Given the tech and weapons they’d seen or heard existed here, the only chance Biba’s army would have had was to use overwhelming mortar fire. And keep on using it, blasting the hordes to kingdom come.
Which meant explosives. A lot of explosives. More than any army could carry. They’d need resupply. Weekly. Daily, if they could manage it, just to try and thin down the hordes before a Fused Colony could show up and smash them to tiny army bits. Cut the supply lines….
Oh dear god, how did anybody make it out alive?
Well. Sounded like Biba’d made it out on pure, unadulterated hate.
And I can’t even blame the bastard. Jack took deliberate slow breaths to calm the hell down. Beside him Sam was white-faced with horrified fury, while Daniel had backed closer to Teal’c, the pair of them tense as tripwires. Because if Uryuu was telling the truth – and from the fact that Lady Ayame had let the Hunters on the Koutetsujou at all, she thought he was-
SG-1 wasn’t dealing with anything as nice and pretty as fallout from politics and stupidity. Hi-no-Moto had been betrayed.
Oh lord, no wonder this train’s a powder keg.
Elder Dogen had been in the shogun’s inner circle, meaning he’d at least been making nice with the hide-behind-walls faction for over a decade. His niece had found a way to kill off Kabane once and for all – and she’d brought jet bullets and their inventor right to the shogun’s doorstep.
Oh, and Hunters too. Most of whom had probably been whoever was left alive when Biba had made his breakout. Which meant they would have hated the shogun’s guts with the same burning passion of a thousand suns, and oh lord no wonder Kongokaku had gone up in Kabane.
“But….” Sam swallowed hard, a little color coming back into her face. “How could this even happen? People had to know, you have radio-”
She cut herself off, as Uryuu frowned, and Eishun – winced? Huh. “You do have radio,” Jack said plainly. “You called us in Keishi.”
“Yeah. The Koutetsujou’s got one. Might be the only hayajiro that does.” Eishun rubbed at the back of his neck. “They stole it out of Kongokaku.”
Apoca-looting again. This time in the middle of a city in the process of being swallowed by the Kabane. Jack was impressed. Or maybe terrified. Because if Eishun meant what he thought the guy meant-
“Are….” Now Daniel was pale. “Are you telling me the stations are cut off, there’s only rail, and the hayajiro don’t even have radios so they don’t hit each other?”
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
Oh. Yeah. Angry, angry people. Outside of their culture, it still must be nice to have other people tell them that their feelings are valid. The idea of using radios on the hayajiro in general in place of/addition to the whistle signals, well. If it were wider spread may occur to the locals. But it says interesting things to the locals that SG1’s first thought was such a simple use for it.
I was going to say ‘civilian’ but then I realized that in Hi no Moto hayajiro aren’t technically civilian. (I’d say the idea of civilian isn’t really one that is strictly defined or articulated beyond ‘townsman,’ really.) And to SG1, it has been a long time since trains were considered part of war.
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What we see of radios in canon indicates 1) Suzuki knows enough about them to make sure they hook up right, and 2) the shogun only allowed them in the ring stations and Kongokaku itself. So… yeah, everyone else could have used them, I sense a pattern.
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Radios could have been used to worn Stations better, Ayame’s station would not have fallen if the Hayajiro had Radio-as the Kabane wouldn’t have been able to use it to confirm they’re human, and im sure its not the only place a station would not have fallen with it.
proper communication is important.
I wonder how much the lack of Radios is due to difficulty of manufacture, and how much is due to Shogun paranoia.
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Probably Shogun paranoia. Remember how he executed the radio operator who relayed the message about Biba destroying Tomio station? And that was one of his own guys, who surely would’ve kept his mouth shut if ordered to.
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Iwato Station. But, agreed. Brrr, that guy was cracked.
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“Rhhuuuahhhh.”
“… You’re breaking up, hayajiro. Say again.”
“Ghuuughaaaahhhh.”
“… Somebody get the cannons.”
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Something along those lines would have been very helpful, yes. 🙂
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Think of it like playing chicken on the train tracks.
Only both sides are trains…
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Well, I think “radios” just moved waaaaaay up on the list of tech to share. Also, the sheer horror SG1 is expressing at the idea of cutting the supply line? Probably doing a lot to make the Hunters more likely to trust them.
Another point here? Train radios? Would be another REALLY VALUABLE trade option. SG1’s radios are compact and seem to be reasonably powerful, but even just a bit of tweaking local style radios to make them easier to produce, or more powerful, or using different materials, would be valuable trade material. For that matter…imagine a wide-spread, working radio network. The supply lines could be vastly improved if people could quickly and easily communicate. It would be so much easier to know when a station had fallen.
Now that crazy Shogun isn’t around to foul the waters, there might be a bit more working together. People will still be stupid, I’m not saying they won’t be, but stations not as elite as Kongokaku are a bit more aware of dangers faced, and I imagine most would be a bit more willing to deign to accept massive safety improvements. There’s going to be a bit of confusion over who is in charge, and if, in the absence of leadership, station lords decided to make common sense improvements to their safety, why certainly whoever the new lord is won’t object to the improvements once they take charge. Adopt it fast enough, widely enough, and boom, it’s established and common, and you can’t take it away without a fight.
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One of the big things, since they appear to be stuck with short wavelength (basically line-of-sight) radios, would be longer wavelength radios, so the stations could speak directly to eachother, without needing relays.
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From what I understand of Kabaneri canon, however, stations are usually days apart at the very least. Relays would be required for stations to talk to each other.
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At the right wavelengths and distances, you can use a variety of non-LOS options. Like bouncing the signal off the ionosphere. Or simply using one of long enough wavelength that mountains are basically transparent to it and “line of sight” has different meaning.
The wavelengths we usually use for cellphones (which are really just fancy digital radios with most of the options hidden from the user), or with walkie-talkies, or is usually close to a 2m wavelength, which means anything over 1m thickness tends to block it, and that it doesn’t bounce off the ionosphere easily. Go up to 20m or 80m, tho, and you can start using skywave, or moonbounce, or other such exotic techniques to get around the LoS limitation. And these aren’t even limited to a single bounce. Sometimes, you can bounce a signal all the way around the world, if the conditions and angles and wavelength are right.
Admittedly, shorter wavelengths have data-density and signal/noise ratio advantages, and relays make it more reliable to communicate at longer ranges, but the Kabane make that a difficult proposition (they already have enough trouble maintaining the tracks for the Hayajiros).
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Well, the SGC radios are short distance. The one on the Koutetsujou might have longer range.
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At this point Jack is considering radio as a necessity – these people need to be able to talk to each other, it’s all too easy for a station to get overwhelmed because there’s no help coming.
…That and the Haber process.
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Plus they have fusion generators. So you can have unlimited radio classes, radio music, and radio drama.
(“Sir! Don’t you dare tell them to name their DJ Tokyo Rose!”)
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You know Jack too well….
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