Tag Archives: timonium

Accepting the Lance – Chapter 30

Five Light-Hours out from Surebleak Libration Point Five

In which some spacefaring devices have things to say.

And now we know where the Department of the Interior sent its fleet of Old Tech war machines, though I think we’d all been assuming the answer anyway.
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Accepting the Lance – Chapter 26

Surebleak Orbital Influence Zone
Northern L5 Limits

In which Bechimo makes an unusual discovery.

Libration points, or Lagrangian points, are points in a system involving two large orbiting objects, such as a planet and its sun, where the balance of forces means a smaller orbiting object may maintain its position relative to the two larger objects. There are five such points in any given system; the first three tend to be unstable, meaning an object in one of those orbits will drift out of it over time, but the last two are stable when the mass ratio between the two larger objects is greater than a particular size, and it’s not uncommon to find smaller objects orbiting in a planet’s L4 and L5 points. For instance, the regions surrounding Jupiter’s L4 and L5 points are both home to sizeable clusters of asteroids orbiting in sync with the planet.

I don’t believe we’ve encountered Remco before, but we have of course heard the name of Carresens in several different contexts. One of which is that the Carresens family operates a shipyard at Margate, which among other things produced the Free Ship Disian.

Excerpts from Two Lives

In which the fate of the RosaRing is sealed.

The story carefully sticks to local dates to avoid tying itself down too tight, but there is a hint of approximately when it’s set: one of the characters mentions the disruptions caused by astronomical phenomena cutting off the traditional trade routes, which suggests it’s set within the time period of Arin’s Envidaria.
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Neogenesis – Chapter 20 part VI

In which Val Con and Miri offer their solutions.

The distinction Val Con makes between those who count themselves to be Scouts and those who count themselves to be Liaden Scouts is one I was reaching for yesterday but didn’t manage to wrap words around. (And reminds me of Eylot, forcing its pilots to decide whether they were pilots who happened to be Eylotian or Eylotians who happened to be pilots.)

It also, come to think of it, suggests the possibility, if not the certainty, that at some point in the future the Scouts headquartered on Surebleak are going to accept non-Liadens into their ranks. Once you’ve reached the conclusion that being a Scout and being a Liaden are not necessarily linked, it’s an obvious consequence. (There have been hints in that direction already, too, with people mentioning that the Scouts have been providing educational opportunities on Surebleak, usually followed by commenting that Scout teachers always treat their students as prospective Scouts.)
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Neogenesis – Chapter 20 part III

In which Val Con and Miri are not getting much sleep tonight.

Chapter 20 is shaping up to be a long chapter, to the point that I’m almost wondering if I need to subdivide the sections even further. Makes sense, though, since this is the chapter where a whole bunch of plot strands come together, not just from this book but from the four books preceding it.
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Neogenesis – Chapter 19 part I

Tinsori Light

In which Tocohl makes a status report.

I found the jump from where Tolly and Haz were at the end of the previous chapter to where they are when they show up in this one so jarring that I actually flicked back a few pages to make sure I hadn’t accidentally skipped a chapter. Maybe it would have been a short chapter, and amounted to “Everything went according to plan for once”, but it still feels to me like its absence leaves a perceptible gap. Even a sentence or two from Tolly or Haz about what they’d been doing since the end of last chapter would have helped. (Maybe we’ll still get that in an upcoming section, and I just haven’t got to it yet because I stopped to write this entry.)
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The Gathering Edge – Chapter 4

Orbital Aid 370

In which Chernak and Stost arrive at their destination.

Well, that prediction was correct. It probably wasn’t a very difficult prediction, to be fair.
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Dragon Ship – Chapter 41

Bechimo

In which Theo encounters an old friend of the family.

A nice moment of cross-purpose: on hearing the message saying that Spiral Dance is out from Solcintra, Kara and Win Ton both think immediately of Solcintra City on Liad. After all, what other Solcintra is there?

I am not entirely sure what to make of Spiral Dance‘s reappearance. It could be considered as the end of something, with ship and passenger returning to yos’Phelium. But it could also be the forerunner of something: if they can make it through, what else might follow?

(The answer to that might depend on how, exactly, Spiral Dance found its way through. If it was only possible because of having a ssussdriad assisting the navigation, that’s probably an end of it, as there are no sussdriads left in the old universe. On the other hand, if the key event was Bechimo‘s haunted Struven Unit calling out in a way audible to old tech, that means the way is potentially still open – although even then, I suppose it’s unlikely that there’s going to be another ship with a haunted Struven Unit sitting in the wyrd space any time soon.)

It’s not clear how much time has passed for Spiral Dance since the Rising of Solcintra: that its passenger is now a tree and not just a seedling suggests it’s been a while, but the fact that it still fits in its planter shows that it’s been considerably less than the centuries it’s been for everyone else.

Dragon Ship – Chapter 39

Jemiatha’s Jumble Stop

In which Bechimo and his Captain rescue their crew.

Bechimo‘s reserve personalities were mentioned back in Ghost Ship, shortly after Theo first came aboard; Bechimo had just started really wondering if Theo was the right captain, and worried for a while that accepting her and Win Ton might be not only a bad judgement call but the first sign of a mental instability that would end with him being deactivated and replaced by one of the reserves. So there’s a kind of Balance to them being mentioned again now, when he’s come to the conclusion that it was the right call after all.

I am kind of wondering, however, what kind of situations the Builders were expecting Bechimo to get into, that they gave the ship the kind of abilities it demonstrates in this chapter.

Dragon Ship – Chapter 32

Ynsolt’i Approach

In which Ynsolt’i is back off the agenda.

My response to the Department’s claim of being “proper representatives of Liad” is a rude noise, but I wonder how much the Ynsolt’i authorities believe it.

The pilot from Metrose is another addition to the gallery of one-off characters who make an impression in a single brief appearance, the more impressively for appearing only as a voice. (That sentence was slightly trickier to put together than I expected when I began it, because I realised partway through that the pilot also belongs to the set of characters whom the authors have not burdened with gendered pronouns.)