The Nightstar Zoo

Tune in tomorrow for an exciting episode of Splat Mercenary.



Actually, I suspect that Tagii has another trick up her, um, ALU.

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"A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke
"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
Jack L. Chalker
"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"
Larry Niven

I hope the Tough's spiffy new armor has a spatula and wet/dry vaccum attachment.

Oh Howard, you're awesome.

It took me ten minutes to stop laughing.

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Using Ubutnu! Go the Penguin!

GRAAAAAAAAATE

Honestly, I don't expect Schlock to die, but I suspect he may be seriously inconvenienced, and he'll be the butt of jokes for months (until somebody else does something even stupider, but non-lethal). I mean, killing off Schlock would be like killing Superman. Oh; right; they did. But they cheated and brought him back. Of course, as my son has observed, "In science-fiction and fantasy, nobody's really dead, even if you do see their body." That's an homage to Frank Herbert's Dune series in which a recurring proverb was "Never believe your enemy is dead unless you've seen the body, and even then you may be mistaken." I just thought of something else; has Petey had a chance to tinker with Schlock? Perhaps that amorphous blob is teeming with the carbosilicate equivalent of Laz 'R' Us nannies. That's a scary thought, but you'll have to get somebody else to sing you to sleep.

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"A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke
"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
Jack L. Chalker
"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"
Larry Niven

Schlock doesn't need any tweaking, he's practically unkillable as is except by a really hot fire, and a decent set of armor can help him resist even that. His main problem is he doesn't have a decent set of armor customized specifically to him, and no one's bothered to correct this before now because he's already so tough to kill.

Even boosted with Laz 'R' Us-type nannies, humans are still easier to kill than "baseline" Schlock. Only somewhat easier mind you, but still easier. Schlock's got the edge in pure regenerative abilities unless the nannies can rebuild a human body that's been turned into Ludricrous Gibs. Head and all.

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The MacNut
Artist and writer of The Vanguard, a space opera superhero comic.

You're forgetting the vacuum and cold. Schlock freezes solid at space temeratures, and vacuum isn't that kind, either. If he hits at over a thousand miles per hour, he will splatter into very tiny bits, which will freeze solid and each be exposed to vacuum. His main body can survive vacuum for a while, but I suspect that the tiny pieces will be unable to prevent sublimation from removing essential volatiles. If sufficient damage occurs to Schlock's structure, he might be unable to recover. After all, he was blown up twice, once when his BH-209M Plasgun was saturated with alcohol, and once when he ate a plasma grenade. In the first case, he was just splattered; in the second, a significant amount of his mass was vaporized.

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===============================================
"A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke
"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
Jack L. Chalker
"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"
Larry Niven

Here's a thought:

If the gravity down the hole is that strong, why do they need an airlock? Wouldn't it be sufficient to contain a small pocket of atmosphere?

Because the gravity in the hole is only nine point metres per second squared which is slightly less than Earth gravity (nine point eight one metres per second squared) so is far too little to hold a sigificant amount of atmosphere in a hole only 6.2km deep. If the hole was ten times as deep maybe it might be able to hold enough air to not need airlocks but that would then require the provision of cubic kilometres of air to fill it up making it IMO considerably less practical than simply using an airlock, particularly as the air would also contaminate the dug material prior to analysis and make the grav driver to launch packets of overburden out of the hole harder to implement.

BTW what is the proper way to report a typo? In the strip from the 7th acceleration is given in meters per second when it should be meters per second squared.

"Meters per second of acceleration" is an accepted shorthand for "meters per second squared." It's not a typo. Dialog bubble space is precious, and you obviously knew what I meant.

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Creator and Cartoonist, Schlock Mercenary

Hum.... Something is interfering with the teraports and preventing poor Schlock from being rescued. I even wager our Author has nothing to do with it. (Well.... almost nothing). Ideas?

//Yamagawa

Yeah, we understand. You must put more than enough time in keeping the edges of the panels clean and painted with all the characters holding on to them, and occasionally blowing holes in them.

Also, Sometimes Howard puts in those little science/backstory pargraphs underneath the main comic. I love those things.

Personally, I'm a little stuck on why Tagii is calling Dr. Bunnigus. Why not swoop another VDA node in under Schlock and physically catch him? She's still got "just under 9 seconds" to get it there; even if it can't teraport all the way, it should be able to teraport nearby and then drive in under max accel (a few thousand gees, probably?).

Maybe there isn't a node close enough (?), and she doesn't have any left inboard, although that seems odd.

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After 3 long, weaponless years, I became the wielder of the Doobie/Dobie gun!

Because it doesn't just need to swoop in and catch him. It needs to swoop in, match speed, catch him and decelerate, because hitting a VDA node at a lethal velocity is not really any better than hitting the bottom of the hole at a lethal velocity.

Looks like the sarge's penchant for being a walking arsenal has finally bit him in the ass - or eye more accurately

She's officer on duty? Or else she has the spatula.

See? Schlock was going to be fine. Even the eyes survived the impact. Granted, they didn't survive being axe-chopped, but clearly the fall wasn't going to actually kill him.

Well, I suppose if one considered "of acceleration" to be equivalent to an extra time-term, then it would be acceptable. I wouldn't quite say it's shorthand, though. "Of acceleration" is definitely longer than "squared". I suppose it would make it somewhat more clear to those who are not into scientific pedantry, though.

That landing was significantly less KEW-like than I was expecting.

Good thing he tossed the plasgun though, otherwise he'd be suffering the insult of being blown apart as said plasgun exploded on impact. His eyes probably wouldn't have survived that either. And now he needs new eyes again, and considering what he had to go through to replace them last time...oy.

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The MacNut
Artist and writer of The Vanguard, a space opera superhero comic.

Now it's time for another trip to Bruuurrp.

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===============================================
"A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke
"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
Jack L. Chalker
"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"
Larry Niven

That's what gravity shields are for.

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===============================================
"A sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clarke
"Sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
Jack L. Chalker
"Magic is just another way of saying 'I don't know how it works.'"
Larry Niven

Blindy O'Sightless, Mercenary.

Ok, but there is simply no way (outside of a "magic" handwave) that he could stop from that speed in that distance without suffering the inertial equivalent of the fall. It doesn't matter a lick what stops him, it matters that he's pulling thousands of gees if he stops that suddenly. Hitting a pile of bouncy flubber at 1000 mph is still going to make you into very small, chunky pieces more reminiscent of salsa than a physical form.

That's not true with gravity manipulation. What kills you isn't the deceleration, it's that different parts of your body experience different decelerations (your front stops before your back does, which lets your back keeps moving right through your front).

With manipulable gravity, you can stop all of Schlock (or anybody else) at the exact same time, and therefore can do it as fast as you want without consequence to them. Freefall doesn't hurt, even freefall at thousands of gees, as long as the gees are the same throughout your body.

The plasgun was out of fuel and couldn't have exploded.
IIRC they said the last time that they couldn't grow him new eyes because his body doesn't code for them. This time they have one left for the doc to take DNA from so it's even odds on if they can grow a new one in the regen tank.

I don't think they can grow one, because if I remember correctly, the eye trees aren't biological. If they were, it would be extremely odd that a) they couldn't have been grown anywhere else in the galaxy, or b) nobody had attempted to transplant them elsewhere in their entire spacefaring history.

And can we all stop staying "eyes"? Only ONE of them got sliced by the axe, the other is fine. Schlock is not blind by any stretch of the comic.

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"You think you know munitions? Darling you don’t know jack. What do you know about micro-missiles and nerve disruptors? What do you know of micro-janglers and variable grenades? Have you ever seen an e-dust commando? No? Well come talk to me when you earn your claws. It’s a big universe out there and most of it is trying to kill you already."

'Big' Kat Mikkelson to John. J. Johnson on his first day at boot camp.

If we're going to be pedantic, "ms^-2" is shorter than either "metres per second squared" or "metres per second of acceleration", while still saying exactly the same thing

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"You think you know munitions? Darling you don’t know jack. What do you know about micro-missiles and nerve disruptors? What do you know of micro-janglers and variable grenades? Have you ever seen an e-dust commando? No? Well come talk to me when you earn your claws. It’s a big universe out there and most of it is trying to kill you already."

'Big' Kat Mikkelson to John. J. Johnson on his first day at boot camp.

Maybe he can wear an eyepatch.
Why would anyone bother to transplant them? The only ones who want them are amorphs and most of them seem to live on Ghang-rho. Amorphs aren't space-faring on their own and the unioc pirates who took over wanted to keep them all in one place so they could easilly guard them while staying near the customer base for them.

I'm pretty sure the trees are biological since they needed fertilizer and could grow in the wild. They probably are genetically engineered though. I'll bet the bradicor created them as a source of security cameras or something. They do like to watch things. That would also explain why they're compatible with amorphs since they used similar biotech in their computers.

Dude, I see two eyeballs with X's on them, and two splortches of yellow goo being spewed up by the axe.

Btw, Howard, I laughed a lot.