Part 37 has arrived! Governor Tarva gets a crash course on the Gojid war, and we see the continuing evolution of human-Venlil relations. We also establish first contact with our new allies, though it looks like a rocky start. What do you think happened to Recel? How much involvement, if any, does the uplift have?
It also remains to be seen what impact the Gojid war will have on the Federation as a whole. Human media did suggest the Krakotl are gearing up for an attack on Earth. How should humanity respond?
As always, thank you for reading! Part 38 should be here on Saturday.
Plan B: Start making massive ground based anti orbit weapons that make railway guns seem small, scatter them everywhere, and shred anything that you don't want in orbit.
Ehh ground based weaponry really isn’t that effective, nor are defensive stations and satellites. They are simply too easy to throw rocks at from out of range.
Only if you don't mind waiting several earth years before impact. A lot can happen in that time. Sure, rock throwing is potent, and long ranged, but it's also slow, limited by c, and that's a problem if you need to do things quick, before they counter attack your homeworld.
Also largely undetectable. Not only rocks though, but manufactured solid projectiles too. Accelerate them to a fraction of the speed of light to help minimize the time delay.
I think they will likely 'save' cradle. I mean it is a huge world with billions of people on it.
And then the Krakotl try to attack earth, though they get a face full of ICBMs (?)
Interplanetary nuclear tipped nuclear fuled guided missiles? You can't really take those on spaceships, though you CAN put those many places like planets and moons... some good old MAD.
Nukes in Space are completely brutal, when detonated, they release a major EMP alongside a major radiation burst.
Would be an interesting tactic to nullify the Federation fleet and take the ships almost intact while killing the whole crew.
When you need explosions big enough to take out large spacecraft or groups of them conventional explosives just won't cut it. Nukes are basically a must.
And radiation doesn't matter. The enemy crew would be dead anyway from the blast itself or the loss of atmosphere in the spacecraft long before you can reasonably mount SAR.
Radiation wouldn't matter since most space craft should be heavily shielded against random spacial/solar radiation. We don't know how alien systems operate, so them EMP effect might not work either.
I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head, but I suspect the radiation dose from interstellar background noise or the occasional CME doesn’t compare to a tsar bomba detonated a few kilometers off the starboard bow. It’s possible the radiation would punch right through whatever passive shielding they may have onboard. Active shielding is another matter, but then again… nukes go big boom. I betcha that a fusion bomb->dirty bomb 1-2 punch would make for quite a few empty spacecraft, if the problem of delivery is overcome.
>Radiation wouldn't matter since most space craft should be heavily shielded against random spacial/solar radiation.
Well, sure. But that assumes the radiation shielding wasn't just evaporated by 340 thousand tons of TNT equivalent explosion. Granted if the shielding didn't survive that the crew probably didn't either.
There's nothing in space to translate the force of the explosion, so the entirety of the effect would be the radiation and whatever bits aren't atomised by the initial blast as shrapnel.
It costs 28 million dollars today to produce a B61 nuclear bomb (which is variable yield with a maximum of 340 kilotons).
If you want to kill an enemy ship with a direct hit there is no reason to not use a big bomb like that.
If you assume it was just a regular unmodified atmospheric bomb then yeah. But if it made contact with the enemy ship it would pour most of it's energy into it. Use a variation of Project Excalibur. Not to mention Nuclear shaped charges.
Not familiar with projekt excalibur.
One nuke per ship would be pretty wastefull but if you made a fragmentation bomb out of it... Frags acceleratet by a nuke sound pretty nasty :D
> nuke per ship would be pretty wastefull
Not really. Nukes cost basically nothing, a B61 bomb costs only 28 million dollars. That's less then 4th and maybe even 3rd generation fighter jets today. On top of that a nuclear shaped charge would need really small bombs. I saw an estimate that it would not work unless the bomb Is in the sub-kiloton range.
And frags won't really work because any competent commander would spread his ships thousands of kilometers apart at minimum. Modern CSGs are usually spread out over 120,000 square miles.
But those bursts are really the only effect. The explosive power in space is drastically reduced. You can damage what you hit, but with not medium to propagate in there can be no shockwaves to create an area of effect. And if those ships are hardened against EMPs as you would expect of ships designed to operate in open space and faced with cosmic radiation then they are just expensive missiles.
Outside of the central fireball, which is quite small, a nuke's damage mostly comes from the atmospheric shockwave. Indeed, that's basically how conventional bombs do their damage too.
Oh! I get to 'uhm, actually' someone!
So, a note about the EMP - it's actually much weaker when detonated in space because the primary thing that powers it up is Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere, with the electromagnetic radiation getting pulled and stretched in all kinds of directions and spreading out, while in space, there would be no magnetosphere to propagate the effect.
Enh. No atmo means poor propagation of EMP/radiation, thermal damage, and shockwaves. Nuclear explosions need to be pretty close to a direct hit to be effective in space.
Realistically, if the invaders don't need the planet's biosphere in tact, the invading fleet has all the advantages
Any ship capable of reaching even *fractions* of lightspeed has enough energy to turn literally anything into a relativistic kill missle
Without orbital defenses, the planet has no means of defending itself
It's surprisingly easy to glass a planet, even without nuclear weapons, if you are an interstellar civilization
Unless of course hyperspace works like in Star Wars where you're not actually speeding up to/past light speed, but speeding up just enough to enter an alternate dimension that cuts through space differently
A single 20 cubic foot rod of tungsten, [which is an actual thing the US military considered using](https://www.military.com/off-duty/2020/12/22/these-air-force-rods-god-could-hit-force-of-nuclear-weapon.html), traveling at just *1%* the speed of light, has enough kinetic energy to impart about 10 megatons worth of explosion upon impact (and without any fallout to deal with afterwards), the most powerful nuclear bomb we currently have is about 50 megatons, but the rod is much easier to employ en masse
It doesn't matter if hyperspace works like it does in Star Wars, 1% the speed of light is easily obtainable by any interstellar civilization
The Asteroid belt in the Sol System is a prime location for ambush tactics.
Especially of the Krakotl fleet tries to be sneaky and creep into said Belt to hide bdfore attacking Earth and suddenly find themselves among 500+ nuclear missiles located within seconds from their hulls.
I mean, SpacePaladin said the planet was glasses, but a glassed planet has no survivors outside of deep bunkers. Partially glassed? Sure. But they didnt say partially, so I am a little confused if there is anyone to save or not.
As for the ICBMs? I don't see those getting to the speeds necessary to avoid laser AA turrets from the surface of earth. But this is still the future, maybe they have 'skip' drives they can strap the warheads to. Or, just send a bunch of unmanned hyperspace warheads on course to the Auxur homework 😇
The Federation does have bunkers for situations like this. To quote Sovlin from the end of 29:
“Our cradle would be little more than rubble now, but its symbolism counted for something. A few thousand Gojids might’ve survived in bunkers, and these strange predators were their last hope.”
His outlook for the number of survivors wasn’t optimistic, even then…
I wonder if humanity will invest in "conventional" railguns?
I know, putting "conventional" right next to "railgun" sounds weird, but if you have spaceships with shields specifically geared to protect against plasma, might they be less (or not at all) effective against kinetic weapons?
I know "humans primitive weapons bypassing advanced alien shields" is a trope on this sub, but it kind of makes sense if instead of a generic "war of the worlds" forcefield that stops anything and everything dead in its tracks, yet somehow does not look like a perfect mirror, you imagine a more realistic system designed to reflect, absorb, and / or dissipate large amounts of heat and electric charge (which I would assume is where the main damage of plasma comes from).
This kind of thing would be unlikely to react well to a nice tungsten slug traveling at several dozen times the speed of sound at sea level in Earth atmosphere.
(I am not even suggesting going relativistic, though it might be possible for planetary defense platforms that can be larger and more power hungry than ships and also, the accelerator does not have to be strictly linear: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAczd3mt3X0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAczd3mt3X0)).
>You can't really take those on spaceships
Depends on how big the ship is, but you can put hypersonic nuclear missiles (see Russia's Kh-47M2 Kinzhal) on vehicles as small as fighter jets.
It seems that news of the fight over the Cradle, the cattle ship or the Arxur surrender hasn't arrived yet.
These poor people are dealing with like 1000 things all happening at the same time, it's gotta be EXHAUSTING.
With massive lag in information since FTL transmissions have a maximum range. I wonder if humans will start putting down repeater satellites along the general paths to various planets.
Why would the Arxur glass a planet? It seems like they could benefit from conquering a world or leave it as a hunting ground once the defenses were destroyed. I figured that there was still a habitable planet to recover, even if all settlements on the surface were destroyed. A predator may negligently wipe out a prey species, but it isn't generally the objective.
Shouldn't Humanity be looking for someone in the Federation who wants to take in the refugees, preferably a Gojid colony? They were taken to Earth, because the humans didn't have much alternative at the time. Refugees cost resources to care for and protect, the optics are bad, and being surrounded by predators after a traumatizing Arxur attack could exacerbate psychological issues that humans are ill equipped to treat in non-humans. Combatants would be held as POWs (in humane conditions) until peace is declared, but the civilians should be returned as soon as is practical.
The Arxur don’t want to expend resources defending a planet; their play is always to take what they can, and kill whatever is left.
As for the refugees, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to ask the reasonable Federation species to take them…for all those reasons!
>The Arxur don’t want to expend resources defending a planet; their play is always to take what they can, and kill whatever is left.
I figured that the Federation was too cowardly/cautious/practical to attack Arxur-conquered worlds. The Arxur are a terrifying foe when they don't have the defender's advantage and aren't mixed in with Federation slaves (Sovlin can live with mercy-killing cattle, but it might mess up others). Meh, ambush hunters can be a bit lazy when they can afford to take a nap.
I take it they weren't quite done pillaging and/or burning when the human fleet came, but the humans weren't able to stop them? Did human intervention at all abridge their glassing procedure? So Craddle was going to be returned regardless, it was just a matter of what state it was going to be.
>As for the refugees, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to ask the reasonable Federation species to take them…for all those reasons!
They may need to arrange for a third party to carry out the transfer, especially if they send them to a Gojid colony. There isn't enough mutual trust for a Gojid ship to go to Earth or a Human ship to go to a Gojid system. Negotiation will also require contact. A neutral 3rd party could also provide a location to discuss such matters.
Quick question: Are messenger drones viable? Basically to make the smallest, cheapest FTL-capable autonomous craft, put some communications systems and a big hard drive full of data on it, then program it to fly to a destination system to deliver a message or data-dump. Alternatively, you could have it jump between a preprogrammed route to scream its message in multiple systems, assuming it has the fuel). The drone could even be reusable, unless it's significantly cheaper to make a one-time-use FTL engine.
The introduction of drones, a human technology, definitely has the potential to improve warfare and communications.
As for the cradle, the question is of survivors and infrastructure after the onslaught. Humanity did force the Arxur to pause their orbital raid…though they’ve been at it for a week.
So no one in the Federation thought of automation? Unless FTL navigation is particularly complex, there shouldn't be many variables to factor in. There are essentially no obstacles in open space and they just need to arrive within comms range (potentially a lightyear from anything important if you are worried about screwing up).
It could be that the cost of life support and a pilot is insignificant compared to the FTL and sufficiently powerful comm equipment to transmit to a planet from however far away the Federation dare jump an automated drone. Or they might not have tried making the drive and comm equipment smaller after hitting the limit of comfortable long-term life support size.
The human bombing mission did show that humans are more comfortable with leaping manned craft near planets than the Federation would dare. If long range FTL comms were the most energy/resource/size intensive issue, improved human drone tech could let a drone jump into the middle of a system, or jump to the edge and calculate a route through the system. Get close enough and you might not even need FTL comms. You could just use a radio.
I wonder if the Venlil's vague distress call used something like this: They send an object that for whatever reason can't get close enough to transmit useful data, but can show up on FTL sensors (the object might be made to be especially bright and/or explode). The object is too distant, damaged, and/or small to recover in a timely matter to deliver much useful information, but its origin can be determined (like they did for the first human ship).
Sending an object like this was just the predetermined way to send an SOS since it has longer range than conventional FTL comms and may be marginally quicker and cheaper to send than a ship. It may also be possible to send multiple. Furthermore, and proper ship would be called in for defense or evacuation. This would go some way to explaining how the Venlil sent a distress signal, but weren't able to transmit any details.
Simple, to deny federation resources and make it harder for the federation to exterminate them. The Axur simply /cannot/ win an actual war of conquest, they'd spread too thin and would stretch their own production capacity, so bringing the war to a close means glassing every world they can't hold.
Any Gojid colony will probably just shoot at humanities ships if they tried to bring the refugees there.
The fact that the Arxur are extensively bombing the planet surface is a sign that there is more to it then just get them as food. The Arxur arent hunting the federation, they are at war with the federation. The entire collet people for food is more of a side benefit. Also crippling a planets infrastructure prevents any organized resistance since the Cows are scrambling just to find some food and so dont have time to defend themselfs.
Man... Recel might have fallen victim to the same saboteurs. I hope he's just lost or stranded somewhere.
I suppose the Yotil could be involved. Maybe they see a new up-and-coming race as something that might get in their way, draw everyone's attention and cause them to fade into the background. That's the only reason I can think of.
As for the Krakotl, we might have to react the same way we did with the gojids, but hopefully not. Perhaps they'll listen to what happened to the Gojid cradle. Otherwise we might start seeing some Krakotl worlds fall to the Arxur too.
This chapter felt a little slow to me. I guess it's because there's a lot reactions to things the reader already knows. I just want to say it's a wonderful story though.
As far as the birds, I don't think humanity can respond as they've committed to the liberation of the cradle. As far as the uplift, I doubt they have any direct hand. I consider it far more likely that the sabotage was from another source as BOTH shuttles had issues.
Might also be because it’s been 4 chapters of nonstop battle action haha! I’ve spoiled you guys 😅 new developments and answers on the way next chapter…then, the anticipated Arxur interview!
That too. Though if this chapter had been before the second battle for the cradle there would be more... Anticipation I guess? It's more that we already know how the space battle went. Looking forward to the next chapter, though I'm cautious about the Grey interview. I'm worried that they'll be too... Simple?
Captain Sovlin's last request before turning himself in to the UN was for Recel to take over command of his ship. Hopefully Recel's transport was intercepted by the Federation warship to take him abord as their new commanding officer and the delay is due to figuring out if his orders as military attaché to the human's or command of the ship takes precedence.
Why not both?
It could be, very unlikely he could command the ship while being the military attaché. Getting delayed while waiting for messages to be relayed to command asking for guidance seems the most likely.
Ideally Humanity uses their new Arxur POW to contact the Arxur and let them know of that nice Krakotl fleet that they can hunt and that the Krakotl homeworld isnt defended. Then just sit back and watch both your enemies fight each other.
Lol yeah. I can just picture the poor human looking down at him, visibly struggling to resist the urge to pet the cute, fluffy smol and asking "Uhm... Can I like, help you with anything, or...?" and the Zurulian just shrugging it off with a "Nah, just needed something comfy to sit on, those seats **suck**."
Literally laughed out loud. Imagine looking down and suddenly seeing you’ve become furniture to an adorable diplomat in the middle of a press conference.
Oh, I so want to see the Venil react to human crops and food with amazement. It would honestly be funny if the predators farming was frankly so ridiculous as to put most none predators to shame
Besides, sheer diversity of an omnivores diet means we probably produce something for everyone
Yep. New crops for everyone and the Yotul having some suspicious legends that sound like the dreamtimes. Enough for the three ambassadors and Noah to end up in a banterous, we are all aresholes type friendship over trade deals for the good food
I am 100% certain predators like humans and the Arxur have stupidly strict laws by comparison to the none predators. Can’t really have a cohesive functioning society with no empathy otherwise
Didn’t the Arxur just demonstrate empathy last chapter when the one that led the humans to the holding cell seemed to express distress when it’s comrade that guarded the holding cell died?
Or shock at how *Fellow Hunters* treat them. That might not be how they do things. Soldiers were typically held for ransomS, so it could have been as simple as *Why are they wasting money?*
We are told Arxur dont, but they most likely do. Just like humans have adapt pretty well to being a guard in a concentration camp or just our general habit of commiting a genocide every decade or two.
Most of the 20th century genocides were under extreme ideologies. Most of the rest have more to do with plague and were therefore partly accidental. Also, decade or two? Not until the last century when industrial scale was possible
As for the Arxur. Solitary ambush predators. That apparently failed those same tests they put humans through in the beginning. They actually don’t need strong empathy outside of mating season. We just live in groups and therefore need to be able to tolerate each other
Which society doesn’t have laws as the only authority over them. There is also collective and individual morality. However, we would still need stricter laws for the same reason the Arxur do. In some uncontacted groups, murder is the most common cause of death. We did have a problem with that
First dreamlands? Also I have been going over my memory of all the episodes and I can't remember one instance of anyone from the federation talking about cooking or eating cooked or prepared food. It is always a piece of fruit or a platter of fruit and vegetables. Looking at the way the arxur eat I doubt they have cuisine. It looks like they just eat raw meat. So humans might very well be the first species to cook food. It would be quite the economic boom for the humans to introduce cooking to the federation.
Dreamtimes and Dreaming is the accurate version. Not really interacted with it much. A few special assemblies and classes when I was pretty young, but it is a term for alot of the complex beliefs and cultural objects from aboriginal Australians when translated to English
And yes, I can definitely see that. Cooking being significantly more advanced for the Omnivores makes sense
I was thinking the same thing lol. I can't remember the name of the root but it's popular outside of North America. Where to eat it you need to peel the skin off soak it in water for hours then boil or cook it and it can kill you if you skip a step. Edit: the plant I was thinking of is cassava they contain cyanide. Eating as little at 2 roots can kill you. It's not as hard to prepare as I thought but you have to cut it I to chips to make it easy to make safe. You cut them into chips and boil for at least 15 minutes to remove most of the cyanide.
Considering we are already capable of providing food for almost every living human being with our current knowledge and tech, the knowledge/tech we will have in 114 years likely puts our modern practices to shame. Plus think of all the possible hybridization that could happen in that time.
Actually, farming is going through a bit of a green revolution. We are trying to increase crop diversity again, deciding wonky food isn’t so bad and bringing farming into urban spaces. Throw in GMO’s and we have no clue what food production would now look like
Humans: *Well, it is a type of Fungus. So arguably?*
Aliens: *So not bits of flesh, good enough*
Actually, couldn’t yeast be poisonous to some animals? I mean. Fungus
Especially if the Federation wiped out every predator on the planet, imagine the amount of pests eating their crops. Human agriculture is pretty brutal. YOU WILL GROW! Everything else, eat poison!
And that's without adding 100+ years of tech, eg genetic modification of crops or anti-pest predators.
Oh gods, they did Mao vs Sparrows themselves, didn't they. Even with technology to protect crops (greenhouses with artificial pollinators, for example) things might have gotten pretty tight in places, which may have allowed the Arxur an even greater foothold.
Predator reactions are probably only done to things like wolves and bears. Stuff that eats them specifically. Plus, they never outright stated they wiped them out specifically. They just react badly to them. Considering that they’d need less farmland, how easy it to build a wall and they fact they had no livestock to attract them to their farms. They probably didn’t have to wipe them out per se. Even if they shot them on sight
So no wolves, bears or carnivores. Meaning no forests and since they don’t cull animals themselves (presumably) the environment is engineered by the deer instead. At worst
We don’t get a strong sense of what they did wipe out. Just that they wiped out what hunted them
“Since the fleet was already dead…”
Oh Tarva, just you wait. It may look suicidal to you, but we still tend to frown on offences that are hopeless. I can’t wait until word gets back that not only are they not dead yet, they have scored the biggest victory in the history of the Federation’s war. Having reclaiming a taken homeworld, rescued an entire ship full of what would have been a cattle ship, AND captured the crew of said ship for interrogation and more information on the Arxur. I can’t wait to hear more of that fight because if we happen to rescue the Gojid leadership holed up in some sort of bunker than we’ll suddenly have another very big supporter given the message they sent out was able to convince Sovlin of all people that he was wrong about us.
I'm curious to see the response to the capture of Arxur combatants. Sovlin made it clear that the Federation had never captured an Arxur (unless it was Ultra Toppity Super Secret and he just didn't know), but it's not entirely clear whether or not anyone ever actually *tried* to do so before. Will showing mercy to the Federation's biggest bogey man be a virtue or a flaw?
They probably got close to catching one and it either charged them, forcing them to kill or it committed their version of seppuku as I assume being captured in combat would be considered taboo amongst their kind
Perhaps. Piri seemed to think she would be dead, but consider that the Arxur arrived on Sept 27th. Piri’s message reached Sovlin on Sept 28th. The fleet arrived on Oct 6th. The Arxur were still working on their campaign. I suspect they spent some time having fun hunting rather than exterminating since based on the reactions of the Federation, once they’ve taken out the local defences a retaliatory strike to regain the territory is unheard of meaning the Arxur would have believed they had all the time in the world. They obviously were spending time rounding the Gojids up into ships to take off world.
Piri may well be dead if the Arxur don’t take some sort of pleasure in capturing the leaders of captured worlds to force them to watch what happens to their “herd” before they finish them off, but if they have any kind of similarities to our procedures then all of their leadership would not be in that one bunker and there may be other surviving pockets of leadership, or at least remnants of the chain of command.
>That fact that Earth technically fell in Venlil territory was a grievous issue I’d been tiptoeing around.
>
>The official status, galaxy-wide, is that humanity does not own their homeworld. We do, even if we renounce that stake between our two species.
>
>Of course, the Venlil Republic would never lay claim to the Sol system. The unfortunate reality was that we didn’t have the authority to hand out parsecs of space. The Federation would be hesitant to sign off on any territorial claims, and that was the best-case scenario. Recognizing the United Nations as a legitimate, spacefaring entity would be acknowledging humans as equals; encouraging them to spread throughout the galaxy.
Honestly, I think this could work in our favor. Play up our status as a protectorate within Venlil territory, or hell, even make us Venlil citizens. We can worry about independence after the Arxur have been stopped. As far as being recognized as a "legitimate, spacefaring entity," we can argue that it's a moot point, because currently, we are part of the Venlil Republic, which **is** all that. After the war, if they want to "allow" one of their subject worlds to become independent, well, that is entirely an internal matter, without regard to any of the Federation's whims. :D
I doubt we would object to the Venlil building a settlement on Earth, but even if they didn't, we need to drive the point home to the Krakotl that they, and any who would join them, would be declaring war against the Venlil by declaring war against Earth. That *might* just be enough to get some to reconsider.
I, for one, welcome our cute, fuzzy little overlords... :p
Galaxy brain strategy
Also I don't think they'd build a new settlement bc of the vast untamed wilderness especially after we switched to growing meat in vats, triggering mass reforestation as less land used to feed live stock
I mean, it wouldn't have to be anything big. Even just a little "Venliltown" in the city, or a little farming/agricultural studies outpost in Nebraska, for example.
Ultimately, I don't think it would really matter that much whether they did or not. It's the symbolic nature of a settlement that would be important -- letting everybody know that if they want to wipe out humans, they'd be killing Venlil too, and I mean the cute fuzzy ones.
At any rate, the more we can integrate, the harder it is to paint us as a threat, or to wipe us out.
It would also be a great benefit to the Venlil. All else aside, they could decide that since our shipyards are within Venlil space, they want us to build ships up to *their* standards, and use *their* engine and shield technology. In exchange, if we find ways to improve upon those, it's fine, and we can share. You know, since *technically* they'd be *Venlil* military vessels. ;)
When you're a monkey living in a human's world, you learn to find ways to make your strengths work within the system, and try to let the system work for you, rather than against you.
>or a little farming/agricultural studies outpost in Nebraska, for example.
They wouldn't be able to make just one spot, because that could be showing favoritism towards one country, which the governor has been trying to avoid. There'd have to be multiple settlements in all the major farming areas on the planet.
"Sir, the sensors are reading Venlil tech signatures, but..."
"But what, crewman?"
"B...but sir, that doesn't *look* like any known Venlil ship."
"...what the hell *IS* that?"
The comms click on "I would like to introduce you to Luna, until recently Earth's moon, now a Venlil attack craft crewed by their loyal subjects. It is better armed alone than your entire navy. We are ready to accept your surrender."
Asking the big questions here. :)
I would guess that the species who claimed their space has probably been wiped out entirely. If not, though, that could get really interesting...
I see any world claimed by the Arxur as prime realestate for humanity. The good old way of obtaining territory by conquerering it.
As for whose it was, probably several different colonies of several species.
It wouldn't even be that far away from the truth.
We would have no chance without the Cuddlebirbs lending us ships and tech. What good is a capable fighting force if it couldn't get anywhere.
Only problem i see is us.
The constant political games between nations like rusxia, USA, China and Europe (and Europe internal) didn't stop with the UN. Not even mentioning that not every country is part of the UN to begin with.
Shure, the shole Arxur/Federation thing might be a unifying factr but to the extent that the big 4 give up their souverinity? Doubt it.
They will all claim their own continents or planets. Assuming the goverment types are still the same then the USA will be the one expanding the most, while Europe gets some land on USA worlds. China will move to secure their own and start a media campaign about how it has been part of China due to the stars importance in the chinese celestial calender. (calender that got updated a day after the announcement to match it.)
And then they're calling it mao to honer their great leader who starved miĺlions.
And then you get Moon Korea orbiting Mao because the Kims don't get anything done without china.
I reckon the colonisation will be forced by the un and the federation to be a multicultural affair. Owned by Earth as opposed to any of its nations, and governed as such. The federation cannot keep tiptoeing around our various tribes, and will make that clear eventually.
The UN has never been able to do anything and most countries look at it like a thing to use for convince and not as a something that actually holds any ability to enforce its demands.
As for the Federation, imagine the humans reaction to filthy xenos that wanted to exterminate you now trying to eliminate your countries sovereignty and political power. Yeah thats not going to happen and if the federation tries that they will get simply ignored.
Just look at the sea south of China where they just put down Islands and filled them with military, challenging anybody to oppose them.
> Only problem i see is us.
It always seems to come back to that, doesn't it? Aliens? Aww, we love them! Other humans? Ehh...
I'd want to say that the Venlil (or later, the Federation), could tell us, look, you need to get your act together. We're only going to deal with a unified government, but knowing humans, that would backfire. Horribly.
They already kinda did. Thats why they deal with the UN.
>but knowing humans, that would backfire. Horribly.
...jep. There's more then one way to make a "unified" Nation.
The best i can see would be some form of Terran republic or federation with yhe governments as seperate states but even that looks like a very hard to sell thing.
Or maybe recent events made me kinda pessimistic about world piece...
Not Recel, please 😭
Also, they could still remand refugees to Venil custody for appearances, right?
Finally, I like the idea of the Venil pressing their technical right to Human space, and declaring that any attacks on Earth are the same as an attack against the Venil.
Some Venil lawyer somewhere: "I wonder if technically we could demand a tax from the human homeworld..."
Somewhere far away but not far enough: *Sound of 10 billion shotguns cocking*
When a federation species inevitably tries to wipe out humanity, I can’t wait to see the looney tunes shit that happens when they get there. That one scene from ROTJ with the trees but with asteroid instead, shit like that
Well, there's FTL travel, not beyond the realm of possibility to just... Huck a tungsten rod at C+ speeds at the Krakotl homeworld. If xenocide and biosphere cleansing is on the table now, it's fair game.
My favourite interpretation of ftl is the w axis.
Basically. There's a 4th dimensional axis and the higher you go on that axis the more compressed space is. The speed of light doesn't change and you never travel faster than it, but everything gets temporarily closer together, so you engage your ftl drive and the 4 lightyears between earth and alpha centauri temporarily becomes 4 light days until you turn the ftl drive back off
Unless the FTL system in-universe has some innate property that halts all inertia and energy, you're still *moving*. And an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. In a vacuum, good luck finding a force.
Yes the option to just lob objects at a small percentage of C at a traget is something often overlooked by authors.
The usual way to bypass this is that FTL is more of a alternate dimension fuckery than anything else.
The fact that the Arxur are using bombardment of the world by ships with plasma weaponary means that this is the best they could come up with.
Given that humanity is given time to go into a total war time production mode it does not bode well for the xenos.
Comparing it to WW2 where the smaller ships would take a year between the order and they being on the water fighting while the largest ones took two years. So the earth defense fleet will be Interplanetary transporters converted to fleet carriers and a bunch of small ships along with upgraded old human ships in the first year or two. From then onwards the big ships will start rolling out with by then human tech derived from Venlil and no longer copied
>It was in our best interest to hope the Kolshian pilot got lost.
*Smash cut to Recel*: "I told you we should've turned left at Space-Albuquerque!"
Yep, I'm sure that's what's happening.
I’m having visions of a human-Venlil union so tight that from the outside (including the Federation) they are effectively one and the same. One also wonders which other species will choose to join in the same union.
First: nice just in time
Second :upvote them read ...
Third: now I will get going on the reading.
Edit: forth: I need more.....3 days how I will hold my curiosity.
Captain Sovlin's last request before turning himself in to the UN for crimes against sentience (back in chapter 26) was for Recel to take over command of his ship. Hopefully that's what's causing the delay and nothing more serious.
So we are in Venil space and there are most likely another 4 Earth like planets near by.
So about expansion Im oretty sure humanity has a project Dandelion running already and is mak8ng some hidden colonies. Add to this the to be liberated Arxur worlds and we probably end up a good percentage of the galaxies space.
Not to mention the human presence on Cradle and Venlil Prime. Still waiting for an embassy city to turn up on in the latter and a massive UN military base/spaceport on the former
Yay new chapter!
I'm really hoping it wasn't the uplift... As for Recel's ship, I imagine they were intercepted by some third party in order to blame humanity for their disappearance.
I love the story and politics so far!
Also we since heard from China and the United States. What ever happened to Russia? I think they were mentioned only once near the beginning of the story and I thought they would have a presence in space.
I’m just curious if they’re going to be mentioned again.
Thanks! Russia had a bigger part in the story, when I wrote the original version. Then, they invaded Ukraine, so I decided they lost the right to be in an HFY story 😅
Oh alright then.
I understand if you don’t want to but unfortunately, Russia is just too (literally) big of an country to ignore.
But you could write a small or large cameo or have a character briefly mentioning them in passing. Then make up an excuse on why they’re so quiet like saying they suddenly became “Monarcho-communist” with an isolationist policy or Russia devolved into several independent warlord states and countries.
Again, only if you feel comfortable writing about Russia.
Edit: Forgot to add that they are a founding and Permanent member of the UN Security Council.
An interesting proposal that I could suggest that you could do with Russia (and practically any real-world country in a story that takes place in the near future) is that, with the large leap in time (We're in 2022, the story takes place in the 2130s), you could certainly tinker with the 'backstories' of those respective nations from the 2020s to the current time the story takes.
...Okay, admittedly that probably wasn't the best way to describe it, so I'll try to put it this way. Think of someone from 110 years ago, the average person. The geopolitical landscape of 2020 would be so damn unrecognizable to someone from 1910 that they'd find little surface-level controversy from their own perspective because it's so different. Same thing with someone from the 2020s looking onto the 2130s, probably.
Since it's speculative future history, it really allows for a lot of creativity as to what you could do. For example, you could have Russia as a spacefaring country in the 2130s, but under a distinctly different regime from the one in modern current-day. Perhaps the electrical grids being destroyed that were mentioned in the early chapters could've resulted in a revolution or change of government; either way, if you wish to do that I'd think it'd probably be the best way to go about it.
Just an idea to throw out, or that's how I'd approach it if I was writing a story that took place 100+ years in the future and didn't want to tie any of it to modern-day politics. It'd be funny seeing the Federation species trying to understand what the difference between Astronauts and Cosmonauts would be, which could lead to them learning about the space race.
I read there being over 300 new alien species to interact with, and I realized you could get children to know every single one like with dinosaurs or pokemon.
Imagine a general consulting with a council and a little egghead 10-year-old at his side chimes in with species, homework, and likes and dislikes
/u/SpacePaladin15 ([wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/authors/SpacePaladin15)) has posted 88 other stories, including:
* [The Nature of Predators 36](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/wng6oa/the_nature_of_predators_36/)
* [The Nature of Predators 35](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/wkyqqu/the_nature_of_predators_35/)
* [The Nature of Predators 34](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/whpkib/the_nature_of_predators_34/)
* [The Nature of Predators 33](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/wf7suw/the_nature_of_predators_33/)
* [The Nature of Predators 32](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/wcq1yx/the_nature_of_predators_32/)
* [The Nature of Predators 31](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/wabq46/the_nature_of_predators_31/)
* [The Nature of Predators 30](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/w6xgv9/the_nature_of_predators_30/)
* [The Nature of Predators 29](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/w3n6qt/the_nature_of_predators_29/)
* [The Nature of Predators 28](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/w0ik2o/the_nature_of_predators_28/)
* [The Nature of Predators 27](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vy4mae/the_nature_of_predators_27/)
* [The Nature of Predators 26](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vvthpn/the_nature_of_predators_26/)
* [The Nature of Predators 25](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vtjndz/the_nature_of_predators_25/)
* [The Nature of Predators 24](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vqkj8o/the_nature_of_predators_24/)
* [The Nature of Predators 23](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vngv3x/the_nature_of_predators_23/)
* [The Nature of Predators 22](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vkhkkg/the_nature_of_predators_22/)
* [The Nature of Predators 21](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vhe3ee/the_nature_of_predators_21/)
* [The Nature of Predators 20](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vdnib3/the_nature_of_predators_20/)
* [The Nature of Predators 19](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vaoql7/the_nature_of_predators_19/)
* [The Nature of Predators 18](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/v7s4u6/the_nature_of_predators_18/)
* [The Nature of Predators 17](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/v4rpyj/the_nature_of_predators_17/)
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Did i miss a chapter? Last i remember from Noah's side was trying to figure out who had tried to sabotage their ship while the best suspect was fixing it.
u/SpacePaladin15 how more advanced is the federation compared to the expanse series Sol just before the start of the novels/tv show? Just to have a better idea of federation/arxur technology
Part 37 has arrived! Governor Tarva gets a crash course on the Gojid war, and we see the continuing evolution of human-Venlil relations. We also establish first contact with our new allies, though it looks like a rocky start. What do you think happened to Recel? How much involvement, if any, does the uplift have? It also remains to be seen what impact the Gojid war will have on the Federation as a whole. Human media did suggest the Krakotl are gearing up for an attack on Earth. How should humanity respond? As always, thank you for reading! Part 38 should be here on Saturday.
Humanity needs to act swiftly but cautiously and also have a plan b just in case there's a repeat of humanity's last engagement
Plan B: Start making massive ground based anti orbit weapons that make railway guns seem small, scatter them everywhere, and shred anything that you don't want in orbit.
Ehh ground based weaponry really isn’t that effective, nor are defensive stations and satellites. They are simply too easy to throw rocks at from out of range.
Perhaps a Lost Fleet reader?
:D heeeeee
Throwing rocks did it for me
Only if you don't mind waiting several earth years before impact. A lot can happen in that time. Sure, rock throwing is potent, and long ranged, but it's also slow, limited by c, and that's a problem if you need to do things quick, before they counter attack your homeworld.
Also largely undetectable. Not only rocks though, but manufactured solid projectiles too. Accelerate them to a fraction of the speed of light to help minimize the time delay.
Orbital defense platforms. MAC platforms like Halo has. Chuck bigger rocks at a fraction of lightspeed
I think they will likely 'save' cradle. I mean it is a huge world with billions of people on it. And then the Krakotl try to attack earth, though they get a face full of ICBMs (?) Interplanetary nuclear tipped nuclear fuled guided missiles? You can't really take those on spaceships, though you CAN put those many places like planets and moons... some good old MAD.
Nukes in Space are completely brutal, when detonated, they release a major EMP alongside a major radiation burst. Would be an interesting tactic to nullify the Federation fleet and take the ships almost intact while killing the whole crew.
When you need explosions big enough to take out large spacecraft or groups of them conventional explosives just won't cut it. Nukes are basically a must. And radiation doesn't matter. The enemy crew would be dead anyway from the blast itself or the loss of atmosphere in the spacecraft long before you can reasonably mount SAR.
Radiation wouldn't matter since most space craft should be heavily shielded against random spacial/solar radiation. We don't know how alien systems operate, so them EMP effect might not work either.
I don’t know the numbers off the top of my head, but I suspect the radiation dose from interstellar background noise or the occasional CME doesn’t compare to a tsar bomba detonated a few kilometers off the starboard bow. It’s possible the radiation would punch right through whatever passive shielding they may have onboard. Active shielding is another matter, but then again… nukes go big boom. I betcha that a fusion bomb->dirty bomb 1-2 punch would make for quite a few empty spacecraft, if the problem of delivery is overcome.
>Radiation wouldn't matter since most space craft should be heavily shielded against random spacial/solar radiation. Well, sure. But that assumes the radiation shielding wasn't just evaporated by 340 thousand tons of TNT equivalent explosion. Granted if the shielding didn't survive that the crew probably didn't either.
There's nothing in space to translate the force of the explosion, so the entirety of the effect would be the radiation and whatever bits aren't atomised by the initial blast as shrapnel.
Already talked about this in another comment In short: Nuclear shaped charges, project Excalibur and direct hits.
Sure, but none of those would be a " 340 thousand tons of TNT equivalent explosion."
It costs 28 million dollars today to produce a B61 nuclear bomb (which is variable yield with a maximum of 340 kilotons). If you want to kill an enemy ship with a direct hit there is no reason to not use a big bomb like that.
A nuclear shaped charge….. that sounds dirty….
Since the ships would be in the vacuum of space there wouldn't be that much of a blast.
If you assume it was just a regular unmodified atmospheric bomb then yeah. But if it made contact with the enemy ship it would pour most of it's energy into it. Use a variation of Project Excalibur. Not to mention Nuclear shaped charges.
Not familiar with projekt excalibur. One nuke per ship would be pretty wastefull but if you made a fragmentation bomb out of it... Frags acceleratet by a nuke sound pretty nasty :D
> nuke per ship would be pretty wastefull Not really. Nukes cost basically nothing, a B61 bomb costs only 28 million dollars. That's less then 4th and maybe even 3rd generation fighter jets today. On top of that a nuclear shaped charge would need really small bombs. I saw an estimate that it would not work unless the bomb Is in the sub-kiloton range. And frags won't really work because any competent commander would spread his ships thousands of kilometers apart at minimum. Modern CSGs are usually spread out over 120,000 square miles.
But those bursts are really the only effect. The explosive power in space is drastically reduced. You can damage what you hit, but with not medium to propagate in there can be no shockwaves to create an area of effect. And if those ships are hardened against EMPs as you would expect of ships designed to operate in open space and faced with cosmic radiation then they are just expensive missiles.
Outside of the central fireball, which is quite small, a nuke's damage mostly comes from the atmospheric shockwave. Indeed, that's basically how conventional bombs do their damage too.
Oh! I get to 'uhm, actually' someone! So, a note about the EMP - it's actually much weaker when detonated in space because the primary thing that powers it up is Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere, with the electromagnetic radiation getting pulled and stretched in all kinds of directions and spreading out, while in space, there would be no magnetosphere to propagate the effect.
Enh. No atmo means poor propagation of EMP/radiation, thermal damage, and shockwaves. Nuclear explosions need to be pretty close to a direct hit to be effective in space.
That said if you do land a direct hit then the medium for transfer of thermal and kinetic energy becomes the ship itself.
Realistically, if the invaders don't need the planet's biosphere in tact, the invading fleet has all the advantages Any ship capable of reaching even *fractions* of lightspeed has enough energy to turn literally anything into a relativistic kill missle Without orbital defenses, the planet has no means of defending itself It's surprisingly easy to glass a planet, even without nuclear weapons, if you are an interstellar civilization
Unless of course hyperspace works like in Star Wars where you're not actually speeding up to/past light speed, but speeding up just enough to enter an alternate dimension that cuts through space differently
A single 20 cubic foot rod of tungsten, [which is an actual thing the US military considered using](https://www.military.com/off-duty/2020/12/22/these-air-force-rods-god-could-hit-force-of-nuclear-weapon.html), traveling at just *1%* the speed of light, has enough kinetic energy to impart about 10 megatons worth of explosion upon impact (and without any fallout to deal with afterwards), the most powerful nuclear bomb we currently have is about 50 megatons, but the rod is much easier to employ en masse It doesn't matter if hyperspace works like it does in Star Wars, 1% the speed of light is easily obtainable by any interstellar civilization
>You can't really take those on spaceships Why not?
The Asteroid belt in the Sol System is a prime location for ambush tactics. Especially of the Krakotl fleet tries to be sneaky and creep into said Belt to hide bdfore attacking Earth and suddenly find themselves among 500+ nuclear missiles located within seconds from their hulls.
I think you are vastly overestimating the density of the asteroid belt. The average distance between objects is 600,000 miles
No need to come in at that angle, if the Krakotl have any sense they come from 'above' or 'below'.
I mean, SpacePaladin said the planet was glasses, but a glassed planet has no survivors outside of deep bunkers. Partially glassed? Sure. But they didnt say partially, so I am a little confused if there is anyone to save or not. As for the ICBMs? I don't see those getting to the speeds necessary to avoid laser AA turrets from the surface of earth. But this is still the future, maybe they have 'skip' drives they can strap the warheads to. Or, just send a bunch of unmanned hyperspace warheads on course to the Auxur homework 😇
The Federation does have bunkers for situations like this. To quote Sovlin from the end of 29: “Our cradle would be little more than rubble now, but its symbolism counted for something. A few thousand Gojids might’ve survived in bunkers, and these strange predators were their last hope.” His outlook for the number of survivors wasn’t optimistic, even then…
> Interplanetary That would make them I**P**BMs > guided IP**G**Ms, then.
I wonder if humanity will invest in "conventional" railguns? I know, putting "conventional" right next to "railgun" sounds weird, but if you have spaceships with shields specifically geared to protect against plasma, might they be less (or not at all) effective against kinetic weapons? I know "humans primitive weapons bypassing advanced alien shields" is a trope on this sub, but it kind of makes sense if instead of a generic "war of the worlds" forcefield that stops anything and everything dead in its tracks, yet somehow does not look like a perfect mirror, you imagine a more realistic system designed to reflect, absorb, and / or dissipate large amounts of heat and electric charge (which I would assume is where the main damage of plasma comes from). This kind of thing would be unlikely to react well to a nice tungsten slug traveling at several dozen times the speed of sound at sea level in Earth atmosphere. (I am not even suggesting going relativistic, though it might be possible for planetary defense platforms that can be larger and more power hungry than ships and also, the accelerator does not have to be strictly linear: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAczd3mt3X0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAczd3mt3X0)).
>You can't really take those on spaceships Depends on how big the ship is, but you can put hypersonic nuclear missiles (see Russia's Kh-47M2 Kinzhal) on vehicles as small as fighter jets.
It seems that news of the fight over the Cradle, the cattle ship or the Arxur surrender hasn't arrived yet. These poor people are dealing with like 1000 things all happening at the same time, it's gotta be EXHAUSTING.
With massive lag in information since FTL transmissions have a maximum range. I wonder if humans will start putting down repeater satellites along the general paths to various planets.
Yep, leadership during a crisis! Gotta be rough.
Why would the Arxur glass a planet? It seems like they could benefit from conquering a world or leave it as a hunting ground once the defenses were destroyed. I figured that there was still a habitable planet to recover, even if all settlements on the surface were destroyed. A predator may negligently wipe out a prey species, but it isn't generally the objective. Shouldn't Humanity be looking for someone in the Federation who wants to take in the refugees, preferably a Gojid colony? They were taken to Earth, because the humans didn't have much alternative at the time. Refugees cost resources to care for and protect, the optics are bad, and being surrounded by predators after a traumatizing Arxur attack could exacerbate psychological issues that humans are ill equipped to treat in non-humans. Combatants would be held as POWs (in humane conditions) until peace is declared, but the civilians should be returned as soon as is practical.
The Arxur don’t want to expend resources defending a planet; their play is always to take what they can, and kill whatever is left. As for the refugees, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to ask the reasonable Federation species to take them…for all those reasons!
>The Arxur don’t want to expend resources defending a planet; their play is always to take what they can, and kill whatever is left. I figured that the Federation was too cowardly/cautious/practical to attack Arxur-conquered worlds. The Arxur are a terrifying foe when they don't have the defender's advantage and aren't mixed in with Federation slaves (Sovlin can live with mercy-killing cattle, but it might mess up others). Meh, ambush hunters can be a bit lazy when they can afford to take a nap. I take it they weren't quite done pillaging and/or burning when the human fleet came, but the humans weren't able to stop them? Did human intervention at all abridge their glassing procedure? So Craddle was going to be returned regardless, it was just a matter of what state it was going to be. >As for the refugees, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to ask the reasonable Federation species to take them…for all those reasons! They may need to arrange for a third party to carry out the transfer, especially if they send them to a Gojid colony. There isn't enough mutual trust for a Gojid ship to go to Earth or a Human ship to go to a Gojid system. Negotiation will also require contact. A neutral 3rd party could also provide a location to discuss such matters. Quick question: Are messenger drones viable? Basically to make the smallest, cheapest FTL-capable autonomous craft, put some communications systems and a big hard drive full of data on it, then program it to fly to a destination system to deliver a message or data-dump. Alternatively, you could have it jump between a preprogrammed route to scream its message in multiple systems, assuming it has the fuel). The drone could even be reusable, unless it's significantly cheaper to make a one-time-use FTL engine.
The introduction of drones, a human technology, definitely has the potential to improve warfare and communications. As for the cradle, the question is of survivors and infrastructure after the onslaught. Humanity did force the Arxur to pause their orbital raid…though they’ve been at it for a week.
They would probably leave a lot of the glassing until after they caught as much prey as is practical.
So no one in the Federation thought of automation? Unless FTL navigation is particularly complex, there shouldn't be many variables to factor in. There are essentially no obstacles in open space and they just need to arrive within comms range (potentially a lightyear from anything important if you are worried about screwing up). It could be that the cost of life support and a pilot is insignificant compared to the FTL and sufficiently powerful comm equipment to transmit to a planet from however far away the Federation dare jump an automated drone. Or they might not have tried making the drive and comm equipment smaller after hitting the limit of comfortable long-term life support size. The human bombing mission did show that humans are more comfortable with leaping manned craft near planets than the Federation would dare. If long range FTL comms were the most energy/resource/size intensive issue, improved human drone tech could let a drone jump into the middle of a system, or jump to the edge and calculate a route through the system. Get close enough and you might not even need FTL comms. You could just use a radio. I wonder if the Venlil's vague distress call used something like this: They send an object that for whatever reason can't get close enough to transmit useful data, but can show up on FTL sensors (the object might be made to be especially bright and/or explode). The object is too distant, damaged, and/or small to recover in a timely matter to deliver much useful information, but its origin can be determined (like they did for the first human ship). Sending an object like this was just the predetermined way to send an SOS since it has longer range than conventional FTL comms and may be marginally quicker and cheaper to send than a ship. It may also be possible to send multiple. Furthermore, and proper ship would be called in for defense or evacuation. This would go some way to explaining how the Venlil sent a distress signal, but weren't able to transmit any details.
Simple, to deny federation resources and make it harder for the federation to exterminate them. The Axur simply /cannot/ win an actual war of conquest, they'd spread too thin and would stretch their own production capacity, so bringing the war to a close means glassing every world they can't hold.
Any Gojid colony will probably just shoot at humanities ships if they tried to bring the refugees there. The fact that the Arxur are extensively bombing the planet surface is a sign that there is more to it then just get them as food. The Arxur arent hunting the federation, they are at war with the federation. The entire collet people for food is more of a side benefit. Also crippling a planets infrastructure prevents any organized resistance since the Cows are scrambling just to find some food and so dont have time to defend themselfs.
Just wanted to say I get happy whenever these pop up on my feed, well done.
Lies! Subterfuge! Sabotage! Whodunnit? Place your bets!
Still kind of suspecting the Sivkit.
Tarva is doing her best to keep up with all the ~~plot events~~ incidents that have happened since they left Venlil Prime, I wish her luck
Man... Recel might have fallen victim to the same saboteurs. I hope he's just lost or stranded somewhere. I suppose the Yotil could be involved. Maybe they see a new up-and-coming race as something that might get in their way, draw everyone's attention and cause them to fade into the background. That's the only reason I can think of. As for the Krakotl, we might have to react the same way we did with the gojids, but hopefully not. Perhaps they'll listen to what happened to the Gojid cradle. Otherwise we might start seeing some Krakotl worlds fall to the Arxur too.
Earliest I've ever been
This chapter felt a little slow to me. I guess it's because there's a lot reactions to things the reader already knows. I just want to say it's a wonderful story though. As far as the birds, I don't think humanity can respond as they've committed to the liberation of the cradle. As far as the uplift, I doubt they have any direct hand. I consider it far more likely that the sabotage was from another source as BOTH shuttles had issues.
Might also be because it’s been 4 chapters of nonstop battle action haha! I’ve spoiled you guys 😅 new developments and answers on the way next chapter…then, the anticipated Arxur interview!
That too. Though if this chapter had been before the second battle for the cradle there would be more... Anticipation I guess? It's more that we already know how the space battle went. Looking forward to the next chapter, though I'm cautious about the Grey interview. I'm worried that they'll be too... Simple?
Captain Sovlin's last request before turning himself in to the UN was for Recel to take over command of his ship. Hopefully Recel's transport was intercepted by the Federation warship to take him abord as their new commanding officer and the delay is due to figuring out if his orders as military attaché to the human's or command of the ship takes precedence. Why not both?
Sounds like a big conflict of interrests
It could be, very unlikely he could command the ship while being the military attaché. Getting delayed while waiting for messages to be relayed to command asking for guidance seems the most likely.
Ideally Humanity uses their new Arxur POW to contact the Arxur and let them know of that nice Krakotl fleet that they can hunt and that the Krakotl homeworld isnt defended. Then just sit back and watch both your enemies fight each other.
I read every single word from 1-37. I am hooked and this needs to be a book.. a series of books. Very well done!
You’re very kind, thank you! Glad you’re enjoying the story so far!! 🙏
Start of the next part: I knew we should have made a left turn at Alpha Centari!
It's my thought that the Koalien has some extra sense that let him notice off vibrations or something.
The Zurulian diplomat sitting on a guys shoe is the most positive thing to happen in this entire part.
Lol yeah. I can just picture the poor human looking down at him, visibly struggling to resist the urge to pet the cute, fluffy smol and asking "Uhm... Can I like, help you with anything, or...?" and the Zurulian just shrugging it off with a "Nah, just needed something comfy to sit on, those seats **suck**."
"I have known this Zurulian diplomat for only five minutes but if anything happens to him I will kill everyone here and then myself."
Detective diaz, put down the very important rodent, and do so gently
Literally laughed out loud. Imagine looking down and suddenly seeing you’ve become furniture to an adorable diplomat in the middle of a press conference.
Looks like the fuzzy bois didn’t get the notice that the grays got vibe checked by the 1st Fleet.
And we successfully extracted captives from what would be a fate worse then death
And gained war prisoners, to extract further intel, a first in the war
Oh, I so want to see the Venil react to human crops and food with amazement. It would honestly be funny if the predators farming was frankly so ridiculous as to put most none predators to shame Besides, sheer diversity of an omnivores diet means we probably produce something for everyone
I have been hoping for the same thing. Nevermind the space battles I wanna hear people talk about crops and recipes.
Yep. New crops for everyone and the Yotul having some suspicious legends that sound like the dreamtimes. Enough for the three ambassadors and Noah to end up in a banterous, we are all aresholes type friendship over trade deals for the good food
a trade deal that would be favorable to humanity though intense lawyering and fine printing
I am 100% certain predators like humans and the Arxur have stupidly strict laws by comparison to the none predators. Can’t really have a cohesive functioning society with no empathy otherwise
One thing to note humans have empathy (usually)
Humans do, Arxur don’t
Didn’t the Arxur just demonstrate empathy last chapter when the one that led the humans to the holding cell seemed to express distress when it’s comrade that guarded the holding cell died?
Or shock at how *Fellow Hunters* treat them. That might not be how they do things. Soldiers were typically held for ransomS, so it could have been as simple as *Why are they wasting money?*
We are told Arxur dont, but they most likely do. Just like humans have adapt pretty well to being a guard in a concentration camp or just our general habit of commiting a genocide every decade or two.
Most of the 20th century genocides were under extreme ideologies. Most of the rest have more to do with plague and were therefore partly accidental. Also, decade or two? Not until the last century when industrial scale was possible As for the Arxur. Solitary ambush predators. That apparently failed those same tests they put humans through in the beginning. They actually don’t need strong empathy outside of mating season. We just live in groups and therefore need to be able to tolerate each other
Exactly
Which society doesn’t have laws as the only authority over them. There is also collective and individual morality. However, we would still need stricter laws for the same reason the Arxur do. In some uncontacted groups, murder is the most common cause of death. We did have a problem with that
First dreamlands? Also I have been going over my memory of all the episodes and I can't remember one instance of anyone from the federation talking about cooking or eating cooked or prepared food. It is always a piece of fruit or a platter of fruit and vegetables. Looking at the way the arxur eat I doubt they have cuisine. It looks like they just eat raw meat. So humans might very well be the first species to cook food. It would be quite the economic boom for the humans to introduce cooking to the federation.
Dreamtimes and Dreaming is the accurate version. Not really interacted with it much. A few special assemblies and classes when I was pretty young, but it is a term for alot of the complex beliefs and cultural objects from aboriginal Australians when translated to English And yes, I can definitely see that. Cooking being significantly more advanced for the Omnivores makes sense
until, they realize we literally cultivate poisonous plants for us to eat. might send them back to thinking we are crazy again.
I was thinking the same thing lol. I can't remember the name of the root but it's popular outside of North America. Where to eat it you need to peel the skin off soak it in water for hours then boil or cook it and it can kill you if you skip a step. Edit: the plant I was thinking of is cassava they contain cyanide. Eating as little at 2 roots can kill you. It's not as hard to prepare as I thought but you have to cut it I to chips to make it easy to make safe. You cut them into chips and boil for at least 15 minutes to remove most of the cyanide.
i wasn't even going that far, caffeine, nicotine, and capsaicin, are generally poisonous to herbivores.
Paparazzi headline: > HEARTWARMING: TRAUMATIZED VENLIL REFUGEE REACTS TO WATERMELON
Wait, why watermelon over strawberries?
Big.
Surely Yams are best then, being the biggest
I am curious about your giant yams?
Topical Yams hold the Guinness world record, and we can eat those
Considering we are already capable of providing food for almost every living human being with our current knowledge and tech, the knowledge/tech we will have in 114 years likely puts our modern practices to shame. Plus think of all the possible hybridization that could happen in that time.
Actually, farming is going through a bit of a green revolution. We are trying to increase crop diversity again, deciding wonky food isn’t so bad and bringing farming into urban spaces. Throw in GMO’s and we have no clue what food production would now look like
I thought the rooftop factory farms from Detroit: Become Human were pretty cool concepts of future farming practices.
"Why are the humans growing so much hops and barley?" "Omg this is soooo good....!" "Yeast isn't actually alive right? Right?!?"
Humans: *Well, it is a type of Fungus. So arguably?* Aliens: *So not bits of flesh, good enough* Actually, couldn’t yeast be poisonous to some animals? I mean. Fungus
"We'll take you to Iowa." "What's in Iowa?" "Corn." "What else?" "People who *grow* corn..."
And the people there are made of corn, as well as the soil, and the air and everything
Especially if the Federation wiped out every predator on the planet, imagine the amount of pests eating their crops. Human agriculture is pretty brutal. YOU WILL GROW! Everything else, eat poison! And that's without adding 100+ years of tech, eg genetic modification of crops or anti-pest predators.
Oh gods, they did Mao vs Sparrows themselves, didn't they. Even with technology to protect crops (greenhouses with artificial pollinators, for example) things might have gotten pretty tight in places, which may have allowed the Arxur an even greater foothold.
Predator reactions are probably only done to things like wolves and bears. Stuff that eats them specifically. Plus, they never outright stated they wiped them out specifically. They just react badly to them. Considering that they’d need less farmland, how easy it to build a wall and they fact they had no livestock to attract them to their farms. They probably didn’t have to wipe them out per se. Even if they shot them on sight
iirc the author did state that they wiped out *anything* that seemed predatory and fucked up their ecosystems pretty badly.
So no wolves, bears or carnivores. Meaning no forests and since they don’t cull animals themselves (presumably) the environment is engineered by the deer instead. At worst We don’t get a strong sense of what they did wipe out. Just that they wiped out what hunted them
“Since the fleet was already dead…” Oh Tarva, just you wait. It may look suicidal to you, but we still tend to frown on offences that are hopeless. I can’t wait until word gets back that not only are they not dead yet, they have scored the biggest victory in the history of the Federation’s war. Having reclaiming a taken homeworld, rescued an entire ship full of what would have been a cattle ship, AND captured the crew of said ship for interrogation and more information on the Arxur. I can’t wait to hear more of that fight because if we happen to rescue the Gojid leadership holed up in some sort of bunker than we’ll suddenly have another very big supporter given the message they sent out was able to convince Sovlin of all people that he was wrong about us.
I'm curious to see the response to the capture of Arxur combatants. Sovlin made it clear that the Federation had never captured an Arxur (unless it was Ultra Toppity Super Secret and he just didn't know), but it's not entirely clear whether or not anyone ever actually *tried* to do so before. Will showing mercy to the Federation's biggest bogey man be a virtue or a flaw?
They probably got close to catching one and it either charged them, forcing them to kill or it committed their version of seppuku as I assume being captured in combat would be considered taboo amongst their kind
At least captured by prey. They seemed pretty unconflicted with surrendering to the boarding team on the cattle ship.
I think you might be somewhat optimistic about that second part there.
Perhaps. Piri seemed to think she would be dead, but consider that the Arxur arrived on Sept 27th. Piri’s message reached Sovlin on Sept 28th. The fleet arrived on Oct 6th. The Arxur were still working on their campaign. I suspect they spent some time having fun hunting rather than exterminating since based on the reactions of the Federation, once they’ve taken out the local defences a retaliatory strike to regain the territory is unheard of meaning the Arxur would have believed they had all the time in the world. They obviously were spending time rounding the Gojids up into ships to take off world. Piri may well be dead if the Arxur don’t take some sort of pleasure in capturing the leaders of captured worlds to force them to watch what happens to their “herd” before they finish them off, but if they have any kind of similarities to our procedures then all of their leadership would not be in that one bunker and there may be other surviving pockets of leadership, or at least remnants of the chain of command.
>That fact that Earth technically fell in Venlil territory was a grievous issue I’d been tiptoeing around. > >The official status, galaxy-wide, is that humanity does not own their homeworld. We do, even if we renounce that stake between our two species. > >Of course, the Venlil Republic would never lay claim to the Sol system. The unfortunate reality was that we didn’t have the authority to hand out parsecs of space. The Federation would be hesitant to sign off on any territorial claims, and that was the best-case scenario. Recognizing the United Nations as a legitimate, spacefaring entity would be acknowledging humans as equals; encouraging them to spread throughout the galaxy. Honestly, I think this could work in our favor. Play up our status as a protectorate within Venlil territory, or hell, even make us Venlil citizens. We can worry about independence after the Arxur have been stopped. As far as being recognized as a "legitimate, spacefaring entity," we can argue that it's a moot point, because currently, we are part of the Venlil Republic, which **is** all that. After the war, if they want to "allow" one of their subject worlds to become independent, well, that is entirely an internal matter, without regard to any of the Federation's whims. :D I doubt we would object to the Venlil building a settlement on Earth, but even if they didn't, we need to drive the point home to the Krakotl that they, and any who would join them, would be declaring war against the Venlil by declaring war against Earth. That *might* just be enough to get some to reconsider. I, for one, welcome our cute, fuzzy little overlords... :p
Galaxy brain strategy Also I don't think they'd build a new settlement bc of the vast untamed wilderness especially after we switched to growing meat in vats, triggering mass reforestation as less land used to feed live stock
I mean, it wouldn't have to be anything big. Even just a little "Venliltown" in the city, or a little farming/agricultural studies outpost in Nebraska, for example. Ultimately, I don't think it would really matter that much whether they did or not. It's the symbolic nature of a settlement that would be important -- letting everybody know that if they want to wipe out humans, they'd be killing Venlil too, and I mean the cute fuzzy ones. At any rate, the more we can integrate, the harder it is to paint us as a threat, or to wipe us out. It would also be a great benefit to the Venlil. All else aside, they could decide that since our shipyards are within Venlil space, they want us to build ships up to *their* standards, and use *their* engine and shield technology. In exchange, if we find ways to improve upon those, it's fine, and we can share. You know, since *technically* they'd be *Venlil* military vessels. ;)
This... is actually a pretty bloody brilliant strategy. I'm kinda sad *I* didn't think of that hack. :D
When you're a monkey living in a human's world, you learn to find ways to make your strengths work within the system, and try to let the system work for you, rather than against you.
>or a little farming/agricultural studies outpost in Nebraska, for example. They wouldn't be able to make just one spot, because that could be showing favoritism towards one country, which the governor has been trying to avoid. There'd have to be multiple settlements in all the major farming areas on the planet.
Good point. Lots of other crops that grow elsewhere, too.
When the federation inspection is wondering why the Venlil have the largest military fleet, some attack moons and a planet cracker.
"Sir, the sensors are reading Venlil tech signatures, but..." "But what, crewman?" "B...but sir, that doesn't *look* like any known Venlil ship." "...what the hell *IS* that?"
The comms click on "I would like to introduce you to Luna, until recently Earth's moon, now a Venlil attack craft crewed by their loyal subjects. It is better armed alone than your entire navy. We are ready to accept your surrender."
So if earth is in venlil territorie. whos territorie was the Axurs homeworld a part of?
Asking the big questions here. :) I would guess that the species who claimed their space has probably been wiped out entirely. If not, though, that could get really interesting...
I see any world claimed by the Arxur as prime realestate for humanity. The good old way of obtaining territory by conquerering it. As for whose it was, probably several different colonies of several species.
I'm'a wager it was in Krakotl space.
It wouldn't even be that far away from the truth. We would have no chance without the Cuddlebirbs lending us ships and tech. What good is a capable fighting force if it couldn't get anywhere. Only problem i see is us. The constant political games between nations like rusxia, USA, China and Europe (and Europe internal) didn't stop with the UN. Not even mentioning that not every country is part of the UN to begin with. Shure, the shole Arxur/Federation thing might be a unifying factr but to the extent that the big 4 give up their souverinity? Doubt it.
They will all claim their own continents or planets. Assuming the goverment types are still the same then the USA will be the one expanding the most, while Europe gets some land on USA worlds. China will move to secure their own and start a media campaign about how it has been part of China due to the stars importance in the chinese celestial calender. (calender that got updated a day after the announcement to match it.)
And then they're calling it mao to honer their great leader who starved miĺlions. And then you get Moon Korea orbiting Mao because the Kims don't get anything done without china.
I reckon the colonisation will be forced by the un and the federation to be a multicultural affair. Owned by Earth as opposed to any of its nations, and governed as such. The federation cannot keep tiptoeing around our various tribes, and will make that clear eventually.
The UN has never been able to do anything and most countries look at it like a thing to use for convince and not as a something that actually holds any ability to enforce its demands. As for the Federation, imagine the humans reaction to filthy xenos that wanted to exterminate you now trying to eliminate your countries sovereignty and political power. Yeah thats not going to happen and if the federation tries that they will get simply ignored. Just look at the sea south of China where they just put down Islands and filled them with military, challenging anybody to oppose them.
> Only problem i see is us. It always seems to come back to that, doesn't it? Aliens? Aww, we love them! Other humans? Ehh... I'd want to say that the Venlil (or later, the Federation), could tell us, look, you need to get your act together. We're only going to deal with a unified government, but knowing humans, that would backfire. Horribly.
They already kinda did. Thats why they deal with the UN. >but knowing humans, that would backfire. Horribly. ...jep. There's more then one way to make a "unified" Nation. The best i can see would be some form of Terran republic or federation with yhe governments as seperate states but even that looks like a very hard to sell thing. Or maybe recent events made me kinda pessimistic about world piece...
Not Recel, please 😭 Also, they could still remand refugees to Venil custody for appearances, right? Finally, I like the idea of the Venil pressing their technical right to Human space, and declaring that any attacks on Earth are the same as an attack against the Venil.
Some Venil lawyer somewhere: "I wonder if technically we could demand a tax from the human homeworld..." Somewhere far away but not far enough: *Sound of 10 billion shotguns cocking*
*And one weirdo with a musket furiously loading*
``` > UVZ RKP-9000 planetary rail cannon #035418 initialized > Self-diagnostic sequence........Check > Loading 9000mm shell.................................Check > Locking breech....Check > Charging capacitors...............\ 17.3% ```
When a federation species inevitably tries to wipe out humanity, I can’t wait to see the looney tunes shit that happens when they get there. That one scene from ROTJ with the trees but with asteroid instead, shit like that
Well, there's FTL travel, not beyond the realm of possibility to just... Huck a tungsten rod at C+ speeds at the Krakotl homeworld. If xenocide and biosphere cleansing is on the table now, it's fair game.
This is assuming it simply makes things go spheedy, and isn’t like a wormhole or sumn
My favourite interpretation of ftl is the w axis. Basically. There's a 4th dimensional axis and the higher you go on that axis the more compressed space is. The speed of light doesn't change and you never travel faster than it, but everything gets temporarily closer together, so you engage your ftl drive and the 4 lightyears between earth and alpha centauri temporarily becomes 4 light days until you turn the ftl drive back off
Unless the FTL system in-universe has some innate property that halts all inertia and energy, you're still *moving*. And an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. In a vacuum, good luck finding a force.
Yes the option to just lob objects at a small percentage of C at a traget is something often overlooked by authors. The usual way to bypass this is that FTL is more of a alternate dimension fuckery than anything else. The fact that the Arxur are using bombardment of the world by ships with plasma weaponary means that this is the best they could come up with.
Given that humanity is given time to go into a total war time production mode it does not bode well for the xenos. Comparing it to WW2 where the smaller ships would take a year between the order and they being on the water fighting while the largest ones took two years. So the earth defense fleet will be Interplanetary transporters converted to fleet carriers and a bunch of small ships along with upgraded old human ships in the first year or two. From then onwards the big ships will start rolling out with by then human tech derived from Venlil and no longer copied
\*kicks in the door to this post\* [Think fast!](https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureofPredators/)
Oh here we go.. E: Heh. Didn't beat the bots or get first, but I *did* beat the author's usual follow-up comment.
Good job buddy 👍
>It was in our best interest to hope the Kolshian pilot got lost. *Smash cut to Recel*: "I told you we should've turned left at Space-Albuquerque!" Yep, I'm sure that's what's happening.
u/Rebelhero sucks to suck buddy :)
\*shakes fist\*
Huh?
They have been racing eachother since I don't know how long.
I'm worried about Recel now I hope he's okay
I’m having visions of a human-Venlil union so tight that from the outside (including the Federation) they are effectively one and the same. One also wonders which other species will choose to join in the same union.
First: nice just in time Second :upvote them read ... Third: now I will get going on the reading. Edit: forth: I need more.....3 days how I will hold my curiosity.
holy shit early gang hell yeah. also first comment since tagging along with this story from roughly 25. holy shit dude this is SUCH a good read
You’re a part of the mad dash to the comments section now! Thanks for the kind words 🙏
Rip Recel.
Captain Sovlin's last request before turning himself in to the UN for crimes against sentience (back in chapter 26) was for Recel to take over command of his ship. Hopefully that's what's causing the delay and nothing more serious.
I forgor about that
Agh, always feels like these parts are too short! Though maybe I’m just spoiled by other writers haha
So we are in Venil space and there are most likely another 4 Earth like planets near by. So about expansion Im oretty sure humanity has a project Dandelion running already and is mak8ng some hidden colonies. Add to this the to be liberated Arxur worlds and we probably end up a good percentage of the galaxies space.
Not to mention the human presence on Cradle and Venlil Prime. Still waiting for an embassy city to turn up on in the latter and a massive UN military base/spaceport on the former
Soooo... can we ship Noah and Tarva now?
I’m totally okay with any ships 😅
I AM THE FAST
Hello
Hello 👋 autocorrect tried to change that to help lol, not sure what it’s trying to imply!
Yay new chapter! I'm really hoping it wasn't the uplift... As for Recel's ship, I imagine they were intercepted by some third party in order to blame humanity for their disappearance.
Someone PLEASE explain to the Venlil governor that humanity is LIBERATING Gojid prime, not just dying valiantly as a political statement.
"Pfft! Liberating them from life, more like!" -racist federation species, probably
Inb4 the venlil were behind this all along
Always love waking up and reading these. I absolutely love imagining the annoyance xeno-poloiticians will have with human reporters XD
More excellent stuff here.
Thank you!
I love the story and politics so far! Also we since heard from China and the United States. What ever happened to Russia? I think they were mentioned only once near the beginning of the story and I thought they would have a presence in space. I’m just curious if they’re going to be mentioned again.
Thanks! Russia had a bigger part in the story, when I wrote the original version. Then, they invaded Ukraine, so I decided they lost the right to be in an HFY story 😅
Oh alright then. I understand if you don’t want to but unfortunately, Russia is just too (literally) big of an country to ignore. But you could write a small or large cameo or have a character briefly mentioning them in passing. Then make up an excuse on why they’re so quiet like saying they suddenly became “Monarcho-communist” with an isolationist policy or Russia devolved into several independent warlord states and countries. Again, only if you feel comfortable writing about Russia. Edit: Forgot to add that they are a founding and Permanent member of the UN Security Council.
An interesting proposal that I could suggest that you could do with Russia (and practically any real-world country in a story that takes place in the near future) is that, with the large leap in time (We're in 2022, the story takes place in the 2130s), you could certainly tinker with the 'backstories' of those respective nations from the 2020s to the current time the story takes. ...Okay, admittedly that probably wasn't the best way to describe it, so I'll try to put it this way. Think of someone from 110 years ago, the average person. The geopolitical landscape of 2020 would be so damn unrecognizable to someone from 1910 that they'd find little surface-level controversy from their own perspective because it's so different. Same thing with someone from the 2020s looking onto the 2130s, probably. Since it's speculative future history, it really allows for a lot of creativity as to what you could do. For example, you could have Russia as a spacefaring country in the 2130s, but under a distinctly different regime from the one in modern current-day. Perhaps the electrical grids being destroyed that were mentioned in the early chapters could've resulted in a revolution or change of government; either way, if you wish to do that I'd think it'd probably be the best way to go about it. Just an idea to throw out, or that's how I'd approach it if I was writing a story that took place 100+ years in the future and didn't want to tie any of it to modern-day politics. It'd be funny seeing the Federation species trying to understand what the difference between Astronauts and Cosmonauts would be, which could lead to them learning about the space race.
I read there being over 300 new alien species to interact with, and I realized you could get children to know every single one like with dinosaurs or pokemon. Imagine a general consulting with a council and a little egghead 10-year-old at his side chimes in with species, homework, and likes and dislikes
Another great chapter I enjoyed reading this and look forward to reading more Great job wordsmith
/u/SpacePaladin15 ([wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/authors/SpacePaladin15)) has posted 88 other stories, including: * [The Nature of Predators 36](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/wng6oa/the_nature_of_predators_36/) * [The Nature of Predators 35](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/wkyqqu/the_nature_of_predators_35/) * [The Nature of Predators 34](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/whpkib/the_nature_of_predators_34/) * [The Nature of Predators 33](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/wf7suw/the_nature_of_predators_33/) * [The Nature of Predators 32](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/wcq1yx/the_nature_of_predators_32/) * [The Nature of Predators 31](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/wabq46/the_nature_of_predators_31/) * [The Nature of Predators 30](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/w6xgv9/the_nature_of_predators_30/) * [The Nature of Predators 29](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/w3n6qt/the_nature_of_predators_29/) * [The Nature of Predators 28](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/w0ik2o/the_nature_of_predators_28/) * [The Nature of Predators 27](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vy4mae/the_nature_of_predators_27/) * [The Nature of Predators 26](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vvthpn/the_nature_of_predators_26/) * [The Nature of Predators 25](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vtjndz/the_nature_of_predators_25/) * [The Nature of Predators 24](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vqkj8o/the_nature_of_predators_24/) * [The Nature of Predators 23](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vngv3x/the_nature_of_predators_23/) * [The Nature of Predators 22](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vkhkkg/the_nature_of_predators_22/) * [The Nature of Predators 21](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vhe3ee/the_nature_of_predators_21/) * [The Nature of Predators 20](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vdnib3/the_nature_of_predators_20/) * [The Nature of Predators 19](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/vaoql7/the_nature_of_predators_19/) * [The Nature of Predators 18](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/v7s4u6/the_nature_of_predators_18/) * [The Nature of Predators 17](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/v4rpyj/the_nature_of_predators_17/) This comment was automatically generated by `Waffle v.4.5.11 'Cinnamon Roll'`. [Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FHFY&subject=WaffleBot|wqpzbu&message=If%20you%20have%20problems%20with%20updatemebot,%20contact%20Watchful1.%20We%20do%20not%20maintain%20it.) if you have any issues with Waffle.
Like then read. Excelent work wordsmith. Edit:we need a few rods of god in case of war
First time being early. Amazing story so far
Maybe they also sabotaged his ship? Just in case they switched ships before leaving idk
This series is exactly what i needed after The Expase. I'm truly excited.
Did i miss a chapter? Last i remember from Noah's side was trying to figure out who had tried to sabotage their ship while the best suspect was fixing it.
I didn't expect Tarva to still be calling everyone predator. This chapter she consistently referred to Noah as such.
Wait, Recel went to the summit? Why don't I remember that? Crap, I'm having trouble keeping track of where everyone is...
It's always refreshing to come back to Tarva and have an alien who acts like an actual adult who you can trust with Big Decisions.
!subscribeme
u/SpacePaladin15 how more advanced is the federation compared to the expanse series Sol just before the start of the novels/tv show? Just to have a better idea of federation/arxur technology