Latest blog post: Update on the comic (2026-05-28)
Author's comment:
I think they'll be fine. They're so far away, after all...
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Comments (7)
Ummmhh, captain Kas? An unknown, very foreign ship taking aim at your main ward should merit you telling your own crew to "fire at will!", don't you think ... ?
That is the problem with a "Chain-of-Command" passing through individuals made out of Carbon. Its vastly slower than , we presume ,an AI run counterpart.
Kas will get there. In a about 1 billion Nano-cycles.
When a target has a large rotating drum to provide an open-air pseudogravity environment, and an attacking bogey has a light-speed beam weapon that they can aim and fire in less than a handful of heartbeats, I am pessimistic about evasive maneuvers. The captain's warning will arrive after the damage.
Even if evasive maneuvers are technically possible, it would mean applying enough drive force for Dawn to structurally destroy its own habitat with enormous loss of life.
It is possible that the bogey is firing to disable, and Dawn will be left immobile but mostly unhurt. It is also possible that Dawn is about to be destroyed with the loss of all crew aboard. Either way Earth would have Raharran refugees to shelter in addition to the Raharran exile already stranded there.
Any speculation about the bogey? Do they have a motive to disable rather than destroy? They clearly did not want to be found. Having been found do they want to run away, or eliminate the witnesses? And if they want to eliminate the witnesses, does that include Earth?
I'm guessing the Dawn isn't the target, but rather it's military escorts. They are far more likely to be able to pose a threat to the Azinarsi than the Dawn itself.
It doesn't have to be a light beam, an ion/plasma beam is also possible. (eg strip off electrons, use magnetic field (electricity in superconducting wire) to speed atoms up to fraction of speed of light.
From their perspective 1000 years can be like a day in our terms because they have been around for millions of years.
An advanced alien civilization might watch *every* other civilization that might advance to be able to come near their territory in next 1000+ years.
I think the most obvious original motive of bogey was to watch earth.
Reasons why can vary, earthlings making thousands of thermo nuclear bombs and potential rapid tech growth from AI could make them a future "threat" especially from a species that looks at things from perspective of thousands of years.
From perspective of advanced tech civilization, "moron" lower tech civilizations can be threats, in same way the superpowers of earth have to fear a 3rd rate country making dna manipulated anthrax bombs.
I too am pessimistic about their evasive abilities.
Hmmmm. If the architects of the Dawn thought of this kind of situation and provided a (non-military) defense against it, I'd expect the still-rotating habitat to emergency-detach from the "frame". The habitat could accelerate away from the frame at, say, 90% of its internal artificial gravity, and the ship-gun-carrying "frame" would be at liberty to maneuver.
Still not likely to happen fast enough to avoid taking the first hit, I fear ...
I suspect that the most feasible thing (in terms of engineering) would be to make Dawn as a warship separate from the habitat which normally rotates around it.
That way you could have a rapid evasive maneuver, usable exactly once, where explosive charges situated inside pistons KICK the habitat and the warship apart, hopefully in time for the approaching damage to pass between them. This leaves the habitat floating, vulnerable, but presenting no specific reason for it to be attacked.
And besides, any attackers now have a more important problem: A fully armed, capable warship is free to engage and maneuver. Free to maneuver, in fact, with drives that normally move several times its mass.
The structure of the habitat could be built to withstand it. The habitat does need to withstand occasional acceleration along its rotation axis anyway, and if the warship has a fraction of the mass of the habitat, then when they kick apart the habitat would only take a fraction of the acceleration given the warship.
But the people inside the habitat would still be having a very bad day, with chunks of landscape ripping loose and everybody suddenly moving a few dozen meters per second sideways relative to their normal gravity. Most of the obstacles they could hit when suddenly flying sideways would have to be built to crumple and give way rather than withstand the impact leaving the people to crumple and give way instead.
For the people inside, it would be about the same as hitting the ground (or the nearest wall in that direction) when jumping out of a moving train.
TBH, for me Dawn in any sort of combat role feels like expecting a Boeing 747 to fill a fighter jet's role.
With bit of luck, that´s a communication laser pulse and just by "happenstance"
is aimed past Earth and apparently close to the vicinity of Dawn.
Well, we can always hope.
Oh shit!
If the previous page was shit hit the fan, we straigh up go to a sewer discharge into a turbine here.
Chirst. Surely that the Dawn can do some evasive maneuver, but dear that it poorly desidned for: the drum will be a total mess and dang! Also a thought for everyone in EVA suit, like Hekaht, who arent in a very good position to withstand sudden acceleration like that.
btw, the Moon is a 1 l/s of Earth, is very short for maneuver of any kind. And even if the beam is slower than ligh, it seem uncomfortably fast.
Else, no matter who are this Azinarsi, their are pretty upset to be discovered.
What if the "ghosts" do choose to wipe Earth clean, too? "Pulsar jet sweeping a close-orbit binary star"?
Something tells me Gharr & friends are about o have quite a few more roommates...
I really like the "crater" dents in the Azinarsi ship.
And boy, are those grills full of lunar regolith, this thing hasn't had a good cleaning in a long time.
So "Camp Raharr" is going to be....."Refugee Camp Raharr" and span 1/4 of a continent? Lets hope not but this is certainly a clear declaration of War if I have ever seen one.
Oh Voy, I don't see this ending well if that strike hits. Very typical elder race reactive stupidity of course to strike first at any hint of a "threat" even if it is not a threat.
Holly Terra! I wasn't expecting that!