“In the starry realms above/God will mete as we may measure.”
–Friedrich Schiller, “An die Freude”
Shang Xiao Xú Mùlán sat up, icy gel sliding off her body with a sickening thwuck, which was soon replaced by the even more sickening retching of Xú.
“Easy, Ma’am,” the quiet Australian doctor said. “Just lie back. You’re still not fully reanimated.”
“Sitrep,” Xú said, as soon as she stopped spluttering.
Oliver Robinson smiled in spite of himself; he liked the captain, even if she could be a pig-headed idiot from time to time.
“We’re reanimating the crew, Shang Xiao. Obviously, we’ve just passed Luna.”
“Not funny, Oliver.”
“We’re 36 hours out, condition green across the board. Ted, Mukta, Yelena and I are bored out of our skulls, but otherwise fine, and Shang Xiao, you need to lay back down. I need to move on to step four, and then I need to start work on Commander Marechera.”
“Send Lt. Col. Martínez down at his earliest convenience,” Xú said, trying but failing to stay vertical. Cryosleep was a miracle – she did not envy the two years that the skeleton crew had spent awake – but damn it, the TSS Stanisław Lem was her command, and now that she was conscious, she intended to take it.
“Col. Martínez will be down in three hours, ma’am, as soon as I clear you for duty. In the meantime, I’ve linked the ship’s computer up to your gool so you can get a full report, because I know damn well that even with your mind functioning at 40 percent, you’re going to want to go full-out.”
Mùlán smiled at that; the doctor really did know her. If she couldn’t take command immediately, at least he’d bring her up to speed.
“Would you like that in Mandarin or English, Ma’am?”
“English,” the captain said. She wanted to make sure her fluency had not waned while she slumbered.
“Thought so. Now, lie down; your core temp is still only 34 degrees.”
As Mùlán lay down, sliding back into the slowly warming gel, she realized the futility of fighting with Robinson, and so she instead murmured, “Thank you, Doctor.”
Robinson smiled, pressed a few buttons, and moved on to the next tank.
The optical lens quietly came to life, running the test pattern Mùlán had known since she was five. A series of icons dotted the lower part of her visual field; she sighed as she saw there were 45,000 messages in queue. Happily, she saw that Robinson had placed an icon for the briefing on the desktop; she looked at it and blinked twice, then closed her eyes as the briefing began.
“Ni Hao, Shang Xiao Xú. The time is 0822 UTC on Thursday, 14 January 2155. You have been in cryosleep for one year, eleven months, and twenty-five days.”
“I know,” Mùlán muttered.
“Of course you know.” The computer said. “We are currently on final approach to Saturn. We are due to enter an eccentric polar orbit at 2106 UTC on 15 January, T minus 35 hours, 15 minutes, 14 seconds and counting. Our current velocity is 20.68 kps, down from a peak of 67.44 kps reached on 17 July 2154. Main thrusters have been braking since that time; orbital thrusters are due to begin firing in T minus 15 hours, 15 minutes, 4 seconds and counting.
“Events of note based on your preferences: On 31 December 2153, your cousin Jiang Da’s wife gave birth to a baby girl, who they named Jiang Xiùlán. A summary of messages from him indicate this was done in your honor. There are several messages I have flagged in the queue related to this.”
“That’s sweet of Da; please compose a congratulatory message and send.”
“Message sent. Continuing. On 20 January 2153, Robyn Martin became the first transgender American president. On 1 December 2153, Minister Lǐ Wáng was sworn in as the new United Chinese Republic premier. Last 1 May, Jerusalem became a joint city of both Israel and Palestine in accordance with the Nairobi Accords of 2124. On 1 August, the Treaty of Tangiers went into effect, giving the United Nations additional powers to enforce its decisions on all member nations. On 7 August, the United States of America won its fifth men’s World Cup football championship, defeating China 1-0 a.e.t.; Lt. Col. Martínez wishes me to inform you that he expects you to honor the terms of your bet.”
That brought a bit of profanity from Mùlán; if the computer noticed, it did not mention it.
“The TSS N.K. Jemisin is in its ninth month in orbit around Jupiter; Captain Bjornsen has reported significant new findings at Harwell Deep on Europa, including several new samples of Europa hsuensis and at least one related species. He has sent seventy-four messages to you regarding them; he appears to be quite excited.”
“He should be.” Mùlán was beaming now; she had been XO on the Arthur C. Clarke on the first Jovian mission; no matter what Saturn brought, the first multicellular extraterrestrial organism ever found bore her name. That it was a relatively dull-looking marine flatworm was of little import; it was enough to ensure she would go down as at least the second-most-famous Mùlán in history. She could live with that.
“Anything else of note Earthside?”
“The latest United Nations Climate Change Task Force Report indicates that global temperatures are up 4.8 degrees Celsius from two centuries ago, but down 2.9 degrees since 2100; alleviation technologies appear to be having significant mitigating effects. Ground was broken on Chawla Station, the fifth JTSA permanent Lunar colony. And Admiral Harwell wanted me to tell you that you are waking up on the 142nd anniversary of the disappearance of Dr. Niall Freeman, so if you happen upon a missing sesquicentenarian physicist in your travels, let him know.”
Xú laughed out loud at that. Harwell had been her commander on the Clarke, and he considered himself something of an amateur conspiracy buff. Not a believer in them; more of a connoisseur. Freeman’s disappearance was, he said, the Kennedy Assassination of the 21st century – a bright young physicist goes missing on the brink of developing cheap fusion power? Clearly, the illuminati must’ve got to him! Xú, of course, had immediately asked who Kennedy was, and ended up learning far more about Russo-American politics of the mid-20th century than she had ever wanted or needed to know.
“Send a message to Admiral Harwell that in the unlikely event Freeman turns up on Iapetus, I’ll let him know.”
“Done. That will take one hour, 24 minutes to reach him; shall I alert you when he responds?”
“No. He’ll alert me. I’m quite sure of that. Okay then. Give me the full situation report.”
“Of course,” the computer said, and as it began to drone on about power levels, thruster output, and their itinerary, the captain of the Lem realized with dismay that Oliver was right – for she had to fight not to doze off.
* * *
Several light years away on a nondescript moon, orbiting a nondescript planet, orbiting a nondescript star, Sorcha Freeman felt very much like she wanted to vomit.
She had worked very hard over the past two years she’d spent on Avalon, throwing herself into a project that she felt destined to succeed at. Indeed, she’d had great success – by any measure, the citizenry of Avalon was more educated now than it had been when she arrived. They’d moved through industrialization and space and were racing headlong into the information age. They had cellular phones, a solidly functional internet, Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, and just in the past week, two Avalonian scientists had brought a primitive fusion reactor online. It still consumed more power than it generated, but it was a start. They had covered over four hundred Earth years in just over one hundred; in another hundred Earth years, they might just catch up. They had done incredible work.
“But I don’t know what more we can do.”
She had taken to pacing lately, and her passenger felt it was time to note this.
“Sorsh…if you’re just going to walk around your office, can you at least set me on the desk? I think I’m starting to get motion sickness.”
Sorcha paused, and sighed. “Sorry, Lessy, I’m just….”
“I know,” Alesia Nonahsdottir said from the pocket of Sorcha’s coat. “Sit down, breathe, and let’s talk this out.”
Sorcha fished in her pocket and with practiced ease, plucked her friend out; she didn’t have to be told to be gentle as she dropped the tiny human to the desk beside her. She’d been doing this a long time.
Alesia was Sorcha’s best friend, and had been for as long as she could remember. Lessy’s parents were some of her parents’ closest and dearest friends, and while Alesia was a bit younger than Sorcha, she had matured slightly faster, meaning they’d hit their teens just about the same time. She was grateful Alesia had come on this journey with her; Avalon was a long way from home.
Of course, it was also a far better place for humans than Archavia.
“You know I’m right,” Sorcha said, quietly. “We can’t push them any faster, not without taking over. Titans can’t drag this group up to even with Earth technology, especially as Earth keeps moving forward. We’ve moved them forward sixty years in the last twenty, but they’re still way behind.”
“I know,” replied Alesia, sitting cross-legged on Sorcha’s desk. She had her mother’s blonde hair and intuition. Her heart ached for her friend; she knew that Sorcha was despondent over what she saw as a complete failure on her part. Lessy took a more philosophical view, but then, she always had. “We can keep improving education, and should, but the next big leap for them is more about research and development and patience. Getting them from the agriculture age to the information age was about education; developing warp drive is different.”
“I keep thinking…we could give them more Titan tech. Move them along. Basically hand them warp drive. But….”
“But that’s not advancing them. Not really. Titan interference kept this group where it was for centuries, artificially stunted. Titan interference can’t magically make it better.”
Sorcha nodded. “Maybe if we’d been here at the start…but we weren’t. And I just don’t see any other way. Titans have to get out of the way, and let the humans lead themselves.”
“You know, that’s why I brought you here.”
Sorcha’s and Alesia’s necks both snapped to the open door, where Pryvani Tarsuss stood.
“Pryvani…I’m sorry, we were just….”
“I want to say, ‘How dare you! After all I’ve done?’ Of course, mostly, I want to say, ‘How dare you be right about this.’ But you are. Hello Alesia.”
“Hello Senator Tarsuss.”
“Please, Pryvani.”
“Sen. Pryvani…nope, doesn’t seem right,” she said with a grin.
“You’ve done great work with the primary school. You know the average Titan intelligence test score for her students is an age-adjusted 56? And they’re just an information age society! Imagine what they’ll be able to do in twenty years.”
The smile on Pryvani’s face faded. “But we don’t have twenty years, do we?”
Sorcha gestured to a chair. “I’m sure you heard about the Jupiter probe before I did.”
“Your uncle was kind enough to share the information. You know, your father predicted twenty-one years ago that humans would be knocking on the door of Titan Station right about now.”
“Yes, well, don’t remind my dad, because he’ll never let any of us hear the end of it.”
“You think he needs reminding?” Pryvani laughed. “Last time I was on Archavia, I had dinner with your parents, and he was positively beaming. Says he has a bet with your uncle he expects to win.”
Sorcha sighed. She just wanted to keep the conversation on this track. But she knew it had to be said.
“Pryvani, you said it yourself…we don’t have time to move them forward. If you’d been born a hundred years earlier, or if….”
“I’d be old now. I just…I hate to lose. Especially on the one project that is truly mine.”
“You haven’t lost, Sen. Tarsuss,” Alesia said, approaching the Titan and touching her hand, as tall as she. “Avalon is going to catch up to Earth in the next forty years. And that’s all down to you. We just don’t know that they can get there before Earth leaves its solar system. That’s hardly a defeat; Avalon and Earth are closer technology-wise than Earth and the Empire. We just think it may be time to accept that we can’t get them to perfect synchronicity. So we think we need a new approach that recognizes that.”
Pryvani glanced upward from the human who was attempting to console her, toward the young woman who sat across the desk. Sorcha was not quite eighteen in Titan years, perhaps twenty or twenty-one physically and emotionally based on her part-human physiology. She was headstrong, willful, and arrogant, far too talented for her age – and well aware of it.
“I want to emphasize the ‘think’ part,” Sorcha said. “It’s far from solid.”
“There’s no perfect plan,” Pryvani said, smiling. “Most of the time, there’s no plan at all. So what are you thinking?”
Sorcha felt queasy again. Did she really dare to suggest this? Yes. She did. She had to.
“It’s time for Titans to get out of the humans’ way,” she said. “It’s time for Titans to give humans the opportunity to chart their own destiny, make their own mistakes. Titans can help….”
“’But not lead,’ yes, I know the words of the charter. And?”
Sorcha coughed quietly. “We need to turn their destiny over to them, completely,” Sorcha said. “We need to end our mission on Avalon.”
* * *
“Pilot, thrusters to station-keeping.”
“Thrusters to station-keeping, aye, ma’am.”
“Navigation, check bearing?” the Shang Xiao said, rising from her seat, and thanking the woman who’d discovered artificial gravity as she did so.
“We are past the South Pole, and have entered orbit Alpha One, to within 1-10,000th of one percent, Shang Xiao.”
“Thank you, Captain-Lieutenant. Nice work everyone,” Xú said, maneuvering around the bridge to get a look out the viewports. The rings were quite spectacular from this angle, and even the most experienced of astronauts were momentarily silent as they looked out at them.
They’d orbit Saturn twelve times; they were shedding momentum, and powering up the gravitic thrusters as they did so. In two days, they’d break orbit, shoot the Cassini Division, and then head to Titan, which they would orbit indefinitely. It was one of the most interesting worlds in the Sol System, and what’s more, spectral imaging had been showing something completely unexpected lately – just a bare hint of O2 where there really shouldn’t be any. It might be a glitch, but if it wasn’t, it would almost have to be something amazing.
After they made orbit there, it was a series of hops and skips – send the shuttle down to Titan for samples, travel out to Iapetus, then drift in with stops at Rhea and Enceladus, and finally, a brief dip by the shuttle into the Saturnian atmosphere. They had enough fuel for at least two years, with plenty for the captain to make changes to the itinerary as she saw fit.
Starting right now.
“Commander, we’re about ten hours from Enceladus; do you want to take the Sally Ride out?”
Her first officer, Tatenda Marechera, looked over with a wide grin; they’d talked about this, even simulated it. Enceladus was in its own way as interesting as Titan, with a cryovolcano near its South Pole that was venting water high into space. Water directly from its sub-surface ocean. A sub-surface ocean that could, like Europa and Earth, support life. They’d be spending a fair amount of time there no matter what, but if there were signs of life, Xú and Marechera intended to chuck the itinerary and go there immediately after Titan.
Of course, there was no way to know this without getting samples. And the Lem wasn’t going by Enceladus on its way to Titan. But its shuttlecraft could; the Sally Ride had easily enough fuel to go to Enceladus, gather some samples, and rendezvous with the Lem in orbit around Titan. Indeed, it would allow them to get a jump start on observations there.
Besides, it would be fun.
“Yes ma’am,” the XO said in a deep, booming voice. “Should we discuss this with Houston?”
“Well,” Mùlán said, winking, “It seems to me that you have to take off in about two hours, and we wouldn’t hear back for three.
“Too bad,” Tatenda chuckled. “We are on our own, I suppose.”
“Yes we are. Col. Martínez, you’re with Commander Marechera; grab Dr. Frieden on the way.” Then, hitting a button, Xú added, “Engineering, this is the captain, please have Major Nejem report to the shuttle dock.”
Xú sat back down in her chair as Captain-Lieutenant Bobrova slid in to take Ted Martínez’s place at the helm. This was a slight risk, but they were already in orbit around Saturn. What was a bit more risk?
* * *
Navarchos Aertimus Bass shifted slightly on the lift, unconsciously adjusting the twin-comet rank insignia that had found its way onto his neck.
The doors opened, and he walked across the CIC of the Star Carrier Xifos; six times as large as the bridge on the Gyfjon, with displays and terminals covering every square centiunit. He was in command of 25 capital ships, plus any others that might get temporarily assigned to Deep Space Fleet Gama; in addition, four outposts answered to him.
He supposed he should be proud, and he was, sort of. Nobody ever put on the brass square of a Junior Crewmate, 3rd Class without one day envisioning a comet or two in its place. Still, he’d never really aspired to become a flag officer. He much preferred sitting in the worry seat himself, ass-end out in some unknown system, complaining about how the Navarchoses were holding him back. Unfortunately, he’d done too well at that; at some point, someone was bound to recommend him for promotion, and alas, that day had come.
His adjutant, Archiploiarchos Lemm Tam, came up beside him. “Sir, the Troji is requesting permission to land on Sentavia 4-I.”
“Well, make them wait a bit. The Emperor knows, if the Navarchos starts giving back permission in a timely manner, everyone will want everything right away.”
“Aye, sir,” Lemm said, pausing, for she had been working with Bass off and on for twenty-six years, and knew what was to follow.
“Belay that,” he growled with a grin. “Have comms send out permission immediately, but make sure to tell Jomo that if he sees any sign of trouble from natives, he needs to get out of there immediately.”
“Aye, sir.”
“And he’s got 30 hours! I don’t want to hear that he needs more right now. This is a scouting mission, not an exploratory one.”
“Aye aye.”
Bass walked to his spot at the head of the command table, and began flipping through reports from the fleet. Nothing out of the ordinary. The Sandava was coming in after six months of scouting. The Tuana Zanil had detected a new Mu-class planet in orbit around a star in the Monceros Ring, about 100 Tly above the galactic plane. The Gyfjon, Emperor love it, was still kicking around, and doing close observation of Rigil Kentaurus B 3, to see if its “snowball world” phase was beginning to end. Titan Station….
He stopped dead.
“When was someone going to bring this to my attention?”
“Sir, it came in two minutes ago,” said Junior Crewmate Nave, who was at inbound comms.
“No excuse,” said Aertimus, as he read the report. It could be nothing. It was probably nothing. There’d been five unmanned probes sent to that system in the past four years; it was probably just a sixth. They could deal with that; robotic probes, even with the primitive AI the last few had sported, were reasonably easy to fool.
But it was big – well, relatively speaking, anyhow. Roughly as big as the manned probes Earth had sent to Jupiter. He couldn’t take the chance.
“Connect me to Titan Station,” Bass said. “Right now.”
Lemm saw that outbound comms was busy talking to the Troji, so she took it upon herself to make the connection. Within a few moments, the viewscreen displayed Centurium Kir Oden, who looked up in surprise.
“Navarchos Bass! We didn’t expect to hear from you so soon!”
“Hello, Kir. So, do you think it’s manned?”
“It – you mean the probe?”
“No, your snack bar. Yes, the probe!”
Oden shifted a bit; Aertimus Bass usually affected a gruff persona that everyone in the fleet saw right through. (Everyone in the fleet also understood that Bass intended them to see through it.) Kir had talked to him dozens of times, from his time commanding the Gyfjon on. He wasn’t used to seeing the Old Man rattled, but no question, he was rattled.
And that rattled Kir.
“Well, sir,” Kir said, “the humans only just sent their second manned mission to Jupiter, and we’ve cleared out of Europa; they won’t see any signs….”
“I know that,” Bass said. “I’m asking about the probe you picked up.”
“Yes, sir, and no, I don’t think so. But I’ve already asked Opito Starati to send out a recon bird to take a look; it can hide out by Enceladus and get a good reading. Should be in position in another few hours.”
“Good thinking,” Bass said, relaxing just a bit. “All right. I’m sorry to be so direct, but between you and me, we are not ready to say hello to the humans yet. Nobody’s seriously working on whether Humans should be upgraded to Class One, which at this point is just perverse. We have no plan in place to deal with them. If they’re in orbit around Saturn, twenty years of delay are going to have to be rectified in about twenty minutes, and should that happen, may the Emperor protect us all, especially Baby Blue.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is your top priority right now, Kir.”
“I understand, sir.”
“Good. Get back to me as soon as the recon bird returns. Bass out.”
About 75 light years from Aertimus Bass, and about 1.2 million kilometers from Kir Oden, the Stanisław Lem completed its second orbit around Saturn, and a house-sized ship broke away, firing thrusters full as it accelerated toward Enceladus.
I dunno if you guys spotted but DX updated the BIOS too…
Can’t say I did. Stealth edits on the blog are hard to spot as they don’t get bumped in the Newest Stories list.
The key conflict won’t merely be that humans have to adapt to the fact that there are Titans and they are the small end. What is most interesting to me is how Titans will react. They don’t exactly have a good track record with other species in their empire, and what kind of reaction are we looking at from their government once contact is made. Not like they can allow an independent government (The Human UN or w/e is running things) running one of “their” worlds. There will certainly be an inclination to install their own government or demand Earth dismantle its own and submit to Imperial rule. That could cause some serious issues particularly when that demand is backed by superior tech and military and does not concede First Class status. Humanity will be forced into an Empire it probably doesn’t want to submit to. Cannot wait to see the fireworks.
Which might lead Sorsha to visit Earth to mediate, it’ll be cool but the circumstances leading to it will be downright tragic.
“There will certainly be an inclination to install their own government or demand Earth dismantle its own and submit to Imperial rule.”
Unless humans are acknowledged as Class One sentient that’d be like officially demanding rulership from a colony of mice. Any such proposition would be ridiculed.
As for Sorcha acting as mediator, I would expect the Empire to send a government official, and it doesn’t appear that Sorcha is one. Actually she may not even have any significant political knowledge or mastery of diplomacy. Loona would be a much better candidate I think.
Also, I expect Ammer Smit to get involved. He may not have any official ties to the Imperial government, but he should know its ins and outs as well as anyone, and as a human he’d have a much easier time getting Earth officials to trust him than any titan (or titan-looking hybrid).
Great first chapter DX!!! Been a long time, but it’s finally here.
Loving the idea of an internal Google Glass like computer, a cool idea for a future in the 2100s.
I wonder how big of a ship a “recon bird” is compared to the small transport ship the humans are using. A small ship to the Titan’s perspective is gigantic to humans (obviously)
Liking the characters so far, though you may need to describe their physical features, at the moment they’re just names and with many year’s passed, just a small note. (like with Aerti, you only describe his new rank, nothing about his hair or new wrinkles, etc.)
One thing I wonder, but with the Titan Empire being a space faring race without lots of experience in war, I’ve gotta wonder how the Empire would react to human histories of large scale war. Just an interesting thought since a conflict of the Empire and the Insectoids was heavily hinted in ‘Exile’. I’m guessing human experience of war would help them.
Let’s just lay this on the table right now, the advancement of Avalon. Does it make sense? Let’s break this down.
Time frame: It’s been 21 years, or around 140 Earth since Pryvani removed titan restraint on this culture. 60 years of advancement in the last 20, about 400 in the last 100 or so. (That’s a decelerated rate by the way.) If we assume they are at late 20th century now, 60 years is the start of WWII technology wise, and over 400 years is smack in the middle of the Renaissance. Also assuming just over 100 years means 16 titan years, that gives them about 30 to have advanced from Antiquity to the age of Western colonization.
What they have helping them:
It looks like they avoided the collaspe of their civilization, which saves nearly a millenium of make up progress, and maybe leaves only three centuries to advancd in the first thirty years. (Best case scenario and we are still kind of stretching here.)
They are not uncontaminated. They have been exposed to everything from holograms to modern medicine to Buffalo chicken wings. They have been introduced to early 21st century ideas including democratic governing. In ensence they are reverse engineering the end goal rather than spending time on a long term trial and error approach to arrive at that point naturally.
When we left off, Avalon was hardly unified. The outer lands was bandit county, and a new power had been established in the region composed of largely disenfrancised Atlantians. This isn’t necessarily a set back though. The early religious wars led to immediate advances in things like metal working. This has its limits though, and thankfully the team shows up at the WWII military stage to push a focus on education.
And that’s the heart of it, titan cheating to get them up to speed. Sorcha, and even Alesia , are a giant loop hole to get around the charter. I wouldn’t be surprised if they supplied the resources for their space program at a huge discount.
One major problem, adapting generations:
Nevermind that they’d be asking every generation to skip ahead three in their way of thinking, but thanks to life extension many older generations stuck around a lot longer. It looks like what ended up happening is they took advantage of the crisis from the lost of the old “goddess” culture to jump start them into a more modern mind frame, only without all of the tech to go with it.
Well that’s my take on this one. Hope I haven’t offended any of the writers on this over analyzing. I am willing to take this one on suspension of disbelief. The bigger question for me is why they are doing it.
By nearly a millennium of make up progress I mean the Dark Ages. If that wasn’t clear.
We can only wait and see, I guess. I’m willing to believe all this if Avalon had to pay a cost for their rapid tech advancement.
Dun dun dun…
Screw ceremony, let’s just do this first contact quick an messy like scapping a bandage off with a sledge hammer.
I can tell this story is going to be one hell of a ride.
I’m curious to know why getting Avalon and Earth in sync is so important. Functionally, Avalon is a splinter colony of humans, which is okay to be technologically behind the home world. They are avanced enough to understand concepts even beyond Earth’s level and would be pretty easily assimilated. Were they hoping Avalon could jump start class 1 reassessment or that those humans would initiate first contact? No, that does make sense if they were shooting for equal levels.
Titans really got caught with their pants down on this. I guess they could have tried clearing out of the system the second humans sent their first manned mission to Jupiter. But considering Xu Mulan had time to go there (launched 2146), back to Earth (2150) and come to Saturn (arrival 2155), that’s barely over a titan year since they first arrived at the edge of the restricted zone. If Titans were filtering through what must be an obscene amount of Earth radio broadcasts by now while waiting for them reach the nearest listening post, that must now be on Titan itself, they may have missed the launch of the Stanislaw Lem. Hell they could have missed it if they where only running quarterly checks. Not a lot of time to clear out a major and strategic port. Honestly though, some enlighten people in high positions have been expecting this time frame. I’ll be very disappointed if Artie hasn’t at least pondered an emergency course of action for this worst case scenario.
So it begins.
It’s pretty amazing that even with someone as capable and intelligent as Bass that they were still taken off guard by how fast humans move. Even Pryvani seemed wholly unaware, even though she was aware that it would happen in the near future.
Seems the human rights movement hasn’t made the strides I was hoping for, and it seems any possibility for Titans to be proactive are completely dead. Next couple chapters should be fun.
Speaking of which since the story is finished is there any set update schedule? I would personally love it if it were released all at once, but I could live with knowing when I can get my next fix. :p
I would not say dead but dormant, this will reawaken the debate and strengthen the pro-human side. No matter the outcome of Darren’s fight, this will send it through.
Oh I didn’t mean human rights movement was dead, just that there’s now no chance for Titans to be proactive and get ahead of the situation. Titans will act now because they’ll be forced to act, if not internally then I’m sure the other species will press the issue.
They will also have to deal with an entire planet of ‘free’ humans knowing that a race of giant aliens treat them as a second class species, as pets. That’ll be embarrassing but that would be an understatement.
The long wait was worth it! Unlike JS and OHH I haven’t read this over and over and over a dozen times in hopes of catching every minor change you’ve made over the year plus since you’ve written it. Hard to believe around the time I was finishing CSP 2, you were finishing this!
Now, as for my official review, I love it. I’d like to say I found it a little hard to fall in love with the new cast, but that’s just not the case. You integrated them well right off the bat and they just feel like old friends.
Can’t wait to re experience this story, as I haven’t read it since you finished it! It’s going to be a fun ride.
Finally, contact is here! Strange Pryvani & her team started to interfer in Avalonians affairs. Maybe Avalon govt. asked her help.i THINK too titan military is aware of Lem Stanislaw. A Bass is caught off guard or Panicked.
Titan station gets all kinds of radio and TV broadcast from Earth, yet nobody knew Humans had sent a manned spaceship bound for Titan 2 years ago ? Really ?
Is the Lem’s mission supposed to be a secret ? I didn’t get that impression. If it is public, I assume it made a big splash on Earth’s news broadcasts and for a while.
If so, someone in the Imperial Department of Citizenship really dropped the ball on this.
Broadcast TV? Radio? That stuff is dying *now* in the early 21st century. Everything is over the Internet now, and it’s not going to go back to RF in 140 years.
RF is NOT the same as radio. The frequencies we use for radio are just a tiny sliver of the RF band. Any sort of non-electrical transmission, if it’s not light based, is going to be RF, and I don’t see that changing any time soon, if ever.
I’m reading this story over cable. I could be doing that over ADSL, which is just another kind of cable. Both transmit very little RF, and fiber leaks none. That’s how I get Internet content, and these days, that is most of the content. Sure the last leg is Wifi in my home, but there are so many wifi base stations around, and all of them so weak, that it would be very hard to tap into any of them.
Cellphone towers are a little more powerful, but still much weaker than the AM radio stations. What I’m saying is that we are now emitting much less RF than we did 20 years ago, and it’s going to go lower and lower.
I’m talking about communication with the Lem. It’s not like they can just run a cable, it has to be a decently powerful signal. 2 years is about 200 days (5 months) for the TItans, and a lot longer then the 2 minutes or so Artie seems to have had. Seems kind of unbelievable for me, but I suppose they just weren’t really tracking it unitl they could be sure. I think Saturn is the closest the Titans can actually get to earth.
Aside from communication with the Stanislaw Lem there are also several permanent colonies on Earth’s moon now. Earth and those colonies will no doubt be communicating all sorts of things, including television and internet. They’ll need broadcast to achieve that.
Time is almost up, Aertimus. You titans are just too damn slow. History marches on, ready or not. But yeah, with things the way they are, the upcoming contact is not going to be pretty.
I’m somewhat surprised that the Stanislaw Lem managed to catch the Imperial military off guard like this. Don’t they monitor Earth broadcasts? I can’t imagine the mission to Saturn to have been a secret. Also, it took the Stanislaw Lem years to arrive. Did the Empire really only spot them just now? The Red Zone is supposed to have an advanced sensor network to detect would-be smugglers. Although I suppose that the Red Zone sensor network might just check for signs of warp, in which case the Stanislaw Lem wouldn’t register.
Anyway, talk about embarassing. Especially because there apparently was a near miss already at Jupiter.
Also: Contact is finally here! D.X. Machina had to wait so long to start posting it, he must have been near tears from frustration.
Damn it ! Burned by faeriehunter ! 😛
Well, there are many possible answers, one of which being the shere number of “random space objects” far bigger than the tiny Stanislaw Lem, which by all intense and purposes is smaller than a titan personal shuttle craft, escape pod, or even sensory probe. It’s a good chance the tiny little relatively primitive piece of space “junk” just didn’t register.
It’s not hard to stretch your suspension of disbelief there, considering.
And D.X was quite patient, he didn’t rush JS or myself along, and even had no trouble waiting a few hours until after I posted the climax chapter of Exile to post this.
Man, I knew Exile was wrapping up, but this just cements the fact that Exile is, indeed, ending soon.
An arguement you can make is that the Human ship doesn’t match any known readings of Empire + Insectoid ships.
We’ve seen it get breached before, this isn’t new.
Oh mah gawd! And it begins!
About time.
Too late Aerti… now you get to see the obstinate and racist politicians in charge of your society race to see who can be the most obstinate. Accepting humans as a class one species would be too embarrassing for Archavia, what with enslaving them as pets for the last thousand Archavian years.
Well somebody was impatient….
Looks like the Titans are in for a rude awakening.
As for Avalon’s rate of development….I’m struggling to even believe it but I hope the societal issues from such a extreme rate of development is touched upon. You don’t jump through multiple technological ages without a few bumps in the road to put it lightly.
Twenty Archavian years is about three or four generations of humans. They also aren’t just leaping ahead by themselves either, they were being guided.
Even still we’re talking about 400 years of development in over 100. Humans don’t adapt to change that fast. There are bound to be cracks in Pryvani’s project.
This is also a unified society with a much much smaller population than Earth that actually knows where they are heading, rather than feeling around in the dark.
They are free from religious traditionalists. The only religion they had ended years ago. It didn’t just fade away as less and less people believed; their goddess straight up told them that she wasn’t a deity and explained to them what was really going on.
Their society is missing a lot of the factors that contribute to slow adaptations. I find it completely believable that they can keep up, especially when being guided through these changes.
You have a very optimistic outlook on humans in general if you believe that just because the Avalonians lack religion and have a smaller population that they’ll completely avoid any growing pains of technology advancement or that their culture will keep up at their pace of advancements. I just don’t find that believable. The Avalonians are still people, not machines that can fall perfectly into Pryvani’s project. There has to be a price to artifically boosting them to such heights in such a short time.
I’d say that there will be problems on the grounds that problems are what drive stories. There’s no story if every thing goes well from the start.
I’m with you on that. We discussed Avalon’s future at length, it is a possible breaking point for suspension of disbelief (for me anyway). Among others (what’s going on on Earth).
Story wise, of course, I can see the usefulness of it : Contact era Avalon has the same technology level as we do on Earth right now, so we, readers, have an easy point of comparison. But still…
Alesia Nonahsdottir
Nonahsdottir
Nonah’s Daughter
… Really?
I kind of like it, its got a cool Nordic thing going there.
Thanks for clearing up who Alesia was for me.
Well well, how long have you been sitting on this one DX? A good part of a year ? I think I’ll like Sorcha….