Troy Rising: Difference between revisions

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Two years later, [[NASA]] has just completed preliminary studies to the studies necessary to begin preliminary design phase of the bid phase on a potential ship to reach, but not enter, the "Gudrum Ring". (Cost: $976 million dollars.)

 

A year after that, Earth pretty much gets fifty years of [[I Want My Jetpack|space development]] [[Laser-Guided Karma|karma]] all at once. A single Horvath ship comes through the gate. It destroys Mexico City, Shanghai and Cairo in a single attack. (They were warning shots - the most noticeable constructed features on the planet.) Ultimatum: Surrender all stockpiles of precious metals or they continue shooting. Have more for them to take next year or they continue shooting. The Horvath are pirates without galactic representation, but the dominant powers can no more afford to interfere than NATO could send troops to aid a third-world country no-one in the West has heard of. Earth is on its own.

 

 

 

 

* [[Alien Catnip]]: Maple syrup is, to several species of the aliens, an addictive beverage with effects similar to that of alcohol on humans. Tyler Vernon milks this for all it's worth, and builds his own empire on it.

* [[Author Filibuster]]: Ringo's standard Pet Peeves show up: Pacifism is dumb, the military is extremely important, people who have their jobs because of political/family connections are the bane of humanity and should be fired immediately, liberalism is evil, the [[Mainstream Media]] cannot be trusted... New(ish) ones include "space is ''really'' dangerous", "[[Science Is Good]]", and "maintenance is very important."

* [[First Contact]]: Done in a rather amusing manner via phone calls to major world leaders.

* [[Famous Last Words]]: Attempted and averted by Vernon when asked for his Last Words.

* [[Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon]]: Rangoran Assault Vectors and ''Aggressor'' class battleships have spinal weapons mounted to the front, with the ones mounted on AVs having their own dedicated reactors even.

* [[Humanity Is Superior]]: For one very specific reason; ''We're [[Crazy Awesome]].''

'''Granadica''': '' 'It's not crazy.' You humans are the only sophonts in this galactic region to have that saying. Most people just go with '[[You're Insane!|that's crazy]]'.'' }}

** Other instances of Human 'superiority' are actually mostly a result of the fact that every other race humans have close dealings with (or fight against) was at the 'hiding in caves' to 'tribal' levels of technological development when the gates were placed in their systems. It all boils down to Tyler noticed that 'Hey I can execute on all this Big Ideas from Scifi'. The other races didn't have the benefit of Hard Scifi writers coming up with things for them since they weren't far enough along on their own when they suddenly got access to advanced tech.

** Part of the reason why the story begins: he starts talking to an alien about the possibility of Earth foods being sold offworld, possibly as a niche market. He strikes it gold with Maple Syrup.

* [[Line-of-Sight Name]]: "CeeFid" is used as a fake project name used to fool any Horvath listening to a conversation between two human characters, as part of an excuse to go to a secure room. Once they're out of observation, the speaker explains the inspiration: the book '''''C'''++ '''f'''or '''Id'''iots'', a book he saw on the shelf in his office.

* [[No Biochemical Barriers]]: Used and averted in that the Glatun traders simply assumed that any foods produced on earth wouldn't be of any value until Vernon, in a desperate attempt to make enough money to pay his bills, gathers up large mounts of foodstuff from one of his jobs and the majority actually turns out to be edible. Well, except for [[Take That|Coca-Cola, which is horribly toxic.]]

* [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]]: After the fight over maple syrup is finished and Vernon starts working on building a space infrastructure for Earth, a lot of these pop up and get in his way of doing what they and their parent organizations wouldn't.

* [[Occupiers Out of Our Country!]]: Vernon's initial goal. He's got bigger ones.

* [[Oh Crap]]:

** The humans get their turn in the barrel, so to speak, when the ''Thermopylae'' jumps into Epsilon Eridani to rescue their diplomatic mission from a Horvath attack, and run into so many missiles set up as part of a trap of the Rangorans that they literally blot out the sun<ref>well, technically the system's star</ref>. One of the human commanders even invokes the relevant phrase from the [[Real Life]] battle after which the station was named. [[It Got Worse|It gets worse]] when {{spoiler|said swarm of missiles is discovered to be ''the bait''}} The Rangora are equally surprised.

* [[Only Sane Man]]: One Rangora general is assigned to analyze humanity and determine a battle plan. High Command keeps ignoring him, and keeps sending entirely insufficient force. He even says he's not sure it's possible to overestimate humans. {{spoiler|And when High Command ''does'' decide to listen to him, they don't have the resources to implement his suggestions because they were destroyed earlier, because of the aforementioned stupid plans. He even mentions in private that he's worried about holding the Rangora homeworld, not taking Terra, and hopes that the humans give him a job after they win. His [[Political Officer]] is herself somewhat in alignment with his views.}}

* [[Orion Drive]]: Troy adds an [[Orion Drive]] so that it can get to the [[Portal Network]] and go crush enemy alien fleets out-system. Upon first seeing the Troy begin detonating the bombs, the aliens think it's been hit, only to [[Laughing Mad|suddenly realize it's actually the drive.]]

* [[Paranoia Fuel]]: In-universe. Like its parent series, the [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness/Physics Plus|sole piece]] of [[Applied Phlebotinum]] is gravity manipulation. What bothers the hell out of Vernon is that the only known way to build an efficient gravity manipulator is with ''another'' efficient gravity manipulator - and no one knows who invented the damned things... {{spoiler|In the canon Schlockiverse, all tech can be traced to the Gatekeepers, galactic overlords who secretly duplicated, interrogated, and slaughtered countless trillions of trillions of sentients in appeasement to extragalactic overlords.}}

* [[POV Sequel]]: Part of ''Citadel'' to the final events of ''Live Free or Die''. Including the one-in-a-million survival of the ''Myrmidon'' caught outside ''Troy'' during the attack, from the perspective of the pilot.

* [[Ramming Always Works]]:

** [[Subverted Trope|Not]] when you're smashing a couple million tons of spacecraft against several ''trillion'' tons of asteroid it doesn't, as the Rangora found out to their chagrin, in ''Citadel''. The damage was patched over before the next book.

** In ''The Hot Gate'', however, several partially completed cruisers are hastily converted to overglorified battering rams, which are used along with [[Macross Missile Massacre|a whole mess of missiles]] for both [[Heroic Sacrifice|taking shots intended for the rammers]] and to batter down Rangoran defenses in preparation for ramming Assault Vectors.

* [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens]]: The Rangorans manage to convey aspects of both Nazi Germany (big on eugenics and genetic purity) and Soviet Russia (led by a constantly-backstabbing Oligarchy, use of [[Secret Police]] to keep 'dangerous intellectuals' in line), with shards of Imperial Japan (fanatical dedication to [[The Emperor]], in ideal if not in practice, strong warrior culture) on top of it. And yet, at the same time, they manage to be remarkably human.

* [[Secret Police]]: For Rangorans, the Kazi fills this slot.

* [[Shout-Out]]: Vernon orders tea.

** There's an amusing one in ''The Hot Gate'', when the commander of the Thermopylae has to report that he's walked into a trap and balks at saying '''[[Memetic Mutation|IT'S A TRAP]]''' for a moment. His subordinate all but explicitly makes the [[Star Wars]] reference. [[Fun Personified|As well as what seems like a dozen others]].

* [[Strawman News Media]]: Courtney Courtney of CNN, who always tries to be as [[Political Correctness Gone Mad|Politically Correct as possible]] while seeming to have a slightly antagonistic view towards Vernon due to his economic success.

* [[Strawman Political]]: The [[Our Presidents Are Different|President of the United States]] in "Live Free Or Die". Elected post-invasion, he won't give Vernon even the slightest assistance in attempting to eject the Horvath from Earth, and is pretty much just [[The Quisling]] because his family(and assets) is old money.

** After the Horvath get their nose tweaked, the Air Force. When Vernon contracts Boeing with developing a [[Artificial Gravity]]-based space shuttle, the Air Force makes them use the money to build a (crappy)space fighter {{spoiler|armed with gravity warheads}}. First, [[Space Fighter|Space Fighters]] are all but ''useless'' in this 'verse, where gunboats are the kings of space combat. Second, the Air Force invested ''just'' enough money to figure the basics of gravtech, then spent all of Vernon's money on the spoiler. Finally, they declare the spoiler above Vernon's clearance, and it takes a [[Depopulation Bomb]] for them to even acknowledge what they've spent most of his money on.

** This can be a fun drinking game: Step one: every time that Vernon or one of the characters goes on a "Take That" rant, take a drink. Step Two: Have your will written out in advance, you'll be dead by chapter six.

* [[That's No Moon]]: Troy is the size of a small moon and is ''mobile''.

* [[Walking Techbane]]: PVT John "Chaosman" Peterson, one of the Marines stationed on Troy, is infamous for breaking anything technological he uses, even if the item is supposed to be completely immune to complete and total failure. Considering [[Space Marine|his job]] involves operating in space, this isn't exactly the best of situations.

* [[Wave Motion Gun]]: SAPL for the win.

* [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?]]: At least one person Verner hires to work on the ''Monkey Business''. Dr. Chu, who is a highly paid and well respected physicist, who leaves his job at MIT to work as ships cook, explicitly because it's a job in space.

* [[Write Who You Know]]: A staple of Ringo's writing.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Military Science Fiction]]

[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]