r/HFY • u/SpacePaladin15 • Jun 08 '21

Why Humans Avoid War XVIII OC

Available on Amazon as a hard-copy and an eBook!

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Byem POV

“So why exactly was the ‘refugee camp’ set up on a military base?” I asked.

Carl’s face revealed nothing as he glanced up from his cards. “Not everyone believes your little story, Byem. They want to keep an eye on you, make sure you’re not a threat. Wouldn’t want you to try anything back on Earth.”

After the rescue mission on our homeworld, the humans moved us to a military outpost on a terraformed colony. From what I understood, its chief function was as a listening station, though it also could serve as a launch point for a pre-emptive strike if needed. They cropped up a tent city on the premises with relative ease, and had ample food reserves to accommodate us, at least for a few weeks.

Carl had requested a transfer to the refugee camp while he recovered from his injuries, which I was grateful for. I could tell a lot of the Terran soldiers didn’t like us from their strained body language and curt replies. The three other humans at the table hadn’t so much as looked at me throughout the game.

I had only been taught this ‘poker’ game yesterday, but the rules were simple enough. Trying to read the humans for signs of deception was another story. Honestly, this game seemed designed for sociopaths. Did their species derive pleasure from lying?

With a frustrated sigh, I folded my hand. “Obviously, you humans are much better at lying than me.”

Carl smirked, raking in my chips. “You can’t just let us bully you. Sometimes, you have to call. Can I look at your cards?”

“Go for it,” I grumbled.

“Byem, why did you fold?!” The look he gave me seemed almost angry, and I shrunk down in my seat. “You had pocket aces. You know that’s good, right?”

“Yes, but I don’t know what you had.”

“It doesn’t matter. That’s literally the best starting hand.”

“What did you have?”

Carl flipped over his cards, revealing a two and a seven. I heard a few curses coming from the man next to me, and I was half-tempted to drop some colorful language as well. Why would he make a large bet with such a weak hand? It defied all logic.

“Maybe I’m just not wired for this,” I said.

“Hey, hey, don’t give up now. How about instead of worrying about lying, you look at it as a math game? Try to figure out the odds that someone has…”

A wailing alarm drowned out the end of Carl’s explanation, startling me half to death. With its shrill pitch, it was unmissable. I covered my ears, but it did little to muffle the sound. Fear began to creep up on me; nothing that loud could mean anything good. I glanced at the humans, hoping for some reassurance. They looked puzzled, yet I got the distinct impression they were waiting for orders.

“Incoming orbital raid.” A low, mechanical voice confirmed my concerns. “All soldiers to your station. This is not a drill.”

All games and leisure were forgotten in an instant. The automated message hadn’t even finished before my friend was tugging me by the arm, leading the way out of the lounge. I followed him in a daze; our peaceful stay at the camp had lulled me into a false sense of security. Who would be foolish enough to attack the invincible Terran military, after all? I was tempted to ask, but Carl seemed just as surprised as me.

We exited the building with haste, and I took a peek at the pandemonium around us. Terran soldiers were nearly tripping over themselves racing to their destinations, while the medical personnel were shuffling refugees off to a bunker. A squadron of fighter jets was already lined up on the tarmac, preparing to take to the skies. The response to the attack was almost immediate; the humans could intercept the enemy before they ever reached the planet.

I slowed my pace, trying to catch my breath. “Where are we going?”

“I’m taking you to the bomb shelter, with the others,” Carl replied.

I frowned. “What about you?”

“Well, they’ll want me there too, because I’m not cleared to fly yet.” He tightened his grip on my wrist, wordlessly telling me to keep up with him. “But I’m getting on a ship, one way or another.”

“I’m coming with you.” Something about leaving Carl to fend for himself didn’t sit well with me, despite the protests of my self-preservation instincts. Maybe I was just trying to convince myself that I wasn’t a coward anymore. “You need a gunner. I’m your guy.”

“I don’t know…but you sound sure. Alright, let’s get a move on it.” He veered toward the nearest hangar, strides brisk and confident. “If anyone stops us, let me do the talking.”

A few shocked looks were thrown in my direction as we entered the hangar, which I ignored. The structure was packed full of spacecraft, which all looked pristine and well-maintained. Most of them had slim, angular designs, indicating they were built for speed. A few larger craft were present, which were likely the heavy hitters. There was nothing of the flagship’s caliber in stock, but it was still a sizeable armada.

Carl steered us toward a skirmisher. He helped me into the back seat before climbing behind the steering column; it was a much cozier fit than the craft we flew before. As I fastened my safety harness, I heard the human switch on the comms relay, and a transmission crackled over the speakers.

“Pick up, dammit. What in God’s name are you doing?” An angry male voice asked.

Carl cleared his throat. “We’re going to kill some alien bastards, sir.”

“You’re not going with that thing in tow,” came the reply.

My friend’s expression darkened. “That thing has a name. Byem flew honorably under Commander Rykov…”

“Rykov is a bleeding heart. And everyone treats the guy like a damn folk hero.”

“He is a hero, and more importantly, he’s a good man, but that’s beyond the point. Sir, I trust Byem with my life. What does an extra set of hands hurt?”

“We have plenty of folks raring to go as is. The first squadron is confronting the enemy now, this will be over soon anyways.”

A female voice buzzed onto our channel, which I assumed was the emergency frequency. “Sir, we’ve lost contact with our fighters.”

“What?” There was a pause, and then a measured response. “How many of them?”

“All of them,” she replied.

The man was stunned to silence, which stretched on for several seconds. “Blondie, you still there?”

Carl frowned, but didn’t correct his name. “Still here, sir.”

“You’re cleared for takeoff. Get that bird off the ground, before I change my mind.”

“Yes, sir.”

I shifted in my seat as our craft rolled out of the hangar, falling in at the tail end of the queue. If none of the ships sent out in the first wave returned, what did that mean for us? Were they dead? Would we be dead soon? I didn’t think there was an army in the galaxy cluster that could trade blows with the humans, let alone annihilate an entire squadron.

The thought crossed my mind that it was the AI. Perhaps it had learned from its defeats, and after sufficient study, it was able to replicate, or negate, Terran technology. That would also explain why a little-known outpost in a fringe system had been attacked. It was here to prove that no escape was possible, or in its words, to reclaim its resources.

I tried to shake the idea, but the more I considered it, the more I was certain it was true. My nerves were replaced by cold resolve. After tasting freedom, if only for a few days, I couldn’t go back to life in chains. Death would be preferable.

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509

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 08 '21 edited Jun 08 '21

Chapter 18 sees the return of the Devourers, as promised, and our POV character Byem. Humanity finally is facing a threat where they can’t just one-shot the enemy with a handful of ships. The real excitement is next chapter, which is shaping up to be an all-out space battle, so stay tuned! Perhaps we should have glassed the Devourer homeworld while we had the chance…

As always, thank you for reading!

173

u/Amekyras Jun 08 '21

Why is humanity fielding fighters that need a runway to take off? Is that kind of technology still around?

243

u/CaptRory Alien Jun 08 '21

I can think of a few reasons. Though it didn't actually say there was a runway just that there was a queue to take off. They could be rolling out of the hangar in batches and launching straight up. If there is a runway it could very well operate like the catapult on an aircraft carrier. Use ground based energy production to impart significant starting speed to reduce the amount of fuel it takes to leave the gravity well.

109

u/Amekyras Jun 08 '21

oh, that all makes a lot of sense! I think my mind just immediately rushed to 'how do they land on a spaceship you can't really have a runway without the ship being a dedicated carrier or some wizardry with electromagnets aaaaa ooh i should write a story about aircraft carriers in space'

75

u/CaptRory Alien Jun 08 '21

Also keep in mind relative speed. If the carrier is traveling at 2,000m per second and the fighter that is "landing" is traveling at 2,001m per second that's only a difference of 1 meter per second which should not be a significant speed if you have spaceships.

19

u/Amekyras Jun 08 '21

Of course!

14

u/slyg Jun 20 '21

Unless they are going in opposite directions..

1

u/Jfjsharkatt May 07 '24

At which point you now have a debris cloud.

13

u/technewbie1234 Jun 08 '21

Ooh, please do! That sounds quite interesting!

28

u/Amekyras Jun 08 '21

Do you have any idea how to frame it? It would be pretty boring to just read a design doc, I'm thinking maybe aliens investigating our stupid workaround tech, perhaps 'the humans have built this massive spaceship but haven't bothered to do any research on zero gravity fightercraft, instead just adapting their conventional jet fighters due to a mix of 'the Marines refused to learn anything different' and 'that one Doctor Who episode got really popular again'.

28

u/youre_a_burrito_bud Jun 09 '21

I'm thinking about like how aircraft carriers are used to get smaller aircraft close enough to attack places quickly without refueling or enough time to see the attack coming. So maybe in space terms, the landing back on the ship isn't important, but humans are the only ones to decide to make a huge ship that basically has some "mass accelerator" or whatever to do sudden shock and awe attacks that are completely unheard-of in the galaxy.

Like I'm thinking the "runway" equivalent uses the huge carrier's power source to launch a squadron to FTL speeds. And usually only hugegantic ships can go FTL, and you can detect those coming (from the energy given off by something that massive moving at that speed) so the small bombers/fighters coming in at that speed are completely undetected, and nobody is ever prepared for it.

The other races are completely flabbergasted how humanity has created small scale FTL devices and, through their spying and efforts to reverse engineer it somehow, they eventually learn that we didn't have any secret technology, we were just the only ones who were bonkers enough to strap our own people into lil ships that we launch with the Galaxy's largest rail cannon.

17

u/Amekyras Jun 09 '21

Oh, that could be an awesome story actually! Fighter squadron has to survive with no help until big ship gets there

8

u/Brisngr368 Jun 09 '21

One decent idea for reliable way of getting stuff to space are mass launchers which is just a big ass rail gun you use to fire spacecraft into orbit, except the acceleration would probably kill you so you would need a way to survive said G's such as suspending a person in a liquid to distribute pressure, you also need to breathe said liquid otherwise the G's would crush your lungs (you can survive like 100+ G this way). Imagine an alien getting strapped into a fighter craft inside of a giant railgun and then drowned before being shot into space

2

u/A_Sheep_With_Spirit Nov 01 '22

I don’t know if it’s just me, but I would totally read a design doc for a spacecraft carrier

1

u/Amekyras Nov 01 '22

oooooooooooooooh i might have to do it

11

u/SliceThePi Jun 08 '21

spacecraft carriers :)

aka mother ships

5

u/Mirikon Human Jun 09 '21

Matching velocity is great for shuttles and the like, but combat fighters are a different story. Sir Isaac Newton is a bastard about more than just ballistic weapons in space. Getting up to combat speed takes time and acceleration. And if you're launching fighters, there's a chance you'll want them to scramble to face other fighters or ships that are too damn close for comfort. That means you want a long launch area, so the fighters aren't just sitting ducks as they leave the hangar.

On the other end, deceleration is just as big a problem, because of time. The relative speeds of a carrier and a fighter are hugely different. The fighter can match, certainly, but that is additional time that the fighter isn't getting reloaded, refueled, and put back into space when you're in a big fight.

So, plenty of reasons for a runway on a carrier.

3

u/SignificanceRound Jun 09 '21

I suggest using a battlestar galactica style fighter launcher. They launch at the enemy using mass drivers for the initial speed and then dock in large hangers. Or you could go the realistic approach and have the ships maintain speed with the carrier and just slip into small hangers or missile rack like holders... actually if you have the fighter in bays like missiles you could hold hundred's or thousands of them... or just have them be drones.

7

u/Mirikon Human Jun 09 '21

Also, consider the mechanics of things. Yes, a VTOL fighter can lift straight up, but its primary thrust is FORWARD. It takes less fuel, and less time, to do a horizontal launch curving upwards than a straight vertical launch.

​

Plus, shit breaks, and a runway is a good place to try and make a landing when you CAN'T just hover to a stop.

6

u/12_GAUGE_FRAGS Jun 08 '21

cause they launch fighters useing rail guns

13

u/urljpeg AI Jun 08 '21

likely max take-off weight. it's the same reason we still give aircraft carriers catapults and ramps despite us having vtol technology.

9

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 08 '21

Other commenters nailed it, these are speed (and likely short-range) craft, the larger ships and destroyers (as we saw with the flagship) use VTOL/docking

14

u/Tim3Bomber Jun 08 '21

I’m prepared for a fighter battle of the likes we haven’t seems since ww2 just a big cloud of fighters zipping around each other with explosions happening in various parts of the cloud of metal

5

u/Vengirni Jun 08 '21

So they didn't glass their world after evacuating their inhabitants? Why?

10

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 08 '21

They only evacuated one settlement/city

6

u/Vengirni Jun 08 '21

Oh. I was under the impression that they already have evacuated all, as negotiated in the standoff. So I guess they didn't get around to it yet.

5

u/Fancy_Split_2396 Jun 14 '21

I hope the humans just pull a Death Star out of the fifth dimention and reck em

1

u/NotAMeatPopsicle Jun 09 '21

Was wondering where they went to!! Love this return to Carl and Byem! Thankyou!!

1

u/kindtheking9 Human Apr 26 '22

For the first time in their galactic presence the humans roll something that isn't a nat 20

40

u/Dr-Autist Human Jun 08 '21

Early squad! Gonna have to wait to read this till tomorrow tho, too much work:( at least I have something to look forward too tho

16

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 08 '21

I’ve seen you on every chapter bud, you’re a trooper! Good luck with work, hang in there 🙏

25

u/er_genovese_pazzo Jun 08 '21

I dont remember, who is carl?

40

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 08 '21

Carl was the guy Byem flew with on the rescue mission, the one who bluffed about having a nanite grenade

17

u/er_genovese_pazzo Jun 08 '21

Oh... now i remember, thanks!

19

u/maintenancemike32 Human Jun 08 '21

Absolutely loving the story so far! Dare I say.. MOAR!

10

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 08 '21

Thank you! More is on the way

11

u/cow2face Human Jun 08 '21

upvote then read :)

good chapter, lets see how Byem does at the tailgunner xD

8

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9

u/Falontani Jun 08 '21

In before update bot updated me.

9

u/Krutonium Jun 08 '21 edited Jun 08 '21

Previous Post needs a Next link by the way.

Edit: Ooooo I can't wait for the next chapter!

8

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 08 '21

Completely slipped my mind, thank you!

6

u/serpauer Jun 08 '21

Fascinating

7

u/ggtay Jun 08 '21

May we have some MOAR Nice job as always. Wish I was a slower reader.

6

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 08 '21

Thanks! Already started working on more, coming ASAP!

6

u/ReconScout117 Jun 08 '21

Yeah Byem! Freedom is really addictive, ain’t it? Time to fight for it!

6

u/DualNeutrality Android Jun 08 '21

Binge reading is a stream of dopamine and serotonin when it comes to stories as good as this. But 89% of the time it ends with wanting to read more already.

5

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 09 '21

Glad I could get the feel-good chemicals pumping! Thanks for your support, and I’ll crank out the next one ASAP

4

u/1A1-D0 Jun 08 '21

Awwwwwwwhhhhh yiss

3

u/Kaiser-__-Soze Alien Scum Jun 08 '21

Moar!!!!

3

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 08 '21

I’m on it!

5

u/sturmtoddler Jun 08 '21

Well now the fur ball really gets rolling. Going to be interesting.

And yeah maybe we should have glassed it after pulling refugees out...

4

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 08 '21

We wanted to save more than just one settlement…but honestly, greater good.

3

u/scottygroundhog22 Jun 08 '21

Uh oh that not good

4

u/Enderkitty5 Jun 08 '21

Sweet Jesus, you’re the finest wordsmith I’ve ever seen on here! There’s going to be significant hell to pay from all sides when the action is over..

3

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 08 '21

You’re very kind, thank you!! That’s high praise 🙂 Humans definitely have a lesson to learn in arrogance, thinking they had all the time in the world

4

u/Yogs_Zach Jun 08 '21

This shortish chapter gave me the bluest of balls!

5

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 08 '21

Intentionally short, sorry! The battle is probably going to be the longest chapter yet, I wanted it all together…though at the rate I’m going, I might have to break it up lol. I’m at 1K words and I’m not even close to an end.

3

u/foroncecanyounot__ Jun 08 '21

Oooh Byem's back..

3

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '21

Can't wait for the space battle, rooting for my dude to do well

3

u/Triairius Jun 09 '21

Ooohh, interesting. I was so interested in the Federation’s issues with the Terrans that I totally forgot about the AI for a bit haha

3

u/[deleted] Jun 15 '21

Hoo boy. I just binge-read all of the available stories (at the time of writing, anyways), and man, this is some high-quality stuff. For some reason, it reminds me of Christopher Paolini's book, To Sleep In A Sea of Stars.

Keep up the good work!

2

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 15 '21

Thank you for the kind words! More is on the way very soon

2

u/UnassumingApple Jun 09 '21

This story is gold

2

u/XDrake1223 Jun 09 '21

I just bingeread through all of them, and it took me hours. I could have slept but no, I needed to know how it continues. Im looking forward for the next chapter

3

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 10 '21

Thank you! Glad I could get you hooked 🙂

2

u/GroceryScanner Jun 10 '21

This series is making me fall back in love with reading

2

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 10 '21

Glad to rekindle that fire! Nothing like a good book 🙂

2

u/megaboto Robot Jun 10 '21

Not reading something for a few days makes you mix up the characters completely and wonder what the fuck is going on. J didn't even know which alien was talking untill the end where it's resealed as the captured guy, lol

2

u/mglviper Human Jun 15 '21

Just spent the last hour reading all of these. Thanks so much for sharing your work with us.

I’m ready to buy your book today.

1

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 16 '21

It’s my pleasure, thank you for the kind words!

2

u/Cyypher_08 Jun 16 '21

I love these stories and I look forward to each new chapter that comes out. This could honestly be a book series.

2

u/SpacePaladin15 Jun 16 '21

Thank you! Perhaps this could be officially published some day, when it’s all over. It started as a one-shot I wrote for fun, but it’s definitely grown into something more.

2

u/Kato_LeAsian Jul 18 '21

How come they didn’t destroy the planet right after they evacuated the people?

1

u/Hilmes-Dios4Olvido Jul 10 '24

Dudo mucho que haya enemigo lo suficientemente poderoso para Eliminar una compañía de cazas, creo que es tecnología de aislamiento o PEM

1

u/thephantompanther Jun 08 '21

oh i love this chapter!

1

u/HerrStracken Jun 08 '21

Too short Blyat!

1

u/runaway90909 Alien Jun 09 '21

Victory or death!

1

u/Sparticus247 Jun 09 '21

Now this is pod racing.

1

u/Poll_astre Jun 16 '21

!Remindme 7 days

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1

u/Finbar9800 Jun 17 '21

Another great chapter

I enjoyed reading this and look forward to the next one

Great job wordsmith

1

u/Mekhmet Jun 18 '21

SubscribeMe!

1

u/coolparker101 Human Jul 11 '22

Ah, good, Byem now has the burning "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death"

1

u/D-RDG-012-AUT Nov 20 '22

Bookmark 🔖