Hunted Tribes

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

In another universe, Colonial Lieutenant Margaret "Racetrack" Edmondson would have discovered an uninhabited planet that the remnants of humanity would have settled on. In this universe, however, the planet has been colonised by Clan Wolverine. Relations are rough and hesitant, but there must be cooperation, for the Cylons are still out there, the Inner Sphere is pesky, and the Clan invasion awaits.

Hunted Tribes is a Battlestar Galactica (2004)/BattleTech crossover written by Hotpoint, who also authors XSGCOM. It offers his usual blend of action, drama and humour.

See also side-/future-story But somehow a most melancholy, where an expedition finds a damaged warship. The problem? It's a Caspar drone craft, and both sides of the expedition have reasons to be distrustful of it...

Tropes used in Hunted Tribes include:
  • Aliens Speaking English: How convenient that there was a Greek-speaker on the spacecraft intercepting Racetrack's Raptor. On the other hand, the need for interpretation and translation efforts between Caprican/Greek and English is a running effort.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Adama discusses with Roslin how the Wolverines are genetically engineered to be superior to baseline humanity, he concludes by mentioning that they are on average taller.
  • Artificial Gravity: The Colonials have it, the Wolverines don't, and it's the purported reason for why Kearny-Fuchida drives cannot jump into gravity wells the way Colonial Jumpdrive can.
  • Frickin' Laser Beams: The Colonials are initially surprised by the Wolverines having weaponised lasers, but eventually get around to installing energy weapons on Vipers and the Battlestars. Colonial kinetics are better than Wolverine ones though.
  • I Should Write a Book About This: Racetrack makes a quip about Wolverine history that makes it sound strangely like the RTF's and then says it should be made into a show.
  • Mighty Glacier: Wolverine fighters can't maneuver nearly as well as Vipers or Raiders, but they can take a lot of fire and their counterattack rips Raiders apart like tissue paper.
  • Mythology Gag: Zarek says early on that people would have wanted to settle down even if there had only been an empty planet.
    • Lee goes through a fat stage.
    • Kasey (the little girl Starbuck was told was her daughter) was not separated from her mother, but when she was given a blessing, the priestess' blessing directly references the events of canon New Caprica.
  • One-Hit Polykill: Wolverine PPCs and Lasers can punch through several Raiders in a row. The autocannons frequently kill entire Raider squadrons in one burst using cluster rounds.
  • Schizo-Tech: The Wolverines consider the discrepancy in Colonial capabilities bizarre. The Colonials return the favour, albeit not to the same extent.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Underestimating Badassery: The Cylons about the Wolverines a few times. The Colonials too at first.
  • Values Dissonance: In-universe between Colonials and Wolverines. One standout example is Lee making a crack about a carpenter getting executed by nailing to a block of wood. Dude, Not Funny ensued.
Tropes used in But somehow a most melancholy include:
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The reason for the distrust of Nike - Colonials see her as an overgrown Toaster, Wolverine ancestors had to fight through her kind to get to Terra in the Amaris Coup.
  • All Asians Are Alike: Some Vietnamese from Kowloon are characters. This may be just a holdover from BT canon, where there really is a planet called that, but in Real Life Kowloon is part of the very Chinese Hong Kong.
  • Beat Them At Their Own Game: Thanks to Nike, the Cylons get a taste of getting beat at EW and don't like it one bit. They are forced to de-network their systems to fight back and are starting to build a proper Battlestar to fight her rather than relying on the thin-hulled carriers that Basestars are.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Nike and Gibson's plan for his Trial of Grievance failed to take into account how he was supposed to brake safely.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Nike, after being repaired. Battleship-grade weapons and the best EW suite in the galaxy for offense. Battleship-grade armor and absurd system redundancies for defense. Far better speed and maneuvering than any other capital ship in existence. All of this is on a destroyer hull.
  • Loyal Phlebotinum: Nike.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: Cavil wants the new anti-Nike ship to "Fire so many missiles that I can walk over them to get to the other ship."
  • Mind Rape: According to Nike, A Is experience getting hacked as one of these.
  • Weaponized Exhaust: Nike kills a Base Star by flying at it, flipping over, and turning her drives to full overthrust. The Base Star gets literally cut in half by the drive plume.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Adama chews Nike out for almost getting Gibson killed with the wild maneuver they planned.