Trope-a-Day: Master Race

Master Race: While the Imperial polyspecificity (which is to say, by no means just the eldrae, so not exactly a Master Race) is by and large comfortable in its non-innate-we-worked-hard-for-this-thank-you-so-very-much superiority to damn near everyone, as per Superior Species and Can’t Argue With Elves, they really have no time for this sort of thing.

(I mean, yes, obviously the universe would be better off with them running things, in their inimitable hands-off style, so everyone can and should look forward to the day when they attain this state philosophically through sheer force of virtue and arete, but one would have to be a pretty inferior superior species not to recognize the inherent paradox in going around conquering people in the cause of liberty, consent, and a-sword-is-not-an-argument rationality.

See also, to quote myself, “What sort of pathetic excuse for a Superior Race has to actually keep the Inferior Races down?  Newsflash, morons, that means you weren’t qualified for the position in the first place,” and likewise, poncing around like a bag of giant fascist dicks also means You Fail Ethical And Intellectual Superiority Forever.)

((The irony, of course, is how many people find that attitude even more infuriatingly smug than, y’know, actually being conquered.))

Trope-a-Day: Superior Species

Superior Species: We pretty much covered this territory under Can’t Argue With Elves too, didn’t we?

Well, to expand in general, rather than pick a specific example, especially since they started building their own future generations with transsophont technology, there are very few successful species that don’t maintain their general superiority at some level, at least to themselves, except those who are part of polyspecific civilizations and maintain their species-group’s superiority, instead.  Of course, since they’re all using culturally-defined measuring rods of different lengths and configurations, many of them – the non-deluded ones – are right in their own terms, even if no-one else would agree to them generalizing their standard across everyone else.  Which more or less explains the problem with the whole notion of generalized “superiority”, now doesn’t it?

Before the Phoenix: Preparations

The sculpted hull of the starship rose impossibly skyward, looming over the queuing passengers as if it might fall upon them any minute. Gleaming chrome and gold, it shone in the sunlight against the black-painted metal of the stardock. The subdued roar of its warming engines, readying themselves to propel it to the farthest worlds of the Stellar Imperium, rose from the thrust pit and made the ground tremble…

Ienith Steamweaver sighed in irritation and tossed his copy of Wonders of Tomorrow aside. “Gleaming, sculpted hull” was, at best, a charitable description of the Initiative’s first – and, given their rapidly dwindling budget, quite possibly last – orbital craft. “Stardock”, for that matter, was altogether too grand a name for a concrete pad surrounded by earth berms, and the lashed-together dyanail1 scaffolding that would hold their rocket in place. But there was only so much you could expect when getting a decent spin assist meant being stuck out on an island at the far dawn-edge of the world and, he admitted to himself, when trying to work those wonders on that limited budget.

A clang from above announced that the engineering siblings had finally got the Skyreach capsule successfully mated with the main body of the rocket. Ienith walked over and patted its metal flank, chilly in Lormyrian’s tropical heat. The metal did gleam, at least, thanks to a lot of polishing, although it still bore an unmistakable resemblance to the pressurized tank it had started out life as, if you avoided looking at the tangled plumbing and bulging engine bell at its base. Pulling his circuit tester from his pocket, he began his part of the preflight procedure – checking and double-checking the burn-through clamps that held the rocket to the pad, and the explosive clamps that held the boosters –

The barrels of slow-burning explosive.

– to its side. Well, at least they’d been used before and were known to work. Although they’d never been used before with anyone sitting on top of them.

This would all make me pretty damn worried for whoever’s going to be flying this thing.

But then, that would be me.


1. A plant similar to Terran bamboo.

Trope-a-Day: Mary Sue Topia

Mary Sue Topia: Well, of course. If you don’t want one of these (especially with regard to, say, No Poverty), what’s wrong with you? (And, for that matter and rather more smugly to say, if you don’t have one of these, you aren’t trying hard enough.)

Of course, the reason that it’s “a perfect society filled with perfect people” is that, well, it got that way by eliminating all the assholes. In the first place, they have neurosurgery for that these days, and considering that society is filled with incentives – like, say, the way that microtorts and the Ephemeral Contract rep-net will drive the cost of living of people who are dicks to service staff through the roof – not to be one, people go and have themselves fixed.

(And those who don’t want to do that generally find the local atmosphere intolerable enough to find their own way out.)

Epistolary Experiment (17/30)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Partial Service Restoration, Spinward Constellations; Possible Coreward Outages Expected

Outer Ring Netweavers, ICC, is pleased to announce that full extranet service, including open-service relays, has been restored to the Galith Waste, Frentish Nebula, and Cordai Gap constellations. Service has also been fully restored to regions of the Crimson Expanse, Vanguard Reaches and Csell Buffer to trailing of the Borderline, although service delays due to enhanced security protocols may still affect this area.

To coreward, similar enhanced security protocols are currently in operation in the Uulder Shore, and may affect further coreward constellations in upcoming weeks. ORN reserves the right to move to a full extranet shutdown (except for high-protocol overweaves and military priority traffic) in these coreward regions in the event of an unanticipated threat excursion, although none such is anticipated at this time.

ORN apologizes once again for the inconvenience and asks for its customers’ understanding of the exigencies of war.

Contact:

Serril Cyprium-ith-Reyne
Sophont Relations
Outer Ring Netweavers, ICC


“…distress, distress … this is VNS Egalitarian, calling distress … computer malfunction … three links from Manar  … distress, distress … fuel dumped automatically … explosion in low power room … distress, distress … self-repair systems not responding … Egalitarian, calling … battery power only …”

– Republic communications intercept, received at Tarqil (Crimson Expanse)


“Wanted: contributions of goods and knowledge for the poor benighted sod-clingers on the Republic’s ‘Protectorate’ worlds. Suggestions include cornucopias, design libraries, field power reactors, nanosources, hosted freelibs, toolmaker’s tools, starship drive-parts, and anything else you think the Vonnies would prefer they didn’t get. You get us the materiel, and we’ll get it to them. Help a fellow soph and kick a slaver in the cloaca at the same time!

“Donations accepted at Warehouse 22-19L, Ocella Down, care of Starfall Arc Free Merchant Confraternity”

– seen on public notifications channel, Ocella (Imperial Core)


FROM: CORE COMMAND
TO: FIELD FLEET SPINWARD COMMAND (CS LIBERTY’S PRICE)

*** EXPEDITE
*** EYES ONLY GRUMPY BADGER

FLT ADM DAPHNOTARTHIUS, COMMANDING FIELD FLEET SPINWARD:

1. CORE COMMAND HAS RECEIVED REPORTS OF ATTACKS BY THE ILTINE UNION ON THE SARAGÓS SYSTEM.

2. THIS INCIDENT IS NOW CODED GRUMPY BADGER. TACTICAL AND STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS SHOULD NOW BE CODED EYES ONLY GRUMPY BADGER, AND SHIFT IMMEDIATELY TO ONE-TIME PAD SERIES Q012.

3. NO RESPONSE TO THIS INCIDENT IS REQUIRED FROM FIELD FLEET SPINWARD; ADMIRAL, YOUR PLATE IS FULL ENOUGH. DIRECT RESPONSE TO ILTINE ACTS OF AGGRESSION WILL BE HANDLED BY HEAVY SIX UNITS, CAPITAL FLEET.

4. FIELD FLEET SPINWARD IS AUTHORIZED, HOWEVER, TO DEAL WITH FURTHER ILTINE AGGRESSION AT ITS DISCRETION.

5. STAND BY TO PROVIDE LOGISTIC SUPPORT AS REQUIRED TO CAPITAL FLEET UNITS.

6. AUTHENTICATION PADLOCK WILLOW WOLF GATEWAY CIRRUS PRAYER / 0xAE9532BB81200A18

ADM/FLT RELEQ CLAVES-ITH-LELAD, FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY


Consolidated Mutual Mitigation & Surety today announced a reduction in shipping insurance rates across previously affected regions of the spinward Worlds back to pre-war levels, except for shipping within the border constellations (the Crimson Expanse, Vanguard Reaches, and Csell Buffer) and the territorial volume of the People’s State of Bantral, while simultaneously imposing a 15% rise in rates on the constellations currently forming the coreward battlespace. The Exchange responded favorably to this news, and to the parallel announcement by several commercial banking consortia of favorable bridging terms to shipcorps whose business has been adversely affected by the ongoing military action, moves seen as showing a determination to restore and normalize the interstellar economy as quickly as possible.

CMMS closed today at Ex. 1835.6, up 293 basis points on market opening.

– the Seranth Times, financial section


From: Simichie Anant
To: Lt. Halet Makeer, VNS Social Harmony
Subject: Homemade cookies!

I hope you enjoy them. Let me know how they tasted, okay?

Trope-a-Day: No Poverty

No Poverty: Played straight in the Empire – and indeed the entire Core Economic Zone.

Well, at least as far as absolute poverty goes. Let us consider, for example, the hypothetical lowest-income citizen-shareholder in the Empire, someone who certainly doesn’t exist, having never had a single original, marketable thought in their entire life, possesses no skills, and who has never found any way to make themselves useful to any other sophonts whatsoever.

That guy, whose only source of income is the Citizen’s Dividend, can still afford a good-sized, luxurious home to live in, and – for less than the price of basic cable *here*, at that – an energy-and-cornucopia-services subscription sufficient to fabricate more food than he could ever eat, more clothing than he could ever wear, and a wide range of other assorted consumer goods even if they’re last year’s relinquished-copyright model; along with information-services access, basic-coverage tort insurance, and comprehensive medical.

That’s only going to stop being true if he manages to screw up deliberately and dramatically – and, given the generosity of Imperial bankrupty/debt law designed to encourage entrepreneurship and leave people able to function and earn more money to pay their debts in future, in fairly exotic ways. (And this is itself unlikely, inasmuch as That Guy is likely to receive a friendly visit from the Guardians of Our Harmony seeking to cure his obvious craziness even before taking it to the next level.)

tl;dr It is within delta of functionally impossible to have less than a well-off middle-class lifestyle in the CEZ in general and the Empire in particular.

Now, to mention what the trope page says is rarely mentioned, if you’re the type to concern yourself with relative poverty, then you can still find plenty of material to get hot and bothered about. The Empire got to its poverty-free post-material-scarcity state of awesomeness through the vigorous and rapacious practice of free markets and greed, and isn’t planning to change any time soon. As such, were anyone to bother computing its Gini coefficient or other such measures of economic inequality, it would undoubtedly cause some serious palpitations and flabberghast, the fantastically wealthy Numbers owning private luxury moons, and so forth.

It’s just that no-one *there* gives a damn, because the traditional ways of “legally stealing” your way to wealth are all illegal, and because it’s hard to convince people who live in big houses and own magic boxes that can make heaps and heaps of anything for twenty bucks a month that they’re being Horribly Oppressed by the 1%, the Man, or pretty much anyone else. At least, it is without idiot primate status-game instincts to help you.

Finally to note, this is something that I do pretty much try to take lightly, at least inside the CEZ. After all, to the lucky people from there, the magic box that makes whatever you want just as soon as it occurs to you to want it is the natural state of the universe, belike.

Of course, when they have to deal with the people from outside there, or, dearie me, with the people from the Unemerged Markets, they have the most terrible – “No comconsoles?” – problems in understanding exactly what the heck this poverty thing is. (See much more under Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense.) Not having a cornucopia machine of your very own is about as far as the non-cosmopolitan imagination gets.

In Space, Everyone Can Hear You Burn

“Space may be silent, but it’s easy to tell how the ship’s maneuvering from the noise inside. Cold-gas thrusters hiss. Hypergolics hiss too, with a harsher metallic note, bangs and pings. Hydroxy rockets, they roar. Solid packs are similar, but rougher, with underlying stutters and clicks. Fusion torches purr like giant cats – unless they’re Nucleodyne-made and running at hard burn1, when the afterburner resonance mode makes ’em howl like damned souls. Mass-driver launch is eerily silent, nothing but air whispering over the hull until the lasers cut in, and then it’s endlessly rolling thunder, dwindling behind you.”

“Nuclear pulse-drive? You don’t hear a pulse-drive, not with your ears and live t’talk about it. You hear it with your bones.”


1. Hard burn, in the jargon, refers to the practice of injecting (a limited supply of) antiprotons into the exhaust of a fusion torch for short, high-power bursts.

Trope-a-Day: Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense

Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Part of the problem – to an extent, sense being defined as specifically those kinds of it that apply in scarcity economies – the Empire and its economic peers have in relating to the rest of the galaxy, specifically those parts of it that aren’t awash in automation, cornucopias, and in any case, cashy money.  Which is to say, those who’ve read history or geography enough to learn about the past or elsewhere can more or less appreciate the notion of poverty as an abstract datum, but, y’know, it feels like poverty ought to mean something like bandwidth limitations, or having a valet-bot with no sense of taste, or having to make do with public-domain fashion, or something.  At worst, the sort of temporary condition that happens on very early colonies or during disasters before you get the power plants and the autofacs up and running (again).

The sort of thing that we would recognize as poverty, either here in the West or worse, in the Third World, isn’t even on the imaginative radar of the modal Imperial citizen-shareholder.  Those who do come to appreciate its existence generally form the core of the faction that wants to see Order, Progress, Liberty and the Imperial Way of Life rammed down the throat of the entire galaxy right the hell now, because gods above and gods below, how can any sophonts bear to live like that?

(This is also the one, incidentally, that supports any number of smugglers willing to take immortagens and cornucopia machines to the Oppressed Masses, and remains terribly, terribly confused that people who have all the means to live in a comfortable not-as-cool-as-ours-obviously but still pretty damn nice Utopia still manage to consistently screw it up.)

Also, apposite and relevant Jeeves and Wooster quotation: “As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them. I’d always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves and haven’t got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don’t you know. I mean to say, ever since then I’ve been able to appreciate the frightful privations the poor have to stick.

Trope-a-Day: Marked Bullet

Marked Bullet: You can actually buy gun add-ons to engrave the flechettes (with elegant and situationally relevant haiku, even, in the case of the Eye-in-the-Flame Warrior-Poet Gun) – granted, it’s too small to read with the naked eye, and it’s almost impossible that it will be readable post-impact – as you fire them, if you really want to make a point of this sort of thing, but it’s not exactly a practical device.

(And anyway… like they say, it’s not the bullet with your name on it you should worry about, it’s all the thousands of bullets labeled “To whom it may concern.”)

Epistolary Experiment (16/30)

LANDING, SARAGÓS – “The future of Saragós as an independent world today hangs in the balance, as the Iltine Union’s true intentions in keeping its primary fleet elements at home were revealed in a surprise attack on the freesoil world Saragós, on the rim of the Osis Deep constellation. Behind me, you can see the aftermath of the opening Iltine kinetic strikes on defense facilities near the city of Landing, effectively destroying them and doing considerable collateral damage to the city. Fires from damaged power conduits are still burning through much of the northern quarter.”

“Iltine forces are still in orbit, and rumors are spreading of troop landings in outlying regions. Response from local governances to these attacks have been weak and erratic, but many Saragónes have been forming informal militias to oppose the expected Iltine incursions. Nevertheless, with the attention of other local powers drawn elsewhere by the Republic invasion, it remains to be seen if this will be enough”

“This is Xaríä Cieng, Telememe News.”


FROM: CS FLAMEFANG (TASK FORCE SP-V31, TALON A)
TO: FIELD FLEET SPINWARD COMMAND (CS LIBERTY’S PRICE)

*** EXPEDITE TANGLE
*** EYES ONLY FERVENT SPAN
*** AFTER ACTION REPORT

INFORMATIONAL:

1. TALON SUCCESSFULLY MADE TRANSIT VIA KORDAL ROUTE TO DANTRY (VONIS 31) SYSTEM, PER PREVIOUS ORDERS. MINIMAL REPUBLIC PICKET VESSELS ENCOUNTERED EN ROUTE, NO ENGAGEMENTS.

2. PER SPECIAL QUERY, REPUBLIC STARGATE SYSTEM APPEARS TO BE OPERATING WITHIN NORMAL PARAMETERS.

3. UPON ARRIVAL IN DANTRY SYSTEM, IMMEDIATELY DETECTED LOCAL GUARD FORCE CHARACTERIZED AS FOUR HARRIER-CLASS DESTROYERS AND ONE NEW PATH-CLASS CRUISER WAS DETECTED AT ELEVEN LIGHT-MINUTES RANGE, IN PARALLEL ORBIT TO DANTRY VI FUEL DEPOT/GAS MINING FACILITY.

4. LOCAL GUARD FORCE IMMEDIATELY PROCEEDED TO CLOSE RANGE, WHILE TALON ASSUMED DIRECT COURSE TO DANTRY VI FUEL DEPOT ON BRACHISTOCHRONE TRAJECTORY, WITH INTENT TO INVITE A CLOSING ENGAGEMENT.

5. SUBSEQUENT CLOSING ENGAGEMENT STARTED AT 2.1 LIGHT MINUTES AND CONCLUDED WITH REPUBLIC WITHDRAWAL AT MINIMUM RANGE 0.4 LIGHT-MINUTES. IN THE COURSE OF THE ENGAGEMENT, ONE REPUBLIC DESTROYER WAS LOST AND TWO MORE WERE ABANDONED AND SCUTTLED. THE CRUISER (SEVERELY DAMAGED) AND THE FOURTH DESTROYER (UNDAMAGED) SURVIVED WITHDRAWAL TOWARDS VILIN (VONIS 31). TASK FORCE SUFFERED MODERATE/SEVERE DAMAGE TO CS FLAMEFANG AND BOTH COHORTS.

6. TALON ELECTED NOT TO PURSUE AND PROCEEDED ON COURSE TO DANTRY VI FUEL DEPOT AFTER RECOVERING REPUBLIC SMALL CRAFT.

7. ESPATIER FORCE WAS DISPATCHED TO SECURE FUEL DEPOT, AND SUCCEEDED IN SO DOING AFTER LIGHT SKIRMISHING, NO CASUALTIES. NO CLASSIFIED MATERIAL WAS SECURED. AFTER TAKING ON BUNKERAGE, FUEL DEPOT WAS DESTROYED WITH NUCLEONIC CHARGES.

8. PENDING ORDERS TO THE CONTRARY TALON RETURNS TO KARAL DEPOT FOR REPAIR AND RESUPPLY.

9. AUTHENTICATION MONOMACH QUIVER PHOENIX CYAN GOLD BILE / 0x7782BB3A831D99EE

CAPT CORDÉ VITREMARVIS, CS FLAMEFANG


From: Imogen Andracanth, VP Research, Ring Dynamics
To: Adm. [blank], Imperial Naval Intelligence
Subject: UNSEEN KEY; info req.
Security: EYES ONLY UNSEEN KEY

With regard to the preliminary abstractions, some possibilities occur.

Do you or anyone else on the Security Executive have any record of signatures matching the enclosed (even approximately) from anywhere within, say, three hundred light-orbits of the Vonis Prime system? I have my people checking into public records, the Stargazer’s Guild historicals, and the Very Long Baseline, but something from closer up would be better.

-i

encs.

Author’s Note: Atomic Law

For those with a curiosity as to why this automatically constitutes three or four crimes rather than one, at least in legal terms, the answer is that the Imperial legal system, unlike ours, works very hard to make its charges atomic. That is to say, each individual part of the criminal act gives rise to one, and only one, charge which can then be conveniently assembled into a proper reflection of the totality, without punishing anything twice or not at all. Apart from avoiding the obvious abusability of overlapping systems – such as our habit of stacking on multiple overlapping charges to ramp up the total sentence and encourage plea bargaining – to do otherwise would be almost painfully inelegant and irrational.

(And when you position as a law provider depends on your ability to convince people of your law-providing arete, that is not an appearance you wish to give. Well, not to eldrae, anyway. Humans seem to have more tolerance for that sort of thing.)

So those three crimes mentioned down there, would be the rape, the battery which enabled you to carry it out (assuming, in this case, the use of violence), and the proximal assault which the battery almost certainly implied. Of course, in other cases, instead of that proximal-assault-and-battery, you might instead see charges of pharmaceutical-mediated battery, if coercive aphrodisiacs or incapacitors were involved, or coercion (in the duress sense), or even fraud, for that matter, because in Imperial praxis, lying your way into someone’s bed is every bit as much rape as any of the others, and they’ll execute you for that, too.

Of course, if we’re being purely pragmatic about it, the fine details of the charging system doesn’t matter all that much where this particular class of crime is concerned. (In the ancient days, it might have made the difference between “we’ll offer you a mercy-draught of hemlock and a fast pyre” and “we’ll smoulder you to death over the course of a couple of weeks just to emphasize how VERY VERY MUCH we disapprove of this sort of thing”, but everyone’s much more civilized now and realizes that this sort of thing is impolite, uncivilized, redundant, and no additional deterrent.)

But justice has to be seen to be done, and it has to be seen to be done right – which is to say, in accordance with mélith, the principle that each shall receive exactly as they merit. And so, one must necessarily determine that – even if the debt they accrue happens to, and is known to, substantially exceed their life.

Trope-a-Day: Marital Rape License

Marital Rape License: Hah.  The only difference in Imperial law between non-marital and marital rape is that in the latter you go from committing three crimes, two of them capital, to committing four crimes, three of them capital (the extra one being Infiduciarity, which becomes capitalized due to the precise magnitude of the betrayal involved).

As civilized folk, though, they’ll only kill you once, even if the technology does exist to raise the dead.  Besides, it’d be hard to carry the sentences out consecutively; these days the flames of purification are usually provided by fusion plasma.  It’s hard on the mind-state recording equipment.

Trope-a-Day: Manipulative Bastard

Manipulative Bastard: The right (or wrong) kind of professional memeticist (or related professions, such as lawyers – the technical term for one kind, for example is nomomach, freely glossable “war-lawyer”).  The Office of Warrior Philosophy, for example, is full of the militarized subspecialty of this, but it’s hardly the only profession that is.

(On the other hand, also somewhat necessary just because widespread awareness of memetics and its core techniques acts as a sort-of memetic immune system.  The equivalent of the “pick-up artists”, for example, suffered greatly from the “Ooh, who’s a cute little amateur meme-wrangler, then?” effect – which is not to say that the seducers have gone away, but it raises the level of the game considerably when you need the equivalent of a postgraduate education to sneak a loaded meme past the average person’s information-society-grade meme filters.)

Drinking Problem

“Thirty-Two Tons, this is Clajdia SysCon, we’re going to need you to abort your next maneuver, recompute for previous burn time plus twelve minutes, crossing traffic drone freighter DF-01369. Over.”

“Clajdia SysCon, Thirty-Two Tons, negative on that, we have traffic priority over drone freighters. Over.”

“Thirty-Two Tons, Clajdia SysCon, affirmative, but you don’t want to exercise priority over one-three-six-nine, over.”

“Clajdia SysCon, Thirty-Two Tons, clarify please. Over.”

“Thirty-Two Tons, Clajdia SysCon, one-three-six-nine is a three-hundred-barrel fermenter of Callaneth’s Finest Ballistic Beer with a special requirement for constant acceleration. We preempt her for you, they lose thrustdown. They lose thrustdown, they lose the batch. They lose the batch, all the belters out of Ipsy Station want your heads to decorate their candles. How badly do you want to harsh the local color? Over.”

“Clajdia SysCon, Thirty-Two Tons, recomputing as requested. Clear.”

Dear Patreons…

…an administrative question. So far, I’ve only been posting links to actual fiction pieces through Patreon. But as you know, that’s not all I post here. So, since that’s just an arbitrary choice, I thought I’d ask y’all about your preferences for it:

[polldaddy poll=8583840]

Note: Since my Patreon is set as monthly, not per-piece, whatever you pick here will have no effect on how much I’m costing you.

 

A Megaton of Prevention

The chfsssc, or rather the chfsssc‘s environmental armor, sat in the parking lot below the conference room, glowing dully red even in the bright afternoon sun, the low rumble-throb of its internal reactors clearly audible from inside. Around it, the tarry surface steamed and slowly melted in the radiant heat.

Above, Orthly min Sachill turned away from the window, consulted the fresh text on his slate, and spoke:

“My colleague regrets to say that the lithospheric situation is extremely serious -”

A loud bass grinding from outside interrupted him.

“Pardon me. My colleague regrets to say that the lithospheric situation is a pyroclastic fertilization in a sedimentary geode, if you’ll pardon the idiom. The magma chamber is hot, wet, fluid, and not going anywhere with a simple divert. In short: you left it cooking too long. We’re going to have to lance it and release the pressure up top.”

“What does that mean?”

“Ultimately, it means we need to install a wide-area nanofiber crust reinforcement mesh, and then zap the magma chamber just right with an orbital laser. Right now, it means we need to talk to our insurance broker, and you need to evacuate everyone within six hundred miles and decide where you’d like your new peninsula.”

“You can’t be serious! What’s the alternative?”

“This is a supervolcano, gentlesophs. Your alternative is go shopping for a new homeworld.”

Hohmann Transfer Delta-V Approximator

Speaking of handy little Mathcad tools, this one is a generic delta-v approximator for planet-to-planet Hohmann transfers, based on the same mathematics as this Stack Overflow answer:

http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1380/how-to-calculate-delta-v-required-for-a-planet-to-planet-hohmann-transfer

As mentioned there, it makes various assumptions, including that the bodies’ orbits around their sun are within delta of circular and coplanar (which works reasonably well for Sol), and that you aren’t using low-thrust drives and as such it can get away with treating burns as instantaneous. The further you wander away from these, the more approximate the approximation gets, belike. Caveat calculator!

Anyway, here it is:

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=8B53BC30DA65DCAA!90356&authkey=!AAMfSsixhk7pGRI&ithint=file%2cmcdx

Enjoy!

State of the Me

Incidentally, just to let you all know, the twin problems that have afflicted my productivity for a while – first, computer breakages and the repair thereof, followed in swift succession by second, mind-fuzzying incompetence-generating plague – look to be all done with, or at the least, clearing up rapidly.

Normal service in these parts, or at least normal fiction posting frequency, should therefore be resumed shortly.