Tag Archives: Ckrakec Yxtrang

Plan B – Chapter 15

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Erob’s Hold
Freeze-Dry Prison

In which the Lytaxin Combined Forces gain a new recruit.

Val Con reporting Nelirikk as an example of a “potentially sapient race” is one of my favourite moments in a chapter with many excellent moments.

Incidentally, Val Con’s account of their first meeting confirms that he held the rank of captain before being promoted to commander, though that still seems to me backward from the way I’m used to seeing ranks work. Come to think of it, the same thing is visible this chapter with the mercs — Commander Carmody outranks Captain Robertson — but I don’t think I ever paid that much attention before because I figured a merc unit might use whatever ranks it likes, and it makes sense for Suzuki and Jase to be the Commanders when they’re the ones in command of the unit. For that matter, it’s been mentioned in the past that the individual in command of the Scouts is the Scout Commander, which is presumably different from being a scout with the rank of Commander. At this point, I’m about ready to just throw up my hands and go on to a less confusing subject.

The name of Nelirikk’s “toy”, the Shibjela, calls back (or forward, if one is reading in publication order) to a weapon called a “shib” that Jela carries in Crystal Soldier. The two weapons don’t actually seem very similar beyond being worn, contrary to their names, concealed in the belt; Jela’s shib is described as more like a whip, with a flexible ceramic cutting edge that can slice through bone. Perhaps it was the product of old technology since lost, or perhaps what was lost was a detailed description of what it actually was, and either way the Shibjela is somebody’s best attempt to recontruct it with the knowledge and technology available.

I did wonder briefly if the medic named Chen, who comes to attend to Nelirikk at the end of this chapter, was the same person as “Doc Tien”, who saw to him when he was first brought in, give or take someone’s attempt to pronounce a name from an unfamiliar culture. But Chen is male and Tien was female, so that’s unlikely.

I wonder what it says about the Yxtrang worldview that they have one God of Quartermasters but multiple Gods of Irony.

Agent of Change – Chapter 25

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In which Val Con declines to surrender to the Yxtrang.

I’m not sure how to picture the spin that Val Con applies to the yacht. Spinning around a central axis, perpendicular to the motion of the yacht? Tumbling end over end? Neither of those quite match all the other things that are going on at the same time.

A belated observation: when the Yxtrang first attacked the yacht, their scans reported three people on board, but Miri and Val Con only found one body. If Val Con’s right about the dead guy being a smuggler, it’s most likely that the other two were colleagues, rather than any of the family members he was carrying around photos of; and the fact that he was carrying around photos of his family adds to the likelihood that they were off somewhere far away. At least, this is what I am telling myself; given some of the threats the Yxtrang Commander utters in this chapter, I don’t like to consider the possibility that their previous victims included women and children.

We’re back in the land of short chapters which indicate increased pace if one reads them all at once but drag things out when one reads one chapter per day.

…which is why, presumably, my notes indicate that tomorrow I will be covering both Chapter Twenty-Six and the Epilogue in a single entry.

(And then we will be going straight on to the second chapter of Carpe Diem, since the first chapter is basically a repeat of this one, slightly reworded, with a few bits abridged and a couple of additions that don’t need an entire entry to cover. The more significant one is the addition of a dateline establishing that this scene takes in “Second Quadrant: Ramal Sector”.)