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But there's no way for her to know if she'll die in one minute or fifteen or an hour. Even if I was coughing up blood, I couldn't predict my own time of death. If I know for sure that I've got maybe one to two minutes left to live, that would drive me to ram a shield emitter for the good of mankind. Otherwise, I'd be holding out hope.

How much do you know about fission reactors. Technically, the power generators in my fighters are not nuclear reactors, but the same principles might apply. Namely that they can go supercritical without coolant. One of my pilots is not losing coolant, but he's lost main power. The other pilot who sacrifices herself does so because she's losing coolant and the power generator will explode. How do i reconcile those? How is it that pilot A loses power without his generator exploding, while pilot B is about to explode because of coolant loss?

Um, no. :-)  I'll wait until you read it. Easier to discuss in context.

Does anyone have any suggestions for why a damaged starfighter would lead to the death of the pilot in, say, a minute? I need the pilot to sacrifice herself after she (Eve) realizes she doesn't have enough time for a rescue. I've already used the "losing air" bit in the previous chapter, so I was hoping to do something different this time. I was going to use a coolant leak from the power core, but another pilot has his power knocked out without an explosion, which suggests Eve should be able to simply take her core offline, too. Perhaps she can't take it offline? Seems hokey.

Thoughts?

The last battle chapter is up. I didn't have space for traps or delaying tactics, since the chapter is already too long. My story excuse is that they're waging battle chess, which has strict rules. No glue on the floors. No hydraulic-propelled nails through the eyeballs, either. A shame about that last one.

Go read my crap.

Thanks.
Dirk

One correction to what I said several posts back, the defenders have no need to blow the air out of the hangar bays. The bays's shields keep both enemy ships out and air in. You either need to kill the shields by blowing up the emitters, which will always blow the air out into space, resulting a vacuum in the hangar, or you need the frequency codes that allow you to modulate your boarding ships' shields, so they can pass right through the barrier. The barrier uses a rapidly changing frequency to avoid someone coming in without a security code to match hangar's shields. Air isn't able to escape through a properly working shield, since the shields are too strong. They act like a wall as far as air molecule are concerned.

The advantage of this approach is that I don't need two sets of shields: one to defend the hangars from outside attack, and another as an airlock between space and the hangar. My single set of shields serves both purposes.

I have something called molten grenades, but the treaty forbids their use (except against your own people) What you may do is set your flesh eater on overload and through yourself at the enemy.

Laufenheit.

Body shields!

I'm trying to write a scene where a group of marines in pressurized boarding suits (including helmets and rebreathers) have to exit their raiding ship into the vacuum of an exposed hangar bay they landed in. They depressurize the raider before stepping out of the raider. Eventually, as they move deeper into the ship, there will eventually be fully pressurized locations with breathable air, but they don't remove their helmets so they can't be gassed. My reason for the vacuum in the hangar bay is that the crew of the ship are trying to make it as difficult as possible to be boarded.

I assume there has to be an airlock between the vacuum-filled areas of the ship and the pressurized locations. If you're in a vacuum like those who are boarding and open a sealed hatch containing air, what will happen to the boarding team? Do they get blown off their feet as the air escapes into the vacuum, or is the effect not as severe? Also, is there anything here that I'm not accounting for?

Thanks
Dirk

Hmm. I've found more instances. Unless someone has a better idea, I'm just going to refer to the pilot as he. I'm imagining this in real life and I'm pretty sure that's what they do. Being gender neutral in a dogfight probably isn't a priority.

Silly question (aren't they all?): How do I write the following sentence assuming I don't know the sex of the pilot?

Not sure about the US, but I bought a nice refurbished laptop with DVD drive at Staples for $250.