A Dying Planet
Starbound
Chapter 04 - A Dying Planet
Twilight stood in Jack’s ship, the Ulysses, as he began to run a search over the known systems in the two sectors he had explored. It had been four days since he had saved her life from the penguins, and in the time since, he had worked tirelessly to help her get everything in gear. He had donated a generous amount of excess coal, he had managed to repair the Enterprise’s engines in the span of a couple of days, even adding some of the molten cores he had salvaged from Dreadwing’s ship for better efficiency, and now he was attempting to locate Equus in the midst of what planets he had access to.
“Alright, so, can you describe your stellar system to me?” he asked, looking up at the giant computer screen that showed all of Sector Alpha.
“Yellow star, five planets,” Twilight recited, for starters. Jack typed in the information and narrowed the search field. Several systems disappeared, but many more remained.
“Anything else you can narrow it down with?”
“Equus is the second planet, and it is only a single planet with a single moon.”
Jack added that information to the search field, and even more systems vanished. They were left with about thirty systems.
“What primary climate type is it?” he asked.
“Well, there isn’t a primary one,” she said. “There’s a lot of different ones.”
Jack looked at the list of planetary systems that were still on the list, but upon sorting them by primary climate, none of them had a varying type. Frankly, none of the applicable planets in Sector Alpha had a grassland type of biome at all.
“No luck,” Twilight said, feeling slightly let down. But then again, there were only four more sectors to explore. “What about Sector Beta?”
Jack repeated the process in the second sector, but while it did turn up more results, and two of them with varying biome types, upon further inspection Twilight could tell they weren’t Equus. Her disappointment grew, but her optimistic side informed her that this meant there were only three sections left to look through. Now if they could only get the maps to them...
“Well,” he sighed, “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this.”
“Do what?” Twilight asked.
“We’re going to need to procure a starmap for Sector Gamma,” Jack said. “Problem is, there aren’t many places that sell Sector Gamma starmaps. There are places that have them there for us to take, but they typically have hostile beings toward humans in them, or humans that are hostile towards other beings. Fortunately, I think I might know a place for us to purchase one. However...”
He got out of the pilot’s chair and walked over to his armor stash. His preferred armor was inside, as were his guns, or so she learned they were called. Other things lay inside as well, such as swords, pickaxes, and different tools or weapons.
Jack pulled out a set of weapons for melee combat. A sword, a spear, a hammer, and a shield.
“You’re going to need protection besides your magic. These should be pretty easy to figure out to use offensively. As for defensively, we’re going to need to find you some armor that fits your equine form. I know a good smith on a human planet who has done this sort of thing for a different species. I don’t think he’d mind crafting a set of armor molds for your pony form. Then we can craft your armor ourselves.”
“Why do I need something besides magic?” she asked. “It’s served me well in the past.”
“Twilight, there are going to be times when you won’t be able to use your preferred brand of magic. Those lasers you can shoot are nice, and I don’t doubt they’d help in a pinch, but you can’t just go around blasting everything with them.”
“Well, duh,” she snorted. “I know that. But--”
“You know the fact,” concurred Jack, “but in the moment, against something you don’t know, you can’t just fire away. You have to take time to survey the enemy and determine what you have to do to take it down, whether it be physical force, or your magic.”
He studied his own armor, then surveyed her for a moment.
“And besides, if what I’ve seen with you and your magic wasn’t just a miscalculation, you need protection in case you’re too exhausted to use it.”
He picked up the spear.
“Your shield goes down, the enemies get through and you have no armor? Dead.” He punctuated the statement by thrusting forward and missing her left side by less than the width of his smallest finger, which caused her to hiss, but Jack could see the understanding in her eyes.
“Shrapnel from an explosion gets flung too fast for you to react and you have nothing to stop it? Dead. You need armor to protect yourself from these kinds of things. Perhaps we can tinker it and allow you to channel magic through it later, but the important thing is to get you protected first.”
Twilight could only smile to herself as he returned to the pilot’s chair.
Dove right into the deep end, didn’t I?
“This excites you?” Jack asked, eyebrows slightly raising.. “I mean, I know we were excited at first too, but that quickly wore off when we saw what was out here waiting for us.”
“It does a little,” admitted Twilight, smiling coyly. “I mean, I get to be the first pony to see all of this. I get to make my mark on magic and science in a way I’ve done only once before.”
“Once before?” he asked, doing some quick typing and consulting of the map.
“Remember when I told you about how alicorns like me are made, not born?”
“Yeah.”
“I managed to complete a final spell written by an absolute genius who couldn’t figure out the end of it.”
The typing paused for a moment, but after a few seconds of staring at his computer screen, Jack continued typing.
“Sounds like something out of our history of mathematics,” he commented. “Guy by the name of Pierre de Fermat wrote that for positive integers A, B, C, and N, A to the Nth power plus B to the Nth power--”
“--can’t equal C to the Nth power,” Twilight recited, “for any integer N greater than 2.”
“Yeah,” Jack nodded. “Works with negative numbers, but that’s beside the point. This guy wrote that theorem almost eight hundred years ago, back in the 1600s AD of human time. Took our mathematicians almost 360 years to prove it to be true.”
“Eight hundred years?” Twilight asked. It had taken ponykind over one thousand three hundred years to complete Star Swirl’s Last Spell, the count ending when Twilight uttered the fateful words that caused her ascension.
“Eight hundred years,” Jack repeated. “The guy was centuries ahead of his time. A few decades before that, it suddenly got people studying different fields of math in an attempt to prove it.”
“You seem to know your mathematical history,” noted Twilight.
“Dropped out of college immediately prior to planet-jumping, but not before I had passed Calculus III with a good solid A. Have to know my math when piloting a starship, else I end up doing this shit wrong.”
Twilight winced at the cursing. She had never liked it when ponies used profanity. Just seemed unnecessary and rude, even when it was Rainbow Dash doing it.
Especially when it was Rainbow Dash doing it.
“Sorry,” Jack added, though he sure didn’t sound sorry. “Didn’t know you were one of those that didn’t like cussing.”
Twilight shrugged. “I never liked it. Don’t really know why, even though a few of my friends do it. Just makes me uncomfortable.”
“If you want, I’ll not do it,” offered Jack, looking up at a screen that was showing a system of desert planets. “You’re kind of my guest for the foreseeable future. I can suspend the habit.”
“No no, it’s fine,” Twilight said. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to change just because of me being here.”
“Oh, well in that case,” Jack smirked, “fuck the police.”
A chorus of beeps rang from the back of the ship as he prepared the Ulysses for warp.
“I’ve just sent the data for the Sectors Alpha and Beta starmap over to the Enterprise,” Jack explained, continuing to monitor several different gauges and numbers that Twilight couldn’t make out. “I’ve also sent you coordinates to the planet I’ve made my little base on as well, in Sector Beta. It’s a desert planet, should have plenty of sand to sift through, with plenty of ore to get out. Should be easy to get metal for your armor, not to mention any coal we dig up.”
“So, do I need to bring the Enterprise along?” she asked.
Jack turned and gave her an amused look. As soon as she realized she had asked a dumb question, her ears drooped and a shade of pink colored her cheeks.
“Why do you ask? Do you not plan on bringing, I don’t know, your one method of transportation along, and instead relying on me to be your mommy and take you everywhere?”
Twilight just gave him a flat look.
“Science and survival are not joking matters,” she chided.
“You sound like my old teacher,” Jack retorted, rolling his eyes. “Lighten up. Just trying to ease the tension here.”
He glanced up at the screen.
“Anyway, you might want to be getting a move on. My calculations are almost finished. Should be ready to warp momentarily. Might want to go get your calculations started.”
Twilight complied, trotting over to the transporter and beaming over to her own idle ship.
Jack had done more than repair it. Her engines were now more powerful with the help of some of the molten cores he had pilfered, allowing her to go further off the same fuel. As well, he had managed to craft a smelting station using her anvil and his last one. She was very pleased to see that her new anvil was much more of an efficient workstation than before.
She trotted over to the pilot’s chair, where the sent coordinates were ready to be punched in. Thank goodness the engineers at Hoofston had had the foresight to make it to where her ship could receive and intercept subspace frequencies, allowing her to communicate with the other ships if she ever came across them. While they may not speak the same language, they would still be able to sense and communicate.
There was a roar, and the Ulysses shot off into space faster than her eyes could follow. Her calculations would take a bit of time, but she would be following him soon after.
Struck by the sudden impulse, she glanced down at the planet, toward where her shelter had been. They’d spent part of the second day vacating it and putting everything on her ship, since with proper organization it had plenty of room to hold all of her crafting supplies. Her materials had also been stored away in a large metal locker that had been installed on her ship, courtesy of Jack.
In short, she didn’t need a planetary base if she had access to her ship. Still, the fact that Jack knew how to make basic shelters despite his ship also having such items meant that it would be a good survival skill to learn.
The computer beeped several times, signaling that her calculations were complete. Twilight casually trotted over to her console, buckled in, and hit the “Warp” button, and as with the Ulysses, her ship maneuvered itself into position to warp straight to this unknown planet in Sector Beta.
As soon as she was in position, the stars stretched toward her, and the Enterprise blasted off.
“Captain, sir, we have some news you might want to have a look at,” a military officer said, jogging over with a tablet. “Dreadwing the Pirate’s ship has been downed.”
The captain in question, currently studying a star-map of Sector Gamma, looked up with interest.
“Dreadwing?” he asked. “The mutated penguin?”
“Yes sir,” said the officer, handing the tablet over. “We got a distress signal that matches the USCM’s experimental prototype from a few decades ago, downed on a planet in the heart Sector Alpha.”
The captain investigated the tablet’s contents. Dreadwing’s ship had ventured down to the planet’s surface, and after a few moments, the distress signal had been sent out, before the ship just vanished completely.
“Interesting,” the captain murmured. “I wonder who took him out.”
“I don’t know, sir. We’ve no other information than that.”
“Take a guess, then,” the captain responded, starting to pace around the outpost’s operations room. The windows around the room showed the plains of the planet outside, a deserted planet once home to a colony of Apex, before the USCM came and drove them all out to take over their research facility as a base.
“We’ll need to send an investigative team if we’re to make any sort of educated guess,” the officer explained. “But given that not even a USCM strike team was able to take him out, I’m going to go ahead and guess that it was magic.”
The captain stared out of the window, letting the silence drag on. Magic may have sounded like a stupid answer, but after what had happened over the last few decades, nothing could surprise him anymore. Not after seeing Novakids and walking and talking plants up close, or witnessing an asteroid carrying a tentacle monster crash straight into a drill-hole meant to tap the energy from Earth’s core.
The asteroid had flown at exactly the right angle to fly in with no friction. The captain thought that some malevolent species had fired it at Earth. Now, Earth had mere months before that thing matured. And when it matured, it would eat the world and everything on it. Earth had only a few precious months left to live.
The captain sighed sadly.
“Lieutenant Ross,” he began.
“Sir!” the officer said, snapping to attention.
“Send that forensics team, and be quick! We need to find the wreckage of that ship before they do. If there’s another species out there that’s now able to take out USCM experimental ships, we’d better make sure the main USCM force don’t find out, else they’ll be on another extermination spree for whatever race did it.”
“Sir! Yes sir!” the lieutenant said, saluting and jogging off.
Captain Jensen removed his officer’s cap and ran a gloved hand through his brown hair, then rubbed at his equally brown eyes. It had been a long day. From reports that several USCM frigates had been moving toward Sector X, to rumors that the Rock had started implementing new torture methods, and now Dreadwing the Pirate had been taken out. Far from good news, though it seemed like it. It only meant there was now another party running around, and if it got on the wrong side of the USCM…
“Sergeant Smith,” Jensen barked, turning towards one of his operations men, suddenly struck by an idea.
“Yes sir!” acknowledged one of the technical members sitting at one of the many computers around the room.
“Send a message to that forensics team. Tell them to scan for warp drive signals within the last week that don’t match Dreadwing’s. We need to find those responsible as soon as possible.”
“Understood, sir,” Smith said, already working on typing and sending the missive.
Jensen looked out again, but this time up at the starry sky, visible even in the day. Whoever was responsible was going to need protecting. And if he was going to make good on his oath to protect any spacefarer, as every member of the USCM had made before the Great Earth-Jumping and the breaking of those oaths, he was going to help this unknown being or beings.
“I hope they stay safe,” he muttered to himself.
Jack’s shelter, it turned out, was on a desert planet. As in, entirely desert. Twilight had never thought single-biome planets were possible, only to find one sitting right in front of her.
“Wow,” she breathed as she beheld the tan planet. It may not have looked like much, but to her at that moment, it could have been the jewel set in her old tiara.
The Ulysses was maneuvering itself into an orbiting position as Twilight watched, and a few orders plugged into her ship later, the Enterprise was doing it as well.
INCOMING TRANSMISSION.
“On screen,” Twilight replied to the ship’s notification. At once, an image of Jack aboard the Ulysses appeared on screen.
“Welcome to my planet,” he said immediately. “Or at least, the planet that houses my current base. I move around every so often trying to find more plentiful resources, but this is where it’s at right now.”
“It’s beautiful,” Twilight said sincerely.
“Eh, it’s an eyesore if ever there was one,” Jack replied. “And that’s including how Earth looks right now.”
“What makes it an eyesore?” Twilight asked curiously.
“The tan color? That’s a monstrous sandstorm that’s been going on for years, and since I’ve lived here for a couple of months, I’ve gotten sick of it. My base is underground, and we’ll have to move quickly if we want to get in without the sand getting everywhere. It’ll be in your best interest to put on some kind of clothing or armor.”
He left the screen for a moment, but Twilight heard the sound of armor clanging, so she assumed he was putting his on.
“I’ll send the coordinates for your transporter, which should send you right down by the entrance. I’ll go first so I can let you in,” he called from offscreen. “Give me a moment. And keep a sand-shield up when you’re down plantside. That stuff really does get everywhere.”
The screen cut out at that, leaving Twilight to begin putting the Enterprise in orbit around the desert planet.
A few short minutes later, Twilight had beamed down to the surface of Jack’s desert home. And she had not been prepared in the slightest.
It was hot, it was dry, it was windy, the sand was everywhere, and she had no shields up for three of those four facts. A few quick spells later, that was fixed, but the visibility was still very low.
How can he stand this planet? she wondered. And for that matter, where is he?
A flat panel on the ground suddenly flipped up right next to her, startling her for just a moment, before she realized it was just a wooden trapdoor as the sand fell off of it. A testament to just how sharp her survival instinct had become since being stranded on Alpha Prime III-B.
Jack’s armored figure climbed out of the hole in the ground as she watched.
“Well, come on, then,” he said, motioning for her to get into the hole. “You’re letting the sand in.”
Twilight had to go in backwards, and it was incredibly awkward. These humans designed steep ladders with rungs for flat feet on a bipedal body. Trying to go down it on hooves was both strange and difficult.
As she descended, she saw him start climbing down, and she saw the square of light above her vanish. Slowly, she continued downward, until after a few minutes, she had reached the bottom of the ladder.
Jack’s base was incredibly well-equipped. A furnace and anvil like her’s, a loom, a strange second furnace which appeared to be an oven, and a machine set in the middle with a pad for teleportation. Several hallways and sets of stairs led off to various places. It was quite a bit roomier than the mines Twilight had slept in over the last couple of months.
“That’s my Transporter platform,” Jack explained as he removed his helmet and shook his red hair around. “Directly wired to the Ulysses, and it lets me teleport directly down here, rather than go up there and dig for my trap door every day.”
“With all that sand up there, how does your tunnel not flood?” she asked.
“Wooden walls,” Jack said. “You probably didn’t see them. It’s just a bunch of wooden planks stuck tight together there.”
Twilight then noticed something strange. Jack had a garden down here, in this cave! There was a tilled patch of actual dirt in a corner, with a lower stone ceiling compared to the rest of the room, just large enough for Twilight to fit under it. And there were strange glowing yellow rocks embedded in it.
“What is that?” she asked, gesturing to the stones.
“Solarium,” he answered. “Found a lump of it while digging here. Strange little element, that is. Up close, it gives off the heat and light, just like a yellow star. Perfect for use farming underground. It also makes a good source of energy. Remarkably efficient, very strong output, it’s the ideal source of energy for large cruisers.”
Twilight furrowed her brow, staring at the glowing rock.
“How common is it?” she asked.
“In Sector Beta? Almost unheard of,” answered Jack. “Guess I just got a bit lucky with it being here. It’s much more common in Sector X. In fact, it practically only exists there. There are other nodes, of course, but Sector X is 99.99% of all solarium is mined.”
“Would it make an efficient fuel source for the Enterprise? I mean,” she called forth one of the magical energy crystals she had kept in storage, in case she had needed this kind of comparison, “these are extremely energy efficient, extremely powerful, and they got me from Equus to being pulled out of orbit, to Alpha Prime III-B in one load.”
“I can’t compare the energy levels, though,” Jack said, shaking his head as he took the clear crystal, shining with the light of magic inside, and scrutinized it. “If I knew how far away Equus was, I could, but since we don’t know where it is, we have nothing to base it on.”
“But it’s out there, right?” she asked. “Even if we can’t compare it, my ship consumes minerals for energy, and you said it’s abundant in Sector X. It will require a test, but if the Enterprise can consume coal for energy, I’d bet my wings it can consume solarium.”
“Are you suggesting we go to Sector X, just for solarium?” asked Jack, handing the crystal back to Twilight, who returned it to within her Source. “Do you know what Sector X is like, Twilight? Have I not explained it?”
“No, I don’t,” answered Twilight.
“You know Dreadwing?”
“The penguin who attacked me? What about him?”
“There’s something in Sector X that’s a lot worse than him.”
“What could be worse than Dreadwing?” Twilight asked, confused.
“Many things,” replied Jack, sitting on the floor cross-legged. “Many things are far worse than him.”
He placed his helmet in front of her so she could inspect it.
“This armor’s not mine. I stole it to stay alive. But notice these initials here,” he tapped a small branding close to the right side of the eye goggles.
“U.S.C.M.?”
“Yep, the USCM.”
Jack took a moment to draw a few shapes in the dirt. A few circles, a strange comet-shaped thing, and a rocket..
“The USCM started off as a human space police, essentially,” he explained. “The United Systems Colonial Marines were instituted as humankind expanded further and further into the stars. They were meant as both a defensive and peacekeeping force for the different colonies, and they were kept in check by Earth’s United Nations.”
“Your home planet’s name is Earth?” Twilight asked.
Jack nodded, and pointed to the circle closest to the other strange shapes.
“Well, I think the technical name is ‘Terra,’ or ‘Gaia,’ but Earth was falling into terrible shape over the course of the last century. Resources were drying up, and star-travel hadn’t developed into a public thing yet. With this being said, smaller nations began to fold into larger ones as resources dwindled. Now, on Earth, there are seven continents. There’s North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and Antarctica. North America used to have a large country set right in the center called the United States of America, but as nations above and below it folded into it, including every South American country, it became known as the United Nations of America. Europe had several nations be part of the European Union, so when resources dwindled, they just became a sovereign body rather than a national union. As Australia had been part of the EU before, it stayed with them.
“And this leaves Asia and Africa-- Antarctica was devoid of life except for researchers. China, a world superpower, accepted more and more folding nations until it became as large as the EU or the UAN. But because of political differences dating back hundreds of years, China and the UAN maintained a very tense relationship. The EU had a kinship with the UAN because of several factors, and so it was always two against one. But China’s population meant they had just about as much manpower as the two put together. And when it became clear relations were going downhill, all three countries started manufacturing nuclear weapons.”
“So… a weapon designed around an atom’s nucleus, or something?” Twilight asked.
“Something like that,” Jack said, shrugging. “They were designed with unstable molecules in the missile, with fuses that, when tripped, would cause the atoms to split, resulting in a massive, radioactive explosion. About eight years ago, though, it finally happened.”
Twilight could hear the sadness in his voice. With this in mind, she wondered what would happen if ponykind and the griffins got into a war on this scale.
“China, with dwindling resources of their own, invaded Africa. Africa had yet to declare whether they were going to join the EU, China, or the UAN, but they had a very fertile region that China desperately needed. This didn’t sit well with the UAN or the EU, and they sent in their own troops to fight to repel them.”
He sighed heavily.
“That’s when the nukes started flying. The population of earth, just utterly decimated by the three nations. And in all the confusion, there was a strange little meteoroid that happened to land in South America. South America was home to many deep mines. So many that this meteoroid, of the slim chance to land in such a hole on another continent, fell right into one. But there was a nasty surprise in the meteoroid. A strange, tentacled alien creature was inside. The nuclear radiation mutated it as it fell, but it eventually found its way to the bottom of the hole.
He pointed to the strange comet.
“We call them World-Eaters. There are several cases of small planetoids being consumed from the inside by them, but a case like Earth was unheard of. It grew exceptionally large and began to eat the Earth from the core outward. And now, Earth only has about a year left.”
“I’m sorry,” Twilight said, noticing that Jack seemed very put off by having to talk about this.
“‘S fine,” Jack said, though his voice told Twilight the opposite. Jack was trying to maintain composure, and he was succeeding, but not in a stoic way. “I, uhh, haven’t called Earth home in eight years.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“World War III,” Jack said. “Soon as it looked like things were turning south, many people, me included, stole or borrowed or just hopped on ships we owned and sped off into unknown space, looking for Earth colonies to live in instead of the new battleground. We call it the Great Planet-Jumping, and we who abandoned Earth are, naturally, referred to as Planet-Jumpers.”
He shook his head again.
“World War III ended two years after it began, but the damage had been done. The UAN and the EU combined to become simply the United Nations, after an old organization that had been founded back a few hundred years to prevent calamities like this. Their combined might, along with a few tactical exploitations, was enough to crush China and have its warmongering leaders imprisoned. The UN now, from what I’ve heard, is trying to find a solution to the current problem. It would be easy, were it not for the USCM.”
Despite the seriousness of the story, he smirked.
“Got back to it eventually, didn’t I? Well, the USCM, like I said, was founded as a space colony defense and peacekeeping force. But when Earth went to hell, they were leaderless, since Earth was where they got their orders. In the confusion, a schism happened, and this wasn’t the good kind of schism. A ruthless leader of the USCM with an aggressive streak managed to sway several other leaders to his cause, and soon, this USCM peacekeeping force had become a military, and it already had a sizeable conquest. They coerced other USCM outposts to either join their cause or be eliminated.”
“Their cause?” Twilight asked, but she had a feeling she knew where this was going.
“The leader of the new USCM is a ruthless human-supremacist,” Jack said, a bitter edge to his voice. “He’s not a human racist, but he expresses genocidal tendencies toward any sapient non-human out here. Their cause is the complete domination of the human race. They’ve committed atrocities the likes of which haven’t been seen since World War II, when a similarly-ruthless man attempted to exterminate a whole race of humans. And the rumors are, their entire fleet of ships has been moving into Sector X for the last year or so for some unknown reason. They have plenty of bases to marshal at, but the belief is that they’re preparing an assault on a world capable of defending against them for a long period of time.”
With that, he swept away the many planets he had drawn in the dirt. “We can’t go to Sector X because you’re non-human, and you have a high risk of running into them.”
“I can defend myself. I’m willing to, if I want to get back home.”
“You don’t understand,” Jack said, shaking his head. “You’re a new species. They’ve never seen you before. If they find you, if they see what you can do, they will torture you until you give them the location of your home planet. And then they will invade and exterminate. If you value your planet and your race, Twilight, I would suggest staying away from Sector X, unless we can get in and/or out undetected to find your planet. We had best hope it’s somewhere in Sectors Gamma or Delta.”
A sense of dread washed over Twilight. Fate always had the cruelest sense of irony. There was no way Equus was not going to be somewhere in Sector X now.
“It’s going to be in Sector X,” she said.
“You never know,” Jack said. “It could be in the others. We’ll have to get starmaps for Sectors Gamma and Delta, though. Could take some time. We’ll need to find civilized plants, but before that, we’ll need a steady supply of fuel and some combat armor for you. We’ll get started on the latter two tomorrow. For now, it’s getting late. We need our sleep.”
He motioned for Twilight to follow him, and with her mind still reeling from the information she had just received, she followed. He led her down a hall, past a few doors, and into a room with several beds.
“In case of company,” he explained. “Take your pick of beds. Don’t worry about me, I’ve slept on all of them at some point.”
She gave a grateful smile, and hopped onto the nearest one, before burrowing under the covers.
Jack took longer to prepare for bed, having to strip down to a sort of athletic shorts sort undergarment. Twilight blushed slightly, noticing that under the armor and clothes he always wore, while he wasn’t the size of Bulk Biceps by any means, he was certainly moderately toned. Mining, smithing, and survival must have taken its toll. As Jack climbed into his bed, he grabbed a small black thing, pointed it at a torch on a wall which emitted the lights they could see with, and clicked something on it. At once, the light vanished.
“Good night, Twilight,” she heard him say as she rested her head on a pillow and began to sleep. “I promise, I still will do whatever it takes to get you back home.”
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I take exception to your re-write of the Novakids.
I don't like the change.
Other than that, I like the world-building done in this chapter, and the characterization of Twi and the human are pretty good. The re-write of humanity knowing exactly what's destroyed earth is a minor-ly upsetting point, but I can let it slide for story purposes.
Grammar is alright, though there's a typo or two in there, if you're feeling nit-picky.
5118795
Like I said, I had to retool things for story purposes. Novakids didn't originally have a place in the story, so I had to allude to them rather than feature them (that has changed, though, which I'll get into in a later chapter).
I drew from the Civ II "Endless War" game for what was going to be the death of Earth, and it will be a major plot point later on. As for them knowing exactly what is destroying the planet, rarely anything is instantaneous in regards to destroying Earth. And growth never takes place over a short period of time. They have plenty of time to be made aware of what is happening, and then do something about it.
And feel free to point out the grammatical errors. I am trying to fix things, after all.
5118809
Well, you completely re-wrote them (the Novakids) and not in a meaningful way. You didn't actually have to reference them, if you're only going to bastardize them. Why not either leave them out, or have a chipper Novakid in one of the settlements, just wandering though?
So, again, I take exception to your poor retcon of an entire species and their history.
What little of that history they remember.
5118817
I didn't modify history willy-nilly. I modified it for sympathetic purposes. Also, this may surprise you, but I don't regularly play Starbound. I have played it through to the end, and I keep up with patches, but I haven't memorized anything to a ridiculous degree. Most of what I know of NKs is from the Starbound Wiki, back when NKs weren't even implemented at the time. Of course, that will change... later. But for now, it is what it is.
5118862
Would you like a PM with an info dump for you? I usually play Novakids, so I've memorized the lore to the best of my ability.
5118872
Would be welcome. And I can give you my reasoning for changing them, too. Maybe you'll understand a little bit more why I did it, but this is assuming you don't mind spoilers.
Okay, so there are two things that I'd like to address. Firstly, repetitions. Mostly in previous chapters, but in this one as well. The very 1st paragraph of the prologue had word "fuel" used in it three times. That put me off a bit. If you wish to improve, expand your vocabulary with some words of similar meanings. Instead of repeating "crafted" you can say "made" or "built".
That brings us to the second point, which really depends on whether or not you want this fic to be more towards following the game or rather being just based on it. I'm talking about the terminology that is used throughout the story. Aforementioned "crafted" for instance. In games you always craft stuff, but in real life how many people will say that they "crafted" smth? They made it. They put it together. Etc. Some of the words used just strike me as taken straight out of the game and not fitting the situation or sounding odd in given context.
I like your approach to some elements, like the kit with stimpacks. I was almost wondering there for a moment if he'll make her chow on a band aid. ^^ That said, he could inject himself with one of the speed stimulants when he was running to help her. It was the green one I believe? Or blue. Haven't played in a while, don't remember. If you prefer the story to be more "realistic", don't be afraid to adapt some game mechanics into more believable forms.
Aside from that there're some grammatical errors and not-so-brilliant syntax (presuming I still remember what syntax is and used this term here correctly). Still, it's nothing a decent pre-reader wouldn't catch.
As a final note, I can't help but see Jack at least a bit as this main guy from the Guardians of the Galaxy (forgot his name). Before he made friends that is.
5118876 wow you couldnt project that more blatantly could you USMC is going to attack equs
5120118
1) Yeah, I have an editor, but he hasn't done any work in so long I'm looking at getting a new one. He obviously missed some things, just as I did.
2) As far as expanding (dong) vocabulary, I'm an interesting case. I have one of the largest speaking vocabularies I know (and I don't mean that to brag), but when I write, it's like it all just runs and hides somewhere, where I'm left with only a few basic terms. Am working on that, though.
3) Some of the stuff has been changed in some ways, others are remaining the same. I'm following PIXAR's motto of "Story is king," where rather than keep 100% true to the root of the game, I'm modifying things as I come to them where I think it would make an interesting plot device.
4) Star-Lord is the GotG guy you're looking for.
Thanks for the critique!
i.imgur.com/zS6pQAr.jpg
Humanity now! Humanity Tomorrow! Humanity Always!
5120202
I don't think you quoted the person you meant to quote. That or you've taken talking to oneself to a disturbing new level.
5120159
Heard of the term "red herring" before?
5123279
Tried to quote him, weird glitch screwed that up. Been fixed now, though.
It is really getting interesting and you should keep it up like this but can you add more avians? they are my favorite race in starbound and i would love it if you add some more.
5358502
Well, as far as fully-developed Avian characters, we won't really meet too many more than we already know, unless Jack and Twilight decide to go against how I have this story planned and go do what they want (which happens a lot). But they will appear more, mostly through vague mentions of Avia running around.
But unfortunately, I can't pander to everyone, else this will never end. Already got a guy helping me with Novakids, since we don't know anything else about them, but not too many of them will appear in the starry-membrane-thing-they-use-as-flesh because storytelling.