Brigade XO wrote:If the Alignment was being safe, anything related to specs for anything would only have been kept on either a command fortress or the militarized production facilities doing the work. Nothing on the planet- absolutely nothing.
It's not possible to not keep some specs on the industrial nodes fabricating the thing in the first place. It might not be a blueprint and much less the theory behind the engineering, but it's still enough technical data to duplicate parts or the whole.
Nothing on the planet, though, but only because the planet shouldn't have any industrial nodes in the first place. As you said:
[qupte]An enclave on Galton where none to almost none of the rest of the planetary population was allowed is mentioned. That could be presented as a HQ Administration center with all the planetary operations controlled from there but it and the planet effectively kept out of sharing of any serious information about the system, the military and policy other than as it would affect the ground. It would also function as an R&R location for the system's elite.
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Between the orbital forts and the infrastructure which was either destroyed in combat or self destructed, there should be extremely little information connecting Galton with anywhere else or what business was being done with anyone. Certainly nothing that involves the Alignment directly and never Darius. Recall how Detweiler was somewhat antsy comming into the Galton System and gettin through to meet the people who were controlling the system. He knew about Alamo, he knew the system was an expendable diversion and I wondered if what he was shown as thinking could be part of a possibility that the Alignment in control of Galton just might be having second thoughts of knowing that suicide was not only the only future result WHEN not if the GA found them? True Believers, burn everything in one last spasm of defiance and try to suck the attacker into committing an EE on the system at large by lashing out with one massive final attack after having surrendered?
Galton shouldn't have any legitimate business with anyone. If any foreign connections are found, they'll be covert ops and industrial espionage.
Wreckage of forts and fabrication facilities.....well, sure...probably in fairly small parts at various high velocities heading out of system, in the gravity pull of the planet of the star and now the GA has to find things that might have records or examples of stuff. Heck, how many unexpended weapons remain in the system that were manufactured by Galton to check as examples?
Not necessarily very far. Those things were in orbit in the first place. About half of the pieces of what got blown up will be in trajectories leading down the planet, but that's not immediate (despite what you may have heard during the Yawate Strike). Some things will take time to finally enter the thick atmosphere and burn up. Also, note how the gravity on this planet was supposed to be high... that usually means a denser but thinner atmosphere (otherwise the atmospheric pressure on the surface would be too high for habitation).
There's also the other half of what got blown up and is now in a escape trajectory from the planet. But that does not mean high velocity compared to the system. A delta-v of 3 km/s is only ~10% of the orbital velocity of the planet around the star. It would also mean 1 million seconds (over 11.5 days) to get 3 million km away from the original orbital position.
There are probably not many unexpended weapons. The battle lasted long enough that the Galton forces could resupply from any stores. Of course, every time they showed a weapons cache, it fell victim to a brace of missiles, but the end result is the same. There are probably a few remaining scattered here and there, that weren't practical to use, plus whatever was in the production lines before they were shut down.
What is the likely scenario that every member of the military above the rank of LT, Enlisted above Petty Officer and "civilian" on any of the habitats/industrial platforms had their own dose of nanite assassins so IF they survived and were questioned they would just die. That would be very Alighemnt......generic nanite assassin treatment in your standard healthcare package as soon as you met a very low set of criteria.
Cynical but very Alignment.
Or maybe they didn't? Where are the nanites?
If the surviving high-ranking officers have no nanites, then it's a big, gaping hole in the smoke screen.
If they do have nanites, then there have to be plans for them somewhere in the system and chemical industrial plants to make them.