History Literature / StarCarrier

* TheMilkyWayIsTheOnlyWay: AlcubierreDrive is far too slow to have a hope of crossing the void between galaxies. DoubleSubverted with the Sh'daar: [[spoiler:They arrived from a dwarf galaxy that was "eaten" by the Milky Way a few hundred million years ago. Their Singularity was set off when they went into a frantic increase in technological advancement to survive the intergalactic collision.]]

* PortalNetwork: The TRGA cylinders. Initially, only two are known, but, later, the Agletsch reveal that they know of thousands of these scattered throughout the galaxy. It is possible to travel through one to a specific cylinder, but one has to know the exact route to take through it (e.g. the entry vector, the path through the cylinder) in order to get to the desired one. Further more, being off by even a meter can result in a ship emerging at a completely different cylinder thousands of light years away or, even worse, in a different time period. That's right, the cylinders not only form a network through space but also through time. [[spoiler:It's later determined that the Sh'daar are not responsible for building them, with their creators being the so-called "Star Gods" that are responsible for uplifting several species]].

** In ''Deep Space'' Gray's SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute Lt. Donald Gregory charges a Slan warship and passes it so close the narration mentions him hearing their hulls scrape. This is so he can engage his singularity drive ''inside'' the ship with the "bootstrap" function that switches it on and off disengaged, consuming the Slan vessel from the inside out.

In the 24th century humanity is a spacefaring power, the Terran Confederation of States, that had been trading profitably for about fifty years with a species called the Agletsch Collective. This came to an abrupt end when the masters of the Agletsch, a vast empire calling themselves the Sh'daar, demanded that humanity take its place as a vassal state or cease all trade with the Collective. There was [[{{Understatement}} some disagreement on that point]], and when the series picks up in 2404 with ''Earth Strike'' humanity has spent the last four decades slowly losing ground to a second, very warlike, Sh'daar vassal race called the Turusch.

* CultColony: Normally {{averted}} due to the fact that most nations were forced to sign the White Covenant severely limiting religious expression in order to join the Confederation. Most Muslim states refused, though. The series starts with the Confederation fleet arriving to help evacuate a Muslim colony that has been attacked by the Turusch. Well, technically, the mission is to evacuate the SpaceMarine contingent on the planet, but Admiral Koenig decides to save as many colonists as possible, focusing mainly on [[MenAreTheExpendableGender women and children]]. The conflict comes from the Muslim men being horrified that their women would be among infidels without their husbands. Koenig has to threaten the colony with DeathFromAbove for the colonists to finally allow their women to board the transports.

** A habitable world in 40 Eridani A is appropriately dubbed "Vulcan". The fifth novel even goes into an extended {{infodump}} about the history of the name, including the original idea that 40 Eridani would have an Earth-like world that astronomers named after the Roman god of fire and the name of the fictional planet from ''Series/StarTrek'' (although the name of the show is not mentioned) also stated by WordOfGod to be in that system. When probes actually scanned the planet, everybody was shocked that it is not only a world similar to Earth, but all life on it shares Terrestrial biochemistry, meaning humans can eat local plants and animals.

* BiggerBad: The fourth novel introduces a new race/faction that even the Sh'daar are afraid of. That is why [[spoiler:they are gathering a fleet to quickly take care of humanity before focusing their efforts on the new arrivals]]. On the other hand, [[spoiler:the epilogue implies the new arrivals may be friendly to humans, and the destruction of the research vessels was an accident]]. As more information is revealed, humans find out that [[spoiler:the so-called "Rosette aliens" are an extra-universal entity so advanced that they likely don't even perceive the beings of this universe as sentient. As revealed by a Sh'daar race that exists 12 million years from now, the goal of the "Rosette aliens" appears to be the terraforming of the galaxy by building a galaxy-sized DysonSphere]].
** The Rosette entity, known to itself as the Consciousness, eventually takes center stage in the seventh and eights books, where it turns out that it is indeed hostile.

* The Consciousness has a host of weird senses, and its POV sections show it sensing such things as radio broadcasts, gravity fields, and even the motion of individual atoms. Justified, given that it's a [[DeusEstMachina massively powerful and expansive AI]].

** The Turusch evolved to live in Venus-like atmospheres and exist as pairs of cylindrical organisms with a StarfishLanguage where each speak a different line, and the two lines together form a third.

** The Denebans in ''Bright Light'' are initially suspected to be this, since they live around an infernally hot O-type star and their ship has an internal temperature of 900 degrees Celsius. [[spoiler: In fact, they are a [[DeusEstMachina super-AI swarm intelligence]] that harvests various O-type stars for energy. They originated as fairly normal biological creatures around a cooler star, but that was [[TimeAbyss a billion years ago, so far in the past that the Denebans forgot about it]].]]

** The aliens encountered in ''Deep Time'' perceive everything through "electric-sense", an advanced form of a sense present in some terrestrial marine animals. They do perceive light, but it's far from their primary sense. They also communicate by modulating electric pulses, using their natural bio-luminescence to convey the emotional component. Their own language is indecipherable, but, like a number of other Sh'daar species, they also know an Agletsch-derived pidgin that is relatively easy for an AI to learn and translate.

** The Sora ships introduced in ''Center of Gravity'' are armed with gamma ray lasers that are terrifyingly efficient against fighters.

** Averted with the Sora destroyers (called "Claws" by the Agletsch). These are armed exclusively with gamma-ray lasers, which are extremely effective at swatting down fighters and doing heavy damage to capital ships. According to the Agletsch, the Sora use neither kinetic weapons nor missiles.

* PointDefenseless: Human, Turusch, and H'rulka ships don't really have good point-defense systems, mostly relying on "sand" barrages (effectively, a shotgun spread of fine metal spheres launched at high speeds towards missiles). {{Beam Spam}}mers like the Sora, the Slan, and the [[spoiler:Sh'daar]] are ''very'' good at swatting missiles and fighters from the sky.

** The sixths novel introduces the SG-420 Starblades (which break the naming scheme a little), which are considered to be a huge step above the others (one of the pilots even lampshades the [[invoked]] TechnologyMarchesOn trope, pointing out that the Starblade may be only a few months newer than the Stardragon, but it has already made the Stardragon obsolete and is far beyond what the Confeds are using). The biggest problem is not growing the new fighters but with re-training older pilots and patching their nanocircuitry to use the new fighters with different control systems. The Starblades' nano-hull flows around the cockpit, giving pilots unprecedented maneuverability and survivability. For example, a KK round hits a fighter, causing the Starblade to shift the pilot slightly to the side to keep her out of harm's way, while the nano-hull also shifts the round's trajectory and reforms the hull immediately behind it. A pilot can also form weapons facing in any direction without the need to flip the fighter.

** The Glothr look like bio-luminescent jellyfish. They use said bio-luminescence for communication. They have evolved on a Europa-like world (which is stated to be the rule rather than the exception, with races that have evolved on the surface of rocky worlds being a rare occurrence) in an ammonia-nitrogen environment. Since their environment lacks oxygen, they would have been destined to never develop technology, as even something as simple as fire would be impossible. They ended up being uplifted by a race they call the "Star Gods", who gave them enough tech to survive on the airless surface of their planet and start an industrial revolution. What separates them from any other race known to humanity is that they possess fairly sophisticated robots, despite robotics being one of the forbidden techs to the Sh'daar races. Additionally, the fact that they breathe hydrogen means that their metabolism is extremely slow compared to oxygen-breathing races, which also affects their perception of time. To them, every other race appears as a blur that moves too fast. To mitigate this, they have developed technology to put members of other races into their own frame of reference (i.e. slow down time).

* {{Xenofiction}}: The books intersperse human points-of-view with alien points-of-view, exploring what the world and events look like from their perspective. Examples include the Slan, a heavily collectivist species that sees by echolocation, or the H'rulka, LivingGasbag colony organisms 200 meters long that view a BoardingParty of Navy SEALS as bizarre parasites. The squid-like aliens that appear in ''Deep Time'' live in an ammonia-based environment and metabolize hydrogen instead of oxygen, which means that they perceive everything extremely slowly (basically, imagine living in a galaxy where everyone but you is TheFlash). Their primary sense and method of communication uses electrical fields with the emotional content carried by their bio-luminescence. They have trouble understanding how such a limited sense as vision can be a specie's primary sense. Their social structure involves "swarming", with the entire species working towards a common goal with politics and factionalism being foreign concepts (they have trouble understanding humans having multiple factions). They don't have permanent jobs and do whatever is necessary at the moment (e.g. an admiral today can be a dock worker tomorrow without any regrets), so the idea of an individual with a specific permanent task seems strange to them.

The ''Star Carrier'' series is a series of MilitaryScienceFiction novels by Creator/WilliamHKeithJr under his pen name Ian Douglas, better known for a variety of ExpandedUniverse titles and the nine books of the ''Literature/GalacticMarines'' series.

* FasterThanLightTravel: Ships accelerate to near ''c'', then use the extra relativistic mass to bend spacetime around themselves to accelerate past lightspeed. Most Confederation ships can make about a light-year and a half per day.

* RuinsOfTheModernAge: Global warming caused water levels to rise, with many coastal cities across the world drowning, while others were only protected by sea walls. Then the Chinese performed their ColonyDrop in the Atlantic, causing most of those cities to be completely flooded. Now, these largely abandoned cities are called the Periphery. Only squatties live these, refusing the join the modern society. In particular, the ruins of [[BigApplesauce Manhattan]] are frequently referenced, as Trevor Grey, one of the point-of-view characters, lived most of his life in the ruins of the Tribeca Tower (an early {{arcology}} built in Tribeca before the ColonyDrop). Another key character is from the Washington Swamps, the remains of the former D.C. area (the administrative District of Columbia has been moved to Columbus, Ohio, the new capital). Yet another character is from the ruins of Baltimore. Notably, the Statue of Liberty is mentioned to have largely survived being drowned several times, and Periphery restoration efforts are shown at the end of the third novel.

** The sixths novel introduces the SG-420 Starblades (which break the naming scheme a little), which are considered to be a huge step above the others (one of the pilots even lampshades the [[invoked]] TechnologyMarchesOn trope, pointing out that the Starblade may be only a few months newer than the Stardragon, but it has already made the Stardragon obsolete and is far beyond what the Confeds are using). The biggest problem is not growing the new fighters but with re-training older pilots and patching their nanocircuitry to use the new fighters with different control systems. The Starblades' nano-hull flows around the cockpit, giving pilots unprecedented maneuverability and survivability. For example, a KK round hits a pilot, causing the Starblade to shift the pilot slightly to the side to keep her out of harm's way, while the nano-hull also shifts the round's trajectory and reforms the hull immediately behind it. A pilot can also form weapons facing in any direction without the need to flip the fighter.

** A new race is discovered in ''Deep Time'' that look like bio-luminescent jellyfish. They use said bio-luminescence for communication. They have evolved on a Europe-like world (which is stated to be the rule rather than the exception, with races that have evolved on the surface of rocky worlds being a rare occurrence) in an ammonia-nitrogen environment. Since their environment lacks oxygen, they would have been destined to never develop technology, as even something as simple as fire would be impossible. They ended up being uplifted by a race they call the "Star Gods", who gave them enough tech to survive on the airless surface of their planet and start an industrial revolution. What separates them from any other race known to humanity is that they possess fairly sophisticated robots, despite robotics being one of the forbidden techs to the Sh'daar races. Additionally, the fact that they breathe hydrogen means that their metabolism is extremely slow compared to oxygen-breathing races, which also affects their perception of time. To them, every other race appears as a blur that moves too fast. To mitigate this, they have developed technology to put members of other races into their own frame of reference (i.e. slow down time).

** The aliens discovered in ''Deep Time'' have ships that can project time dilation fields to either immobilize the enemy or protect them from attack. For example, one of their "time twister" ships (their term) is shown capable of surviving multiple nuclear detonations in the immediate vicinity by slowing down the explosions to a crawl, thus exposing the hull to a significantly lower amount of radiation per second and then leaving the area of the blast before the fireball expands. It's also fairly easy to slow down enemy fighters and pick them off. This was developed out of necessity, as their metabolism is much slower than that of most races they encounter, requiring them to figure out how to compensate for their slowness (basically, anyone else is TheFlash to them).

* YouAreInCommandNow: In the fourth book, the Confederation invokes its Military First Right law to take command of the ''America'' battlegroup without approval from the USNA chain of command. A Pan-European admiral is placed in command of the fleet made up of the USNA and Pan-European battlegroups. As the ''America'' is the largest carrier in this fleet, the Pan-European admiral moves his flag to the ''America'' and the USNA admiral is forced to be his staff member instead. Later, the fleet is ambushed by several Slan ships, and one of the Slan beams destroys the flag bridge. Captain Grey, ''America's'' CO, attempts to continue the mission but comes into conflict with the captain of the Pan-European battleship from whence the slain admiral transferred his flag, who intends to return to Sol for new orders. The ship's AI claims that there is equal amount of precedent for both command claims, and Grey ends up commanding only the USNA ships, while the Pan-European forces jump out [[WeHaveReserves and leave their surviving fighters behind]].

** For that matter, most extraterrestrial bodies are {{Death World}}s (it's just that Haris is the only one really described in detail). Of all the planets shown, Earth, Osiris, and Vulcan are the only ones where humans can survive unprotected.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: At the end of the USNA-Confederation civil war, the USNA manages to capture General Corsi, the true leader of the European forces. However, it's never mentioned what happened to the FrenchJerk president. Since Ilse Roettgen is later mentioned having resumed her post as president of the Confederation Senate, he was presumably caught or killed.

* EatsBabies: The Grdoch are hermaphrodites. Their offspring are frequently "born" in stressful situations, when they judge it unsafe to remain in their parent. On their DeathWorld home planet, the aliens frequently use their offspring to distract the larger predators while they run away... or as a light snack. In space, the offspring are usually either a nuisance or food. The alien commander is shown to eat one of the "children" it just produces when one drifted a little too close to one of its many mouths.

** In the first three novels, the maximum interstellar speed for most Confederate ships is about 1.5 light-years per day, which was a big part of the reason Operation Crown Arrow kept getting rejected: it would've meant taking a considerable portion of the SpaceNavy out of circulation for defensive ops for about four months. By the fourth novel, taking place 20 years later, improved drive technology theoretically allows speeds of up to 400 light-years per day, but power generation technology hasn't quite kept up and only allows a maximum of about 18 light years per day. Only specially-designed unmanned probes can go up to 360 light-years per day.

** In the first three novels, the maximum interstellar speed for most Confederate ships is about 1.5 light-years per day. By the fourth novel, taking place 20 years later, improved drive technology theoretically allows speeds of up to 400 light-years per day, but power generation technology hasn't quite kept up and only allows a maximum of about 18 light years per day. Only specially-designed unmanned probes can go up to 360 light-years per day.

* StrawmanPolitical: Especially in the second trilogy the series runs into what Website/StarDestroyerDotNet has called the "AMERICA FUCK YEAH!" problem: Only the Americans get to save the day, and if you're not with the Americans you're either a coward or a bad guy. Oh, and acquiescing to the Sh'daar Masters' demands as the Conciliationists running the Confederation by ''Deep Space'' want is BAD BAD BAD, and to prove it the Conciliationists are willing to use nanite and antimatter weapons to get the heroic Americans to fall in line (then blame the attacks on the American government when they're caught at it on video).

** FrontlineGeneral Koenig expresses great disdain for these types. ''Earth Strike'' has a mention that his orders from Central Command include a clause mandated by the politicians that says Koenig isn't supposed to take the ''America'' closer than six light-hours to Haris, since the carrier is one of only six ships of her class. The obvious problem is that in a setting with no SubspaceAnsible, it's completely impossible to direct a fleet from that far off. So the more realistic members of the Central Command have to insert a giant ass-covering clause directing Koenig to keep the carrier back if he judged it appropriate, which would obviously never happen.