- Location
- Patriarchova
Ditto your response to it.
But seriously, your second "The Way Things Are" post is your best omake so far, and quite possibly the best in the entire thread.
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
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- Tags
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Ditto your response to it.
But seriously, your second "The Way Things Are" post is your best omake so far, and quite possibly the best in the entire thread.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ditto your response to it.
I imagine the Risans don't really have coping mechanisms for something like this. It must seem so utterly unreal that they honestly can't process it.
Poor cinnamon buns.
- Location
- Patriarchova
They're also extremely distant from it in space. I imagine that for them it fades into the background noise of other Syndicate War horror stories, albeit a bigger headline than most. They probably don't really process the difference between "200,000 dead on Amarkia" and "5,000 dead on Duaba."
Also, reread my last post. Edited it to give your latest omake some richly deserved praise.~
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- madison
oof, right in the soul. That's some well written tragic heroism. The image of an Orion Starfleet officer sacrificing himself to mitigate some small part of the syndicates mad atrocitie is extraordinarily poignant.
and then there is this asshole
though this mushroom cloud does have a silver lining, The syndicate just rather openly committed a major atrocity quite plainly to provoke reprisals that would hit theOrionn people. I don't think we are going to have to worry much about any political party adopting a pro syndicate stance after they proved themselves both psychotic and willing to throw the union under an angry blue bus. I would also be unsurprised if even other criminals were hesitant to deal with the syndicate after this. I don't imagine too many smugglers would willing risk being the guy who moved a bomb to the city it kills.
hmm, omake idea, smuggling crew thinks they may have unknowingly delivered the bomb, argues about turning themselves in.
- Location
- Patriarchova
I'm pretty sure they're counting on the Orion people having very short memories and acting on emotion rather than logic. Initially, yes, the bombing's motives will be transparently obvious. As time goes on though, and the reprisals see more and more angry Amarki stomping around on Orion soil, people might forget that, and come to see the situation as "aliens are invading us, Syndicate is fighting the aliens, better throw in our lot with the Syndicate." If that sounds eerily like the pitch that the Cardassians use to recruit new client races, it may well be that the Syndicate has been learning from them.
We can beat them at their own game, but only if our conduct is beyond reproach and our PR machine never winds down. Based on that council session, we're off to a very good start on both those fronts, but we can't get complacent.
- Location
- madison
point, but "they murdered a city." is kind of an easy win for our pr team. We should definitely look into getting more media presence as soon as we can. A lot of our cost seems to be coming from the syndicate spinning our operations. Though the syndicate is still going to likely have a lot more trouble finding allies in the halls of power, most politicians are going to be smart enough to understand just how hard the syndicate tried to screw them, so the bar for "better the syndicate than X" just got a hell of a lot higher.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I honestly feel absolutely horrible about him and Lannie dying. I actually liked the characters. I had originally intended for them to survive and bear witness... but It just didn't work out that way.
I originally had a bit about a picture being taken of Auras with "Green Skin, Red Uniform, an Amarki crest on his head and a child in his arms" being one of the iconic images of the bombing. But then I realized that that cheapened the sacrifice somehow.
Heading out into certain doom and passing on quietly of massive rad poisoning in a ditch with his friend desperately trying to haul him back as well as a final survivor on her other arm (I did not leave that bit in because it was waaayyyyy too depressing) was somehow more honest and heartfelt than an ICONIC MOMENT.
I really wish that I could have gotten to use those characters again, but I guess that part of the tragedy is that their lives are cut short for even the author! There's some other stuff I cut too, like how their Human friend will never ever, til the day he dies in '73, forgive himself for being forced to stay behind and not joining them.
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- Australia
Here we see an AKuz in her natural environment, attempting to kill us all by acute feelz poisoning.
- Location
- madison
I almost feel kind of bad that Auras is likely going to be brought up a lot in the PR war. Your right it does kind of cheapen it, but that hasn't stopped anyone since someone first realised lying to your troops made them more willing to fight.
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The cousin he mentions is the Patriotic Lieutenant in the first "The Way things are Now" that looses her hand on Dauba on the same day. I expect much will be made of how the same family serves Orion in Starfleet and at home. (Though this exists because I changed names around to put a face to someone in the family that Orran Auras is worried about)
I've actually got two more "The Way Things Are Now" planned for "soon". One is an Orion Politician getting the news while in the legislature and standing up and essentially going "YOU FUCKERS. THIS IS OUR FAULT. We need to change everything now or this will keep happening" with a side order of suggesting the opposition should be arrested or at the very least expelled for accessory to crimes against sapience.
The other is Doctor Asurva having a crisis of conscience later that night with the same thoughts the thread is having of "Is this our fault? Did we cause this?"
I should really be in bed now though.
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- Mid-Atlantic
There's a lot of propaganda value to be had from Auras that is entirely, literally accurate. His initiative and quick thinking saved over 300 Amarki lives, or a one-half to one-third share of same depending on whether you think Lannaess would have snapped out of it and thought to try the same thing, or whether T'Pel would have thought to think outside the box.
The truth is, Orions are in fact basically normal people; they are not the empire of haughty slave-lords who used to be a blight on the galaxy. They are just as capable of contributing positively to the galactic community as humans or Vulcans or Amarki or Apiata or Betazoids. The actions of the Syndicate should not mar this fact.
All this is fact. And Auras's actions illustrate it wonderfully.
It isn't wrong to tell your troops the truth.
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- Patriarchova
From a xenopsych perspective, the Orions are damned near identical to Humans and Andorians aside from pheromone related complexities.
Granted, the pheromone-related stuff might also make the concept of slavery a bit more innately palatable to them than it is to most sophonts (since something like a master/slave relationship is innate to part of their life cycle). But I don't think that's any worse than the shit the other Federation races have had to deal with. Good god, just look at the Vulcans.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yeah, that's kind of my point.
But as others have been pointing out, the problem here is that the face Orion space turns towards the galaxy, for a long time, has been that of the smuggler, the pirate, the slaver, and the corporate raider. They have a terrible reputation. Anything that acts to correctly restore that reputation to one of "decent people who live in a country with a lot of shitty political problems" is a good thing.
Yes. And all this works extra-well when combined with "Look what just happened to Bajor."
Because that's a great example of the Cardassians promising to 'protect' an opposition party after it overthrows a government friendly to the Federation. The Cardassians are 'protecting' Bajor all right. They're going to protect the hell out of that place, you can just tell.
You can make a good argument that anyone who proposes to take Cardassian help in overthrowing a local government is setting their country up for what is happening to Bajor.
- Location
- Australia
Oh right, naming vote closed.
Vote Tally : Sci-Fi - To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) | Page 1074 | Sufficient Velocity
##### NetTally 1.7.4
[X] Aeroknights
No. of Votes: 24
[X] VIGIL
No. of Votes: 18
[X]Aethercorps
No. of Votes: 3
[X] VIGILANCE
No. of Votes: 3
[X] Knights Valkyrie
No. of Votes: 2
[X] The Knights of the Order Vigilant
No. of Votes: 1
[X] Peacekeepers
No. of Votes: 1
[X] JGOC
No. of Votes: 1
[X] Eat shit and die, Syndicate.
No. of Votes: 1
[X] Iron Eagles
No. of Votes: 1
[X] Joint System Operational Command - JSOC
No. of Votes: 1
Total No. of Voters: 56
##### NetTally 1.7.4
[X] Aeroknights
No. of Votes: 24
[X] VIGIL
No. of Votes: 18
[X]Aethercorps
No. of Votes: 3
[X] VIGILANCE
No. of Votes: 3
[X] Knights Valkyrie
No. of Votes: 2
[X] The Knights of the Order Vigilant
No. of Votes: 1
[X] Peacekeepers
No. of Votes: 1
[X] JGOC
No. of Votes: 1
[X] Eat shit and die, Syndicate.
No. of Votes: 1
[X] Iron Eagles
No. of Votes: 1
[X] Joint System Operational Command - JSOC
No. of Votes: 1
Total No. of Voters: 56
- Location
- Infraspace
That could still be a painting (or holoimage equivalent). My knowledge of history of art is next to non-existent, but I'm sure there are plenty of examples of such in Earth history.
I'm sure any dramatisation would have a scene very much like that, too.
Fire Rescue - Leila Hann
- Location
- Patriarchova
- Location
- Australia
No update today, I'm afraid. Busy, tired, etc.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I don't mean to rain on the feelz parade, but anti-matter warheads are actually pretty clean. If people are dying of radiation poisoning, then the Syndicate had to have used a dirty bomb.
- Location
- Patriarchova
Yes and no.
Annihilation reactions produce a ton of gamma rays. However, after the initial blast, there's no fallout to continue emitting those rays. Anyone within sight of the explosion would have gotten radiation poisoning, but people coming out of buildings in the aftermath would not.
Of course, gamma rays from the warhead itself aren't the only factor here. An explosion of that size in a major city is going to leave clouds of toxic particulate matter from the various things that got vaporized. If there was any other hazardous material within the blast radius (likely, in a high tech society like the Amarki's) then there might be containment failures that release toxins or radiation from those other sources.
If they were equipped with space age Starfleet hazmat suits, they would have been fine. However, all they had were literal museum pieces from an era with technology equivalent to late twentieth or early twenty-first century Earth, and probably not in the best working condition after centuries of being kept in a display case.
I wouldn't put it past the Syndicate to modify the design to incorporate a non-standard chunk of [Nasty Sci-fi Shit].
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Problem is if someone was close enough to get irradiated by gammas, then they were probably close enough to be killed by the blast wave. From the text, it seems like the bomb was detonated near ground level in downtown, which means the surrounding buildings would have absorbed most of the gamma rays before they were flattened by over-pressure.
As to the toxic particulates, that's... debatable. I don't know much about building materials and how their react to sudden nuking, but I expect that even in a high tech society, truly dangerous materials would have been minimized in construction, and where they had to be used, they would be well protected. Airborne particulates would be an issues, but in teh absence of NBC threats, even museum piece filters should be able to keep them out.
None of which invalidates the omake, it just requires adding in a bit about the bomb being dirty.
edit: Actually, depending on population density, a dirty bomb might not square with the casualty figures we saw. The problem is that creating a dirty bomb that could actually generate enough radiation to kill people would require either exorbitant amount of radioactives, or some really Nasty Sci-Fi Shit to pull off. Otherwise you'd just see some light radiation poisoning, well within Trek medicine's ability to treat.
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- Mid-Atlantic
The reason a nuclear airburst causes lower fallout than a groundburst is that a lot of the radioactive material created by a nuclear device isn't actually made up of the material that used to be part of the device itself. It's made out of dirt, ash, and other materials that got caught in the explosion and radioactivated.
[Yes that is a real word for what happens when you make a thing radioactive, everyone. ]
The gamma rays released from an antimatter explosion at ground level will still be ionizing radiation. By definition, that means they will still knock electrons out of the atoms they strike. Those electrons, flying at extremely high speeds, themselves become ionizing radiation that has the potential to strike atoms and make them radioactive, causing them to decay at a later time. In other words, fallout.
There will be a fallout plume. It may not be as bad as it would be from a nuclear warhead of equivalent yield set off at ground level, but the fallout from a nuclear groundburst would be really bad.
I think there is ample grounds for the omake to stand as-is, without any need to say "oh, the Syndicate must have deliberately modified the bomb." Events that release the energies of atomic nuclei and annihilation reactions, at ground level, in a destructive manner, are nasty. They will always be nasty. The level of nastiness is sufficient that we don't need to add 'extra-nasty' to the description, just to explain why it is capable of killing people.
...
The Syndicate could probably have made this part drastically worse if they wanted to, but they really wouldn't have to in order to create the effects we see, which may have more to do with fires and toxins than they do with radioactivity.
[Yes that is a real word for what happens when you make a thing radioactive, everyone.
]The gamma rays released from an antimatter explosion at ground level will still be ionizing radiation. By definition, that means they will still knock electrons out of the atoms they strike. Those electrons, flying at extremely high speeds, themselves become ionizing radiation that has the potential to strike atoms and make them radioactive, causing them to decay at a later time. In other words, fallout.
There will be a fallout plume. It may not be as bad as it would be from a nuclear warhead of equivalent yield set off at ground level, but the fallout from a nuclear groundburst would be really bad.
I think there is ample grounds for the omake to stand as-is, without any need to say "oh, the Syndicate must have deliberately modified the bomb." Events that release the energies of atomic nuclei and annihilation reactions, at ground level, in a destructive manner, are nasty. They will always be nasty. The level of nastiness is sufficient that we don't need to add 'extra-nasty' to the description, just to explain why it is capable of killing people.
...
The Syndicate could probably have made this part drastically worse if they wanted to, but they really wouldn't have to in order to create the effects we see, which may have more to do with fires and toxins than they do with radioactivity.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
The reason a nuclear airburst causes lower fallout than a groundburst is that a lot of the radioactive material created by a nuclear device isn't actually made up of the material that used to be part of the device itself. It's made out of dirt, ash, and other materials that got caught in the explosion and radioactivated.
[Yes that is a real word for what happens when you make a thing radioactive, everyone.
The gamma rays released from an antimatter explosion at ground level will still be ionizing radiation. By definition, that means they will still knock electrons out of the atoms they strike. Those electrons, flying at extremely high speeds, themselves become ionizing radiation that has the potential to strike atoms and make them radioactive, causing them to decay at a later time. In other words, fallout.
There will be a fallout plume. It may not be as bad as it would be from a nuclear warhead of equivalent yield set off at ground level, but the fallout from a nuclear groundburst would be really bad.
...
The Syndicate could probably have made this part drastically worse if they wanted to, but they really wouldn't have to in order to create the effects we see, which may have more to do with fires and toxins than they do with radioactivity.
I may be wrong, but as far as I know, it's neutrons that are the reason ground busts tend to be dirty. A gamma ray blast will ionize surrounding matter (in that it will strip it of electrons), but won't actually turn it radioactive the same way that shoving a neutron into its nucleus will.