Everyone's a WarCriminal: the Mil-SciFi Thread

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StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

ahahah naw I'm still here, lurking. Keep on posting you brave idiot goon

# ? Jan 1, 2020 12:35

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# ? Apr 29, 2024 02:45

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

My new year's resolution was to only read good stuff, like incredibly gay moomin/snufkin fanfic, but I accidentally read one of the honor harrington posts and yeah I'm gonna need plenty of missiles in 2020. My brain is broken.

# ? Jan 1, 2020 13:47

Deptfordx: Dec 23, 2013

Kchama posted:

I see everyone's New Year's Resolution was to abandon the Mil-Scifi Fiction thread.

Wise posters, one and all.

Not so, my ability to make poor life decisions is as strong as ever.

# ? Jan 1, 2020 14:51

FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

out of the names of all the myriad ship's boats in the age of sail, Weber sure did fall in love with the word pinnace

# ? Jan 2, 2020 01:38

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

FuturePastNow posted:

out of the names of all the myriad ship's boats in the age of sail, Weber sure did fall in love with the word pinnace

Hey, there's also cutters! Which are the same thing but slightly bigger and with actual engines.

Anyways, it's time for...

On Basilisk Station Chapter Sixteen

Hello all! I am here to share with you all my New Year's Resolution... To never finish tormenting you even as the year 2020 ends! Let's get right into this!

quote:

Scotty Tremaine hit the powered adjustment button and stretched hugely as the purring motor moved the copilot's seat back from the pinnace's console. He rotated his shoulder joints, grimacing as he worked the stiffness from them, then rose.

"I'll be back in a few minutes, Ruth," he told his pilot.

"No sweat, Mr. Tremaine." Coxswain Third Class Ruth Kleinmeuller grinned. "I don't guess the planet's going anywhere till you get back, Sir."

"Probably not," he agreed, and opened the cockpit hatch. He made his way down the cramped passage (pinnaces were little larger than pre-space jumbo jets) to the flight engineer's cubicle and poked his head in.

Oh boy it's about Tremaine, who everyone loves! Also, it's really jarring the sudden comparison to 'pre-space jumbo jets'. It's such an odd in-universe reference. Also, jumbo jet passages are actually pretty spacious when you don't have five hundred people seated in one.

quote:

"How's it going?"

"Nothing, Sir." The rating manning the sensor equipment wrinkled her nose at him. "As far as this outfit's concerned, we're flying over lots and lots of nothing."

"I see." Tremaine smothered a smile at her tone. Her reply was respectful and reasonably cheerful, but he heard the disgust under its surface. His people had been less than pleased to be detached to customs work at the outset, but that had changed over the past few hectic weeks. They'd learned to take a positive glee in making a major bust, and what it was doing to their bank accounts back home didn't hurt. Now they actively resented any diversion from the steadily thinner pickings of the orbital traffic.

"Y'know, Sir," a voice said from behind him, "without more pinnaces, this is going to take a long time."

Tremaine turned to face PO Harkness.

"Yes, PO, I do know," he said mildly. "But unless you happen to have a half-dozen more of them tucked away in your locker, I don't see anyone else we can assign to it. Do you?"

"No, Sir," Harkness said. The ensign, he reflected, had come a long way since that first contraband discovery. Harkness liked Tremaine�he was neither an arrogant snot, like too many ensigns who were afraid of betraying their inexperience, nor the sort to avoid responsibility�but he'd been testing the youngster. There were many ways to find out just what an officer had inside, and there were depths to young Mr. Tremaine the casual observer might not suspect.

"I was just thinking, Sir," the petty officer went on after a moment.

"About what, PO?"

"Well, Sir, it occurred to me that we're diverting one pinnace full-time from customs work, right?" Tremaine nodded. "With the close passes we have to make, this is going to take days then," Harkness went on, "but what about all the other boats?" Tremaine cocked his head and made a little "go on" gesture with his fingers. "The thing I was thinking, Sir, is that each of those other boats is making at least six space-to-ground passes every day�down and back every time they change off crews�and that got me started wondering. Couldn't we maybe reroute their landings and liftoffs? I mean, they've got the same sensors we've got, don't they?"

"Hmmmm." Tremaine rubbed his chin. "That's true enough. We could lay off flight paths to cover this entire hemisphere, couldn't we? And that would free us up to cover the other side of the planet." He nodded slowly, eyes narrowing in thought, and Harkness nodded back.

"This, PO," the ensign said judiciously, "bears thinking on. Thanks."

"You're welcome, Sir," Harkness said, and Tremaine headed back to the cockpit and the pinnace's com.

What an interesting scene. ... Okay, that was sarcasm. And then we get to a bit that Weber clearly thought was super funny, but definitely isn't.

If I have to suffer the Treecats, then so do you posted:

Lieutenant Commander Santos stepped into the briefing room and paused behind the captain's chair. Honor was busy perusing the latest data on planetary power usage and didn't hear her come in, but she looked up at the sound of a sudden, juicy crunch.

Nimitz's buzzing purr confirmed her suspicions, and she shot a humorous glare at Santos as she saw the celery stalk clutched in the treecat's right true-hand. Nimitz's carnivore fangs weren't designed for vegetable matter, despite his tree-dweller origins. Treecats were the top of Sphinx's arboreal food chain, preying on the smaller vegetarians and omnivores who inhabited their domain, and his needle-sharp teeth shredded the celery into stringy green strands�wet, stringy green strands�as he chewed.

Santos gave her a half-apologetic glance as she watched the 'cat make a blissful mess, and Honor shook her head.

"You know that stuff's bad for him, Dominica," she chided.

"But he likes it so much, Skipper," Santos excused herself.

"I know he does, but he can't metabolize it�not fully, anyway. He's got the wrong enzymes. It just fills him up, and then he picks at his supper."

Nimitz paused in his chewing. His vocal apparatus might be utterly unsuited to anything resembling human speech, but he understood a surprisingly large vocabulary, and he'd heard this particular speech from his person too often over the years. Now he gave her a disdainful glance, flirted his tail, and rose on his rear feet to rub his head against Santos's arm, making his views on the subject abundantly clear. The engineer was his favorite among Fearless's officers�probably, Honor reflected darkly, because she always had a stash of celery somewhere about her person these days�and Santos grinned down at him.

"Well," Honor sighed finally, "I guess I should be used to it. The little devil always finds someone to pander to his vices."

"He is kind of cute, isn't he?" Santos agreed. She gave the 'cat an affectionate chin rub, then sank into an empty chair at the table, and Honor smiled. She was, she reflected, a terrible sucker where people with a kindness for treecats were concerned.

"You wanted to see me about something?" Santos asked after a moment.

Useless treecat worship. THis never ends. Oh wait, actual plot-related stuff!

Snipping a bunch of chatter so this isn't such a long post.

Cardones has good reason to be wary posted:

"Problem, Ma'am?" Cardones sounded a trifle wary, and Honor smiled.

"Nothing to do with your department. It's just�"

She paused again as the hatch opened once more. McKeon wore coveralls over his uniform, and there was grease on them. That was one thing Honor unreservedly approved of in her prickly executive officer; he was never above getting his own hands dirty.

"You sent for me, Captain?" he asked, far more formally than Cardones. Honor nodded, feeling her own face stiffen with a chill of answering formality, and pointed at the chair opposite Santos.

"I did," she said. McKeon sat. "How's the missile feed problem?" she asked, trying�again�to draw him out.

"Nothing major, Captain. I think it's pretty much solved," he replied crisply, and she hid a sigh. Behind her, Nimitz stopped crunching his celery for a moment, then resumed with more restrained gusto.

"Well," she said, "as I was telling Rafe, we have a problem. We're trying to spot unusual power flows, and we don't have a reliable base usage to pick them out of." McKeon nodded, gray eyes thoughtful but cool in his expressionless face.

"What I want you and Rafe to do," Honor went on, "is take all the input from the solar collector taps and compare it to Major Isvarian's rough estimates. What I'm looking for is a total usage figure over several days' time for each enclave, one we can relate to his estimate on a proportional basis."

She paused, and Cardones glanced at the first officer, as if waiting for him to ask a question. When McKeon only nodded, he cleared his own throat.

"Excuse me, Ma'am, but what good will that do us?"

"Maybe not a lot, Rafe, but I want to see how close Barney came in his original estimate. If he's close, or if he's off by the same proportion in each case, then we'll have both an indication of his numbers' reliability and some idea of what a given enclave's power needs should look like. If he's close in most cases but off by a large factor in one or two instances, we'll have an indication that the ones outside his estimate bear closer examination."

Cardones nodded. McKeon simply sat silently, waiting.

"In addition," Honor went on, "I want the changes in power demand tracked on an hourly basis. Get a feel for the pattern. In particular, I want to know if any of them use large amounts of power during local down periods�especially late at night, for instance. Compare the fluctuations in power usage between all the enclaves on a time basis. If demand drops by a lower percentage in one or two of them, I want to know about it. From what Major Isvarian and his NPA types tell me, a mekoha lab wouldn't be able to shut down in mid-process, so if someone's power levels remain high when all their neighbors' drop, we may have an indication that we're closing in on the lab."

Cardones nodded again, eyes bright with interest. Unlike, Honor noted, McKeon's.

"I'll get right on it, Ma'am," the exec said after a moment. "Will there be anything else, Captain?"

"No," Honor said quietly, and McKeon rose with a quick nod. He beckoned to Cardones, and the two of them filed out. Honor watched the hatch close
behind them and sighed.

And it's time for more drama! Oh boy! I'll preserve it because it's at least character stuff.

Character Stuff posted:

"Skipper?" It was Santos, her voice soft, and Honor flushed. She'd forgotten the engineer's presence, and she castigated herself silently for betraying her concern over McKeon in front of one of her other officers. She made herself turn to Santos, hiding her chagrin.

"Yes, Dominica?"

"I�" The engineer paused, looking down at her hands on the edge of the table, then squared her shoulders. "About the commander, Ma'am," she said. "I don't�"

"Lieutenant Commander McKeon isn't your concern," Honor said quietly.

"I know that, Ma'am, but�" Santos drew a deep breath, disregarding her captain's clear hint to drop the subject. "Skipper, I know you're concerned about him. For that matter," it was her face's turn to darken, "I know you were concerned about all of us. We . . . weren't exactly on the top of our form when we got here, were we?"

"Have I complained?" Honor asked, and met Santos's eyes levelly when the engineer looked up.

"No, Ma'am. But, then, you wouldn't, would you?" Santos's voice was as level as Honor's eyes, and Honor made a tiny, uncomfortable gesture with her hand. Nimitz swarmed down into her lap, still clutching the stub of his celery stalk, and lifted the front third of his body onto the table to look back and forth between the two women.

"The thing is, Skipper, I've known Alistair McKeon for a long time," Santos went on quietly. "He's a friend�and I'm your next senior officer."

Honor sighed and leaned back. She ought to shut Santos up, she thought. If there was one thing she hated, it was discussing an officer behind his back, especially with one of his juniors. But she was very nearly at the end of her rope where McKeon was concerned. She'd tried everything she could think of to reach him�to make him the true second-in-command she needed, not simply an efficient, perpetually unengaged automaton�and failed. And there was no malice or spite in Santos's voice, only concern. Besides, Dominica was right; she was Honor's next most senior officer, third in Fearless's chain of command, with not just the right but the duty to speak up if she saw a problem.

The engineer's expression relaxed a bit at her captain's reaction, and she reached out to stroke Nimitz's ears, keeping her eyes on her fingers.

"Alistair is a good officer, usually, Skipper," she said. "More than that, he's a good man. But if you'll pardon my saying so, it's pretty obvious the two of you just aren't on the same wavelength, and I don't think it's because you haven't tried. I've never seen him like this, and I'm worried about him."

Honor watched Santos thoughtfully. There was no self-serving edge in the engineer's voice, only concern. This was no attempt to curry favor with her commander or cut her immediate superior's throat when he was absent and unable to defend himself.

"And?" she said, unable�and unwilling�to criticize McKeon by agreeing with Santos's statement and voicing her own concern.

"I just�" Santos paused, staring down at the fingers caressing the treecat. "I just want you to know that whatever's wrong is hurting him, too, Skipper," she said finally. "He tries not to show it, but I think he thinks he's letting you down�letting the ship down. And he is, in a way. I don't know why, but he's just not involved the way he was under Captain Rath, and he loves every scrape and dent of this old ship." She raised her head and looked around the briefing room, eyes slightly misty, and smiled. "So do I," she admitted. "She's old, and they raped her when they gutted her armament, but she's a grand old bitch. She won't let us down in the crunch, and�" she met Honor's eyes again "�neither will Alistair. Whatever his problem is, he won't let you down when it really counts, Skipper. That's�" She paused again, then waved her hand. "That's all I wanted to say."

"I understand, Dominica," Honor said softly.

"Yes, Ma'am." Santos stood and inhaled sharply, then gave Nimitz one last caress and squared her shoulders. "Well, I guess I'd better get back on those taps, Skipper," she said more briskly, and followed McKeon and Cardones out the hatch.

Nimitz settled down in Honor's lap to finish his celery, and she leaned back, running her hand down his flank in long, slow strokes while she considered what Santos had just said. It must have taken guts�and deep concern�for the engineer to risk exposing herself that way. (It never occurred to Honor to wonder if her own actions or example might have had anything to do with Santos's openness.) Most officers, she reflected, would have taken great care to distance themselves from an executive officer they suspected was in bad odor with his CO, lest any of the captain's displeasure splash on them. And how Dominica had said it was just as important as what she'd said. Her concern was obvious, and it was for the ship as a whole first and for McKeon as a person second, but the fact that she cared about McKeon was clear.

'It had never occured to Honor to wonder if she was All Good In The Universe', which she clearly is'.

End of Chapter posted:

And important, Honor decided. It spoke well for any officer that one of his juniors would speak up for him, especially when it was the junior who stood to gain the most if he fell short of his commanding officer's standards. More than that, Santos's remarks reinforced her own judgment that McKeon was grappling with something inside himself, something that even the engineer didn't fully understand.

Dominica Santos would not have spoken for an officer she didn't believe was worth defending, however much she liked him. Honor was certain of that, and as she replayed her own encounters with McKeon, she realized the engineer was right. Whatever his problem was, however hard it seemed for him to meet his captain halfway, he was doing his job. Not as well as he could have, not without a distinctly dangerous disengagement and brittleness, and definitely not the way Honor would have preferred, but he was doing it. He was making himself do it, even while it was obvious that something was tearing him up inside.

She sighed and rose, transferring Nimitz to her shoulder as the 'cat popped the last half-centimeter of celery into his mouth. He pressed his chin into her short hair, chewing happily, and she folded her hands behind her and started for the hatch herself.

It wasn't fair. She shouldn't have to make allowances for her executive officer, shouldn't have to worry about his support or what inner problems were affecting his duty. But no one had ever said life was fair, and the RMN tradition was that there were no bad crews, only bad captains. That applied to the captain's officers, as well. Much as she might want, even need, for McKeon to drop his barriers, it was her job to work with him�or to replace him. And she couldn't replace him. Not simply because the "chemistry" between them was bad.

And not, she thought as the hatch opened, when Santos was right. Somehow, Honor knew, whatever might be bothering Alistair McKeon, he wouldn't let her down in the crunch.

I'd find all this a lot more interesting if the story hadn't already made it clear just exactly is McKeon's problem, and it's just petty jealousy.

# ? Jan 2, 2020 04:56

Larry Parrish: Jul 9, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

I'm reading To Honor You Call Us, and tbh, this feels like the sailing ships in space, USN edition, that David Weber wanted to write but was too dumb to pull off. It's an Aubrey Marturin book but in space. But unlike the Drake version of the same idea, it's a lot more, I dunno, rote and predictable. I wouldn't say it's bad, and its definetly good for Kindle Unlimited, but honestly I might be bumping it up a few notches because I finished all the RCN books forever ago and the recent Weber read along has been painful.

Also the space ships arent bizarrely two dimensional and it's much more....submariney. It doesnt have the charm of Drake's solar sails and weird hyperspace, though. You got Alcubierre drives and jump drives, including the thing where ships take a few minutes to reboot after jump and it inexplicably makes people sick. It's not exactly an original work but it hasn't made me set it down in disgust yet.

Larry Parrish fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Jan 3, 2020

# ? Jan 3, 2020 03:50

StrixNebulosa: Feb 14, 2012; You cheated not only the game, but yourself.
But most of all, you cheated BABA

Excuse me, the treecat worship is perfect and I wouldn't have it any other way. I like how it's a cat/parrot fusion and loves making a mess and being terrible.

# ? Jan 3, 2020 11:58

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

StrixNebulosa posted:

Excuse me, the treecat worship is perfect and I wouldn't have it any other way. I like how it's a cat/parrot fusion and loves making a mess and being terrible.

It gets much more irritating as time goes on and retroactively spoils it forever. Weber can't keep a thing good for long!

# ? Jan 3, 2020 21:59

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

Kchama posted:

Also, it's really jarring the sudden comparison to 'pre-space jumbo jets'. It's such an odd in-universe reference. Also, jumbo jet passages are actually pretty spacious when you don't have five hundred people seated in one.

This is a perennial problem with sci-fi in general. Working with analogies is a really easy way to get a concept across to people, but the only way an analogy can work is if it is something that the audience is familiar with - and when the work is set 2100 years in the future, the reference is jarring.

You see this quite often with famous people - unless you've already established in-universe historical personalities, you're most likely to refer to Napoleon or Einstein - people who should be fairly obscure outside of their narrow field by this point.

Also, the passages in a jumbo jet might be spacious if nobody's sitting in them - as long as you haven't filled the thing with weapons, sensors, and another drive system - all of which a pinnace is explicitly stated to possess.

# ? Jan 3, 2020 22:18

Larry Parrish: Jul 9, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

at least einstein makes sense. like newtonian physics are named for newton, so hes still well known and will probably remain that way. ecluid also. maybe einstein will turn out to be completely wrong but it seems like a safe bet that he'd still be known in the future

# ? Jan 3, 2020 22:46

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

20th century physicist Einstein, who laid the foundation for all modern starcraft, didn't kill himself.

# ? Jan 3, 2020 22:54

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

He'd still be known and referenced, but I highly doubt that he'd continue to be the stereotypical "smart guy" in the year 4000 - just like we don't use Archimedes for that purpose.

# ? Jan 3, 2020 22:56

Patrat: Feb 14, 2012

Gnoman posted:

He'd still be known and referenced, but I highly doubt that he'd continue to be the stereotypical "smart guy" in the year 4000 - just like we don't use Archimedes for that purpose.

I figure the easy way to do this is to come up with a name of whomever worked out faster than light travel then use that, easy enough to establish and remember if you call it the 'Bob Drive' and keep referring to it.

# ? Jan 3, 2020 23:58

FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

If I remember right, a pinnace has no less than four propulsion systems: an impeller for faster spaceflight (but not the good kind of impeller than can make a hyperspace sail), thrusters for slow speed maneuvers, turbines for atmospheric flight, and a counter-grav so it can hover and land vertically. It also has laser guns, an inertia compensator so the impeller doesn't gib its passengers, and is made of "battle steel". This is all apparently powered by batteries because Weber later establishes that fusion reactors can't be miniaturized (since he makes a big deal about the space-fighter LACs having fission powerplants). These systems are crammed into something the size of a C-5 but shaped like the Space Shuttle.

Now a lot of that never made sense to me, because the Manticoran recon drones are powered by miniature fusion reactors, but maybe those are even bigger than a pinnace. Also once you've invented antigravity propulsion, your civilization has reached the end of the sublight tech tree and you won't need thrusters or turbines ever again.

FuturePastNow fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Jan 4, 2020

# ? Jan 4, 2020 00:28

Patrat: Feb 14, 2012

To be fair, the thrusters might be pretty tiny. I am imagining a couple of glorified fire extinguishers strapped to the outside of the hull to allow for cold gas maneuvering to dock without doing... whatever the gently caress tidal force mangling gravity manipulation drives might do to solid objects in immediate proximity.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 00:47

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

Patrat posted:

I figure the easy way to do this is to come up with a name of whomever worked out faster than light travel then use that, easy enough to establish and remember if you call it the 'Bob Drive' and keep referring to it.

There's a few scientists like that in this setting, and several setting do just that.

FuturePastNow posted:

If I remember right, a pinnace has no less than four propulsion systems: an impeller for faster spaceflight (but not the good kind of impeller than can make a hyperspace sail), thrusters for slow speed maneuvers, turbines for atmospheric flight, and a counter-grav so it can hover and land vertically. It also has laser guns and is made of "battle steel". This is all apparently powered by batteries because Weber later establishes that fusion reactors can't be miniaturized (since he makes a big deal about the space-fighter LACs having fission powerplants). These systems are crammed into something the size of a C-5 but shaped like the Space Shuttle.

Now a lot of that never made sense to me, because the Manticoran recon drones are powered by miniature fusion reactors, but maybe those are even bigger than a pinnace. Also once you've invented antigravity propulsion, your civilization has reached the end of the sublight tech tree and you won't need thrusters or turbines ever again.

There's distinct reasoning for all four drives, most of which show up in this book. As for power, Book 8 suggests that they're powered by the turbines, an internal fusion plant, or by thermal power converters. The big advantage of fusion plants was that they could power the new gunboats for years without the bulky fuel storage a fusion plant requires.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 00:48

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

FuturePastNow posted:

If I remember right, a pinnace has no less than four propulsion systems: an impeller for faster spaceflight (but not the good kind of impeller than can make a hyperspace sail), thrusters for slow speed maneuvers, turbines for atmospheric flight, and a counter-grav so it can hover and land vertically. It also has laser guns, an inertia compensator so the impeller doesn't gib its passengers, and is made of "battle steel". This is all apparently powered by batteries because Weber later establishes that fusion reactors can't be miniaturized (since he makes a big deal about the space-fighter LACs having fission powerplants). These systems are crammed into something the size of a C-5 but shaped like the Space Shuttle.

Now a lot of that never made sense to me, because the Manticoran recon drones are powered by miniature fusion reactors, but maybe those are even bigger than a pinnace. Also once you've invented antigravity propulsion, your civilization has reached the end of the sublight tech tree and you won't need thrusters or turbines ever again.

Gnoman posted:

This is a perennial problem with sci-fi in general. Working with analogies is a really easy way to get a concept across to people, but the only way an analogy can work is if it is something that the audience is familiar with - and when the work is set 2100 years in the future, the reference is jarring.

You see this quite often with famous people - unless you've already established in-universe historical personalities, you're most likely to refer to Napoleon or Einstein - people who should be fairly obscure outside of their narrow field by this point.

Also, the passages in a jumbo jet might be spacious if nobody's sitting in them - as long as you haven't filled the thing with weapons, sensors, and another drive system - all of which a pinnace is explicitly stated to possess.

I did some poking around, and recon drones are approximately half the mass of a modern jumbo jet's takeoff capacity, so recon drones can't be that big.

Also if pinnaces are the size of jumbo jets and eying various sizes of stuff in the Honorverse, then they shouldn't be big enough to have any room, as they're much too small to have the four engines and weapons plus a hundred crew. Also I'll be doing the next chapter soon.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 00:58

Larry Parrish: Jul 9, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

iirc the setting doesnt have true anti gravity reactionless drives, but 'countergrav', which isnt a reactionless drive despite affecting velocity without the use of newtonian motion. somehow. maybe they deploy parachutes but just call it that because its cool

# ? Jan 4, 2020 01:27

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

My favorite scifi FTL travel method is the "bloater driver" dreamed up by Harry Harrison.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 01:48

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

The only thing of his I ever read were the Stainless Steel Rat books, but looking it up, that's hilarious.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 02:04

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

ON BASILISK STATION Chapter 17

We�re about halfway through with the book! The Haven plot basically hasn�t moved at all, with Haven more or less in holding pattern until Honor finds their stuff.

�Hey you guys love Tremaine, right?!� posted:

"Well, now, Mr. Tremaine. Would you look at that?" Sensor Tech 1/c Yammata tapped his display, and Scotty Tremaine leaned close. To the untrained eye, the faint blotch of light in the center of the screen could have been anything; given what they'd been looking for, he knew it could be only one thing.

"How big?" he asked.

"Well," Yammata manipulated controls and frowned thoughtfully, "I figure they're shielded, Sir�I sure can't get a good read on the user end�but the feeder beam seems to be peaking at about two hundred kilowatts." He looked up and met the ensign's eyes expressionlessly. "That's a lot of juice for a bunch of Stilties."

"It is, indeed, Hiro," Tremaine murmured. "It is indeed." He shook himself. "What's the location?"

"Sixty-three klicks west-southwest of the Muddy Wash Valley, Sir," Yammata replied. He tapped another light blotch, smaller but much brighter. "That's their direct feed station, but it must be a relay. It's on the side of a ridge, well below its crest, and I don't see any up-link."

"Um-hum." Tremaine watched the display for a few more seconds while the pinnace's low-orbit sweep took it towards the horizon. Then he nodded and clapped the sensor tech on the shoulder. "Good job, Hiro. I'll make sure the skipper knows who spotted it."

"Thanks, Sir." Yammata grinned, and Tremaine turned to his NPA com officer.

"Punch up the ship, Chris. I think the Old Lady will want to know about this."

* * *

Hey it�s a very rare scene break that also indicates a change in PoV! There should be more of these! Also I wish Weber would stop with the obscure (in the sense that people who don�t research/belong to the military) terminology with that 1/c there. I know what it means, but it�s still irritating.

Also Yammata is probably suppose to be �Yamata�.

�It looks like you were right about the most obvious thing ever� posted:

"It looks like you were right, Honor." Dame Estelle Matsuko's face was distinctly unhappy on the com screen. "There's something there, anyway, and whatever it is, it certainly isn't legal. The entire Mossyback Range is off limits, and so is the Mossyback Plateau."

"It doesn't necessarily follow that it's a drug lab," Honor pointed out, and Dame Estelle snorted.

"Of course it doesn't�and if you can say that three times in a row with a straight face, I'll buy you a five-course dinner at Cosmo's."

Honor chuckled at the reference to Landing's most expensive, and exclusive, restaurant, but then she sobered.

"You're right, of course," she admitted. "And even if it isn't the lab, it's still illegal. The question, I suppose, is what you want to do about it, Ma'am."

"What do you think I'm going to do about it?" Dame Estelle's expression was grim. "Barney Isvarian is putting together a raiding party right now."

"Do you need any additional manpower? I could land some of Captain Papadapolous's Marines�?"

"I expect we've got all the troops we need, but thanks. I'll check with Barney. If he thinks he needs some help, I'll certainly let you know," Dame Estelle said gratefully.

�I understand that reference.� Anyways time for a scene and POV change that has no indicator whatsoever! We go next to the raid on the drug lab, because it�s obviously a drug lab.

�slithered� posted:

Major Barney Isvarian, Medusan Native Protection Agency, slithered forward through waist-high knobs of shemak moss and tried to ignore the chemical stench of its sap. His mottled fatigues and body armor weren't as good as the Corps' reactive camouflage, but they blended well with the monotonous background. The hugely out-sized insects that served Medusa as "birds" swooped and darted above the moss, and he made himself move even more slowly to avoid startling them. Unlikely though anyone was to be looking this way and notice a sudden eruption of bugs from the moss, it was still possible, and he had no intention of blowing this operation now.

He reached the crest of the rise and paused to catch his breath as Sergeant Danforth eased up beside him. Like Isvarian, Danforth was an ex-Marine, and he unlimbered his massive plasma rifle with reassuring competence. Alloy and plastic clicked as he mounted the one-hundred-fifty-centimeter weapon on its bipod, inserted the heavy power pack, and snapped the electronic sight into place. He hit the self-test switch with his thumb, then nodded and burrowed the stock into his shoulder, peering through the sight at the buildings below.

Isvarian checked his own sidearm, then raised his electronic binoculars to survey the same scene, and his lips pursed in grudging admiration. No wonder the aerial shots hadn't shown anything. The Corps itself couldn't have done a better job of concealing the place.

The structures were clearly off-world in origin�sturdy pre-fabs that might have come from any planet�but they were buried almost to the eaves, and their roofs had been covered in sod. Rolling knobs of shemak grew across them, completely breaking up their outlines, and he was willing to bet there was a hefty layer of insulation under each of those roofs to prevent any betraying heat signature. That would only make sense, particularly with the volcanic springs two klicks east of them. Waste heat could be ducted to them and lost forever in their natural cover.

He swallowed a sour curse as he reflected on the fact that the whole damned base had been built right under the NPA's nose. Admittedly, their hands had been full with other matters, but this was more than any single night's work. His people had had every opportunity to spot it going in, and they hadn't.

Well, they were about to make up for that, he reflected with a certain grim satisfaction.

He lowered his glasses and keyed his com twice without speaking, then waited. No one answered with the matching double click that would have indicated a perimeter team not yet in position, and he raised his glasses once more.

Not a sign of life, he mused. Just the silent, moss-covered roofs and walls. That showed more confidence�or stupidity�than he would have allowed himself. There should have been at least one lookout, however good they thought their camouflage was. But Isvarian wasn't the sort to look a gift horse in the mouth; if his opponents chose to give him the advantage of complete surprise, he certainly wasn't going to object.

He raised his wrist com to his mouth, never letting his eyes waver from the scene before him.

"Go," he said quietly, and idling turbines screamed to life fifty kilometers to the south. Six armed NPA skimmers rose on their counter-grav, pointed their noses north, and leapt ahead at full power.

Go, he said quietly, and then very loud vehicles started moving in. I know they�re very far away but it�s just a funny contrast.

�The rest of the assault� posted:

Isvarian held his glasses steady as the mounting roar of turbines swept up from behind him. It was faint, at first, little louder than the distant wind, but it grew by leaps and bounds as the skimmers roared forward at over nine hundred kilometers per hour. They exploded over Isvarian's perch in a wave of man-made thunder, battering him with turbine wash, and made one screaming pass above the outlaw base. Two of them killed velocity with savage power, going into a perfect hover directly above the buildings, and the other four peeled out to the sides, spreading to encircle the base before they grounded and popped their hatches.

Armed NPA cops poured out of them, eight from each grounded skimmer, and moved rapidly forward under cover of their transports' dorsal turrets, spreading out as they went. They advanced warily, half-crouched, weapons at the ready, but still there was absolutely no response from the structures, and Isvarian frowned. Half-buried or not, the occupants of those buildings would have to have been stone deaf to miss that thunderous arrival. Surely at least one of them should have poked his head out to see what as going on!

He was raising his com once more to order his strike commander to hold his positions when something cracked viciously from his left. He wheeled towards it as a terrible, gurgling scream sounded over the com, and a second flat, sharp explosion echoed over the rolling terrain. He saw a spurt of smoke this time�gray-white smoke, surging up out of the moss�and then the echoes of the two explosions were drowned in the rippling whine of pulse rifles on full auto.

Bright, spiteful flashes of white fire blossomed as the pulse darts shredded the moss about the burst of smoke like some crazed threshing machine, and Isvarian shook himself out of his momentary paralysis.

"Check fire!" he barked. "Check fire, drat it!"

The pulse rifles fell silent in near-instant response, and he darted a glance back at the base. Still no sign of life, and his strike party�frozen as the crackle of combat erupted behind them�began to move forward once more as it ended. They moved more quickly now, rushing to close with the buildings before anyone else got any ideas about opening fire, and he turned back to the flank. The stinking smoke of burning shemak floated on the wind, rising from the moss the darts had torn to ruin, and he coughed.

"This is Leader-One," he barked into the com. "What the hell happened over there, Flank-Two?"

"Leader-One, this is Flank-Three," a voice replied. It was flat and tight, over-controlled, and it wasn't Flank-Two. "Matt's dead, Barney. Don't know what it was. Some kind of projectile weapon, but not a pulser. Blew a hole the size of my fist through him, but it didn't explode."

"Oh, poo poo!" Isvarian groaned. Not Matt Howard. He'd been due to retire in two more years.

"Okay, Flank-Three," he said after a moment. "Make a sweep of the area and find out what the gently caress happened. And be careful, we don't want any more sur�"

The terrible, end-of-the-world concussion blew him flat on his back as the entire base erupted in a red-and-white fireball of chemical explosives.

Everything explodes, and bad stuff happens, and Yammata�s name is revealed to be Hiro Yammata so it has to be Yamata. Tsk, Weber, tsk!!

�Boom� posted:

"Holy Mother of�!"

Ensign Tremaine swallowed the rest of the phrase as a towering plume of smoke and dust spewed up from the base. An entire NPA skimmer cartwheeled away from it almost lazily, bouncing end-over-end across the ground for fifty meters before it disintegrated in a fireball all its own. One of the hovering skimmers vanished, plunging straight down into the inferno as some flying projectile smashed into its counter-grav coils and it lost lift. A fresh explosion roared up out of the chaos, and the last of the six skimmers staggered drunkenly across the sky. It careened downward, barely under control, and its port engine ripped away as it hit. The pilot lost it�dead, unconscious, or simply overpowered by the uneven thrust that spun his crippled mount in a wreckage-shredding ground loop over the rough terrain�but at least it neither exploded nor caught fire.

"There, Skipper!" Hiro Yammata snapped. "Oh-six-five!"

Tremaine ripped his gaze from the deadly chaos below him, and an ugly light blazed in his normally mild eyes as he saw the sleek, high-speed aircar darting out of its camouflage. It rocketed forward, accelerating madly as it streaked away, using a knife-edged ridge of rock for cover against Isvarian's stunned perimeter force.

"Ruth! Get me a pursuit vector on that son-of-a-bitch!" Tremaine snarled, and the heavy pinnace dropped like a homesick rock as Kleinmeuller chopped her counter-grav back to zero. She did more than that; she dropped the nose almost perpendicular to the ground, lined it up on the fleeing aircar, and gave her air-breathing turbines full throttle.

The pinnace shrieked and bellowed down the sky, and Tremaine hit the arming button. He'd never fired a weapon at another human being in his life, but there was no hesitation in him as the targeting screen flashed to life. Nor did he even consider calling upon the aircar to halt; he was no policeman or court of law, and its sudden flight on the heels of the explosion was all the proof of murder he needed. His lips drew back over his teeth as the target pipper moved steadily towards it, and his finger caressed the trigger grip.

The fleeing aircar's pilot probably never even realized the pinnace was there�not that it mattered one way or the other. His craft had the speed to out-distance anything the NPA had, but no pure air-breather could run away from a Fleet pinnace.

The pipper merged with the aircar, a tone sounded, Tremaine's hand squeezed, and a two-centimeter laser ripped its target into very, very tiny pieces and scattered them across the endless moss like tears of fire.

Dame Estelle was deathly pale on the briefing room com screen, and Honor knew her face showed her own shock. The triumph of finding the lab at last had turned to dust and ashes on her tongue as the commissioner recited the casualty figures. She should have insisted on using Papadapolous's Marines, she thought wretchedly. At least they'd have been in battle armor.

But she hadn't. Fifty-five dead and six wounded. Over ninety percent of the strike team had been killed, and every one of the survivors was injured, two critically. And one of the perimeter team was dead, as well. Sixty-one men and women, wiped away or hospitalized in the space of two minutes. It was a staggering blow to the small, tight-knit NPA, and she felt physically ill over the role she had played, all unknowing, in creating that slaughter.

"Dame Estelle," she said finally. "I'm sorry. It never occurred to me that�"

"It's not your fault, Honor," Matsuko said wearily. "Nor is it Barney Isvarian's, though I think it's going to be a long time before he accepts that. There had to have been a leak at our end. They must have known we were coming."

Honor nodded silently. The trap Isvarian's strike team had walked straight into had been deliberately designed to kill as many of them as possible. The druggers had evacuated well before the raiders arrived, but they could have blown their base any time they wanted to. They'd waited until the ground team was right on top of it, and that made it cold-blooded, deliberate murder.

"At least Ensign Tremaine nailed the ones who set it off," Dame Estelle went on. "That's something. I'd have liked to have prisoners, but don't you dare tell him that. He did exactly what I would have done."

"Yes, Ma'am." Honor managed a wan smile. "I'll tell him you said that, not chew him out for a perfectly normal combat response."

"Good." Dame Estelle scrubbed her face with the heels of her hands and straightened her shoulders with a visible effort. "Actually, I'm afraid what happened to Matt Howard worries me even more than what happened to the strike team," she said, and Honor blinked in astonishment.

The commissioner's mouth twisted at her expression, and she rose from behind her desk, turning the com terminal to direct its pickup at her coffee table. A strange weapon lay on it, looking very like some crude version of a pulse rifle, except that it had neither a magazine nor a proper stock. Instead of a vertical butt stock, it ended in a flat, horizontal arc of curved metal, perpendicular to the line of the barrel.

I�m not sure how I�d picture this rifle at all, to be honest. Though I imagine Honor would have a good enough idea what it is thanks to her extensive firearms knowledge that only first mentioned in like two books as opposed to the narration�s obliviousness.

�The Gun� posted:

"See this?" Dame Estelle's voice asked from beyond the pickup's range.

"Yes, Ma'am. What is it?"

"This is what killed Matt, Honor. My people tell me it's a single-shot, breech-loading flintlock rifle. One built for a Medusan."

"What?!" Astonishment startled the response out of Honor before she could stop it, and Dame Estelle's hands appeared on her screen as the commissioner lifted the clumsy-looking weapon.

"That was my response," she said grimly. "This�" she touched the curved metal arm "�is the butt plate. It's made of metal because there's no decent wood on the planet, and it's shaped like this because Medusans don't really have shoulders. It's designed to go across the firer's chest to absorb the recoil, but that's not the most interesting part of it. Look."

She turned the weapon on its side and gripped a small knob on the trigger guard, then cranked the entire guard through a half turn. A plug of metal dropped vertically out of the barrel, and the commissioner lifted it to show the opened breech to the pickup.

"It's a very ancient form of breech-closure for nitro-powder weapons, though I understand it usually operates in line with the barrel, not vertically." Dame Estelle's voice was almost distant, a dry, lecturer's voice like a buttress against her own shock. "It's called an 'interrupted screw,'" she went on. "Basically, it's nothing more than a long, coarse-threaded screw with the threads cut away on two sides so it only takes a half-turn to engage or disengage it. One of my com techs is an antique weapons buff, and she tells me it's the only practical way to achieve a gas-proof breech seal on a weapon that uses loose-loaded propellant. They shove a hollow-based projectile of soft lead about eighteen millimeters in diameter in here, put the powder behind it, and close the breech."

Her hands demonstrated on the screen, and she turned the weapon on its side.

"Then they pull back this hammer, which opens this little pan, and they put more loose powder into it. When they pull the trigger�"

The S-shaped hammer snapped forward, striking the lump of flint in its jaws against the roughened inner surface of the pan lid, and a brilliant spark flashed.

Dame Estelle dumped the weapon back onto the table and returned to her desk, swinging her terminal until she looked out of it at Honor once more, and her face was grim.

"A Medusan could reload this a lot more quickly than we could," she went on. "If he puts the butt directly over one of his arms, he could actually reload and re-prime it with that arm without even lowering it from firing position with the other two. And it's a lot longer-ranged and more accurate than you might think. The barrel is rifled, and the explosion of the powder�old-fashioned black powder, not even nitro-cellulose, they tell me�spreads the hollow base of the projectile, forcing it into the rifling and spin-stabilizing it. It's no pulse rifle, Honor, but according to my weapons buff's best guesstimate, this thing is probably accurate to two or even three hundred meters . . . and we have no idea how many of them are out there."

"Dear God," Honor murmured, her mind racing as she envisioned thousands of Medusans armed with those primitive but deadly weapons.

"Exactly," the commissioner said harshly. "It's crude, very crude, but that's because someone took considerable pains to make it look that way. The actual manufacture is quite good, and, given the current Medusan level of technology, it's an ideal weapon for them: simple, sturdy, and within their own manufacturing capabilities, even if only barely. But there is no way�no way�this many sudden advances could occur naturally in one lump. My com tech tells me it took centuries for Old Earth to advance from crude, fuse-fired smoothbores to anything remotely like this. In fact, she insists no one on Old Earth ever produced one that incorporated all of these features, except for something called a 'Fergusson Rifle,' or something like that. And that one never went into mass production. So�"

... It seems strange that this is within their manufacturing capability as they are said to be very primitive. The fact that it took so many advances means it shouldn�t be at all. Also I like how of course someone is an expert in firearms built 2000 years ago.

�If it jumped their ability 1500 years then it wasn�t in their manufacturing capability� posted:

"So at least the design had to come from someone off-world." Honor's voice was equally harsh, and Dame Estelle nodded.

"My own opinion, precisely. Some greedy idiot has jumped the Medusans' ability to kill one another�or us�by something like fifteen hundred T-years." The Resident Commissioner looked strained and old, and her hand trembled slightly as she brushed hair back from her forehead. "He's brought this abortion in through my security, and he's turned it over to the nomads in the Outback, not even to the Delta city-states. Even if we nail him, there's no way to put this genie back into the bottle if he's taught the Medusans how to build the things. In fact, they're bound to figure out how to make heavier weapons�real, honest-to-God artillery�so unless we want to take over the role of guaranteeing the Delta's security with off-world weaponry, we're going to have to encourage the city-states to learn how to make the goddamned things just so they can defend themselves! And worst of all, our forensic people think the Medusans who killed Matt were hopped to the breathing slits on mekoha�the same off-world mekoha we've been seeing clear on the other side of the Mossybacks."

"But . . . why?" Honor asked slowly.

"I don't know," Dame Estelle sighed. "I just don't know. I can't think of a single commodity on this planet that could possibly be worth this kind of investment, Honor. Not one. And that," she finished softly, "scares me a lot worse than if I could."

The quiet hum of the buzzer turned raucous when no one answered, and Andreas Venizelos jerked up out of his sleep with a muffled curse as it broke into a series of abrupt, jagged bursts of sound, guaranteed to wake the dead. The lieutenant dragged himself to his feet, rubbing sleep from his eyes while he stumbled across his darkened cabin. He hopped on one foot, yelping as a bare toe collided painfully with some invisible obstacle, then half-fell into the chair before the com terminal. The buzzer was still screaming at him, and he glared at the chrono. Oh-two-fifteen. He'd been in bed less than three hours.

This, he told himself savagely, had better be damned important.

He raked a hand through sleep-tousled hair and punched the audio key with his thumb, refusing visual contact in his disheveled state.

"Yes?" He didn't�quite�snarl the word.

"Andy?" the blank screen said. "This is Mike Reynaud."

"Captain Reynaud?" Venizelos straightened in his chair, rags of drowsiness fleeing, and frowned.

"Sorry to disturb you," Reynaud continued quickly. "I know you just got in a few hours ago. But we've had some traffic up here I think you should know about." The ACS commander sounded anxious, possibly even a little frightened, and Venizelos's frown deepened.

"What sort of traffic, Captain?" he asked.

"A Crown courier boat came in from Manticore about an hour ago and headed in-system," Reynaud replied. "It didn't stop for inspection, of course�" Venizelos nodded; Crown couriers had absolute precedence and complete freedom of passage anywhere in Manticoran space "�but I just got a look at the passenger manifest."

Something about the way he said it touched Venizelos with dread, but he bit his lip and waited in silence.

"It's Klaus Hauptman, Andy," Reynaud said softly. "I don't know what he's doing on a Crown courier, but he's here. And he's headed for Medusa. After what happened with the Mondragon, I thought, well . . ."

His voice trailed off, and Venizelos nodded again to the unseeing pickup.

"I understand, Captain Reynaud. And I appreciate it." He rubbed his eyes for a moment, then inhaled deeply. "It'll take me a few minutes to get dressed, Sir. Could you warn the com center I'm on my way up and ask for a scrambled channel to Fearless?"

"Of course, Andy." The relief in Reynaud's voice was manifest, and he cut the circuit. Venizelos sat motionless, staring at the silent terminal for long, slow seconds, and his mind raced.

Civilians, no matter how important, had no official business on Crown courier boats. But Klaus Hauptman wasn't just any civilian. It would have been very difficult to refuse him passage. In fact, Venizelos doubted anyone had dared tell Hauptman "no" about anything for decades. Yet how he'd gotten here mattered far less than why, and Venizelos could think of only one possible reason for him to come, especially in secret aboard an official government vessel rather than openly aboard a civilian transport.

He rose and reached for his uniform trousers.

So that�s the chapter. It�s a bit of a long one, but it... almost advanced the plot? Like, they know about the drug lab but we�ve known for chapters that they were suppose to find it, so it�s just catching up to what we know. I feel like Weber is really bad at multi-PoV stuff because he generally only uses it to spoil what the protagonist is going to find out soon.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 03:24

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

Kchama posted:

I�m not sure how I�d picture this rifle at all, to be honest. Though I imagine Honor would have a good enough idea what it is thanks to her extensive firearms knowledge that only first mentioned in like two books as opposed to the narration�s obliviousness.

... It seems strange that this is within their manufacturing capability as they are said to be very primitive. The fact that it took so many advances means it shouldn�t be at all. Also I like how of course someone is an expert in firearms built 2000 years ago.

This is a Ferguson (one S) rifle. The Medusan weapon is essentially this, but with a chest brace instead of a stock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODhQmE2OqY

As for it being within their ability to manufacture, guns are a funny thing. The manufacture of gunpowder doesn't require anything beyond Stone Age technology, while you can make a pretty serviceable firearm with pretty basic metallurgy. The Medusan tech base is given as "starting to smelt wretched iron and crude steel", so they have good enough metal.

The problem is that a gun like a Ferguson would require pretty tight manufacturing tolerances that weren't attainable on Earth until the 15th or 16th century. Muskets would be quite plausible for local manufacture, but the Ferguson is a bit too far if you want somebody to believe that the Medusans are be manufacturing them themselves.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 03:34

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

This is a Ferguson (one S) rifle. The Medusan weapon is essentially this, but with a chest brace instead of a stock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODhQmE2OqY

As for it being within their ability to manufacture, guns are a funny thing. The manufacture of gunpowder doesn't require anything beyond Stone Age technology, while you can make a pretty serviceable firearm with pretty basic metallurgy. The Medusan tech base is given as "starting to smelt wretched iron and crude steel", so they have good enough metal.

The problem is that a gun like a Ferguson would require pretty tight manufacturing tolerances that weren't attainable on Earth until the 15th or 16th century. Muskets would be quite plausible for local manufacture, but the Ferguson is a bit too far if you want somebody to believe that the Medusans are be manufacturing them themselves.

That's basically what I was getting at. While it's plausible the Medusans could make lovely guns (though these seem to be actually relatively solid guns considering their accuracy and range), the idea that they have the manufacturing ability for that kind of gun goes way beyond "barely", since it involves a lot of techniques that someone with no gun manufacturing experience would have the equipment or knowledge to make. It would be instantly obvious instead of 'barely out of their ability'.

If you have to say it's 1500 years too advanced for them, then you're way past 'barely'.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 03:38

Gnoman: Feb 12, 2014; Come, all you fair and tender maids
Who flourish in your pri-ime
Beware, take care, keep your garden fair
Let Gnoman steal your thy-y-me
Le-et Gnoman steal your thyme

You're pretty much right - the Ferguson is an excellent rifle by loose-powder standards, but is well beyond the reach of a Bronze Age culture like this one. Given what we see in a chapter or two, it is pretty obvious that this was a goof of the author, not a (completely comprehensible) in-universe oversight by the Havenites.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 03:44

FuturePastNow: May 19, 2014

Patrat posted:

To be fair, the thrusters might be pretty tiny. I am imagining a couple of glorified fire extinguishers strapped to the outside of the hull to allow for cold gas maneuvering to dock without doing... whatever the gently caress tidal force mangling gravity manipulation drives might do to solid objects in immediate proximity.

What happens when a pinnace's impeller is activated while inside the boat bay of a warship is actually an important plot point in a later book in the series

this kills the battlecruiser

# ? Jan 4, 2020 03:45

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

Gnoman posted:

You're pretty much right - the Ferguson is an excellent rifle by loose-powder standards, but is well beyond the reach of a Bronze Age culture like this one. Given what we see in a chapter or two, it is pretty obvious that this was a goof of the author, not a (completely comprehensible) in-universe oversight by the Havenites.

Pretty sure Weber just wanted his cool historical guns and didn't think about what it'd mean for the setting. This is absolutely not the last time a Cool Historical Gun is wedged into the plot.

... Though the next example is possibly dumber because apparently they still have 20th century guns in the 40th century.

Kchama fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Jan 4, 2020

# ? Jan 4, 2020 03:48

quantumfoam: Dec 25, 2003

Smuggling works two-ways, my friends.
Amoral merchants gun-running weapons to the natives in return for ~~whaleFur~~ ~~melange~~ ~~mace and nutmeg~~ whatever Honorverse resource just increases the "David Weber applying a thin scifi paintjob to the glorious British empire" hypothesis that kchama and other people has bitched about repeatedly re: Weber.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 04:08

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

I know no one cares about these Safehold posts, but I promised KChama, so have another one!

Safehold Chapter II

We get a cinema jump cut to "Royal Palace, Tellesberg, Kingdom of Charis"

Weber posted:

"Father, you know as well as I do who's really behind it!"

Crown Prince Cayleb [fuuuuuuuck] folded his arms across his chest and glared at his father. King Harrahld, [fuuuuuuuuck] however, endured his elder son's expression with remarkable equanimity.

"Yes, Cayleb," the King of Charis said after a moment. "As it happens, I do know who's really behind it. Now, what do you suggest I do about it?"

Cayleb opened his mouth, then paused. After a moment, he closed it again. His dark eyes were, if anything, even more fiery than they had been, but his father nodded.

"Exactly", he said grimly. "There's nothing I'd like better than to see Tahdayo's head on a pike over my gate. I'm sure he and his...associates feel the same about mine, of course. Unfortunately, however much I'd like to see his there, there's not much prospect of my collecting it any time soon. And since I can't-"

He shrugged.and Cayleb scowled. Not in disagreement, but in frustration.

Meet Cayleb. We're going to be spending a lot of time with him. He and his father are currently discussing how the corrupt priests from the previous chapter are interfering with the rightful birthright succession. We, the readers, know the evil Tahdayo is paying the archbishops for fraudulent claims. The irony is, of course, that these characters are a king and a prince, two positions that usually owe their prominence to...divine right. Now before people start yelling and posting about Enlightenment philosophers, remember that this world has been set up by authorial contrivance to be as backward and superstitious as possible. Characters will start questioning the religious beliefs and scientific impositions of the "archangels", but as far as I can recall no one ever questions the monarchy's executive powers. Charis does have a parliament (but I literally had to google to remember it and don't remember it doing anything of import). Again, it's Space Britain because that's the only kind of society Weber is ever interested in.

I'm going to elide the exciting political discussion. Narhman, Hektor, Erayk, and Zherald are currently opposing the Kingdom of Charis.

Haarahld looks out the window and sees all the trade ships in the bay.

Weber posted:

"That's the reason we're not going to find many friends," Haarahld told his son, jutting his bearded chin at the merchant shops thronging the Tellesberg waterfront. "Too many want what we have, and they're foolish enough to think that if they league together to take it away from us, their 'friends' will actually let them keep it afterward. And at the moment, there's no one who feels any particular need to help us keep it."

So I want to point out that "over a third [of the ships in the bay] were the bigger, heavier ... galleons which served Safehold's oceanic trade". Wouldn't these foreign nations trading with Charis have a vested interest in keeping them open for business? As far as I know Charis doesn't have colonies to have mercantilist adventures with. Charis isn't a nation of gold miners or textile producers, their strength is their merchantry, which...requires customers and friends to trade with. I would imagine countries with strong economic ties to Charis would have a vested interest in keeping the trade routes open, no?

Anyway, this isn't important for this book but I'm quoting it for later.

Weber posted:

"Sharleyan is already half on our side," Cayleb pointed out.

"But only half," Haarahld countered. "She made that clear enough this past spring."

Cayleb grimaced, but he couldn't really disagree. Queen Sharleyan of Chisholm had as many reasons to oppose the League of Corisande as Charis did, and her hatred for Prince Hektor of Corisande as Charis did, and her hatred for Prince Hektor of Corisande was proverbial. There'd been some hope that those factors might bring her into open alliance with Charis, and Haarahld had dispatched his cousin Kahlvyn, the Duke of Tirian, to Chisholm as his personal envoy to explore the possibility.

Without success.

This is foreshadowing for later when Charlene, who is totally smokin hot, marries Caleb to join her elite armies to Caleb's bomb-rear end fleet and a later character to battle the Dumb Fake Jesus Sword Guys.

Anyway, we get back to the real meat of the plot, which is that Tadeo is bribing the priests to gain rulership of some place called Hanth.

Evil Bribemans? In a Weber book? posted:

"Tahdayo has no legitimate claim to Hanth! Even if that ridiculous lie about his grandmother's being Earl Fraidareck's [gently caress these awful names] bastard daughter had an ounce of truth in it, Hauwerd would still be the rightful heir!"

"Except that Mother Church is going to say differently." Haarahld's tone was light, almost whimsical, but there was nothing amused or lighthearted in his expression.

"Why shouldn't she when Nahrmahn and Hektor are so willing and eager to pour gold into Dynnys' purse?" Cayleb snarled. "Besides, the Council's always-!"

He broke off abruptly as his father laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Carefully, Cayleb," Haarahld said, his voice soft. "Carefully. What you say to me is one thing, but you are my heir. What you say where other ears can here and use it against you-against us-is something else entirely."

"I know that Father." Cayleb swung away from the window and looked into his father's eyes. "But you know, and I do, that it's exactly what's happened. And you know why the Council of Vicars is allowing it to stand, too."

"Yes," Haarahld admitted, and there was as much sorrow as anger in his eyes now. "If all Mother Church's priests were like Maikel, or even Father Paityr, it would never have happened. Or, at least, I wouldn't be worried that my son would be executed for heresy simply because he spoke the truth in the wrong ear. But they aren't, and I am. So guard your tongue, my son!"

As it turns out, our heroic royals know that the Church is a corrupt piece of poo poo taking bribes. Tadeo, of course, is a poor ruler who wants to exploit the commoners for money, unlike our good monarchs here who are afraid of what is going to happen to their people and can sympathize with the average Charisian they never interact with.

Weber's villains are never compelling posted:

"Nor the fact that he's going to begin looting Hanth the instant he's confirmed as Earl," Haarahld agreed, his expression hard. "And I won't be able to protect 'his' people from him, either. Not when the whole world knows I was forced to accept him by Church decree. Any attempt I make to rein him in will be the same as openly defying the Church, once his agents in the Temple get done telling the tale to the Vicars, and many on the Council will be prepared to automatically believe them."

"But he and his masters aren't going to stop trying to undermine you, or our house, just because you can't crush him like the bottom-feeder he is."

"Of course not."

There's some chattering about how the Temple won't move against Charis immediately, but the Charisian fleet can beat the entire league unless their ally Gorjah betrays them.

Weber posted:

"Gorjah's never been all that happy with our treaty," Haarahld pointed out. "His father was another matter, but Gorjah resents the obligations he's found himself saddled with. At the same time, he recognizes the advantages of having us for friends rather than enemies. But if Hektor can work on him, convince him that with Corisande and Emerald both prepared to support him..."

The king shrugged, and Cayleb nodded.

Caleb then realizes something else is on his father's mind.

Weber posted:

"Your mother is dead, Cayleb," he said softly. "She was my left arm and the mirror of my soul, and I miss her counsel almost as much as I miss her. Nor will I get any more heirs, and Zhan is barely eight years old, while Zhanayt is only two years older, and a girl child. If my enemies truly wish to cripple me, they'll take away my strong right arm as I've already lost the left."

He looked into his elder son's eyes, his own level, and Cayleb looked back.

"Remember the sand maggot," Haarahld told him. "The slash lizard might fling himself against us, fangs and claws first, but not the maggot. Watch your back, my son, and watch the shadows. Our enemies know us as well as we know them, and so they'll know that to kill you would take not simply my arm, but my heart."

That ends the chapter. It's kind of amazing how in Weber's writings political marriage between two monarchs always deepens into love, and never ends with them gritting their teeth and loving out a child and then fooling around on the side like many real monarchs in history. It's also amazing how despite all the linguistic drift causing silly names, the characters speak in remarkably modern English with none of the poetics or grandeur you would expect out of the mythical True Just King. "Slash lizard" and "sand maggot" are just bad and manage to draw and quarter any attempt at solemnity the scene had.

Really, though, this is just setting up Weber's triumph of the technologically advanced monarchy - the best form and most deserving of government - against a strawman church who doesn't deserve to rule because they don't have the right bloodlines and are badmen.

Join me next time as Weber takes any form of dramatic tension behind the woodshed and executes it!

# ? Jan 4, 2020 05:06

blackmongoose: Mar 31, 2011; DARK INFERNO ROOK!

Kchama posted:

ON BASILISK STATION Chapter 17

“I understand that reference.” Anyways time for a scene and POV change that has no indicator whatsoever!

I noticed you bringing this up a lot and I thought it was weird because although I remember a lot of terrible stuff I didn't remember major technical issues like that. I finally decided to go dig out my physical copy that for some reason I haven't gotten rid of and all the scene transitions are pretty clearly marked with extra whitespace. I think this is probably an issue with whichever electronic version you're using, so unfortunately it's one thing we can't blame Weber for.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 05:12

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

blackmongoose posted:

I noticed you bringing this up a lot and I thought it was weird because although I remember a lot of terrible stuff I didn't remember major technical issues like that. I finally decided to go dig out my physical copy that for some reason I haven't gotten rid of and all the scene transitions are pretty clearly marked with extra whitespace. I think this is probably an issue with whichever electronic version you're using, so unfortunately it's one thing we can't blame Weber for.

What made me think it was intentional was that sometimes there would be extra whitespace or * * * but then way too much it'd just launch into the next scene without any indicator. This is the official BaenCD copy, so Baen's not fully off the hook.

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

I know no one cares about these Safehold posts, but I promised KChama, so have another one!

Safehold Chapter II

We get a cinema jump cut to "Royal Palace, Tellesberg, Kingdom of Charis"

Meet Cayleb. We're going to be spending a lot of time with him. He and his father are currently discussing how the corrupt priests from the previous chapter are interfering with the rightful birthright succession. We, the readers, know the evil Tahdayo is paying the archbishops for fraudulent claims. The irony is, of course, that these characters are a king and a prince, two positions that usually owe their prominence to...divine right. Now before people start yelling and posting about Enlightenment philosophers, remember that this world has been set up by authorial contrivance to be as backward and superstitious as possible. Characters will start questioning the religious beliefs and scientific impositions of the "archangels", but as far as I can recall no one ever questions the monarchy's executive powers. Charis does have a parliament (but I literally had to google to remember it and don't remember it doing anything of import). Again, it's Space Britain because that's the only kind of society Weber is ever interested in.

I'm going to elide the exciting political discussion. Narhman, Hektor, Erayk, and Zherald are currently opposing the Kingdom of Charis.

Haarahld looks out the window and sees all the trade ships in the bay.

So I want to point out that "over a third [of the ships in the bay] were the bigger, heavier ... galleons which served Safehold's oceanic trade". Wouldn't these foreign nations trading with Charis have a vested interest in keeping them open for business? As far as I know Charis doesn't have colonies to have mercantilist adventures with. Charis isn't a nation of gold miners or textile producers, their strength is their merchantry, which...requires customers and friends to trade with. I would imagine countries with strong economic ties to Charis would have a vested interest in keeping the trade routes open, no?

Anyway, this isn't important for this book but I'm quoting it for later.

This is foreshadowing for later when Charlene, who is totally smokin hot, marries Caleb to join her elite armies to Caleb's bomb-rear end fleet and a later character to battle the Dumb Fake Jesus Sword Guys.

Anyway, we get back to the real meat of the plot, which is that Tadeo is bribing the priests to gain rulership of some place called Hanth.

As it turns out, our heroic royals know that the Church is a corrupt piece of poo poo taking bribes. Tadeo, of course, is a poor ruler who wants to exploit the commoners for money, unlike our good monarchs here who are afraid of what is going to happen to their people and can sympathize with the average Charisian they never interact with.

There's some chattering about how the Temple won't move against Charis immediately, but the Charisian fleet can beat the entire league unless their ally Gorjah betrays them.

Caleb then realizes something else is on his father's mind.

That ends the chapter. It's kind of amazing how in Weber's writings political marriage between two monarchs always deepens into love, and never ends with them gritting their teeth and loving out a child and then fooling around on the side like many real monarchs in history. It's also amazing how despite all the linguistic drift causing silly names, the characters speak in remarkably modern English with none of the poetics or grandeur you would expect out of the mythical True Just King. "Slash lizard" and "sand maggot" are just bad and manage to draw and quarter any attempt at solemnity the scene had.

Really, though, this is just setting up Weber's triumph of the technologically advanced monarchy - the best form and most deserving of government - against a strawman church who doesn't deserve to rule because they don't have the right bloodlines and are badmen.

Join me next time as Weber takes any form of dramatic tension behind the woodshed and executes it!

I care. And I think you do a better job at the Let's Read than I do. I feel like I should copy how you do it more but at the same time there just... isn't that much to talk about beyond summarizing. Safehold's a lot dumber, too.

Also the linguistic drift is amazing because he only uses it for people's names and nothing else.

Also I'm going to be frank and say that Weber's ENTIRE STYLE of writing is consistently destroying dramatic tension. He will constantly have a scene set up dramatic tension, and then the next chapter be from another POV that explains in detail everything that the other side doesn't know, and make it so clear that it's obvious what's going to happen next. Or, in amazing form, he'll have the explanations BEFORE we get to the chapter where we learn the heroes don't know what the previous chapter just explained in detail.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 06:15

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

Kchama posted:

I care. And I think you do a better job at the Let's Read than I do. I feel like I should copy how you do it more but at the same time there just... isn't that much to talk about beyond summarizing. Safehold's a lot dumber, too.

Also the linguistic drift is amazing because he only uses it for people's names and nothing else.

Also I'm going to be frank and say that Weber's ENTIRE STYLE of writing is consistently destroying dramatic tension. He will constantly have a scene set up dramatic tension, and then the next chapter be from another POV that explains in detail everything that the other side doesn't know, and make it so clear that it's obvious what's going to happen next. Or, in amazing form, he'll have the explanations BEFORE we get to the chapter where we learn the heroes don't know what the previous chapter just explained in detail.

You're doing fine, don't feel like you need to change.

The problem of doing a Let's Read of any of Weber's works is that you're absolutely right there's not much there. The prose is banal and uninteresting at best, characters are stock archetypes to pander to wish fulfillment fantasies (I've ranted enough about this), the plots are drearily similar and uninteresting, and there's absolutely no depth to it all. Weber's political commentary is about as subtle as Terry Goodkind's 20 page rants on Objectivism But With Justified Coercion and doesn't offer any insight into the systems it's critiquing. This isn't like Patrick Rothfuss where if you disengage your brain it seems kind of deep but crumples under scrutiny, this is a thin patina of unappealing garbage over an empty core.

Unfortunately, while the books are poorly constructed there is little shock value to be derived from them. You don't have crap like Goodkind's literal rape pits or Ringo's Waffen-SS worship where you can point to the awful poo poo happening and make fun of it. It's all a dull, unexciting mediocrity.

The puzzle of Weber isn't "why is this so bad", the puzzle is "why does this poo poo sell" and I think that's the question we're all trying to answer in this thread.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 08:01

Aerdan: Apr 14, 2012; Not Dennis NEDry

What competition is there in this space, though? Aside from David Drake and Elizabeth Moon, that is.

Like, most of the rest of the authors we've discussed are much, much worse than (solo) David Weber.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 08:55

Larry Parrish: Jul 9, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Marko Kloos and the poor mans war guy are pretty good. Palladium Wars is a lot better than Frontlines though, which just kind of kept going nowhere. You've got Expeditionary Force, too, which unfortunately is also just kind of going nowhere. Uhh. Evan Currie wrote a bunch of mil SF, but its very predictable and cheesy.

I hate Weber though because it's like hes enjoying writing these books as much as I do reading them. Aka not at all, and as some kind of self flagellation

# ? Jan 4, 2020 10:12

Kchama: Jul 25, 2007

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

You're doing fine, don't feel like you need to change.

The problem of doing a Let's Read of any of Weber's works is that you're absolutely right there's not much there. The prose is banal and uninteresting at best, characters are stock archetypes to pander to wish fulfillment fantasies (I've ranted enough about this), the plots are drearily similar and uninteresting, and there's absolutely no depth to it all. Weber's political commentary is about as subtle as Terry Goodkind's 20 page rants on Objectivism But With Justified Coercion and doesn't offer any insight into the systems it's critiquing. This isn't like Patrick Rothfuss where if you disengage your brain it seems kind of deep but crumples under scrutiny, this is a thin patina of unappealing garbage over an empty core.

Unfortunately, while the books are poorly constructed there is little shock value to be derived from them. You don't have crap like Goodkind's literal rape pits or Ringo's Waffen-SS worship where you can point to the awful poo poo happening and make fun of it. It's all a dull, unexciting mediocrity.

The puzzle of Weber isn't "why is this so bad", the puzzle is "why does this poo poo sell" and I think that's the question we're all trying to answer in this thread.

He does try to make jokes but they are the most mild not even worth a Sensible Chuckle stuff out there. The Treecat stuff might be amusing in a cute-cat way if it wasn't for how Treecats become more and more important with each book.

Also, the next book actuallyhas Literal Rape Pits, so you're going to be in for a treat there! Like, the entire next book is full of Shock Value Stuff and it's amazingly terrible.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 11:01

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Larry Parrish posted:

iirc the setting doesnt have true anti gravity reactionless drives, but 'countergrav', which isnt a reactionless drive despite affecting velocity without the use of newtonian motion. somehow. maybe they deploy parachutes but just call it that because its cool

There's a difference between reactionless drives and just propellant less drives. The setting drives are propellant-less, but they're still not perpetual motion machines like true reactionless drives would be. (Which is fine, and I put this down as a good point for Weber. True reactionless drives always amazed me, because here you have a drive which brazenly breaks all manner of natural laws, which should not be a thing in SF.)

Kchama posted:

That's basically what I was getting at. While it's plausible the Medusans could make lovely guns (though these seem to be actually relatively solid guns considering their accuracy and range), the idea that they have the manufacturing ability for that kind of gun goes way beyond "barely", since it involves a lot of techniques that someone with no gun manufacturing experience would have the equipment or knowledge to make. It would be instantly obvious instead of 'barely out of their ability'.

If you have to say it's 1500 years too advanced for them, then you're way past 'barely'.

To be fair, I always imagined the Medusan weapons as to be some sort of slightly fancier muskets anyway, since I have zero knowledge about foreign rifles and nether bothered to look up what a "Ferguson" is. I just assumed Weber made the name up, since it is what I would have done in his place! :v:

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

The irony is, of course, that these characters are a king and a prince, two positions that usually owe their prominence to...divine right. Now before people start yelling and posting about Enlightenment philosophers, remember that this world has been set up by authorial contrivance to be as backward and superstitious as possible. Characters will start questioning the religious beliefs and scientific impositions of the "archangels", but as far as I can recall no one ever questions the monarchy's executive powers. Charis does have a parliament (but I literally had to google to remember it and don't remember it doing anything of import). Again, it's Space Britain because that's the only kind of society Weber is ever interested in.

Yeah, now that you're mentioning it, Weber seems to go with the "Anglican Church, but in Space!"-angle here. With the building conflict between Charis and the official church and all that. Me, I was instead reminded of how the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire after a certain point became to see themselves as the true protectors of Christianity, and that the pope should now do as they say. Hilarity ensued!

I feel this would have been a better fit for the growing conflict, but apparently Weber is addicted to shoehorn in Britain into his works regardless of how much sense it makes.

Kchama posted:

Also I'm going to be frank and say that Weber's ENTIRE STYLE of writing is consistently destroying dramatic tension. He will constantly have a scene set up dramatic tension, and then the next chapter be from another POV that explains in detail everything that the other side doesn't know, and make it so clear that it's obvious what's going to happen next. Or, in amazing form, he'll have the explanations BEFORE we get to the chapter where we learn the heroes don't know what the previous chapter just explained in detail.

This is what finally killed Honor Harrington for me. I can take a lot of schlock, but this here got so bad I started to notice I suddenly could predict every single plot point of the following books. And when my dense head got penetrated by the realization that the big bad I was reading about would be effortlessly defeated in the next book, I just stopped. Because what was the point? I already knew how it was going to end. And if I want to read about boring politics even though I know how the entire sordid affair ends, I can just read a history book instead.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 13:02

Larry Parrish: Jul 9, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

i guess i dont know what the difference is. the closest thing I can think of to a propellant less drive would be an RCS system (except is not a drive because it doesnt modify velocity) and ionocraft (the atmosphere is the propellant, it just doesn't carry it on board)

# ? Jan 4, 2020 13:20

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Larry Parrish posted:

i guess i dont know what the difference is. the closest thing I can think of to a propellant less drive would be an RCS system (except is not a drive because it doesnt modify velocity) and ionocraft (the atmosphere is the propellant, it just doesn't carry it on board)

I've read this up on Wikipedia to minimize error on account of me being dumb, but the difference is: A drive without propellant can just be an open system, which means it still interacts with the rest of the universe, just by using fields like gravity or electromagnetism instead of shooting out stuff. An Ion Drive shooting out ions is still a propellant-driven system, for example. A gravity-assist slingshot or one of those monstrous impeller drives of Weber are not. NASA's Alcubierre Drive or Star Trek's Warp Drive are both examples for propellant-less, but open drive systems, too.

And as examples for closed-system, propellant-less drives that could be interpreted as being reactionless: That weird made-up drive system Aurora-ships run on, the EM-drive and basically every crack-pot idea some random person came up with over the last two centuries. Turns out it's kind of hard to generate propulsion if your device doesn't interact with the outside world!

Edit:

Ironically, both your examples use propellant and are therefore not propellant-less systems, sorry!

# ? Jan 4, 2020 14:09

ToxicFrog: Apr 26, 2008

Larry Parrish posted:

i guess i dont know what the difference is. the closest thing I can think of to a propellant less drive would be an RCS system (except is not a drive because it doesnt modify velocity) and ionocraft (the atmosphere is the propellant, it just doesn't carry it on board)

Usually "reactionless drive" just means "a drive that affects velocity without expelling reaction mass". A lot of the time, yes, this means the author just waves their hands and the velocity comes out of nowhere. Gravity-generator drives also count -- you could argue that the reaction mass in that case is "the rest of the universe", but it's not actually getting sucked through the drive and fired out the back, it's "reactionless". A real-world example is the electrodynamic tether, which works by pushing against the magnetosphere of a nearby planet.

Libluini posted:

Ironically, both your examples use propellant and are therefore not propellant-less systems, sorry!

By "RCS" they may have meant "reaction wheels", which do not use propellant (until they reach spin saturation and you need to use the gas-jet RCS to hold the vehicle stable while you despin them).

# ? Jan 4, 2020 14:20

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

ToxicFrog posted:

Usually "reactionless drive" just means "a drive that affects velocity without expelling reaction mass". A lot of the time, yes, this means the author just waves their hands and the velocity comes out of nowhere. Gravity-generator drives also count -- you could argue that the reaction mass in that case is "the rest of the universe", but it's not actually getting sucked through the drive and fired out the back, it's "reactionless". A real-world example is the electrodynamic tether, which works by pushing against the magnetosphere of a nearby planet.

There seems to be a disagreement of definitions going on here, according to my sources a reactionless drive is not "reaction mass less", but instead it is supposed to mean that the drive doesn't react with forces outside its own system. But it could be that I'm unfair here, as many SF-authors also get this wrong and confuse a reactionless drive with one that is just propellant-less.

The source of the confusion seems to be that a propellant-less drive can be both reactionless and not, while a propellant-driven system can by definition not "reactionless", since by the very act of expelling reaction mass, it interacts with the outside world and is therefore not a reactionless drive. This then leads to people conflating propellant-less with reactionless, since "it makes sense".

On the other hand, an electrodynamic tether would also not be a reactionless drive, as the magnetosphere of the nearby planet is outside the drive. The EM-drive, which works by "pushing" against the inside of itself (very simplified explanation here) is a better example. It also doesn't work and is maybe founded on misinterpretation of measurement errors, see my comment about true reactionless drives not being possible. :v:

quote:

By "RCS" they may have meant "reaction wheels", which do not use propellant (until they reach spin saturation and you need to use the gas-jet RCS to hold the vehicle stable while you despin them).

That's interesting! Wikipedia only told me about the type of RCS that uses thrusters, and I didn't look any deeper.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 14:56

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# ? Apr 29, 2024 02:45

KOGAHAZAN!!: Apr 29, 2013; a miserable failure as a person

an incredible success as a magical murder spider

Libluini has the right of it. To be a �reactionless drive� something has to violate the principle of the conservation of momentum, and thus implicitly Newton�s laws of motion.

�Exchanges momentum with something outside itself� isn�t enough to qualify. Nor is it particularly noteworthy- under that definition my legs would be reactionless drives.

# ? Jan 4, 2020 15:31

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Everyone's a WarCriminal: the Mil-SciFi Thread

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