Tag Archives: Liad defense net

Alliance of Equals – Chapter 9

Vivulonj Prosperu

In which patience is a virtue.

Interesting. The scene with Daav is Interlude 9 from Dragon in Exile, only from Daav’s point of view instead of the Uncle’s. Which means this present is after Dragon in Exile‘s main plot line (i.e. the part that had Tolly and Haz in) but contemporaneous with the interlude/subplot. Well, it’s not as if it would be the first Liaden book where the various plot lines travelled at different speeds. The other interesting thing about it is that the empty chamber Daav finds himself in, and gets up to explore, is not real — or, let us say, no more real than the plain he recalls having been on earlier. In the Uncle’s viewpoint, he’s lying in the rebirthing unit the whole time with his eyes closed.

I’m getting really worried about Padi now. If she’d gone ahead with the plan to attack the guard she’d have been in a whole heap more trouble without having achieved any benefit — had she even got as far as thinking about what she planned to do after she’d killed him? (Failure to consider longer-term consequences seems to be a thing with her when she’s upset. Probably an effect of what she did to lock her fears away: if you don’t consider the consequences you don’t need to be frightened of what they might be. But you might also easily do something that solves an immediate problem by causing much worse problems later.)

Ghost Ship – Chapter 12

Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which Clan Korval looks to the future.

Jelaza Kazone is currently housing all the members of the Clan, excepting the children and the two adults who are with them, and they are ten in number. That would be Daav, Val Con, Miri, Pat Rin, Natesa, Shan, Priscilla, Nova, Anthora, and Ren Zel: ten. Doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t know already, but does confirm that there aren’t any extra members of the Clan everybody’s forgotten to mention.

And just when they’re beginning to feel they’ve got their feet under them, in walks Clarence O’Berin, whose presence surely portends something, though whether good or bad remains to be seen.

Saltation – Chapter 41

Arin’s Toss
Volmer

In which Theo is off to Liad sooner than expected.

It’s tempting to speculate, given the coincidence of the deadline, that the Uncle’s rush job has something to do with Korval’s departure from Liad. The trouble is, why would it be a rush job in that case? The Council gave Korval 144 days notice, which is tight for an established clan to gather up all its belongings but plenty of time for a nimble operator to line up a single courier.

Unless, perhaps, Volmer is so far from Liad that by the time news arrives of Korval’s expulsion, hot on the heels of the news of Solcintra being attacked, the 144 days are half over and there’s only just enough time for a courier to hotfot it back to Liad if they leave immediately.

The trouble with that is… well, there’s two problems:

One is that, if you break it down, that means it takes about 70 days for the news to travel from Liad to Volmer, and another 70 days for Theo to travel from Volmer to Liad. (The exact amounts are arguable – for one thing, the news probably travelled somewhat less urgently than Theo, so perhaps the split is more like 85-55 – but not enough to affect the point.) The point is, that means Theo’s dash from Volmer to Liad would last weeks without stopping for food or fuel. And since it’s specified that it consists of five Jumps, that means each Jump would be at least a week in itself. And that just doesn’t seem right.

The second problem is that we already know how far Volmer is from Liad, more or less, and it isn’t that far. We’re told in Agent of Change that Lufkit to Volmer is two days at a reasonable speed, and in Carpe Diem we learn that a suitably motivated pilot can go from Lufkit to Liad in another two days. Even at a comfortable amble – no, put it this way: even if the news travelled from Liad to Volmer by Clutch ship, and then Theo travelled from Volmer to Liad by Clutch ship, the entire round trip would take up only half of the 144 days.

Even if one throws up one’s hands and decides the Uncle’s rush job is just a coincidence, there’s still an issue, because Theo arrived on Volmer within twelve hours of the news that Liad had been attacked; are we to assume that Theo made the trip from Volmer to Liad in a few days in response to news that took months to travel the other direction? Well, perhaps we are; Shan does say in Conflict of Honors that news can take months to travel if it’s left to whoever happens to be going in the right direction instead of sent directly. And, after all, is there anyone on Liad who has any reason to send the news directly to Volmer? (Well, I expect the Uncle has someone keeping an eye on things there. But he could well have received the news quickly and decided to keep it to himself, leaving everyone else on Volmer to find out when the news arrived by a slower and more public channel.)


Tomorrow: Chapter 42 and I Dare Chapter 58. The order in which to read them is thereby left to pilot’s choice.

I Dare – Chapter 57

Day 59
Standard Year 1393

Solcintra
Liad

In which the Council of Clans throws Korval into the briar patch.

The Delm Hedrede who delivers the Council’s judgment here is not the same Delm Hedrede who clashed with Korval thirty years ago in Scout’s Progress – different pronouns – but it does make me wonder if Hedrede has a personal investment in Korval getting booted off the planet.

There’s a neat bit of narrative sleight of hand with the problem of what to do with the dies: the problem is carefully laid out, then just as Val Con is about to suggest a solution, the conversation is interrupted. The reader is left to assume that a solution is found without the authors having to actually come up with one.


Tomorrow and tomorrow: Revisiting old friends and seeing how they’re affected by recent events, in “Misfits” and then the remainder of Saltation.

I Dare – Chapter 55

Solcintra
Liad

In which the Captain acts for the safety of the passengers.

The mode of Ultimate Authority, which is referred to twice in this chapter, has, perhaps unsurprisingly, not come up much before: three times in the series up to this point. Priscilla adopts it briefly when putting Sav Rid Olanek in his place at the end of Conflict of Honors; Commander of Agents is said in Carpe Diem to use it when dealing with his underlings; and Val Con, greeting the Tree in Plan B, places the Tree in the position of ultimate authority.

The fact that it’s used twice in this chapter, and by whom, is the central conflict in a nutshell: the first is Commander of Agents again, and the second is Miri when she takes on the melant’i of Liad’s Captain. And I think it says something that, whereas Miri adopts the mode temporarily and in a situation where she is in fact the duly-appointed ultimate authority until the emergency is resolved, the Commander is not only self-appointed but apparently expects to be regarded as the ultimate authority all the time.

There’s a leap near the end of the chapter that I’ve never been able to follow. After the doomsday weapons are activated, ter’Fendil says he can deactivate them if Val Con gives him the control device, and Val Con does. Then it cuts to another scene, and when it cuts back everybody’s running for their lives and talking about the urgent need to do something before the weapons break out and start killing everybody. Is there something missing, or is it just me missing something?

Carpe Diem – Chapter 49

Liad
Trealla Fantrol

In which the First Speaker of Korval departs Liad in a hurry.

This is a new wrinkle in Nova’s talent: before, when a Memory came upon her, she was stuck in a fixed re-enactment of a past event, but this Memory is aware of and responsive to the circumstances in which it is being Remembered. That makes sense, though, since this is a circumstance in which a fixed re-enactment wouldn’t be very helpful.

The phrase “the children would be off-planet already” is a useful one. Not only does it save the authors the time and space necessary to list the children individually, it leaves them room to later remember an extra child or two whom they might not have thought to mention (such as, for instance, Pat Rin’s heir, who presumably exists but has not yet been introduced).

The Beggar King

In which Daav yos’Phelium and Clarence O’Berin do not become friends.

This story follows close on the heels of “A Choice of Weapons”, with Daav still on the same leave of absence from the Scouts and still not convinced that he will have it in him to sit on Liad and be suitably delm-like when the time comes.

The legitimate front for the Juntavas on Liad is a company called Triplanetary Freight Forwarding; if the name is to be taken literally, I wonder which the other two planets are. (Come to think of it, I wonder if it’s a shout-out to “Doc” Smith.)

Something that struck me on this re-read, with this story coming so soon after several others relating one way and another to the Liaden rules about face-touching: at one point, the luck-for-hire at the casino places her hand on Daav’s face, and he thinks nothing of it except to observe the callouses on her hand. This seems a remarkably cool response after how firm Samay pin’Aker was on the subject of hand-to-face contact in Trade Secret. (This story was, of course, written some considerable time before that one; perhaps the full details of what Liadens could and could not do with their faces were yet unclear.)

Those callouses, though, are said to be the same as the callouses on Daav’s own hands, which suggests that Zara Chance is herself a Scout, or more likely a former Scout. I wonder if she’s working for the same people as that other seductive former Scout we encountered not so long ago.

Tomorrow: Local Custom