Grrl Power #676 – Double Death Star?
I’ve had the idea of this station in my head for a long time. Now that I’ve drawn it I realize it looks more than a little bit like Apokolips, but the portals on Fracture Station aren’t… well, I’m not sure what the big fire pits are for on Apokolips, but on Fracture Station, they’re fleet sized Stargates/wormholes. (I’m sure the fire pits on Apokolips were just something cool looking that Jack Kirby drew to look cool and a writer had to backfill their purpose.)
Of course I imagined it with about 1000 times the fidelity of what I’m capable of drawing. Here’s an amazing fan render of Cybertron from a guy over at Artstation. So imagine, like… lots more detail I guess. Fracture Station is basically a moon sized city and shipping port. Sydney will get and give more information about it on the next few pages obviously.
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.
DaveB set us up with a nice little seek-and-find game here. How many spaceship designs can you identify? So far I see The Lexx, some wedge shaped things that could be from Star Wars, a silhouette that has an Enterprise look to it, another silhouette that could be the Liberator from Blake’s Seven, and something with a passing resemblance to The Heart Of Gold from Hitchhikers.
There’s also a Go’uald Mothership and a Colonial Battlestar.
I also spotted Lexx and, yes, the Traveler in the lower right quadrant.
I think I see the mothership from Homeworld Cataclysm (on the left, looks like it has a wide front end and back end but nothing in the middle) but I don’t see the Lexx.
Where’s my favorite planet-eating wingless dragonfly? Are you guys saying it looks different because it isn’t Lexx, but “Little Lexx” (born of the giant planet-destroyer and a normal Earth dragonfly) just grown up (The Lexx did tell Waste of Skin that he’s ‘still growing’ when Tweed Man complained about the decor changing.) or is it the first one?
You can see The Lexx just about to enter the main portal, unlike the other ships it dos not have the stars as a background so possibly more difficult to spot
Thanks, Guesticus.
Pretty sure Dave drew that just for me (I mean it isn’t like I didn’t constantly reference it over the years) but even if that’s not the case, I’m telling myself it is. Okay catching up to current.
The Goa’uld pyramids are called Haa’taks. Or something like that. Look, I don’t read/write ancient Egyptian, okay?
There seems to be a flying pyramid from Star Gate.
And the yellow sphere on legs thing remionds me of an old comic I read in the eighties, that explored Daniken’s “aliens as gods”. But that one is so obscure, I’m pretty sure I’m wrong.
What’s on the other end of those light beams? More than death star, it reminds me of the star forge…
That’s what the pyramid is! It was driving me nuts, I knew I should know it, but I just drew a blank on the dang thing.
I think that is firefly on the top left
At this scale, a Firefly like Serenity would be a barely visible dot. I still haven’t spotted the Lexx…the Lexx should be easily the most visible object at this scale, given its size.
just below the portal on the front right
Depends on how far away it is. Remember that these things aren’t going to all be stacked perfectly vertically with respect to Sydney.
ew, and that may be a Zentradi ship on the bottom right!
Flying pyramid probably isn’t from StarGate… it’s
HEY DAVE IS THAT FLYING PYRAMID FROM KUNG POW ENTER THE FIST?
(Monty Python ending song from Meaning of Life plays in the comments section)
If you mean the spherical ship in the top left with the 3 pylons I think that’s the Titan from the movie Titan A.E.
There’s one that reminds me of an Amarr Apoc (just above the Enterprise), I wonder if Dave ever played Eve Online?
I thought so to. And the one below and right has a certain Caldari look to it.
Hard to be sure though, I hope Dave releases a key to the ships!
it could also be a covenant cruiser from halo above the starfleet ship. the silhouette matches that too
1 or 2 star destroyers, USS Enterprise battlestar Galactica seems to be there as well,almost sure Tardis is one of shapes (of not yet named ones)
There’s also a Phoenix-class (think Spirit of Fire) from Halo on the left I think
For this one in panel #1 today, I’m getting more of a vibe to be expecting seeing Shadowseid (a being of near god-like power) flying out from his home planet of Apalca-Lisp (Shadowseid has a face like an alpalca & he talks with a lisp) to steal her Orbs to power his Infinity Belt (which just happens to have 7 places open to put them).
Oooops, sorry…Panel #3.
I want to say I see a Halcyon-class cruiser (Pillar of Autumn from Halo ), but it *could* be the Sulaco out of Aliens…
What’s the guitar ship? It looks awfully familiar, but I can’t place it. Not Daft Punk or Boston.
Sadly, no Red Dwarf.
It is likely the one from The Darkness’s “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” music video.
What? No Red Dwarf? I am disappointed, it even overshadows being impressed that Lexx is there.
Well, there’s Earthling Cruiser from Star Control with it’s four nacelles.
darn! beat me to it! I mean, the front part of it is a little more diamond shaped than DaveB seems to have drawn it, and the nacelles should be more swept back, so it COULD be a different ship, but… almost a dead ringer
Thanks, I was trying to remember what game that one was from.
> something with a passing resemblance to The Heart Of Gold from Hitchhikers.
Which HoG, the round one from the film, the tennis shoe-shaped one from the novels, or the sort-of shoe shaped, sort of vibrator-shaped one from the TV series?
I think I see a Romulan Warbird cruiser just above the classic Enterprise silhouette on the left.
Top right I see this khaki/grey shape that reminds me of a Peacekeeper Cruiser/Carrier from Farscape.
Lower on the right there is an almost black shape just above the ISDs that reminds me of the Super-Super Star Destroyer belonging to the Palpatine clone from Star Wars Legends. The one with the Death Star Laser in its prow.
I am sure I can also see the Dark Star from John Carpenters film as well.
It may be a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but at least it looks like the sort of place Sydney can find a bite to eat. All she needs to do is find someplace that will accept Earthican money. Somehow I wouldn’t be all that surprised when she finds a place that accepts her VISA card. Those things work everywhere.
Before she has to use her VISA card she’ll try the Googley Eyes from her craft supplies.
Hey, the large ones should be worth 500 yeets.
1. Your comment wins this entire page. Hands/tentacles/flippers/claws down, wins. Thank you.
2. Large googly eyes (of the sort pasted to the skull mask of the Periwinkle Butt Sniffer Stupid Tolls name fame) are actually currently worth 2,417 Yeets.
3. Within 12 minutes of her arrival, before she can finish the original price negotiation, that value will rise by over 40,000 when the news media find out what Sydney did to an unauthorized deathsquid squad all on her lonesome.
4. She will purchase a very tasty, and very spicy meal for nearly 2,000 Yeets.
5. 41,357 of her Yeets will be confiscated to pay for the damages left by the last wielder of the orbs.
6. Sydney will not have enough Yeets left over after her meal & her past-orbs-wielder fines to purchase seed packets for growing the new fast-growing superhot pepperoid she got to eat.
7. This abject failure to purchase, take home, & grow her own pepperoid saves the Earth from being overrun by superfast growing odiferously toxic pepperoid vines, which would’ve been even worse than living downwind of the main Sriracha production plant in Irwindale, California by a factor of about 7,000,000.
8. Sydney mourns, and eats plain boring Unmaker-seasoned food at Fusion.
the portion of the battle in which the Periwinkle Butt-Sniffer gets PWN’D is played in the main entertainment module on loop…through You-Tube, to hilarious chuckles and people chanting ‘Meme! Meme! Meme! Meme!’
If it’s the size of berths moon and solidly inhabited, it’s got every space for every human who ever lived. You can fit hundreds of trillions of people in a space that big.
It looks like 99% of that sphere is containment and whatever it is that it’s containing.
That remaining 1% would be enough city space for milions of persons.
70 percent of earth is covered in water, most of the landmass is Antarctica, Siberia, Sahara, ect. Population seven billion and growing. If that thing is the size of earths moon it’s got a potential surface population of billions. North America would fit between those portal gates.
Lunar diameter: 3474 km
Lunar circumference: 10,921 km
Half lunar circumference: 5,460 km
North American continental span (New York to San Francisco): 4139 km
…. sooo … while I won’t say that billions of humans couldn’t live in the something-under-9.478 million square km of surface area that said diameter represents (7 billion, evenly spread out, would result in about half an acre each), and I absolutely agree that the volume (just shy of 22 billion cubic km) would house a hell of a lot (3.1 cubic km per each of 7 billion people), just … don’t forget how big land masses on Earth are, or how small Luna really is in comparison.
Just by looking at the image, I’d easily give up 80% of that volume to gate engineering and transit space. 4.39 billion cubic km is still a lot of space, though …
It’s gotta work better than Ford Prefect’s American Express card did…
Was it rejected or hit with 900% service fees?
He got throttled by a disembodied arm while a nasty vulture-like bird clawed at his shoulder.
(OK, technically, that happened a little while later, when he asked for bar credit. The bartender simply told him that he had no idea what that dumb looking piece of plastic was. Ford ended up resorting to ‘paying’ his bill – which is described as resembling a military budget for a nation in the grip of an arms race – with a promise to give them a good write-up in the Guide.
Cool, and it looks like her little icon too…
Last panel is beautifully drawn.
Yes, and she should video this entire experience.
I love the little detail of weightless hair after she’s let go of the flight orb
Oh hey, that’s… clever. That suggests that while it lets her fly, it makes her body act as though she was… under her “home” gravity while letting her fly? That’s really confusing.
I’m glad she didn’t do a selfie. :D
Give her a minute…
Now if it transforms into a massive robot and has the voice of Orson Welles… SOLD!
Let’s hope the planet wreckers didn’t track Sydney here… although maybe there’s enough tough space defenders to make them regret any attack here… or just make them call another two gigs-ships
Coruscant?
Or just another JumpPort truck stop?
Cue the Truckstop scene from Spaceballs, complete with singing chestburster.
Check please!
Considering the numbers and types of different ships, this is probably a Neutral Zone, any violence will be dealt with down to the sub-atomic particle levels!!
The captain just said you can’t track anyone using an aetherium gateway
No, Cora said they can’t be tracked once they close, which is why they had to be quick
More importantly, she didn’t want the Squiddley’s from tracking them
But she jumped half a planet away from the squids, so they didn’t see her warp
As she emphasized the fact Sydney’s gate left no traces, I think it is same to assume the FTL technology used in her ship does leaves traces that could be used to track them.
Actually… with a name like “the Fracture” and all those portals I’m thinking this might actually be a fracture point in the universe that they’ve tapped into and harnessed for travel purposes. Maybe something used by planets without serious FTL tech or some kind of efficiency to save whatever fuels they use for FTL.
It’s a fracture in the SF-universes where you can cross from one SF-universe to another. Special attractions are the cagefights (Friday specials are Cybermen versus Cylons, and Kzinti versus Wookie) and the Draco Tavern “Where everybody knows your species”.
What? Not a Callahan’s franchise?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callahan%27s_Crosstime_Saloon
Don’t be silly, you two. It’s obviously The Gallimaufry. Don’t forget to stop off at Velvet Fist for a free… greeting. :-)
Note that they’ve just re-opened the portal to Cynosure, so remember to pick up you free drink voucher for a drink at Munden’s Bar!
NO TOURBOTS!
That would be awesome to see Sydney meet Justin, the Mick of Time.
Yeah, Justin IS his real name:
“When I was born,” he said, “I was known as Justin.”
~Mike Callahan; Callahan’s Secret
I like that theory. It could be that the fracture in space/time is the blue thing extending out past the two poles, the arm like contraptions on the poles are what hold the station in place relative to the fracture, and the various portals are somewhat akin to lenses that focus pathways through the fracture to established destinations. That large hatch like area could actually be a boarded over portal that leads to someplace we don’t talk about anymore.
I like this idea – the image immediately reminded me of a pulsar spitting twin pillars of energy. This could easily be a Dyson sphere, harnessing energy for wormgates and venting the waste radiation energy (symmetrically to maintain position).
Which NASA has been telling us is just x-ray radiation, but somewhere in a government basement a team without sufficient security clearance for Archon-level support has been trying for decades to figure out what’s really happening. There is an undercover alien on the team filming them going nuts with increasingly wild theories, and broadcasting the highlights to the Hypernet News Network for a popular reality/comedy show.
The name Fracture makes me think that it’s built around a Tannhauser gate (a fault in the space-time continuum where two normally distant points of space touch one another).
What if it’s a dyson sphere for the use of hyperspeed jump-starting?
Or a Dyson ball, for hyperspeed vacuuming around corners!
That would explain the attacking Kzinti…
It’s just the nickname the place picked because all the floors are really slippery.
About the vibe I am getting off of it.
Also won’t doubt its also a toll bridge to interstellar travel.
so they built a shell around the Manticore Wormhole Junction?
I cant wait for monday still dying to know what that last orb can do
It occurred to me while reading this page that it could be translation. If Sydney is going to learn about the station in the next few pages, is something going to be speaking English? Or will the last or finally show it’s stuff?
Orb*
That feels like something the truesight orb would do.
Vision/understanding
Yes. I’m expecting Holo Halo to speak and understand Galactic.
Dave would put her English dialog in a speech bubble pointed at real Sydney, and
her holographic projection would have a speech bubble with…???
Weird symbols or phonetic equivalent?
Break out the pictionaray peeps. It’s amazing how well you can communicate by pantomime only.
Now if we can get a Lovely Angels cameo when Sydney boards the station it’ll be fine.
The Lovely Angels (aka: the Dirty Pair) AND the Mighty Halo at the same location at the same time? Welp, there goes any insurance the Fracture had. :-)
It’s not our fault!
Administrator: Ah… Sydney Scoville, Orb Operator of the Telluric Silicate Planet designate: Earth. Welcome!
Sydney: What’s an “telorac selacape”?.. Wait, HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME!?!
Administrator: We have psychological evaluations on all our Operators given to us by the Orbs via a brain-scan that gives all the information you posses, which includes your name, amongst other things… Can’t have derange criminals possessing all that power now, can we?
Sydney: What is this place?..
Administrator: It is the Orb Union’s Central Hub.
Sydney: *Gives Blank Stare*
Administrator: *Annoyed* *Searches through Sydney’s profile* *Gives dull, annoyed response* You basically the real-life equivalent of a “Green Lantern”. *Mumbles to himself* What the @^$@$% that is…
Sydney: *Commence Squeeing in 3… 2… 1…*
Now that would be great if the Administrator could give Sydney of the Operating Manual for those Orbs, wouldn’t it? Of course, he’ll probably download it to her pipboy, but just like Sydney’s luck, he’ll forget to run a translator (based from her psych eval) on it before downloading so it’ll still be unreadable.
Dabbler could always translate
That wouldn’t do much good for now, would it? Dabbler’s not here…
;)
She’d just shrink herself and forget the manual when she re-enlarged.
Greatest American Hero Reference FTW.
You win all the internets.
Believe it or not
she’s cursing on air
never thought
she could feel
so Squee-ee-ee!
Flying away with no wing and no prayer
who could it be?
Believe it or not
It’s Sydney!
« +1 »
This theme song rewrite is proof that the comment section needs the ability to give posts a thumbs up.
how about the fact that the song (or at least that part) was catchy enough to be easily recalled by people after 4 DECADES
Well it definitely outed me as an old geezer.
Ya get used to it. I’m a part of the ‘Old Fogie’s Club” myself.
Cute as that is, I must again stress that *Dabbler has no clue what the orbs are and had never seen anything like them*. They are definitely not commonplace among an elite league of galactic law enforcers. If this place the Causeway took her was a place Cora didn’t recognize, it would be one thing. But the Fracture is basically a hyperspace junction and truck stop from the sound of it. Just an easy way to get to new places since the orbs only seem to let you fast travel to favorited destinations.
I thouroughly expect and/or hope to see Phineas and Ferb running the place, with the shake your asteroid song playing in the background
Actually, the orbs have complete travel capabilities, but Sydney can’t figure out the navigation controls (The 4D Space Calculus wormhole display that came up when she activated the FTL function) and thus is limited to the Favorites List.
It does however mean the orbs last user was around while that station existed for it to be in the bookmarks. So if the station is only 500yrs old or such, it gives a datum on the possible age of the orbs.
unless its one of those 10,000+ year old predecease stations that Sci-fi is littered with. where no one knows who made it but archeologist say it was lost and found at least three times over its life time.
Will Sydney get upset upon learning the real truth of that Fracture Station!?
not to nitpick, but if she’s taking a pic through a smartphone, why is she shutting an eye???
I see people do this all the time.Totally pointless to close an eye when using your phone’s screen as the viewfinder, but somehow people still do it.
Maybe it’s easier to look at things that are close up through only the unbroken lens of her glasses?
Ah, correction there, forgot which eye was closed when I typed that.
Maybe the broken lens is making neat prism flare effects?
She’s actually looking through the broken lens (unless that was what you meant)
Autonomic brain-memory of using a real camera (yes, there are some people still alive who remember using, and still use, those archaic recording devices)
Or she’s winking… Some people wink a lot with a particular eye (not necessarily their dominant one, either!)
Orrrrrrr…she just got a strand of free-floating bangs near her lashes and is squinting to keep it out of her actual eye while taking the picture, then can put the phone away, brush back her hair, and grab the flight orb…
Young-uns these days just don’t appreciate how easy they have it. I remember filming events in Super-8mm movie film (heck, lots of them don’t even know nothin’ about Betamax tapes for video either!) & listening to my music on 8-track tapes.
Want to use a spare cane, or did you bring your own, as we sit here yelling at them durn kids to get off of our lawn? :D
Oh you’re lucky. YOU didn’t have to keep winding the victrola.
I was going to suggest this myself, but apparently it’s a bad habit? (according to a recent photography class I took, the teacher suggested having both eyes open while using a camera, which feels weird)
Annnd my comment got posted in the wrong location.
We had it tough. But you try telling that to kids these days, and they won’t believe you.
Not quite, but I did have to remember to make sure that I got the tape reels secured before I listened to some of my dad’s music. After all, I didn’t want to have to try re-winding the tape back on the reel if it fell off the sindle & rolled across the floor. He had other music also, on 78 rpm records.
Heck, for that matter, I saw JFK get shot & Neil Armstrong step foot on the moon, but I was a bit too young at the time to understand the significance of it.
“Betamax”? Self-contained tape cartridge that was already threaded? You had it easy, when I was in A/V club all we had for video was one of those Ampex 2 inch reel tape machines.
Do Notte Buye Betamacks – Agnes Nutter
My family had a BetaMax once. A big professional-looking camera, and the recoder/player that could be split in two.(The cassette part was carried in a shoulderbag and connected to the camera when filming)
I have a couple of 8mm cameras(the type that uses 16mm film and you film on it twice, along both edges, then split it after processing) and have B/W film for it. But I’m not going to film anything… until I manage to successfully spool film onto a processing rum for 16mm film.(Got a Russian model on eBay)
8track was luckily never popular here in Europe. We got cassettes we could record onto instead…
My main camera these days is the ONDU OnduRama 17×6. It’s a panoramic pinhole camera(f=225) with a 130degree view.
No viewfinder, just lines lasered onto the top and side. The shutter is a piece of wood.
Each negative is 170x60mm and I get 4 of those onto a 120 film.
My skills with it is kind of pants, but it’s fun.
Hey, actual cameras are still useful. Phone cameras are good, but they aren’t _good_.
And not much beats being able to physically hold a photo in your hands and pass them around friends and family :D
Unless someone wipes or takes her phone away, I think Sydney’s going to bring back lots of pictures that’s going to have the US military literally drooling all over!
considering she’s a living hyperdrive, I think loosing her phone isn’t a problem now
I still think it’s more a Transwarp conduit that a warp drive
And every one will be a selfie.
I was just pondering that Sydney is probably going to bring back more info on whats ‘out there’ than Dabbler has had the inclination to share with the natives.
Well, one native is being an accidental tourist now, so it’s not like Dabbler could tell her to shut up about it.
I’m thinking when Syd gets back Dabbler’s gonna be stuck talking with ARC-Light/Dark about what races Syd saw and Dabbler will give them details they didn’t want like ‘Gzorbioan- 6 genitals but all only about a quintar long; Latop-love going in one orifice and out the other…’
So what, she can always just jump here again and retake that picture.
Or go there again with a proper first contact team.
And now I’m picturing Syd with an armed team straight out of SG-1 yelling “I’M BACK BI**HES!”
and a bunch of aliens just go “SYD!” like Cheers did “NORM!”
hmmmm now I’m thinking the unknown orb is a translator, but maybe that might’ve come up with Dabbler earlier
Maybe, but depending on the series translators can be fickle things that can be screwed up usually by things like “the intent of the speaker”, “cultural and mental references of the listener”, and “proper nouns”.
Basically you could never have a perfect machine translator, you’d need a full AI that knew the culture and such of both languages.
Which is exactly what most automatic translators are in Sci-Fi.
Except even with that you couldn’t do it in real time, you’d need to wait until they finished their thought to translate it. In some cases you’d need to wait a while to see how context changes it.
Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel. One of the best ST:TNG episodes, in my opinion.
Yes, the need for a massive interstellar database of each species and the sub-cultures of each species and the specifics of their language that the translators are connected to is a must for instant communication on a diplomatic or multi-species location.
It is always important to not simply have direct translations but understand context and conceptual equals *we see this when trying to dub anime that metaphors and puns don’t translate well, and even nouns…how often have you seen a Japanese movie dubbing the word “star” rather than “planet” because the people translating it don’t seem to understand the same word is used for both in Japanese and the context of the conversation would say which. Same issue can arise when purely verbal and dealing with homonyms.
With aliens it gets significantly more complicated with the language variants *infra sonic, ultra sonic, thermal pulses along with vibrations, chromataphore communication, ect…
But in the end even at its simplest a good translator means the difference between
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news”
and
“I am unhappily pregnant with new evil”
In the 60s a test of automatically translating Russian to English was tested.
“Out of sight, out of mind.” was translated to Russian then back to English.
It came out “Invisible insanity. “
There was one where “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” translated to “the vodka is strong and the steak is rare”. Makes me wonder if they taught the translator only using Russian cliches ;)
The translation works either way if you’re carrying a chest burster internally…
Let’s just hope she doesn’t let go of her shield orb in space by mistake. That would be a really pointless and gruesome death…
It would be painful but not fast. She can probably regrab the shield and air orbs in time.
To avoid dying. Healthy to lungs or ears it is not.
It depends on whether she’s inhaling or exhaling at the time, and whether her eyes are open or closed.
I mean. How painful it is. She’ll die in minutes either way if she doesn’t quickly repressurise herself. Luckily, she can do that!
I wonder if the orbs themselves actively prevent Sydney from disengaging an orb at a time when it would be potentially fatal. True they let her release the fly orb once while at altitude, but she had plenty of time to reengage the fly orb before she went splat.
considering they have failsaves like the trigger on the PPO or the anti vertigo on the fly orb, and we have seen them lock themselves to your hand (skill point select), it’s definetly plausible
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says that if you hold a lungful of air you can survive in the total vacuum of space for about thirty seconds. However it goes on to say that what with space being the mind-boggling size it is the chances of getting picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and sixty-seven thousand seven hundred and nine to one against.
Of course, that sort of thing comes up a lot, so she’s practically guaranteed to be rescued in time. Especially since we already know there’s a rescue ship in
purr suitspursuit.The actual time limit is about 15 seconds before the pressure difference kills you, via vapor pressure generating air bubbles in your blood and throughout vital organs.
you’d probably get more if you hyperventilated then exhaled completely, but I wouldn’t want to try it.
And with all due deference to the panic-free-paperback, 30 seconds probably only applies if you were born on a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.
Exhale immediately when exposed to vacuum to avoid rupturing the lungs.
I think this was described in the novelization of 2001 A Space Oddessy.
Hm so this is a Dyson sphere? But around a Neutron star instead of a normal one? Would explain the two open ends but then it would have to rotate. But at least it should be able to power nearly everything :P
My guess is it uses the power to open hyperspace gates for spaceships
At least it’s not the Fracture Eisley. All the Fractures are hives of scum and villainy, but Eisley is the most wretched.
Seriously though, there are so many things I wonder now. Will Sydney have to hide that from HQ? Since she went FTL, will Earth enter the united federation of planets? Is the Fracture safe? Maybe it isn’t but Dabbler’s friend is super strong, or maybe it is and she’s not, the first explanation would tell us a lot regarding the OP-ness of the Alari genocide force. Will she be able to help Sydney understand stuff about her orbs? Was the “middle branch” upgrade the obvious, Sydney-can-now-use-3-orbs-at-once upgrade?
Uplift rules are pretty clear on who & what gets to count when it’s something like FTL (or any other universe-traveling ability) equalling entry into interstellar community acceptance: The civilization in question has to develop its OWN faster-than-light (or magical equivalent of any dimensional/locational/portal-hopping) technology.
Sydney did not develop the orbs in any way, shape, or form. She earned points to put in the pip slots, but she merely found the orbs. She did not create them, ergo, it don’t count.
Additionally, it’s usually not considered “acceptable” when a single “rogue unit” (independent developer unfunded by any government or large conglomerate) develops interstellar travel capacity, because they don’tt have the support of the rest of their nation, and clearly aren’t sharing it with them…or they’d have had that support. An *individual* can be accepted as an interstellar nation, but there’s often hellacious custom forms to fill, regarding what can and cannot be brought back to their otherwise pre-FTL home planetoid.
er, I missed putting in several important words in that last paragraph… It’s supposed to read:
An *individual* can be accepted as an interstellar -traveler-, even if their home nation is not yet ready, but there’s often hellacious custom forms to fill … (yadda yadda)
You ask, “Is the Fracture safe?”
Safe *for* Sydney, or safe *from* Sydney?
[Kosh] Yes… [/Kosh]
Of course the Fracture is safe! There’s no way Sydney is going to repair it! She can’t break it; it’s already broken, that’s why it’s called the Fracture!
Inserting the obligatory comment: That’s no moon…
It is your ASS!
Does anyone else think that place looks like a cross between Cybertron and apocalypse?
Funny you should mention that… DaveB mentioned both in his Authurb below the comic
Yeah like most people I choose to post my first impressions before reading other people’s comments or the author’s blur that way my first impression is not color by other people’s expressions.
Actually it looks like necron tech to me.
i’m not familiar with that one do tell
It’s a Warhammer 40k reference; Necrons are one of the races.
I have to say. If I was in that situation, that would be the first thing I did as well, and I don’t even take many pictures.
Well if the previous user fo the orbs was here before he crashed on earth, we my finally learn somethign about them.
Or maybe the previous user didn’t have any idea what the peck he was using either, maybe they are just an indewstructible artifact passed down trough generations or whoever finds them first i guess.
Or there have been centuries between when the previous user was here and Sydney’s arrival.
Or Millennia. Or several million years. We have no idea how long the Orbs had been sitting idle before Sydney touched the flight orb.
One of the ships on the right reminds me of a Guild Heighliner from the first Dune movie rather than the Traveler from Star Trek.
Looks like what I’d always pictured the “evaporating black hole with the mass of ceres in a gigantic control sphere” weapon would look like.
Welp Sydney can now travel across vast distances with ease, getting away from those planet wreckers. I’m sure at some point they will be given a severe punishment but till then that fair blue captain will need to play catch up with the person she is supposed to rescue.
Wait, what if the orbs are actually shrunken dyson spheres?
That would explain why the PPO feels like a star (or maybe just the PPO, and it’s their power source)
Problem is that is just how Sydney described it, her personal impression of it. Maxima stated how powers feel to different people varies. So a personal mental impression can’t really be taken as word of God fact.
Its like when someone says their drink tastes like piss; we shouldn’t assume they’ve drank piss before and thus are making an accurate statement to the flavor of the drink.
Only the very best scum and villainy, thank you very much.
So like Babylon 5 then.
Wow. Just… wow.
“Neat!” …Trust Sydney to subvert expectations and go for understatement. I suspect my response would have been more along the lines of “AWESOME!” or “THAT IS TOTALLY WICKED!”
I thought Maxima was the “master of understatement”
In the first panel, captain Cora reminds me of Queen Nefertiti, with that long neck. Quite beautiful, hadn’t noticed that before.
Never trust anything that is venting a boundless amount of energy for no apparent reason.
We need a further back shot, because it could be venting, or it could be like a bead on a string built around a fracture in space time to utilize it by manipulating the destination points for ships.
If the outer shell is just an containment for the inner part, it may be better to simply vent the energy without an effort… – at least better then to have it build up inside and some day violently breaking out.
Who is speaking in the yellow boxes?
Dave narrating to us or something speaking to Syd?
That is Cora talking with her crew.
Of course they would be familiar with this destination.
Ah, that makes sense.
Dave, one artist to another, your starscapes in this page are KILLER. Great job!
The Fracture, would be an awesome wallpaper. Hint, Hint!
you mean. awesome t-shirt
merch! merch!
If that’s a city the size of the moon, it could hold a population a couple of thousand times larger than the entire human race. Go read the tv tropes article on “sci-fi writers have no sense of scale.”
Given it looks to be over a wormhole junction the whole thing probably isn’t livable, just the outer shell.
Could very well still hold true. Even accounting for large uninhabited areas designated for oxygen generation (your gas of choice may vary) food production etc lowering that figure, you might have more worlds using that hub than there are people on Earth.
While it is possible that The Fracture is a sphere of scum and villainy in the tradition of Mos Eisley spaceport, it is also possible that this thing could be hosting the largest high class shopping district in the entire Milky Way. Once she gets back to Earth and tells everybody about the awesome shops, I wonder which of her teammates will be the first to beg her for a shopping trip?
Your description reminded me of a button I have someplace that is a horrible pun in it’s own right. “Monolith Mall. ‘My God, it’s full of stores.’ “
A few suggestions for (space) cadet Scoville:
1) It may be tempting, but if you pass any thermal exhaust ports on the way it, try not to shoot them with the PPO.
2) Once inside, you may want to see if your hidden insignia gets you any any assistance (see panel 6 of this page. https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/1630)
3) You will probably want to get your glasses fixed. Remember to look look for a store with the sign that says ‘Lenscrafters”. Do not confuse this with a store having the sign “Lensman”. You have enough mystical artifacts to deal with. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/Lensman
Pft, an Arisian would take one look at Sydney and go ‘oh, HELLS no we’re not equipping her with a Lens’. Besides, there was ever only one, and would ever only be one, female wearer of the Lens.
And when all is said and done.. a Lens isn’t all that powerful. Universal translator, form of ID, and.. that’s about it.
I wouldn’t be so worried about asking a lensman for help, I’d be more worried about them asking why I’m carrying a controlled substance (ADHD meds). I don’t remember them thinking very highly of “zwilnicks”.
Not entirely accurate Tarne, The lens is a focus or key to the abilities of the wearer. at bare minimum it is a translator, telepath, and form of ID. However it is also a key to the individuals ability. the more potential a user has the more the lens will let them do
The Obvious: While never touched on in any depth, I would infer the Galactic Patrol had no issues with physician prescribed medications.
SimianJyhad: True. I had forgotten the long distance aspect of the Lens in telepathic communication. And while yes, it’s potential did vary on an individual basis, the vast, vast majority of wearers of the Lens never progressed beyond that ‘translator, telepath, and form of ID’. The only individuals that did were products of the Arisians millennia to eons long eugenics programs to create the living weapons that would defeat Boskone.
I wonder if Sydney is shortly going to have her phone ring…
If this place is even half as cosmopolitan as it looks from all those different portal and ships *someone* here will be able to do a translation spell and be able to talk to her. Hopefully someone halfway official that can also point her the way back to Earth.
Hope she doesn’t answer it with the hand holding her shield orb.
I’m expecting a several robots to greet her once she’s inside.
“Any of you speak Earth English?”
A worn and somewhat disrepuitable robot rolls forward.
“Errrd Inglik? Talk that good! Howdy buddy! Youse need friend here? Get youse low prycces! Youse need stuf?”
(Should sound like Robin Williams or Andy Kaufmann. )
…..but not like Jar Jar.
(I tried to put this beneath my coment.)
Citizen Jay-R-MND;1, please report to the nuclear plant for reassignment. Your new position is Reactor Shielding. Have a nice daycycle!
(What, you didn’t think I would find a way to fit both a Whateley Academy and a Paranoia reference into one joke, Oh you silly silly sausages, I can even fit a Jim Sterling reference in!)
(Oops, I messed up, the real name of the Whateley Academy Nephandus is Jean-Armand – Jay-Arm is just She-Beast’s nickname for, or maybe dig at, him. Unlike our Nephandus, young monsieur St. Michel- du Chantraine is full deserving that mockery and more.)
So, it’s a wormhole nexus. Great, now all she has to do is find an information booth that has maps/directions to Earth.
It is a major tourist attraction after all. Shouldn’t be too hard to find someone who could point her there.
yeah, but somehow i don’t think that she’s up for the experience of cosplaying as an “anonymous sex tourist” in order to get the directions from somebody in this hive of scum and villainy…
Got the impression there was more than one kind of tourist to Earth.
He he. Selfie time!
Just try to avoid being run over whilst taking it.
It looks like a place with a lot of traffic so she better watch out even if her bubble would probably survive collision with a very fast ship. Some ships in this picture would be nice to hitch a ride with. Others, not so much.
I’m imagining Sydney on the Lexx…
I would pay a large sum to see Sydney visit the Red Dwarf.
Sydney and Lister would get on like a house on fire, once the subject of curries got mentioned.
OK a couple of decks might become uninhabitable, after the inevitable curry-eating competition, but small price to pay for making friends with the last living human around!
I will be disappointed if, in some future page, we don’t see one of her teammates wearing a tee shirt that reads: Sydney went to The Fracture, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.
…Where do you think a full page of gold stars and several of the medium & small googly eyes from her crafts pouch went? After the aforementioned Yeet fine, she had to pay in direct trade. (She actually got a far better bargain that way, too; the shop owner has a kidlet who’s been doing well in elemental school; successfully conjured fire elementals without burning anything down, yaaaay! Have another gold star, Progeny-Prime!)
The hardest part was finding a full set of 5 tees in Harem’s size that only had 2 sleeves stitched in a human-wearable configuration, AND in 5 different background/letter color combinations. (Sydney knows better than to give Harem all the same clothing item.)
Maxima has been known to wear hers off-duty.
Hiro saves his in a shadowbox display because he keeps losing teeshirts off his body and doesn’t want to have Sydney think it’s a good idea to “just nip on back there with a fresh sheet of googly eyes to get you a new one!” Arianne INSISTED this would not be a good idea.
Arianne doesn’t wear her shirt, though she hasn’t tossed it by any means. She was just upset she can’t use this as a marketing idea, because 1. people on Earth don’t get to know about the Fracture until after they’ve developed their own FTL, and 2, Fleboniiqian copyright laws are labyrinthine, even to an experienced Public Relations Expert / Lawyer. She perks up, however, when she realizes she can print “Halo Went To (thick censorship lines) And She Brought Us Back These Cool Teeshirts!” instead, with artistically “reinterpreted” (and not the least bit Apokalypse-looking) “images” from “(thick censorship lines location)”. Marketing. GENIUS!
Stalwart irons his every time he washes it, as well as just before he wears it. That is, after getting Dabbler to translate the Care & Washing Instructions from Fleboniiqian so he knows he’s doing it perfectly.
Vance (spiderdude) got a tee shirt with eight armsleeves. He had to point out to Sydney that his legs count as two of his limbs, so it only really needed six sleeves. He awkwardly pats her and promises to wear two of the sleeves with his pedipalps…if he ever figures out how to combine all of his inner spiders into one giant spider. Sydney 1. freaks out, and 2. asks if she can ride him like a Warcraft mount, and fantasizes about declaring herself the TERRIFYING SPIDER QUEEN!! and 3. freaks out again. Vance finally admits he’s not a collection of spiders…but teases that he’s something far worse, but it’s just the 1 thing inside his skinsuit.
Leon wears his teeshirt for 3 days straight. Nobody notices.