Latest blog post: An unforseen hiatus. (2023-01-02)

Author's comment:

Guys, I don't think such a country exists?


Comic transcript


Major: What’s the matter?
Iskra: Major, you are too fast to reject the proposal.
Iskra: If the extraterrestrial thinks she can help us find that lost passenger...
Iskra: Why not check out what she can bring to the table?
Major: Are you seriously suggesting to let an individual prone to escaping out of this classified facility?!
Major: I am absolutely against this!
Iskra: Major, I’ll remind you that you are now in charge of just the base.
Iskra: One phone call, and you could become a colonel Pronin...
Iskra: ...Or a private at some godforsaken northern border checkpoint with Tobolia.
Iskra: I suggest you to take that into account when making decisions.


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Senior
Keith Schiffner (transfer from Disqus)

I see he's manipulated the agent quiet well. And playing up the anger at her threat as if he didn't think it would come to that. Well done sir. At this rate, I'll see you Knighted.

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Senior
Lord Eric (transfer from Disqus)

Huh. Did not occur to me that the Major might be using reverse psychology. Not entirely convinced yet that he is, though.

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Regular
wolf ryet

I have heard of this being done to make sure that everyone is aware of who was in charge and gave the orders if something goes really bad. It has even progressed to lower rank soldiers asking for an officer to be on site to make sure things go correctly. Being the officer on site will get the blame no matter what, or getting himself killed and problem solved. Happened a lot in Vietnam.

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Regular
multilis (transfer from Disqus)

There is a whole alien fleet in solar system with tech that is vastly above human level, I can see logic in trying compromise... the current captured alien is sort of like an ambassador and holding captive holds risk of starting a war humans can't win.

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Regular
multilis (transfer from Disqus)

The aliens for example could probably redirect asteroids to crash into earth wiping out billions of people and humans could not stop them... aliens could easily shoot down any attempts by humans to stop the asteroids or harm the aliens in spaceships.

In such a situation, trying to establish good relations with alien abassaddor is probably high priority. I think Iskra might be the smarter one in this situation. Alien escaping is least of their problems.

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Senior
glenn (transfer from Disqus)

At the highest level (which we haven't seen) those who know about this see it as a great opportunity. Think of that technology which will advance the human race into a new era. Their task is to see that anything that could interfere with this smooth meeting doesn't happen. War is not an option.
Since both parties are guilty of something it should even-out. The aliens failed to recon the Earth enough to beware of any defensive systems in place, so it was their mistake (versus the mistake the Earth's defense made in thinking this was a hostile action.) Either way, it was a tragedy due to a lack of communication and couldn't be helped, so that's the level playing-field.

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Regular
JoB (transfer from Disqus)

Out of interest, agent Iskra, what's going to be your next post and rank, once the extraterrestrial's nanites and implants had a friendly chat with whatever homing devices you put on her?

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Senior
glenn (transfer from Disqus)

Yes Major, make any decisions you want only understand that she's the boss.
(Or is it that girls always stick together, no matter what?)

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Regular
JoB (transfer from Disqus)

Well, if they always stick together, there'll be no escape attempt we'd need to take serious and prevent in the first place, right?

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Senior
glenn (transfer from Disqus)

Rather than escape, the expert lady figured that she and the alien female might do a little bit of shopping. (It's What They All Do.)






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TRIVIA
These trivia bits are generated randomly.
Raharrs are warm-blooded creatures and are accustomed to temperature range a bit warmer than Earth's.
"Dawn" class mothership and "Lake" class tankers are the only spacecraft in the Exploration fleet that can create artificial gravity while not under acceleration.
If a space ship accelerates at the same rate as it would in a free-fall under Earth's gravity (Otherwise known as "1G acceleration"), it can reach Jupiter from Earth in just under 6 days. It would need to flip in the middle of the travel, to start decelerating and enter the planet's orbit.
Insectoids in a lot of ways are the weird ones among the Alliance members. Besides having a completely unpronounceable name of the species, they have dextero amino acid biochemistry, which makes their food and biosphere to be inedible by the rest of the Alliance, and vice versa.
The names of every species of the Alliance (besides Insectoids) are words taken directly from their respective native languages that they use to refer to themselves. They all have same translation:
"a human".
Azinarsi relationship to death is different from the rest of the civilizations of the Alliance: they do not care about it. Death would mean loss of information and experience gathered by that instance of a person's mind, though, and these two things are about the only valuables for an Uploaded mind, so Azinarsi try to avoid it when possible.
A lot of backgrounds and other elements in the comic are actually 3d models. It helps reduce the time each page takes to make.
Raharrs descended from the evolutionary branch that can be described as "apelike cats" by their evolutionary niche. Although initially carnivorous and solitary, they were forced to become omnivorous and form persistent packs during the latest of the rare ice ages of their homeworld, approximately 30 million years ago.
It takes more than a year to cross the Alliance space even with the fastest FTL drive.
Prior to becoming a webcomic, Leaving The Cradle was initially developed as a modification for Source engine, back in 2007. It was vastly different back then, much closer to the usual space opera look and feel, and the plot had nothing in common with the webcomic version, sharing only exactly two characters and nothing else.
Many homeworlds of the respective species are still divided into countries, but freshly established colonies on other planets are almost always monolithic and basically independent, since they sprawled from a single initial outpost, and time lag involved due to interstellar distances making remote management of the colony from a homeworld to be ineffective and frustrating at best.
There's no way to communicate faster than light. If you want to send your message to another solar system, your best bet is to use a courier spaceship. It can take even a month for it to finally reach the destination, but it still beats sending it as a transmission and expecting it to arrive decades or thousands of years later.
So far there hasn't been a single instance of a massive interstellar war. Due to the vastness of space, there's no territorial or economic gain from it. The presence of armed spaceships is still warranted for keeping space travel safe and for peacekeeping or policing missions since unexpected events or rogue states can still happen and might require force as a solution.
The Alliance space stretches for an impressive 16 thousand light years along the longest axis, and contains approximately twelve billion star systems. Despite that, 99.99% of those star systems weren't explored even by an automatic mapping drone yet, and the borders of the Alliance space are defined mostly by the reach of spaceships from the nearest colony or space station.