quote:

The first floor we covered was still lit with fluorescent lights, but by the time we hit the stairs for the next level down, we were forced to switch to our helmet-mounted night vision monoculars. Something had systematically smashed every light. Glass crunched under our boots as we quickly made our way through the narrow steel corridors. I had a pair of lights on my shotgun, one a super-bright white light, and the second cast a brilliant beam that was invisible to the human eye, but lit up the whole world in green through my monocular. The rest of the team was similarly equipped with infrared lights on their guns as well. Since we were fighting undead, the thermal-imaging gear had been left on deck. It was not very useful against things that were already room temperature.

We swiftly passed through what had been the galley. I kept the shotgun at the low ready, elbows tucked down to keep from banging them on the walls. Meals lay half eaten and rotting on the tables. The walls were splashed with a thick fluid that was indeterminate through night vision, but my gut told me that it had once been bright arterial spray. I bumped into a wine bottle with my foot and sent it spinning under one of the tables. The doors were basically watertight hatches, and I had to carefully step over a steep sealing lip on the base of each portal as I passed. So far all of the hatches had been open.

The crash of gunfire echoed through the corridors and ductwork. That was a good sign that our friends were still alive. My small team quickened its pace. According to the blueprints we'd studied on the way to the ship, we needed to go down one more flight of stairs, through some quarters, down a long corridor, and then we would be right on top of the engine room. We all flinched as an explosive whump vibrated the whole freighter and rattled the utensils in the galley.

quote:

I flipped my monocular back and complied, pushing the button that activated the 120-lumen Surefire light on the forearm of my 870. Brilliant, scalding light suddenly filled the room from five waving points.

quote:

The rest of my team emptied their subguns into the creature as it closed on them. Holly and Trip started to reload and Lee drew his knife and swung wildly. The vampire moved so quickly that it was hard to visually track. It side-stepped the blow, grabbed Lee by his arm and tossed him across the room. I heard the smaller man skid roughly across the floor. The vampire was distracted from Trip and Holly as heavy .308 bullets struck it in the feet and legs.

Julie's cover was torn away as the sailor thing grabbed the bunk and ripped it from the wall, easily breaking the heavy bolts. It reached for her but I got there first. I swung my ganga ram with all of the fury that I possessed. Somehow it sensed me in midswing, and started to move. I had been aiming for its neck, but instead my blade sunk deep into its shoulder, breaking the collarbone and grinding out against the top of the monster's ribs. Black fluid sprayed everywhere like a pierced hydraulic cylinder.

Spinning away, the creature ripped my blade from my grasp. The vampire flew backwards, and stuck to the wall like a spider. Screeching in anger, it reached up, grasped the hilt of the massive Nepalese blade and drug it out of its back. The noise of steel scrapping on bone was sickening. The blade dropped to the floor with a clatter. I heard the near simultaneous dropping of bolts as Trip and Holly got their UMPs back in action. Julie was reloading. Lee wasn't moving. I reached for a specialty 12 gauge round, dropped it into the open chamber of my 870, and ran the pump forward.

The wound was already sealing. It hissed something obviously profane in French.

"Parley-vous this, mother-fucker."

It leapt at me, launching itself like a demon frog missile. I brought the shotgun up and pulled the trigger as the muzzle contacted the vampire's chest.

A regular breaching round is used by police to safely break the locks or hinges on heavy doors during raids, which fragments without endangering any bystanders. The 3-inch magnum 12 gauge sintered magnesium/tungsten breaching charge that I had just fired had been designed for blowing through hinges suitable for bank vaults. Milo had told me that, during testing, this special breacher had put a basketball-sized hole through a side of beef.

The recoil was amazing, even by my standards. The noise was going to leave all of us with ringing ears for a week. The vampire's torso exploded in a black mist.

quote:

I took my place at the door, light stabbing ahead, searching for targets. Julie took the second position. She spoke softly in my ear.

"Parley-vous, mother effer?"

"It sounded good at the time," I shrugged. "Hey, if we don't die in the next few minutes, are you doing anything for dinner tonight?"

She thumped me in the shoulder to indicate that it was time to move out. I took that as a no. I moved quickly, the light from the flashlights behind threw my hulking shadow down the hall. I had pulled something in my leg in the struggle with the vampire. My head and chest ached from my earlier adventure in the water. My stomach and throat hurt from all of the heaving. My nerves tingled with adrenaline and terror-induced endorphins. I was still seeing purple ghosts in one semi-blinded eye, and I was covered in vampire juices. I was having a great time and had never felt more alive.

quote:

While we waited for Harbinger to get back to us, I could not help but ask, "Did any of you guys know Roberts?"

"He was the tall, skinny, blond guy on the boat," Trip said. "Seemed like a good guy."

"He was a great guy. Brave. A little crazy, but he was a dang good Hunter," Julie told us. "Roberts has been with us since we restarted. First batch of Newbies we had. He'll be missed. I think he had an ex-wife and some kids in St. Louis."

quote:

Julie thought about it for a moment and then nodded at Trip. Lee unclipped the pouch, opened it, made a few adjustments, zipped it back up and handed it over. Trip gently bounced it in his hands a few times to test the weight, then he underhanded it with perfect accuracy, landing it on our side, just in front of the targeted hatch.
"Good throw," Holly said.

"I helped coach the girl's softball team too. Slow pitch." All of us gave him funny looks. "It was a small school," he added defensively.

quote:

"Go get them, Cowboy," Julie whispered under her breath, while tightening the grip on her M14. We were positioned so that anything stepping into the hall was going to get a big surprise. A bit of high explosives and four of us that were able to provide direct fire. Julie and I were even pretty decent shots. Who was I kidding, I was pretty good, but from what I had seen up on the deck, she was amazing. I glanced surreptitiously her way. Her brown eyes were focused through the lens of her ACOG scope. Her gloved finger was resting easily just alongside the trigger guard. She was leaning against the steel hull to steady herself. Her features were strong, and somehow she was still attractive in her relatively unflattering green body armor despite the scratches and slime all over her face. Julie Shackleford was the girl of my dreams.

quote:

In the distance the sound of banging metal could be heard and then a rapid series of gunshots and another clang of metal on metal. Trip was prone on the floor, so he felt the vibration first. "Here we go!" he shouted.

A metallic screeching tore at our ears, as a wall of white vapor poured out of the open hatchway. The noise was a bastardized version of the world's greatest and most terrifying teapot. Even from where we were, the temperature rose dramatically as the scalding mist began to fill the hallway. Just under the onslaught of noise could be heard other equally inhuman screams, this time from the engine compartment's resident vampires.

Something moved in the hatchway. First one, then two, and finally a third vampire stumbled into the corridor. The steam was boiling their fluids and peeling their flesh far faster than they could regenerate. One of them turned malevolently toward us with blind, molten eye sockets and screamed.

"Hit it, Lee!" Julie shouted. Our demolitionist librarian complied and compressed the clacker in his gloved fist.

The small charge detonated. The explosion was more of a muted thump than the expected fireball. In the open, Lee's little bomb might not have been very impressive, but in the narrow metal space, the energy of the C4 tore through the undead. Their bones were smashed into powder and their bodies were disseminated into their component materials. We were thirty feet away but we were still peppered with a fine mist of vampire.

quote:

The vampire was torn asunder, but already it was beginning to heal. This time Trip and Holly did the honors while I covered them. Holly put her boot down on the creature's spine, and slammed a stake through its back with a vengeance. This vampire was too damaged to scream. Trip grimaced as he pulled out his hatchet. I suppose that the correct term was tomahawk for the Vietnam-era weapon that he had picked out of the armory. My friend raised the little ax and brought it down swiftly. The vampire had been shot through the neck so many times that it did not take much effort. The tomahawk slipped through with enough force to raise sparks on the floor. Immediately the tissue began to dissolve and drip through the grating, leaving only a black, damaged skeleton with abnormally long teeth.

The noise of the escaping steam died off as the ship's emergency systems took over, shutting down the boilers, and locking down specific valves. The white mist in the hall slowly dissipated. The temperature had risen at least twenty degrees, and I could feel the sweat rolling down my body.

quote:

I paused in front of the heavy metal door that held the French survivors. I tried the wheel. My gloves provided enough protection to touch the metal, but not for long. It was stuck. I pounded on the door. The fist falls echoed loudly.

"Anybody know Morse code?" I asked. Everybody shook their heads in the negative. Not a whole lot of former Eagle Scouts on my team. Julie shoved past me and struck the butt of her rifle against the door. Dum-du-du-dum-dum. Shave and a haircut.

We waited a few seconds. Dum-dum. Came the response. Two bits. The wheel began to turn. I sighed in relief and tried in vain to wipe the sweat and moisture from my face. I could hardly wait to get out of this sauna. The door opened.

The famous French hunter Jean Darné stood before us, tall and imposing in his black body armor that differed only slightly from our own. He was a legend. Considered one of the greatest Hunters the Europeans had, he had hunted more monsters in more places than probably anybody but Earl Harbinger. His team was well respected, and he was considered by many to be the best of the best.

He was also currently dead. As were the four other members of his team standing to his side.

"We have been waiting for you," the vampire said.

Zereth posted:

I'm betting the french hunter is a vampire or other undead thingy already and this is just a huge trap.

chitoryu12 posted:

Man right before I post the end of the chapter, too.

Khizan posted:

Morse code is just a representation of the letters, albeit English letters. There's no reason you couldn't tap out a message in Spanish or French or any other language that can be represented with the standard English letters.

Hostile V posted:

Frankly they should've been suspicious people trapped on a broken-down boat would know Morse Code or have access to it and they should have prepared to just immediately immolate the part of the boat sending messages out in Morse Code. Only cops and undead assholes know Morse Code.

Samizdata posted:

You forgot about ham radio types.

Hostile V posted:

Again, cops and undead assholes.

chitoryu12 posted:

It leapt at me, launching itself like a demon frog missile.

quote:

None of us moved. The vampire and his four wights stood separated from the Hunters only by one narrow doorway. Julie and I were closest. For some reason the vampire did not move. The wights made chewing motions and stood tensed, ready to pounce. Their red eyes studied us hungrily. They were all wearing the same black body armor. Darné smiled at us, showing off his elongated incisors. He absently rapped his knuckles on the metal hatchway. S-O-S.

"Well, if it is not little Julie Shackleford. My, how you have grown up," Darné said. "You are the image of your mother, an absolutely lovely woman. What a pleasure."

"The pleasure is all yours, Jean," she answered. She shifted her rifle slightly. The two of us were blocking the doorway. The undead were close enough to smell. I did not think I could move fast enough to get away. It would only take a single touch from one of those wights to end up paralyzed.

"Now, now, little girl. Do not try anything hasty. The only thing holding back my 'men' is my will. They are bonded to me. If I lose concentration for an instant your team is doomed." He would have been a very handsome man when he was alive, suave and distinguished with just a touch of gray at his temples and in his thin moustache; his English was impeccable. I'm sure he could have been quite the charmer except for the whole evil vampire thing and the four undead pit-bull equivalents standing beside him.

"So why didn't you make your move? You could have just charged us immediately and taken us by surprise." I could tell Julie was stalling for time. But I wasn't sure what exactly she was hoping for.

"Americans have no flair for the dramatic. You are almost as bad as the Germans. No romance in your souls. Always straightforward." He snapped his long fingers. "I want to make a deal."

"We don't deal with vampires," she stated flatly.

"But you have made deals with monsters before. The truth of that is undeniable. I want to make a deal with you. I will let you live, and I will give you important information, in exchange for safe passage from this ship after sunset."

quote:

"Do not be so quick to judge. You of all people must wonder about this life. It is marvelous. I fought the darkness for so many years. I did not know what I was missing. I can see everything, Julie. I can feel your pulse from here. I can feel the world. The heartbeat of the very world. It is ecstasy." The vampire was beginning to wax poetic. I had to try something.

"Hey, Jean," I interrupted. "The girl's hardheaded. I'm willing to talk business."

"Your standards are slipping. When did MHI start hiring gorillas?" the vampire asked wryly, glancing in my direction. His red eyes bored into me.

"Owen? What are you doing?"

"Shut up," I snapped at her. "I don't want to die here. You can keep the girl. I'll go up and pull up the anchor and point this barge at Florida. Old man Earl isn't going to want anything to happen to this chick. We will leave."

"A sensible one. You must be new, yes?"

"Yeah, I'm just a mercenary. I'm just in this for the money," I lied. Moisture dripped onto my helmet and rolled hotly down my spine.

quote:

"Look, Jean, I don't want to stop him. I just want to make sure I end up on the winning team. Know what I mean?"

The vampire smiled. "I can help you then. You do not want to be on the wrong side when Lord Machado rules. Do we have a deal?"

Julie interrupted angrily. "Owen? What the hell are you thinking? No deals with vampires; he'll kill me as soon as you walk out the door."

"Shut up, bitch!" I snarled. I move very fast for a big man. In the next second, I dropped my shotgun, letting the sling catch it. I lifted my right hand as if I was going to backhand her. Julie's eyes widened in shocked surprise. The vampire's eyes followed my uplifted hand, as my left hand lifted a grenade off of my webbing. I brought my hands together smoothly. Instead of throwing my fist, I stuck my finger through the safety pin and pulled. The sound of the pin landing on the steaming floor was exceedingly loud.

"Run, Julie. Run now." I held the live grenade up next to my face. The only thing keeping the grenade from exploding was the thin spring-loaded metal spoon that I was holding down with one finger. If I relaxed my grip the fuse would ignite. Five seconds later it would explode, and possibly ignite the engine room in a massive explosion. Julie did not say anything. She nodded and then retreated. The rest of the team followed quickly. I shouted one final instruction: "Get ready to abandon ship!"

quote:

"You idiot!" the vampire roared. The wights hissed and thrashed in unison. "You will destroy us all!"

"Better my way than yours, you snail-eating bastard." I started slowly backing away. The wights exploded from the room and spread out in a skirmish line, snapping and clawing at the air. Jean Darné stepped through the portal and strode forward. In the residual steam and in the red emergency lights he looked like the traditional versions of the devil. So this must be hell.

quote:

I kept my left arm extended with the grenade. I reached down with my right and grasped the stock of my shotgun. I had fired this gun hundreds and thousands of times, practiced until my fingers had bled and my shoulder formed thick recoil calluses. My father, the ruthless perfectionist, had driven me hard when it came to shooting, because he sensed that I had a gift and would not settle for anything less than perfection in his sons. The wood was worn smooth under my glove. The Remington glistened darkly with moisture from the steam. I brought the butt into contact with my shoulder. My life came down to this instant. I needed to beat my record.

"Catch!" I tossed the grenade to Darné. The spoon released with a metallic sproing, igniting the fuse. The vampire moved as a blur to snatch the grenade out of the air. The wights mindlessly tracked the moving object. For me, time ceased. The gun and I were one seamless melding of man and machine. The safety was released as my finger knowingly sought the trigger. The muzzle rose perfectly. The trigger was pulled. The sear released. The hammer fell. The firing pin struck the primer. The powder burned.

I was bringing the muzzle onto the second wight's head before the buckshot struck the first. Fire. Work the action. Repeat. Five shots. Faster than I had ever gone before. The fusillade was a continuous roar without pause. I did not miss any of the five undead craniums.

Dropping the shotgun onto its sling, I grabbed the ladder and started to climb as fast as I humanly could. I did not wait to watch for results. I heard thuds as some of the wights fell to their backs, or collapsed to their knees.

Darné had been a Monster Hunter for longer than I had been alive. He knew what to do with live ordnance in a bad place. He had caught, and then immediately launched the grenade with a pitch that would have made any major league pitcher proud, right through the doorway and into the corridor. He did that even as my silver buckshot pellets penetrated his skull.

The grenade hit the corridor wall and rolled away, now belching orange signal smoke. It was a harmless smoke grenade.

Darné screamed as the silver burned him. "Kill him! KILL HIM!"

quote:

The blind wight surged upwards, sensing my warm blood. Still facing down, I swung my fist and shattered its undead face. The creature was knocked aside and fell. Instantly my hand went numb, and coldness rippled up my arm. I grunted as I did an upside-down sit-up, grabbed the rung above me with my left hand, and pulled. My right arm hanging limply and my knee throbbing in pain, I kept pulling myself along; push up one rung, lean in, reach up for the next one, repeat. My shotgun shattered as it ricocheted spectacularly off of the rail next to my head. Darné had a good arm.

"That was my favorite gun!" I bellowed as I kept inching nearer to the hatch. I now had a wight on the ladder below, rapidly gaining, and two more scaling the wall to pounce on me. The hatch was still ten feet away.
"You should have taken my offer," the vampire roared.

He jumped impossibly high and landed on the ladder directly below me. The metal shook under the impact. Hot water droplets flew off and struck me in the face. Three wights and a vampire in striking distance in the next few seconds. I just kept climbing because that was my only option. I was pretty much screwed.

Then the hatch opened, directly above my head. It was my savior.

It was Grant Jefferson.

"Grant! Help me!" I screamed, clawing my way toward him.

His eyes grew wide as he saw the undead creatures swarming upwards. He started to hold out his hand to me, and then he apparently decided that he did not have time before the creatures would be on him as well. I could see the fear register on his face as he did the math. They were too close. Grant stood in his polished black body armor, bristling with useful weaponry, and said two words: "Sorry, Pitt." He looked right at me as he slammed the hatch.

quote:

"Tell me just one thing, you poor brave idiot," the vampire ordered as he shook me. "How did you know about Lord Machado? How?"
"I went to France once," I gasped.

"And what does that have to do with anything?" Darné asked, fangs extending as he prepared to feed on me. I wondered if I had the strength to break free long enough to fall to my death. It beat the alternative.

"My family went there to see where one of my grandpas was buried. He died on Utah Beach."

"How touching. Now, if you tell me how you learned about Lord Machado, I'll make your death painless."

"I learned that the people in the countryside were pretty nice. But the people in Paris were a bunch of stuck-up, self-righteous pricks. I'm guessing you're from Paris."

quote:

"How do I know you don't have ten Hunters waiting in the hall?"

"You don't. But you know my reputation."

"I do. Fine, Earl. Let us see who the best Hunter really is." The vampire released me and I dropped, barely managing to grab a rail. Darné let go and fell swiftly to the floor, landing as if it was nothing.

The two combatants squared off in the red light and steam. I watched in amazement as Harbinger began to circle. He was just a normal man, maybe two thirds of my weight, and in training he had never given any indication of having any sort of special fighting skills. On the other hand, I had just watched Darné perform several superhuman feats and smash my pistol into bits with his bare hands. This did not look good for Harbinger.

The hatch creaked open above me. Strong hands reached through and grasped the handles of my armor. The smell of Copenhagen told me that it was Sam Haven. He hung upside-down through the hatch and scanned the room. He saw Harbinger and Darné preparing to fight.

"Oh hell. We've got to get out of here!" Sam blurted. He tugged on me and grunted. "Help me, you hare-lipped derelict! You're too drat heavy."

"What about Harbinger?" I asked in a panic.

"Don't worry about Earl. He'll be fine. You don't want to be around him when he gets into one of his moods. Now move, drat it!" I struggled up the ladder with Sam pulling me. More hands grasped my arms and helped. Chuck Mead was there as well. The two burly men pulled me into the cargo bay. Sam threw the hatch down and spun the wheel to seal it behind us.

chitoryu12 posted:

Welfare elves.

chitoryu12 posted:

Also I've read ahead. This book is starting to get wonderful. I'll give you one hint:

Welfare elves.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

why are the vampires evil

why do good people who become vampires become evil

why is the state of vampirism all that is needed to justify extrajudicial military action

It seems this book works on the underlying assumption that a person's "categorization" is a meaningful and fully deterministic value. This underlying assumption suggests a deeply dangerous and deranged world-view that I think you do a disservice by failing to actually analyze.

and don't say "its dumb fun, you are not supposed to think about." This is a novel of implicitly coded political messaging and it is a moral failure to not engage with it.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

why are the vampires evil

why do good people who become vampires become evil

why is the state of vampirism all that is needed to justify extrajudicial military action

It seems this book works on the underlying assumption that a person's "categorization" is a meaningful and fully deterministic value. This underlying assumption suggests a deeply dangerous and deranged world-view that I think you do a disservice by failing to actually analyze.

and don't say "its dumb fun, you are not supposed to think about." This is a novel of implicitly coded political messaging and it is a moral failure to not engage with it.

Zanzibar Ham posted:

Augh, you Monster Rights Activists are what's wrong with America.

But seriously, come on, I'm gonna assume MHI vampires are of the classic horror variety ie they happily feed on human blood.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Proteus Jones posted:

I feel like you're overthinking a Baen Truck Stop novel.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Make no mistake, this novel is propaganda and it is intellectually lazy to avoid wrestling with its themes because the author pretends to be creating only entertainment

chitoryu12 posted:

Propaganda for....what, exactly?

Zanzibar Ham posted:

The guy and his book are obviously racist but going 'oh so now all vampires are evil huh???' is a really dumb angle on that.

Zanzibar Ham posted:

The guy and his book are obviously racist but going 'oh so now all vampires are evil huh???' is a really dumb angle on that.

Darth Walrus posted:

I mean, are you not familiar with how fantasy is used as a metaphor for the real world or something?

Mel Mudkiper posted:

well yeah but I wonder what this posits about Correia's view of human nature.

If becoming a vampire means they take on certain behaviors, then why does the vampire fundamentally retain most of their human identity and personality? How does the transformation manage to cause a person to utterly change in terms of moral behavior while they still retain all the rest of their basic nature?

As I see it, there are three possibilities.

A. Vampires are not actually evil. Correia is inadvertently making a commentary on the selfishness inherent in a carnivorous existence. The shift from hunger for, say, a cow to hunger for a human is not actually a change in moral prerogative. A vampire has as much right to eat a human as a human has to eat an animal. The vampires are not evil, they are simply in need of prey that has a better capability for self-defense. In this case, there is not an inherent moral justification to killing vampires. It is simply prey defending itself.

B. Vampirism is the empowerment of the Id over the Ego. The personality of a vampire remains relatively unchanged from their human form because the essential nature of the host remains unaltered. Instead, the drive to immediate gratification overtakes the more rational elements of the person, and they become driven by an untamable neural itch to feed that still renders them essentially human despite this impulse.

C. This is what I think is the correct answer. Correia has constructed a reality which is totally devoid of any concept of free will. We do not act in any way determined by our morals or sense of self. Instead, we are creatures of pure instinct, behaving in the ways natural to our physical form. There is no such thing as "self", instead we are all biologically mechanistic, acting in the way our glands ordain without any actual say in what we do. We do not think, we do not feel. We simply act and ascribe these higher virtues to our actions. In this way, the change from human to vampire is a fundamental change of impulse and biological imperative. Personality, morality, desire, etc. are merely a superficial coverings of our true nature, which is the total dominance of instinct.

ShinsoBEAM! posted:

Because if the things you were killing a lot weren't evil wouldn't that make you the bad guy?

I'm pretty sure Correia started with the end goal of monsters are evil so my dudes can kill them, and backworked in the justification as part of worldbuilding, he isn't trying to make some sort of literary point.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

well yeah but I wonder what this posits about Correia's view of human nature.

If becoming a vampire means they take on certain behaviors, then why does the vampire fundamentally retain most of their human identity and personality? How does the transformation manage to cause a person to utterly change in terms of moral behavior while they still retain all the rest of their basic nature?

As I see it, there are three possibilities.

A. Vampires are not actually evil. Correia is inadvertently making a commentary on the selfishness inherent in a carnivorous existence. The shift from hunger for, say, a cow to hunger for a human is not actually a change in moral prerogative. A vampire has as much right to eat a human as a human has to eat an animal. The vampires are not evil, they are simply in need of prey that has a better capability for self-defense. In this case, there is not an inherent moral justification to killing vampires. It is simply prey defending itself.

B. Vampirism is the empowerment of the Id over the Ego. The personality of a vampire remains relatively unchanged from their human form because the essential nature of the host remains unaltered. Instead, the drive to immediate gratification overtakes the more rational elements of the person, and they become driven by an untamable neural itch to feed that still renders them essentially human despite this impulse.

C. This is what I think is the correct answer. Correia has constructed a reality which is totally devoid of any concept of free will. We do not act in any way determined by our morals or sense of self. Instead, we are creatures of pure instinct, behaving in the ways natural to our physical form. There is no such thing as "self", instead we are all biologically mechanistic, acting in the way our glands ordain without any actual say in what we do. We do not think, we do not feel. We simply act and ascribe these higher virtues to our actions. In this way, the change from human to vampire is a fundamental change of impulse and biological imperative. Personality, morality, desire, etc. are merely a superficial coverings of our true nature, which is the total dominance of instinct.

Samizdata posted:

Or you know, the author is threatened as vampires mean humanity are no longer the apex predators.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

And this is getting to the core of my fundamental issue with the book

ShinsoBEAM! posted:

I fail to see how this is different then the huge plethora of books/movies/fiction who throw in insert evil that everyone knows about see Nazi's/Mega-Corps/KKK, something else and then just runs with the default assumption that they are bad because well...of course they are, maybe add in a few scenes showing yes they are evil wow.