Re: Retribution (chapter 6) - spoilers!

[Wolfee]

Fel, a bit on the short side, but you hit all the high notes! Well done! Very enjoyable chapter that I read twice last night before crashing.

I am looking forward to the negotiations with the Board. It should be Interesting! I am really interested in how things are going to shake out with the Dreamers am definitely looking forward to the next few chapters.

[SoronelHaetir]

Aye, very powerful chapter.

[SoronelHaetir]

Given that the prisoners include many of the Syndicate's best/most experienced soldiers wouldn't it make sense to plan to evacuate them to the MW prison planet rather than leave them in-place for the enemy to recover when they show up in four months? Moving however many prisoners ought to be far easier than the much more numerous Dreamers, even with the active cooperation of the latter and resistance by the former.

[Rakshasa claw]

Except with the interdictors they essentially ARE in a prison already. And one that requires almost no effort to maintain. It might be more ideal to lock them onto a planet in the milky way galaxy so they can't be rescued, but leaving them behind isn't really a mistake. If anything imprisoning them in Andromeda is a pointed threat to the Syndicate that they are so insignificant that the CCM doesn't need to move their captured personnel, because even in their home galaxy the can trap them nearly effortlessly.

[D.F. Thompson]

I’m sitting here trying to put into words what this chapter made me feel and I can’t. My hat is off to you Sir, I can honestly say that your work is on par with if not equal to the great fiction writers. Keep up the excellent work and I keep reading. Wow

[Hello World]

Given that the prisoners include many of the Syndicate's best/most experienced soldiers wouldn't it make sense to plan to evacuate them to the MW prison planet rather than leave them in-place for the enemy to recover when they show up in four months? Moving however many prisoners ought to be far easier than the much more numerous Dreamers, even with the active cooperation of the latter and resistance by the former.

With the interdictors up, they'll be trapped there for up to 20 years which is a pretty long period of time. I'm guessing the Confederation figured that if they signed a truce, then they'll have to give back the captured troops anyways so why not just stick them in a place where they are easily accessible by the Syndicate once the interdictors are turned off?

Anyways, that was a pretty nice and satisfying conclusion to the Dreamers plotline. I really do wonder what the next chapter is going to be like.

[SoronelHaetir]

I was thinking that once the Syndicate gets to the heart of the system they'd be able to destroy the intidictor but realize now that with synced devices that more than one can be used and moved around to trap the Syndicate ships for as long as needed (or at least until the Syndicate figures out how to escape)..

[SYED]

The benga are still likely unaware of the newest trick which was used to steal Aria from the flagship. so that could be used to cause much chaos as they go after the remaining oracles trapped in enemy hands. If a large enough explosive is left behind then, then it is entirely possible they will assume that the oracles were killed in the strike. Oracle containment is meant to be the ultimate vault/cell, it is not designed to contain a truly large scale explosion.

[GotToGo]

Fel,

Was Chapter 5 the last will hear of the Benga name Gen? Thought you were going to do more with him. Now Chapter 6 was outstanding, thanks again.

[BabaNovac]

Damn those ninja onions! This chapter is so beautiful!

[Exskie]

Hi Fel

The biggest thing that struck me in Chap 6 was (spoiler!) was how you united the themes with the 'oye' tree & Aria. It was incredible, and definitely make this one of the best chapters in the whole Subjugation world.

Thanks again for a wonderful story...

[SYED]

I just had an awesome idea. Those quantum entangled computers link the ships to some sort of central command for the navy. Can they use that connection to target a free form wormhole using the portal station? That has to be a key location, so if shudderingly destroyed, it would affect their logistics deeply. To target the portal, you need a real time connection, which is usually done by the biogenic systems, but why not the QE systems.

[imthejman85]

Arm a significantly powerful explosive, drop a wormhole in the middle of the QE computers, drop off the bomb, close the wormhole, bomb goes off. Suddenly the Syndicate is unable to communicate with any of their fleets anywhere. Chaos ensures.

[GotToGo]

Well so far into this book of Fel's, everything is going just fine. Jason has freed the Dreamers on the moon, the Dreamers shown their new home moon have loved it, they have captured lots of Benga and nearly two hundred thousand ships cruising in at sub light, have four months to evacuate the moon before that fleet arrives (leaving God only knows how many currently behind 2 years of indicated space which can easily be increased, Jason wants to use those trapped to help in the negotiations with the Benga Leaders to research a settlement and return of the off-moon Dreamers.

Seems like everything going Jason's way, so when is the shit going to hit the fan (do you Brits use that?)? Remember the name of this book! There has been no RETRIBUTION Yet and WHAT'S THE REASON?

[MartinK]

Arm a significantly powerful explosive, drop a wormhole in the middle of the QE computers, drop off the bomb, close the wormhole, bomb goes off. Suddenly the Syndicate is unable to communicate with any of their fleets anywhere. Chaos ensures.

Because, you know, they aren't clever enough to build redundancy into their computers, right? SpaceX uses triple redundancy on their rockets and each dual core processor doesn't use their second core to speed up their job but to do the job two times and compare the result with each other to catch errors. Any SpaceX rocket has dozens of processors on board. And that is our current technology level, which, compared to any good science fiction story, is truly primitive. I would think taking out any computer on those big ships would be akin to trying to shut down our modern internet. It's impossible! Well, at least with one well targeted explosion that is. You can still isolate the continents if you take out both all undersea cables and satellites.

So, it might be easier to just put those bombs into their energy generators and hope for really big explosions.