Episode 11 - Questions - Warning Spoilers

If you want to fully explore time travel, I suggest "The Man who folded himself" by David Gerrold. That was the most exhaustive exploration of time travel that I have read.

Jump Tech: it seems that since Jumping is dependant on a sufficient mass not being in the way, that this is just a faster form of already existing FTL transit. It is not revolutionary, but evolutionary. Game changing, sure, but merely a faster version of existing systems.

What would be revolutionary, then? A weapon that pierced shields? Some sort of Neutron Bomb type weapon that kills without damaging or interacting with technology? Small AI-controlled swarming missiles? How about some form of communications that was truly FTL, maybe instantaneous? Medical Tech that could revive the dead?

I dont think another separate civ or group will show up though its possible another occupied world may come in to play like Tanna. Perhaps one of strategic importance in the counter attack scenario a couple of books from now.

I also dont like the concept of time travel being added but if it's at the very end of the story i dont think ill mind so much.

I too think the PC was settled by multiple colonies from specific cultures. The corinari for instance was thought to be descendants of scottish or irish people ... I forget which. It seems almost a rule in the books that 1 planet = 1 colony ship.

I also agree with the possibility that there may not be much help coming from PC. I think Tug is probably having a tough time keeping things running well there. Probably due to political machinations by those who were loyal to the previous emperor.

Hi all,

I started reading Mr. Brown series in 2012 and I should say that every time I receive a mail from Amazon telling me that a new episode is available I know that I’ll have a nice weekend readin the new episode.

After reading all the thread, I offer you my 2 cents thoughts about the future of the series.

1. Nathan keeps the command of the Aurora, and Cam keeps the command of the Celestia. Despite the space flight experience of the Intrepid crew, only the Aurora crew has seen space combat and won. And most important their combat tactics knowledge using the jump drive makes them irreplaceable.
2. Earth is a mess and nobody knows it's remaining production capabilities after the Jung invasion.
3. Before the Jung general flees Earth he told his aid to destroy everything (spaceports, the station in orbit, etc). We don't know if his aide was able to accomplish it. I don't think that the Jungs on board the station would commit suicide just because they were ordered to. Probably some of the installations will be of some use.
4. The Jungs that stayed on Earth should be easy recognizable as most of them are soldiers and they didn’t had to learn one of the earth languages. Some of them can speak one of Earth languages but as we could read in Ep. 10 with a heavy accent. So infiltration is not a possibility, but we have the brain-washed earthlings to worry about.
5. I guess that the Aurora will be repaired in orbit and Celestia will be finished in orbit as well.
6. The Jar-Keurog Jung battleship will also be repaired in orbit. And I guess it will be the new home of the Ghatazhak.
7. It will be a proble to full crew the Celestia and the captured Jung ship.
8. Tug cannot afford to send a battleship nor the Corinari but he has a lot of Ghatazhaks he can send and the Corinari were already equipping freighters with the jump drive.
9. I don't think there still exists any Falcon class fighter available at PC. If it was the case Tug should have gave Nathan some more, while refitting the Aurora at the Takaran shipyard.
10. Knowing the Chaos that reigns on Earth, I should guess that the Corinari will help sending some more Medical aid and Heavy fabricators to help rebuild the ships (probably some more fighters too). Takarans will probably contribute with engineers and technicians.
11. What we don't know is where this help will head to because when the shuttle departed from the Aurora, Earth was still controlled by the Jungs. Tanna maybe?
12. It will take months to the Jung general reach Alpha Centauri and some more to coordinate a new attack against earth. And I can believe that with a concentrated effort all ships can be repaired and fully crewed and even a small orbital station can start to be constructed.
13. Another question I have is: What about the moon rail gun installation? Was it completed destructed or can it be salvageable in part?
14. An interesting idea to the series is to use the PC Rebels concept of a hidden base and construct one at Ceres. Big enough to build a hidden shipyard and not far from earth. PC engineers have all the knowledge necessary.
15. I also think that in Ep. 11 we will know what happened to Nathan's mother and sisters and maybe Abby will find her husband and daughter.
16. Abby will be able to finish the Celestia jump drive and upgrade the Aurora's so both ships can jump up to 30ly instead of 15 ly.
17. I don't think that the Jungs are the military branch of the old Earth. The data ark warned the survivors about the Jung so they existed prior the digital virus and I can guess they are the ones that spread the virus.
18. I also think that the next episodes will be about retake Alpha Centauri, and maybe another battle for Earth. And we'll have lots of clues about the PC colonization, and the Jung. Of course these clues will lead us to the Part 2 of the Saga.

Reading the thread I notice that someone talked about parking old fighters at the desert as we do today. I don’t think that in a planetary government that will happen, it makes more sense to recycle the ships and reuse the materials in the fabricators to produce new fighters.

What we don’t know is what looks like the new Takaran fighters. Yes, we should keep in mind that a government only retires a fighter when it gets better ones and until now Mr Brown didn’t describe the actual Takaran fighters.

As Tallan is now part of the alliance and a minor colony of the Jung empire (was) the Jung should not be aware that they lost this colony which is IMHO a good resupply point to the new alliance fleet and even a possible supplier of fighters even “Falcon class”. Yeah “Falcon class” because even if it’s an old fighter I’m sure the blueprints are kept in the Takaran databases and can be easily build elsewhere once you have the right infrastructure, and we should remember that Tallan was almost kept intact.

OK All I can say about Ep. 10 and waiting for Ep. 11...is...(please dear lord forgive me)...I burned Bacon reading Ep 10.

Now that I have stated my sins in front of everyone, I can move on and speculate like everyone else about what the forthcoming episodes will have in them. I do hope that the EDF's 2 missing ships make an appearance either in 1 piece or shattered remains (for closure on the subject). And it would be nice to "find" a copy of some of the military aspects of the Data Ark or even as mentioned above, a secret EDF military base or ships out there somewhere.

@MikeG: Now that would be a nice surprise! an address to a secret pre-plague military installation. But I think that would be a bit much to ask for. I mean what can stop the Aurora and EDF if they now have access to military tech that blows everyone else's away. THat'll make for boring read. What i think would make more sense would be one time use type of technology. This way there is no lasting effect on the balance of power. Also I kind of like having only a few jump capable ships. I wouldn't want to have too much jump drive sprawl. Did you still eat the Bacon? 🙂

@Hans: I agree with everything you said. I think now that Abby has access to both jump drive models as well as the smart PC Engineers I bet she can improve both Jump drives. She'll be able to make the Aurora's Jump drive jump farther and charge faster while the Celestia's becomes as reliable as the Aurora. Maybe the joint design will charge not twice as fast but 1.5x and jump 25LY rather than 30 as compromise for safer more reliable Jumps.

I still think that The ships "Defender" and "Valiant" are out there somewhere in hiding (I proposed as much in an earlier post here in the forum as being in the Lagrange Point between Pluto and its moon Charon). I think that the story of there loss is fabricated and they are hiding out somewhere. I believe that Kelly D. proposed the Asteroid Ceres in the belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter being used as a covert base. I'm thinking that it already is and there may be some military supplies cached there. Kelly also said that it would be a good idea for a covert base like the one used at Corinair, and I agree!

Also, the The ships "Defender" and "Valiant" are slightly smaller than their later counterparts. They may have been the initial prototypes used for testing and the "loss" might be a cover story to confuse the Jung due to the espionage being conducted by them on Earth.

The Jung General Bacca has already said that the Jung homeworld is "on the edge of the core worlds, and Earth is at the center." The Jung want Earth for its strategic value as a center point to expand from. And with the discovery of the PC colonies 1000 LY's away, they will want to secure Earth for their use. Earth has not seen the last of General Bacca, that's is for sure! With the Aurora harassing their fleet the Jung have started to develop ways of fighting jump capable ships. The next encounters with the Jung will be more difficult in the future books... I see the next one being a building and repair/prepare time. The next major fighting will happen in book 12 in my opinion.

First: I am super excited about seeing more people posting here. Very cool.

I was reading Eric G's post about

The Jung General Bacca has already said that the Jung homeworld is “on the edge of the core worlds, and Earth is at the center.”

and it made me think of the Asimov Foundation series... Where is the Jung HQ? On Tanna! Or in one of its moons...

People, think of the space equivalent of the M1A1 Abrahams tank.
Take a large shuttle, wall off the cockpit, biggest JPED that will fit in back, shields to match, plasma cannon, massive sensor array, jump drive, and a couple of KKTs.
Four man crew, all pilot rated, as follows; pilot, navigator, gunner, and commander. Put a head and a couple of berths in the back of the cockpit, for 2 or three days they can eat MREs.

KKT, kinetic kill torpedo. A KKV started out as a com drone capable of long (100s of light years) distance at high (10 to 1,000 times light) speed. A KKT has just enough chemical rocket to clear the launch vessel, just enough power to sustain 30 seconds of FTL at 2X light, and a very simple payload. Anyone familiar with the depleted uranium armor piercing rounds the M1A1 uses? What happens if you use enriched uranium instead? Would it not wad up into a super critical ball when it impacts at something over the speed of light in the side of the hull of a Jung warship? Given there is a few nano-seconds (which at .9 light puts it deep inside) before the fireball, if you're lucky a propellant tank will get engulfed, really lucky and the neutrons will cause the Jung nukes to go off (probably the secondary), either way they're toast.

I like it!!! Small, compact, maneuverable, and also cheap to produce and good for surprise attacks. Use it along with the Falcon for recon/combat support.

On the KKT pack it along with the enriched uranium, also a tank, about the size of a propane tank on your BBQ grill, of lithium 6 to punch up the power to an H-Bomb... call it the KKT(N) kinetic kill torpedo, nuclear.... BIG BOOM!!!

P.S. yes I watch the discovery channel... got the lithium 6 idea from show about the Czar Bomb blast from the '60s in northern Siberia 😉

Yesterday I started to reread the 10 episodes of the “Frontiers Saga” (3 months to wait 🙁 ) specially to catch the details I missed and most important the clues Mr. Brown gave us about the future of the series. I think that there are a lot of them.
IMHO the end of Part I (next 5 episodes) will be about reconstruction of Earth and maybe retake of Alpha Centauri so the Alliance can grow stronger to face the Jung. I think that we will also learn a bit more about the Data Ark contents and start exchanges with the PC (comm drones and some people flying both ways). Part II will be about locate and free the Jung slave colonies (Data Ark will play an important hole in this). I guess we’ll also see lots of PC/Earth interaction and maybe some prequels aboutt what happened to Earth before the plague.

Someone wrote that it looks like the Jung are Asian descendants that decided to colonize another world. I should say that I agree with this hypothesis. I the first book of the series Senator Scott tells Nathan the he’s against FTL ships only because he does not want to provoke the Jung Dynasty. Maybe I’m wrong but i don’t remember seeing the word “dynasty” being used out of imperial or royal governments in Asia, in particular in China.

One thing that still bothering me is how the Jung were able to infiltrate Earth? How Eli was able to make contact with them? Sol system was condemned because of the virus and even Tallan people could not believe there were survivors. I hope Mr. Brown can give us some clues about that. Does anyone has any idea about this?

I like it!!! Small, compact, maneuverable, and also cheap to produce and good for surprise attacks. Use it along with the Falcon for recon/combat support.

On the KKT pack it along with the enriched uranium, also a tank, about the size of a propane tank on your BBQ grill, of lithium 6 to punch up the power to an H-Bomb… call it the KKT(N) kinetic kill torpedo, nuclear…. BIG BOOM!!!

P.S. yes I watch the discovery channel… got the lithium 6 idea from show about the Czar Bomb blast from the ’60s in northern Siberia

The damaged Jung battle ship in earth orbit has to have dozens of Jung shuttles. Those would be perfect donor hulls. If you keep the Jung reactor on-line to Jung sensors it would appear to be one of theirs. You could get really close to a battle platform, before they discover that things are not what they seem.

@Hans~
It would not be hard for them to determine that Earth was still populated just by listening to the recurrence of high power radio wave being broadcast into space. Even today the Earth broadcasts an incredible amount of radio noise. During the end of the plague in the story, all radio would have ceased being broadcast as the power infrastructure went offline. There would have been a point that all signals stopped and then all it would take is a ship dropping out of FTL close by (say just outside the Sol System) to realize that Earth had started to recover and was regaining its technological legs again just by listening for radio noise from Earth. They could then send in ships to take tests of the atmosphere and soil and also tissue samples to determine if the plague still would cause a problem for them. They could do this over time. There could have been spies here for a couple of generations and the post-plague people would not know anything about it until they started sending out ships again.

@Glenn~
There could also be shuttles that are on planet that were not destroyed for possible use for your "Trojan Horse" operation!!!

I remember I time when the idea behind the "jump" drive was for peaceful exportation... but like everything created by man it can be corrupted and use for war. It's a sad lot for sure...

Just a warning all jumpsuits must have a self destruct button. After all we can't have a level playing field when it comes to war.

P.s. not a supporter of the Jung. Just felt like being silly. Down with the jung. Long live the alliance!!! Hup hup!!

Whoa, "Jumpsuits"? Kelly, I think you are reading book 18 already... 😉

WOOHOO!!! JUMPSUITS!!! I WANT ONE!!!