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Whoooooo, Another Great Page Arioch !

I love how you did weightless hair on Beryl in the last panel.

http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider141.html

:edit forgot the page link

Aaaand... Beryl almost fully switched to the "protect/care for the male" mode, giving the Loroi in the passenger section only a passing thought in favour of his small head wound. And head wounds usually look much worse than they are.

I wonder how Alex would take being mothered by a girl about half or two-thirds of his chronological age - I can almost imagine the next lines:

Alex: "Really, it's nothing!"

Beryl: "You are bleeding all over the place. Now shush and let me fetch the medkit!"

A little bit of nitpicking: Especially in panel two this wound looks more like a clear cut rather than a rip or bruise, as to be expected from hitting or getting scratched by a sharp object rather than something softer/more blunt. Could have been the edge of an armor plate rather than Beryl's head Alex hit.

hi hi

First the food, then the radiation and another head injury. If Alex hadn't been resting for the last week or so, I'd think he might need some of that.

The first thought that came to my mind was: "Forget the cut, are my pupils the same size? If so, I'm alright."

novius wrote:Could have been the edge of an armor plate rather than Beryl's head Alex hit.

Well, Beryl's head might not have been the only thing he hit. Maybe after bouncing off Beryl, he hit the corner of the console on his way to the deck?

Still, from the looks of the way they were positioned right before the explosion, I suppose he might have hit Beryl's brow or chin at an edgewise angle. Some facial bones have enough of a corner to cause a cut like that when they hit a flat surface, the stitches I got in my chin as a kid were a testament to that.

They have to cycle the pressure door?
Has the passenger compartment been breached, and lost its pressure?

Krulle wrote:They have to cycle the pressure door?
Has the passenger compartment been breached, and lost its pressure?

Presumably they either lost power to functions like doors when the power system scrammed, or door power is designed to purposely shut down in events like this as a built-in safety precaution.

Small abrasions don't read very well in this art style (without having to zoom way in on it), whereas a simple cut reads very easily.

My younger brother (on whom Alex's design is somewhat based) was very accident prone as a child; he would have repeated injuries to the same location. He had his forehead stitched up so many times that eventually any significant blow there (even, once, from the smooth rounded edge of a wooden stool) would cut it open. I can imagine Alex having a similarly rambunctious youth.

The shuttle has lost power, and so powered mechanical doors have to be opened manually, which will probably involve something like opening a panel in the wall and turning a crank. You can't just push them open, even if you're as strong as Khan Noonian Singh.

D'oh, stupid me!
Of course, power is out so they have to open the doors manually.


Also, OP seems to be missing link to current page (which I always found very handy when discussing):
http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider141.html

So, with no power to monitor the situation in the system, Alex and company will have little to do except wait as they coast away from the fighting. There's not likely to be much fuel left for maneuvering after trying to outrun the offensive coming in on their heels, so their plan at this point will boil down to waiting until reserve fleets can repulse the Umiak and retake the system they're in, then get transferred off the shuttle and onto a friendly vessel.

All that means waiting a long while in an un-powered state to maintain their possum act and only powering back up once they're likely to be in the clear. Time for Beryl to resume conversing about Humanity and the Loroi while bandaging him up, with side commentary from Talon and Spiral. Should be fun! I bet those two are great at derailing the science-elf's queries and taking things to interesting places.

CF2 wrote:So, with no power to monitor the situation in the system, Alex and company will have little to do except wait as they coast away from the fighting. There's not likely to be much fuel left for maneuvering after trying to outrun the offensive coming in on their heels, so their plan at this point will boil down to waiting until reserve fleets can repulse the Umiak and retake the system they're in, then get transferred off the shuttle and onto a friendly vessel.

All that means waiting a long while in an un-powered state to maintain their possum act and only powering back up once they're likely to be in the clear. Time for Beryl to resume conversing about Humanity and the Loroi while bandaging him up, with side commentary from Talon and Spiral. Should be fun! I bet those two are great at derailing the science-elf's queries and taking things to interesting places.

You (may be) are forgetting the contingent of Loroi in the back, and also that Mozin is presumably still in the area. It'll likely still be a near thing, but I would say that unless Arioch is taking the story into Umiak territory, that's our likely plot line.

CJSF

cacambo43 wrote:You (may be) are forgetting the contingent of Loroi in the back, and also that Mozin is presumably still in the area. It'll likely still be a near thing, but I would say that unless Arioch is taking the story into Umiak territory, that's our likely plot line.

CJSF

Not sure how long that airlock will keep the main cabin and cockpit groups apart since there are two doors to hand crank their way through. As for Mozin, I don't think they'll have stuck around with Umiak craft picking fights, but once it's safe I'm sure they'll return to rescue the shuttle. Unless we're going to get a viewpoint of things beyond Alex's perspective, or a narrative time skip, we're probably due for a tense bit of character interaction.

Let's hope Prophet's Reason's sensor suite is up to the task of Search&Rescue purposes, even if it is currently used as a courier. Sifting through a debris field and such with little to no energy emissions.

Wasn't Beryl's caste known for its sharp minds?

You’re hitting the nail on the head...

o ho ho ho ho ho

Incidentally, we use these kinds of doors already on modern sea-going ships. See page 22 and 23 of this PDF.

These kinds of doors may have an electric motor, and up to two different types of emergency opening/closing mechanism. The first is the obvious hand-crank, but the other is a cylinder of compressed gas that can be used as a one-time push to open or close the door. The doors in the PDF show car and cargo ships, but the same type are used in military vessels.

L.

hi hi

I wouldn't have thought Beryl to be known for her razor wit.

She's the brightest thing in the room.

Werra wrote:She's the brightest thing in the room.

And the sharpest, with the cutting edge brain artificial evolution has given her.

Diplomacy is all about putting your heads together.

novius wrote:Aaaand... Beryl almost fully switched to the "protect/care for the male" mode, giving the Loroi in the passenger section only a passing thought in favour of his small head wound.

Given how casually Talon had 'sacrificed' the station, it may be that the attitude of the Loroi female/warrior class to each other is purely pragmatic...if that's the correct term for it.

EDIT: Forgot about the Barsam ship. Any chances that it is still around? Given that that Rigai Mozin said it would take him 16000 solon = ~291 minutes or ~4.8 hours to reach the shuttle...chances he might still be around...IF he's not dead yet or turned tail.