TSiaSOS Spork Part 2, Chapter 4: Kriegsspiel

[mara_dienne459]

A battle happens. Everyone watches it like it's some sporting event. A bunch of NPCs die. Kira only cares about getting her way. The title has nothing to do with anything in this chapter.  


TSiaSOS Spork Part 2, Chapter 4: Kriegsspiel

 

To give a translation to the title, Kriegsspiel is a genre of wargaming developed by the Prussian army in the 19th century to teach battlefield tactics to officers. It literally means “wargame” in German, but in context, it’s usually thought of as a serious tool for training and research. This term isn’t used for actual combat but in practice and to prepare officers for what they might face in a fluid battle that is constantly shifting and changing. It was a thinking game, one with high stakes.

 

Somehow I’m not sure it’s quite being used in that context for this chapter.

 

This chapter starts with Kira panicking that she just put a whole bunch of people in danger because the place she wants to get to is now under imminent attack. Oh, no, wait. She doesn’t panic about that. What she actually does is calmly turn to her inner tv and goes to study the station. She describes it to us as a “disorganized pile of sensors, domes, docking bays, and radiators built around a hollowed-out asteroid”. There’s a habitation ring there, too. Next to the station is a refueling platform. Ships are swarming around the two places like agitated bees (my words, not the actual words used in the book) and Kira wonders if the ships can stop the Jellies. Her answer is “Not sure” because apparently only the Darmstadt is their real firepower and the rest of the ships are local LEO’s (law enforcement officers). Or PDFs, as Falconi calls them.

 

Kira’s like what’s that, so Falconi explains to her that PDF is short for “Planetary Defense Force”. A planetary defense force? For an asteroid? Seriously? Okay... Anyway, Sparrow becomes a Debbie Downer and says the Jelly ships are small “Naru-class” - whatever that means, because I don’t think I’ve come across that definition before, and so far I don’t remember reading anything about ship classes in this story - and Trig helpfully explains that the small ships only carry three aliens, two or three crawlers, and two or three snappers. Whatever those are. Trig also, I think, makes a sexual joke about the Jellies having crabs. Vague and not funny. At all. There’s also some talk about how the Jellies have something called “birthing pods” which basically means they have endless reinforcements because they can just make more right then and there.

 

I’m reminded of the Irken invaders. I wonder if Zim or a Zim equivalent will appear...

 

Kira says that she didn’t see anything about this on the news, and she’s told that the League has been keeping it to themselves to avoid the inevitable mass panic that’s pretty much already there. Falconi “caught wind” of the information a few weeks ago, he says. Kira does not react to this one iota. Instead, she whines about the idea of a “birthing pod” being “dimly familiar” and complains that she just needs to get her hands on a Jelly computer and then she will know everything! Insert evil laughter here. God, I hate her. I hate her so much. This isn’t the attitude of a hero. This is the attitude of a villain.

 

There’s some blah blah about the Jellies being confident to take out Malpert and the military ship with just four ships of their own, but Trig says the miners will fight too. He swears it. Kira gives Trig an odd look and he explains that he grew up on a mining station and he knows people. Hey, I know people too, but I don’t expect them to stand their ground and fight a battle against an unknown alien race when they’re clearly outmatched and outgunned. Especially if they’re outmatched and outgunned. And sometimes even if they aren’t outmatched and outgunned. It takes a certain person to stand their ground and fight, to face death unblinking and head-on. Bravery isn’t the absence of fear; it is the conquest of it.

 

Anyway, Nielsen suggests changing course, but Falconi is like “eeeehhhhhhh” and says even if they ran, they couldn’t escape. Nielsen says maybe, but the Jellies could also decide the chase isn’t worth it and give up. Falconi says yeah but they’ve already burned through a good portion of their fuel and they couldn’t make Ruslan if they got out and pushed. (He doesn’t say that, I made that up.) So he ultimately decides the ship’s going to live up to its name and they’re going to hide and wait out the fight. Kira chooses this wonderful moment to look up what “Wallfish” means, and it turns out it’s a British term for “snail”. She stares at Falconi like he lost his mind for naming his ship “the Snail”. Bitch, it ain’t your ship. You shouldn’t have any opinion on what the ship’s name is. You aren’t allowed. You don’t know anything about these people, their experiences, what they went through, or how Falconi arrived at the name for his ship. Get off your high horse.

 

As the crew debates, Kira decides it’s time for a private chat with Falconi, so she and he go outside to the hallway, where Falconi shanks her with the fork he hid up his sleeve because he finally realized how much of a threat Kira is to his ship and his crew, and he needs to get rid of her before she kills everyone aboard the ship.

 

Hah. I wish.

 

No, what really happens is that Kira tells Falconi he needs to get her on a Jelly ship and he goes “Bye Felicia, that sure as fuck ain’t happening.” Kira grabs his arm and Falconi tells her to let go or he’ll take her hand off for her. Yay displays of wanton violence. Not that it matters. Kira quickly explains herself that she isn’t looking for a white knight on a fast horse. She just needs someone with ninja skills to get her into a Jelly ship. Falconi is like bitch, check yourself before you wreck yourself, but Kira the Selfish Twat-Monster won’t take no for an answer. She says she needs to get onto one because then she can figure out why they’re attacking humans, and all sorts of other things. And then Kira pulls the “you need money” card on Falconi.

 

And instead of showing a little bit of integrity and care for the lives of his crew and the people down in his hold, Falconi bites at the money-bait, hook, line, and sinker.

 

Seeing Falconi is going to jump on the Kira Gets Her Way Train, Kira starts building him a lovely mountain out of imaginary pyrite, asking him to imagine how much her company would pay for the first sniff at alien tech. Kira tells him to get the Entropists to help - because asking outsiders to help you ransack an alien ship has never backfired before - and that with what they could possibly discover, they could not only win the war, but jumpstart their own technology by a hundred years or more. Yeah, because they’ve already come so far in a mere 200 years where everything is still super heteronormative and the single lesbian relationship so far is glossed over pretty damn quick in favor of a goddamn pig getting a massive amount of screen time. Falconi finally shows that he has some kind of honor and says he’s got the people in the hold to think of. Lots of people could get hurt or killed if fighting broke out.

 

Kira, the bitch, says:

 

Kira couldn’t help herself: “And how much were you thinking about their welfare when you started charging for rescue?”

 

Holy fuck, Kira, it’s called “being a dick”. You should be quite aware of how that works out. It means looking out only for number one and doing things your way, regardless of whoever it hurts. Also Falconi isn’t running a charity here. Why would he pay out of his pocket for the extra fuel the trip is going to cost, for the food and drink and whatever other supplies the refugees are going to use up? It isn’t like they’re working on his ship to pay for their passage. They have to pitch in somehow. And Kira must also be looking through some pretty rosy glasses if she’s getting offended Falconi is extorting people, because he at least is rescuing them. Other people would just take their money and space them, as Kira is fond of saying. Other people might not even wait that long, and just kill the lot of them and strip them of anything of value before chucking their naked bodies out of the airlock. Or, worse, abandoning them by jettisoning the cargo hold at the slightest whiff of possible danger. Sure, there are probably people with ships who are evacuating people out of the kindness of their hearts, but Falconi is not one of them.

 

Falconi replies that he still doesn’t want to see them killed. Apparently Kira does because the next thing out of her mouth is “Does this ship have weapons”. Kira, you are a fucking bitch. Falconi tells her there’s enough to stop a rim runner or two, whatever a rim runner is, and my brain must be in the deepest of gutters because hahahaha sexual joke hahahaha, and he says that they couldn’t fight a Jelly ship (is that like a Jelly sandwich?) and hope to live.

 

Kira stood back, put her hands on her hips. “So what are you going to do?”

 

I put my hand upon your hip, when I dip, you dip, we dip. Seriously, what the hell kind of position is this you’re taking, Kira? The Hands-On-The-Hips-I’m-Disappointed-In-You position? This is the kind of pose people take when they’re annoyed things aren’t going the way they want them to go. Instead of backing down and figuring out another option - because the Wallfish isn’t her ship, this isn’t her crew, it isn’t anything that she’s got a say in - Kira just makes it hers and puts all the decision-making on Falconi after she’s already made him change course for her in the first place. Kira was the one who wanted to go to Malpert, Kira was the one who brought up the idea of paying him, Kira was the one who wanted this. And now she’s once again putting herself and her wants above the safety and well-being of others. She doesn’t care about those people in the hold any more than Falconi does - except that Falconi doesn’t want to see them hurt, and Kira could care less about that. Kirantoinette has basically said “Let them eat cake” in answer to the refugees’ plight. It’s just a shame Madame Guillotine doesn’t get a shot at Kira.

 

Falconi studies her for a while, probably weighing the amount of potential Monopoly money he’d get for her versus the relief he’d get for just shoving her out an airlock, and ultimately decides they’ll keep going for the asteroid because they might need it, and Kira gets her way because he’ll get her on a Jelly ship if it looks doable. We’re told “a sense of enormity filled Kira as she considered the possibility”. There’s no reaction from her other than that, and I’m left thinking “bitch, please. didn’t you think about all this and all the ways it could go wrong and all the ways it will go wrong?” And I’m also left wondering why that line reads to me like all of a sudden this is Falconi’s idea and not hers and he is the one suggesting they board the ship to her. Anyway, Falconi makes a joke about the UMC getting pissed off at them for taking initiative that they won’t be able to figure out if they should award them a medal or throw them in prison. Or how about just murder all of you and chalk it up to an accident or a casualty of war? What he says is apparently very funny to Kira because she bursts out laughing, too.

 

Subchapter number two starts with the narrator telling us that “the waiting was tortuous”. Not sure what’s so tortuous about waiting, at least not in this situation. I would think it would be more anticipatory than anything else. Anyway, Kira apparently is shacked up with the crew in the galley - because apparently the crew doesn’t do anything to prep the ship for possible attack or to safely stow the passengers and secure escape routes in the event shit breaks and they’re all going to die - and she’s watching the Jellies get closer to the station. Apparently she’s so fed up with waiting that she’d rather be shot at than sit around and wait for something to happen, which is Kira’s entire life at this point, because she’s reactionary more so than proactive. She also wants to bite her nails but she can’t do that because the Limp Dick is covering her fingers and she doesn’t like the way it tastes. There’s a brief paragraph where Kira wonders why her nails haven’t grown and that the Limp Dick must be acting as her personal manicurist.

 

Yeah. No reaction to what’s going on or why the crew is just sitting around with their thumbs up their asses instead of preparing the ship to go into a warzone. No, Kira just cares about her nails.

 

Anyway, Kira eventually gets bored and goes to hang out with Trig. Instead of peppering the kid with questions about why nobody’s moving or doing preparations for battle or at least preparations for possible evacuation, she asks if Trig can get her something else to wear. Because clothes are the most important thing to Kira right now. Not the possibility of hundreds of INNOCENT people dying for her stupidity or the possibility of her playing right into the aliens’ hands, or the possibility of the Limp Dick controlling her every thought, word, and action so it can get to the mothership for an uber-power-up that will make it immortal, invincible, and otherwise indestructible so it can lead a genocidal war on humans and take over the entire known universe. Noooo. She’s just sick of wearing that damn jumpsuit and wants some new threads. Unsurprisingly, Trig grants Kira her wish for new clothes.

 

While they go, they discuss the rest of the crew and Trig himself. And instead of distrusting this alien parasite-infected lady and not answering any questions out of self-preservation and the desire to keep his crew safe, Trig answers every single thing Kira asks of him. He’s been on the Wallfish for about five years, not counting all the time spent in cryo - which we actually aren’t told how long that was - and Kira is shocked because Trig must’ve been extremely young to join the crew. Apparently Trig was so annoying that the station he was on practically paid Falconi to take him off their hands and voila, the station had peace and Falconi had an irritating brat. No, I’m kidding. Actually, Trig was bored with station life and asked Falconi to take him away, so Falconi did.

 

Add charges of kidnapping and child endangerment to Falconi’s list.

 

Kira’s like you must like him a lot, and Trig says Falconi is the best captain and it’s not his fault they’re stranded here and oops the kid said too much. Instead of backing off, Kira wheedles even more information out of him, and Trig tries to evade until Kira pulls the “our lives are in danger” card on him. Because Kira’s a selfish bitch who calls other people out on putting her life in danger, but doesn’t think twice about her putting other people’s lives in danger. Trig wilts like an unwatered flower and says Nielsen books the jobs and she was hired on last year, real time, and instead of letting Trig talk and get everything out, Kira has to take a sidequest and ask if Trig likes Nielsen. Trig blushes, so I guess he likes her, and he likes her a lot more than Hwa-jung (and here, jung is italicized for emphasis because Trig is being a little snot, I guess, and is sore that Hwa got mad at him for not being able to pronounce her name. Because who doesn’t want someone to pronounce their name correctly?) and he calls Nielsen “nice” and blushes even more, which makes me think that “nice” in this context is being used as a sexual euphemism, especially when Trig has to walk back what he said and goes “not like that” to clarify he didn’t mean “nice” in a sexual way. The awkwardness continues as Trig says they’re lucky to have her aboard as first officer and definitely not as a ship hooker.

 

So if a lady who works a truck stop is called a “lot lizard” and a lady who chases cowboys is called a “buckle bunny”, what would a lady who works a ship be called? “Space spanker”?

 

Aaaanyway, Kira decides that’s enough about torturing an obviously post-pubescent teenage boy about girls, so Kira changes tactics and says that Nielsen didn’t choose the job that brought them here. Trig says that’s right, but the normal jobs we were doing weren’t paying the bills, so Falconi found them another job. It went south. Because these people just aren’t cut out for the life of a smuggler and pirate. This whole debacle is soon over as Trig hands Kira a bunch of clothes, and they part ways. Kira goes back to her cabin thinking about how Falconi is a Han Solo reject but he’s a good captain. The way Trig reacted so enthusiastically to her question proves that. Not that the kid has been psychologically tortured and has a case of Stockholm Syndrome so he’s forced to react that way or anything smarmy like that. She gets back into her cabin and finds that there’s a message for her. It’s from Greg. He talks something about being the spark in the void, a “widdershin scream” in the night, an eschatological nightmare - and I had to look up what “eschatological” means because I don’t know this word, and it’s an adjective that means “relating to death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and humankind” so that is fucking creepy as shit that Greg is saying he’s this kind of nightmare for Kira - and that he is “the one and the word and the fullness of the light”.

 

So what is he, Neo and Jesus rolled into one?

 

Then Greg rips off the Jigsaw Killer from Saw when he asks Kira “would you like to play a game? Y/N”.

 

As a rule, ship minds tended to be eccentric, and the larger they were, the more eccentricities they displayed. Gregorovich was on the outer tail of that bell curve, though. She couldn’t tell if it was just his personality or if his behavior was the result of too much isolation.

 

Wait, what? “As a rule, ship minds tended to be eccentric”? No! You don’t want your “ship mind” being eccentric! You want your ship mind to be logical and practical - and okay, maybe you want it to have a little personality too because interacting with monotone-Spock every day might get a little tedious (and I love me some Spock, and there were times he did show emotions) especially when all the thing does is recite back numbers and probabilities and not give a tiny spark of hope ever - but you don’t want it to be fucking crazy and think that trapping you in the bathroom and shutting off life support is a fun game! You need to trust your ship mind, you need to trust that it trusts you, and that it actually cares for you! And that last line is very telling, about Greg’s isolation. It means nobody on this ship treats him like a friend. Nobody talks to him, nobody treats him as if he’s real. He’s just a computer, he can’t feel anything. Certainly can’t feel that laser biting into his hull and tearing a hole in the metal. 

 

Kira pisses on people with mental illnesses and says that Falconi isn’t crazy enough to fly around with an unstable ship mind, right? Because Kira can’t think of any other reason why Falconi would keep Greg around, apparently. Anyway, Kira tells Greg no, to which he gives her an emoticon frowny face. No. Seriously. It’s a legit emoticon in the text. Are we sure this is a “for adults” book?

 

Anyway, Kira strips out of her jumpsuit, washes her new clothes and hangs them up to dry, then checks the Jelly ships and practices with the Limp Dick to try to remove it from different parts of her body and improve her control over it. So much for Limp Dick being a partner. Poor thing is just a tool to be used and controlled. Eventually Kira goes to sleep, and then there’s a subchapter break whereupon she dreams something about the Plaintive Verge, which I’m assuming is some place under water, and seeing the Abyssal Conclave, whatever that is, and then seeing some massive thing with a thousand lidless eyes. She dreams of a name - Ctein - and that whoever she is in the dream is joined with some flesh called the Shoal Leader Nmarhl - who wants to run away as fast as she can, but it’s too late and then there’s a page break!

 

So why do we have subchapters when we also use three little stars to represent a page break? Such is the mystery of life, I guess.

 

Kira wakes up and contemplates her dream and decides that the name Ctein evokes fear in the Limp Dick, but ultimately decides that it’s not even Limp Dick’s fear, but whoever it was joined with before Kira. She decides it’s trying to warn her but can’t figure out what it’s trying to warn her about, and instead of asking the alien organism she just chalks it up to the Limp Dick being anxious or that it was trying to show her how dangerous the Jellies are, not that she needs any help in that arena. Go fuck yourself, Kira. She then complains that everything would be so much easier if it could talk. Go fuck yourself again, Kira. Why don’t you take some initiative and try to talk to it instead of waiting for it to talk to you? Seriously, show the alien some respect, Kira. Don’t just assume because it’s easier for you to do that. Put a little effort in.

 

Kira then makes a diary entry about her dream but while she’s sure it would be a “mistake to discount the xeno’s concern” she doesn’t really know what the thing is concerned about and therefore she just completely ignores it otherwise. She then gets out of bed, which is once again covered in alien poop-dust, and checks on the Jellies. They’re only “hours away” from the station now, and the defenders have put themselves only “several hours’ burn away from the station” so they can have room to maneuver as they fight. Please note that Kira is experiencing zero emotion about any of this. Kira then tells us that Malpert station has a mass driver that I guess is like a giant catapult system because she describes it as being used to “fling loads of metal, rock, and ice deeper into the system” - which is a super bad idea, because if any of that is caught in the gravitational pull of the asteroid, or anything else for that matter, it could slingshot around and come back at Malpert twice as fast as when it got slung away - which is a huge thing not meant for fighting small, mobile targets like ships, but whoever’s in command currently has it turning as fast as its thrusters will allow so it can fight, too.

 

Mara: The whole mass driver thing is actual working technology. The mass driver itself doesn’t exist yet, but it’s basically the idea of making a massive rail gun. Naval rail guns can fire a projectile at over 4,500 mph. So, assumedly, a mass driver would be able to exceed those speeds... I could be wrong, but such a speed should be able to get an object out of gravity fast enough to stop it from ever being affected, or at least minimize the effect.

 

Dienne: Well, that would have been nice if it was explained in the book because I’m not going around to check on his science and look up shit that I don’t know. I don’t read a book to have to go read another book to find out what I’m reading about in the first book.

 

Mara: Oh, I know. He’s just assuming people know this shit.

 

Kira has no emotions about this, either.

 

She gets clean, dressed, and goes to the galley, where she finds it empty save for the cat, who’s up on the counter getting a drink out of the sink faucet. Kira tells the cat to shoo, and I swear to god right now Mr. Fuzzypants is my favorite character in his book because a) he doesn’t talk and b) he hates Kira. Case in point, Kira tries to pet the cat, but he tries to tear her hand to pieces with his claws. Kira calls the cat a “little bastard” because he hasn’t jumped on the bandwagon of Team Kira and isn’t flipping himself upside down to get some belly rubs from the bitch who put hundreds of thousands of people in danger for her desire for fame and for her desire to be a one-woman army that saves the day at any cost except to herself.

 

...You know, they say cats know people. They know who they can be friendly with, who they should be afraid of, who they shouldn’t get close to. Cats know danger. Cats know ugly, mean-spirited people. Kira is an ugly, mean-spirited person.

 

Kira then has a leisurely breakfast - notice how she hasn’t wondered one time where the crew of the Wallfish is and what they might be doing - and watches the Jellies get closer. She tells us it’s a useless exercise, but hey, there’s nothing else exciting on tv right now.

 

That’s right. Kira has just likened imminent war and casualties to an “exciting tv show”.

 

I can’t even.

 

The Wallfish is closing in on their hiding place, and why we care about that, I don’t know. Vishal eventually enters the galley to get himself some tea and he invites Kira to watch the fireworks on the big screen in the control room, because apparently that’s where everyone is, watching the unfolding events like it’s the Super Bowl or the World Cup (enter whatever sport you want here) instead of doing things like... I dunno. Preparing the ship to enter a warzone. Ensuring the passengers are safe in the hold. Ensuring there’s a way to allow the INNOCENT PASSENGERS WHO PAID TO GO TO RUSLAN NOT A FUCKING MINING STATION to escape in the even the Wallfish is blown to smithereens. I’m surprised there isn’t a giant bowl of popcorn being passed around. There is, however, coffee.

 

Kira asks if anything new has happened. Sparrow says there’s been a lot of chatter on the military communication system, as the UMC is coordinating with the people around Malpert to set up IED’s for the Jellies. Kira’s like, wait, you have access to military channels? Sparrow realizes she said too much and Falconi is like, you know how it is. Ships talk, word gets around. There are no secrets in space. Yeah. Right. Kira ultimately decides not to press the point, but she wonders just how shady Falconi really is and whether Sparrow had been in the military. It would make some modicum of sense... No. Not really. If Sparrow had been in the military, it’s likely she would know the codes and such to hack into the communication system, but unless the military isn’t in the habit of changing its channels and codes on a regular basis, she wouldn’t be able to get her hands on any codes since her discharge.

 

Oh. Wait. Who am I kidding? This is a Paolini story. The good guys are handed everything on a silver platter.

 

Nielsen says the Jellies will be in shooting range soon and the fireworks will start any minute. Kira asks when they’ll reach the asteroid and Greg says fourteen minutes. So Kira grabs a chair and makes herself comfortable to watch the show. Instead of, you know, asking Falconi what preparations he’s made in the event they’re attacked before they get to the asteroid or if Schrödinger’s Cat happens to walk across the intervening space between them and the giant hunk of space rock. Nope, she just snuggles her butt into that chair, and then we get a whole description of the ensuing battle. The station releases giant clouds of “chaff and chalk” to create a smokescreen of sorts, and the shooting starts. Nothing much happens except this side fires at that side, more chalk is released, the mass driver fires a giant slug of refined iron at a Jelly ship and misses, and then a random shot from “seemingly empty space” hits a Jelly ship through the middle and it explodes. Sparrow caps the moment by saying “Oh fuck yeah!” like her home team just scored a winning goal and things are looking up.

 

Kira is like what the fuck was that but without any shock or surprise. She just asks it. The Limp Dick communicates with her by telling her about ships burning in space, uncounted dead, sparkly motes in the darkness, and that’s the end of that. No more exploration there. Falconi orders Greg to pull in the radiators so they don’t get shredded, and Greg starts to argue with him about the likelihood of that happening, but Falconi says just do it so Greg obeys. There’s another “white-hot needle” that goes zooming across space, and we finally get an explanation as to what these blasts are. They’re “Casaba-Howitzers”. Kira has no idea what they are. Neither do I. I mean, I know what a Howitzer is, which is a piece of giant artillery that stands between a cannon and a mortar (not literally, but in design, as a cannon has a longer barrel than a Howitzer and a mortar shoots at higher angles of ascent and descent than the Howitzer) and is characterized by a short barrel and the use of small propellant charges to shoot projectiles over high trajectories with a steep angle of descent. They’re also organized in groups called batteries.

 

So I already know that this “Casaba-Howitzer” isn’t being used in a battery because the two shots so far have come singly and not together. More, it feels like this is “ye olde science-fiction energy cannon” or a giant-ass railgun that needs time to charge in between shots.

 

Unless we’re going with the idea that has been perpetuated by the US military, where they’ve been calling weapons called “gun-howitzers” (machines with relatively long barrels and high muzzle velocities combined with multiple propelling charges and high maximum elevations) simply “howitzers” for nigh on 60 years, and therefore “howitzer” is now just a generic term for a piece of artillery that is designed to attack targets using indirect fire.

 

I think we’re going with “generic long gun = howitzer” idea.

 

Hwa and Trig explain that the artillery fires a “bomb-pumped shaped charge(s)” but in this case the bomb is a nuke. Trig is eerily way too excited by this fact. Kira’s like, goddamn, I didn’t know that was a thing.

 

Seriously? You didn’t know that this standard piece of military weaponry was a thing? How old are you, Kira? How can you know so much about the military in the first couple of chapters of his book but then know absolutely nothing about what their standard weaponry is?

 

And the reason I say this is because Sparrow says they’ve had “Casaba-Howitzers for ages”, but they don’t use them much for obvious reasons (and what reasons are those? because they’re basically using tactical nukes?) but apparently they’re “fuck-simple to build” (uh... really? This thing shoots nukes. How can that be simple to build?) and apparently the plasma it fires moves at light speed, which makes the shot near impossible to dodge.

 

Wait. I thought the thing shot nukes not plasma. That’s a completely different ballpark of technology and science and engineering. Are we changing the rules to our story again, Chris? Only this time with technology instead of magic?

 

Well, the Jellies finally get on the scoreboard, managing to take out some human ships. All that’s said about that is a bland “Dammit” from Falconi. No emotion. No anger. No sadness. No jumping up to prepare his ship for the battle they’re flying directly into. Nope, just sits there and gives a generic complaint like he spilled his beer all over his favorite shirt.

 

Another plasma shot comes in and takes out another Jelly ship. Yay, cheering, yay. But the two remaining Jellies aren’t about to get caught with their pants down, so one starts firing directly at the Darmstadt while the other fires on the refueling platform. Guess which one blows up first. The mass driver then fires, but it misses the Jelly ship and instead hits a satellite, which explodes and creates a field of debris that starts peppering the Jelly ship and basically lames it. Hwa-jung uses a Korean expletive - Shi-bal - which is basically the equivalent to the English “fuck” or “shit”. I also looked it up, because I’m that kind of person, and the other translation is “to have sex with another”. I still have to wonder why, in 200 years, language hasn’t changed much and vernacular and vocabulary are very much the same as they are today. Anyway, this attack causes the Jelly ship’s engines to sputter out and die, making it a sitting duck and perfect for Kira’s espionage plan. She thanks Thule and looks at Falconi as if to tell him hurry up. He ignores her.

 

The Wallfish finally gets to its hiding place and continues to watch the ships fight each other. Sparrow points out that the Darmstadt is going to overheat soon, and true to her word, they begin to vent hydrogen so they can keep the lasers firing. We’re then literally told when the end comes, it comes fast. This... this is so boring. A small mining rig, manned of course, starts to pick up speed to ram the remaining Jelly ship. The ship is then blown to smithereens by the Jelly, and the Jelly avoids the debris, which allows the Darmstadt to blow it up. See, anticlimactic. Boring. Nothing exciting at all.

 

Apparently, though, it was exciting for Kira because she has a “death grip” on the arms of her chairs. I wish I had her view because I didn’t feel any sort of page-turning, edge of my seat excitement. The chapter ends with Falconi issuing an order to head for Malpert Station, and Kira glares at him, so he changes his order to head to the Jelly ship instead, which makes Nielsen protest. Or I’m assuming. Her speech tag is “said” but she gets an exclamation point, so I guess it’s serious protest. And... once again, the title has nothing to do with what happens in this chapter.

Next is Toryll with Chapter 5, Extremis.

Comments

[cmdrnemo]

Kira is the worst. She's not even a good protagonist. Mindless and boring are not great qualities for a main character.

I am also confused by these howitzers. Plasma is very much not a light speed thing. It could be a near light speed thing. In which xase he might be failing to describe bomb pumped x-ray or gamma ray lasers. Which use nuclear explosions as the light source then lase it to reduce drop off over distance and use that as the weapon. It's a cheap, easy to make, one time use laser system that is classic near future tech. One of those things we could build now. But, don't because what good would it do?

Except this mess doesn't act right. Those things don't charge up and fire one at a time. They just explode and you get a new one. May as well fire them all at once.

It could be a high powered rail gun that superheats the projectile while firing. That is almost how modern rail guns work. Because the atmosphere is in the way. It's not how rail guns work in space. And it's an unwanted side effect. We'd rather not do that. Missiles are so much more useful than plasma.

The system described here does not connect to reality. Only to classic soft science fiction. It really reads like a filtered simplified version of a dumbed down copy of a half understood idea.

[ultimate_cheetah]

Why do they use nukes? Doesn't that seem a little dangerous, especially with all the radiation. I know that space already has radiation, but it's probably better not to expose yourself to more radiation than necessary.

[cmdrnemo]

Radiation in space is rather like water in the ocean. It's not so much present as it is unending and everywhere.

Mostly the idea is to attach that as the warhead to a missile. Because shockwaves aren't a thing in a vacuum. You need either a direct hit. Which is fairly easy to prevent with counter missiles, guns, or lasers, or something that can detonate at range and still cause some effect.

There's also the concentration and timing to consider. A few random particles are not going to hurt anyone. And if they are only moving at a few thousand times faster than a bullet it'll probably take a couple hundred trillion years to get to a planet anyway. By that point the halflives are pretty much over.

Once you start arming space craft you are already talking about weapons that can wipe out all life on a planet. Heck even without guns. You just need some rope, time, and math and sending a "kill the dinosaurs" asteroid is super easy.

That's the biggest problem with James Cameron's Avatar sequel. Humanity can easily tug a couple of rocks into position and end the conflict. It would actually cost less resources than landing a diplomat.

It's also something of an issue with space craft design in the real world. Nukes in space are just an efficient energy source. But, getting them there is risky and dangerous and most people are not willing to sign off on normalizing their use.

[ultimate_cheetah]

Thanks. Would a good space battle system be spaceships using cables to fire asteroids at each other, or at a planet?

[cmdrnemo]

planets yes, very yes. Planets are super vulnerable to giant space rocks.

Spaceships less so. They can get out of the way. Even if the rock is coming at you at 164,000 miles an hour you still have a couple of months to evade.

Things that do work pretty well are:

Space armada parks deep in the Oort cloud and uses tugs to decelerate some very large rocks, putting them on course to hit Important Planet. Then the heroes have to split their forces between stop the rock (can't stop the rock, great song) and fighting the space armada that is protecting the rocks. This puts them wildly out of position for any space defense stations. So now they are weakened and unfocused. Oh no! How will they win?

Or planet Hasn'tBeenSpokenWithInnaWeek is suddenly lifeless, nearly airless, and it's oceans are boiling off into space. Right into a brand new rings system made of a large continents worth of dirt, cities, blah blah blah. But, was this natural like TotallyEvilEmpire claims. Or did they have something to do with it?

Or heroes are trying to sneak out of star system. Turning the engines on would be as subtle as fireworks on New Years. So instead they attach themselves to a large asteroid and build a small thruster that slowly spits out rocks. It'll take a few months to even begin to break free though.

This sort of thing gives you that soft sci-fi classic space action feel. But, also acknowledges that space is big and empty. Hiding in it is hard. And it takes time to do much of anything.

[ultimate_cheetah]

Thank you! For spaceship battles, should I use lasers, or should I use a warhead? Again, this is really fascinating.

[cmdrnemo]

It's really up to you. I prefer a bit of a mix. The original idea in Star Trek was that phasers were going to be incredibly damaging to hulls but do little to shields and photon torpedoes were going to disrupt shields but do very little to the hull. So combat was going to be a game of positioning to hit the enemies shields with rapid phaser follow up. While angling your own ship so if you take a torpedo you can bring one of the other shield faces to that side and let that absorb the phaser hits. This is why they were so big on the directional shields in the early years.

If you have something like that. So there's some consistency and the audience can see that the characters are making reasonable to good choices. That's going to get you more points than any amount of arguably physically accurate systems. One of the big problems with books like this one is that the audience has no understanding of the rules of combat in this setting. So they can't judge the stakes or the quality of the choices. It's why battles in Eragon fell so flat. If the audience is lacking information about the stakes they aren't going to feel the tension.

You don't need to worry about that for a passenger just hoping to survive. Or a redshirt engineer whose day doesn't really change in combat or out. But, if you are looking at the bridge and want to show the captain being good at captaining. Someone is going to need to explain why what he is doing is a good idea.

[epistler]

The system described here does not connect to reality. Only to classic soft science fiction. It really reads like a filtered simplified version of a dumbed down copy of a half understood idea.

Remember when Paolini bragged about how scientifically accurate this thing was going to be and how he spent a year studying physics just so he could get it all right?

Wow, who would have thought that would turn out to be a load of self-aggrandising bullshit? Not me, that's for sure.

[cmdrnemo]

He would have been better off spending that year learning about writing. Errors in the setting matter so much less if the story is any good.

[epistler]

Definitely. A mentorship with an editor who'll tell him the truth, some writing classes... anything that would take him out of his I'm a Bestseller So I Can Do Whatever the Fuck I Want bubble would be a good start.

[ultimate_cheetah]

Aaand some editing. Actually, a lot of editing. He seems to think that bigger = better.

[ultimate_cheetah]

• I still have to wonder why, in 200 years, language hasn’t changed much and vernacular and vocabulary are very much the same as they are today.*

I know! Hwa-jung uses "Fighting" all the time, which is a korean expression that means "Let's go!", in the encouragement sense. However, it comes from modern english. Hell, even a century ago, language has changed. Like why do they use Mrs. ,Miss, or Ms. Since this is a more egalitarian future, shouldn't they just use Ms?, or shouldn't gender-based honorifics have gone the way of the dodo?

[baronleduc]

Hey, I know people too, but I don’t expect them to stand their ground and fight a battle against an unknown alien race when they’re clearly outmatched and outgunned. Especially if they’re outmatched and outgunned. And sometimes even if they aren’t outmatched and outgunned.

If you may, I'll add a another point : not only they'll be outmatched and outgunned, but also they'll be outtrained. Firearms aren't for everyone and aren't certainly toys. There are reasons why we have restricted laws on guns. Besides, a civilian with a firearm is not automatically a soldier.

What Chris Paolini was thinking when writing this part (like most of this book)? Civilians aren't soldiers.

[epistler]

Besides, a civilian with a firearm is not automatically a soldier.

It's amazing how few people seem to get that. There's this mentality in some quarters that if you have a gun then the moment things go pear-shaped you'll magically turn into John McClane. Rather than, say, run away and hide in the cellar, or panic and surrender to the enemy, or accidentally shoot your own leg off.

[ultimate_cheetah]

And it takes time to learn how to kill people. It's hard to kill another person, or another sentient being. That's why soldiers are specially trained to be desensitized to violence. Even if you have a gun up to someone's head, that's no guarantee you'll pull the trigger.

[epistler]

Oh yeah. I mean you don't even have to be in a situation where you're asked to kill another person to figure out that you don't have it in you. On multiple occasions I've been faced with a captured mouse and couldn't bring myself to harm it. The one time I actually did kill the creature (it was already stuck in a trap and I had to finish the job) I felt horrible about it for days. Another human being, staring me in the face, silently begging for his life? Forget it. Not a snowball's chance in hell.

[ultimate_cheetah]

Exactly. I don't even kill bugs. (And I once reamed a kid (who was close to my age) for kicking a moth. He was too shocked to reply.) I catch spiders and let them go outside. I couldn't kill a human at all, or even a sentient alien. It's really really hard to harm another creature. This trait is in most humans. Studies show that humans are less likely to harm an object if it has a face (even one that's drawn on).

Kira, however, just goes warhammer on the Jellies and immediately starts slaughtering them en masse.

[epistler]

Studies show that humans are less likely to harm an object if it has a face (even one that's drawn on).

Or even if you give something a name. Ever see that bit from Community where the lawyer guy holds up a pencil, introduces it as "Steve" and then snaps it in half and everyone winces?

Kira, however, just goes warhammer on the Jellies and immediately starts slaughtering them en masse.

Because of course she does, because she's a Paotagonist and that's just what they do. I mean if you want to have a character who's immediately okay with killing things at least write them as an ex soldier or something.

[cmdrnemo]

Or a farmer or rancher. Militaries like recruiting them. In part because they get used to killing as part of the job. People are mechanically close enough that a dead person and a dead pig have the same smell and similar enough appearance.

[baronleduc]

I don't even kill bugs.

I wouldn't mind killing bugs.

Except hornets. Not because I like them, but I'm terrified of them. If I found one inside my house, I'll freak out.

[baronleduc]

In the documentary " The Vietnam War", by Ken Burns, veterans told that when they were trained, instructors demonized the Vietcon as worse than monsters, so when they'll meet them on the battlefield, marines won't hesitated to eleminate the enemy.

The idea of drill instructors is basically to break the civilian part of the recruit to become a soldier.

The army is a harsh industry. No wonder why there are veterans who have difficulties to fit back into the society after their tours.

[epistler]

This is also why in movies, enemy goons usually have face-covering helmets or hoods or similar - so the viewer won't see them as people and therefore not care about them getting killed.

[baronleduc]

There's this mentality in some quarters that if you have a gun then the moment things go pear-shaped you'll magically turn into John McClane

I played alot of CoD Modern Warfare (I have a new pc since the beginning of this month), so technically, I know how to use an automatic rifle, right ?

... right???

/s

[minionnumber2]

I mean, we're kind of making a lot of assumptions about the gun culture of these miners? Trig's statement implies they're already familiar with self-defense against "jackers", so we're already a few steps ahead of your typical city slicker in terms of being familiar with a weapon. And Sparrow mentions that defending yourself from Space Criminals is not the same as going to war, so I personally can't really hold this short exchange against Paolini.

[ultimate_cheetah]

A full scale battle is different though, and the Jellies have superior weaponry, so the miners were outgunned. If you aren't specially trained for that situation, it's likely that you would obey your "flight" instinct and run. It would be easier to kill the Jellies than other humans, though, since Jellies don't like humanoid in the slightest.

[minionnumber2]

Guess I have a hard time believing that training for conflict is an all or nothing kind of thing. They've demonstrably got at least some experience with life threatening situations, even if it's not on the same scale as a full on war or full on unit formations. While that's no guarantee that they'll be successful, it does put them at a different baseline than someone with no experience in these situations.

[minionnumber2]

I’m reminded of the Irken invaders. I wonder if Zim or a Zim equivalent will appear...

Greg's behavior suddenly makes much more sense. ~InSaNe PeNgUiNz Of DoOm~ style of humor.

[epistler]

I'm going to sing the Doom song! DOOM DOOM DOOMY DOOM DOOM! LOL RANDOM!

[ultimate_cheetah]

MORE RANDOM! DOOM DOOM DARKNESS DESTRUCTION HEAVY METAL OMG SO GOTH DOOM DEATH

[minionnumber2]

*stabs j00* LOL hiya, I'm Minion and I'm a pineapple! Spork!!!!1! Sometimes I just say that lol XD The fish are taking over my MIND!

[ultimate_cheetah]

*maces joo back* The fish? My mind is a tiger. Much Orange. Sociopath Ra'zac.