This Means War!
The Confederation of Planets (ConFed) and the Independent Lepine Republic (ILR), interplanetary governments that for decades had maintained a cold war situation, with the exception of the attack on Derzon, entered into an undeclared total war when the latter bombed the planet Dornthant, Erma Felna's home planet, at SD 200-09-20 (September 20th, SD 200). The news of the cowardly attack on that planet has caused panic and fear on the planets of all sides to this conflict, since, apart from the news of the attack itself and the outbreak of hostilities, no one knows what will happen next.On the other hand, in SD 201-01-02 (January 2nd, SD 201), Dr. Elaki Kalahahaii did not seem to care much about the war itself, as she had other more important problems to deal for herself. Since she, with the help of the EDF, found that unknown spaceship full of human corpses more than four years ago, her life took a turn that she never imagined would affect her completely, forcing her to work far away from her home and family after a spy working for the ILR stole confidential information from her brain, being a Talent with psychic powers. Even after that spy's identity was discovered and eliminated, she was now the target of the EDF, whoever didn't want anyone else to know about that dangerous discovery and now they were willing to kill her to cover up that information. Now, she has to work in a distant place, thanks to the auspices and protection of the Chairman of Enchawah, who offered to protect her from the EDF. For obvious reasons, none of this made her happy, since she cared about her family and how they would be reacting to the news of the upcoming war.
There was also something else that had her restless: The discovery of a book called Frankenstein. To the best of her knowledge, the book was written in a time of war (apparently) and is probably a work of fiction for a human culture, but she had trouble figuring out how much information about that human woman's culture she could get from that book. There was also the matter of the other humans on the ship, which were of artificial origin. Their very existence was something she could not understand, for she could not believe that the human race had the ability to create artificial life forms, just as humans created the anthropomorphs using the same method in Arras Chanka centuries ago. All this was because the human woman was completely normal, while the others had several genetic modifications, along with the fact that they used nanomachines inside their bodies that made them completely different from the human woman in general terms, which also helped them to survive the harsh conditions of outer space.
This added another mystery about those mysterious beings who accompanied the woman: Were they slaves who worked for her and the other humans who crewed the ship or were they her masters instead? The mere existence of both the anthropomorphic and these artificial humans implied that slavery exists or existed in human society, something that the novel Frankenstein also mentioned in broad terms, due of their ability of manipulate people at biological scale. And although she knew that novel was written centuries ago, it did nothing to help her extrapolate information from the context of the novel to the current context of the society from which that woman hailed from, much less what kind of social evolution that society might have had or currently has.
Elaki Kalahahahaii couldn't help but feel bad for that human woman, because of how little she knew about her, she could imply that the world from which she could originate must have been a terrible place to live, not to mention the reasons why she had that book at hand. Did she have it as a reminder or a testament of what they had done with anthropomorphics like her and her whole society, just as the novel mentioned about the Frankenstein's Monster in the same way?
To clarify all these questions about the book, Dr. Kalahahaii decides to ask for some opinions from two entities: The Net and an Avian (probably penguin) named Dr. Dussault. When the doctor asked the AI if the book was a story that served as a warning to readers about the dangers of humanity trying to play god while creating new life forms, even if the novel was evidently a work of fiction written in an ancient age, the latter only answers that it had not taken that viewpoint deeply into account. On the other hand, Dussault also felt the same way about the novel as she did about it, but added that the fact that the Creators could be evil beings who enslave their own people and even create social castes based on people's genes was something he found very unpleasant, considering the dead artificial humans inside the ship whose role was not known with certainty.
Another point to consider was that the human woman had probably sacrificed her life, although no one was sure if it was something she decided on her own or was something of a conditioned response imposed on her. Furthermore, if the society from which that dead woman was originally from was really as authoritative as they had originally deduced, at least for Dr. Dussault, it was unlikely that a book like Frankenstein would exist or even be on that ship in the first place, something that the Net did not seem, or wanted to add to the discussion, apart from the fact that the latter decided to change the subject with a story about the Matter Conversion Cannon, which a prototype was being tested somewhere.
And with regard to that, in some unknown place in the ConFed space, we see some scientists who were testing the MCC with a stationary target in space, to be exact, with a non-operational satellite. The scientists had a problem with the weapon and that problem was that the MCC generated so much energy that many of the moving parts of the weapon were worn out after each shot. This was because the reflecting mirror, which was an essential part of the weapon, was its Achilles' heel, even with proper cooling. Despite this, the EDF managed to successfully fire the weapon without problems, destroying the satellite in a single shot.
Meanwhile, in another corner of outer space, we see the crew of Enchawah's ship, captained by Itzak Arrat, who were performing a simulated exercise of an attack, under the orders of Dru Clark. Despite being an exercise, Dru takes it quite seriously, and despite the warnings of Lees Koschusko and, above all, Frieda Rangoon, it does not seem to stop him and even takes Frieda's warnings as a personal insult. Moments later, Arrat himself gives the order to his crew to take a break and head to the space station where the ship was at the time to spend the time before leaving from there. Once she was resting, Frieda invited her friend, Illnya Ludadpik, to spend time together at the station, something she declines to do because she has other things to do, but not without warning Frieda not to get herself into trouble.
Unfortunately, Illnya's prediction came true, since the first thing Frieda did was go to a restaurant and order a crispy bar, which she licked in a very erotic way. This attracted the attention of several Canines, who wanted to court her. To Frieda's misfortune, her courtship turned into a brawl between several men who wanted to be with her, turning into a dog fight in the literal sense of the word. But before the fight turned much more violent, Dru, along with other soldiers, ended the fighting by using shock sticks against the warring parties. Once the brawl was over, Dru scolded Frieda for getting into that mess, and if it had not been for a previous order to return to the ship, he and the rest of the crew would have left her at the space station. The only thing Frieda did in response was to hug Dru tightly, to his misfortune.
Once the entire Arrat crew was back inside the ship, the ship itself left the space station on an unknown course, while Arrat himself decided to give the bad news about the attack on Dornthant and the declaration of war against the ILR. Meanwhile, Illnya and Frieda, the latter was resting after being saved by Dru from the brawl at the space station where the ship was refueling, noticed that the ship was accelerating faster than usual and recommended that they should return to their posts. Moments later, Arrat informs the entire crew of the terrible news of the attack on Dornthant and the bombing of the city of Annahport by the ILR, in addition to the fact that from now on Enchawah would join forces with the EDF to combat the ILR, and that the entire crew would carry out combat drills taking into account the current war situation. Frieda suddenly notices that Illnya breaks into tears at the news, since millions of people died in the attack and they are now knee-deep involved into a galaxy-wide war. The only thing Frieda can do for her friend is to comfort her in her arms.
And with regard to the ILR, in the following scene we see Captain Barlahan analyzing on the ship's computers that were being chased by an EDF ship after what happened in Dornthant, to which he requests the opinion of Lt. Ipcha Tankannahai in order to evade the enemy ship. The latter analyzes that they have two escape routes to leave the solar system without having to do any fighting, and fortunately, the ship has enough fuel to do so.
And it turns out that EDF ship is captained by Erma, who is in pursuit of the ILR fleet that attacked Dornthant with impunity. The ship's crew informed her that the Republican fleet had jumped into another system and she ordered to follow them as they jumped into her direction, despite being warned beforehand that it was too dangerous to jump with so little room for maneuver. To make matters worse, having no more places to monitor the enemy by other means, they now had to do it on their own, not to mention that they need two days minimum before jumping, something that the enemy fleet could take advantage of to escape.
Once the ship jumped to its destination, Nagai, the Feline (cougar) XO at Erma's orders, asked her in a severe tone the origin of the violent sounds the ship makes after jumping, something Erma claims are caused by the ship's sensors and would jump again after a few hours. Not content with her explanations, Nagai requests to speak with her in private, something she concedes, and once out of sight of the rest of the crew, the XO harshly criticizes Erma, telling her that she was endangering the ship just to get revenge on the ILR by doing a Snipe Hunt. As if this were not enough for him, Nagai does not hesitate to tell Erma that he hates her, since she is not qualified to be the captain of a ship, and that even she does not belong to his environment, not to mention that he will do his best to defend his crew from any nonsense she may do, to which Erma responds that the feeling is mutual.
Despite this, Erma acknowledges that she has no experience in captaining spaceships, despite having the accreditations to do so. She also adds the circumstances for which she is the captain, mainly what happened in her native Dornthant and the coup d'état organized by Tavas Ikalik and his followers. Erma warns Nagai beforehand not to try to tell anyone what she said about the coup d'état, because of the risk that the EDF secret services could make his life impossible or kill him. To conclude the discussion, Erma also warns the XO that they are now in a state of war and that she is willing to fulfill the mission that was assigned to her and the rest of the crew, and that she will also do her best to protect the crew, and since they are now at war, anything goes to achieve those goals, including ignoring the safety rules regarding jumps.
At the end of the discussion with Erma, Nagai asked the Net for its opinion on what she had said, which the IA agreed with her, to Nagai's indignation and surprise. The Net explained to the XO that his exaggerated concerns were only hindering Erma's work and that he should understand her situation, adding that what she said about the tragedy in Dornthant was true. Nagai, incredulous that the AI agreed with her, asks the computer if he should play along with her, to which the Net answers that he should do his duty, but at the same time if Erma also does something stupid, the computer will do the same with her. Once the discussion is over, the AI orders Nagai to return to work, while it decides to talk to Erma in private.
Once alone, the Net asks Erma to understand Nagai, since he was still loyal to his former captain whom she replaced, to which Erma aggressively replied that he was useless in a war situation in which everyone was involved. The AI advises her to give him time to accept the situation, not to mention if she had taken the time to analyze her crew, almost none of them had military experience, since most of them had experience with civilian transport or scientific research. In addition, the Net explains more or less concretely Nagai's concerns regarding the safety of the ship and Erma's work regarding the pursuit of the enemy fleet, since, as Nagai was explaining, she and her crew were playing a intergalactic cat-and-mouse (pardon the pun) game with the ILR fleet and she was only putting the ship at risk unnecessarily with all those jumps. Erma asks the Net for another better idea, to which the AI responds that she should try to anticipate their movements rather than blindly pursue them.
Back with Barlahan and his crew, we see in this scene that his ship found a civilian spaceship that was in his way, causing Tankannahai to give notice to him, who was just waking up at the time. Tankannahai deduces that they're going to need extra supplies and the only way to get them is to storm the civilian ship. A week after the ILR fleet spotted the civilian ship, named "M. T. Feebles", the crew of that ship also noticed the presence of an enemy fleet, which appeared in front of them, without them knowing their identity. Moments later, they receive a call from Barlahan's ship, demanding that they surrender and deliver their supplies to them. Obviously, the first thing the Feebles crew takes into account is that those ships could be pirate ships, thus concluding the story of this issue.
Tropes:
- Bar Brawl: Happens when some Canine guys in a restaurant inside a space station where courting Frieda and the whole situation became ugly when they start fighting due to jealosy.
- Bearer of Bad News: Arrat had to report the attack on Dornthant to his crew. Unfortunately, Illnya breaks into tears at the news.
- Crapsack World: Dr. Kalahahaii considered that the human woman could have come from a very terrible place to live after reading Frankenstein. It turned out to be a little more complicated than that.
- Extremely Short Timespan: All the events of this issue happens in a span of a single day.
- God Is Evil: Discussed: Since they found no information about the artificial humans inside the ship along with the body of the human woman, the first thing that some people, including Dr. Kalahahaii, began to deduce was that the Creators were probably evil beings who enslaved their own people and used their scientific advances to create castes based on people's genes, something that was later discarded in view of the human woman sacrificed her own life, which was inconsistent with such an image.
- Snipe Hunt: Nagai accuse Erma of endangering the ship by doing many jumps to many places without success in a galactic game of whack-a-mole at the expense of the security of the ship's crew.
- These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Discussed in-universe: It was more than obvious, considering the content of the novel and the very existence of the anthropomorphic civilization, that even in the context of Frankenstein and the culture in which the novel was written, the very idea of creating artificial life forms was and IS considered as a forbidden knowledge to which no one should dwell in, under penalty of suffering unforeseeable devastating consequences, as happened to the titular Dr. Victor Frankenstein in the book.
- This Means War!: Since the ILR attacked Dornthant, a ConFed planet and a member of the EDF, in a surprise attack, the whole cold war situation between both superpowers since decades ago turned hot in an instant and now a full war is unleashed between them.
- Time Skip: The beginning of the second arc happens four months after the attack on Dornthant, which occurred in SD 200-09-20 (September 20th, SD 200)
- Visual Pun: The brawl between all the Canine men wanting to be with Frieda, also a Canine as well, is a very literal dogfight.
