Was Ezra Payne wrong? Naïve?
Re-reading Embers of War again and while Ezra Payne is a well developed character a couple of things bother me. Like Julian Davion he does not realize he is being groomed to command, but oddly he has more & yet less reason to suspect. Payne had three officers between him and leadership of the Stealthy Tigers, one dying in the assault on McNally’s position . . . which may have been set up by the sibling Majors, its never clear. And while he commands the seed of the 3rd battalion he seems not to have realized that his company would end up becoming 3rd BN when enough mechs were rebuilt. Part of this is also Colonel R’s (not spelling out that name, lol) fault for establishing a chain of command BEFORE the XO died to say who was stepping into those shoes. Kirsten honestly seemed to be the one doing a lot of the XO’s job but Mason was getting leadership roles- except for the plum assignment as liaison with the Dismal Ds.
Payne is also the leader of the Raiders, the elite society/cadre inside the Tigers, after the death of the regiment’s XO in battle. This is another problem, he knows the unit’s informal rules/customs that the commander comes from among the Raiders but does not recognize that makes him most likely to be next in line. Leading the Raiders gives him access to all sorts of informal knowledge the Raiders accumulate that would not end up in official reports- like where their payment comes from and other intel/counter-intel gems.
Which brings me to my biggest question . . . Ezra was brought up in the mercenary unit, and not one that always operated in the MRBC or Comstar’s previous version. While the Tigers were a older unit with a established reputation, their command staff still IMO should have been looking for the knife in the back on each job. Colonel R shows some understanding when he says the mystery backer of the attackers want unrest on the world but seems unwilling to consider the next step in that chain of logic. While any mercenary has to follow the contract, or be out of the business, Ezra seems unwilling or just too naïve to consider that while the Tigers may have continued acting in good faith his employer & their backer was not.
After the attack on Ezra & the Dismal Ds while escorting Burton, would it have been a breach to inform the Dismal Ds that Baranov was bankrolled by the Word? Or lay out that the Tiger’s loyalty to the contract was to the person who signed rather than to who was the ultimate source of the money?
Or does staying loyal to the contract mean they could not tell where Baranov’s money came from?
