07/10/19 – Trust




I felt that this strip needed the breathing space to handle the content, and so I did it as a double-strip. Which means there will be NO strip tomorrow! “Apologies,” or “You’re Welcome,” depending on how you feel about that decision. 🙂


  1. Fontlady

    Thank you (even if we don’t get one tomorrow). It wouldn’t have felt right to be left hanging at that point. After all, the decision to post four days a week was not a hard and fast, carved in stone rule, more just a guideline that could be adapted to fit the needs of the story.

  2. watcher

    I bet Devyat is just testing Anesu. She doesn’t know where the Kreebrick is exactly.

    Wild theories:
    Kreebrick’s are the children of Dimitri mating with something in that wormhole.
    The Kreebrick will be needed to attack a bigger and more deadly threat.
    Devyat just testing Anesu.

  3. Peter Rogan

    Devyat’s sudden resolution gave me a new understanding of her performance anxiety. She really CAN do Godlike things with a snap of her fingers. No Infinity Glove required. Knowing she can do that at any time across space to anything or anybody must weigh on her heavily. That sort of capability makes me wonder what would happen the night she had a bad dream. Would it only be in her head? Or…? And now I must find brandy, no snifter, ’cause I’m gonna chug-a-lug the whole thing.

  4. Night-Gaunt49

    Having that kind of power is frightening since there is the fear of frailties among the godlike beings. She has adapted to it well it seems.

    I liked it that she got Anesu to drop her performance screen for once.

  5. TB

    Okay, I think the average person would not go through a lot of anguish killing a sentient being who is certainly about to kill billions of other sentient beings. Like, none at all.

    Then again, if someone is omnipotent, it’s probably reassuring to see them really overdoing it on the side of restraint. Their slippery slopes are a bit more important than ours.

    “See how easy the first one is?”

    That said, you’d think an omnipotent being could be a bit more creative. Maybe just create a permanent restraint that actually works, or tweak its brain to keep it asleep, who knows? What do Taveyrian Kurgs do in the other universe?

    1. @TB, Well, she never really questioned the act of doing it, she recognized the bigger picture, but then one comes to the act of actually killing a sentient being. That would cause me (at least) a lot of anguish. In fact, I’d like to think it would cause most people anguish, even if I’m not sure that’s true.

  6. ronald

    Well, technically, I’m not sure that an immobile Kurn is “standing”… 😉

    “Sentient” means (for lack of a better term) human-level intelligence, right? I just realized I’m not sure I initially “got” that Kreebricks are sentient. I thought they were like Giant Star Trek Space Amoebas OSLT, animal-level intelligence only. My bad, then.

    BTW, two off-topic questions:

    1) Why did Gurf react to the Beejah planetary pulse? Was that a plot point that I similarly missed?

    2) I can’t seem to find “Book four…a standalone detective story featuring Emily Taylor at the G.O.B.” in the archive. Help? Thanks.

    1. @Ronald,

      Sentient: https://www.baldwinpage.com/spacetrawler/2017/09/25/092517-about-the-kreebrick/

      1. No specific plot reason intended. Some are simply affected by the pulse.

      2. https://www.baldwinpage.com/spacetrawler/2013/09/22/spacetrawler-353/

      And yes, Red-9 is a piece of work. But she also had an incomplete picture, and mostly just knew that eebs were being detained, controlled, tortured, and their brains modified, and so there was some goodness underneath the motivations for her actions — despite her somewhat seeming lack of concern for certain results.

  7. ronald

    A few moments too late, another belated comment occurred to me (I only even found out about Book 5 and so on yesterday, please bear with me):

    Since it was Red-9 who initially freed the unclamped Eebs to begin with, in a way, the subsequent massacre of billions was all her fault. And if she cares even a little bit, I missed that, too. Hm.


    Man, I’d forgotten the extent to which Red-9 was such a complete and utter JERK back in the earlier saga. As was intended, I’m sure.

  8. ronald

    >>>Sentient: https://www.baldwinpage.com/spacetrawler/2017/09/25/092517-about-the-kreebrick/

    Thanks, but with due respect, that doesn’t answer the question. Dmitri says that they’re sentient but he doesn’t spell out what that means, human-level or animal-level (because all of the other characters presumably already know what “sentient” means in this context). In some fictional universes (most notably Star Trek), “sentient” means, as noted, at least human-level intelligence, but I’m unsure if that’s what it means in the Spacetrawler universe. Of course, if the Kreebrick only had animal-level intelligence, there probably wouldn’t be as much of a moral dilemma about destroying it.

    Reading that strip again, should the characters have been concerned about the disembodied Eeb spirit (or whatever the deal is) in the secret society’s spacetrawler? Wasn’t IT a person?

    Anyway, thanks again. 🙂

  9. russell styles

    The dividing line between sentient and non sentient seems to be blurred in this universe. Kangaroos aren’t sentient normally, but here this one at least is passably sentient once given a translator chip.

    To be honest, he seems to be smarter than many of the galactics. Just saying.

  10. russell styles

    If she can manage to hide from hunters or random idiots with a clamper, Devyat will probably do alright. She seems to be more of an adult than her dad, and is almost unique among Eebs as such.

    Her dad seems to be stuck in young male mode, not ready to settle down yet.

    1. Muzhik


      No … he’s stuck in Russian mode.

      When you’re dealing with a Russian, never, EVER forget: A Russian with think one thing, say another, and do a third.

      Dmitri is THINKING about his daughter. People are threatening her. YOU THREATEN A RUSSIAN’S FAMILY AT YOUR OWN RISK. If you saw “John Wick”, the idiot’s Russian father agreed with John — his son “f*****” up, and deserved to be put down. BUT … he could not stand by and watch his son get punished. Maybe he could have punished his son himself, but that would not have been sufficient for Wick. So he stood between his son and Baba Yaga. Dumb.

      Those two idiots who threatened Devyat will pay. At a time of DMITRY’S choosing in a WAY he chooses, that will not be traceable back to him. (There’s a story on the Reddit thread r/ProRevenge, where some loan shark’s goons beat up the wrong guy, putting him in the hospital. The guy’s father was former British SAS (think British “SEAL Team” but more … discreet.) This BBA (British Bad Fanny) made his career doing … things .. and knew how to apply pressure. He and his mates spread the word through the local community that these goons had beaten up the wrong person (true) and had bragged about it (maybe). Soon, no one would touch these guys. Their lives did not end happily.

      NOW, think of BBA, think of Dmitri, and imagine what Dmitri will do to those two guys who tried to hurt his little girl. Cue evil laughter.)

      Dmitri is now SAYING that he’s leaving because he has been compromised by what his daughter did and what people have tried to do to her.

      He will now DO things, which remains to be seen, but which will happen while he is unencumbered by any position inside the GOB. May G_D have mercy on their souls, because no one else will.

  11. Meran

    On the sapience vs sentience, I decided to Google the phrase, see what the Hive Mind says.

    And found this nice little thread. Read the whole thing, it’s not very long! There’s a good discussion about what each word means, how they’re to be used, yet how they are prob being used, etc. Oh! I think it’s a forum for “space people”. (I should go read up more on the group. I used to work for Lockheed. I ~loved working on Space Stuff! I helped send up two Mars rovers, and I have no idea how many satellites. ??)


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