Big ships (presumably) need crew habitability for extended voyages, fuel for same, usually an FTL gizmo, and crew including maintenance types, etc. All of which are mass penalties. A fighter is pretty much just drive engine, enough delta v for its mission profile, minimal habitability for a...
‘Energy to mass, right? Direct conversion of the radiant energy of the beam.’ And the damn thing wasn’t even warm in my hand. I clicked the base back into place; the flower’s growth stopped. Evidently, the base was a key; remove it to make the flower work. The Squeem didn’t...
Big ships (presumably) need crew habitability for extended voyages, fuel for same, usually an FTL gizmo, and crew including maintenance types, etc. All of which are mass penalties. A fighter is pretty much just drive engine, enough delta v for its mission profile, minimal habitability for a...
The alien has kill the humans in just the past ten minutes because it has a gizmo that allows it to teleport. The alien materializes behind a human and slices the hapless scout in two with long razor-sharp alien claws. The human ship's automated weapons are not quick enough to target ...
(ed note: I will mention that back in the early 1960's when I was in grade school, I was among the students who scored high enough (color code purple) on the SRA Reading Kit to be allowed some training with a weird gizmo that I now know was a tachistoscope. I am now a fast ...
I mean, for all he knows the gizmo is a brain enslaving device or something. Now that the alien can speak English, he proceeds to tell them that they are all in hot bubbling doo-doo up to their eyebrows. Boy, are they strict! Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice She just saw a spaceport...