Theemile wrote:Brigade XO wrote:I don't think Admirals Henke and Tourville are going to eliminate Manpower on Mesa in the way that sounds. What is more likely is that they (probably in conjuction with Jereme X and others) are going to have to deconstruct Manpower in some orderly fashion to retain records, and safely shut down what needs to be shut down while protecting the inocent and not destroying billions of credidts in equipment which can and should be used elcewhere.
Manpower is not the only corporation that will have to happen to. At the very least, all the local operations of the TransStellars in-system plus the other companies that worked with and for Manpower in the genetic slave and research operations will need to be examined. Given what they were doing, it would be prudent to invite in Beowulf to assist. That would add other levels and specialties of fields to discover what was done and how in both the research and get some sort of handle on the medical conditions and modifications to the slaves and others.
Total mess.
Place/assign blame for slavery, sure. Trying these people under former Mesan law is going to be be odd if not impossible exept where they broke actual Mesan law.
Amoung other considerations are all the genetic slaves presently under the control and existing only on the support of Manpower and it's subsidiaries. Even if you have a lot of adults, they are probably not anywhere near ready to funtion as free and independt people ON MESA, let alone elcewhere. Liberating even several hundred slaves on a slave ship only puts a microscopic drop of people into whaterver planitary system they are taken to (Beowulf, Manticore, even Torch.)
So some mechanism has to be set up to transition these former slaves into the general population of Mesa and find them employment, even if what various people - say Torch- would be willing to take them by the shipload. Still have to keep them alive and get them there before starting their education and learning skills.
Then there is the current batches of slaves in the process of being grown in the uterine replicatiors -literaly on an industrial scale- and the staffs and support personel that oversee and maintain all that. You can't just cut the power and dump the fetuses -at least the people incharge from Manticore, Haven, Torch can't. So they need to be carried at least to term (with a range of a couple of days to full term with imminent decanting. Time, people support....and then caring for the infants. The actual locations may stay the same but so much other stuff is going to have to change.
To be practical, all of that Manpower laboratory and industrial artificial birth enviornment equipment and infrastructure has a significant medical value. It is probable that Manpower or a number of it's subsidiaries was also the primary manufacture of uterine replicatiors for the Citizen portion of Mesa's population including supplying the hospitals and private clinics. Just scrapping it vs cleaning, reconditioning and then selling it off-world to help pay for at least partial rebuilding of much of Mesa is crazy. Even if some parties are going to want any proceeds to be "given" or at least allocated to improving the lot (and education, training or immigration) of the former slaves and seccies, the equipment should be treated as a resource. No, I don't trust the actual Manpower employees to handle that.
Even with Houdini and then Albrect's spectacular exit accompanied by 30 nuclear blasts, it is going to take a long time and a lot of people to sort out what the hell was going on with Mesa. That means people (security, accountants, investigators and some sort of longish time occupation scheme to find and look through all that "paperwork" and records.
A bunch of this is probably going to come back and bite the Alignment in the ass because when people get around to actualy proving that this was, in the great part, an Alignment operation, the backlash will impact on the Alignment grand plan.
How? Things in the genetics- the "research" labs and the varioius slave populations that match -later- things in the Alignment are trackable. You can show where they originated (Mesa labs). Unless, of course, a lot of that research and lab space is also now radioactive dust and glowing holes in Mesa.
I'm waiting for the Hali Sowli, the Sparatacus, and a half dozen Torch Frigates to cross the hyperlimit, with a Regiment from the Torch Army on the Hali Sowli, and "take control" of the situation on Mesa. Watching a CA take over command of a 60 SD from force, and 1500 men take control of a 1.5 million man army will be... Interesting...
I think a lot of the information will be valuable but I am going to guess it's the mandarins who'll be hurt more than MAlign. Right now, just about no one knows where the emigrants went. I've got the feeling that they are going to 'play possum' there for a bit and wait for the League to disintegrate. Then they'll start to grow from their 13 planets.