#Military Energy Storage

[electronalytics]

Ground Military Battery Market Analysis Key Trends, Growth Opportunities, Challenges, Key Players, End User Demand and Forecasts to 2032

Overview: The ground military battery market refers to the market for batteries used in various ground-based military applications such as armoured vehicles, communication systems, field equipment, and portable electronics. These batteries play a crucial role in providing reliable and long-lasting power supply in demanding military operations.

Key Factors:

Increasing Defence Expenditure: The rise in defence budgets across the globe is a significant driving factor for the ground military battery market. Governments are investing in advanced military technologies, including ground-based systems, leading to an increased demand for reliable power solutions.

Growing Adoption of Unmanned Systems: The proliferation of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and autonomous systems in military operations requires high-performance batteries. The need for longer endurance and improved power efficiency in these systems is driving the demand for advanced batteries.

Focus on Lightweight Solutions: Military forces are emphasizing the need for lightweight battery solutions to reduce the overall weight of equipment and increase mobility. Lightweight batteries enable soldiers to carry more equipment and operate for longer durations without the burden of heavy power sources.

Operational Efficiency and Reliability: Military operations require batteries that can withstand harsh environmental conditions, including extreme temperatures, shocks, vibrations, and rugged terrains. Ground military batteries need to provide reliable and consistent power supply to critical systems without compromising performance.

Characteristics:

High Energy Density: Ground military batteries need to have high energy densities to ensure longer operation times and support power-intensive applications such as communication systems, night vision devices, and electronic warfare equipment.

Durability and Robustness: Military batteries must be designed to withstand harsh operating conditions, including extreme temperatures, humidity, shocks, and vibrations. They need to be rugged and reliable to ensure uninterrupted power supply in demanding environments.

Fast Recharge Capabilities: Quick recharge capabilities are essential for military batteries as they often operate in time-critical situations. Fast recharge times ensure that soldiers and equipment can quickly resume operations after a power source has been depleted.

Safety Features: Ground military batteries should incorporate safety features such as protection against overcharging, short circuits, and thermal runaway to prevent accidents and ensure the safety of soldiers and equipment.

Long Operational Life: Extended operational life is crucial for ground military batteries to minimize the frequency of replacements and reduce logistical burdens. Longer battery life ensures continuous power supply and reduces downtime for critical military operations.

Demand:

Armored Vehicles: Ground military batteries are extensively used in armored vehicles for starting engines, powering communication systems, operating electronic systems, and running various other auxiliary systems.

Communication Systems: The demand for ground military batteries is high in communication systems such as radios, satellite terminals, and data communication devices. These batteries provide reliable power to ensure uninterrupted communication in the field.

Portable Electronics: Military personnel rely on portable electronics such as handheld GPS devices, night vision goggles, and ruggedized laptops. Ground military batteries power these devices, allowing soldiers to operate effectively in the field.

Field Equipment: Various field equipment, including surveillance systems, remote sensors, and command posts, require batteries for their operation. These batteries need to be durable and long-lasting to support extended field deployments.

We recommend referring our Stringent datalytics firm, industry publications, and websites that specialize in providing market reports. These sources often offer comprehensive analysis, market trends, growth forecasts, competitive landscape, and other valuable insights into this market.

By visiting our website or contacting us directly, you can explore the availability of specific reports related to this market. These reports often require a purchase or subscription, but we provide comprehensive and in-depth information that can be valuable for businesses, investors, and individuals interested in this market.

“Remember to look for recent reports to ensure you have the most current and relevant information.”

Click Here, To Get Free Sample Report: https://stringentdatalytics.com/sample-request/ground-military-battery-market/4649/

Market Segmentations:

Global Ground Military Battery Market: By Company • EnerSys • GS Yuasa • Saft • Exide Industries • EaglePicher Technologies • BYD • Toshiba Infrastructure Systems & Solutions Corporation Global Ground Military Battery Market: By Type • Non-rechargeable Batteries • Rechargeable Batteries Global Ground Military Battery Market: By Application • OEM • Aftermarket Global Ground Military Battery Market: Regional Analysis All the regional segmentation has been studied based on recent and future trends, and the market is forecasted throughout the prediction period. The countries covered in the regional analysis of the Global Ground Military Battery market report are U.S., Canada, and Mexico in North America, Germany, France, U.K., Russia, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, and Rest of Europe in Europe, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Rest of Asia-Pacific (APAC) in the Asia-Pacific (APAC), Saudi Arabia, U.A.E, South Africa, Egypt, Israel, Rest of Middle East and Africa (MEA) as a part of Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Argentina, Brazil, and Rest of South America as part of South America.

Visit Report Page for More Details: https://stringentdatalytics.com/reports/ground-military-battery-market/4649/

Reasons to Purchase Ground Military Battery Market Report:

• To obtain insights into industry trends and dynamics, including market size, growth rates, and important factors and difficulties. This study offers insightful information on these topics.

• To identify important participants and rivals: This research studies can assist companies in identifying key participants and rivals in their sector, along with their market share, business plans, and strengths and weaknesses.

• To comprehend consumer behaviour: these research studies can offer insightful information about customer behaviour, including preferences, spending patterns, and demographics.

• To assess market opportunities: These research studies can aid companies in assessing market chances, such as prospective new goods or services, fresh markets, and new trends.

• To make well-informed business decisions: These research reports give companies data-driven insights that they may use to plan their strategy, develop new products, and devise marketing and advertising plans.

In general, market research studies offer companies and organisations useful data that can aid in making decisions and maintaining competitiveness in their industry. They can offer a strong basis for decision-making, strategy formulation, and company planning.

About US:

Stringent Datalytics offers both custom and syndicated market research reports. Custom market research reports are tailored to a specific client's needs and requirements. These reports provide unique insights into a particular industry or market segment and can help businesses make informed decisions about their strategies and operations.

Syndicated market research reports, on the other hand, are pre-existing reports that are available for purchase by multiple clients. These reports are often produced on a regular basis, such as annually or quarterly, and cover a broad range of industries and market segments. Syndicated reports provide clients with insights into industry trends, market sizes, and competitive landscapes. By offering both custom and syndicated reports, Stringent Datalytics can provide clients with a range of market research solutions that can be customized to their specific needs

Contact US:

Stringent Datalytics

Contact No -  +1 346 666 6655

Email Id -  sales@stringentdatalytics.com

Web - https://stringentdatalytics.com/

[haiwangdacontainer]

We are manufacture of #sewage treatment containers, #garbage leachate containers, #prefabricated cabins, #generator containers, data centers, #energy storage boxes, #storage boxes, thermal energy boxes, military shelters, logistics transport boxes, modular building Email: haiwangdacontainer@gmail.com whatsapp/wechat: +86 19061973897

[agirlwithachakram]

Marc: I can't believe you live in this frickin' mess

Steven, who DIDN'T PICK OUT THE APARTMENT, who literally does NOT have the time nor energy nor MONEY to fix up the place, who probably isn't the reason the kitchen table is jury rigged and on a tilt, who is just managing to keep his goldfish alive, who wouldn't have sand and tape everywhere if he weren't being hijacked at night for secret quests: oh I'm sorry we can't all be weird military washouts who live in a tidy little storage locker because all the rest of our stuff is actually stored at MY place and the only thing you had to stash there was a cot and your bag full of crimes.

[freetheshit-outofyou]

Free Survival PDFs, Manuals, and Downloads (2022 Update) Index of downloads.

Military, Combat and Tactical (51 downloads)

Wilderness Survival Books (51 downloads)

Food and Food Storage PDFs (222 downloads)

Homestead Skills (75 downloads)

Emergency Medicine (42 downloads)

Security and Defense (27 downloads)

General Emergency Preparedness and Survival (100 downloads)

Alternative Energy (2 downloads)

Water Storage, Treatment, and Resupply (41 downloads)

Survival Shelters (36 downloads)

Hygiene and Sanitation (2 downloads)

Knot Tying (16 downloads)

Urban Survival Manual PDFs (11 downloads)

Free Survival Guides (15 downloads)

[kneelingshadowsalome]

Ozzie back here again to add to the idea of how much König needs to eat a day, here are a few suggestions that I can imagine he does to make his great need for food easier to handle (this is based on my own experience and the experiences of the other people at my gym and old veterans at my favourite pub so do not use this for in real life as this is just to help imagine how König eats and lives)

So, from what I know from the veteran I have made friends with, when he was in the military, they had a focus on foods that provided them with a great amount of energy, protein, iron, zinc, and vitamins C and D as it was the nutrients that they tended to run out of the most but it also the ones with some of the greater consequences with diseases that can make them weak and cause their immune system to be weak. Soldiers also eat a lot of protein as it is believed to help them grow their muscles more quickly. This makes me believe that König would focus on foods that provide him with a lot of nutrients but mainly protein to grow his muscles but not too much protein as he does not want to get sick and to build the balanced diet needed for his lifestyle

Some great food options for him would be many vegetables and fruits but for protein, I would suggest things such as eggs, poultry, beans, lentils, fish, nuts, chickpeas, yoghurts, and cheeses, I tend not to suggest red meats unless they are very lean due to the amount of fat in them and not being fond of the texture but I imagine König to enjoy them so if you were to make him food I would include things such as those along with some form of starch/carbohydrate by giving him some pasta, rice, bread, or potatoes which can help fill him up faster without him overeating and if they are reheated they will get resistant starch

I imagine König lives in the Alps so that he can be away from people and enjoy nature but I also imagine him earning a lot of money due to his job, putting his money into stocks/businesses, some dodgy dealings, and saving it up as he had no reason to spend most of it which means he could buy a lot of land. With this large amount of land, I imagine him using it to have his own giant garden with some animals, as it means he has to deal with fewer people to get what he needs. The garden would probably be made up of an orchard with trees of his favourite fruits but it would mainly be patches of vegetables and fruits while for his animals it would make sense for him to have chickens as he probably needs a lot (and I mean a lot) of eggs so having chickens make it a lot easier

If he can not grow it on his own land, he would probably hunt or forage it, which means that he can get his energy and murderous tendencies out that would normally be taken out on the field while still getting some food out of it (but it sadly makes him more hungry). But if it is a certain food like milk or cheeses or yoghurts he will most likely just go down to the local markets in the nearby towns and villages so he can get fresh items from people he trusts

Now we know some information about where he gets the food from we need to know where you would be cooking and keeping it. An appropriate and smart option would be to have a walk-in freezer in his basement that he can use to store the great amount of meats he has that has a wine/alcohol storage opposite it. While the kitchen would probably be massive and fully decked out with anything you need to be able to cook and two or three double-door fridges that are filled with any item that needs to stay chilled in it, although the cabinets are mostly up too high for anyone to reach without a stool unless you are König but they are filled to the brim with sweets as the giant has a sweet tooth to match his size or the weird collection of novelty cups he has collected from places he has went on missions too or beer glasses from different bars or pubs

If you were to cook food for him batch cooking (so you do not keep having to cook again and again) would be the best option with foods that are traditional to Austria or hearty foods like stews that can be cooked in large amounts with lots amounts of meats and vegetables (I can give a whole list of foods I recommend or I think he would like if you want them)

As you can tell I have too many ideas about this and I have way more because this has inspired me, and thank you for reading this long rant that probably does not make any sense

I love this so much 😭 The sweet tooth headcanon, his collection of beer glasses and such, him living in the Alps and hunting some of that precious protein... This screams Cabin/Off the grid König to me, I would make a cute garden for him to get those veggies stocked and stashed to some root cellar like this:

And then I'd probably spend the rest of my time here, cooking those hearty stews for him:

[oshlet]

Lohan-Scott 'Vagabond' MBT, a refit of the chassis, swapping its 120mm gun for a high-energy laser instead. With energy storage becoming ever more powerful, several larger militaries have refitted some of their AFVs with energy weapons. Although lacking the indirect fire and multiple ammunition types of conventional guns, lasers are exceptionally precise and also remove the risk of ammunition cook-offs.

While unable to match the all-terrain nature of mechs as well as their agility and variable profiles, tanks are still widely used due to their ability to fit more armour and firepower on a platform for a cheaper price-point. Head to head, a tank is normally the favoured combatant, but a mech's strategic mobility allows it to find effective vantage points for ambushing such vehicles. Across open plains however, the tank still reins supreme.

[zoeykallus]

Rex x F!Reader One-Shot - My Love

Warnings: Hurt/Mention Of Depression/Comfort/Fluff/Slightly Suggestive

AC: I just read a post from a mutual(?) here on tumblr, dated back a few days ago. It was so relatable, and I felt bad for not being able to really do much for her, but I didn't want to impose either. So I just wrote this, maybe she reads it, maybe not. Let's say I just leave this here for anyone who needs it, in hopes that it helps a little.

I know guys, I still have to work on many requests, I just felt like I should do this. Don't worry, I get back to working on your requests.

It's one of those days. Lack of motivation, feeling alone in the world, depression kicking your ass again. It feels like you're sitting in a deep, dark hole and somewhere far above, there's some light, and it's unreachable far away. To make matters worse, you've barely gotten to see Rex in the last few months, always just glimpses, barely time to really talk, let alone do anything else. Your fingers play with the pendant on the leather band you wear around your neck. Rex brought it back for you from one of his missions. A colorful reflective stone, blessed by a tribe of an alien planet on which he had been stationed for a time. Supposedly, this thing brings good luck, but lately you haven't been feeling much of it. You're supposed to be off today, but you're sitting in the canteen, your eyes wandering around the many familiar faces, hoping to find comfort in them, to create something like an illusion of Rex's presence. But it doesn't work, all you feel is this dull pressure in your chest, this heaviness in your limbs. You breathe in and out slowly, paying close attention to your breathing, trying to calm yourself, to find comfort in the regularity of your air intake. But your hand clenches around the stone on the leather band. Frustration joins all the other negative feelings.

A deep, soft voice behind you says, "What a sight for my weary eyes". You almost jump out of your skin in shock when you hear Rex. He steps around the table and sits down opposite to you. In public, you can't show your intimacy, your relationship, especially not here. Rex smiles, but his gaze becomes thoughtful, probing. "Rex?" you say softly, as if you're not sure if you're awake or dreaming. Rex's expression softens a bit as he says, "I've been looking all over for you. Today's your day off. What are you doing here?" You don't really know what to answer, you want to fall into his arms, you want to feel his warmth. But right now all you can do is look at him and talk to him in a whisper.

"You are really here" His brows go up in concern, and he says, "Meet me at the intersection of hangar B2 and B1, in five minutes." You look at him questioningly, but nod. You lack the energy to disagree. As Rex gets up and leaves the canteen, you look after him. Hell, you even love the way he walks, so upright, powerful, with a masculine, military elegance. And yet he walks differently than most of his brothers, but maybe you're just imagining it. Either way, Rex is special.

You wait a moment before getting up and slowly making your way. You wonder what he is up to, why he wants to meet you there. In fact, you'd much rather go home with him, really enjoy some time with him, but maybe he wouldn't be here for long again. You arrive at the intersection and look around, no Rex in sight. But someone grabs your shoulder and pulls you back. You don't even have time for a surprised exclamation, a gloved hand is immediately on your mouth. You are pulled into a storage room, the door slams shut. Before panic can really rise in you, you're spun around and looking into Rex's face. "What the hell-" He interrupts you, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you gently but firmly into his embrace. He has his arm and breastplate off, you can feel his warm body directly through the fabric of his Blacks. You can't help it, a heavy, drawn-out sigh crosses your lips. It feels like something is escaping from you, something very dark. It's clutching, even on its way out of you, tears painful grooves as it tries to desperately claw its way back in, as if it is alive and aware, trying to hold on to you.

A slight tremor goes through your body as your weakened state of mind fights back with the last of its strength and, with the support of Rex's embrace, finally driving the sinister monster away. At first, you're completely stiff, every muscle taut, then it feels like you're going to slump, but Rex holds you upright in his embrace. Your arms eventually wrap around him as well, your fingers digging into the fabric of his blacks at his back. You take long, deep breaths, taking in his closeness, the warmth of his body against yours. Tears well up in your eyes, you're not yet sure if it's relief or frustration, maybe both. He emphasizes his embrace and hums softly, "It's okay, don't hold back, let it out." You blink and the first tears fall, a quiet sob. Rex gently cradles you in his embrace. "Oh my darling, I've been gone so long, barely had time for you. I wish I could have been here sooner," he says in a husky voice. "Me too," you say softly, barely more than a trembling whisper. He coos tenderly as he turns gentle circles on your back with his hand, "But now I'm here for you. I have a few days off, finally. And I plan to spend every free second with you."

Another sob comes out of your throat, now you know, it's definitely relief. "Can we go home?" you ask him quietly. "Of course," he says immediately, explaining, "I just wanted to meet you here because I felt that you needed this moment, as soon as possible." You smile, even laugh softly, once again amazed at how empathetic this man can be. "You were absolutely right," you admit. Very slowly, he loosens the embrace, wipes the tears from your face, and finally holds your head gently between his hands to look at you. "You always seem to forget how much passion and fire you have in you, how much creativity. But I don't mind to keep reminding you“, he laughs softly, “I missed this sight, these eyes that know me so well,"

"I missed you too, more than I can put into words," you say and close your eyes, enjoying the warmth of his hands through the fabric of his gloves on your cheeks. When you open them again your eyes are full of fresh fire, there it is again the spark Rex fell in love with. The real you. He gives you strength, hope, love. He grins at you and you grin back. "There she is, my Love," he says with satisfaction.

The surging energy inside you tingles through your nerves, your imagination, your longings, your desire. Almost breathlessly, you say, "I want to go home with you, now. I want to cuddle with you, talk to you, make love to you for hours, just about anything you can imagine." The corner of Rex's mouth twitches upward saucily as he says, "I can imagine a lot of things, beautiful. You go ahead, I'll catch up with you as soon as I can". You're on your way home so fast, full of energy, fired up, full of anticipation. Rex is like the purest premium gasoline for your engine. The anticipation tingles under your skin, you suddenly have so much extra energy that you run up and down while waiting for him in your apartment.

His knock on the door is answered immediately, so quickly that he looks at you in surprise, but his surprise quickly turns into a smirk. "You must have been waiting for me," he says and steals a kiss, teasing, nibbling your lower lip, flicking his tongue playfully against yours, tickling the corner of your mouth before granting you a shit eating grin. Like a blissfully warm summer rain, the sensation of this touch shudders through your neural pathways, from the crown of your head to your toes and back up again, until suddenly it seems to bundle in the heat between your thighs. You feel his energy, his desire, he's as ravenous as you are. You feel his strong hands on your hips as he gently but firmly pushes you further and further toward the bedroom with each kiss. "I think", says Rex between two kisses, "once we go into that room, we're not getting out of there anytime soon". You giggle into the kiss, unable to help yourself. He leans his head back a bit and looks at you with a smirk and asks, "You don't mind, do you?" "Not at all"

@rintheemolion

@andyoufollowyourheart @clone-whore-99

@brynhildrmimi @kaliel2310

@misogirl828 @tech-deck

@meshla-madalene

@chxpsi

@thebahdbitch

@nahoney22 @ladykatakuri

@darkangel4121

@ttzamara

@arctrooper69

@padawancat97

@agenteliix

@allsystemsblue

@palliateclaw

@either-madness-or-brilliance

@ortizshinkaroff

@andy-solo1

@hunterssecretrecipe

@heyitsaloy

@greaser-wolf

@extrahotpixels

@hated-by-me

@hunterxcrosshair

@malicemercy

@bebopsworld

@echos-girlfriend

@cpnt616

@dangraccoon

@jediknightjana

@pb-jellybeans

@antishadow2021

@sleepycreativewriter

@projectdreamwalker

@1vlouds

[girlactionfigure]

🚨 ISRAELI PM NETANYAHU AND CABINET TO REMAIN IN BUNKER; ISRAELI AND US LEADERSHIP TAKE EMERGENCY MEASURES AMID HEIGHTENED TENSIONS 🚨

‼️Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will stay at the Kirya tonight, accompanied by his cabinet. The Kirya houses a bunker system built to withstand a nuclear attack, equipped with satellite communication systems and sufficient food storage for at least a month. It can accommodate senior Israeli leaders and military leadership.

‼️In response to recent developments, Israeli Minister of Energy Eli Cohen convened an emergency meeting, deciding to increase coal and diesel stocks.

‼️The Israeli General Staff has ordered reinforcements for forces affiliated with the Northern Front Command and has raised the alert level.

‼️The Israeli top brass is preparing for a response that could last at least three days

‼️US President Joe Biden has been briefed on the Iranian response. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Blinken is currently holding a phone call with the Iraqi Prime Minister.

‼️In a related move, the UK has evacuated the families of staff members and non-essential staff from its embassy in Lebanon with other Countries expected to follow suit.

🟢 SUNDAY night - ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

▪️CROSS BORDER SMUGGLING TUNNELS.. Gaza to Egypt, orders to NOT blow up, because doing so is doing damage to Egyptian border wall defenses.

▪️US CENTCOM COMMANDER.. will arrive in Israel tomorrow to complete the coordination with the IDF in preparation for a possible Iranian attack.

▪️AIR TRAVEL - MIN OF TRANSPORT SAYS.. Those who want to fly should fly - keep in mind that the return flights will be delayed due to the cancellations and because there is no room on the Israeli airlines.

❗️HOME FRONT COMMAND SAYS.. activating EMERGENCY CELL BROADCAST system, which will send an emergency pop-up SMS-like message to EVERYONE, with an alert sound.  This is a standard government emergency capability, and I personally saw this while in California earlier this year with an earthquake warning.  It is NOT a substitute for a Red Alert app - but a quick way to get an emergency message out to everyone.  

.. HOWEVER, Home Front says it ONLY works for Cellcom and Pelephone customers, and only 4th generation on Cellcom and 3rd generation on Pelephone phones at this time.  It DOES NOT include kosher phones. (We asked Home Front.)

💩IRANIAN FEAR CAMPAIGN - propaganda from all social media channels

.. Wall Street Journal: Iran has refused many requests from Western diplomats to moderate its response against Israel.

.. Report: Iran will respond in a way that crosses Israel's red lines.

.. The US asked European governments to warn Iran that a major attack against Israel would trigger a response.  Iran, for its part, told Arab diplomats that it did not care if the reaction against Israel led to an outbreak of war.

▪️ISRAEL OUR HOME MK LIBERMAN.. wrote on X: "In the jungle of the Middle East, we must conduct ourselves differently. A situation in which an entire country panics and waits for a multi-arena attack must not be allowed. The initiative must always be in our hands"

⭕ ROCKET ATTACK from HEZBOLLAH at Snir, northern border town.

⭕ ROCKET BARRAGE from HAMAS at Bitzaron, Gan Yavne, Hatzor, Azrikam, Sdeh Uziahu, Shtulim.

[mariacallous]

When the arsenal in Toropets detonated, the blast was so large it registered as a small earthquake and some eyewitnesses likened it to a small nuclear explosion. On the night of Sept. 17, the 107th Arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate, a military facility about 300 miles from the Ukrainian border in the region of Tver, was struck by around 100 Ukrainian drones, destroying some of Russia’s most advanced rockets and air defense interceptors, and possibly newly arrived North Korean ballistic missiles. Three days later, another large-scale Ukrainian drone strike hit the Tikhoretsk Munitions Storage Facility in the southern Krasnodar region, a main distribution depot of Russian munitions sourced from North Korea. Well over 200 miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory, the attack resulted in another huge fireball. That same night, more drones sailed into the directorate’s 23rd Arsenal, again in Tver, igniting the facility.

In a matter of days, munitions worth hundreds of millions of dollars had been destroyed. Estonian military intelligence estimates that the bombing of the 107th Arsenal destroyed two to three months’ worth of munitions alone.

These were the latest sorties of Kyiv’s fleet of homemade unmanned aerial bombs, which over the past few months have immolated air bases, fuel depots, oil refineries and ammunition stockpiles, all of them well inside Russian territory.

Ukraine is now giving as good as it gets, hitting Russia on its own turf by land, sea and air, and prompting a new debate in Western capitals as to whether NATO allies should assist it in these deep strikes or can afford to do so without triggering nuclear war.

In August, Ukraine made a well-coordinated incursion into Kursk, the first time a foreign army had invaded sovereign Russia since World War II. Despite early Western forecasts that this operation would be swiftly and severely reversed by a Russian counterstrike, Ukrainian forces continue to hold an expanse of territory roughly the size of Los Angeles and have so far deflected from Russian efforts to dislodge them by invading from other axes. In square mileage, this surprise tactical victory eclipsed in the space of two weeks Russia’s yearlong advance in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, where Moscow has committed enormous resources in manpower and artillery. According to members of the Ukrainian military interviewed by New Lines, at least some of these resources have now been redeployed to Kursk, partially fulfilling one of the stated aims of the offensive.

Though military cartographers and statisticians may assess these gains and losses as a decidedly mixed result after Kyiv’s third summer of fighting, Ukraine has also been making gains elsewhere, namely in the field of arms development. It is now manufacturing a fleet of combat and reconnaissance drones, both airborne and naval, as well as its own long-range missiles. Kyiv is using these weapons to do what Washington still refuses to allow it to do with Western equivalents: strike at Russian air bases, command-and-control hubs, logistics centers and energy infrastructure, all deep in Russia’s interior.

If the Kremlin entered the war under the “rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them,” to borrow a phrase from Sir Arthur Harris, the commander in chief of the U.K.’s Royal Air Force Bomber Command during World War II, Ukraine has spent the last months of 2024 bringing the war home to Russia and to Russians, with devastating effect. Ukrainian drone attacks have become so common that some enterprising Russian insurance companies have even started providing dedicated home insurance against drone attacks.

The only surprise is that this comes as any surprise.

During the Soviet era, Ukraine was a military-industrial powerhouse, home to the largest cargo aircraft ever built, the Antonov An-225 Mriya (the Russians destroyed it at start of the full-scale invasion), not to mention the entire line of T-64 main battle tanks and R-36M ballistic missiles, the introduction of which caused sleepless nights among Western military planners at the height of the Cold War — which is partly why NATO codenamed them “Satan.” Contemporary Ukraine has tapped into this heritage, and its engineers have gone to work again, this time to fight their former metropole and to make up for the American restriction on the use of Western artillery rockets and cruise missiles to target Russia.

According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Strategic Industries, Kyiv’s defense industrial base now commands 300,000 employees spread across 500 enterprises — four-fifths of them privately owned. Major Ukrainian public figures and charitable organizations have supported the effort by raising money and supporting the manufacture of drones.

Other Ukrainian civil society actors and volunteers have also turned hobbyist racing drones into remotely piloted, precision-guided munitions. FPV (first-person view) drones have become one of the most lethal weapons of the war — and one that Russia has copied to equal effect. Piloted by technicians stationed miles away wearing a virtual reality-style headset that captures the flight path as though they were on board, FPVs chase down soldiers on foot, on motorbikes or in armored vehicles and pound into command centers and military-occupied buildings. Recordings show everything until the moment of impact when the screen ominously turns to white noise.

So terrifying are FPVs — and so difficult to evade owing to their small size, speed and maneuverability — that Russian troops have committed suicide rather than face a grisly death from above. They’re also incredibly cheap and easy to mass produce, costing on average $300 to $500 depending on the components used. As such, these drones account for the majority of casualties on both sides, according to Lt. Gen. Oleksandr Pavlyuk, commander of Ukraine’s ground forces.

For all the domestic innovation, Ukraine insists it still needs to use foreign weapons systems to go after strategic targets in Russia. The U.K., which was the first country to supply long-range munitions to Ukraine and has been one of Kyiv’s more bullish allies in the war, has been in favor of lifting such restrictions. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has even been lobbying European allies, such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, to support a proposal to allow Ukraine to use European-provided long-range weapons inside Russia without U.S. approval, Bloomberg recently reported. Other British officials were reported to be holding similar talks with their French and German counterparts.

There are growing indications that Washington is also coming around to this point of view. According to sources in the Biden administration, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is “fully in favor” of letting Ukraine strike back but faces resistance among those fearful of escalation with Russia, including at the National Security Council and the Pentagon. During a recent trip to Kyiv, Blinken stated that since the start of the war, the U.S. has been willing to adapt its policy as the situation on the battlefield evolves. “From day one, we have adjusted and adapted,” Blinken said after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Needs have changed as the battlefield has changed, and I have no doubt that we will continue to do this.”

These adaptations, while welcome, often come too late to save Ukrainian lives. After the Russian incursion into the northeastern region of Kharkiv in 2024, U.S. restrictions preventing Ukraine from striking targets on the Russian side of the border were lifted. Had they been lifted before the incursion, a member of Ukraine’s Kraken special forces unit told New Lines during a visit to the front in May, the Russian invasion could have been prevented entirely. An unknown number of Ukrainian casualties could have been prevented, and the city of Vovchansk would not have been razed to the ground.

Telegraphing to Washington that Russia can absorb losses on its own territory without starting World War III may be why the guns of August have been firing overtime.

Apart from the Kursk operation, the end of summer has seen the successful use of Ukraine’s long-range drone program. On the night of Aug. 2, these flying bombs struck the Morozovsk air base in Rostov, approximately 165 miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory. The base’s ammunition dump housed hundreds of glide bombs, deadly air-dropped munitions that can destroy entire buildings and fighting positions in a single hit. The dump was obliterated in the Ukrainian strike, which also destroyed at least one Russian Su-34 fighter-bomber and almost certainly damaged two more, plus airfield infrastructure.

Days later, on Aug. 8, another Ukrainian drone strike targeted Lipetsk air base (250 miles from the border), a major training center for the Russian air force. The ammunition dump at the base was likewise also completely destroyed, with the other buildings at the facility suffering damage as well. Then, on Aug. 22, Ukraine’s drones bombed Marinovka air base in what was possibly the most successful strike to date, destroying at least one more Su-34 and likely destroying or heavily damaging four more aircraft. The base’s facilities suffered extreme damage, with hangars, ammunition stores and emergency vehicles all taking hits.

“No individual strike tells us that much, but it’s the growing number and mass of systems involved that are most important,” Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, told New Lines. “If Ukraine can wage a comprehensive ranged campaign against the Russian military, it will allow it to degrade Russian production, logistics, command and control. The types of targets which usually determine the outcome of wars.”

Just the fact that Ukraine can routinely and successfully target such air bases will have an impact on Russian air force operations, according to Lt. Col. Jahara Matisek⁩, a U.S. Air Force pilot and a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, who spoke in a personal capacity. “The biggest benefit is that it is forcing the Russian air force farther away from Ukraine, which decreases Russian ability to lob missiles and bombs into Ukraine.” He explained that it would also provide Ukraine with an opportunity to establish localized air superiority, giving Ukrainian ground offensives a greater ability to mass forces and maneuver in the open without fear of being attacked from the air.

Russia will continue to struggle to defend itself against Ukrainian drones, Matisek⁩ believes, because its air defense networks were designed to fend off a large-scale NATO and U.S. attack, rather than smaller, slower drones flying from Ukraine. “Cold War assumptions about how the U.S. and NATO would attack the USSR meant that Russian air defenses are oriented in that fashion. Hence, Russia likely never designed an air defense network to defend against Ukrainian incursions.”

To ward off Ukraine’s drones, Russia has instead opted for ad hoc measures such as painting the outlines of fake aircraft on the concrete hard stands and covering real ones under dozens of old tires — not the best form of camouflage against weapons that don’t rely on visual sensors to find their targets. The most effective way Russia defends against current Ukrainian attacks, however, is to simply fly all airworthy planes away from incoming drones, something that would be entirely ineffective should supersonic long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMS, be allowed to target them.

Ukraine isn’t just pounding planes on the tarmac. Deep strikes have been directed at Russia’s strategic oil infrastructure, such as refineries, depots and even export ports. For instance, on Aug. 17 Ukrainian drones targeted the Kavkaz oil depot, a large storage facility in Proletarsk, in Rostov, causing a catastrophic fire that continued to burn for over two weeks. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of fuel was destroyed in one night, and the Proletarsk facility will be functionally useless for the foreseeable future. (Russian authorities eventually drafted in a number of Orthodox priests in an attempt to invoke divine intervention to put out the fire — a further sign of Moscow’s fecklessness in the face of these attacks.) Less than two weeks later, on Aug. 28, Ukraine hit the Atlas oil depot, another large storage facility, also in Rostov, precipitating yet another multiday fire but not before 40% of the facility’s fuel tanks had burned to the ground. Then, on Sept. 1, a wave of Ukrainian drones struck the Moscow Refinery, located just outside the Russian capital.

An assessment by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimated that Kyiv has so far disrupted 14% of Russia’s oil refining capacity and driven up domestic fuel prices by 20%-30% as of mid-March. This might have gone down well in Washington, given the attention paid to hobbling Russia’s war-oriented economy through sanctions, but such was not the case. The Biden administration responded to Ukraine’s targeting of Russia’s energy infrastructure by expressing its displeasure, citing the risk of rising global oil prices (the implication being that this would hurt the Democrats in November’s election). Self-deterrence has been a constant in U.S. security assistance, but Ukrainians and oil industry analysts alike greeted this American grumble with bemusement. Russia’s hydrocarbons industry keeps its tanks and personnel carriers moving and is thus a viable strategic target.

As with the incursion into Kursk, the impact of these strikes is not just physical but also psychological: They make a population largely indifferent to a foreign conflict acutely aware of its domestic costs. Ukraine’s incursion into Russia has seen the largest occupation of Russian territory since World War II, and like its deep strike weaponry, has shown Russia and the world that Ukraine retains the ability to inflict significant pain on its adversary.

The arrival of even more sophisticated Ukrainian drones will likely compound the pain for the Russians. On Aug. 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day — the third such celebration since the start of the full-scale invasion that was meant to take all of three days to be decided — Zelenskyy announced the successful employment of the new Ukrainian Palyanytsia. Named for a type of bread, the Ukrainian word for which is notoriously difficult for native Russian speakers to pronounce and is thus a convenient way of ferreting out Russian spies and collaborators, the drone will produce “unpronounceable results,” according to Zelenskyy. The Palyanytsia is powered by a rocket engine, meaning it will fly far faster than Ukraine’s current, mostly propellor-driven suicide drones, giving Russian aircraft less time to scramble out of the impact zone when used against their air bases. Days later, Zelenskyy also announced the successful test of an as yet unnamed Ukrainian ballistic missile. While he did not specify the exact type, it is likely the Hrim-2, a short-range ballistic missile that has been in development for over a decade, funding for which was supposedly earmarked by Ukraine’s then-defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, in 2023.

These new weapon systems come a year after the introduction into Ukraine’s arsenal of a land-attack version of its Neptune anti-ship missile, a munition Kyiv famously used to sink the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship cruiser, the Moskva, in the first year of the war. On Aug. 22, a Neptune cruise missile destroyed a Russian ferry loaded with fuel tanks in the Kerch Strait. “While Palyanytsias and Neptunes can achieve many objectives, there are tasks that only ATACMS, Storm Shadows and other weapons from our partners can fulfill,” Zelenskyy said.

From a logical and legal perspective, there is no reason to prohibit Ukraine from using Western weaponry to strike any legal Russian military target. American artillery and cluster munitions are already killing tens of thousands of Russians inside Ukraine, and the British-French Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG cruise missile conspicuously powdered the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea, claimed by Moscow to be an integral part of “Russia” since 2014.

There has also been a consistent pattern of the Kremlin making exaggerated threats when a Western capability has been on the table for delivery to Ukraine, only for it to later claim, once those weapons have been delivered, that they’re insignificant or that Russian forces have already destroyed all of them. This happened with HIMARS, Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter jets.

The West needs to stop allowing the Kremlin to set the rules of the game, Timothy Snyder, a European historian and professor at Yale University, told New Lines on a recent visit to Kyiv. “It’s the same psychological mistake where you’re playing by the rules that the other side has set for you as opposed to the rules of international law, which allow for an invaded country to defend itself.”

Washington’s escalations have routinely been met by Moscow’s anticlimactic responses. Nor does Russia stand to gain anything by resorting to nuclear weapons just because the munitions destroying its air bases, command centers and logistics hubs are made in the U.S. (or the U.K. or France) instead of in Ukraine. On the contrary, even the use of a tactical nuke in Ukrainian territory would yield no advantage on the battlefield. It would, however, transform Russia into even more of a pariah state overnight, alienate its critical ally China and likely lead to nuclear proliferation in places where neither Moscow nor Beijing would desire to see it, such as Kazakhstan, Finland, Turkey, Taiwan, Japan and Australia. As has no doubt been communicated, such an escalation would be met by a NATO conventional military response that would do even greater damage to Russia than anything currently on offer from Ukrainian ATACMS or Storm Shadows. Sergei Markov, someone often used as a hard-line voice of the Russian government in the Western press, told The Washington Post recently that the White House’s eventual rescission of the deep strike restriction has already been factored in by Russia’s war planners, who consider the decision a fait accompli — this in an article about Ukraine’s serial violation of Russia’s supposed ��red lines.” Tellingly, Markov made no reference to weapons of mass destruction.

[krimsonkatt]

Varna, Daeva of Ice

A beautiful icy maiden and one of the 7 daevas, fragments of the avatar of ELLUM, the True God and embodies the element of ice. It is said that she was once a beautiful yet vain alfar princess living in the time following the second war, and desired to preserve her beauty forevermore. So, at the ripe young age of 19 she asked the witch Chili Von Nebiros, one of the members of the council of six, to make her beauty everlasting. Chili responded by leading the princess into her laboratory, freezing her solid within a block of ice, implanting her with one of the fragments of ELLUM, and then transforming her into a scion. She was one of the first scions that were created using the "scionify" spell, so her transformation caused her immense pain. The next thing she knew she was in a new, icy body and being attacked by a bunch of strange men in magitek equipment. Morda Vael military. They restrained her and sealed her within an animus, using her as a living weapon against the Ferngulf Republic during the Ferngulf-Vael War. Later once the war was over her animus was left to rot before being picked up by Sero Omnis who was traveling through Baetas Sewer and being resummoned as one of the scions at her disposal using the Summoner class.

In the alternate timeline of Chronicles Black, following the Shattering, angels came down from Mt Celestia in order to find allies and begin their war against the demonic forces. One of these allies were the 7 daevas, as since they were fragments of the True God they would clearly align themselves with the angels in the coming war. So they liberated all the scions they could find from their animus, including Varna, in hopes that they would join the angels in gratitude. They were largely correct with Princess Varna and 5 others, Agenus, Indra, Vayu, Ushas, and Shiva joining the angelic ranks. But one scion remained, Ratri, scion of darkness, who allied herself with the demonic forces.

The 6 daevas aligned with the angels were then sent out across the ravaged planet to guard various areas of importance for the angels. As the second-strongest daeva, Agenus would guard their main HQ, the Santillan Sanctum. Shiva, the strongest daeva by far, would guard the Empyrean Ascent, gateway to the realm of the divine. Vayu would guard the Edenian Windworks, a power plant located on the continent of Eden that would generate mass amounts of energy for the angels using the wind caused by sandstorms. Ushas would guard the Lighthouse, a, well, lighthouse that also served as a storage facility for the angels light-based weaponry, located on Ferris Coast. And finally, Princess Varna would guard the prison located in the Frozen Crater where the angels kept the most dangerous criminals and insurgents awaiting the angel's divine punishment. It was a hard job, but at least Varna was finally free to bask in her favorite environment, the slow-covered winter wonderland of Nifell Isle. At least there she wouldn't melt.

In battle Varna uses primarily water-elemental attacks such as Arcfrost, Blizzard, Avalanche, and her signature attack Diamond Dust. She can also use various status moves like Sexy Dance, Kiss of Death, and Water Break. She is weak to smash, fire, and dark, resists slash and strike, nulls light, and absorbs water.

Her design is based on Shiva from World of Final Fantasy.

[electronalytics]

Military Rechargeable Battery Market, Key Vendors, Segment, Growth Opportunities by 2017 to 2032

Overview:

The military rechargeable battery market has witnessed significant growth in recent years, driven by the increasing adoption of advanced technologies and the need for reliable power sources in military operations. Rechargeable batteries offer several advantages over traditional disposable batteries, including cost-effectiveness, reduced environmental impact, and longer operational lifespans. This market encompasses a wide range of battery types, including lithium-ion, nickel-metal hydride, and lead-acid batteries, tailored to meet the specific power requirements of military applications.

Demand:

Communication Systems: Military operations heavily rely on effective communication systems for coordination and situational awareness. Rechargeable batteries power communication devices, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity and reliable communication in the field.

Portable Electronics: The demand for rechargeable batteries is driven by the need to power a wide range of portable electronic devices used by the military, including night vision goggles, GPS devices, laptops, and ruggedized tablets.

Unmanned Systems: Military unmanned systems, such as drones and robots, require rechargeable batteries for extended flight or operational durations. These systems are extensively used for surveillance, reconnaissance, and logistics

Key Factors:

Technological Advancements: The development of advanced battery technologies, such as high-energy density lithium-ion batteries and improved charging systems, has significantly enhanced the performance and efficiency of rechargeable batteries. These technological advancements have resulted in increased energy storage capacities and longer-lasting power solutions for military operations.

Growing Demand for Portable Power: The modern military relies heavily on portable electronic devices and equipment, ranging from communication devices to unmanned aerial vehicles. Rechargeable batteries provide a reliable and convenient source of power for these devices, enabling soldiers to operate effectively in the field without being limited by disposable battery replacements.

Rise in Hybrid and Electric Military Vehicles: The growing adoption of hybrid and electric military vehicles, including electric boats, submarines, and unmanned ground vehicles, is driving the demand for rechargeable batteries. These vehicles require high-capacity batteries to provide sustained power and range, making rechargeable batteries an essential component in the military's transition towards greener and more efficient transportation solutions.

Need for Reliable and Robust Power Sources: Military operations often take place in challenging environments, including remote locations and extreme weather conditions. Rechargeable batteries offer the advantage of being rugged, durable, and capable of withstanding harsh operating conditions. This reliability factor makes them an attractive choice for military applications, where power availability and durability are critical.

Characteristics:

Rechargeability: The primary characteristic of military rechargeable batteries is their ability to be charged and discharged multiple times, offering a sustainable and cost-effective power solution.

High Energy Density: Rechargeable batteries designed for military applications have high energy densities, allowing them to store a significant amount of power in a compact and lightweight form factor. This characteristic is crucial for enabling portability and extended operational durations.

Rapid Charging Capability: Military rechargeable batteries often incorporate fast-charging technologies, reducing downtime and ensuring quick replenishment of power sources in the field.

Durability and Robustness: Military rechargeable batteries are built to withstand harsh conditions, including extreme temperatures, shock, and vibration. These batteries are designed to be rugged and reliable, ensuring optimal performance in challenging environments.

Safety Features: Rechargeable batteries for military applications incorporate safety features such as overcharge protection, temperature regulation, and short-circuit prevention mechanisms. These features enhance the overall safety and reliability of the batteries during operation.

We recommend referring our Stringent datalytics firm, industry publications, and websites that specialize in providing market reports. These sources often offer comprehensive analysis, market trends, growth forecasts, competitive landscape, and other valuable insights into this market.

By visiting our website or contacting us directly, you can explore the availability of specific reports related to this market. These reports often require a purchase or subscription, but we provide comprehensive and in-depth information that can be valuable for businesses, investors, and individuals interested in this market.

“Remember to look for recent reports to ensure you have the most current and relevant information.”

Click Here, To Get Free Sample Report: https://stringentdatalytics.com/sample-request/military-rechargeable-battery-market/4648/

Market Segmentations:

Global Military Rechargeable Battery Market: By Company • EnerSys • GS Yuasa • Saft • Exide Industries • EaglePicher Technologies • BYD • Toshiba Infrastructure Systems & Solutions Corporation Global Military Rechargeable Battery Market: By Type • Less than 12V • 12–24V • More than 24V Global Military Rechargeable Battery Market: By Application • Ground • Airborne • Marine Global Military Rechargeable Battery Market: Regional Analysis All the regional segmentation has been studied based on recent and future trends, and the market is forecasted throughout the prediction period. The countries covered in the regional analysis of the Global Military Rechargeable Battery market report are U.S., Canada, and Mexico in North America, Germany, France, U.K., Russia, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, and Rest of Europe in Europe, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Rest of Asia-Pacific (APAC) in the Asia-Pacific (APAC), Saudi Arabia, U.A.E, South Africa, Egypt, Israel, Rest of Middle East and Africa (MEA) as a part of Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Argentina, Brazil, and Rest of South America as part of South America.

Visit Report Page for More Details: https://stringentdatalytics.com/reports/military-rechargeable-battery-market/4648/

Reasons to Purchase Military Rechargeable Battery Market Report:

In-depth insights: Market research reports provide detailed and comprehensive information about a specific industry or market. They offer valuable insights into market trends, growth drivers, challenges, opportunities, and competitive landscapes. These insights can help you make informed business decisions and develop effective strategies.

Market size and segmentation: Research reports typically provide data on the market size, including historical, current, and projected figures. They also analyze the market segmentation, including factors such as product types, applications, geographical regions, and customer demographics. This information is crucial for understanding the target market and identifying potential customer segments.

Competitive analysis: Market research reports often include detailed analysis of key players in the market. They provide information about their market share, business strategies, product portfolio, strengths, weaknesses, and future plans. This competitive intelligence can help you benchmark your company against competitors and identify areas for differentiation.

Industry trends and forecasts: Research reports highlight the latest industry trends, technological advancements, and regulatory developments. They also provide forecasts and predictions for the market's future growth and direction. This information can assist you in staying ahead of the curve, identifying emerging opportunities, and anticipating market shifts.

In general, market research studies offer companies and organisations useful data that can aid in making decisions and maintaining competitiveness in their industry. They can offer a strong basis for decision-making, strategy formulation, and company planning.

About US:

Stringent Datalytics offers both custom and syndicated market research reports. Custom market research reports are tailored to a specific client's needs and requirements. These reports provide unique insights into a particular industry or market segment and can help businesses make informed decisions about their strategies and operations.

Syndicated market research reports, on the other hand, are pre-existing reports that are available for purchase by multiple clients. These reports are often produced on a regular basis, such as annually or quarterly, and cover a broad range of industries and market segments. Syndicated reports provide clients with insights into industry trends, market sizes, and competitive landscapes. By offering both custom and syndicated reports, Stringent Datalytics can provide clients with a range of market research solutions that can be customized to their specific needs

Contact US:

Stringent Datalytics

Contact No -  +1 346 666 6655

Email Id -  sales@stringentdatalytics.com

Web - https://stringentdatalytics.com/

[thetruearchmagos]

On 'Energy Crystals'

Copying this over from a worldbuilding write up I posted on Discord!

Tagging @athenswrites @theprissythumbelina @hessdalen-globe @caxycreations @moremysteriesthantragedies @avrablake @thatndginger

While Energy Crystals are a very modern innovation, the pursuit for a crystal based means of high density energy storage is probably as old as the use of crystals in any of their myriad forms.

To skip the deep dive, 'magic crystals' operate through the highly ordered nature of their composition, a structure which extends beyond the three dimensions of the physical plane and which allows them to warp and rend the very fabric of the Underlay, that little understood realm of energy which permeates existence. In order to 'activate' their properties, however, energy in some form or another has to be supplied, 'forcing' the crystal's internal structure into the needed to act against the oppressive forces of the Underlay; heat, in the past, and these days truly massive amounts of electricity for the most intense applications.

A long noted characteristic of these crystals, however, has been their 'lag'. This effect describes the tendency for crystals to retain a small, rapidly decreasing degree of their powered properties even after their external energy source has been removed. The various physical characteristics of the crystal itself influences the degree of this lag, sheer size chief among them, which has at times been both a blessing and a curse for those using crystals for technical applications.

Still, it is not too difficult to see how a crystal's potential to retain energy might be a useful quality in and of itself. Various bodies have long attempted to harness this characteristic, but to little avail: having spent so long making crystals which efficiently utilised every scrap of energy fed to them to the fullest, it was very hard indeed to make one that would use no energy at all. Most interested parties would thus quickly decide to cut their losses early.

It would take modern developments in the field of micro-crystals and electrical-gate crystals to crack the problem. In the former field, a greater understanding of the internal structures of crystals at the most minute scale gave crystal forgers insight into the causes of crystal lag, and how crystals converted their input energy into work. The latter field was the result of the ability for crystals to act as incredibly efficient electrical conductors, leading to their application in the still nascent electronics and computing machine sector. Here, of course, understanding the interaction between crystal structures and electricity was key, as was minimising the 'waste' of a crystal's energy to activate the sorts of properties that in the past were their reasons for existence.

With the rise in this general understanding of just how a magic crystal worked, the secret to energy storage in crystals would be cracked in the 160s A.S. As with many technological developments, it was the United Commonwealth which would own the invention, lavishly funded from the sizeable cheque book of the Defence Consolidated Technical Establishment, whose leadership foresaw the many electricity intensive technologies poised to enter military use.

[kivaember]

okay it's time for some apv drabbles.... with thumper!!!! thinking about it i am gonna do drabbles and whatnot set during apv time that offer up alt povs or scenes :)

so this oneshot is set sometime around chapter 14 and follows thumper and vinegar!

enjoy!

-

The Warren's bar was busy that night, the mood buoyant in a way that Thumper couldn't remember it being for a long time now. The people on bar duty that night had even cracked open one of the casks that contained authentic Rubiconian ale, salvaged from one of the few underground storage cellars in some nearby town or other. Or, remnants of a town, she should say.

Thumper didn't begrudge the their joy, though. The haul that had been brought back contained so many vital things they had desperately needed: medicine, food, basic equipment and supplies... of course, it'd take a few days for all of that to go to where it was needed, after being aggressively audited and marked down, but the Liberation Front was hungry for uncomplicated victories. It made sense to celebrate this stroke of fortune.

The woman of the hour was, of course, Ziyi, who was regalling a throng of eager young recruits about how they had "taken those corporate dogs by surprise and smashed them to bits!" Ziyi was a boisterous storyteller, and her energy made it easy to get caught up in the moment - and, tellingly, she didn't embellish overly much, either. She weighted the credit accordingly towards Rokumonsen and Rusty, who had done the lion's share of offensive combat.

Speaking of Rokumonsen, Thumper had only just finished dealing with before slithering her exhausted body here. The doc had taken care of him technically - a sharp-tongued military doctor that had been enlisted in Rubicon's militia back when Uncle had been born - but Thumper had dotted the i's and crossed the t's when it came to annotating the medical equipment used and confirming that yup, Rokumonsen sure was concussed and nursing one hell of a bruised ribcage.

He was actually talking like a normal human being, with not a single haiku uttered the whole time in the infirmary. Guy's brains were definitely scrambled.

But it left Thumper in a bit of a grumpy and exhausted mood, and the only reason she was here was because she wanted a slice of that rare Rubiconian ale pie, damn it. She got her cup of it and lurked in the fringes of the party, half-watching Ziyi hold court and half-brooding over the other problem she was finding herself feeling responsible for, even if it technically wasn't:

Raven.

You know, there were so many stories about that guy. Both bad and good, but everyone agreed that he was a neutral party in all of this, really. Raven was a creature they all somewhat understood the motivations of, and thus could manipulate if their coin purses were deep enough, and as a Gen Four, everyone assumed him to be some grizzled old vet that'd make Uncle look like a fresh-faced young man, bursting with deadly experience and jaded to hell.

A whole mythos had been built around him, whispers of "I heard Raven destroyed ten corporate MTs with only five bullets" or "I heard he took on all of the Redguns and the Vespers at once without taking a single hit" or "I heard even V.I Freud checks under his bed for Raven!"

All nonsense, of course. Yet, Thumper had kind of bought into it, anyways. Like, obviously he wasn't backflipping across the battlefield in that AC of his and karate-chopping corporate dogs in half like some of the recruits gushed about, but he was obviously good. Terribly skilled, and terribly neutral, a literal force of nature that just meandered across the horizon, running roughshod over anyone stupid enough to stand in his way. In the mental picture Thumper had unconsciously built up of him, she thought he'd be bigger than life, confident in a quiet and stoic sort of way, and grizzled. Very grizzled. Incredibly grizzled, like some stereotypical gunslinging merc from Tau Ceti.

Instead, Raven was small and slight - Thumper was certain she had twice his muscle mass - and so pathetically and tragically vulnerable looking. His eyes were always just shy of too wide, almost vacant looking with how they simply looked through things, fixed on corners, on the floor, always lowered, never looking someone in the eyes - a kicked dog, she couldn't help but think. A dog that's been kicked and kicked and kicked until it was perpetually cowering, tail tucked in, ribs sticking out, quivering in place and unable to comprehend a kind hand extended out to it.

It made her uneasy in a way she couldn't really pin down. Raven was a broken man, and now the Liberation Front was holding his leash. She knew he'd obey Uncle. He'd probably obey him as unfailingly as he obeyed that handler of his - and it- she didn't really like it. It stuck in her throat something fierce. But she couldn't put into exact words what about it made her skin crawl.

"Thoughts?"

"Huh?" Thumper jolted at the unexpected voice, nearly sloshing her drink, and turned irritably to see- "Vinegar? The hell're ya doin' 'ere?"

"Celebrating," Vinegar murmured. Much like Raven, Vinegar was a slight and slender, but unlike Raven they looked less like some half-starved waif that had been locked up in an attic for ten years and more like a very well-toned gymnast, with buzzcut short hair and heavy-lidded eyes that made them look perpetually sleepy.

"Oh yeah? Celebratin', huh? Looks like yer jus' skulkin' in the shadows and creepin' up on innocent young girls like me," Thumper scoffed, but let it slide. "Well, m'not thinkin' much. Just some dumb shit."

"It's never dumb shit with you."

Thumper blew out a breath. Her and Vinegar went way back - came from the same settlement, waaaay down south of the ice fields, though they had gone into vastly different professions. Vinegar, for all of their soft-spoken and unhurried nature, really loved their big fuck off cannon MTs and blowing shit up, while Thumper liked sticking people back together and having an organised pantry. Still, they stayed close despite their diverging career paths, and Vinegar had functioned as a sympathetic ear on more than one occasion.

"Well, eh... it's about Raven." Thumper pulled a face. "I mean, when's it not, right? Guy's been hauntin' our convos since he blew up half our guys on the Wall..."

Vinegar said nothing, but their silence had a sort of expectant air to it. Thumper took the hint.

"'Ave you seen 'im? Weighs forty kilos soakin' wet and has arms like spaghetti noodles." Thumper waved her wrist in Vinegar's face pointedly. "My wrists're thicker than his biceps! How fucked is that?"

"..."

"Yeah, and- and like, I spent some time with 'im, at Uncle's request, and it was like dealin' with some kinda small animal sufferin' from neurosis. Twitches like crazy and tense as hell! He's just... so..."

Thumper made a helpless gesture, trying to think of the appropriate word to describe the wide-eyed, helpless wet cat that was also Rubicon's most notorious mercenary. "So pathetic."

"He's a Gen Four," Vinegar said, like that explained everything.

"So? That other Gen Four's a fuckin' asshole and ain't afraid to make everyone aware of it!" Thumper huffed. "Fuckin' Iguana prick. Raven's sweet-tempered compared to 'im."

"I mean, Gen Fours aren't considered human. Legally."

"So?"

"So..." Vinegar cut themself off with a sigh, a hint of disaste crossing their face. They hated talking long sentences. "Um, well. Raven's handler has a reputation. His Hounds... they're literally hounds. They're his- not pets, but, like what an attack dog would fill, legally. That. Raven was probably that."

Thumper grimaced. She understood what Vinegar was saying, but at the same time... she really didn't. Because acknowledging, well, that, would mean that Raven didn't sit in the comfortable lines of "hyena come to pillage Rubicon". It meant he would sit in a far more grey-area of "slave soldier sent to die for his bastard master's self-interests". Not blameless in his actions at all but... mitigating factors, at least.

And, since majority of Gen Fours were Rubiconians... there was always the possibility that Raven was, well... coming home, in a way...

Slowly, she started to understand what it was that made her so unnerved about Raven. It wasn't just how reality hadn't matched up to heavily embellished rumours, or Raven's worrying lack of agency, it was that this whole thing wasn't really different to how those hyenas acted: stealing augmented humans as assets to be deployed for their interests, press-ganging what was essentially a slave soldier into service...

It was necessary, she knew that. Raven was too valuable of a piece to not make use of when his leash fell handily into the Liberation Front's hand, but at the same time... it made her feel greasy, doing something those corporations would've done without blinking an eye. Even the reassurance that they were at least treating Raven nicely just felt like a hollow excuse.

"M'not sure I like thinkin' of him as some literal dog we've rescued out of the gutter," Thumper muttered, and took a sip of her drink. "But the comparison fits, huh."

"I think it's okay to do something bad if it's to do something good later," Vinegar said. They were never eloquent, but sometimes simplicity is the way to go, Thumper thought wryly. "Uncle will use Raven, but he'll try to assimilate him too, be kind to him and, um, include him."

"Uncle's all, like, ten layers deep in some 4D chess bullshit, though." Thumper could never make heads or tails of Uncle's various parallel schemes. Guy would make ordering breakfast convoluted if given the chance. "Probably has ten million plans all hingin' on Raven or summin'."

"In the end, he's a hyena," Vinegar pointed out. "You shouldn't really care too much."

"Ziyi was a hyena once." Thumper's gaze drifted over to her. Ziyi was laughing amongst her fellows, her cheeks flushed from alcohol and her expression bright. "Now she's the little sister of the Warrens."

"But she was a baby when she came."

"Rokumonsen too," Thumper continued. "He's a freak, but he's our freak, y'know? And a bunch of others from off planet... him bein' a hyena ain't a problem."

She paused thoughtfully.

"Anyway, he might be Rubiconian, y'know." Thumper downed the rest of her drink and coughed. "Like ya said, he's Gen Four, ain't he? Probably was augmented by the Institute back in the day."

"...maybe."

Vinegar seemed disquieted at the thought. It prompted Thumper to continue.

"And, hyena or not, he didn't come 'ere by choice. He ain't legally human, ya said. He's just some attack dog that probs can't even take a piss without his master tellin' 'im too. I dunno. I guess it's hard to put 'im in the same box as all the independent mercs and corpo-fucks that come 'ere, ya know?"

"Yeah." Vinegar nodded slowly. "It's kind of a grey area."

"It's Uncle's problem, I suppose," Thumper mumbled, even though her mind was furiously thinking of ways to "humanely" integrate Raven into the Liberation Front. Can't just plonk him in a strange organisation and tell him to be a human being when he probably spent god knows how many decades crawling around like a dog. She just kept thinking about how he hadn't moved an inch when she told him to stay put. Who the hell did that?

Bastard might starve because no one told him to go eat if they're not careful about it. Or something equally pathetic and deranged. Thumper rubbed her forehead. Aurgh, this was why she became a medic, wasn't it? She cared too much about idiots whose pains and misfortune was mostly their own damn fault...

"I'll figure summin' out," she decided. "Probs take me a few days but... fuck, we ain't the corpos. We're not press-gangin' some slave soldier into service like those hyenas do. We'll integrate 'im like we did Rokumonsen. We'll integrate 'im so hard he'll be singin' the Rubiconian national anthem by month's end!"

"You make it sound like you're going to put him through re-education."

"You wash yer damn mouth," Thumper harrumphed. "Re-education. Pah! I'm gonna use my charms. My... guile, you can say. Provided that dumbass Rusty doesn't ruin it... fucker keeps pantin' over Raven like some bitch in heat. S'embarrassin'."

Vinegar nodded solemnly. By this point Rusty's crush on Raven was something of a joke, except not really.

"Yer helpin' me," Thumper said. "Operation, er... fuck, um. Raven- Raven Tamin'!"

"Lame."

"Shaddup, ya condiment." Thumper sniffed. "Anyway, let's go."

"...? To where?"

"My room! We're gonna scheme!"

"But, my celebration..."

"C'mon, Vinegar!"

"..."

[moneeb0930]

Annie J. Easley (April 23, 1933 – June 25, 2011) was an African-American computer scientist, mathematician, and rocket scientist. She worked for the Lewis Research Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). She was a leading member of the team which developed software for the Centaur rocket stage and one of the first African-Americans in her field.

In 1955, she read a local newspaper article about a story on twin sisters who worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) as “computers” and the next day she applied for a job. Within two weeks she was hired, one of four African Americans of about 2500 employees. She began her career in as a Mathematician and Computer Engineer at the NACA Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory (which became NASA Lewis Research Center, 1958–1999, and subsequently the John H. Glenn Research Center) in Cleveland, Ohio. She continued her education while working for the agency and in 1977, she obtained a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Cleveland State University. As part of a continuing education, Easley worked through specialization courses offered by NASA.

Her 34-year career included developing and implementing computer code that analyzed alternative power technologies, supported the Centaur high-energy upper rocket stage, determined solar, wind and energy projects, identified energy conversion systems and alternative systems to solve energy problems. Her energy assignments included studies to determine the life use of storage batteries, such as those used in electric utility vehicles. Her computer applications have been used to identify energy conversion systems that offer the improvement over commercially available technologies. She retired in 1989 (some sources say 1991).

Easley’s work with the Centaur project helped as technological foundations for the space shuttle launches and launches of communication, military and weather satellites. Her work contributed to the 1997 flight to Saturn of the Cassini probe, the launcher of which had the Centaur as its upper stage.

Annie Easley was interviewed in Cleveland, on August 21, 2001 by Sandra Johnson. The interview is stored in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Johnson Space Center Oral History Program. The 55 page interview transcript includes material on the history of the Civil Rights Movement, Glenn Research Center, Johnson Space Center, space flight, and the contribution of women to space flight

[gt-mcyt]

monsters vs aliens

(ao3)

Chapter 7: Lord Exdee

Dream groaned. He felt like he got hit by a train, or like his plane crashed … Dream gasped as everything came rushing back to him – the robot fight, the celebrations, the plane crashing. He pushed himself into a sitting position, looking around for his friends, but instead he found something even stranger than three little monsters. He looked to be in some sort of hanger, like where planes would go for storage, except it was filled with over a hundred of that giant robot he fought. There were so many of them, all standing over three hundred feet tall, looming over him and ready to be dispatched at any minute. Dream, despite knowing he stood at a hundred feet tall, felt small in the face of so much strength.

Looking down at himself, Dream found that what he was wearing had changed. Instead of the green military jumpsuit that he had worn for two months, he was wearing a skin-tight black and green jumpsuit. It had lines running up and down the arms and legs, and it glowed dimly in the pitch-black hanger. It looked almost alien in design, like the spandex a fictional hero would wear.

His friends were also nowhere to be found, despite last seeing them in his hands, which scared Dream.

Were they … dead?

The thought made his eyes sting with tears.

While Dream was distracted, something whizzed behind him, and he gasped. He turned around, only to hear the same whoosh of air behind him again. When he turned back, he came face to face with what could only be described as an alien.

The alien – for it was neither man nor woman – was just shorter than the length of Dream’s hand. It looked to be about eight inches tall, but realistically, was probably eight feet. Its skin was the colour of the night sky, with glowing starry freckles to match smattered across their cheeks and forehead. It had hair, too, that matched the same white of Dream’s, and it was long enough that it was in a complicated braid behind their back. Its face would have looked human, if not for the too-much upturned nose, long canines, and four glowing green eyes. It was also dressed in green robes that made room for the four arms it had. It floated on a hovercraft at chest level with Dream, who was still on the floor.

All in all, the alien looked ethereal.

The alien smiled. It looked like the smile of someone who had seen a human smile before, and had practiced said smile in the mirror, but didn’t truly encompass the human emotion it was supposed to convey. “You must be terrified,” a smooth, rich voice came from the alien. Dream was surprised that they spoke in English. “You wake up in a strange place, wearing strange clothes, faced by a strange being, floating on a strange hovering device. It’s all very strange, isn’t it?”

Dream glowered at the alien. “Hardly. It’s not the first time.”

“You must think you’re funny,” the alien said dryly.

“Look, who are you, and what is it that you want from me?” Dream asked.

“You may call me Lord Exdee,” the alien – Exdee, because Dream was not calling it ‘Lord’ – said. “And you have stolen what is rightfully mine!”

“I didn’t steal anything from you,” Dream protested, “I didn’t meet you until today!”

Exdee sighed, like Dream was a particularly dumb individual. “Your enormous, grotesque body,” it said, and Dream frowned. “Did you never wonder how you grew so large? Your body absorbed a considerable amount of quantonium, the most powerful energy source in the entire known universe. Did you really think you could keep it from me forever?”

“That’s what this is all about?” Dream demanded, growing enraged. “You destroyed parts of Florida, you terrified millions of people, you …” Dream’s voice got thick, and he struggled to speak. “… you killed my friends, just to get some stupid energy source?”

“Silence, Earthling!” Exdee snapped. “Your voice is grating on my ears. It’s time to go to the extraction chamber!” Suddenly, a metal platform swooped in below Dream’s feet, and another metal layer floated above him, like magnets that swayed together, and then there was a spark; a giant glowing green force-field was created between the two metal layers, trapping Dream in between them like prison bars. It hummed with power. He reached out to touch the force-field, only to gasp when it gave a powerful shock. Exdee laughed. “This is just a small bit of what one can do with a little bit of quantonium. It’s a shame that you won’t be around to see what the true power of quantonium can do in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.”

“I know how to use it just fine!” Dream spat. He stood and punched the force-field, only to gasp again because it shocked him. He shook out his fist, glaring at the alien.

“Don’t bother,” Exdee said. “That force-field is impenetra –”

Dream punched again, throwing all his strength behind it, and this time, his hand went right through the force-field, hitting Exdee’s hovercraft and flipping it. Exdee barely got a hold of its hovercraft, saving it from falling, and then gaped at Dream. “– what the hell?!”

Dream grinned, all teeth, and used his hands to reach into the force-field to pry it apart. He ignored the continuous shocks it gave him, pushing through, until he swept it all away. Without the force-field, the top metal platform fell, and Dream caught it with both hands. Rage coursing though him, remembering the plane crash and how his friends were all dead, Dream threw the platform at Exdee’s hovercraft. Exdee flew away at high speeds, and a large metal door smoothly closed behind it. The metal platform bounced off the hanger door, leaving a large dent behind. Dream got up and walked over to the hanger door, glaring through the little window provided.

Exdee, out of breath, laughed in relief. Its voice was muted through the window, but no less enraging. “That should stop you from getting to me, you freak –”

Dream punched through the metal hanger door like it was wet paper.

Exdee shrieked and flew away.

“Computer, close door hanger two!” It yelled.

Dream ran after Exdee, determined to catch it and … well, Dream had never thought of himself as a violent person, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to hold himself back from killing Exdee after all he had done. Barely thinking about the morality of wanting to kill an alien terrorist, Dream punched through the next door, much the same as he did with the first. Exdee shrieked again.

“Close door, hangar three! Door, hangar four!” But Dream kept running, punching and crawling through them all. Exdee screamed, “Computer, close all the hangar doors!”

Dream just barely missed catching Exdee as he zoomed into a smaller hallway, much too small for Dream to get through. But he could follow above, where the hallway became a small narrow tube in the floor. He used his enhanced hearing, ears twitching, to tell where Exdee was in the tube. He punched through the metal, just barely missing each time, until finally – finally, near the end, his hands grabbed hold of the flying machine Exdee used, sending him skidding out of the back end of the hallway and into a large room. Dream got up and followed, breathing heavily, watching the little alien running away from him. Dream started running, relishing in the scream from Exdee, up until –

Exdee reached the end of the walkway, pulled a giant lever, and thick glass walls shot up around Dream, surrounding the metal patterns on the floor he was standing on.

“NO!” Dream screamed. Just when he was so close!

He banged on the glass, watching it fracture beneath his fists. He pursed his lips, doing it again. More fractures. In the background, he heard Exdee shriek and yell, “Computer, begin extraction!”

Suddenly, there was a loud few beeps, and then the feeling of a vacuum being held up right against his chest. His hair started to float. A bright light – neon green – flowed from his chest and upward. Dream stumbled. He could physically feel himself getting weaker. More of the light, like hundreds of bioluminescent plankton on the water, floated through the air. Dream’s vision shrunk. He was … he was shrinking, getting weaker and weaker, as the quantonium was stolen from his body. Dream tried to keep hitting the glass – he was so close to breaking it, to getting free – but he only got smaller and smaller, weaker and weaker. His vision went fuzzy until he was left slumped on the ground, too weak to move.

He looked down at himself.

His hair was still white, his ears still felt pointed; he ran his tongue along his canines, and they were still elongated. Even with all the quantonium siphoned from his body, he was still a freak.

Dream heard a sinister chuckle, and he looked up, only to find the alien, Exdee, looming over him. Exdee had looked so small earlier – barely the size of his hand – but now he was at least two feet taller than Dream. It made Dream feel weak, it made him feel scared. All his rage was gone, replaced by fear.

“Finally, I have all the quantonium,” Exdee said gleefully. “And finally, I can rebuild my civilisation on a new planet.” Dream frowned. Rebuild his civilisation? What was that supposed to mean? “Any thoughts on where I should start?” Exdee hummed; it was an unsettling hum, like one a computer made. “Your planet, perhaps? Earth does look ripe for the picking.”

Dream snarled, a growl building low in his chest. He pushed himself to stand. “You keep your hands off my planet – ugh!”

Dream was stopped by a large hand around his neck. One of Exdee’s four arms was outstretched, holding Dream two feet up in the air. Dream’s feet dangled helplessly. Exdee snarled right back at Dream, baring his fangs, which were larger than Dream’s. “If you wanted to stop me, you should have done it when you possessed the quantonium! Now … now you’re nothing.”

“There are innocent people down there who didn’t do anything!” Dream choked out.

“There were innocent people on my home planet before it was destroyed,” Exdee hissed. It threw Dream to the ground, and Dream hit the metal, body slumping. He rubbed at his bruising neck, tears in his eyes.

“I’m sorry your planet was destroyed,” Dream said, “But that’s not a reason to kill billions of innocent people. Please …”

“It’s too late,” Exdee said, voice hollow. “My whole planet was invaded. My family were taken as slaves. My partner was killed. I barely escaped on one of the invader’s ships with the little bit of quantonium that I stole. And with that bit of quantonium, I thought I could defeat the invaders … but it didn’t work. I didn’t have enough. So, I ran away, like a coward, thinking I could come back to save my family. But it’s been years now, and I’m never going to get my family back … and neither are you.”

-

“What … what are we going to do now?” Karl asked meekly.

The three monsters stood beyond the wreckage of their plane. It was completely totalled and on fire. The only reason they had survived was because Dream had grabbed them and taken the brunt of the impact. Then, limp and nearly dead, Dream had been beamed up toward an alien spacecraft, like every cheap, tacky alien movie ever. Now they were stuck in the middle of nowhere, Dream was missing, and they had no idea what to do.

“I … I don’t know,” George said. He mostly felt hollow. Dream was gone – most likely dead – and the dread and grief were creeping up on him eagerly.

“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” Sapnap said. “We’re not going to let this … this cheap, stupid alien take Dream without a fight. We’re going to get up there, find Dream, and take that alien down!”

“And how do you propose we do that?” George snapped.

Behind them, someone cleared their throat. There was the sound of mini thrusters from a jetpack.

“I think I can help,” Bad said, then he gestured behind himself, where another cargo plane had landed. “I came as soon as I heard the plane went down.”

“Bad!” The monsters yelled.

-

The cargo plane took off with all three monsters and the general. In the cargo hold, Bad turned to the monsters. His brown eyes softened.

“All right, so, I know I haven’t treated you well enough over the years,” Bad began. He wiped a tear from his cheek. “But I need you to know that I … I care about you guys. And we can’t let this alien terrorise Earth and take our Dream. These jetpacks I’ve given you – they have enough juice to get you guys up there, but not enough to make it home. I’ll come get you if I can. If I don’t, it means I’m dead … or late. Don’t jump to the worst conclusion. I’ve been your warden for close to a decade now, and I would do anything to keep you guys alive.”

Bad threw each monsters a jetpack, showing them how to secure it and tie the straps, and how to work the buttons. As he was helping Karl get his jetpack on so that his Jell-O-like body wouldn’t consume it, the pilot yelled from the cockpit.

“General!” He screamed, “it’s targeting us!”

Outside the back of the plane, they could all see where a large ball of energy had been shot out of the UFO. It was homing in on their plane.

“That’s your cue,” Bad told the monsters. “Go, go, go!”

All three monsters jumped out of the cargo hold, using their jetpacks to soar toward the UFO.

“Now,” Bad said, “to deal with the other problem …” He turned toward the large ball of energy – practically a missile – heading toward them. He thought about Patches and her latest transformation. He grinned. “I have a plan.”

-

The three monsters landed in the hangar, which thankfully, had been open and left unguarded from the outside. They were quick to infiltrate the ship, following the path of destruction which could be the work of none other than Dream – after all, the holes punched through the metal? It had his name written all over it, and that elated the monsters, knowing he was still alive. They still had time. Now, they just had to find him …

-

“Slave!” Exdee called. Immediately, another alien hurried into the room. This alien looked a lot less humanoid than Exdee. They had four beetle-like wings, mandibles, and eight spider-like eyes that glowed red. They were dressed in a garb similar to what Dream was put in. The alien bowed to Exdee, and Exdee sneered at them, “Take the prisoner to the incinerator. He’s useless to me now.”

“Hail Lord Exdee!” The alien clicked out, sounding high-pitched. They then jabbed what looked like a laser gun into Dream’s shoulder blades. At the very least, they were shorter than Dream, though he wasn’t sure he would be able to take them in a fight – not with their weapon and sharp claws.

Dream had no choice but to walk forward, following the ‘slave’ further into the ship.

“So,” Dream said, trying to stall, “what’s your name?”

The alien seemed to fumble with the laser gun for a moment, as if not expecting the prisoner to talk or ask them questions. Their face didn’t display emotion very well, as insect-like as it was, but Dream got the feeling they were surprised.

“My – my name?” They asked. “Why do you want to know? So, you can steal it?!”

“How do you steal a name?” Dream asked, genuinely confused.

“I – I don’t know!” The alien sputtered. “But you Earthlings – you’re a sneaky sort, I heard. You can do lots of things. I don’t doubt you can steal names.”

“Well, as a human, we can’t steal names,” Dream said, not disclosing that he wasn’t exactly human anymore. “And I think calling you ‘slave’ is pretty rude. Slavery isn’t okay, like, at all. Here, I’ll go first: my name is Dream. What’s yours?”

The alien made a weird clicking sound. “My name is Jurelle.”

“Jurelle is a pretty name,” Dream offered.

Jurelle went quiet and then made a high-pitched squeal sound. He wasn’t sure, but Dream got the impression that Jurelle was blushing.

“So, why do you do Exdee’s bidding?” Dream asked.

“Lord Exdee,” Jurelle corrected, “is the high and mighty lord of ours. He comes from a higher race of beings than us. He is smarter, stronger, and bigger. He came to our planet and enlightened us about the use of technologies that we couldn’t ever hope to begin to understand or make. He took us in, under his arms, and allows us to work for him for free.” Jurelle sounded like they were reciting a mantra.

“Work without pay?” Dream tsked. “You’re being taken advantage of; I hope you know that.”

“Lord Exdee would never!” Jurelle squeaked out.

“I’m just saying,” Dream said, “slavery isn’t good. He doesn’t even know your name. If I were you, I would be pissed. Do you even get sick days or dental?”

“What is …” Jurelle made another clicking sound with their mandibles. “What is … ‘dental’?”

“You don’t even have dental,” Dream said, shaking his head. “It’s where you get free services to take care of your teeth … or in your case, your mandibles. It’s basic healthcare.”

“No,” Jurelle said slowly. “We don’t get dental.”

They were silent for a second, and then:

“I would like to have dental.”

Dream grinned.

“If you help me,” he started, “I can help you get dental.”

“I …” Jurelle got quiet. “I don’t know …”

They continued to walk, turning down one hallway, only to come face to face with …

The three little monsters!

Dream felt overwhelming happiness, so much so that his eyes started to water. “Karl, George, Sapnap! You’re alive!”

He ran to them, pulling them into one big embrace. It was different than before, when he could hold them all in the palm of his hand, but it was a good different. Dream liked being able to touch and hold them like a normal human. It made him feel soft all over. Unfortunately, their reunion was cut-off. Jurelle hunched over, pointing their laser gun at the three little – or, well, not as little as before – monsters. Dream immediately stood in front of the gun, protecting the monsters.

“No, Jurelle!” He said, “It’s okay! These are my friends! They can help set you free!”

“And get dental?” They clicked.

“And get dental,” Dream confirmed. At the monsters’ confused looks, he sighed. “It’s a long story. We don’t have time for it – we need to escape first!”

-

“The only way to escape and ensure that the alien – Exdee, you said his name was? – will not come back after us and continue to terrorise Earth is if we blow up this ship,” George insisted. He was walking beside Dream, who was, in turn, beside the alien – Jurelle, he thought? George had never seen another person who looked like himself – all insect-like – but he still couldn’t take his eyes off Dream. Dream, who looked the same as always, with his beautiful white hair and bright green eyes, but was now human-sized. If he were being honest, it was throwing George off-kilter.

“So, how are we going to do this?” Sapnap asked, cracking his knuckles.

“We need to find the main power source,” George said. “Whatever it is, it must be similar to nuclear power to charge a ship this big – and nuclear power is very, very dangerous if it explodes. It would be perfect to take down an entire alien ship.”

“You need the main power source?” Jurelle asked. “That’s easy. It’s right there, above the extraction chamber.”

Jurelle pointed with one claw. Down the hallway, it opened into a large room, where the ceiling stretched for hundreds of feet in the air. The walkway dropped down into darkness and in the middle of the ceiling was a huge power source. It looked like a generator of some sort, made up of a bunch of different grey metal tubes and cubes, whirring gently and glowing faintly.

“Well, that was easy,” Karl giggled.

“Come on,” George said, “it’s time to blow some shit up.”

-

They left Jurelle on the ground with the laser gun to guard them.

Using Karl’s abilities, he jumped all the way up to the ceiling, stretching his body thin. Dream, George, and Sapnap grabbed onto his body as he bounced to the ceiling, letting them in through a crack in the generator. Once they were in, they let go of Karl and spread out, looking for main power core. Dream ducked under a metal tube and into a smaller part of the generator, only to come face-to-face with a giant glowing … brain? It had a bunch of wires attached to it, and a keypad in front with odd symbols. The brain, in a computer-generated voice, said: “Warning: intruder!”

“Dream?!” George called. He also ducked into the small space, and his brow furrowed when he saw the brain and keypad. “Huh. I guess we can try and guess the code to get into the computer.”

“You will never figure out my code,” the computer voice said.

“Artificial intelligence!” George said, looking excited. “That’s so cool –”

“George,” Dream reminded, “the power source?”

“Oh, right,” George said sheepishly.

“Your puny Earthling brain cannot possibly work around my security protocols,” the computer said haughtily.

“Okay, new plan,” George said, looking furious, “we fuck shit up until it does damage.”

George cackled maniacally before he reached out and grabbed hold of the wires, yanking at them until they ripped out the brain. The brain pulsed angrily. George started fiddling with the wires until electrical sparks flew everywhere. The computer voice started to glitch and squeal. “Warning: security protocol had been breached. Ship has been set to self-destruct. Total annihilation in t-minus seven minutes.”

Dream and George glanced at each other and grinned.

-

“What?” Exdee growled. “What do you mean the security protocol has been breached?!”

“The prisoner escaped and reunited with his Earthling friends,” the computer said, matter-of-factly. “They ruined my power source and main computer. The ship will explode in t-minus six minutes.”

“Well, launch the robot invasion, then!”

“Invasion is no longer possible. All branches of the ship have been shut down.”

“FUCK!” Exdee roared. “Those petty Earthlings! Fine! Divert the quantonium to the bridge and prepare my escape capsule! Make sure to get all possible quantonium transferred and block the slaves from using my escape route. I don’t want any of them to ruin my plan for the quantonium.”

The quantonium from the extraction chamber started to flow through glass tubes to the statue of Lord Exdee situated in the middle of the room. The statue was twenty feet tall and was the perfect likeness of Exdee, right down to its sneer and long canines. The core of the statue opened up to a pod that would protect Exdee from outer space. One of its four arms was outstretched, holding a large glass ball, which was hollow. On the inside it could be seen that the bright neon quantonium collected into the glass ball, lighting it up with a green glow. Exdee watched this with pursed lips, anger and fear growing in its heart. This would not be the first time it had to run away, but this time, it would have all the power needed to start anew.

-

Below, once Dream, George, Karl, and Sapnap had left the main power source, they found that Jurelle had disappeared. It wasn’t hard to see why; all around them was pandemonium. Slaves – all different alien species, some of them looking like insects, some of them looking like fish – ran in all different directions, screaming and crying. Weapons were forgotten on the ground.

Sapnap laughed. “Look at that! They’re all running! The monsters have won this one!” Dream elbowed Sapnap in the gut, making him choke. “You know, for not being so ginormous anymore, you’re still pretty strong …” He rasped, holding his gut.

“Sapnap!” Dream hissed. “Those are all slaves! It’s not their fault that Exdee enslaved them. And they’re not running from us, they’re running from –”

“Ship will self-destruct in t-minus five minutes,” the computer echoed.

“That,” Dream finished lamely.

His eyes locked on the large hangar door in front of them. It was slowly sliding closed and would eventually trap them in the main room of the ship, left for dead in the explosion.

“Come on!” Dream said, “we need to start running, or else we’re going to be stuck on this ship when it explodes!”

Altogether, the four monsters started running. Fifty feet, thirty feet, ten feet – they got closer and closer as the door continued to close slowly. Dream led the way with his long strides, outpacing the other monsters easily. Only a few feet away, he held out a hand before the door closed, managing to hold it open and get through right as it clicked shut.

Breathing heavily, he whooped cheerfully. “Yes! We made it!” He exclaimed. But all he was met with was silence. Dream turned. Behind him was no one – the other monsters hadn’t gotten to the door in time.

“Guys?!” He called.

Through the metal, his ears twitching, he faintly heard, “Dream, if you can hear us – get out of here while you’ve still got the chance!”

“No!” Dream cried. He tried to pry at the doors with his hands, but they wouldn’t budge. He growled, banging on the metal with his fists. “Ugh! If I was still a giant, I could do this!”

“Dream!” George said, voice urgent. “We meant it! You better be running right now!”

“No!” Dream growled, “I’m not leaving you guys!”

The little monsters obviously couldn’t hear Dream the way that he could hear them, because Sapnap’s next words were: “We were supposed to rendezvous with Bad after saving you. He’s outside the ship, waiting for us. Go while there’s still time!”

“Don’t worry about us, Dream,” George said. It sounded like his forehead was pressed against the metal crack, voice thick with emotion, but quiet, as if he didn’t mean for Dream to hear him. “You finally have a chance to get your old life back.”

“But I don’t want my old life back,” Dream said, voice meek.

“Ship will self-destruct in t-minus four minutes,” the computer echoed.

Dream could feel angry tears welling at the corner of his eyes. He hugged himself tightly, glancing down at his feet, trying to fight off the tears. None of this was fair, he thought. But that’s when he spotted it: a hover craft, just like the one Exdee had used before. It was lying on its side, abandoned by the slaves in the ship in favour of running. It hummed quietly and glowed with a faint green light. Beside it laid an also abandoned laser gun. Dream frowned, ideas starting to form in his head. If he could remember the way back to the extraction chamber, from where Jurelle took him, maybe he could find Exdee …

And he would make Exdee pay.

-

“They think they have stopped me?” Exdee growled. It slammed its fist down on the table. “Well, they have stopped nothing! I will come right back to Earth and destroy it all, just like they destroyed my home planet! Earth will know the wrath of Lord Exdee, just you wait –”

“The inferior carbon-based life form, or Dream, is no longer contained,” the computer interrupted.

“WHAT?” Exdee exclaimed. “Where is he? Send a robot probe! Crush the Earthling!”

“Sending robot probe and – oh, uh-oh,” the computer said, sounding oddly human. “He is coming your way in t-minus thirty seconds –”

The metal door behind Exdee practically melted open from the laser on the laser gun. The laser shot through the giant hole it melted, almost hitting Exdee square in the chest. Exdee barely threw up the table in front of it, the metal taking the shot instead of itself. Exdee gasped, looking over at the Earthling, who was stepping through the new hole in the door, obviously on a warpath.

“Are you crazy?!” Exdee demanded. “You could have killed me with that thing!”

-

“Then we understand each other,” Dream said darkly.

“Quantonium has been successfully diverted to the bridge,” the computer interrupted. Dream watched as the last of the statue and tubes stopped glowing, and all the bright green light being concentrated in the glass ball that the statue of Exdee held. He frowned. If that was the quantonium, then … “The escape capsule is ready for transport.”

“Hah!” Exdee said. It casually strolled over to the twenty-foot-tall statue of its likeness. The chest of the statue opened to reveal a pod, just the perfect size for someone like Exdee.

“Like I told you before,” Exdee said smugly, “you should have defeated me when you had the quantonium. Have fun exploding!”

Before Exdee could step into the pod, though, a laser was blasted directly into the pod, melting half the controls. Dream stepped forward, standing right beneath the outstretched glass ball. He leveled the laser gun at the alien, glaring. “Open the doors and let my friends go, and I’ll let you use whatever is left of your escape pod. If you don’t … well, I’m sure you can figure it out.”

Exdee looked close to having an aneurysm. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t!” It cried. “That’s what happens when you set a ship to self-destruct – everything shuts down! And now, thanks to you, we’re all going to die! And there’s nothing you can do about it, Earthling!” It finished off with a sneer.

Dream’s brain was working on overdrive, trying to think of a way to save his friends, up until he glanced up at the statue and the quantonium held in the glass ball. He smirked. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he said, aiming his laser gun at the statue. “And the name? It’s Dream, not Earthling.”

And with that, he shot the hand of the statue, causing the large glass ball of quantonium to fall directly on top of him. Everything went black.

-

“Total annihilation in t-minus one minute,” the computer echoed.

Around them, the ship was falling apart. The walkway was slowly crumbling, electrical sparks shot from the walls, and the generator malfunctioned above them. All the slaves had long since run or fallen off the walkway to their deaths, at least sparing them from the explosion. George, Karl, and Sapnap were left alone on the wrong side of the doors, and they were getting prepared to die.

Sapnap turned to George. “It’s been an honour knowing you, Doctor Cockroach.”

George sniffled, wiping tears from his eyes. “I told you not to call me that, you fucking demon.”

“And I’ll see you guys tomorrow, for lunch,” Karl added.

Sapnap gave a tenuous smile. “That’s right, Karl.”

“And there will be candy, cake, and balloons, too,” George added.

“Cake and balloons for lunch?” Karl gasped. “It’s going to be the best day ever! I love you guys!”

Just then, there was a large groan from above, and the three little monsters gasped as they looked up. The generator, which was roughly a hundred feet by two hundred feet in size, had fallen from the ceiling. As it hurtled toward them, they all flinched and ducked their heads, waiting for the inevitable. But it never came. After several seconds of not being crushed, George and Sapnap exchanged glances. They finally looked upward, only to find Dream – back to his giant size, maybe even bigger – holding the generator up above his head, saving them all from being crushed. Dream’s face was scrunched up in intense concentration as he struggled to get hold of his strength.

“Holy shit …” George breathed. Dream had never looked so breathtaking.

Dream grunted as he heaved the generator over his shoulder and over the side of the walkway. He got down on his knees, reaching out to his three little monsters, who were eagerly herded into his hands.

“Come on,” Dream said, breathless. “We need to get out of here.”

“Good enough for me!” Sapnap said, laughing.

“Thank god you came along!” George said.

Dream gathered all three little monsters in his hands, holding them to his chest as he jumped off the walkway. He held out his fist, like Superman, and punched through several metal floors in the ship before they were suddenly outside, falling on the landing pad at the bottom of the ship. Dream took the brunt of the impact, grunting in pain and letting go of the three little monsters to put them down. Below them was more than a thousand-foot drop, too far for Dream to tank safely. If he jumped he wouldn’t survive, but neither would his friends.

“Total annihilation in t-minus thirty seconds,” the computer called out.

“Nowhere to go from here,” Dream gasped. “Where’s Bad? You said Bad would be here!”

“He’s supposed to be here!” Sapnap argued.

“He said the only reason he wouldn’t be here is if he was dead!” George said worriedly.

Just then, there was an explosion from behind them, blowing them all off the landing pad and into a free-fall. All four monsters screamed before, suddenly, they hit something soft and firm. Dream gasped into familiar fur. In front of him, latched onto a furry brown horn, was Bad. Below them was Patches, the cat-caterpillar – or rather, now the butterfly-cat. Sprouted from her back were two newly formed beautiful brown-red-and-white patched wings.

“I said I would be dead … or late!” Bad yelled over the wind.

Behind them, as they flew away on the new butterfly-cat, the alien ship exploded into over a million pieces. Sapnap laughed joyfully. Dream was just happy that everyone he cared about was alive and well. They slowly headed back toward Florida – toward home.

-

As soon as Patches landed safely in his parent’s neighbourhood – maybe accidentally pushing aside a car or two on the way down – Dream was quick to slide off her back. He loved Patches, truly, but he was glad to have his feet back on the ground. Dream then spotted a crowd growing on the road, made up of all his parents’ neighbours and friends. He heard the yelling from his own friends – “He’s back!” and “Dream’s the goat!” and “Did you see what happened?!” – and then he saw his parents.  

“Clay!” His father and mother called at the same time.

“Mom! Dad!” Dream exclaimed.

For all he had wished he was a giant back on the alien spaceship to help save his friends – and how he didn’t mind being this size once again – he still wished that sometimes, he could be smaller, if only so he could hug those he cared about. And, just like that, his body seemed to listen to him. With a gasp, Dream was suddenly shrinking down. He was still absurdly tall – maybe ten feet or so – but he was actually able to hug his mother and father like this. His parents’ jaws dropped at his display of power, but they still welcomed his embrace.

“Oh, gods,” his mother said. “I hope you’re okay. That – that alien didn’t lay a hand on you, did they?”

“I’m fine, mom,” Dream said. “In fact, I’m better than fine. I feel great!”

And he wasn’t lying. Ever since regaining the quantonium, his body had healed the bruises around his neck and wiped away any aches and pains he’d had.

But then his ears started to twitch as he heard a familiar voice.

“Excuse me! Hello! Coming through!” From the crowd emerged Quackity, a camera man following intently behind him. Quackity was dressed in his usual work attire, a nice suit jacket, slacks, and leather shoes, along with his hair being gelled back. Quackity turned to Dream with a smile, having to crane his neck to look Dream in the eyes. His eyes widened. “Dream!”

Dream’s eyes locked on his ex-fiancé. “Quackity?”

“Babe,” Quackity started, “I thought long and hard about what happened between us – and I want you to know … I forgive you.”

“You … you forgive me?”

“Of course!” Quackity said. He gave what was probably supposed to be a reassuring smile, but only came off as arrogant. “I decided … it wasn’t your fault you got hit by a meteor and ruined everything. And you know what? I say maybe you didn’t ruin everything – I just got a call from New York. They offered me the network! All I need to do is get an exclusive interview from you.”

“… really?” Dream asked.

“Yeah!” Quackity had stars in his eyes. “I get my dream job, and you get your dream guy. It’s a win-win for Team García!”

“Quackity, that’s … amazing. You know what – is the camera rolling?” Dream tilted his head.

“Absolutely!” Quackity gestured to the camera behind him. “All you need to do is – whoa!”

Dream quickly grew back to his hundred-foot-tall size with a mere thought, his entire body glowing a faint green. He knelt down and picked up Quackity by the back of his suit jacket, causing Quackity to have to hug himself so he wouldn’t slip out of the jacket and fall the twenty feet to the asphalt. Dream held Quackity up in front of his face, and he watched as Quackity gulped thickly. He grinned, all teeth, sharp and white.

“Good,” Dream said, “because I wouldn’t want your fans to miss this. After everything you said and did to me over the years, this is Clay Greene saying: Goodbye Quackity!”

He gently flicked Quackity, but with his increased size and strength, Quackity went flying into the air.

Dream knelt lower and whispered to Karl, “can you catch him?”

Karl nodded and quickly moved over to catch and swallow Quackity from his free-fall, eventually spitting him out. Quackity was left slumped on the asphalt, covered in purple goo and utterly humiliated. Karl stuck his tongue out and said, “bleh. You taste like a selfish jerk.”

Quackity turned toward the camera with a defeated look in his eyes. “Just … turn it off.”

-

As it turned out, some of the slaves got off the alien ship before it exploded by using the few free escape pods. Hundreds of aliens – from insect-like looking humanoids to lizard-looking aliens – came off the escape pods, seeking asylum on Earth. The American government had to deal with these asylum seekers, but it was by the persuasion of Bad that they were treated as people and not slaves. By hosting them at Area Fifty-Something for a few months, they were able to integrate the aliens into human society by giving them jobs, homes, and yes – with Jurelle as their spokesperson, they all got dental insurance, as well. And eventually, the humans in Florida got used to their new monster and alien residents.

-

“Monsters, I’m so proud of you!” Bad said, back at Area Fifty-Something. The monsters were gathered in the commons, and Bad was back in his jetpack. Patches laid on the floor, flapping her wings and swishing her tail, enjoying pets from Dream, who currently stood at three hundred feet tall for an easier time petting the new butterfly-cat. “You saved not just Florida, not just America, not just hundreds of alien slaves, but the world as a whole! While the property damage costs from your fight and the explosion may be high, my pride for you guys is even higher! But, and I hate to say this, the world needs you again.”

“What is it, Bad?” Dream asked. He turned and pulled his knees up to his chest, hugging them. Patches meowed loudly when he stopped petting her.

“It seems a snail fell into a French nuclear reactor, turning into a giant monster in the process. As we speak, it is slowly making its way to Paris.”

“Well,” Dream said, looking over at the three little monsters. He grinned and said in jest, “I’ve always wanted to go to Paris.” By now, they all knew his failed engagement and ruined honeymoon story. Sapnap snorted, George smiled, and Karl giggled.

Sapnap looked over at Patches. “I’m in if Patches is in.”

Patches meowed in agreement.

“I’m in!” Karl said.

“Count me in, too! I’ll go anywhere Dream goes!” George said, then blushed, seeming to realise what he just said out loud.

“Well then,” Bad said, “it’s time to save the world again!”

-

[rjzimmerman]

Climate Workers Wanted. (New York Times)

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

Three years ago, Alexsandra Sesepasara moved home to American Samoa, a remote chain of Pacific islands, with her family after more than a decade of military service. She took a job as a water resources engineer for the utility that provides power, cleans up trash and manages drinking water for the more than 49,000 residents of the territory.

But soon after she arrived, she realized that rising seas and worsening storms, fueled by climate change, had brought new problems to her homeland, while exacerbating old ones. Saltwater was seeping into the islands’ fresh water supply, shutting down schools and leading to boil water notices. In December, the issue caused a nearby hospital to close all nonessential services for nearly a week.

There was another problem, Sesepasara said: American Samoa didn’t have enough workers to fix its water issues.

But this summer, the American Samoa Power Authority, her employer, became one of nine entities across the country to receive funding under a $60 million federal program intended to help train workers to combat the growing challenges of climate change.

The climate jobs of the future, experts told me, may mean adjusting how we think of the jobs of the past: Electricians may need to learn to install solar panels, construction workers may need to deal with new engineering requirements and bankers may need to manage climate risk.

“This is a model of us adapting our jobs in real time to the reality and need of the moment,” said Ned Gardiner, a program manager for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Program Office, which is coordinating technical assistance for the grantees.

The funding comes as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included hundreds of billions in tax incentives for clean energy and climate programs across the country.

While most of the applications NOAA received for the grant program focused on coastal resilience and protecting marine economies, the agency was open to proposals from sectors like shipping, engineering and finance, Gardiner said.

“Every job will be affected by climate change,” said Lara Skinner, founding executive director of the Climate Jobs Institute at Cornell University. “We look at every sector of the economy, and every sector will have to change. This isn’t some little transition.”

The tax incentives in the I.R.A. could ultimately help fund more than 6,200 projects in utility-scale clean energy and storage and almost four million jobs, according to the Climate Jobs National Resource Center, a labor organization educating workers on climate action.

NOAA’s work force program isn’t the only funding for jobs included in the I.R.A. Hundreds of millions of dollars are also available to hire employees in the National Park Service and workers to expedite clean energy projects in rural America, as well as to train a new generation of Indigenous workers through the Indian Youth Service Corps.

Last year, the Biden administration also launched the American Climate Corps to put 20,000 young Americans into jobs addressing global warming.

In the short term, there’s a lot of physical work that can be done to mitigate the climate crisis, like building more flood-resilient communities.