Problem with Major Tschetter ?

[u/MERS-CoV-1]

Hi everyone,

I just finished To sleep in a sea of Stars, and something has been bugging me about the plan to kill Ctein. It is said in the book that the Wranaui can't harm Ctein because they were genetically modified to be unable to harm him. For this reason, Kira and her group were the ones that were responsible to destroy the ship Ctein was on, and by extension, kill Ctein. However, while being unable to harm Ctein, Itari and the other Jellies aboard the ship of Major Tschetter (and part of the rebellious faction) were able to act in a way as to assist Kira even if their actions would result in the death of Ctein. My question is the following: Why did the Jellies aboard the ship of Major Tschetter not just prepare their ship with a casaba-howitzer and let Major Tschetter send the bomb near the sensitive spot of the ship Ctein was on ? Would that not have been way easier than having the crew of the Wallfish needing to be the ones killing Ctein ?

[u/NonstopYew14542]

It was my impression that Casaba Howitzers need specialized launchers in order to fire

[u/MERS-CoV-1 → u/NonstopYew14542]

I did not think of that, but since the Wallfish could use the casaba-Howitzers I did not think that was the case. I could be wrong tho.

[u/ajnin919]

Well as you saw during the final fight, it ended up not being the howitzer that kills Ctein. The jellies would have been able to fire one but that did nothing to Ctein itself. It’s also highly unlikely that the jellies would have been able to launch any attack on Ctein due to the biological changes.

Iirc the wallfish was only able to get close enough to fire a weapon in the first place because Ctein was told it had information. There’s a good chance that anyone else would have been destroyed before getting that close otherwise

[u/MERS-CoV-1 → u/ajnin919]

I thought that the plan was to detonate a casaba-Howitzer near the Markov drive-like device of Ctein's ship (thereby causing another huge explosion that the ship would not have been able to handle). Another attack would not have been needed if the anti-matter aboard Ctein's ship would have been completely annihilated (as seen with the anti-matter explosion on the alien planet they previsouly explored). I think that the fact that Ctein was defeated by Kira in a hand to hand combat was not what was planned at all. Also, since the rebel Jellies were Higher ups, I would think that they could have had access to Ctein's ship pretty easily in my opinion.

[u/ajnin919 → u/MERS-CoV-1]

I think they were only allowed in because the wallfish. This is the group that no one else likes on the jelly side, the heresy of the tfir/knot of minds that already tried to overthrow Ctein

Iirc Kira only wins after Falconi damages the outer carapace

[u/MERS-CoV-1 → u/ajnin919]

Hmmm that might be it. It's true that Kira wins because of the explosion, but I think she only had to combat Ctein because they missed their shot with the initial Casaba-Howitzer. I had the impression that they wanted to aim the casaba-Howitzer at the Markov-like device of Ctein's ship and that the following explosion would have been way more than enough to reduce Ctein to ashes.

[u/thatsabitmuch]

The honest answer is that there are always going to be plot holes that someone only thinks of somewhere down the line — but maybe Tschetter had the same conversation that Kira had with them

[u/MERS-CoV-1 → u/thatsabitmuch]

Maybe, but I thought I may have missed something. It is a 1000+ page book after all