Trope-a-Day: Kill It With Water

Kill It With Water: Leaving aside such not-really-the-water examples as water knives, pressure effects, and drowning, this is rather rare, inasmuch as the universe is full of the bloody stuff and as such having much of a vulnerability to water is unlikely to let you live long enough for anyone to actually try to kill you. (And any species having one would be unlikely to be so freakin’ stupid as to invade a small sylithotectonic world whose surface is something like three-quarters covered in the stuff. Yes, I’m looking at you.)

Perhaps the best known related, not-really-the-water-but-more-so-than-some, example exists mostly because of those species whose native temperature range is such that water’s natural state, as ice, is a kind of rock. And being hit by a stream of liquid water, therefore, is much like immersion in lava.

Water

W141972 Syntherum (Gelidaceous-class asteroid)
e’Luminiaren Belt
Lumenna-Súnáris System

A thousand years ago, they used to think there wouldn’t be much water in space, and we’ll all be stuck out here in a barren desert, sending home for bottled oceans.

Well, fortunately not. There’s plenty – more water than there is just about anything else worth digging up outside a gas giant. It’s just nowhere near the places where you actually need the damn stuff, which is where we come in.

We being, first, the Initiative’s tanker, Adorably Aqueous, keeping station about a mile off and waiting to load up with 32,000 tons of water for the thirsty habs between here and Talentar high orbit;

Being, second, the dozen or so automated Seredháïc-class ice-miners sitting around down here on Syntherum, big 160-ton water-blimps with drive, drill, and ancillary equipment all packed into their tiny gondolas. They chop through the dusty crust of the ‘roid, pump steam down to melt the ice and slurp the water back. Shuffling back and forth between here and the tanker, they get it filled up in just a few hours, quick and clean.

And being, third, myself, Cathál Rian-ith-Ríëlle, hydrodynamic engineer, waterwright, and now spacer, with my candle and my trusty wrench.

Because where you have water, you have pipes, and where you have pipes, you have leaks, blockages, and all the rest.

Even in space, that means you need a plumber.