All Comments on 'Three Square Meals Ch. 068'

that BSP keeps showing up and seemingly running away. Hard to decide whether BSP is not as strong as we think, is hesitant to hurt John for some reason, or simply operates indirectly.

I would expect to see a large group of thralls trailing around after the BSP, but we see very few. I know that John keeps breaking up the BSP efforts, having killed at least two thralls directly or indirectly, but it seems like the BSP is no more powerful or advanced (thrall-wise) than John. And since John operates his thralls in a definitely non-Progenitor manner, I would expect that John would have significantly fewer thralls. But from what we have read, this is not so. We have seen maybe one thrall for Trankarrans, one for Drakkar, one for Terrans and maybe one for Kintark. Where are they all? John has 90 (or so) plus two matriarchs.

Could it be that BSP has significantly reduced power, and so has only one old-style matriarch, but can (or will) only support a minimal number of thralls at any given time. It could be that by hoarding his power, he is keeping his network small. We know that normal Progenitors like to force complete control over every matriarch and thrall, and that takes a significant amount of power If BSP is the same Progenitor as in the videos, then we know that he is a loner (seemingly preferring the help of a computer to other living beings,) so this might make sense.

btw - still waiting for green babies

Anon: If you recal, there were a handful of Miliri thralls who asked Edrael to speak on their behalf with John about having his children...including her bodyguards.

Can we get an update on the thralls who went to the tradeport to find fathers?

I was just saying its setting an impossibly high standard for anyone else who wants to use him as an example "you can marry my daughter when you've done any of the things the lion did to get his bride" or daughters saying "I'll marry you when you bring me the head of a dragon, or fight off a whole fleet" now they know it isn't impossible :-)

It could be theres an entire planet out there of former Milari that the other progenitor is using as a battery. he could have 10,000 years head start on John in creating an energy reserve. that immortality effect could have quite an impact. but it couldn't get too large as you'd reach a limit on numbers depending on the amount of time the immortality charge lasts, how many a day he could top up, how many you can keep running without introducing new ones drawing a stronger tentacled horror from the astral plane if he can do 40 a day on just a mouthful and the repeat delay is 1 months that would be 1200, once a year is 14400.

It could be that every now and then he starts to run out of the current batch, and so instead of creating them himself he creates a new progenitor, lets him run up a battery of say 500, or 5,000, then pops up and wipes the floor with him using experience, grabbing his thralls without having to do all the hard creation work.

I'm also thinking Johns big advantage in any combat is the girls. if the other progenitor keeps all his powers to himself, then if it comes to a fight he's got to do all the work himself while he's flying he cant be hacking, shooting, controlling whatever ships he has repairing things, healing people all at the same time whereas john has a separate person with the powers to concentrate on doing each thing.

I agree with the subs looking for the "hole in the water". I just think that they "forgot", once they saw the Black Ship the 1st time, to program the sensors/computer to look for that "hole in space". Since the power signature might be cloaked, they would probably have to do a "visual/camera" sweep every time they dropped in somewhere, or constantly.

Plus, it should be interesting what the sensors DID pick up when Lynton's shuttle was ka-blewied. I am sure, now that the danger is "over", the logs will get reviewed (Faye has probably already done that) and measures will be taken in the future.

SwirlingJedi: I had a thought reading your note. Maybe the Progenitors don't go out for conquest. Maybe they are like the Greek Gods, sitting up on Olympus, "playing chess", or just stirring up shit because they are bored, doing massive psychological experiments, etc. The Gods (according to mythology) did stuff just to see what would happen, testing, pissed off, bored.

You rock Tefler! Easily your best chapter so far - can't wait to see what happens next.

Your writing is so professional - better than many Sci-Fi books I've read in the last few years. I hope to see your name on Amazon soon!

Many have commented about BSP running & not engaging in the fight but I don't think he was there in person .When Lynton got ready to spring the trap on Santini's Battleship it wasn't her Master but his Matriarch Ailanthea that she was communicating with . As A Matriarch she would be powerful but not enough to go up against another Progenetor so she would naturally flee rather than risk destruction or being taken over/controlled by a rival Progen..

Also loved all the action but felt bad about losing the fighter pilots especially Angel ,but will be interesting if Lt Murphy reappears later n the story .As to Adm. Caldwell & TFed ,any attempts to force John & the girls to share or surrender their tech might have a few diplomatic hurdles since John is the Consort (?) of a Maliri Matriarch .

Anyone worried about all this fame , fortune & power going to John's head can relax . The All Powerful Lion & Rear Admiral was more nervous in talking to his girls father than the battle (Loved it, retaining that little slice of humor among the battle fever & bloodshed)

Hey everyone,

I've been enjoying reading all your comments, thanks a lot for giving me such great feedback! Battles take quite a bit of effort to write, so I'm glad you liked this one. It was fun thinking about the scenes and planning them out, while throwing in a few surprises to keep it interesting.

Apologies for not being very active on here this week. I came down with a cold, so as soon as I was feeling better I got stuck into writing chapter 69. Speaking of which, I've written 15k so far, so I hope to wrap up the chapter and hand it over to the editors by the end of the week.

When I've finished the chapter, I'll add some more comments on here. I'll quickly answer Ozkiwi's questions though:

1) I am surprised there were no inklings that the BSP was there?

It was cloaked, and using a Progenitor cloaking device. The Invictus is using an enhanced version of Maliri sensors, but unfortunately they weren't strong enough to defeat Progenitor tech.

2) Why did John let Lynton run?

It was a sensible plan to scoop her up in the Invictus for a number of reasons. Irillith wouldn't have been able to do much if Lynton tried to kill herself. If there was an insurrection amongst the Thor's crew, then they also might have been able to free/kill her. He also had no idea that the Progenitor was lurking around.

"the BSP matriarch could have just drained Lynton of psychic energy leaving her a husk"

If the Progenitor had ordered her to do so, she definitely could have. He didn't though, so perhaps there was a reason for that.

"John seeming to make dumb decisions"

He wanted answers as soon as possible, and rounding up Lynton was a quick way of getting them. It would have worked perfectly if the Progenitor's ship hadn't appeared out of nowhere and blown her away. :-)

Tefler

Found this really gripping, a great read, with fantastic demonstrative text, keep it up.

Best. Chapter. Yet!

Tefler, my main man. I am solidly impressed with your story crafting skills. I just re-read the entire series for the 3rd time with this last chapter as the big finale and I'm awed once again.

In fact, I'm so impressed that I have decided to become a Patron. You are well worth the investment!

Keep up your most excellent work!

Who the hell voted less than 5* ? I really enjoyed Etaski's and RipperFish's stories but this was better.

I have been reading stories on this for almost a year now...and to tell you this is the best series i have ever read.plis keep the good work can't wait for the next update

Glad you are feeling better. Don't overextend yourself. Regardless of how we feel, we really can wait for you to recover (looks for his old xanax pills).

atleast on patreon...

might be a faster way for us to get a piece...

cheers!

...but I am totally hooked on this series. And when I don't have a new chapter to mainline, I'm skin-popping the comments.

Tefler, thank you for being my dealer of choice, and for having so many generous "mules." Your talent and your word output are astounding; I write for a living, albeit nothing like this, so I understand what intense focus it takes to crank out 5,000-10,000 words in a day.

Your ability has grown tremendously since the initial chapters; I've been addicted since Chapter 2. Character development, dialogue, pacing, plotting, exposition, description--all first-rate.

I'm with you until the end, I'll mourn when that day arrives.

I hope that the Kintark will recover and become allies. All the prisoners and their ships become liabilities otherwise and going after the immortal dragons is not going to be easier if they wait.

unfortunately, there are some jealous types out there so s single 1 by a disgruntled reader = about 200 5's to get you back to 4.95. disturbing but true.

;{

This vision in my head about when John is going to go into melee combat again. Him realizing that he forgot his sword back on the ship. After some thought he asks his queen bee to have one of the girls on the ship get Faye to have a bot toss it out of the airlock.(No one else being strong enough to lift it.) Once the Sword is in planetary orbit using his telekinetic power to pull it down to the planet and catch it. When the ensuing shockwave has cleared and everyone sees him standing there like a pimp, they cower in fear of his greatness.

John, as a Rear Admiral, ought to have the authority to recommend for promotion persons whom he thinks deserving. In fact as CO of the Invictus I would have thought that he would have had that authority from the start,

In an earlier post I suggested that creating wormholes could be a time consuming task. I have been giving the other side of the coin some consideration and my ideas are that John and company decide that they will only use the singularity drive if they need to get to their destination "yesterday" otherwise they will use the normal FTL drive.

Also rapid wormhole creation opens up the possibility for the development of a "Wormhole Gun". It would work by making a connection between a special room on the Invictus and the target location on the enemy ship, e.g. the enemy bridge, and then pushing a package through. The package could be high explosive, knockout gas or any other form of nastiness that can be dreamed up.

The post by by Draco9881 made me think about weaponizing the wormhole generator. Imagine creating a wormhole about half the size of the target ship in front of them. Half of the target ship gets warped to another destination while the rest stays put. This may be too powerful of a weapon but it'd be unstoppable.

Even smaller wormholes would be devastating. Imagine a small grid of them in front of a moving ship. It'd be like pushing a ship through a garlic press.

with a rotary dial?

We've seen two wormholes created now for jumps, and in neither case did their creation seem to take any appreciable time. it's possible that the difficult work was done ahead of time, but it doesn't look like it

"The other side of the coin" is an expression that means "The opposite point of view", and in this case I was thinking about rapid wormhole creation not slow.

Your idea on the use of wormholes is one I had not thought of. However I feel that, given John's philosophy, the enemy would be sent to a point well removed from the battle scene, say 200 parsecs.

Lots of different thoughts.

First off, John may not have been able to trade with the Kintark Empire for plasma weapons due to the war, but he did just have a fully tooled (but admittedly somewhat banged up) battle group surrender to him. Hopefully Dana gets a chance to poke around in their stuff for a few hours, or at least a few handgun samples.

Relatedly, here's to hoping that the Brimorians are on the way to where Irillith's sister is so that they can finally upgrade their shields.

Next, In addition to cybersexing it up with John, I think Faye needs a suit of power armor (in pink, natch) so that she can join the team on away missions. Maybe with a built in CPU to overcome the signal lag she was fighting on the Raptor. (which should get a CPU core too) They'll need a method to download a fragment of Faye's personality into the power armor, and to sync back up with the core personality at the end of missions, but that hopefully shouldn't be a problem.

Finally, I've become convinced that the BSP is John's father, not a rival. There's been no known progenitor activity for ~10,000 years, but the BSP could have ruled this part of the galaxy for all that time if he wanted to. Assuming that the BSP, as John's father, is amoral rather than outright evil, this could just be his way of teaching John to be a progenitor in a hands off way. The discord being sown also creates opportunity for John to take his (as the BSP sees it) rightful place as ruler of this chunk of the galaxy while making him earn it (and thus appreciate it) rather than just handing it to John..

it's also possible that BSP is simply bored and waiting for john to becoming more powerful so that he can challenge him to fight with him one on. like he is waiting for a worthy men to fight him.

That John has a unique bond with the girls same with Alyssa I believe going back when John was talking with ederele she said normally the matarch has no free will it all is what the progenitor plan. Also Layton was expendable she was just a thrall but my quests is that had John caught her there may be something that would allow another progenitor get information out with out much hassle .I.e something in the DNA or something else we no PJohn had a talk with the Queen we still don't know what he learned from that conversation and probably won't until John makes peace with the other half of himself

Visions of "Master of the Universe" and "I HAVE THE POWER!" LMAO

A worm hold drive would not move one into the past or have time dilation issues unless the terminal singularity was moving near, at, or faster than light speeds itself. If the two ends of the wormhole, the event horizons, were stable and static in their movement no time travel would occur. One would simply slip throught the event horizon and exit out the terminal event horizon like stepping through a door....and just instantly appear/be on the other side of the Galaxy, Universe, Stellar Cluster, etc.

Think of an edge of a piece of paper with the two corners being light years apart. Folding the paper so the two corners are right next to each other is the folding of space that a worm hole does. Once you step from one corner to the other you simply stop the worm hole and space unfolds....wolla! you are on the other side of the universe.

On wormhole's: Only two ways to really make one work is to achieve ftl via there tachyon drive then activate secondary drive using Einstein-Rosen bridge theory, anything sublight would be moving to slow and wormhole would collapse before you would be able to traverse it, but by going ftl then creating a wormhole you could essentially create a tunnel forward in space moving you many orders of magnitude faster then standard ftl. Second way of pulling it off would be to create a stable wormhole through some form of exotic matter manipulation, probably possible once they get upgraded back at shipyards? While technically violating current known laws of physics best theoretical way of creating a semi stable wormhole would be through some form of negative mass manipulation. Also the concept that a wormhole is instant travel from point A to point B is actually somewhat of a misnomer, it creates generally speaking a anomaly in space that greatly shortens a distance (reference the post below) however this is not instant it can still take a length of time. Also there is an incredible amount of both gravitational energy involved as well as quite a bit of rather far out theoretical particles. would probably suggest they not attempt it till shields upgraded again at shipyards once there back in malari space (if its on the table at all).

(I've refrained greatly from talking about many many science topics throughout this overall excellent book.)

Some modification of a singularity cannon ramping it up by a few orders of magnitude might be able to create a semi stable wormhole in theory? depends on exactly how the theory behind it works in book one would assume creating a short term weaponized singularity of some form. If you where to create energy density negative to that of vacuum density should do the trick for creation of a stable wormhole , Dana modify the base components into a workable drive system of some form, and i believe there's a gutted dreadnought floating around in space at the moment.

A Rear Admiral would have the authority to recommend and promote individuals he/she deems worthy/deserving. That being said, John is operating under a retired status and as such could only make recommendations for awards/promotions; sort of like a civilian contractor. If the Federation officers under his command were to at some point leave his command their rank would only be recognized if it were initiated through Federation channels.

In reference to the wormholes and via the tachyon drive then activate secondary drive using Einstein-Rosen bridge theory. I think that Dana realized that the; I can’t keep track of their names (the little grey dudes), that gave them their engines didn’t fully understand the technology behind it and their engines would have to be reconfigured once they were able to dry doc. Should also alleviate the power drain when using their main cannons as well.

Lot of theories out there! It isn't like the old days where you could just make up something. There is too much science nowadays and guys a whole lot smarter then any of us working on it.

PLR, your folding paper trick is the classic explanation of warp drive. But I think of a wormhole as two holes on a plane (OK, think sheet of paper) and when you stick your finger in one hole it comes out the other. Your dealing with the space/time continuum so the mechanics is pretty heavy. In our case think of driving your car into a tunnel opening (the event horizon) and then being able to chose where the other end of the tunnel is (the other event horizon). The classic example would be Stargate, which was one established event horizon connecting with another. The ability to create a wormhole and have the other end where you want it would be a tough act. The physics and power requirements would be beyond our current understanding. But I think people forget that this is FICTION, and Tefler can make the laws of physics any shape he wants in his universe.

Dana and her mass fabricators will engineer and build a console that lets John have the girls input where he wants to go and event horizons will open at both ends and away they go.

Dave

Yeah, John's worm will be holing pretty soon. (Really sorry.....just had to.)

Dana needs to come up with an antimatter cannon. That would be one thing that would shut down the worm hole generation process or at least destabalize one that was created so BSP could not so easily escape.

All that is necessary (LOL) is to create a shell with an ultra strong, internal magnetic shield as a carrier. The impact destroys the shell/field and the antimatter explodes on contact with matter at a subatomic level. It would release energy well beyond what any thermonucklear warhead could and the amount the size of one's fist could take out an entire sun.

of antimatter would have a 1,360,777.11 megaton yield. That is 90,718.5 times a Hiroshima bomb.

So..... You want Dana to build a mini Death Star?.......

I know all the "personal" weapons are a bit "overkill", and the Invictus is a small bit "overkill" (for its class), but seriously? A planet killer weapon? LOL

On a guess i would say that a nova lance is something along the lines of inetia confinement fusion, using a laser to confine and start a fusion reaction (basically a small sun hence nova) , in a weaponized format, then allowing it to be released in a semi controlled fashion at a target. which would also account for the very large power draw.

Small amount of antimatter have been observed to occur naturally in nature in large thunderstorms and such a few hundred are observed a day, while 100 lbs's of antimatter seems a bit overkill the theoretical creation of it would not be outside of the technical aspects of the Invictus basically a mag bottle for containment and a bit of Sci-Fi based generation with enough energy thrown at it.

You could also look into the mostly unproven theory behind free quarks which should violently pair with there opposite when released although the science behind that is a bit beyond me.

Also there is nearly instant communication in TSM universe going many many times faster then even the fastest ships able to connect to almost anywhere in a matter of minutes, and then have a delay free conversation, the science behind this has never fully been explored, i can only assume this is taking advantage of some form of sidereal space if you can create communicate tech, many times ftl then you should be able to modify that tech for ship purposes?

Considering Dana has already shot a stream of it thru a fusion reactor I would say many things are possible with it.

Exactly. I would think weaponizing it would be a no-brainer.

Antimatter mass drivers would be more devistating than the singularity drivers of the Dreadnaughts (which just use the gravity wells of the singularity to propel the standard mass projectile at high speed)...and, since they would also react with shield energy, a single salvo of sufficient mass would take them out as well, leaving the second salvo (projectiles 3 and 4) to desintegrate large portions of the ship. The resulting shock wave of released energy would also affect the rest of the ship and possibly escort vessels if they are too close.

The mass drivers of all Terran vessels uses hypervelocity to turn mass into plasma which reacts somewhat explosively with a ships mass. Alternatively, antimatter projectiles would turn the ship itself into a devistating bomb, the limits of which would be directly related to the mass of the antimatter. And the shockwave from such an explosion would be anything from a small nuclear device to a wave capable of splitting a small sun...again, depending on the mass of the antimatter in the projectile.

cannot only be stabalized but very tightly controlled, as Tekt points out: the beam lasers can be turned into Antimatter Streams....shooting a constant stream of antimatter at ANY force field or normal matter (mass being just organized energy as shown by Einstein's theory of Relativity) would effectively turn that force field or mass into its own sub-nuclear bomb with near 100% energy efficiency.

Would be similar to the need to pulse laser blasts. The tremendous shock wave from a matter/antimatter explosion would tend to splatter the oncoming stream. So pulsing the stream would be actually much more effective at putting the antimatter on target. And you would not have the required 'cool down' time between pulses because you are not dealing with heat other than a magnetic containment field generation within the barrel...which is MUUUUCH less than what a laser generates.

Tefler has already said that the power core will be upgraded so using novas wont be a problem, so instead of new weapons have dana come up with a drone/fighter support a small drone/ship that 6 of faye's self's could fly same firepower as gunship ?

you could put holographic emits on them so they look like john ship ?

t the end of your post you say that you suggest that the TFed comms tech could be converted to ship purposes, if by that you mean converted to a drive system then I have to disagree. I think that the TFed comms tech is based on quantum entanglement, It is not too big a stretch of the imagination to suppose that TFed has been able to harness the instantaneous effects of quantum entanglement as a communication medium. However, I think that using this tech to develop a super fast FTL drive would be on a par with trying to use our present comms tech to develop a light speed space drive.

On a somewhat different tack: Quantum entanglement - instantaneous and distance independent. Telepathy - instantaneous and distance independent. Is this coincident or is there a link? I suggest that telepathy is a by-product of quantum entanglement.

The first word in my previous post should be "At".

On communication i said it simply hadnt been explored as to how the theory behind it worked. Quantum Entanglement is actually something i hadn't thought of. If you found a way around the no communication theorem it would work pretty well.

As for antimatter in regards to shielding if it was an energy based shield as the story seems to indicate it would still be to a large extent effective at withstanding antimatter, you would have to take down the shield prior to firing.

Also it would even seem indicated on Genthalas shipyard, antimatter is not something that you can rapidly create large quantities of naturally, and requires rather specific containment (mag bottles) while i would not by an means rule this out as a weapon, its not something you could realistically pull off at a rapid firing pace, more along the line of how there nova lance functions know sort of a 1 shot weapon.

In my post I did, by implication, postulate that either TFed had found a way to bypass the no communication theorem or that in Tefler's universe the theorem is invalid. You pays your money and takes your pick.

Another weapon that theoretically Dana should already know how to build is the Quantum annihilator that Nexus was going to destroy earth with. Apparently some of you are very much more well versed in current physics than I am so any thoughts about what that is and whether it could also be integrated into the ship? I also wonder if it is the same weapon the BSP used to destroy the dreadnaut and Gabrielle's shuttle?

Progenitor encode the tech in the genes of the son so if another progenitor invent's or improve know tech does that tech get passed on to other progenitor 's ?

Here are a few issues with antimatter, assuming the physics of 3SM is consistent with what we know in our universe!

1. Antimatter is made of anti-particles, specifically anti-leptons (such as positrons) and anti-quarks (the building blocks of anti-protons and anti-neutrons). Only a particle and its anti-particle (e.g. an electron and a positron) can annihilate to give pure energy (photons). For example, charged pions contain a quark and an anti-quark of different types, and are stable for several nanoseconds before decaying into muons and neutrinos via the weak nuclear force. This has several implications. First, antimatter does not annihilate all forms of mass-energy, and shields would work fine against it. Secondly, collisions between ordinary matter (electrons, protons and neutrons) and corresponding antimatter produce a lot of muons and neutrinos, which carry some of the energy away. Thirdly, such collisions do not create any sort of chain reaction: a gram of antimatter can annihilate at most a gram of matter.

2. Energy is conserved: it takes as much energy to produce a gram of antimatter as you get out of completely annihilating it. So you can't create a few lbs on the fly unless you have a massive energy source.

3. The main reason antimatter is useful in sci-fi is that it is a very efficient way of storing energy: you make it when you have a big energy source to hand (typically a star). Then you can take it with you and annihilate it with matter to recover the energy when you need it.

4. However, this is not without problems, as you have to stop the antimatter from coming into contact with any matter until you want it to. A practical way to do this is to make it electrically charged and hold it in a magnetic field. But it is dangerous stuff (cf. contact poison - why is that not a popular weapon?).

5. In order to fire antimatter as a weapon (without the antimatter destroying the launcher) you would need to use a similar idea: e.g., make the antimatter charged and accelerate it in an electromagnetic field. Unfortunately, that also makes it easy to shield against (the electromagnetic force is about 40 orders of magnitude stronger than gravity).

A weapon is a way of transferring energy produced by the wielder into destructive (essentially kinetic, including heat) energy at the target, and its effectiveness is essentially the percentage so transferred. Firing antimatter is not as good as it sounds: indeed it is probably more effective to use any antimatter you have to fuel your power core than to use your power core to create antimatter.

"First, antimatter does not annihilate all forms of mass-energy, and shields would work fine against it."

Not entirely true. Electromagnetic shields would, but the shields in Tefler's universe are not electromagnetic or they would not react so unfavorably to lasers (the lasers would just pass right through them since light waves are electromagnetic waves themselves. And much like the waves from a boat wake just add or subtract from the waves created by the moon and wind action, the lasers would just 'ride' the electromagnetic shield waves to the target.

"Energy is conserved: it takes as much energy to produce a gram of antimatter as you get out of completely annihilating it. So you can't create a few lbs on the fly unless you have a massive energy source."

You are absolutely correct as far as you take it. But there are other considerations here. First, a Kilo of antimatter destroys a kilo of matter. So you have twice the amount of matter turning into pure energy. While this mass conversion is not 100% it IS over 90% while a thermonuclear reaction is less than a 1% conversion to energy. Hence it would take a 190+ kilo nuke to equate to a one kilo antimatter bomb.

"In order to fire antimatter as a weapon (without the antimatter destroying the launcher) you would need to use a similar idea: e.g., make the antimatter charged and accelerate it in an electromagnetic field. Unfortunately, that also makes it easy to shield against (the electromagnetic force is about 40 orders of magnitude stronger than gravity)"

True: IF the shields were electromagnetic…which they aren't. Electromagnetic shields would be useless against light weapons (lasers) and this is just not the case in Tefler's universe.

Finally, Dana was able to effectively produce a stream of antimatter that equated to several tons of material in a matter of just a few hours (the ore output she retrieved in the bins at the bottom of the fusion reactor core). As you said, energy and mass are conserved. So: With a Progen power core, at that rate of production, creating a stream of antimatter worth the effort to weaponize it (a kilo) would only take 0.0036 seconds.

"In a moment of sudden clarity, Admiral Edwin Caldwell realised that it wasn't only John Blake's ship that had grown powerful. He wondered if Lynette Devereux had even the slightest idea of what she'd created..."

The Admiral's plans to deal with John, whatever they were, just went up in smoke.

You said: "Tefler has already said that the power core will be upgraded so using novas wont be a problem, so instead of new weapons have dana come up with a drone/fighter support a small drone/ship that 6 of faye's self's could fly same firepower as gunship ?

you could put holographic emits on them so they look like john ship ?"

cool idea.

The Quantum Annihilator would theoretically convert mass to energy. How that would work is unknown. But Dana might have a handle on it soon.

I haven't commented in a few chapters so i will do so now, I'm glad your Patreon is doing well BUT i'm hating these longer waits for new chapters!...But i get it lol

Ok, enough complaining, I loved this last chapter, it had everything you needed to make reading a battle scene epic..it had suspense, drama, intrigue, multiple faceted story lines, attention to detail and timing and of course the hidden puppet master watching on.. and that was JUST the battle scene, that's not even mentioning the whole Astral plain boogey monster, the newest addition to the crew, POSSIBLY a physical body for Fey? and Terran military politics.

All that being said all i have to say is this......Update on new chapter?!? :D

Tazzy

While i think antimatter has been thoroughly discussed enough, it should be noted that it simply states in chapter 55, that she would be be sending highly charged antimatter through the power core, and that they would need to begin charging. It is assumed that at some point afterwards they would add the secondary needed components in order to create crystal alyssium.

On a guess i would assume that there by the dialogue there probably streaming Positrons as this is by far the easiest to create/work with, then through means unknown attempting to create some form of Anion with increased and intentional manufactured Resonance. Alot of other ways you could look at it as well, but that would be my offhand two cents guess with quite a bit of Sci=Fi stretching going there. The antimatter was simply a catalyst for the creation of a new element with preexisting materials.

While some of this gets a slight bit beyond me, and its also a Sci-Fi so a bit of artistic interpretation is allowed.

I would say based on what has been shown in previous chapter that they are not a mass/matter based shield

Basically light energy is in essence a photon an always moving with zero rest mass It always moves at the speed of light but technically you can change the speed of light, in order to stop light energy at a quantum level its transferred to a different form of energy, technically according to field theory i believe a strong enough electromagnetic shield would slow for the warping of lightwaves and transferring them into probably electrons, not really sure.

Also any form of gravitic shielding, or some form of electron/static shield, probably with a helping of electromagnetic on the side. From the description and function of the suits it seems almost certain that they are somehow mag based.

All in all at this time i tentatively say that this particular shield may adhere more along the lines of fiction then pure physichs.

Looked into it some more, i believe a Photoelectric Field In conjunction With an Electromagnetic Field, Both being used for shielding would meet the requirements for TSM universe shielding. A Photoelectric Field has been observed to convert Photons to Electrons (Elecrticity as a byproduct of shield damage observed in TSM universe). However this would have no effect on mass based projectiles as TSM shields do so it would need to be coupled with an electromagnetic shield in order to stop both light energy and mass based projectiles. Creating A Photoelectric shield is a small stretch, however in future/Sci-Fi based applications it fits the bill for withstanding light energy based attacks.

This would be my guess as to the current shields used in TSM universe as it fits all known and described phenomenon to the best extent.

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the wait on chapter 69. I've had a cold and I find it hard to write when I'm not firing on all cylinders.

I've written ~24k so far, so I'm nearly done. I'll finish off the end of the chapter today, then with a few days for editing, it should be up on the Patreon page by the end of the month.

Thanks for all the kind/interesting comments. I could spend all day answering these posts, but I try and keep focused on the writing instead. Rest assured I do read them all, and this chapter set new records for feedback! I think it was the fastest chapter to hit 100 comments on literotica, and the Patron thread is at 243 replies as of this morning!

Anyway, I better crack on with wrapping up chapter 69, I hope you all enjoy it!

Tefler

*does the happy dance*

Feel better Tefler!

Shields in TSM are a projected grid of massive pseudoparticles.

Emitters are small surfaces of a hydrogen ice ablating material under Quantum lenses that project and magnify their surface out into a shielding layer. This is a sophisticated form of quantum entanglement that creates shields ideal to interact in superquanta packets of energy. Shielding action dissipates particle kinetics very effectively and photon energy as a loss for loss trade.

Ablation causes total nuclear decay of atoms within the hydrogen ice. The decay reaction actually happens within the projected pseudoparticle of the shield.

It becomes almost a minefield of nuclear bombs that sre sensitive to incoming attacks as an effect of the lensing. The attacks by weapons from a shielded ship do not enter the lensing focus cones in the necessary orientation and pass through rhe shielding layer without interaction.

Most shield schemes have issues with making the ship blind inside their own shield and unable to fire their own weapons without defeating their own shields.

That is how I imagine them at least.

.fs

Shields in 3SM are at least partly electromagnetic, because Tefler has pointed out in the past that a magnetic field would interfere with shielding, and the only way a magnetic field would do that is if the shields were electromagnetic in nature. As Manticore suggests, the shields could also be partly photoelectric in order to block lasers, or are at least designed in such a way as to block certain forms of light and/or light at certain energy levels. We do know that the shields do not block normal wavelengths of light, as the crew is still able to see out of the ship when the shields are up, and people outside the shields are able to see the hull. If the shields blocked all forms of light, a ship in space with its shields up would appear as a big mirrored ball and the crew inside would be blind to what's going on outside.

So, given that Tefler has said that a magnetic field would interfere with shields, one way to make the Terran projectile weapons effective against shields would be to develop a shell that carries a warhead that creates an EMP when it detonates either on impact with the shields or just before. That EMP would theoretically be very effective against shields, probably more so than lasers would be, and would have the added side effect of messing with the target ship's electronics. The EMP from the round doesn't need to be very strong, because when you've got a full broadside of cannons firing volley after volley of EMP enabled shells, you'll eventually get the desired result. The shells probably wouldn't do much damage against armor, if any, but they could end up disabling the target ship with repeated EMP bursts frying the electronics. I'm willing to bet that if the Terran scientists haven't developed such ammunition yet (can't imagine that they haven't tried already), Dana probably can.

Of well wishes and concern for Tefler around him. Get well soon, Tefler. Your health is more important than our need for another chapter.

What if Dana made a emp Lance from the nova Lance tech & put them on deck 5 at the front of the ship

"First, a Kilo of antimatter destroys a kilo of matter. So you have twice the amount of matter turning into pure energy."

Yes, but that is also how you make antimatter, by reversing the process: for every kilo you make, you make a kilo of matter as a byproduct (and you will probably waste a lot of energy as well).

"a kilo... would only take 0.0036 seconds"

That means the power core operates at 50 million terawatts minimum, which is about 3 million times the current global power consumption, or about 300 times the total power of sunlight reaching the earth. Wow!

Power cores are something of a McGuffin in sci-fi - I have no idea how they work. Likewise shields - I have no idea how they stop mass drivers or lasers (as you say electromagnetic fields are no use against uncharged particles, and gravity is too weak). The point I was trying to make is that there is no reason to suppose that shields would be any less effective (per watt) against antimatter as against matter or lasers.

I see your points. And I agree with you on all of them. I was just running with the storyline. No harm, no foul?

The problem is the shields absorb/deflect/dissipate lasers, which is an energy wave just like an EMP. It would probably affect the shields just like the lasers do. And after the shields are down, well, all military ships now are hardened against EMPs. And fibre optic cables are immune...which is most likely the type of wiring used.

No worries. In fact I made a small mistake above: e-m fields would also work against conductors, but presumably mass drivers would therefore use materials with a high density to conductivity ratio (since there is no air resistance in space, absolute density is less important). Anyway, the way shields work doesn't make a lot of sense to me (e.g. providing essentially 100% protection until they "run out") but it makes for better story-telling. And as you suggest, it is the story that counts. It is also fun to speculate about the universe in which the story takes place, and I enjoy reading your (and others) posts.

You said, "Shields in 3SM are at least partly electromagnetic, because Tefler has pointed out in the past that a magnetic field would interfere with shielding..."

I remember him saying the suit electromagnetic shielding would mess with the antigrav units in the suits used for directional control while flying (which makes no sense with antigrave and electromagnetism, while related, do not interfere with each other). But that shielding is different than the ship shielding because it does not deflect energy weapons like lasers or plasma bolts.

Did I miss something?

As do I yours. I think such speculation is picked up by other readers and Tefler as well. I know he takes our discussions and uses them in his story. Which I find very rewarding.

there are problems with trying to build shields with current day scientific explanations. We know that some pieces of current knowledge will have to turn out to be wrong for some of the bits of the story to work. (well maybe wrong isn't the right word, but some sections of science will have to be extended)

As long as the science has its own logical consistency for the story we may just be pointing ourselves in entirely the wrong way to try to explain the effects we are seeing in current physics. We are probably better off looking at effects rather than causes.

The "shield" on the armor suits is a strong magnetic field that reacts to metallic projectiles by deflecting them off to the side, in a general "not at the person wearing the armor" direction; it is nothing like the shields on a ship, which outright stops (not deflects) just about everything. Dana got the idea for that field from the shields (read like metal shields knights of old carried) the Drakkar had, which had a magnetic field that deflected bullets, and she has since built on that and improved it. One of those improvements is that the field/armor is smart enough to not deflect bullets towards another suit of armor that's nearby. which tells me that there is some sort of sensor that feeds into the suit's computer and can determine the position of the suit, the trajectory of bullets coming in, and where to send them.

So, with that in mind, it is possible that being in flight mode disengages the protective magnetic field because the variables for the suit's position and bullet trajectories would be changing much too quickly for the suit's processor to handle, which could result in the magnetic field redirecting the bullets into the wearer rather than away. You definitely don't want a magnetic field that's supposed to protect you from bullets pulling them at you instead. There is also the possibility that flight mode is capable of accelerating the wearer past the threshold the magnetic field uses to determine if there's something coming in that it needs to deflect, which could result in the field trying to deflect a surface that the wearer is attempting to land on.

Both of those reasons explain why the suit's magnetic field is turned off when the antigrav flight mode is engaged considering that gravity and magnetism are not mutually exclusive, i.e. don't interfere with each other.

I believe there were some discussions in the comments following the development of the armor's magnetic field about adapting that to help protect the Invictus, to which Tefler chimed in and said the magnetic field would disrupt the ship's shields. I forget which chapter the discussion was on, but I'm sure it's there somewhere. I recall that I put forth the suggestion of using magnetic reinforcement on the armor plating of the ship, which would help hold the armor together and increase its resistance to being blown apart; the magnetic reinforcement would not be an extensive field that surrounds the ship, only being strong enough to reach no more than an inch above the ship's hull, and therefore shouldn't interfere with the shields. Or that the magnetic reinforcement engages only after the shields have been knocked out, that way there is no interference as the shields wouldn't be up anyways.

Thanks for the insight. What you said is very plausable about the suit fields. Also, I had forgotten that part of the discussion until you mentioned it again. Kudos.

You said, "As long as the science has its own logical consistency for the story we may just be pointing ourselves in entirely the wrong way to try to explain the effects we are seeing in current physics. We are probably better off looking at effects rather than causes."

I could not agree more with your perception. I have no issue with suspension of disbelief in a science FICTION story. I do need things to be consistent for that to work for me, though. And I agree, my fantasy literature does not HAVE to follow the laws of Physics as we know them today...but I do need consistancy as mentioned before.

I LOVE this story, as should be evident by my posts. And I know Tefler reads them and incorporates a lot of what we discuss in his story, which I find absolutely wonderful.

I am really looking forward to them when the progen power core is miniturized by Dana.

It is consistent with other elements of the story: specifically the anti-grav stabalizer working with the shields okay in the Invictus and Raptor so the shield could be used during flight mode.

It would provide the resistance to plasma and laser based weapons.

We know it is possible due to the melee encounter with the dragon and John's extraction team in the sulphur mines.

100% effective shields until they run out isn't that hard to explain. If you imagine that the shields as an active defense powered by capacitors (because they require too much instantaneous power), then you keep sucking power out of your caps until there is nothing left to suck. (Feels like there should be a bj joke in there) Of course, if that's how the shields work, it should be possible to use the Nova Lance charging trick to rebuild shields as well.

Hey everyone,

I've just finished chapter 69!

I've just sent it to my editors, so all being well, you should see it here by about Wednesday or so next week. It's 31k in size, and covers the aftermath of the Regulus battle as well as a few little extra bits and pieces. :-)

Cheers,

Tefler

hooray, glad you're feeling better, and even better that the next slice is on its way. :-)

PLR

yes I'm all for consistency, but story first every time, crowbarring current time real world physics into the mix can just break things unnecessarily. given the several hundred years from the story to now, Physics probably looks at current physics probably looks like pre-newtonian physics to those scientists there. Fitting everything to real world physics just risks breaking the immersion.

Love the story too, and am considering rereading it a second time this time with all the comments just to see how people anticipate developments

Blakes7 rog blake, federation, high tech ship, righting wrongs,

am sure there maybe other series that could be linked

Realistically all you would have to do is create the largest dirtiest nuke you possible. You get not only an Emp wave but a large amount of background radiation that would have an unknown but most likely highly deterring effect on most sensors. Added bonus is its a very big nuke it could probably at least have some effect on fighters and bombers as well as take out missiles, if the raptor was off doing something else. as to delivery in theory you should simply be able to load them in the mass driver and turn down the power from Hyper Warp to really fast and send them on there way.

Anyone who somehow had a ethical problem with nukes in space. there rupturing the power cores of ships as they blow them up, space is full of background radiation, and there tachyon drive is pumping out loads of cherenkov radiation just to name a few examples. No one cares about a few dirty nukes on the side.

My 10 cents.

would like to see Matriarch Edraele send some ships to the Geniya Spaceport and order Merchant Ceradan and a couple of other Maliri males to return under Gruard. and have them think that this is the End but have Merchant Ceradan hailed as a hero by the Maliri for bringing John to them. and the other Males are to help repopulate the planet with the guys to pick Brides from Edraele's Engineers.

Alyssa is a Progen. And there has been some discussion in the comments about how she might create her own thralls but the lack of testicals presented issues that were never resolved.

Point is, women DO have vaginal fluid (I have experience with being able to make a woman squirt) which does contain fully entact DNA. So while it might not have the long term potency of John's semen, it certainly has the potential of John's semen, if only for the short term.

Long term healing may be out. But, the making of male thralls would definitely be possible.

Or Tefler could do what has been done in other sci-fi and allow her the ability to lactate on command or when aroused like John. Her breast milk I'm sure could carry similar properties to Progen cum. Tefler has clearly pointed out that the girls aren't aversed to breastfeeding. It could add another interesting element to the story but to be honest I don't really think it's necessary apart from allowing her to form her bonds with Johns "thralls" or to heal the girls when John isn't available to do that.

Yeah, I mentioned it a few chapters back..... I would go with lactating..... Less difficult to achieve, and less creepy.... (kinda.... lol)

I've been rereading earlier chapters to get my fix between new releases, and two related thoughts occurred to me.

First, despite the fact that the Kirrix were one of the first species to "donate" technology to Dana's reverse engineering efforts, they've made no attempt to field neutron beam weapons.

Second, if they expect to go up against the BSP, they need weapons that are effective against the black armor that the Drakkar got from the BSP. The Maliri laser weapons are impressive, but they are exactly the wrong thing to use against that black armor. They need something like the Kirrix neutron beams or the Kintark plasma weapons. Relying on the (very slow) mass drivers as your only non-laser weapon seems like a losing proposition in a fist fight with the BSP.

I don't recall quite exactly what Dana learned from those Kirrix weapons, but I'm willing to bet that she probably looked at them and said something like "Well, those are neat, but we've got better." Only reason I can think of for Dana passing them up being that the weapons already in the crew's possession (or in Dana's head) were better than the Kirrix neutron beams.

As for the black armor the Drakkar had, that was base level stuff, with relatively minor resistance to laser weapons, especially when compared to the Alyssium Dana creates later, and more so compared to the current Crystal Alyssium. It was enough resistance to be problematic for the Ashanath beam weapons, and those that the Invictus had at the time, but keep in mind, the weapons on the Invictus have gone through a major upgrade. They're now several orders of magnitude more powerful than what they had originally, and would easily overpower that black armor of the Drakkar. Even if that black armor offered decent resistance against the Invictus' beam weapons, the same can't be said for the shields. Once the shields are down, the Mass Drivers can deal significant damage, as they penetrate through armor and detonate inside the ship.

Plus, we don't even know if the BSP's ship is clad in the same armor as the Drakkar. It could be something else entirely, but chances are it's not going to have similar properties as Crystal Alyssium. I don't see the BSP stooping so low as to use his psychic powers to do something as menial as shape metal, so it's possible he's never thought of Dana's alloy, which is by far stronger than the black armor the Drakkar had, especially after it's been reshaped a few times. Which means that if the BSP's ship is indeed equipped with the same black armor of the Drakkar, the Invictus has the armor advantage.

I also think that lactation is the better bet for transferal of the psychic primer to the subject. By psychic primer I mean the substance or substances that make the subject susceptible to psychic manipulation.

I cannot remember offhand whether Tefler has said explicitly that the primer is John's DNA or if it has only been strongly implied that that is the case. Whichever is true. I think that DNA is not the primer because the stomach acids would quickly destroy it.

The true primer is some other substance or group of substances contained in the head of the sperm. The fact that the primer and the DNA are found in the same place has mislead the Invictus' crew and Tefler has not yet got to the part of the story where Rachel analyses a sample of John's sperm for unusual compounds and identified where they are to be found.

The production of psychic primer compound(s) would, logically be governed by genes on the third strand of the DNA. If they are active then primer is produced otherwise there is no primer. If, contrary to my thoughts, the DNA is the primer then having these genes active would enable it as the primer. Alyssa would only be a full Progenitor capable of creating thralls of her own if the relevant genes were active. When John gave Alyssa her third DNA strand did he make those genes active or inactive?

The progenitor would not stoop to anything a menial as shaping armour.

Drakkar armour did not have the psychically reactive etherium bought from the Ashanath so it may not have been psychically forged at all. I doubt he supplied Onyxium and forged their armour for Drakkarr. They did not do their own psychic forming. They might threaten an Ashanath to do some forging but they would eat him before he got much done.

Agreed that bsp is not giving his best tech to Drakkar. His ship has better tech.

You Said: "Second, if they expect to go up against the BSP, they need weapons that are effective against the black armor that the Drakkar got from the BSP. The Maliri laser weapons are impressive, but they are exactly the wrong thing to use against that black armor. They need something like the Kirrix neutron beams or the Kintark plasma weapons. Relying on the (very slow) mass drivers as your only non-laser weapon seems like a losing proposition in a fist fight with the BSP."

Yeah, I cannot think the BSP gave the Drakkar the full tech on that. And I agree, with the Kintark plasma weapons being so effective against armor, those would be a worthwhile choice. But, I am thinking an upgraded Nova Lance which can fire more rapidly with even more power (with the upcoming better heat sinks and power cores Tefler has alluded to) will still overload any localized capacitive ability to absorb the energy from them. Coupled with the fact the Invictus is about to be immune to energy weapons (the Raptor already is), it just becomes a contest of armor strength against mass weapons vs agility. The Invictus definitely has the agility edge. And with upgraded Nova Lances, might have the energy weapon edge as well. The only thing missing from that is a set of singularity drivers.

While the shielding levels may not be the same, the shields on the battleship in this chapter were eliminated by the Nova Lances even faster than the energy weapon of BSP was able to accomplish against the Dreadnaut. Also, the current Nova Lances actually cut the Battleship in two, lengthwise, while the BSP energy device only did damage to the barrels of the singularity drivers.

Yes, comparing apples and oranges, I know. But the destructive power between the two is not orders of magnitude different. With upgraded Nova Lances, the Invictus would be on par if not superior...especially with her agility.

About Alyssa as a progenitor. I think all those possibilities of creating male thralls by using vaginal fluid or breast milk will come later once she is fully merged with Athena. Since john has saving Athena from vanishing in his mind and I think he will achieve it in the future. Even if alyssa creates thralls of her own, breast milk will be more acceptable than vaginal fluid.

are we sure they have an agility edge? we've seen the ship twice,and each time the only maneuvering it's done is to leap into a wormhole. So it's possible that its actual abilities are better than we suspect.

one question, how good are the other ships sensors? we know that the invictus sensors have 3 times the range of everyone else. but if the BSP sensors are as good, then when the first encounter happened the invictus couldn't have sneaked up without being noticed. the invictus would have dropped out of warp (or whatever you call it) outside sensor range and then coasted in partially tangentially to the planetary orbit at matched speed so it wouldnt need any major noticeable energy expenditure inside sensor range, but the BSP would have spotted that if ts sensors were upgraded equivalent.

the second time the BSP jumped out, was it down to losing a Thrall in battle? did the extinguishing of Lynton cause chaos and stress through his thrall network, with much the same shock as when Jade was removed for the girls? now it may be much less effect due to the more minor connection we assume that the other side has. but it might be that with this loss he was incapable of fighting

I hope you have submitted the ch to literotica tefler so that we can read it by Friday

I released it on Patreon last night, and I've just been doing some edits based on feedback from there.

Once the last of my editors gets back to me, I'll make the required changes and release it. If he doesn't reply by tomorrow night, then I'll submit the chapter to literotica then.

Tefler

I loved the chapter, but also a little bit disappointed, just a little. I thought for sure that Jade would end up in trouble in the raptor and Murphy would get his chance to be a badass.

I realize this is a harem type story, but we really need a sexy male badass in the story who's a true genuine good guy. Also, is part of the progenitor transformation that the girls can't imagine even being interested in or attracted to anyone else?

Also, back to Murphy or other people like him. For some strange reason I thought for awhile he was physic. It got me thinking, even Terrans that don't know the truth of their own abilities would have a significant advantage over others if they happened to be physic, no? I could easily see someone like that becoming a pilot ace, thinking that they can simply sense a "killer instinct" when really they can predict what someone else is going to do.

Someone who was REALLY good at doing that could even give the raptor and jade a run for their money, even if they had an inferior ship and weapons. We've seen brute power with physic abilities in Alyssa, as well as engineering, strategy and more from the crew. But what we haven't seen yet is someone who is able to use those abilities to predict what others are going to do. And as someone who understands fighting, that would open up all sorts of opportunities in combat. Not having to guard yourself in certain ways if you know nothing's coming that direction. Being able to lure people in. Knowing when to pump the gas when the enemy is flustered. Being able to react to anything seemingly anything at the last moment, giving the appearance of being seemingly invincible. Being able to ignore the problem of creating openings when you attack someone zealously is huge: anytime you expose a weakness the enemy will unknowingly let you know instantly before they can take advantage of it. The only person who could stand up to someone like that other than a better physic is Faye, since he couldn't read her.