Tag Archives: Tactical Defense Pod 78

Ghost Ship – Chapter 37

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Bechimo
Surebleak System

In which the Department of the Interior have left a few nasty surprises.

I’m not sure what it is that Clarence finds amusing about Theo’s observation on his piloting, but I suspect it might be the inherent incongruity of being given encouraging feedback by someone who wasn’t yet born when he achieved his first class license. It could also be that he’s aware that she’s not giving him a complete answer about what she was thinking, since the part she does tell him doesn’t account for the in-drawing of breath that attracted his attention in the first place.

The location of Pod 78 does seem rather unfortunate, and raises again the still-unanswered question of what it’s doing there in the first place.

Ghost Ship – Chapter 29

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Jelaza Kazone
Surebleak

In which Theo meets more relatives.

It occurs to me that, as out-of-place as Kareen might have seemed as an expert on the Code in a family widely seen as a Code unto themselves, it pales next to being an expert on the Liaden Code of Proper Conduct in a family that’s never going to set foot on Liad again. That’s going to be something she’s going to need to work out for herself – is she a Liaden in exile, upholding the standards of Proper Conduct among rag-mannered barbarians, or would she be truer to herself if she set herself with equal diligence to learning what’s proper to her new situation?

(The rest of the family, I think, has less of an adjustment, because they’re pilots and familiar, at least in principle, with the variation of local custom. And there’s always been that level on which Korval always considered itself not really Liaden, just temporarily resident on Liad.)

There’s a lot of foreshadowing going on: mysterious people about on mysterious jobs, dubious ships in orbit, and so on. Some of it will doubtless come out at the “housewarming party”; that, dramatically speaking, is what important diplomatic events are for.

Ghost Ship – Chapter 14

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Arin’s Toss
In Transit

In which the Uncle has a job for Theo and the Colonel has a job for Clarence.

I’m still suspicious about what the Uncle is up to. Giving Theo a course change while she’s en route means that anybody who might have been paying attention to the flight plan she filed won’t know about her side trip, and might suggest that he has reason to suspect that somebody is paying such attention. The amendment won’t do anything to help Theo evade pursuit, though, since it still ends with her arriving at Ploster in the time frame that the Department is expecting her to arrive. More likely is that the Uncle is only interested in helping himself, and hiding his interest in whatever might be waiting at Tokeo.

We were told in the first chapter of this book how long Bechimo has been on the lam, so the mention of the tales being “older than the Plan” might give us a limit on how old the Department is. Or it might just mean that there have always been ghost ship tales, and in Bechimo‘s case they just happen to be true. In any case, it’s not much of a limit, since it’s far enough back to comfortably include every mention in the prequels of what might be the Department. (Although, since we’re doing comparisons, it still makes Bechimo a couple of centuries younger than Jeeves, and a couple more centuries younger than Edger.)

I’m a mite puzzled by Max, the tug pilot with the colourful hair. Pat Rin’s round-up of pilots in I Dare included Surebleak Port’s tug pilot with colourful hair, but her name was Dostie Welsin.

Ghost Ship – Chapter 10

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Spaceport Gondola
Gondola

In which old machines make their presence felt.

That’s the trouble with signing on with the Uncle. On the up side, he has an interest in old things that’s useful for dealing with the Bechimo situation. On the down side, that same interest means that associating with him is not exactly keeping a low profile when it comes to certain other people who have an interest in old things like Bechimo.

When Priscilla was trying to find out about Tactical Defense Pod 77, Pod 78 was the only other one of the series listed as still active, with a cryptic notation she didn’t have time to follow up at the time.

Plan B – Chapter 33

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War Zone

In which there is a battle for Lytaxin.

Of course the Tree is at the centre of the protected area. But I don’t think that means that Erob is not important to Korval, or that its inclusion in the protection is only incidental, only that the Tree is the most valuable of all the valuable things Korval sought to protect. Considered rightly, I think, it says how much honor Korval did Erob by giving them a Tree; it shows that a Tree is no mere ornament, but a thing which Korval is obliged to protect for as long as it stands, and there are many clans that Korval would not choose to allow to benefit from such protection, even incidentally.

This chapter sees the flowering of seeds planted near the beginning of this novel, or even earlier. The development of the Val Con and Miri’s lifemate bond is one of the more obvious. Another is Pod 77’s attack on the Yxtrang battleship, which uses a chain of events Nelirikk tried to point out, and was ignored, back when he was still Nelirikk No-Troop.

Plan B – Chapter 30

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Erob’s Boundary
War Zone

In which Val Con has a plan which is too audacious to fail.

Over the course of this book, I’ve been having trouble figuring out what it means for a Liaden to be one of “the line direct”. Earlier, Nova said that Miri’s heirloom showed her grandmother was one of the line direct and that would make her easier to identify, and I thought maybe that meant the line direct was whichever family line a clan’s delm was chosen from: Line Tiazan in Miri’s case, or Line yos’Phelium in Korval. But here is Shan counting himself and Priscilla as members of the line direct, so at least in Korval’s case it’s not just yos’Phelium.

But now that I’m thinking about it, I recall a scene back in Scout’s Progress where the term is used to distinguish between someone who might wear Korval’s crest because they’re actually a member of the clan and someone who might wear Korval’s crest because they’re an employee in one of Korval’s businesses. So, I guess that’s what it means, and that does fit the bit with Miri’s heirloom: knowing that her ancestor was an actual member of Clan Erob and not just someone who happened to work for them at some point would make it easier to narrow down who she is. (I’m not sure I see the usefulness of the concept in general: wouldn’t every person be in the line direct of their own clan? But then again, Liadens don’t really do “in general”; there’s always a context. Whenever a Liaden says “the line direct”, the meaning would always be outlined by who’s speaking, who they’re speaking to, and what hats they’re wearing.)