It is a truism of celestial warfare that among the most valuable targets to seize in the course of a major planetary assault operation is the primary planetary starport or local starports close to the  intended target(s) of the operation. Starports, for all the obvious reasons, make perfect orbitheads,
Intelligent Gerbil: I’m working really hard to avert this one, except – quite – in the case of the uplifts (in whose case, retaining the mental characteristics of its animal ancestors that are compatible with sophoncy and civilization is half the point; in a world in which data is trivially shared,
Insufficiently Advanced Alien: Well, we tell them and we tell them that just buying the tech without understanding the science and engineering Will Not Work Out Well, and, in fact, will probably leave them in a Bad Place, given a while – and, well, some species and polities do it anyway.
“Charges in place? Conduits sealed? Okay, go ahead and open it up.” The heavy wrench descending, clangingly, on the sealed emergency hatch once, twice, three times before the seal broke, a wave of fouled air rushing out past the linobir enforcer and hsis men. Beyond, the milling crowd, faces pale
Institutional Apparel: Averted. Pre-conviction, while the Empire will confine the accused, they don’t own the accused, who may, after all, be innocent as the day is long. So they get to keep their own clothing and other perquisites until the trial is done. (Post-conviction, since the Imperials don’t
Instant Sedation: It’s not the drug that makes it near-instant; it’s the active nanoencapsulation-and-transport that gets it where it needs to go to have effect.
Instant Emergency Response: As a side effect of the AI monitors on the raw feed mentioned under Big Brother Is Watching, which both make sure response is dispatched to observed crimes and accidents as they happen, and which are happy to use predictive algorithms to make sure that it’s
Instant AI, Just Add Water: Was once true in the old days, back when people were quite often using mental modules scanned, compiled, and tweaked from brain-scans of biosapiences in their AI architectures. The logos/personality organization algorithm is pretty damn resilient, and often such inexpertly designed modules carried at
It’s question-answering time here at the Eldraeverse! A reader writes: Two questions- 1) Is there a food item for the Eldrae that has assumed the same memetic status as bacon for humans? 2) What do the Eldrae find funny? What human comedians, if they were to go on tour
In Space Everyone Can See Your Face: Averted, for all the practical reasons mentioned. In practice, augmented reality v-tags – actually, the standard public identity tag – tell you who is who, and those who want to can use supplementary v-tags to indicate their current emotional state, etc., and perform other expressive
“Academician. Academician.” The foundry master wiped his hands on his leather apron, and waved at the looming bulk in the back of the workshop. “Your sky-tube’s coming along to plan. Just got the wire-wrapping on today. The woodwright’s’ll be here tomorrow to get the quarter-boards on her,
Insistent Terminology: Happens fairly often, because nomenclature (among other things) is Serious Business, and one therefore – when dealing with people – should know that people earned those attributions, dammit, and that therefore not using them (or misusing them) amounts to a deliberate insult. They would not, after all, presume to insult