Infiltration & Sabotage

Overview

The Necrosynths didn’t just return with armies. They returned with patience.

“You don’t defeat civilization by attacking it. You defeat it by making it defeat itself.”

The Doctrine of Distributed Failure

The strategy:

• Don’t blow up a factory. Degrade its output.
• Don’t assassinate a general. Let their equipment fail them.
• Don’t attack supply lines. Poison them from within.
• Don’t reveal yourself. Let them blame bad luck.

The Infiltration

Who They Are

Not commanders. Not decision-makers. Not anyone who would be noticed.

Role	Function
Assembly line workers	Let defects pass
Quality inspectors	Sign off on substandard materials
Electricians	Install undersized capacitors
Pharmaceutical techs	Dilute medications slightly
Miners	Contaminate ore samples
Shipping clerks	Mislabel cargo
Maintenance workers	Skip procedural steps
IT technicians	Introduce subtle malware
Janitors	Access everything

How They’re Controlled

Method	Description
True Believers	Ideological converts to the cause
Coerced	Family held hostage; blackmail; threats
Paid	Mercenaries who don’t ask questions
Unknowing	Think they work for criminals or competitors
Reanimated	Dead civilians puppeted into position
Sleepers	Descendants of original Necrosynths; activated

The Cell Structure

No single point of failure. Each saboteur knows only:

• Their handler (maybe)
• Their specific task
• Nothing about larger operation

Capture one, you get one. The network survives.

The Sabotage: Death by a Thousand Cuts

The Principle

Don’t cause failures. Increase failure rates.

• A 1% failure rate is normal
• A 3% failure rate is concerning but not alarming
• A 3% failure rate across multiple unrelated systems is catastrophic

But it doesn’t look catastrophic. It looks like:

• “We need better quality control”
• “Budget cuts affecting production”
• “Supply chain issues”
• “That contractor has been slipping”

Examples

Target	Normal	Sabotaged	Effect
Atomic warheads	0.5% dud rate	2.5% dud rate	1 in 40 Purging strikes fails
Hull plating alloy	99.7% purity	99.2% purity	Structural failure under stress
Linkstone crystals	0.1% flaw rate	0.8% flaw rate	Links drop at critical moments
Medical stimpacks	98% efficacy	91% efficacy	Wounded Knights die who should live
Capacitor ratings	100% of spec	94% of spec	Power systems brown out under load
Suit seals	0.01% leak rate	0.15% leak rate	Atmospheric exposure in vacuum
Navigation software	Accurate	Microdelays	Missiles miss by meters

The Cumulative Effect

No single failure is decisive. But:

• Hull plating fails → Knight dies → reanimated
• Stimpack doesn’t work → wounded Knight dies → reanimated
• Capacitor browns out → systems fail → Knight dies → reanimated
• Linkstone drops → Knight stranded → dies → reanimated

Every equipment failure potentially creates a new enemy soldier.

The sabotage doesn’t just weaken civilization. It feeds the Necrosynth army.

The All My Sons Parallel

In Arthur Miller’s play, a father knowingly ships cracked engine heads. Planes crash. Pilots die.

The horror:

• Not dramatic villainy
• “Business as usual”
• “Everyone does it”
• “The numbers still looked acceptable”
• Complicity disguised as normalcy

The saboteurs are the same:

They’re not cackling villains. They:

• Let a shipment pass that should have been flagged
• Signed off on a report they didn’t fully verify
• Took a shortcut that “probably won’t matter”
• Did their small part without seeing the whole picture

Some don’t know they serve the Necrosynths. They think they’re:

• Helping a competitor
• Getting revenge on a bad employer
• Making money on the side
• Following orders from someone they trust

The Detection Problem

Why It’s Hard

It looks like normal failure.

Manufacturing has defect rates. Supply chains have problems. When something breaks, the first assumption is never “coordinated enemy sabotage.”

It’s distributed.

Problem at Factory A on Planet X and problem at Shipyard B on Planet Y don’t obviously connect. Different jurisdictions. Different oversight.

The saboteurs are nobodies.

Security watches Knights, Ordermasters, Senators, Scientists. Nobody watches assembly line workers.

The evidence is ambiguous.

A cracked hull plate could be:

• Normal manufacturing variance
• Supplier quality issues
• Storage problems
• Handling damage
• Bad luck
• Or sabotage

How do you prove intent?

The Pattern Recognition Problem

You need to see the whole picture:

• One saboteur at one factory = undetectable
• Ten saboteurs across ten factories = still coincidence
• A hundred saboteurs across supply chain = someone should notice

But who’s looking at the whole picture?

• Each factory has its own quality control
• Each Order tracks its own equipment failures
• The Senate has aggregate statistics but not granular data
• Nobody’s job is “look for coordinated sabotage”

The Veil’s Counter-Sabotage

The Nightmare Scenario

Phase	Veil Response	Necrosynth Counter
1	Identify pattern	Saboteurs go quiet; wait
2	Investigate failures	Activate different cells
3	Catch a saboteur	Sacrifice them; cut ties
4	Expand surveillance	Saboteurs adapt techniques
5	Mass screening	False positives overwhelm

The Moral Cost

To find saboteurs, the Veil must:

• Surveil civilian workers
• Investigate without evidence
• Detain on suspicion
• Interrogate aggressively
• Trust no one

This erodes the values civilization is fighting to protect.

The Necrosynths win either way:

• If Veil doesn’t find them → sabotage continues
• If Veil becomes authoritarian → civilization becomes what it hates

Specific Operations

Operation: Brittle Shield

Target: Hull plating for capital ships

Method: Saboteur at alloy refinery introduces trace impurities during smelting. Alloy passes standard tests. Under combat stress, molecular structure fails.

Effect: Ships die. Crews die. Reanimated.

Operation: Dead Drop

Target: Linkstone crystal production

Method: Quality inspector passes flawed crystals. Flaws microscopic. Work fine in testing. Under sustained load, quantum coherence breaks down.

Effect: Knights lose connection mid-battle. Stranded. Die.

Operation: Slow Bleed

Target: Medical supplies

Method: Pharmaceutical tech dilutes stimpack compounds. Still effective enough to pass testing. Under field conditions, efficacy drops.

Effect: Wounded who should survive don’t. “Why aren’t treatments working?”

Operation: Ghost in the Machine

Target: Automated manufacturing systems

Method: IT technician introduces malware. Tiny adjustments to tolerances. Nothing individually significant.

Effect: Everything from one factory slightly worse. Can’t trace to human saboteur. Catching technician doesn’t fix infected systems.

Story Integration

The TV Analyst Sees Multiple Patterns

See: The Unraveling

Pattern 1 — Things Going Wrong (Coverup):

• Order spending up, Linkstone down
• Budget discrepancies

Pattern 2 — Things Going Too Well (Infiltration):

• Mortality rates improving impossibly fast
• “Miraculous” safety records

Pattern 3 — Things Going Wrong (Sabotage):

• Failure rates trending up
• Insurance claims rising

Three patterns. Analyst doesn’t know they’re connected. Reader does.

Questions to Resolve

1. How organized are the saboteurs?
2. Who’s running them?
3. Are any saboteurs POV characters?
4. How does counter-sabotage affect civil liberties?
5. What’s the most dramatic sabotage failure?