A Day In The Life
- Thread starter Badenov
- Start date
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
MORE PLEASE.
Considering the fact that just a few weeks ago I was deep into writing up my SIE Big Clipper post in The Fleet forum and doing lots of backstory research around Grote/Glisten and Caladbolg/Sword Worlds pre- and post- Third Frontier War ... seeing that you chose Caliburn/Sword Worlds as the location for your story made me wonder about where things might go next.
Commander Truestar
SOC-13
Minor quibble...
On page 7, you have "You will go through the Hab Bubbles in squads and terminate any rebels."
This despite the fact this Op was directed at Sword Worlds forces who were trying to take the mining operation from Imperial owners.
Granted, this appears after the 5FW, while all or most Sword Worlds populations are under "occupation"
But, even the partitioned Border Worlds populations are not Imperial. So, should the term not be "enemy"?
Also, the "official Imperial Uniform Color" for the Marines is Magenta.
So, where you described the armor liners, I would have thought they would be magenta too.
At half-way through,
1) I'm liking it (especially as it triggers some of my in-service memories)
2) I am already planning to add armor liners to the gear my PC's can buy at InstellArms (and planning proper color coding)
3) Some of the data in the earliest text (before you mentioned Glisten and Fleet 100) suggested this unit was of lower tech than "current day"
Imperial Navy/Marines. Still, that might be how I read it...not how the general audience is reading it
I will make another post if I find other nits to pick.....but I am enjoying it and will share it with my Ex-Marine Character players....
On page 7, you have "You will go through the Hab Bubbles in squads and terminate any rebels."
This despite the fact this Op was directed at Sword Worlds forces who were trying to take the mining operation from Imperial owners.
Granted, this appears after the 5FW, while all or most Sword Worlds populations are under "occupation"
But, even the partitioned Border Worlds populations are not Imperial. So, should the term not be "enemy"?
Also, the "official Imperial Uniform Color" for the Marines is Magenta.
So, where you described the armor liners, I would have thought they would be magenta too.
At half-way through,
1) I'm liking it (especially as it triggers some of my in-service memories)
2) I am already planning to add armor liners to the gear my PC's can buy at InstellArms (and planning proper color coding)
3) Some of the data in the earliest text (before you mentioned Glisten and Fleet 100) suggested this unit was of lower tech than "current day"
Imperial Navy/Marines. Still, that might be how I read it...not how the general audience is reading it
I will make another post if I find other nits to pick.....but I am enjoying it and will share it with my Ex-Marine Character players....
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
If the conversation was being held among diplomats, I'd agree with you.
The context was a briefing to
The way the briefing is being given makes it very clear that command has decided that this is a "no prisoners" (friendly or hostile) situation. There is no one on site who needs to be rescued or taken into custody. If it moves, shoot it. Everything that moves is considered "enemy" for this op. Don't bother second guessing, shoot to kill anyone who isn't "buddy" with you.
Bag 'em.
Tag 'em.
Drag 'em.
Keeps things REALLY SIMPLIFIED and eliminates opportunities for second guessing.
Shoot first. Make sure they're dead. Do not hesitate to use lethal force.
SIMPLE.
One thing that I was kind of expecting to have happen during the story (but which Flower never mentioned) was any kind of attempt to surrender. Be kind of interesting if one of the other units encountered any surrender attempt ... and having Flower hear about how it went down through the gossip net.
Commander Truestar
SOC-13
OK,
Though, while my own service never included action against possible American citizens, I have had similar briefings.
And, the briefing officer always used specific terms to set the tone
In this case, the briefing didn't include any turn coats or Imperials gone bad.
It was clear the Sword Worlds, from a specific government and not ad hoc, had "invaded"
So, where the briefing had mentioned invaders and possible captured friendlies. the addition of "rebels" would have had "Me" wondering what the G2(intelligence guys) knew but were not telling us.
So, from my experience, that would "create" confusion and enhance the chance for confusion as troopers(especially greenies like the main character was) tried to puzzle that out while they should be concentrating on the mission at hand.
Though, I do agree that the piece did do a good job at foreshadowing an attempt to surrender, which I figured was gonna happen when they pulled the floor plate in the shed...
Commander Truestar
SOC-13
@Badenov
Additional consideration....
You stated in a number of places that this was the first operation for your main character.
Still, on page 9, you gave him the thought:
""It seems awfully soon after jumping in-system," I said aloud, breaking what felt like a thoughtful silence. I'd jumped between systems a couple times before, and it was usually several hours before we got anywhere useful."
Yes, this could be said of anyone who had made a number of commercial jumps, but it gives this character a confusing sense of being a veteran trooper in this piece.
Additional consideration....
You stated in a number of places that this was the first operation for your main character.
Still, on page 9, you gave him the thought:
""It seems awfully soon after jumping in-system," I said aloud, breaking what felt like a thoughtful silence. I'd jumped between systems a couple times before, and it was usually several hours before we got anywhere useful."
Yes, this could be said of anyone who had made a number of commercial jumps, but it gives this character a confusing sense of being a veteran trooper in this piece.
Kakistocrat
SOC-12
It’s quite good!
There’s a typo on page 4: “why we want is back” ought to be “why we want it back”.
One drawback of Times New Roman is that when letter spacing is compressed, the two letters “rn” can look like the letter “m”. On page 12, “Burn and I” looks like “Bum and I”, at least to my old eyes. If you prefer Times New Roman, perhaps your word processor has a way to adjust letter spacing to limit compression, at least for adjacent “rn” letters?
Style-wise, on the first page, the “I read in a history book […]” paragraph seems a bit too “explanatory”. If Gardener is telling his tale to his contemporaries, then an explanation of how a refresher works wouldn’t be needed. I’d imagine that in his time, there would be a verb for describing what the refresher does — “to clean up”? “to refresh”? — rather than using the scenic route of “to do what the refresher does”. To me, changing “The refresher uses an ultrasonic wave to blow off […]” to “The refresher’s ultrasonic wave blew off […]” would sound less explanatory and more descriptive.
On the second page, the phrase “automatic scullery” struck me in the same fashion. Would “automatic” need to be there? Would a coining like “scullomat” work instead? (A scullery was originally a separate small room for such washing; does that describe the facility on the Burns, or is it more of a hatch into which trays and utensils are placed for automated cleaning?)
At any rate, these are mere quibbles; I look forward to your future writing!
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
THIS.The way that read to me is that "command" (see: above my pay grade) had determined that there were no hostages to be rescued where marines were to be deployed.
Now, the WHY behind that determination could be various ... including anything from massacre of the civilians by the Sword Worlders all the way through taking of prisoners and shipping them elsewhere ... and since the briefing doesn't delve into that any further, it must not be important enough to bring to the attention of the troops who are going to be "Cranking & Entering" the Hab Domes.
Just making the transit from Glisten/Glisten to Caliburn/Sword Worlds would have required making a few jumps ... all of them to "rocks" bigger than the destination at Caliburn was. Since the story opens with the fact that Flowers wakes up due to the breakout from jump, the notion that he would have been rather aware of the transit time from jump point to disembark point was not a problem for me.
Likewise, I figure that simply getting from the recruiting point to the basic training camp probably involved jumping (and probably not in a low berth), along with advanced unit training for duty cycles through jump (real, not simulated) would almost certainly have been done prior to deployment. So I didn't consider this bit of backstory to be in any way troublesome for continuity up to the present time in the narrative.
My personal preference is for Book Antiqua (if it's available, not all computers have it in their font library).
My second choice is to use Baskerville as a "nicer" font to look at that Times New Roman.
Commander Truestar
SOC-13
I considered that too...
But I remembered my own stint in BASIC, and recalled there were a lot of things you would think were automated....
However, by the end of BASIC, I had realized there were a lot of things that were not automated because making Trainees do it was a method of reinforcing accepting and following orders.
So, since this was Gardner's first stint out of boot, it made more sense to me he'd be seeing things being "done for" the trooper" where they were never done for the trainee.
Commander Truestar
SOC-13
I can understand you reading the text that way...
But, I "did" read it another way.
So, I'd consider that a good reason to tighten things up
Actually, the briefing "did" cover this:
"The report was that the residents had been relocated to another habitation, so assume anyone there is hostile."
On this, "First", I would point out the piece never suggested they started from the Glisten system
As a "response to invasion", this could well be a "forward-assigned" or "on patrol" unit assigned to the Imperial Naval base in the Elixabeth system.
If not, they could well have tankers with their fleet element or the systems they may have traversed might have had logistics fueling in place.
So, there is no reason to assume they had to waste time - while responding to a report of invasion - burning in-system for fuel and resupply.
Standard USN procedure is to pull bunker ships along side while burning hard when so ordered
As I mentioned above, and as you suggested, it does come down to "how the reader reads it"
Based on my background and experience, it is colored different than it reads to you
Badenov
SOC-12
Thank
Good catch, corrected my sloppy wording. It gave me the chance to add a little more military vocabulary, which I think adds tone.
I did want there to be a difference between the Jr Enlisted and the Sr Enlisted / Officer liners, so made them magenta with gray or tan trim. Added a bit of barracks-room reasoning which you can take FWIW.
High praise, thank you. Hope they're mostly good memories!
Cool. NERP items are always fun.
It is indeed a TL12 set of gear, as desribed. These are the guys who still have a job to do, and do what they can. I'm not as up on all the background, though, and I understood that all groups have a number? These guys are simply not the cutting edge of Fleet 100, they're basically a support unit taking out minor targets. If I have described the situation incorrectly, or the units badly, please let me know?
Glad you're enjoying it! Will answer other comments in next post and repost file when complete.
Badenov
SOC-12
Exactly, you have it.
That would have been interesting, but in vacuum and with their rules of engagement, there wasn't much chance to even try to surrender.One thing that I was kind of expecting to have happen during the story (but which Flower never mentioned) was any kind of attempt to surrender. Be kind of interesting if one of the other units encountered any surrender attempt ... and having Flower hear about how it went down through the gossip net.
Badenov
SOC-12
My statement was based on the assumption that he had jumped a few times simply as the force transited from system to system and that was where the experience came from. I will make that more clear.
Badenov
SOC-12
Fixed!
So I added a touch of spacing to make it easier to read hopefully. It does expand out the rest of the words as I couldn't find a way just to do the RN combination.
I have tried to clean it up a bit.
It is the second case, a place where you stick trays for automatic cleaning. I spelled it out because I hadn't thought of coining a specific term. But you're right, that wouldn't be the common term unless there were non-automatic sculleries someplace. On the other hand, he may be simply describing the place by its function rather than by the official name, which is probably something like Scullery, or even Used Dining Equipment Sanitiser. On the other other hand, it's not unheard of for the military to name something redundantly, and, by that logic, that seems like Automatic Scullery could be the official term millenia after the last non-Automatic scullery was decomissioned. As an official name, I have capitalized it into a proper noun, as that keeps the definitions less quirky. I don't need new terms for everything.
Thank you!
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
With the way things unfolded in the story around Flower's unit ... GRANTED.
However, that brings up the rather interesting question ... if someone DID want to surrender, how would they do it?
How could you signal that you had no intention of fighting, please don't shoot me to the marines?
First thought that comes to mind would be to lie flat on the ground with your arms extended overhead and the faceplate of your vacc suit pointed down at the ground (so you aren't looking for targets). Make it as obvious as possible that you don't have a weapon easy to hand ... and hope you don't get shot by a trigger happy marine.
All communications are going to have to be by hand signals and line of sight if surrender is successful and you're taken into custody.
Bummer is that because of the vacuum, you can't do things like knock on walls/doors to make a sound that can be heard to signal you want to surrender.
Reason I mention all of that is because if there was a (terrorized) civilian there who didn't want to die, their most reliable option for survival would be to surrender and get taken into custody as quickly as possible.
Badenov
SOC-12
This sounds entirely reasonable. I would presume spacesuits have some sort of emergency locator radio beacon that will broadcast your position if you were in distress. Of course if you're trying to hide, you wouldn't switch it on, but you would if Marines had landed.With the way things unfolded in the story around Flower's unit ... GRANTED.
However, that brings up the rather interesting question ... if someone DID want to surrender, how would they do it?
How could you signal that you had no intention of fighting, please don't shoot me to the marines?
First thought that comes to mind would be to lie flat on the ground with your arms extended overhead and the faceplate of your vacc suit pointed down at the ground (so you aren't looking for targets). Make it as obvious as possible that you don't have a weapon easy to hand ... and hope you don't get shot by a trigger happy marine.
This is 100% true.All communications are going to have to be by hand signals and line of sight if surrender is successful and you're taken into custody.
Bummer is that because of the vacuum, you can't do things like knock on walls/doors to make a sound that can be heard to signal you want to surrender.
Reason I mention all of that is because if there was a (terrorized) civilian there who didn't want to die, their most reliable option for survival would be to surrender and get taken into custody as quickly as possible.
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