Ballistic Coefficient

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Pale was humanity’s most advanced piece of technology - the first AI to be fully mapped from a human brain. She was humanity’s answer to their impending genocide. And now she is alone, on an alien planet, with no way home.

When Thanatos-class gunship USSBehold a Pale Horseengages the Caatex ships blockading Earth, she expects it to be a routine mission, but a technical malfunction with her faster-than-light drive teleports her into the orbit of an unknown planet in an unknown solar system. Now too damaged to return to her own system, Pale is forced to send herself down as a scouting unit in order to find a way home. She is stunned to find a world that, to her, can exist only in the realm of fantasy. Magic is commonplace in this new world, and it may just offer her a way to return from whence she came.

Now traveling with a local humanoid wolf girl as her guide, Pale must find a way to unlock the secrets this new world has to offer, all to return home and continue fighting her war. But hidden danger lurks all throughout, not to mention a single burning question that begins to haunt her:

When the time comes, will she truly want to return home?

What to expect in this story:

Slow burn soft sci-fi mixed with soft fantasy

NO romance between the main characters

Lots of action

Technology versus magic

AI slowly and steadily learning to be human

Found family

Updates Tuesdays and Thursdays

Information

Status: Completed
Year: 2024
Author: Obsequium Minaris

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 3.5/ 5.0
Followers: 366
Views: 312,818

Chapters(185 total)

What readers say about Ballistic Coefficient

“I've following this story since I found it on HFY. The main character, Pale, is an AI meat avatar and that lends her certain abilities, most often demonstrated with her perfect memory, and the occasional ammo resupply pod. Other reviewers are complaining th…”
RGuillimanRoyal Road5.0 / 5
“I'm submitting a review simply because the others were much too low. I took a chance despite the star ratings and glad I did, not perfect but good sci-fantasy and behaviour of characters seems reasonable except for a few instances of non MC wanting to be un…”
epeeistRoyal Road4.0 / 5

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(7)

RGuillimanRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I've following this story since I found it on HFY. The main character, Pale, is an AI meat avatar and that lends her certain abilities, most often demonstrated with her perfect memory, and the occasional ammo resupply pod.
Other reviewers are complaining that Pale isn't steamrolling the setting with mapping and satellite tech or other sci-fi staples. Not only is it established early on that the Pale's orbital "body" is damaged (explaining her reduced capabilities), it also misses the point of the story entirely. This is a tale about an AI learning to be human through friendship and shared struggles.
Fan-pleasing techno-pr0n has its place. Pale does leverage her modern firearms in combat, but that's not the main purpose of the story - and that's okay.
epeeistRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
I'm submitting a review simply because the others were much too low. I took a chance despite the star ratings and glad I did, not perfect but good sci-fantasy and behaviour of characters seems reasonable except for a few instances of non MC wanting to be unrealistically merciful. Apparently I needed additional words to meet minimum. Review posted shortly after finishing book 1.
AirethRoyal Road
★★ 1.5
A lot of the story doesn't make sense.
MC doesn't behave like an AI who can communicate with her main body aka the battleship. Zero mapping of her immediate surroundings even though it's capable of droppods on call that can even return. At the minimum, she should almost real time overhead view on a tablet or wrist device. I don't even want to go near the technology dissonance where there are starships with FTLs and still using 20th century weapons and ammo.
Also strange to only have a single flesh body. If the ship is the main body, can it not have multiple spare flesh bodies in case one gets damaged? It's also not explained if the entire AI is downloaded into the flesh body's brain or something. If the flesh body is killed, does that mean the ship no longer has an AI in control?
After the first battle in the village and the caravan where she needs high penetration weapons, she stuck to the basic shotgun probably costing her at the cave battle where the assault rifle would have helped much more.
Kayla is also another character that didn't make sense where she struggled in the village against one bandit but capable of taking out most of the hostiles at the cave battle. Her sense of morality is also not in line with people of such an era that death comes at a dime.
Jaller ObrimRoyal Road
★ 1.0
The Verdict: Currently unreadable, come back later
I want to like this story, I really do. This is one of my favorite types of story (Sci-Fi meets Sword and Sorcery). There are some potentially some really great bones here too, but there just isn't enough meat on them to keep chewing.
Style
1 - needs development
comments: This is really the only category I can use for this so here it is. The author needs to do some research and set up a framework for the worldbuilding before committing the story to paper as it were. We have a super advanced humanity, with FTL, starships (obviously), multiple planets/systems colonized, and actual Artificial Intelligence. Yet why is the MC running around carrying a tube fed, pump action shotgun and a .45 pistol? Its just so jarring. This book has ostensible Sci-Fi undertones since the MC is currently on a sword and sorcery world and I get that. But make something up, plasma shotgun, split laser shotgun, electromagnetic shotgun. Something, anything, other than a gun that was old when my grandfather was a boy (and is frankly, barely in use in active military service now, in 2024). There are also several mentions of lightweight depleted uranium body armor, an actual oxymoron. I know expecting hard science in a Sci-Fi/Sword and Sorcery book is ridiculous, but even a brief google would come up with the information that depleted uranium is utilized precisely due to its density and weight. Perhaps something like energy field body armor, plasma shields, diamond/carbon composite plates, again, its Sci-Fi, make something up.
Ultimately, the inconsistency in messaging is jarring. Hyper-advanced, first of her kind Artificial Intelligence and a pump action shotgun.
Story
1 - needs development
comments: The premise of the story is interesting as hell, super future AI, the first of its kind. Created to save humanity from extinction at the hands of an implacable enemy but now stranded in a different system far from home. Super cool. The execution is
WorldRepentRoyal Road
★ 1.0
Unreadable. I gave it 14 chapters, and I think this might be one of the illogical main characters ever to claim to be purely logic-driven. It is clear that investigating magic is the best way to get home, but instead of trying to learn more she has just assumed she has no soul and can't learn, and completely ignored it in favor of a massive side-quest for some random wolf-girl for no particular reason. It makes no sense. Argh. Really frustrating I keep hoping she'll change, but she just gets worse.
GorrionRojoRoyal Road
★ 0.5
The MC's main body is in orbit, but this has zero impact on now the MC navigates the world. She only perceives her surroundings at ground level. So much potential unused.
For example, it can drop supplies a few meters away from the MC's position. However, it can't use satellite imaginery or infrared to find the bandit camp in the forest? It can't even map the surrounding villages, roads, etc? Drection and distance to the nearest village? Shape of the continent she is currently in? Incoming storms or clear skies? Distinguish which villages are still illuminated at night and which have been already massacred and burnt to the ground?
The MC's motivations for protecting the girl. I feel they are not adequately explored. It is a very intrlligent AI with a narrowly defined purpose. It should be constantly asking itself "why am I helpimg this girl around instead of gathering resources to repair myself and go back to my job? What is wrong with me?"
I think we are supposed to realize the the MC has developed emotions, such as compasion and pity.This is a good idea, but the implementation ruined it. It should have been made more explicit. Maybe for the next story you write.
The girl keeps flip-flopping between belonging to a medieval world where death is a normal occurrence, and being horrified by people dying. Then they spend most of chapter 6 arguing about the morality of killing. That's out of character for the girl. The author is inserting what we call "first world concerns", which is be in-character for the MC to have, but not for the girl. They spend waaaay too much arguing on circles about these topics. I just stopped reading there, too much out-of-character exposition.
exo14Royal Road
★ 0.5
The conversations feels so artificial and weird.
The Ai doesn't feels like an AI at all, and the mediaeval person feels like a 21st century first world person debating ethics and emotions with an AI and trying to convince it it's a person and has a soul
When the AI mentions she's a robot and she was a soldier, and talks about how she's made of metal and is from the sky, why would the first question be the medieval girl asking how many people she has killed?
That's such a random and weird question that comes out of of nowhere and feels inserted because the author wanted to talk about that.
Then the medical gets upset that when the AI mentions she has to go back to keep fighting in humanity's war against extinction.
In what scenario is a person in medieval society not familiar with loads of people drying, famine, disease, wars of conquest?
An expected reaction is more of impressiveness that someone is a great soldier defending their homeland.
It feels so disingenuous, everytime a conversation starts, you expect something based off the labels of AI and medical society and the context, but then it doesn't fit that at all.
The AI says she's made in a lab, and isn't a person, the other character keeps insisting she you must be a human because you feel like a human and everyone has souls.
That might be a good plot point in a sci-fi book about AI getting smarter and smarter but it feels very odd putting in this setting and who's asking it.
I'm not explaining it very well, but it doesn't read right.
Not to mention the tech doesn't make sense either. Why is it using shotguns and a pistol? Why is it even on the planet ? Why isn't it focused on fixing itself with materials from the asteroid belt and avoiding sinking time into this world, to get back to the war as fast as possible?