Nea actually would not know if the natives have been playing a "good cop / bad cop" game from the very beginning. With military training I would presume that was her first conclusion all along.

For all she know, Gharr could have been captured from day one and the info Iskra and Major feeds back about Zane and the fleet at Jupiter could come from him. Since Gharr is a civilian he would presumably not have been training in resisting interrogation. There is no such thing as NOT spilling the beans eventually. It is the smartest thing to give a little all the time when playing a waiting game.

Keeping your captivators happy. Which is what Nea is doing.

Seen thought my glasses, Iskra is actually very honest right there. She tells Nea that even the little she has told/interacted away has given away lot. That is not something a trained interrogator would do.

They would build up a friendly relationship but never give away what info is useful. Thus the captive would not know how to lead away from the important bits.

Ah yes, the Spy VS spy games....Skullduggery and deception. Lies upon lies.

What fun. Until you are the one stuck in a cell.

Nea can only be sure of Iskra and Majors intent and the source of info and reliability of it when she herself have spoken directly with her Commander (Zane) and been allowed to interact more freely which would be more or less unnecessary since Zane would be there.

There is a lot more to this but this is a fan forum not a "wall of text" emporium so I will let it rest here for now.

There is no enacted law on this planet that recognizes sentient beings besides humans, and the conventions of Geneva and The Hague are no exception to that. Pondering whether you really want to be at war with the alien visitors is a political decision, and it would be governments and the military they command to decree that an alien they have in custody shall be treated "as if" it were a (Terra-)stateless human, or even a human with the nationality of "a nation we currently have no diplomatic contact to", if they'd like to avoid the (implicit) declaration of war.

The only part of the UN that can throw demands at Protagonistan are IIUC the Security Council and any international courts it (co-)founded. Iskra certainly is no representative of any of the latter, and very likely not acting on the behalf of the former, either.

How the flip do people just know stuff like this?

a) Live in a nation that is not a global superpower in its own right and needs to step in sync with int'l org.s like UN, NATO, EU etc. to have any say in the planet's future. Watch and learn (as best a layman can) how that game works.

b) When PETA campaigns for having human rights extended to all great apes, keep reading the newspaper articles as jurisprudence experts explain why lawmakers and courts are staying well away from trying to pre-regulate scenarios that merely are of philosophical interest so far.

c) To round it off, have a glance at some of the feedback - in particular, inaction from official authorities¹ - that the SETI community gets.

¹ IIUC the only authority admitting to having complete-ish First Contact plans in the drawer is the Vatican, and their motivation is - unsurprisingly - more a mirror of the Matriarch's than anything Zane would want to discuss.

Nea already has prisoner-of-war status in Protagonistan. Zelenkov was complaining about it earlier, because a bunch of research he was planning on conducting can't be conducted on POWs (which was surely a major reason she was classified so in the first place).

...drat, this was meant to be a reply to tully, but it lost the reply flag when I checked the cast page and now I can't edit or delete it.

Is OK , I have read your post.

Yes , the major did say that (which I forgot) so well lets hope she keeps that status.

Not that we get a replay of "it has been revoked !"...

No worries, all fixed ^^

Iskra could hack into the internet and go public, provided her comm implants allow that direct access.

I begin to see Nea no longer as a bitchy bureaucrat up to no good, now. This whole thing of mistrusting the pseudussian military may be justified, but I do think that the actors directly at the base at least, have no ill intent, but are just hamstringing each other because they belong to different factions.

you've mixed them up. Iskra is the human UN deputy, and Nea is the raharr Alliance marine (who, no, cannot hack human computers using her built-in smartphone).

I guess the other part of this is that it was General Bahin who contacted the Raharr Alliance fleet, not one of "Protagistan's" leaders. So there's a small possibility that General Bahin is going behind his own government's back.

It seems like a stretch but consider that it would have been the decision of the Protagistan government, not military, to disclose the alien existence to the U.N. and the Protagistan government's decision to agree to a U.N. agency being formed and submitting to it as the authority on communication and interaction with Nea and possibly the Raharr Alliance.

I highly doubt Nea has the necessary expertise to hack even basic, unencrypted Earth Wifi with no password protection using her implants. Its less a case of the technological superiority of Raharr technology than it is Nea's knowledge on technology and simply configuring Raharr tech to interface with human tech. It'd be somewhat equivalent to trying to get bluetooth to talk with an old dial-up modem, its not that the dial-up modem is particularly secure, its that they're so completely different you need to have incredible technological expertise to make the changes necessary and even then nea probably doesn't have the tools or means.

If the two are really worried about the military the best move is for Iskra to immediately contact the U.N. or members of her agency outside the military base. This could be as simple as using a mobile phone but it wouldn't surprise me if either all such devices are confiscated on base or if there are jammers for mobile phone signals in use. Her next option would be whatever communication method she's been given on the base for contacting the U.N. although that'd be likely monitored and not in the room with Nea, so a race between her and the Major finding out that she knows.

Whatever the case, the Major would only be delaying things as only complete apprehension and detention of Iskra will prevent her from informing the U.N. and once that occurs the U.N. will be wondering why they're not getting updates from the head of their appointed agency and things escalate from there.

In all of this there's still the question of these "Ghosts" and if they are playing a part anywhere.

Hmmm, Bahin going rogue ,,, he also was personally involved in informing the UN, but I suppose that he could've been under orders from "some damn pencil-pusher" to do so ... but the question would still be, what would he hope to gain from it? Any long-term contact between Protagonistan and the Alliance he could forcefully jumpstart would quickly be taken out his hands again by the actual government, short of him planning a coup d'état. It would IMHO be more plausible if he wanted to get advanced technology or somesuch from the Alliance before they leave our system for good, but expecting that to be the final outcome would still be quite the gamble. And frankly, he doesn't seem to be the type to try and lure Zane closer to Earth so as to stage another attack or a false-flag casus belli ...

Zane did seem a little overconfident in their "space debris defense system" in 163. Perhaps Quantum doesn't have the full picture of earth's anti-satellite weapons systems or Zane underestimates it.

Also Bahin knows of (or at least about) the existence of "anomalous materials" from 112. I don't think he'd risk conflict with a force that can glass the planet or drive one small ship autonomously into it at near-luminal speeds.

This all seems like several parties moving and talking past each other, and not talking to each other.

and what systems would that be? The best we have is "explode a cloud of debris and hope the target will still be on the same orbit when they intersect", and it's designed for taking down our ridiculously fragile satellites, not alien warships. Our second best option is to lob a reprogrammed ICBM at them, and for that they have countrers I'm sure.

Its a far fetched theory but if we were to presume that Protagistan went back on it's agreement with the U.N. to co-ordinate communication through the joint agency then one of the great reasons I imagine would be to have the prestige of being the first to open communication/negotiation and relations with the Raharr Alliance as well as possibly getting on on the advantages that such relations with a power like that could being to gain advantage over any and every other nation in the world.

I know they agreed to keep the Raharr existence secret, but sooner or later you'd expect to bring it to light and you can guarantee that one politician or another would want to have it that their face and voice was the first to reach out.

So it wouldn't just be odd for General Bahin to go behind the back of his nation's political leaders and the U.N. but also odd that any political leaders of the U.N. would decide to share knowledge, agree to a joint committee handling communication then secretly have their general go behind the committee's back and establish communication.

It all smells of some other underlying moves and motives at play here and I can't help but keep thinking about these "Ghosts" who are supposedly working in Humanity's network already.

** Political leaders of the U.N. should be Political leaders of Protagistan

Considering the quality and relatively low price these days of modern high quality Telescopes for the serious amateur astronomer, the flashes will already have been spotted by civilians.

No they will not know what it is but the Info will burn like a wildfire already on some (serious) forums for dedicated planetary observers. Not Paranoia-chan (nice one!)

A lot of astronomical happenings are first spotted by amateur astronomers these days. Who then inform prof. astronomers and their modern decedents of " Leviathan of Parsonstown" about it ......all for SCIENCE !!!

I would assume there's a hell of a lot that Nea hasn't told them. Partially because of the non-interferance directive, and partially because they didn't know the right questions to ask. If she believes the directive has been suspended, she might feel free to point out what they've overlooked.

Though her goals probably remain unchanged. Find Gharr. Get the two of them off this rock. Try to salvage something of her career once they're safe. The interests of the naitives are probably low on her priority list.

On the other hand, she may be aware that one possible salvage option (for herself and her superiors) is a permanent diplomatic mission to Earth, and given her experience (and attached political embarressment) she'll be top pick to be assigned to Earth as security. So she might not want to do too much harm on the way out...