Chapter Three: Charades and a Handshake
Chapter Three: Charades and a Handshake
The Luna swooped in to land on a field just west of the settlement. To the team's moderate surprise, it was clearly visible through the shuttle's several windows that one of the flying natives–a pegasus–was flying alongside the shuttle, somehow. Kathy was amazed by the fact that these creatures could fly at all: their shape, and likely their weight, were clearly not suitable for flight. Thinking logically, they appeared to be less aerodynamic than a man in a wingsuit, and yet, they could fly at speeds rivalling that of their craft. It was a light blue color, with a mane and tail striped with colors of the rainbow. The creature looked toward the windows, cracked what could only be a smile, and began to move faster than the shuttle. Whatever competition it was wanting to have would have to wait, as the shuttle landed several seconds later.
"Looks like we've been noticed," Killian deadpanned, looking through a window. Flying aliens had begun to gather.
"That's the point," the Skipper said. "Pilot, open the ramp."
With an electronic noise, the pilot complied. Moving slowly and deliberately, the three linguists and the Skipper disembarked. The multitude of pegasi watched them from the air, but had not landed. The Skipper swallowed. This is it. Such an immediate interception was not quite planned for, but what could he expect?
For several seconds, the field was in silence. Visible in the distance were ground-bound aliens, beginning to close the distance to the landed shuttle. Killian began to roll out the statue that was Sean Powell, and Kathy rolled out the cockatrice, strapped to a gurney and sedated. She carried a sample backpack containing various samples of plant life that had been discovered here.
The pegasi began to chat amongst themselves, in a language nobody on the team had any knowledge of. The linguists began to take notes on small wrist-mounted computers and switched on recording devices. The Skipper decided to step forward, and raised both of his hands slowly. "We come in peace," he said, in a level, loud voice. The chatter was squelched. Your move, the Skipper mused, swallowing. It was clear what advantage the natives had over them, in both speed and numbers.
-----
Twilight Sparkle fixed her gaze on the mysterious object; the one outside Ponyville that, according to Rainbow Dash, had someone inside. It had accumulated quite a crowd of pegasi about it. They had been the ones to notice it first, and so had gotten there first. She could see its upper portions, but there was more below what she could see, obscured by the ground.
"Twilight!" Rainbow had said. "You've got to see this! A giant metal thing swooped down from the sky! It had someone inside, and not ponies or griffons or anything like that! It landed..." She'd pointed a hoof out the window, roughly to the east. "Over there! C'mon!"
That was all the explanation that had been given before Rainbow had left and sped off, saying something about informing the others. It was all Twilight needed. If this was what she thought it was, this was something big. Getting closer, it was evident that the object was, as Rainbow said, a metallic construct, and a large one. It had wings, large, flat ones in a long triangular shape. It obviously didn't float, as anything that big and made of metal couldn't possibly fly very fast and be powered by hot air. Such a thing would be preposterous. The thing had to have some sort of engine. Maybe it was steam powered, or magic powered, but even then, it didn't look like those wings flapped; there were no feathers on them that she could see from this distance, and what flies that has metallic wings?
Cresting a small hill, she stopped to catch her breath, but instead gasped. Now in sight of the ground the ship had landed on, she saw them. Standing, in front of the ship, was an earth pony and what appeared to be five bipedal creatures, the likes of which she had never seen before. They looked like they were wearing domed clear helmets and were clad, neck to foot, in what had to be clothing of mostly a dark blue color, which was also very close to the color of the earth pony. In the front of the group, one of the unknown creatures had both of its upper limbs in the air. What was it doing? Did it come from... Twilight shook the thought; the object she'd seen the other night through her telescope was nothing like this one, except for its grayish-silver color. It was, however, clearly some sort of foreign flying machine. Nagging thoughts wrestled with her reasoning mind. The concept that these beings might be from space was almost overwhelmingly tantalizing, but too fantastic to believe just yet. There'd have to be more proof before she could safely reach that conclusion.
Twilight teleported to the immediate front of the group. Somepony would know what was going on here. The entire group that had, she presumed, come from the ship jumped as though surprised, letting out startled noises and holding up their upper–or forward, in the stallion's case–limbs in shielding postures for a moment, before slowly lowering them again. Checking her own posture, nervous now, she examined the closest unknown visually.
Through its helmet, it clearly had a flat face, with no snout to speak of, and a protruding nose. Instead of the top sides of the head, its ears were situated closer to the middle, on the sides. She peered into its small brown eyes, which stared, intelligently, right back at her. It didn't have a coat of substance that she could see, just a group of black hairs surrounding its mouth, a mustache by any name, which matched the very short mane atop its head in color. Both had more than the slightest flecks of gray in them. Its skin was a somewhat darker shade than the light pink of bare pony skin, and slightly yellowish and wrinkled. From the look of it, this one was male, but she couldn't reliably tell through all of its clothing, the purpose of which was also uncertain, but may have had something to do with their relative hairlessness.
"Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle. What are you doing here in Ponyville? What is this machine, if you don't mind me asking?" she questioned, in an inquisitive, friendly tone. The creature in front of her turned to face the earth pony, who said nothing, and let out a sigh.
A closer look at the rest of the group revealed one much more horrifying element; one of the creatures had been petrified by a cockatrice, one of which lay motionless, strapped to a gurney of sorts, nearby. Were they asking for help? Twilight opened her mouth to say something, but was interrupted by the dark blue stallion, whose cutie mark, she had discerned, was a number of stars of several different colors. Was he some sort of astronomer? Was this some sort of spacepony? The signs for that being the likely scenario increased by the second, but, again, remained unconfirmed. Until then, she would consider the prospect folly. However, evidence was building. The peculiar object in front of the moon, the peculiar object that landed and disgorged these peculiar passengers, and these passengers' peculiar behavior and physiology.
-----
"I can't understand her, Skipper," Killian said to the stares of his colleagues. Kathy made a remark about Killian's ease in recognizing the species' females. He glared at the biologist. Killian wore no helmet, and thus, had no identification signal and radio on him; nothing they had fit him. He had to walk around naked, to Killian's mild distaste. At least he had a coat of hair.
"Kathy, can it. Recorder is going, right?" the Skipper asked the nearest newly-appointed xenolinguist, then spun to face the lavender unicorn again, the one that had somehow just teleported in front of them, and talked to them.
He nodded in response.
"It sounded like she was asking us a question," Killian said. "Probably something along the lines of 'What the hell is this giant metal thing?' or, 'What and who the hell are you?' Probably both, I'd wager. That's what I'd ask, before asking 'What do you want?'"
The Skipper sighed deeply. This was going nowhere fast, though he'd hardly expected it to. The only thing they could do was make these creatures speak more. The inquiring unicorn began to speak again.
-----
"Can I help you with..." she waved a hoof in the direction of the petrified biped, "this? I have just the thing at home." The copy of Supernaturals she possessed contained a remedy for cockatrice-induced petrification, if she recalled correctly, amongst other things. Nearly immediately, she realized the futility of her attempts at communication: they evidently did not speak Equestrian.
Without a word from its companions, one of the vessel's former occupants took what looked like a bag of sorts from its back and set it on the ground. From the looks of things, this one was female. Its mane was slightly longer, like a mare's compared to a stallion's, and it had no facial hair whatsoever, and its skin was of a similar shade to that of the other one she'd examined. Twilight watched intently as she pulled a glass jar from her bag, containing a familiar blue plant: poison joke. She walked deliberately over to the stallion, and gently tapped the jar against his head, and gestured at the jar, then at him. The stallion facehoofed, and put on an annoyed expression. What was she trying to say? Twilight cocked her head and made an exaggerated motion, attempting to indicate that she was confused.
-----
"And it'll go down in history that first contact was a game of charades," Killian deadpanned.
"Do you have a better idea?" Kathy replied.
The Skipper turned around to face them. "It's progress. At least we know now that-" He was interrupted by the arrival of two more pegasus aliens, one of them was unmistakably the one that had followed them in, and the other was a yellow color, with a long pink mane and tail. It humored the starship commander that such colorfulness existed in such a wide spectrum here, where it clearly did not help with camouflage. Blues to browns, purples to whites, it didn't matter, there was at least one alien in any color imaginable, and even then, in different combinations. The two pegasi began to talk amongst themselves, but the yellow one was not hearing the blue one, and closed with the statue of Powell.
In what could only be a concerned tone, the alien looked at Killian and said something, then stared intently at the cockatrice, fluttering over it and apparently examining it. It did not awaken, and the alien touched it with a hoof, then said something to it cautiously, as though testing the deepness of its slumber. It would not wake up, of course; Kathy had loaded it with enough sedatives for another hour at least. They could revive it if they so chose, but what would that accomplish? Kathy once again tried to explain through motions to the purple one that Killian was not a small pony, but a human, and that this plant might've turned him into one.
The Skipper instead decided to make a show of his own. "Hey!" his voice boomed. All went quiet once again. The blue pegasus attempting to talk to the yellow one, the murmurs of the growing crowd, everything went silent. The Skipper was front and center. He pointed at the Luna, then at the sky. He pointed at himself, then at the Luna. He repeated the motions until one of the aliens said something. One of them will eventually get it, the Skipper thought.
-----
"Sweet Celestia..." Twilight muttered under her breath. "They're from space! They landed in this... spaceship! This one came from a bigger one I saw last night in my telescope! That pony isn't really a pony, he's one of them, but he somehow came into contact with poison joke, and turned into one of us! It's all so clear now!" It simply could not be denied any further; now they were telling them that they were from space, or at least, it looked like they were. What else could it mean?
Total silence reigned. All eyes were on Twilight as she made a step toward the alien... captain, it would seem, and raised a hoof to shake. Slowly, with a gloved hand, he took it, shook firmly and... smiled. She spun about, and began to issue orders, as she had a knack for doing when the situation called for order. "Rainbow, ask Zecora to prepare a bath of poison joke antidote, and tell her it's an emergency, please. Fluttershy, you stay here with the cockatrice, see if you can make it free the... alien when it wakes up. If you can't, I'll check the library for cures. Everypony else... don't you think we should give our guests some space? I don't think they appreciate us gawking at them like this."
In turn, each party obeyed her command without question. The fact that Twilight was a well-respected figure throughout much of Equestria gave her word considerable weight. The mare let out a relieved sigh, and suddenly remembered who was missing from this picture. Spike was still at the library. Perhaps it was for the best: the baby dragon's imagination was sometimes overactive. He could have done something to offend the aliens. Twilight spun around. The aliens were still there, watching either her or Fluttershy, who did not appear to want the attention.
-----
The Skipper was impressed by how the unicorn took control of the situation. The actions that she took appeared to be those of an authority figure. She was the only unicorn they had seen so far, and she had been at least partially in charge. Were the unicorns some sort of ruler caste? Was racism an issue here? What in the world had caused that creature to teleport in front of them? Perhaps this civilization had greater depth than once anticipated. Were the unicorns puppeteering the other races for resources while hoarding advanced technology, like the as-of-yet-unseen teleportation device and the levitating basket they'd seen from orbit, and framing themselves as gods to the others to get what they needed? Questions like these would be answered with study, the Skipper concluded. He strained to think of their next course of action. What if the aliens had sent for some sort of security force to deal with them? There were simply too many questions.
"What now, Cap'n?" a linguist asked.
"We wait, see what they do. We're guests here, gentlemen. Let's see how they treat guests."
A hot pink alien came into view, and upon noticing their group, rushed toward them. Within seconds she was upon them, spouting words at a rate usually associated with madmen. She poked and prodded, inquired and sized up, before turning to the purple unicorn and asking her a question.
-----
"What are these things? They look kind of funny! Why do they seem so serious?"
Twilight facehoofed. "Pinkie, these are aliens! You have to be careful not to do anything that they might think of as a threat! If they can get here from who knows how far away, they could probably do terrible things to Ponyville if they wanted to!"
Twilight knew all about interstellar distances; the Princess had explained it in great detail to her, mostly to clarify why she could not move the stars in the night sky as she could the star of the day. The truth of the matter was easily summarized in one word, and that word was far. Farther than any pony had ever ventured, combined, she had said, and that would only be a teensy tiny fraction. If these spacepeople could get here, they would have to be extremely powerful in magic or technology. Though, none of them thus far had used any magic of any sort she'd ever seen before.
"Oh, wow, aliens! I got'cha, Twilight!" With that, the pink pony bounced over to stand at her side, away from the alien whose helmet she had been knocking on gently, to an annoyed gaze from the alien inside.
-----
"I've got to wonder if they fear us. The purple one looks like she's trying to deal with this tactfully and with discretion," Killian observed. "She probably doesn't want to piss us off. I know I wouldn't. Fortunately, they're not the ones who should be worried. After all, we don't bear them any ill will. At least, none that I know of. Right, Skipper?"
The Skipper frowned. These aliens had no reason not to fear them, if only just a little bit. Though the aliens had no way of telling, Eclipse was capable of inflicting terrible damage to a terrestrial body's surface; it bore numerous railgun turrets, eight, to be exact, and a heavy slug moving at a speed measurable in a percentage of the speed of light was not something anything wanted to be hit with.
"They've got no reason not to fear us," he said in response. "I know we would in their place, but you're right, we don't have any good reason to do anything to hurt them."
"Perhaps aliens are not as ingrained into their popular culture as they are in ours," Kathy suggested, "or perhaps they have less of a perception of the possible threat we pose to them, or simply do not believe that we could possibly have come here with malevolent intentions, which would be correct, fortunately for them. If this were to happen on Earth, popular culture would probably have instigated some of the populace's reactions."
"Perhaps our culture is affecting our actions," one of the linguists wondered aloud.
"Yeah," Killian said, snickering, "after all, you did say 'We come in peace,' Skipper."
"We're making shots in the dark here; we've only scratched the surface of how they think, and what their culture is like. We could have just offended them and their families, we could have just shown submission, or we could have shown them fear. We wouldn't know," the linguist added. "What's most puzzling is how the alien responded when you shook her... hoof, Captain. That was a proper reaction; she just shook your hand. What's puzzling about it is that it seems to be analogous to our handshake: a greeting gesture. This is a friendly encounter thus far, not any variation of 'Get off my lawn.'"
The Skipper looked at the vibrant pink alien standing beside the unicorn and rattling off whispered questions, to which the other whispered short, identical responses to each. 'I don't know,' perhaps? He turned to face the linguist. "Well..." he read his nameplate as displayed on his helmet's HUD, "Sanders, what do you think we should do now?"
The linguist swallowed. Never had he been asked to make a decision before. After all, the Captain was the one who issued the orders. His role as a language teacher aboard Eclipse was not much more functional than a standard colonist; he'd teach crew members how to speak various languages, specifically English, French, Latin, and German. It was a sort of pastime for most of his students, especially after a third of their voyage was completed. At that point, everyone aboard had at least learned English. With a role as unimportant as his, he never suspected for a moment that the Captain would ask him for advice on this matter, and yet, now he was. "Uh... We try to communicate with motions, see what other gestures we share."
The Skipper nodded. "Cox, Grant, what do you think?" he asked, looking at each of the other linguists in turn. Both shrugged. "We need someone to head our xenolinguistics department, which will consist of you three along with whoever the head of this department sees fit. Any takers? We need these aliens' language deciphered as soon as possible if we plan to make this place our permanent residence, and since we don't want to have made this long trip for nothing..."
"I'll do it, Captain," Sanders said. "How hard could it be?" In his mind, however, it was already clear just how hard it would be. It would be a big task, for sure. "All we've got to do is formulate a pidgin of some kind, but we don't exactly have a lot of time..."
"Do your best." The Skipper looked toward the yellow pegasus alien, standing near the sedated cockatrice. Killian and Kathy were staring at it. "I wonder what she's doing here."
-----
The nagging matter was the alien that stood motionless nearby, likely petrified by the very cockatrice that lay on this table, which was in a very deep sleep, as it appeared from where Fluttershy now stood. She decided to wait until it woke up to take further action. If she did now, she might startle the new arrivals.
-----
"Good question," Killian said, "Maybe she knows something about this cockatrice. Should we wake it up?"
"No," the Skipper replied. "What if it attacks one of us? We don't know how it did what it did to Powell. It might do it again."
"Yes, good point, Skipper."
-----
"I'll just wait until it wakes up, then I'll talk to it," Fluttershy said softly, "maybe I can convince it to help us, but I don't really know for sure..."
"Thanks, Fluttershy. If we help them out, they'll probably trust us more. And if we're going to cure that pony over there of poison joke, we're going to need his cooperation," Twilight said.
Twilight noticed something in her peripheral vision and looked up to see what it was. Unmistakably, it was Princess Celestia's sky chariot that was approaching their location. She pointed at it. "Look!"
-----
The communications circuit in the Skipper's helmet activated. "Captain," the pilot said, "we have a contact closing fast with this landing site. No detectable power source." The Skipper looked to the sky, noticing a flying object, a vehicle of some kind, evidently propelled by numerous pegasus aliens, clad in gold-colored armor. More impressive, however, was what the vehicle carried as a passenger. An alien, larger than any yet seen, rode in the back. It had a horn and wings, a property as of yet unobserved. Its coat was white, and its mane appeared to shimmer prismatically. From this distance, it was evident that this creature was of a wholly different variety than those that stood in front of them now. As it disembarked from its vehicle, the three aliens standing in front of them did a sort of kneel. A leader figure? A monarch? the Skipper thought. The societal structure here was becoming visibly more complex as time went on. A closer inspection revealed this alien to be wearing particularly ornate accessories of gold and gemstones. It was clear that interactions with this particular alien could likely decide the success or failure of Eclipse's mission, or, at least, their hopes of landing the colony modules within this nation's boundaries.
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Longest chapter I've put out, ever. Hope y'all like it. I apologize for making you wait so long, I hope I can put out the next one faster.
Edit: This chapter has been changed! A scene has been removed.
Finaly contact and now come sthe worst part... witing for the next chaper =/
First time commenting on Fimfiction :D
This is getting so damn exciting >.< I sure hope the ponies see how powerful the humans are without becoming enemies. I'd love to "see" their reaction!
Keep the awesome chapters coming!!! ^^
Good work
1524049 Hmhmhm, yes, indeed. It's intended as both that sort of allusion and a Starcraft reference. (C- is a commonly-used designation for infantry rifle.)
This is gonna be good.
Let's hope first contact goes well!
By the way, what are your influences.
cdn.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/139128/81493557.jpg
1524163 Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke is significant, but no other ones really stand out.
1524134 They'd already known that and been boggled for years trying to explain it. It took many years to relay the probe telemetry back to Earth, and many more years to build Eclipse, as you may infer. The ship's prepared for most anything that could be prepared for, and can go back if the situation warrants, and with an engine as powerful as theirs, they'd be outta there some quick if things got hairy. In my head, the mindset of humanity is more willing to take risks because there's nothing left to go to, to explore. And they're willing to take the risk of delving into the unknown; the only way to find out what's really going on there is to, well, go there. The probes aren't equipped for such intricate observation. With a habitable planet, a new world on which people can theoretically live on... well, that's splendid! Let's send some colonists to it along with our science package.
1524195 Genetically-modified ecologies within the humans are all they've got, a limited defense. There will likely be some situation in which this bites them in the butt later. Magical bacteria would be downright nasty!
Thanks a lot for your insight. I hope you're enjoying the story. Sorry for the double reply.
1524372 ...With comparatively-measly weapons. And if there were any hostile aliens, why hadn't they destroyed the probe, which had passed rather close to the planet to take its readings? Ah, but we could swap points forever, couldn't we? So I'll confess; artistic license and rushed writing are two things this story has in spades. I wanted to make it work like I wanted it to. The probe had passed rather close to the planet and taken readings. So, you've got me. You've untangled the knot and solved the puzzle. Oh, and who knows if the guns are concealed or not?
Anyway, your picking is appreciated and taken into account for later installments. Thank you very, very much, and I hope you're otherwise enjoying the story as it is so far.
Celestia disembarked from the chariot and spoke in a deep, droning voice, "Twiiiiiiliiiiiight! There are a group of albino Nameks behind you!!"
1524466 OH GOD
!! Best. Reference. EVER!! That comment gets 5 out of 5 moustaches 
"and as soon as the white horse with wings and horn started speaking, the Daleks showed up, screaming, 'Exterminate! Exterminate!' "
1524711 And the Doctor defeated them by throwing pears at their eyestalks, leading the Daleks to scream in confusion, "I CANNOT SEE!! MY VISION IN IM-PEAR-ED!!!"
This story is shaping up to be one of my favorite fic ever, the reactions of the humans seems very real and the MLP cast's response is completely in character. High quality stuff, thumbs up favorited and watched, cant wait to see what happens next
:
I like it so far
moar plz
1525436
Yes being consistent is more important that being correct, being correct is just one of the more effective ways to be consistent.
One trick to remember is that being vague can let you avoid getting things wrong, or mask that it is wrong. "We ran it through the HPLC and found some unexpected components," pretty much can't be wrong, (unless it's something you couldn't run through an HPLC).
To give you something of a nit-pick: High explosive rounds are basically useless in space combat. If you can get them close enough to do anything, you can get direct hits. With direct hits you can take advantage of the First Law of Space Combat, "anything moving at 3km/s packs its own weight in blam." The only thing their HE rounds would be good for is orbital bombardment.
So, first of, this fic is doing great so far. I absolutely love the work so far, and hope to see more of it in the future.
Also, [this] was my listening track fro this chapter, and I will be sending you the listening track for each chapter as I make it.
Ah, I love High quality HiE stories like this.
It's like alien first contact except we get to see the contact from the eyes of both aliens, and we KNOW both of the very well!
1525568 Uh, huh, yep.
Okay, HE will be changed to solid slug. Keeping the nuclear. Good idear. And, seeing as though they aren't conventional weapons and closer to railguns, yes, and since everyone knows that Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space, this makes total sense to me. Thanks.
I have one request: More.
Aw yeah, I love this type of story.
I like the human characters you've written, and your interpretation of Twilight, Pinkie, and Flutters.
1526456
If you are going to write more space based stories, this site should be in your bookmarks:
Atomic Rockets
1526456
Did you know that nukes are nearly worthless in space?
Also, things like math (especially primes, e, pi, and the Fibbonacci sequence) and science (say, the periodic table) are universal constants, and easily recognized by any civilization which has discovered them. Those will probably form the basis of the lexicon to start with.
1528543 Yeah, I did (and evidently forgot) but nukes are useful for blasting at lower yield than the primary round, I suppose. (But, yeah, you're right. The reason for there being nuclear rounds I will get to later, but their inclusion in the first place was, indeed, silly and kind of added on a whim. "Why not nukes?")
I was planning math to be part of the equation (sorry, that was lame. Extremely lame) for communications somehow. It's a wonder that the ponies use base-ten; you'd think they'd use something else. Regardless, that aspect will probably aid in the task.
Oh, and the crew isn't idiots, the writer's the idiot, here. As for not jumping into contact, they'll want to know something about the life here before making contact with its intelligent counterparts. It's all in the name of caution (a major part of which I have apparently skipped out on to fulfill my own purposes, like a fool. The amount of artistic liberties I've taken are inexcusably numerous, I know).
Thank you. A good analysis that exposes weaknesses in the story's integrity is worth a hundred times a comment asking for more does. I just hope you're enjoying the story in spite of how I've botched a few things.
1527890 That's neat, thanks.
1528601
I really do enjoy fics such as this, and hope to see more from you.
1528964 And I thank you for your analysis, as well as that of 1527890 and 1524372.
1527342 You and me, both. 1524854 I'd been wondering if I had the characterization just right. Looks like I did okay.
1526333 High quality?
Welp, if it goes HORRIBLY WRONG, they can always just make a Shock and Awe.... Blow up a mountain or two.
Remember rule Infinity: Always have a PLAN B
With Article 2 taking so long to get started back up again..this is quite the reasonable replacement...Its like...Article 2: Now with more humans!...and I do mean that in the best of ways...Do go on, I'm hooked...
Gah, I'm caught up! Why can't the good fics all already be finished by the time I find them!?
1529888 Because they're hard to find, and fade into memory, especially if they don't make the cut to EQD or somesuch.
1529896
I actually stopped paying much attention to EQD's posted fanfics a good while back. I've seen too many amazing fics get posted there and still go way under appreciated, like The Age of Wings and Steel. I find most of my fanfics entirely through FimFiction these days.
1526122 I've recently taken a liking to this artist going by the handle of Aspect of the Storm. [1] and [2].
1530000 Yeah, me too; I mostly go there to skim news and drawfriends for a dose of d'aww and such. Though, I hardly ever read fanfics anymore, which is weird. considering my hobby, the fruits of which are visible here.
1529972 Were you expecting something else? It'd be a neat trick to pull, to have them land in zebra lands or something, but I'm no trickster. Space to ponies in seven thousand words. I could've paced it worse.
1528543
Not quite, a standard 1Mt nuke will do quite a bit of damage even from a fair distance away, (although not as far as they do in an atmosphere). Furthermore, nukes being deployed for use in space are likely going to be nuclear shaped charges or even Casaba-Howitzer type weapons, (both of which extend the distance they can cause effective damage).
That's just the physical damage, in space they also have much stronger radiation effects because the X-ray pulse is not absorbed by the atmosphere.
1530992
True. A nuke going off in contact with a ship will probably kill it. Against a big chunk of rock, not so much.
1531089
The problem with attacking a big chunk of rock is similar to the one where you are attacking an iceberg: It doesn't care about damage, only its overall structural integrity. Setting a nuke off next to an asteroid might boil off a few mm of its surface, leaving you with a slightly smaller rock. Setting it off next to a spacecraft would also boil off a few mm, wrecking all sorts of systems.
1531532 External sensors and weapons would be put out of action, irradiating and perhaps breaching the hull, complicating repairs... and that's without the EM burst associated with the usage of such devices, which could easily and swiftly disable many more systems, if not all of them, depending on the electonics' shielding quality. The nukes are clearly not for terrestrial bombardment or anti-asteroid purposes; that's what the regular rounds are for. When you're venturing into the unknown, you don't want to be unprepared for what could be out there... so you bring something that can really lay down the hurt against something that isn't just an inert chunk of rock--but can also tackle those--and have a healthy amount of them on your ship. (In my head, each colony module and the command module has one cannon, meaning the ship has eight guns. The colony modules will be able to use them from the surface when they land.)
However, given the unlikelihood of any party engaging in ship-to-ship combat in this story, Eclipse is extremely unlikely to ever need those particular rounds. The regular ones, though... heheh.
1531636
Actually, the EMP of a nuke in open space isn't that big. The famous one you hear about, (High altitude EMP), only works in the upper atmosphere of a planet that also has a strong magnetic field.
In deep space you only have System Generated EMP, which is much weaker.
1531720 Yes, the translation from atmosphere to no atmosphere is really the difference between terrestrial and space combat. In atmosphere, you've got more or less pressure waves, burning, shockwave medium and mitigation, air resistance, electrical resistance, the prospect of vacuum... it's just different. The closest we've got today is submarine warfare, which is, in a few ways, completely opposite.
1531959
Actually, submarine warfare is a terrible analogy to space warfare.
The central element of submarine warfare is stealth and there ain't no stealth in space.
How long do you think it will take you to complete the next chapter?
You have me so hooked!
1532071 It's similar in that it's unlike most any other type of warfare, was what I was getting at. Some things that would work on land, in the air or above water don't under it, for obvious reasons. It's similar in that holes need to be patched quickly, life support systems of some sort are often required (air tanks, etc.), everything has to be reinforced and built tough to withstand pressure if it's a deep diver (which is kind of like how space ships are shielded against radiation). It's not so much combat that's similar, it's the special provisions associated with the environments in which starships and submarines operate, but it's much more extreme in the former case, as you can't just bring your spaceship up to repair it. But, then again, I'm crazy.
1532120 Ahhh... I haven't started on that. Probably will soon. I wouldn't expect it for another week or so, though; I'm not very fast.
This has only just started, yet I'm inexplicably hooked. More is demanded!
You used the term 'petrified' once and then decide to use 'stoned' instead. Why?
Stoned means to be pummelled by stones and petrified means to be turned to stone.
1539896 I've heard the terms used interchangably. Stoned also means 'of stone', and, in this context, synonymous with petrified.
I don't think that the Humans would come to the conclusion that the sun orbits the planet. You can define an objects orbit relative to another, this is what humans did when we thought the earth was the center of the universe. The moon had circular orbit around the earth, because it does orbit the earth. And the sun, from the viewpoint of the earth, had a circular orbit around the earth as well. Nothing else had nice circular orbits, but their orbits relative to the earth could be calculated, and the calculations were accurate. Never mind that the orbits were completely schizophrenic, the calculations were accurate so they must be right! We now know this is wrong. We know about gravity and how objects of smaller mass orbit objects of larger mass. But if we do define the less massive object as being stationary, the object that it actually orbits will have a circular orbit relative to it.
This brings us to the system in the story. It appears to be a 3 body system. The sun, the planet, and the planet's moon. Even if the sun did orbit the planet, humanity would still assume the sun to be the center of the system and define the orbit of the planet around it, and it would be a circular orbit to. There is no way to tell the difference between the sun orbiting the planet and the planet orbiting the sun. (That I know of, I could be wrong.)
1540589 I don't know either; I could be wrong as well. By this story's setting in time, I believe that through relative observations the humans would be able to discern which object orbits the other, which, in this case, doesn't make a lick of sense, obviously.
1540758 It could be that the planet is orbiting too fast or too slow for it's mass and distance from the sun, but humanity wouldn't say that the sun orbits the planet. I think the best thing you could come up with is to have the mun be larger than the planet, but still orbit the planet and not the other way around like they would expect.