2024 SF, fourteenth of its series. Roslyn Chambers takes one of the
experimental scout cruisers out in pursuit of the other, which was
stolen at the end of the previous book.
Well, I'm getting a certain sad feeling of inevitability here.
Much as David Weber's series got to a point where the main conflict
could have been brought to a permanent end, only for Weber visibly to
notice that no explodey spaceships equals no book sales and require
everyone to behave like idiots in order to kick off a new war, I can
see a sadly likely course of future events which will bring in a Great
Big War to finish off the series.
(But maybe Stewart will surprise me. He has before!)
What actually happens here is rather more interesting, and more fun.
The stolen ship is very short of crew, which means that they simply
don't have as many options as the pursuers who took a few days to drag
in a full (if inexperienced) complement before setting off after them;
and in a genre which tends to favour the small band of plucky heroes
it's good to see this being taken seriously. Even more importantly,
the mindset of the hijackers leads them simply not to be able to
accept certain things which would potentially render their
multi-generation conspiracy (and all the bad things they did in
service of it) pointless.
Sadly, this does mean we spend rather more time with the hijackers
than with the pursuers, which wouldn't have been my choice (they are
after all fanatics, if reasonably competent ones). Chambers is an
interesting enough character that she really doesn't have to be
relegated to the B-plot in her own book.
Ah well, Not one of my favourites but it still works, and there are at
least two more books out already…
- Posted by John P at
10:17pm on
16 July 2025
Just started reading Sword Of Mars and the space battles reminded me of playing Starfire with hordes of missiles and beams hacking ships apart. But it got me thinking, if mages can teleport ships over light years, then why not teleport an anti-matter warhead inside an enemy ship? Or even in space right next to a ship would do if you can't drop it inside. OK, they need to be touching the ship's simulacrum to move it, but they can move things without touching them so the potential is there. Maybe it would just spoil the battle scenes.
- Posted by RogerBW at
01:01pm on
17 July 2025
I think they don't have sufficient precision. Even a fleet jump leads to ships spreading out quite a bit. So while it might be an effective ambush technique an alerted ship should have no problem in spotting the missile far enough out and shooting it down.
- Posted by John P at
10:11pm on
17 July 2025
But that's when they are travelling over a light year. Battles take place in system at light minute ranges. So precision ought to be easier. Anyway, I wasn't thinking of a missile. I was thinking in terms of directly teleporting a nuclear limpet mine onto (or better, into) a ship's hull. Or at least close by it.
Mind you, that would be a giggle if you could teleport a wave of missiles so that they re-appear behind the ships that fired them. Especially if they then automatically lock on. You could use transponders to prevent friendly fire but with enough missiles in flight accidents can still happen.
The other creative possibility is rocks - create an artificial meteorite storm. Bit indiscriminate, but good against orbital facilities & fortresses which can't avoid them easily. Even if they use missiles to break them, it depletes the missile stocks and the shrapnel can still keep going and ruin your day.
- Posted by RogerBW at
04:21pm on
18 July 2025
Shorter jumps are harder, and the need for precision is part of that. I don't think they ever get the precision to drop a munition close enough to a enemy ship to do any good.
I don't think they've mentioned proper motion, but everyone ignores that. (Including 2300AD, which makes some Great Big Assumptions about how you change velocity to get into a planetary orbit…)
- Posted by John P at
05:44pm on
19 July 2025
Agreed, the mages' ability to identify the position is key. In Sword of Mars chapter 38, Damian teleports through a wall on a station, doesn't adjust for the rotation and ends up 20cm above the floor. But when they do a jump, they are going to a computer calculated position in another system. So dropping some munitions close on a calculated point in system shouldn't be a stretch of the imagination. Even if there was a margin of error, you could still drop a homing missile too close for the RFLAMs to respond. Or a cluster munition of smaller missiles.
I don't know if Stewart just hasn't considered that or if it turns up in a later book that I haven't read yet.
- Posted by RogerBW at
10:33am on
20 July 2025
Given how much the missile salvoes are degraded by EW I suspect getting the exact position might also be a challenge. (And Damian is one of the specialists in jump magery.)
And don't they always need to take the vessel along with them? So now you need two fresh mages, one to get the original one back out.
You may be wight of course, but my feeling is that it's been hedged around enough rather than with just the lazy writer's excuse of "they didn't think of it".