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NecronLord wrote:They tend to do things like hide in hyperspace and move fast (centisecond battles) If the GP has aquired the tech to fight at near culture speeds, then a single shot will kill them.

Hyperspace is the problem.

I'm not sure that they can actually manage single shot kills. Culture ships by excession time frame can surf on super novas without a huge amount of difficulty, and though the ships of this storys time frame an no where nears as tough they are still going to be pretty hard to damage.

Actually what was said was that supernovae were not a problem "if handled correctley". That means buggering off at FTL until proven otherwise. Again they may simply avoid them by jumping to hyperspace.

This surfing nonsense is a fabrication. Technically apollo 11 can surf a supernova if it is far enough away.

In the Idiran war inducing supernovae was a battle tactic, and as such must have posed a significant threat to them.

While this is unnesessary in conventional Lensman universe battles, it seems very likely that the GP ships could have their weapons "on automatic trips" to fire on any ship that emerges from hyperspace near them. What are the weapon ranges of the Culture ship? GP beams propagate at lightspeed, so have a limited range.

Culture ships also have displacers....a displaced nanohole ((microscopic black hole * would be a nasty surprise for the patrol

[swept-to-tight-beam M16 .2 received @ n4.13.589.2399]

XGSV Steely Glint
oROU Attitude Adjuster

Take a look at this. There would appear to be something rather untoward going on in the lower leaf swirl.

(file attached)
*
XROU Attitude Adjuster
oGSV Steely Glint
Yes? I assume you want me to investigate?

*

Indeed. A most interesting case. Their technology is not like I’ve ever seen before

*

Interesting... a new player on the galactic scene?

*
That's what I’d like you to find out.

*

(end signal file)

Galactic patrol ship Defiant, DRED system

The Two Tellurians and One Rigellian watched (or in one case sensed ) the report tape soberly.

“Well that tears it. “ The tape finished and one of the Tellurians, a Captain by the name of John Sims, stubbed out his cigar in the ash tray on the table.

“By Klono’s Diamond Jaws how that tears it.” The other (his name was Thomas Brass and he was a Commodore) rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.

“I still have a hard time believing that one girl and a machine could get away from us like this..... I think we seriously underestimated how good these ‘special circumstances’ are and how much force is needed to bring down one of their machines.”

“I honestly can’t see what more we could have done. The forces we sent in were hard enough to slip by the Planetary Authorities.”

“I feel that we must stop worrying about how this happened at least for a while and decide what to do next. A Culture vessel will no doubt be on its way as we speak. The Rigellian, the Area Intelligence Officer clicked one tentacle on the table. “Perhaps it would be better if we withdrew from this system.”

“It goes against my grain to just leave after all this work.... as I see it, there are two alternatives”. The Commodore scratched his chin. “Either we hope to intercept and destroy whatever they send and hope that by the time they get another one here, it won’t matter cause we’re invading anyway, or we lock down and sit tight and hope they don’t find us when they do come.”
“Hum,’” John lit another cigarette. “I think the latter”, he continued. We can’t be sure we’ll destroy it. And even if we do it’s likely to get a death scream out with all a good description of our technology. We can’t have that. “

“If we are to remain here then there are preparations that must be made. I suggest that if we are decided we begin at once. Time is, as you humans say, of the essence.” The Rigellian thought, as it began to collect its notes.

“QX. ”

The three left to make what preparations they could.

FODE SC watch station
Terillia paced the Watch Station interior, Three hours and not a rad out of place.
Terillia was currently engaged in searching the city for any sign of her attackers or their operation.

So far she had got nothing. She continued to pace. Her neural lace beeped inside her mind for her attention.

The surveillance dust she’d dumped into the atmosphere a few hours back wanted to talk to her.

Hey Terri. I got something. Not much, but it certainly isn’t supposed to be here.

Terillia rooted the feed to her neuro lace. The building was a large corporate HQ in the upper area of the city. Whoever had shoved the large power source inside it, had done a good job of concealing its emissions. Not quite a good enough one though.

Terillia smiled. “Got you. “

The Attitude Adjuster

The Killer Class Rapid Offence Unit Attitude Adjuster hurled through hyper space, its fields pulling it along at speeds tens of thousands of times light. As it went, it and its special circumstances crew reviewed the information being sent from the Watch Station on the planet it was approaching.

Very, very interesting. thought the ship. This assignment will not be dull.

Good, though nitpicks...

I don't think that Attitude Adjuster was built at this time.

Also M16.2 doesn't exist, it's 1 2 4 8 16 32, a binary sequence.

Tens of thousands of C would be more accurate.

NecronLord wrote:Good, though nitpicks...

I don't think that Attitude Adjuster was built at this time.

Also M16.2 doesn't exist, it's 1 2 4 8 16 32, a binary sequence.

Tens of thousands of C would be more accurate.

I'll edit the speed.

The Attitude Adjuster was acording to the book as old as the pittance ships so it was built at that point.

M16.2 is straight out of excession. maybe the .2 is not to do with the M16. I'll put a space between them.

Don;'t kow if AA would have a crew or not, either.... but that isn't important.

Singular Quartet wrote:Don;'t kow if AA would have a crew or not, either.... but that isn't important.

Well, It would need a crew to help with intellgence gathering once it gets there.

Currald wrote:While this is unnesessary in conventional Lensman universe battles, it seems very likely that the GP ships could have their weapons "on automatic trips" to fire on any ship that emerges from hyperspace near them. What are the weapon ranges of the Culture ship? GP beams propagate at lightspeed, so have a limited range.

If they use Sunbeam based weapons, then that'll be FTL for sure. The planets attacking Tellus could have dodged if the Sunbeam was speed of light weaponry( not to mention the 9 minute Time of 'flight').

The sunbeam being ftl would also be in keeping with the generation of one from a distant sun that the Plooran council was anticipating the GP using. I think their more powerful normal beam weapons have to be ftl as well to have any real effect on a 'free' ship.

consequences wrote:The sunbeam being ftl would also be in keeping with the generation of one from a distant sun that the Plooran council was anticipating the GP using. I think their more powerful normal beam weapons have to be ftl as well to have any real effect on a 'free' ship.

Well, that's the thing. Anything less powerful than a primary just pushes a free ship along at lightspeed, doing negligible damage. A primary beam hits so hard that the resistance of the interstellar medium is enough to give it a chance to blast the ship. Before the invention of primaries, combat took place with at least one party inert, and tractor beams were employed to keep the target from escaping.

While I agree with both of your statements about the sunbeam, I am still a bit skeptical. How could the sunbeam be FTL? It is, by its very nature, really intense light. The Boskonians attacking Tellus would not have known what to expect, and those attacking Klovia suffered from a crippling break in command and control, and were basically set up to be blasted.

An interstellar sunbeam would take years to reach its target if lightspeed. It would still be quite potent, though. I imagine that planetary Bergenholms are hardly standard equipment on every planet. They take a lot of manpower to build, and their (Medonian) technology may be kept under tight rein by the Patrol for "national secury" reasons, though in the given timeframe (after the defeat of Boskonia), things may have relaxed considerably.

Possibly a sunbeam has a signifigant sub-etheric component.

Well Haynes (notoriously scientifically imprecise) described it as basically a giant vacuum tube, but then Kinnison tried to explain it more accurately, but was cut off impatiently. There certainly could be a subetheric component. Otherwise, the Boskonians would have realized it was coming.

"Captain, our ultra-detectors have picked up a tremendous amount of light coming our way. It should be enough to destroy our dirigible planets!"
"Holy Klono! Well, we have a few minutes yet. Let's mosy on out of here."

Yeah, I guess it must have a sub-etheric component, or it would be of little tactical use.

FBHthelizardmage wrote:

Singular Quartet wrote:Don;'t kow if AA would have a crew or not, either.... but that isn't important.

Well, It would need a crew to help with intellgence gathering once it gets there.

Not necessarily. If the ship is human-indifferent, e could just build biological androids ( ref. Use of Weapons ) or send drones/micromissiles.

If you remember the culture prefers to keep its war ships crewed to avoid heroics amoung other things.

Next chapter will be tonight or tommarow depending on illness (mine) and creativity (also mine) thankyou.

FBHthelizardmage wrote:If you remember the culture prefers to keep its war ships crewed to avoid heroics amoung other things.

Next chapter will be tonight or tommarow depending on illness (mine) and creativity (also mine) thankyou.

Heroics? Try flat out suicide. Killing Time's major battle in Excession was because he was uncrewed and had a mind state backup on another ship. He could die, and he wouldn't remember it, so he charged right on in.

I see your point, but it still doesn't mean they have to carry crews. Its just encouraged.

Currald wrote:There certainly could be a subetheric component. Otherwise, the Boskonians would have realized it was coming.

Though now that I consider it further, it may be that photons cannot be detected by ultra-wave detectors. Maybe only particles with mass resonate in the sub-ether.

what do the galatic partol call the system earths in?

The Solarian System.

Target Prime One- Oh, what the Patrol calls it, not the Boskonians, my bad.

SC watch station Fode 3 days latter

Terrilla sipped at her drink as she watched the live feed from the building.
“ You really should sleep some time, “ the Attitude Adjuster’s voice came over the Watch Station’s internal speakers. “Nonsense. My implants clean the fatigue toxins out of me fine and I don’t want to miss anything. “

“ As you wish. “ Terrillia went back to watching. So far all they had seen indicated a normal every day business and for a while Terrilia had had doubts whether this really was the place. But small discrepancies kept adding up. There where no plans of the place in the city's main record computer, several people who had no need for the business services (it dealt in minerals,) had been observed visiting it. None of them had come back a second time yet.

“I think they’re locking down and hopping we don’t notice they’re still here. “ Terrilia taped the cup with her lip.
“Or they might just have withdrawn, telling their agents on the ground to lie low until extraction,” the Mind replied.
“I don’t know. From the resource they sent after me this is a big operation, I don’t think they'd just abandon it. “

“True.” The Mind went quiet for a moment. “I don’t think we’re going to know for sure unless we can get to see inside that building. “

“You have a plan?”

“Of course I do.” The ship sounded smug.

Charnob building (galactic patrol area house)

The nano spy the attitude adjuster had created a few minutes before, came into the building on the coat of one of the visitors.

It floated down the corridor until it detected a field of force ahead. After a few seconds of probing it figured a way round.

When the next man walked towards the field the bug entered his nostril.

The field deactivated to let him through and the bug entered with him.

The attitude adjuster’s neural imprint looked around and located a group of very quaint filling cabinets. It looked inside...

this is the stuff........ Oh meat.......

It took about 20 minute for the nano spy to get out ot the building. Its news was not happy.

Solarian system, lensman universe. June the sixth

The Solarian system was the most heavily defended in the known universe, or at least in this known universe.

The system was was ringed by defence fortresses. Millions on millions of space fortresses.

They where laid out in a massive sphere at the edges of the system, shields pushed edge to edge.

Each fortress was about twice the size of a super mauler. Half that was power planet. Most of the rest resembled a marco beam..... As a Sopwith Camel resembles an F-22.

Each planet had its own shields and defence forts as well. Then there were the ground sites.

In orbit around Telus around a billion ships, a mere fraction of the task fleets to be sent into the other universe.

On June the sixth Telus calendar the fleet began to move out.....

Fode system SC watch station

Terrilia enjoyed having other Culture people here. People of FODE were so..... ugly.

It was currently about hour two of FODEs 28 hour day. Terrilia lay in a pleasant half sleep pressed up against the warm bodies of several members of the Attitude Adjuster’s crew.

She was pulled out of her half trance by her lace. I’m sorry to wake you. But I think you should see this. that Attitude Adjuster’s voice flowed through her brain. Terrilia looked sleepily at the data flowing across her skull.... “shit!” She glanded wide awake and began to disentangle her self from the bodies of those around her.

“I assume you told SC already?”

very much.

“So what's the urgency?”

well

The view her lace gave changed to a view of the system through Attitude Adjuster’s sensors. The outer system was filled with sensor contacts....

“I see.”

Terrilia began to look for her underwear. what a way to be told about the invasion of your universe.... she thought.

hm, you know, technically every single Culture civilian is likely to be an unrecoverable Zwilnick in the eyes of the Patrol, maybe I was wrong to discount a war of extermination.

consequences wrote:hm, you know, technically every single Culture civilian is likely to be an unrecoverable Zwilnick in the eyes of the Patrol, maybe I was wrong to discount a war of extermination.

Their psychologists may be able to "cure them of their antisocial tendencies." Dealers are zwilnicks. Users are... unfortunate wretches.

Ah, but they are dealers and users, at last the circle is complete.