Cherensky have known what was in it and that it was this sensitive? Couldn't such an order be taken more along the lines of the circumstances of the Ellie Arrowway incident indicating a significant covert operation directed against Earth, and the Captain (plus whoever does the actual decoding work on the Outcast) simply not needing to know to prevent leakage?

I believe your comparison to My Lai is accurate as intended, meaning that the american public believed one of their own more readily than one of the enemy. But the difference in this case, as I see it, is that the US serviceman knew it had happened: he had been there and seen it with his own eyes. Robyn hasn't, yet apparently believes she knows it just as well, based on the Forseti file and her little chat. I just think that if the colonials can prove it to a professional soldier this readily, there would have been little to loose and a lot to gain by using the information as a propaganda tool.

edited to add:

My personal guess as to the contents of the Forseti file is that it is proof of something very relevant in the military sphere, but perhaps not critically important to the general public, at least not to the extent of making a special propaganda broadcast. Perhaps something along the lines of 'your leaders are incompetent twats who have no regard for the lives or deaths of your soldiers' (as it might take more knowledge of military matters than an average person possesses in order to evaluate) than 'they killed your father, your husband, your son and your brother, and here's the proof'.

Keep in mind that we haven't seen what was in the file, and that makes nailing it down exactly as to why the Captain would believe it and your average Jill on the street wouldn't quite difficult.

Could be the presence of certain scientists, that the Captain would know are involved in weapons research (due to briefings), whereas to your average civvie they'd just be some folks in white labcoats.

It could be due to the use of certain technology that the Captain knows the enemy doesn't have (again briefings), but again the average person on the street wouldn't, and especially not if they've been fed false information due to propaganda.

Maybe it's the presence of a "retired" member of the brass, whom the Captain is familiar with, either due to academy lectures, serving with/underneath them, having heard of their reputation etc etc etc.

Yet it could be a meaningless face to the woman on the street. I mean, how many folks in the US are aware of who are currently sitting on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and/or were previous members?

So while the info could work very well in turning military units rogue, due to what they've learned, it could be useless as a tool to create a direct PR disaster for the Colonials. Simply because the latter audience lacks the relevant frame of reference to the importance of the information and why it's true as opposed to fabricated.

----
Additional note on the My Lai reference, the chap in question: Ronald Ridenhour, while he served in the same unit (Charlie Company), didn't witness what happened. He did get eyewitness and participant accounts from other soldiers. And he was the one who spread the word around to a number of politicians, one of whom began asking hard questions, which eventually lead to the story by Seymour Hersh.)

Another GI, by the name of Tom Glen, who served in the same brigade but in a different unit, also complained about actions by US soldiers, but he didn't speak on My Lai.

The three flyboys who interfered and helped save some people: Warrant Officer One Hugh Thompson, Jr. and Specialists Four Glenn Andreotta and Lawrence Colburn (Andreotta died three weeks after the Massacre) did report things to the brass, but what they said got covered up, until the Peers Probe took place, and even then he nearly got court-martialed courtesy of Chairman Mendel Rivers (D-SC) of the House Armed Services Committee, for having his gun crew point their guns at members of 2nd Platoon, C Company, who were chasing after some more civvies.

Anyway, the Captain would be in a similar position as either Glen or Ridenhour as in they could piece together the puzzle because of their knowledge of what went on there in Vietnam, due to their own experiences and knowledge.

Somebody Stateside wouldn't have had a clue as to who was telling the truth and who wasn't.

Good points. We do not know what was in the Forseti file, or what the enemy commander said, or what the Captain knows out-of-story.

But I still say Captain Kurosawa seems quite quick to accept what information she has received as being accurate, instead of an attempt at deception aimed at producing just the results we are seing now. Victory without battle is the ultimate achievement in soldiering, and it is not impossible that enemy intelligence has found out enough to piece together a convincing story. Prudence is a military virtue, and a healthy dose scepticism might be in order when dealing with any unverified information that has at one point or another passed through the hands of the enemy.

It should also be noted that Captain Kurosawa has stated her intention to let her crew in on her findings. Whatever the Captain might know behind the scenes, it is unlikely her crew are equally well informed. While I'm sure the crew trusts their commanding officer, would they believe her word enough to actually revolt or desert, with all that it entails? The Forseti file seems to me to be the only piece of potentially hard proof that could back up her claims in front of her crew, so I'm still inclined to believe it's contents, whatever they may be, should constitute extremely convincing evidence that does not require the rank of a Captain to put into correct perspective. Being right may be of little help unless you can prove it.

On My Lai, I must admit to speaking out of memory and not checking the facts. My bad.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and list a few issues regarding the last page, and offer some of my own viewpoints on the matter.

Let's take a look at the situation.

1. What is it that the captain has found out?
2. Does the captain believe she is correct?
3. If so, what might have led her to believe she is correct?
4. Does the captain think her crew will believe her? What about the public?
5. Is she even trying to get anyone to believe her?

#1

At this point we do not know exactly. After reading through the comic from the start, I'm beginning to think it really is something about the Plague. Marissa Brahe certainly seemed to think the Terrans culpable (at the time I thought she had simply believed her own propaganda too much), and she had access to the Forseti file.

Taking into account that the contents of the file are likely something that has been hinted at in the comic, what are the other options? What I can think of is the battle of Auleraan (where Pronto lost her leg and eye), and the massacre of a civilian colony by troops onboard the Joan of Arc (according to Annabell the Prisoner). But it is not certain a professional officer would react to either of these in quite this manner; insist upon an investigation maybe, but not revolt or tell an admiral to 'stuff it'. Actually, an investigation might have been the professional approach with the Plague as well, but the genocide of half the human race is probably not a purely professional matter for anyone.

So IMO the Plague has the most evidence speaking for it, conjecture as though it may be.

#2

I'd say most likely. Otherwise her actions don't really make much sense to me.

#3

The options put forth so far are the Forseti file, the talk with the enemy commander, and her previous knowledge. Probably it's a combination of the above. What I just don't get is why she seems so sure, as in my opinion two out of the three sources must be viewed as questionable, and the third conjecture. But we don't know enough about her history to say for certain on the last point, as ISWolf pointed out.

An aside to this #3, the Captain seemed quite willing to have her marines board the enemy mothership until she had her talk with the enemy commander, and we saw him hold Hammer hostage. Quite how that talk progressed beyond the portrayed we do not know, but given that just a minute before she was ready to put dozens of her crew into harm's way, I don't think she backed down over the life of a single pilot. Assuming that is correct, something the enemy commander said or showed to her during their talk made the captain finally make up her mind and let them go. I wonder what it was, but I have a feeling it will soon be revealed in the comic.

#4

I'm leaning towards no. It would be difficult (though not impossible) to use anything in her previous knowledge or the chat as acceptable evidence. It might cause her crew to wonder, and everyone knows 'Bad Stuff' happens, but I don't see them as taking drastic action at least on the short term based on words only. This leaves the Forseti file, which has to have very solid proof if the captain were to think she can prove what she says. If the evidence in the file was strong and credible enough, then it might have been usable for the enemy as a propaganda tool earlier, yet apparently they have not done much with it to undermine terran public support.

#5

I'm not exactly sure. It may be that the Captain has completely lost faith with the Terran Navy and thinks Toat's information has condemned her anyway, so she just wants to get her side of the story across to the crew. An act of defiance in other words. But she doesn't strike me as quite the type.

I'm hoping that anyone actually bothering to read all the above might care to share a few opinions