Grrl Power #674 – Space cavalry
Psyche! I bet you thought that would be Sydney coming outta that wormhole, didn’t you?
Ag. So many double sized pages. Hand. Clawlike…
So this is Cora, a character I haven’t drawn for a very long time, probably since before I started the comic. She wasn’t a blue alien the last time. Actually a fair amount about her has changed, but she’s always been Dabbler’s friend.
The anti-mass driver is just a railgun that fires antimatter projectiles, in case you were wondering. I suppose it would be cool if it was a beam that disrupted the Higgs field. I have no idea what would happen if fundamental particles suddenly ceased to have mass. Probably it would be the same as disintegrating something, because everything would just fly off in random directions. Possibly accompanied by massive explosions and radiation? But no. Just antimatter projectiles. Still, that’s multiple levels of suck for whatever you’re targeting. Not only the Götterdämmerungian kinetic energy delivered by something going… let’s say 0.7 C, but also the mutual annihilation of everything in its path.
Okay, here’s a thought. What if you had an antimatter projectile that was multiple projectiles all matryoshkaed inside one another? Like each layer was sort of like a sabot round. The projectile hits something, apocalyptic explosion ensues, but the interior of the projectile continues forward until it hits the next significant piece of matter. Sort of like a 5 stage antimatter bunker buster?
Yeah. That’s what the anti-mass cannon shoots. Seems like bonkers overkill honestly, unless you’re bombarding the Emperor of Mankind in his bunker under the Himalayas.
Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. $1 and up, but feel free to contribute as much as you like.
SuperheroThey're super, thanks for asking!
Meatspace ComicSeriously these are awesome. Check 'em out!
Not UpdatingNo longer updating or only updates sporadically, but definitely worth reading.
SeriouslySeriously you guys. If you like Grrl Power the check these out.
"Mature"Mature subject matter and occasionally something explicit but usually safe. Can't guarantee the ads are safe though.
Dongs Ahoy!Full frontal and backal. Lots of skin, sex on some or all pages, explicit or otherwise.
All this weapon talk reminds me of the best Sci-Fi weapon I’ve ever read about, in John Ringo’s Voyage of the Space Bubble series.
It was a fucking huge mass driver which fired a giant steel bullet with massive velocity. The bullet contained a radioactive core (tungsten?). The idea behind it (probably not science-proof) was that the steel would vaporize on impact, turning into plasma. Once the plasma had expanded its energy (breaching the armor) the core would hit, shattering into thousands of pieces of shrapnel that spark spectacularly if they hit each other. In summary, it punches a hole in your armor using plasma, then “explodes” inside, potentially causing lots of secondary explosions, depending on what it hit.
A big massdriver would be a armor cracker anyway. As core I would say depleted uranium is a good choice.
Actually … depleted uranium would be a horrible choice. Since it doesn’t explode (since it lacks the radiation needed to hit crit-mass), same with tungsten. Which isn’t radioactive (tungsten is used in the Rods of God project because it is hard, durrable, and won’t melt in reentry, as they are dropped from space).
But yeah, a big mass driver would be an armor cracker. They probably used a sci-fi core, since it has a critical mass of “any shrapnel of itself hits other bits of shrapnel of itself”.
Actually, It would exploded, not in a thermal nuclear detonation but in depleted uranium’s own special way. wikipedia “Depleted uranium is favored for the penetrator because it is self-sharpening[34] and flammable.[29] On impact with a hard target, such as an armored vehicle, the nose of the rod fractures in such a way that it remains sharp.[34] The impact and subsequent release of heat energy causes it to ignite.[29] When a DU penetrator reaches the interior of an armored vehicle, it catches fire, often igniting ammunition and fuel, killing the crew and possibly causing the vehicle to explode.”
As with rail guns under development by the US military, there’s no need for any kind of explosive.
The kinetic energy of the round will create an explosion on impact. Not having read the book, I’m not sure why the Tungsten needs to be radioactive since, agreed, the round is not going to go nuclear.
It’s worth noting that elemental tungsten has about the same density as elemental Uranium (Tungsten is slightly higher).
Reading into Yami’s description, the mass driver round is a shattering projectile like a shotgun blast or a hollow-point bullet. Tungsten might react more prettily as it shatters inside a target than Uranium but since the damage is kinetic I’m not sure what the advantage to tungsten is.
I’m also not sure how vaporizing steel provides plasma for armor piercing however. It will create plasma but there’s no indication of how the plasma is directed along the rounds line of flight where it can do the best armor-piercing.
I DID read the book, and the shot is a DU cored Steel(enough steel to make a WW2 DD) round, steel becomes Plasma, cutting through armor, and DU fragments and strikes itself going at relativistic speed, catching fire
Thanks for the correction, it’s been a few months since I last read the book.
Are you sure you’re not thinking of the Posleen series? I recall a 16″ naval gun with a DU Sabot filled with a dollop of antimatter, but the velocity was in low Machs because it was used on planetary surface. That said, I haven’t read Space Bubble in quite some time, it’s possible that it was in there after a few of the upgrades.
All the Ammo in the Posleen series have antimatter in them and are DU. The primary infantry weapon for the Mobile infantry is basically an antimatter grenade launcher that explodes after the fourth or fifth Posleen it has torn through. There by killing most Posleen that are standing around the one that goes boom. Gauss rifle with an DU antimatter cored round leaves a really messy battle field but when you are fighting something that is a ten foot tall centaur alligator with a habit of eating everything in it’s way you want messy.
I recall it being a Relativistic or similar teardrop of DU for the basic unit, but they had antimatter for the ‘powder’ to power the gravity thingy. That’s why they could run the guns off of suit power when they couldn’t resupply.
They did both, they used antimatter as powder when they didn’t have the power system to recharge the weapons, they always had an antimatter core he details it in the first or second book. Back up for the fancy weapon when it can’t run normally.
The Ship based weapon wasn’t ship based it was an area denial weapon designed to be fired from the Shiva tank which used a 16 inch main gun yes it was a rolling battleship on land. The round consisted of 6 or 7 anti matter devices that were dropped into an area over 10 miles. Again centaur alligators that are ten feet tall and like to eat everything, helps to have something that makes them stay away.
If you speed it up enough there is no need for any explosives or antimatter. a B83 thermonuclear warhead with a mass of 1100kg explodes with 1.2 MT TNT(5PJ) that converts 56 grams of mass to energy. If you can put that much energy into a dumb projectile, you will get a very similar result at impact (like meteors do). For 1100kg you would speed it up to only 0.01c. If you go with 0.034 c you only need 100kg. At 0.1 c you are done with 10kg. Einstein and Newton are deadly.
there’s always room for antimatter, nomatter how fast your projectile is!
Let’s say you have a mass driver firing a projectile at as near to light speed as to make little difference (we’re going to be using some big approximations here) so projectile velocity v=c
and compare the kinetic energy in that, to the energy released if an anti-matter projectile performs an annihilation reaction with an equal mass of target from a standing start.
so we’re using kinetic energy (KE) = 1/2MV^2 vs good old E=MC^2
KE = 1/2M(projectile) * v^2
E=M(projectile + target) * c^2
if v^2 = c^2 they cancel, so:
KE = 1/2M
E = M+M = 2M
E=4KE
so assuming a projectile is travelling close to the speed of light, making that projectile out of antimatter delivers an additional 4x that energy to the target. assuming a slower speed (eg 0.1c) the multiplier becomes much bigger – an additional 400x in this case.
Lensmen series by Edward Smith
“There’s a warfleet 3 days aay”
*Several lensmen compile the mental energy of billions of sentient life across thousands or more planets into a focused blast*
*fleet is no more*
Just going to leave this here:
Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest…
Wolfram aka Tungsten is used because it penetrates without the radioactivity and super heating. With the “depleted” uranium it super heats and becomes very hot particles frying all those within a Bolo aka super smart tank. Tungsten is cold to Uranium’s heat. A more humane ammunition and no radioactive debris left.
The use of an antimatter cannon in (most) atmospheres is pretty easy to engineer. Simply fire a high power laser along the round trajectory. A high power laser burst will ionize particles along the path. The particles repel each other for a brief instant leaving a brief vacuum “hole”. This design actually works better for an antiparticle beam cannon, but if you have a antimatter railgun, you might be able to push the round fast enough to exploit the vacuum hole before it closes.
Added bonus, a laser powerful enough to create this effect would do additional damage to the target. Or at least warm up the armor to facilitate antimatter reaction rates. :D
Any laser capable of doing that would render the antimatter projectile redundant.
When dealing with high end weaponry, there is no such thing as redundancy, overkill, excessive force, or too much of a good/ bad thing.
In this case, laser power doesn’t necessarily translate to increased damage, but increased range in atmosphere. As for the power required, I don’t have the math/chemistry/physics to accurately determine what that might be.
However, we are dealing with technologies that have some sort of FTL drives/signalling. We also see that they have power sources compact enough to enable a handheld railgun that can drill a hole in a tank. Plus, lasers have their downside as a weapon. They’re really too clean when it comes to damaging something like a warship. Antimatter? Antimatter is messy. Very, very messy. Why not use both? :D
Probably better off using the antimatter to push a bullet.
I’d have to disagree. If you use antimatter as the propellant, then you have to deal with all the messy stuff, Hard X-rays, gamma, secondary particles, etc… on your end. If you launch antimatter at a target, they have to deal with all that.
Only a reminder: X-ray and gamma are the same thing.
Gamma rays are not Roentgen rays.
Differences Between X-rays and Gamma rays | Difference Between
http://www.differencebetween.net/science/differences-between-x-rays-and-gamma-rays/
Nov 2, 2009 – There are a few more differences between X-rays and Gamma Rays. The key difference is the source: x-rays are emitted by the electrons outside the nucleus, and gamma rays are emitted by the excited nucleus itself. … Gamma-ray photons have the highest energy in the EMR spectrum and their waves have the shortest wavelength.
Just so I understand, the effect you’re talking about is similar to what happens with lightning and thunder…
Or am i completely wrong?
It can also toast bread to the perfect brownness!
Regarding the remark about “disrupting the higgs field”…
Do… not… If the field can be disrupted, it’s meta stable… If it’s meta stable, you do not want to disrupt it. If you do, you have hit the universal self destruct button and the laws of physics will dramatically change across the entire universe in an ever expanding bubble that expands in all directions at the speed of light. Basically as the bubble crosses where you are, the universe will be unable to sustain any form of matter that you are composed of. What’s more, expanding at the speed of light means you have no warning it’s going to happen. You’re just instantly erased from existence.
DO NOT DISRUPT THE HIGGS FIELD!
This. Definitely this.
I actually recently asked a physicist a question on this. Basically wondering if a manipulation of the field or “anti-Higgs” could give a Spaceship zero or negative mass, and remove annoying FTL problem of FTL requiring infinite acceleration, which would give the spaceship infinite mass, requiring infinite fuel just to reac the Speed of Light.
This was his answer.
“First, a bit of clarification. A “field” is simply a set of values in space that can affect particles in it. For example, the electromagnetic field affects charged particles, and photons are simply ripples (or wave packets) that display particle-like properties in the EM field. It seems the Higgs field is a fundamental property of the universe, and not able to be manipulated or warped. A Higgs boson is just a ripple in that field (this is another reason that bosons don’t have anti-particles).
Interestingly, the Higgs field only gives some particles mass. 99% of the masses of fermions comes from the binding energy holding the quarks together. So even if an anti-Higgs boson existed, it wouldn’t do anything to change the mass of most of the universe.”
The most relevant of all formulas should be applied here.
U – H = U. Universe – Humanity = Universe.
It is safe to say that WHATEVER we come up with is completely and utterly unable to affect the Universe in any meaningful manner. There is no “Spacetime” for us to destroy. Actually, there is not even time.
Time is just a concept we invented, so we don´t have to wait half a day for an appointment (ironically it worked out like that anyway when the new fridge arrives “Between 8am and 5pm”),
At the end of the day we are just gnats in the universe. Actually, all of humanity is just one gnat.
A gnat that bases its “theories” about speed, time and the entire universe on another gnat that grew up with real knowledge.
Knowledge like:
“Horse drawn carriages are loud” and “The stars are pretty”
I think the existence of time is independent of living things talking about it.
Sorry to be off topic….
In the new TV series Manifest it’s my theory, that the writers have already invalidated, that the aircraft was in a type of space without a time dimension.
Time didn’t pass for them because there wasn’t any.
Honestly if they shot a bullet like you’re suggesting, and it was just antimatter, wrapped around antimatter.
Then it would not only explode the second it left the canon (if said canon had a way to purge itself of matter, antimatter interactions). But said explosion would likely destroy the ship. That is unless it had some sort of protection from matter / particles / quirks, till it hit something with significant force.
Or it was a regular bomb / device of normal matter, that held said payload within a super dense electromagnetogravitic field (kind of like how they are making Anti-Elements, and Anti-Molecules nowadays).
Although personally.I like Anti-Carbon Bombs. Eradicate every form of carbon within it’s blast radius. No nuclear fall out, no worrying about irradiation, just all life within a certain radius stops being a thing … for a good amount of things in the universe (stars, hydrocarbons, various carbides, organic matter, etc). As well as Reality Annihilation Bombs, which are slamming together Strange Matter (Quirk Matter) and Anti-Strange Matter (Anti Quirk Matter) in a bomb.
The total annihilation of all reality on a quantum level. Not only releasing a metric fuckton of rape, but dispersing all quanta and anti-quanta till the explosion stops. Then the resulting quantum – anti-quantum vacuum is fun to witness as all the surrounding universe gets violently pulled inwards to fill the gap.
And you’d only need a gram of each to make an anti-matter bomb look like a water balloon compared to a Tsar Bomb.
Premature detonation are hardly an insurmountable problem, especially with the levels of tech this setting has established. Just as an example of how it might work, the first layer of the projectile could be a force field generator. We know they exist in this setting, and all the materials for a force field generator would have an antimatter counterpart. Its own shield keeps it safe from normal matter until the field is overwhelmed by a sufficient impact, and the shields just need calibrated so that it can handle impacts with space dust or atmospheres but will fail in the face of something more solid.
Dont worry about prenature detonation. I’m sure it happens to a lot of guys. You were probably just exhausted or something.
maybe not have solid shells per-say, but orbiting layers of anti-matter (sub)atomic particles, acting similarly to how electrons orbit a regular atom.
that would make the described weapon something like an anti-matter turbo-laser firing packets if these anti-matter shells.
since mass-drivers could have bore diameters of a few mm and scale isnt mentioned.
@Tigereye: Actually, no on the Force Field Generator as a particle shell, as they stated. Which I then later address in my comment by stating having a solid state shell (like a normal bomb) that would either contain the bullet they are talking about, or having a simpler payload.
But as the writer stated “A layer of Anti-Matter, wrapped around a layer of Anti-Matter, till you get to a core of Anti-Matter”. Adding more layers of Matter that explodes the second it comes in connect with a particle of any non-Anti Particle type, doesn’t fix the fact that it explodes the second it comes in contact with a world filled with regular Particles.
But yes, if they were sufficiently advanced, they’d have a delivery system not doomed to destroy themselves when they fire it.
@Cy414, No. Just … no. Scientist have already made Anti-Molecules (what you’re talking about), and they get destroyed just as fast outside of a containment unit, as a ball of raw Anti-Matter would.
https://home.cern/about/engineering/storing-antimatter
__________
That said … Turbo-Laser? Something that shoots at the speed of light? Itself being light? And that wouldn’t work. The Laser being non-Anti Particle generation, would blowup the second used. Which would be less horrifying than an Anti-Particle Laser. Generating Anti-Photons, would destroy all matter and the ship included in it’s blast length, and would violently expand to include the ship, planets, stars, enemies, allies, ect. At a rate of 186,282 miles / second.)
But said MAD laser would be able to carry a pure Anti-Matter payload … but being an Anti-Photon Laser would be redundant … especially since you’re raping everything in it’s general direction.
When using an Anti-Matter weapon, a storage device would be needed to trap the payload at least long enough to see it hit it’s target.
turbo lasers, ala starwars are not “lasers” they are plasma bolts, using lasers to ionise the plasma. but yea, anti-matter molecules are pretty close to what i was thinking.
Never going to happen.
I didn´t plan on spamming the comments, but someone who thinks that a gram of anything can destroy the universe deserves his own.
This is not a thing. Not at all. No, nein, njet, nada, non, lie.
No way. If there is any kind of math that supports what you said, that math ist thoroughly WRONG.
Matter/Anti-Matter reactions are not explosive, they instead just fissile. Granted they release a lot of radiation, but an antimatter-bomb would be supremely disappointing, for all the hype sci-fi gives it. An antimatter bullet, would work great for penetrating hulls, but if you have a matter casing around it, then most of it’s mass would cease to exist before it ever reached the other ship.
If you really want a dangerous weapon, try a warp bullet. A bullet that generates it’s own warp field for FTL travel. The hull of the target vessel would warp ; decelerate in the direction of the bullets travel, bending and tearing to do so ; and decay into Cherenkov radiation the moment the bullets warp field intersected with the hull, preventing the bullet itself from ever hitting the ship, so that it just keeps going until it runs out of energy to maintain the warp field and then drops into normal space and decays into Cherenkov radition itself. A warp bullet basically goes right through it’s target and doesn’t stop for roughly a light millisecond. So remember those environmental integrity shields, or your ship is going to be bleeding atmosphere big time…
That is an excellent spaceship design. Kudos.
Thanks. It’s not really in my wheelhouse, but I think it came out okay.
I imagine the green guy sounding like Garrus trying to do a seductive voice, badly.
Sooo…when he’s flirting with Femshep or Tali….
Mean page, but in a good way, but dang I want to know what happened with that warpish thing.
Also, that guy is totally a male whatever Maxima is
But without the super powers underneath.
And we know this how?
Technically it’s speculation, but it’s in comic speculation (by Maxima and Deus), and so given the narrative law of conversation of detail, it’s probably true.
Although I suppose it is possible that Mr Goldilocks was also a super when he got geoded, or that perhaps he’s from a species that had some kind of natural ability similar to whatever it was that Maxima had which attracted the geode in the first place.
That guy is totally a male whatever maxima is
Hmm to stop having mass, most objects would be totally unaffected by the lack of mass. That is, until some force acted upon them… Then they would accelerate to C instantaneously. Wait… The particles are constantly exerting force on each other… SO yeah, the entire object would explode as a wave of cosmic rays traveling at C, anything in sensor range would likely become so irradiated as to not survive. Such a weapon, would only be useful at extremely long range. Fire and GTFO quick…. And if you miss, and hit a star instead…. that quadrant of the galaxy would be dead.
I hope Sydney does not miss the chance to ride on that space ship, man would it be cool to watch her annoying the hell out of the crew. If she finds out later that she missed out a ride on the SSS Enter Prize she is going to be so depressed.
…I can’t tell what is clothing and what is not with these people!
Yeah. Did she lose a few sword fights? Or is that armour?
All her limbs are mechanical.
I want to know more about the item they wear on their neck.
I’m hoping it’s storage for an automatically deploying spacesuit helmet.
… HELMETS HEEHEEHEHEE…
Oh, Oh! I see you still put bubbles around your heads to survive in space, How adorable…
But how you you know those gold collars aren’t actually part of their bodies? I mean, they COULD be…
Except for the green guy, everything except their face (Minus the cheeks) appears to be uniform. He probably has no neck covering because of his gills.
I’d agree with Elfguy here.
These beings are all clearly different species.
However if you look at them, aside from the captain their uniforms are the same (Grey bodysuit from toes to cheeks with a white panel at the front and the gold collar around the neck) with the Captain just having additional gold components.
The gold elements seem to denote rank as the Captain has much more than the others.
I’d wager good money that those bodysuits are much more advanced equivalents of the Space Activity Suit (A skin tight suit that maintains pressure on your body in the event of decompression) and the gold collars deploy emergency helmets with a limited air supply.
Mass drivers that launch ammunition at Relativistic speeds have one GLARING problem.
Over penetration. At stellar ranges .
Fire a .7 c rail gun in Jupiter’s orbit at a ship. Hit the ship. go through the ship.
and keep on going
and going
and going
until you cause a hazard to navigation;
at Proxima Centauri, 6 years later.
Having a significant amount of the the munition made of anti-Matter means it can turn itself into a large burst of angry light in any place along its path of travel that is conveniently empty of non hostiles or full of little targets. So as to not be a hazard to any future navigation.
Also: Railguns that miss the target by a meter or more are useless.
Railgun rounds with proximity fused antimatter explosions… dont worry about near misses. Ever.
Except that ammunition made of Anti-Matter has even worse problems short term than what you described for normal Matter Ammo.
1) It blows up the second it comes in contact with matter. So either the second it leaves the cannon if said canon purges all matter, particles, photons, and non-anti versions of the aforementioned. If it doesn’t, then it blows up as it’s firing within the gun.
2) Said ammunition is insanely short lived. And increasing it’s size increases the damage to ship, crew members, and allies near said firing ship. Since surrounding space is filled with space dust, space debris, non-anti particles, and other things that trigger anti-matter.
3) Said ammunition while not creating “hazards” in the traditional sense, does release radiation, and at higher amounts, dangerous exotic particles, deadly types of radiation, and would tear through radiation shields to friendly and non-friendlies the second used.
(And a Mass Driver couldn’t shoot at Relativistic Speeds. There’s several obvious reasons why. Not including the friction would melt the ammo instantly, and the force of shooting mass at said speeds that would kill the people as fast as using a Death Star.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6-q2edmiGk
Hollow points.
Hmm, did they just miss her? :)
They look to be different species… so are those weird skin tight suites or are they robot bodies with living heads? o.O
Let’s just hope they don’t turn out to be Peridots.
Prepare the intrinsic field separator!
I’ve always preferred the Q 36 Immodium Space Modulator, possibly tipped with an epidermal tissue disruptor, just because.
I realized this some time ago, but the comment about Sidney finding the orbs while diving reminded me. There is a character we haven’t met yet, who knew all about the orbs before Sidney came out at the news conference. Sidney’s buddy. The person she was diving with, who probably trained with her, and possibly paid for the dive trip to the cays Sidney probably couldn’t have afforded on her own. (Then). Otherwise Sidney was scuba diving by herself, the biggest NO! NEVER, EVER! in scuba diving. Sidney is not stupid, and diving alone requires planned stupidity…
The flashback on page #94 indicates she WAS diving alone when she discovered the orbs. Call it narrative necessity rather than planned stupidity. :-)
Given Sydney’s ADD, she may have had a diving buddy but he or she wasn’t watching closely enough and Sydney just wandered away chasing something shiny.
^^ That.
OK, I grant you that possibility.
that is of course if that’s where she ACTUALLY got them… remember her hesitation and the “significant looks” that Zeph and Max had during this scene, in panels one and two? they both believe that there is a slight discrepancy between where she SAID she got them, and where she ACTUALLY got them… all they have to do is figure out the difference…
There’s a fairly clear suggestion of what happened to the previous owner.
We know that when Halo found the orbs, a bunch of powers had already been unlocked (Her starting skills)
We know that the orbs can not be removed from the owner by conventional means.
We also know that the shield is nigh impenetrable and does not allow you to breath on its own.
It’s also a safe bet that nothing earth-shattering happened at the time in that region or Archon would have heard about it (we have seen their monitoring gear)
Logical conclusion: Previous user was exploring a place with a hostile atmosphere in or around Earth (Either the bottom of the ocean or low Earth orbit)
They had the shield up and were unable to drop it, because there was something worse around and like Halo, they didn’t know about the air orb.
They die from lack of air and either fall in to the Florida Keys from orbit or drown in them (Money is on the later)
i think your being a little to limited in the scope of time the orbs could have been sitting there. the orbs are the level of sci-fi tech where their last owner could have died 100s, 1000s or even 100s of 1000s of years ago and just sat there waiting for someone “worthy” to pick them up.
it could have been a literal earth shattering event that killed the last owner it just happened so long ago archon didn’t exist yet.
Yeah, that’s what I said a while back that it could have been the Chicxulub Impact (The one that wiped out the dinosaurs) and the orbs simply have a “Don’t get buried” function that causes them to periodically levitate themselves and repel dust/sediments to keep themselves from being completely buried even when not bound to a user.
i wasn’t going back quite that far but more or less yeah
I’m assuming the orbs makers are also the ones that made the supers and the geode that gave max her powers. so it would have to be within the last 200,000 and 300,000 years or so.
I’m also getting and Atlantis vibe form then (because of were they were found) so I’d put the marker around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago at the mythological destruction of the city/nation/continent. I’d even be willing to speculate that the last owner used the orbs to contain the damage to the city/continent much the same way Sydney did the rage aura.
thus saving the world but losing their life and the orbs to the sea
Rereading #129, it looks to me like she hesitated on Florida, not diving. Trying to protect her buddy? They were diving somewhere they weren’t supposed to be? Off a boat off the coast of Cuba? (Remember when those pages were drawn…) #94 doesn’t mean there was no buddy, you only need to remain in sight of each other, not necessarily touching in good visibility, buddy just wasn’t in the frame.
you know it would be interesting if instead of missing Sydney she ends up saving them form the space squids as well.
i mean either she hasn’t left yet and they go through the wormhole with her, or Sydney comes back just in time to save the ship and the skip out together. i mean it would salve Sydney’s problem of not being able to get back to earth by herself be an interesting story for later.
like not left through it but see the pencil ship open fire on the other ship and go “oh hell no im the hero I need to help” thus cancleign out the wormhole warp and then using hype speed and shield like a kinetic round. probly crew not seeing her show up going “uh did you fire that round?!” nope WTF is that
It’s obvious that Sydney will eventually do the “Cannonball” attack on something, somewhere, now that she can attain Mach 16 against atmospheric friction, and her shield can withstand that level of impact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_(comics)
Anti-Mass Railgun would actually work rather well provided you kept the projectile suspended in the magnetic field all the way from it’s generating mechanism to launch. You do NOT want it touching anything physical. Until it hits what it is shot at. Then we get to watch the fun! From a safe distance.
Zap it’s over!
Good lord, if there’s one saving grace it’s that the idiotic space clothes are unisex. What is it with interstellar civilizations and bad fashion?
Pockets, people! A way to use the bathroom without having to divest oneself the whole damn thing!
1: Fashion sense is relative and fickle.
2: Maybe they have the same amorphous goo type deal Sciona has for an undersuit, and can make openings as needed.
3: See the notes under (TVTropes warning) latex space suit.
I just noticed the color scheme in the crew.
We have a blue female and yellow male. If skin color is a blended inheritance this would lead to a green offspring. Hey you in the pilot seat! Don’t talk back to your mom like that!
We also have a red male. If Cora and he had an offspring, then it would be purple. Who do we know with purple skin that also knows Cora well enough to get her to do a favor?
Genetics doesn’t usually work so simply. While in humans it is true that skin colors tend to be somewhere between the colors of both parents, most traits are usually from one parent or the other. Being that neither is human it’s a safe assumption that in all likely hood, the offspring of those 2 will more than likely be either red or blue. Assuming such reproduction is even possible. It may be Dabbler’s demonic heritage that even makes interspecies breeding possible.
I am thinking the energy signature they are picking up is Sydney’s wormhole, she hasn’t left yet.
” Seems like bonkers overkill honestly, unless you’re bombarding the Emperor of Mankind in his bunker under the Himalayas. ”
Oh, this is just great. Now my secret’s out, and I have to find a new heavily guarded, top secret location from which to conquer the universe. Geez, do you have any idea how much it costs to build these things?
Which minion or henchman spilled the beans anyway? Was it Mike? I bet it was Mike. I never really trusted that guy, but it’s just so hard to find good help these days.
“Activated self-destruct and flies off in pod”
Wonder which ship they are avoiding…
1. Squiddley Screwship.
2. Scoville SuperBubble.
Hmmm
As these are Dabbler’s friends, I refuse on general grounds to believe that this crew is anything but a bunch of galactic space pirates.
… privateers if you so prefer.
SEX pirates. Definitely a bevy of galactic sex pirates.
that would make a good theme for a webcomic.
Its a luxury blockade runner for detirmined sex tourists to whom credits are no object.
Sorry about the complaint, but I guess I’m just getting impatient to see how this resolves. The story is just starting to feel like it’s dragging now.
Everyone’s here talking about scifi weapons and I’m just like *sound of jaw hitting deck and eyes bulging* “AAAAOOOHHHGAAAAAHHHH”
You know it would be totally awesome and funny if when they arrived the entire planet and maybe a section of the solar system has been turned into a warzone between Halo and the Squid beings. (that is one huge ship they must have an army in there….I still wonder who’s the boss)
I just know Halo’s probably going to either try to steal that uge ship so she’s probably going to attack it a few times to figure out how to get inside or if there is anyone else in there…she might also try to blow it up if she has to no way I wouldn’t leave without doing some damage to that thing…Maybe draw her won face with a “Halo was Here!”
God Emperor, it’s spelled God Emperor.
And help arrives just as Sydney gets even more lost.
This is why survival training teaches that you stay in one place when you are lost.
Unless staying in one place would get you killed.
‘Emperor of Mankind in his bunker under the Himalayas’ = Deus?
From DaveB’s blog: “What if you had an antimatter projectile that was multiple projectiles all matryoshkaed inside one another? Like each layer was sort of like a sabot round.”
If a round of anti-matter munitions weren’t enough of “suck” for any target, this would be like onion-layered levels of “super-suck.” But hey! I’m a die-hard advocate of the concept that “There’s no such thing as Overkill simply because there IS such a thing as Underkill.”
Okay, Dora and her crew of Space Playgirl models are pretty cool, but it’s no match for the MaxXST!
Because yes, I ship them.
Unless the antimass driver shoots projectiles that are somehow shielded until it hits its target (assuming, of course, that there’s a way to keep it from exploding the gun immediately)… it seems it’d be a pretty ineffective (and possibly suicidal) weapon, especially in an atmosphere.
While it would work in some places in space with these limitations, one wonders the practicality of even having such weapons.
I think Schlock Mercenary has the most interesting scifi weapons I’ve seen, from their gravy guns to their Long Guns… unless you want to count a “time machine” as one.
I just want Schlock’s “Ominous Hummm” gun.
For the multilayer Antimatter projectile, perhaps each layer has a forcefield generator, powered by the antimatter itself, to encapsulate the next layer. As each layer “Goes off” it destroys the generator, exposing the next layer after a short delay.
…huh? Double-sized – ‘pages’?
Sorry. I was busy staring at ‘double-sized’ – …something else.
Ok. Am I not the only one who wants to see the Anti-matter Railgun fired directly into Achilles face?
Somewhere in ARCHON’s kitchen Dabbler’s porno-sense is tingling.
Humph! Never a Galactic Zonk Raygun when you need one.
Safety off.
Point at portion of the Galaxy you are not standing on.
Pull trigger.
Honestly, I don’t think all the antimatter is necessary when you can fire a significant amount of mass at those speeds. Antimatter will just convert mass to energy, but an object traveling at that speed will undergo fusion with anything it hits converting quite a bit of it’s mass to energy anyway.
I’ve probably linked this before, and most nerds have seen it. But it’s truely a classic, so I’ll link it again.
I fail at html. try again. If that fails, it’s supposed to be the first xkcd what-if titled “Relativistic Baseball”.
It failed.
Also not joining in the space weapon debate, other than to say in one sci-fi game I was in, we weaponised the Improbability Drive tech.
Antimatter slugs? Must be firing slower than 0.87c
Unless ‘anti-mass’ means something with negative mass, which would be … yuck, all kinds of evil destructive. Physics gets strange if you throw negative mass at it, anti-matter creamer made by the low bidder and deployed on powdered donuts would probably be safer.
Is that a golden shiny space elf? Is he any relation to what maxima is?
I too am wondering if Maxima is unknown to herself, half alien of that persons race.