@Krulle
Bombs are costly. Sending extermination squads down might be the more economical option when there is a dicey war going on. It's also better for the environment.
Not really, just drop some rocks
Ships that are delegated into rear guard bombardment duty in the middle of a total war are far more expensive than a couple of divisions worth of hard troops on extermination duty. Then there is the whole thing with maintaining the ships with fuel and other consumables (the Umiak preferring to build new ships rather than repairing current ones is a known doctrine but still fuel and missiles wasted on uppity civilians are just that, wasted).
Not really. This is the sort of thing you do once to make the planet soft for invasion. Or you overdo it once and let whatever remains of the population die on its own, with only a small system force to make sure no one escapes the planet. At which point, survivors on the surface don't matter all that much. The "nuclear winter" style cloud should eventually kill anyone that survived the bombardment. Or at the very least, knocked them back into the stone age. At that point they are no longer a viable threat to your people, since they have no means of leaving their planet....or building much of anything really.
If you actually want the planet for its resources (aside from its biosphere, cause you just wrecked that), than you take out their cities and industry, leaving the planet soft for invasion. After that point, if you have issues, the ground and air forces you leave behind should be enough. They would likely have a ship or two in system as patrol forces. One can be called on for overwatch duty, if needed. At that point you don't need indiscriminate asteroid bombardment. At that point you need something more precise.
Not really. This is the sort of thing you do once to make the planet soft for invasion. Or you overdo it once and let whatever remains of the population die on its own, with only a small system force to make sure no one escapes the planet. At which point, survivors on the surface don't matter all that much. The "nuclear winter" style cloud should eventually kill anyone that survived the bombardment. Or at the very least, knocked them back into the stone age. At that point they are no longer a viable threat to your people, since they have no means of leaving their planet....or building much of anything really.
If you actually want the planet for its resources (aside from its biosphere, cause you just wrecked that), than you take out their cities and industry, leaving the planet soft for invasion. After that point, if you have issues, the ground and air forces you leave behind should be enough. They would likely have a ship or two in system as patrol forces. One can be called on for overwatch duty, if needed. At that point you don't need indiscriminate asteroid bombardment. At that point you need something more precise.
The way the occupation of Seren is descriped, the Umiak seemed to want to take over the planet with population. By the time they decided on xenocide, they might have had too many troops for large scale orbital bombardment committed. With how poorly the war went for both sides, I can see the Umiak prefer to send their otherwise purposeless gorundtroops and keep their fighting ships on the frontlines.
Do we know that the Seren xenocide wasn't a strategy of scorched earth deployed late by the Umiak when the Loroi were poisod to retake their worlds soon? If a planet can't be held, better to deprive the enemy its population so that rebuilding takes longer.
With how poorly the war went for both sides, I can see the Umiak prefer to send their otherwise purposeless gorundtroops and keep their fighting ships on the frontlines.
Consider how the Umiak treat themselves - when they build a ship they more or less just seal in the original builders as the crew and call it a day. There is no 'leave' or rotation, the crew are now part of the ship to live and eventually die with it.
The same might go for their invasion forces. Once they set hardtroops down on a planet that might be it for them, they are now the 'garrison' force of that planet for life. If the Umiak need troops for something else they just breed more rather than use resources trying to recover the ones already on planet (and considering Umiak biology those troops might be optimized for that planet's gravity and atmosphere alone). By way of comparison when you are laying a minefield you don't go and recover old mines to reuse, you just manufacture fresh ones.
So with the hardtroops already committed to the planet for life it makes sense to throw them at the population rather than waste any new resource by sending ships to deal with it.
I do hope that after this Alex is going to definitely realise something external is responsible for these images.
Whether or not he lets on is another thing, but he must guess there is some psychic leakage going on, right?
It would be funny/interesting if he would 'meet' her in her dream. Maybe sitting in the rubble crying. And he steps up to her and she realizes someone is there who doesn't belong.
Or, Alex is pinging off all the Loroi he's in skin to skin contact with, and some of their memories and experiences are bleeding through. Which his mind would pick up and try to subconsciously try to make sense of with images he's at least partially familiar with.
Essentially dragging Alex into a night terror about his deep seated dread and fear of what could happen to Earth.
I wonder will we see Umaki hard troops doing some T800 style killing on the ground? I know this space opera thing is only using ground troops to evacuate planets but it would be neat to see Umaki a bit more.
The only dreams I remember are either semi prophetic, or probably drug induced due to chemotherapy and pain meds. The other 99.999% are gone before I wake. Alex is most certainly in Fireblade’s nightmares.
Ouch, There are some things in what yousaid which make me cringe.
I hope you're okay(ish), and that these extra-ordinary times do not impact your treatment more than strictly necessary.
(My brother-in-law cannot be treated currently due to the hospital's regulation in this pandemic.)
Vote for Outsider on TWC: charred steppes, borders of territories: page 59,
jump-map of local stars: page 121, larger map in Loroi: page 118,
System view Leido Crossroads: page 123, after the battle page 195
Thank you, Krulle, I am mostly being treated for damage done by side effects and treatments at least for now I am in remission . I think my point should have been: human dreams are only rarely remembered , PTSD being a notable exception. I’m mostly over that. We’re about to see what the PTSD nightmares if a powerful telepath are like!
I think my point should have been: human dreams are only rarely remembered
Thats an interesting point. It is known that you can infact train yourself to better remember dreams, so it might well be different for a society of telepaths.
I think the story also hinted that close contact between Loroi can cause dreams to bleed, which obviously won't be an issue if nobody ever remembered them
