OBT Forum

I'm not familiar with the exactitudes, but I'll offer an idea.

Perhaps she was a liason assigned by the ISF to whatever regiment, "effectively a Chi-i" of the regiment.  Now say that within the ISF there were two factions, the one she was aligned with fell out of favor, and thus so did she.  In her attempt to lie low, she was grabbed by the ISF and your story continues from there. 

Variations with some twists, perhaps she has blackmail-like knowledge over a rival who rose to power in the ISF leading to her arrest.

Another variation would see her as part of a prototype program that created crossfunctional military intelligence teams from both the ISF and the general mustery in order to offload low level intel gathering to less important personnel, allowing the actual ISF personnel to manage small teams and focus their efforts on more important tasks.

The only real problem is her loyalty (I will come back to the intelligence point later) and it is not really that big.
The solution is the Rasalhague Regulars: "The core of the forces of the political sensitive Rasalhague Military District, the Rasalhague Regulars were noted for their actions against the Lyran Commonwealth as much the constant ISF scrutiny intended to ensure their loyalty to the Combine. The regulars were disbanded upon the formation of the Free Rasalhague Republic."

As for the S-2, ISF and the Order of the 5 Pillars are the intelligence agencies of the Draconis Combine but imagine that you are the commanding officer of an unit of Rasalhague Regulars and you are tired of the "bad" intel provided to you, what will you do?
Probably gather some people with an interesting background or that studied things related to intel/data analysts/market analysts and put them together in an unofficial team to help you out.

Make it that she was trained and protected by the Order of the Five Pillars (O5P) as thier agent inside that particular regiment.

The O5P is even more loyal and fanatic to House Kurita and its ways than the ISF, hence my non-choice of this solution.

Any progress? Thoughts?

  At the moment, my rough-draft is something like the following.  (Be advised that this may contain spoilers for future developments in the stories of The Virginia War.)

  Mika 'Misty' Petersen was born on Gunzberg*, which was Lyran-held but ethnically Lyran/Rasalhaguean (AFAIK) at the time - this explains her fluency in German, English (including an almost teenager-like casualness of speech-patterns), and Swedenese; some Japanese naturally comes with the latter, but she learned it in its own right because she had some ethnically-Japanese friends and relations.

  During her adolescence, Gunzberg fell to the Combine and her planet's educational establishment was 'overhauled' by ISF/O5P 'cultural enforcers'.  (Her parents, in all frankness demonstrating a broad 'weasel' streak, promptly changed the family name to Katsuragi.) Technically, by this time/age the lass had had more schooling than the Dragon deems necessary and appropriate for one of her lowly station, and certainly not nearly enough indoctrination, but one of these overseers (I'm thinking a somewhat less doctrinaire ISF agent) realised this meant that her imagination wasn't quite as... restrained as many Combine citizens'.  Recognising that Combine thought-patterns tend towards... inflexibility, this mentor quietly smoothed the way for her to undertake late high-school/early college-grade education, with the intended goal of turning her into an intelligence analyst who was loyal to her world and region (if not necessarily a fanatical servant of the Dragon) and who could think outside the box.

  The price to be paid for this continued education was that it had to take place within the auspices of a DCMS military academy - she was too imaginative/'relaxed' to ever be accepted into the ISF or O5P, and there was no way that loyal soldiers of the Dragon would give a blonde Rasalhaguean girl barely out of her teens (by the end of her training) the time of day, much less put any credence to her intelligence analyses and insights, unless she had something to back them up.  Namely, the rank-tabs of a DCMS officer (even if they didn't have stays).

  The mentor quietly spoke to the instructors at her intended institution, requesting that they give Misty a little leeway on the 'military discipline' side of things and approach 'political reliability' issues with a light touch, so that her gift for creative thinking might be nurtured by her time there, not crushed beneath the weight of dogma.  He reasoned that treating her with trust would be rewarded with trust, and that as she spent time in the DCMS, constant exposure would necessarily soften her "Genius Ditz" persona and guide her towards professionalism and loyalty to the Combine, without blunting her intellect or creativity, and she would show the natives of the planet/region that if a techno-nerd with a tendency to shoot her mouth off could find honour and meaning in becoming an upright servant of the Dragon, perhaps being open to the positive aspects of life as subject of the Coordinator would bring them equally positive results.

  A little baffled by this generosity from an ISF(!!!) agent, but loyal to Rasalhague no matter whose flag flew over it, the young woman agreed to complete her education and accept an 'acting' commission in the DCMS, so that she might be better positioned to defend the world and its inhabitants from the ravages of the Succession War.

  Unfortunately for the mentor-agent, and for the Tai-Sa of the 20th Rasalhague Regulars who accepted her onto his staff and tolerated her quirks because she was so skilled at her work (indeed, he found them somewhat endearing and treated her almost like an eccentric niece), the ISF is not without its doctrinal squabbles, and the mentor's experiment was far from orthodox.  A couple of years after Misty donned DCMS uniform, the Planetary Chairman (an utter reactionary) ordered the arrest and execution of several locals for making a petition that he deemed 'disharmonious'... as well as ordering the arrest of all their relatives as well, on suspicion of sharing the petitioners' 'seditious sentiments'.  The ISF's reactionary elements were more than happy to include the young woman in their arrests, despite the distance of her kinship to the 'rebels', not only to end the experiment and embarrass the mentor but also to get this gaijin harlot out of the honoured uniform of the DCMS.  It took all of her mentor's and CO's influence to prevent these hardliners from executing her outright, and even so, she was thrown into an Unproductive camp on Richmond pending a final determination of her loyalty and status.  This single act of betrayal undid all her mentor's years of careful trust-building and subtle moulding, telling this young woman that in the end, her education didn't matter, her uniform didn't matter, all she did to protect her people didn't matter: in the end, to the Dracs she was nothing more than just another gaijin woman who'd thought to escape the proper station of all such (namely, ignorant housewife at best, or battered-and-chained concubine at worst).

  Thus betrayed by the nation she had thought wanted her to make it her home, she decided 'if that's the Draconis Combine, you can keep my share!' and was more than willing to consider an alternative should it offer itself... and when olive-drab 'Mechs wearing the colours of the Star League Regular Army stormed the wire of the camp, she was quite happy to seek a home that might actually accept her by putting her talents at the disposal of this 'Minnesota Tribe'.  Especially once she learned that her patrons' efforts had not been enough to keep her parents from being executed for their own 'seditious sentiments'.


* Part of the FRR in canon, so I'm assuming it's got at least some Rasalhaguean aspects to it even if it was(?) part of the Tamar Pact.  Sarna.net's maps put Gunzberg in the LC before 1SW and inside the Combine after it, but don't give dates, so I'm handwaving the date of its fall to the Dracs to fit my timeline.   


  Thoughts?  Comments?  Holes in my narrative/logic?