[Spoiler] New girl on the block = ...?

[ANTIcarrot]

Wrong.
The balls would not burn up in an atmosphere, because of their armored shells. They'd impact the planet. They'd be destroyed in that impact, but it would be quite a show.

Technically...

You said that when the balls smash through something they lose most of their energy. That being the case, most of the balls be moving fairly slowly with respect to the space station, and go into similar orbits. Those who break through a window at high speed will face a differet fate. If the station is in...

LEO: They will all eventually burn up in a coupe of years, as there's still enough air up to 500km altitude to bring anything down. They won't hit much faster than about bullet speed though, as re-entry tends to reduce objects to their mere terminal velocity, rather than mach 25.

GEO: Any ball moving faster than about 3kmps will leave orbit, either escapeing the earth's pull and going into orbit around the sun, or going into a differnt inclination or *reverse* orbit, with very few ever falling to the ground. This will be a long term navigation hazard, with the potential for balls impacting other space craft at up to 15kmps.

[Mizriath]

Fel already has me salivating for the next chapter with all the bits and pieces he choose to drop.

The broad picture that Trillane will be kicked out is there or would Fel go for Kumi to be noble in charge of Earth. My 2cents worth.

[Quindo Ma]

Eh.. oh so not a physics major... It makes sense though. But my question is this, isn't gravity stronger than the magnetic forces? I know as long as they have escape velocity, Earth wouldn't have pulled them in unless they came in at the right angle, but if they got close to a larger body, like Sol or a black hole, wouldn't the magnetic force not be enough to counter the pull of gravity? Just curious.

Try a theoretical experiment: Go up to the highest building in your area, then jump down.
Once you reach the bottom, what will happen? You stop.
All that energy you built up by falling from great height, and it takes how long to stop you? A milisecond and a few nanometers.
Why? Because gravity is an incredibly, incredibly weak force, compared to the other 3 natural forces in our universe: Strong and Weak Interaction, and Electromagnetism.

The only reason why Gravity plays such a dominant role in our experience of the universe is because it only works in one direction (it always attracts) and there is nothing that is not affected by it.
Comparing Electromagnetism with Gravity is like comparing the size of a pinprick with the sun and Gravity is the pinprick. The difference is that EM has both positive and negative charges that to a very large degree cancel each other out on large scales.

Without going into any further details, it's basically the EM force that keeps different atoms together, and at the same time prevents them from getting too close. You need an almost unimaginable amount of gravitational force to crush past the barrier that the Electromagnetic force creates.

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That aside, I have no idea how the Marbles from Hell work, nor what other effects the artificial gravity in Subjugation has, so I'll leave that to Fel.