What, they couldn't have waited a year just so all this could happen on 2/2/2222? :)

>Outwardly, the only really peculiar thing about the
>Kowloon-class freighter drifting in the outer reaches of the
>Arteira system was that it was drifting in the outer reaches of the
>Arteira system.

Ah, the Kowloon-class. The Galaxy's first choice for derelict spacewrecks in which something just awful happened. When you think "space zombies" or "explosive decompression", think Kowloon!

Although really, if you'd wanted to truly capture the zeitgeist of the Golden Age, where there was never a Wing Commander reference to small or obscure to make it into the text, this thing would be a Drayman-class. :)

>As such, today might well have been the busiest day in the history of
>the system, since there were not one but three starships within
>the heliopause today: the freighter, a United Galactica Navy Patrol
>Command vessel, and now - arriving in a flash from its miniature
>spacefold drive - one of the Wedge Defense Force's Broadsword heavy
>bombers.

Good'ol Broadsword. I spent many an hour frenetically switching back and forth between turrets as I waited for the goddamn torpedoes to lock on.

This is the one Corwin was talking about when he gave Utena the nickel summary of FTL drives in Christmas Rose, right? The fold-capable bomber the WDF used to run until it got way to expensive even for them?

>"Chasseur responded at best speed; we were on the scene by
>0944," Tarquini continued. "We found this vessel drifting, powered up
>not under way, and unresponsive to hails. After making fast to the
>starboard entry port, my executive officer and a standard distress
>response team effected entry at 1017."

I love how you're Mass Effect accurate on these things down to even the smallest detail, such as the fact that every Kowloon you board in the games, you do in fact enter on the starboard side.

It's the little things.

>"Thank you," Tarquini replied. "As you no doubt know, damage control
>is among the Patrol Fleet's primary tasks when rendering aid to a
>starship casualty."
>
>"Of course."

This is a bit to "As you know, Bob," I think. If I might suggest, rather than having Tarquini tell Gryphon a basic fact that both she and he know he's been cognizant of since probably before she was born, if you really want to convey that information to us the readers (which I imagine was the point here), it might be best to have her brag about the competency of her particularly ship at this job. Something like "Thank you, sir. The Chasseur took last year's Fleet Engineering Excellence Award in her class."

I'll have more to say on that topic in general in a bit.

>On the far side of the compartment, an emergency patch panel marked
>PROPERTY OF UNITED GALACTICA NAVY, braced with hydraulic struts,
>covered an entire section of bulkhead.

On the other side of the patch panel: FRONT TOWARD VACUUM

>The item inside the crystal column was a woman - well, a girl, really;
>apparently human, probably in her mid-teens, petite and athletic. She
>wasn't looking her best. For one thing, she'd been shot; there was a
>livid, bloody wound low on her left side, the blood frozen in weird
>ribbons around it, as if in a still frame of diffusion in water. For
>another, she was dressed in the ragged remains of what looked like
>they might have been rich garments once, and her long, coal-black hair
>was disordered, part of it escaping from an elaborate knot high on the
>back of her head, her long, centrally-parted, face-framing bangs in
>frazzled disarray.

... I was not expecting Azula in this context. Not one bit. Well now!

>"Well... you know how bounty hunters like to freeze their captures in
>carbonite, to make delivery easier? The usual thing is for the client
>to thaw out the captive after delivery, and then proceed to...
>whatever the next step is going to be. Judicial proceedings for the
>legitimate authorities... other stuff for the underworld boss
>types."
>
>"Right. That I know about."

This infodump seems much smoother and more natural to me than the one I commented on earlier.

>Rather, Vandal Carondan and his crew had discovered to their dismay that not >every pretty teenage girl in the galaxy is as harmless as she looks.

Poor bastards had just no idea what kind of universe they were living in.

>"Vintage Vandal," he muttered to Tarquini's questioning glance. "Even
>under those circumstances, he was still thinking about the bottom
>line. Damaged and dangerous is worth less than intact and docile, but
>a corpse isn't worth anything at all."
>
>"You almost sound like this guy was a friend of yours," Makra remarked
>dryly.
>
>"Hardly," Gryphon replied. "But he was an old, old enemy."

See, the way you handled Vandal throughout this short? That's... hell. There's a technical term for this, I wrote a whole paper on it once, but I'm blanking on it. There's a term that refers to "normalizing" information presented within fictional works, not with respect to the reader, but with respect to the internal universe itself. The "As you know, Bob" phenomenon I mentioned above is part and parcel of that. It is generally considered better, when at all possible, to have things flow naturally and let the reader draw their own conclusions as they slowly assemble history, nature, and technical specifications from the natural in-universe flow.

Military sci-fi is usually a huge offender here, with it's endless litanies of technological advances and weaponry and kinds of starships. (The relatively hilarious parody of that style, In Ovens Baked, is a good example of the phenomenon.)

This is a roundabout way of saying I really liked what you did with Vandal. There's very clearly a history between him and Gryphon, and in fact between Vandal and the majesty of the law in general. We know that he's not below freelance slaving, probably a little piracy and general blaster-and-blade action aimed at maximizing his quarterly margin, things of that nature. But it all flows nicely smoothly. When Tarquini first IDs the ship as belonging to Vandal, she and Gryphon don't spent four paragraphs having a back-and-forth where they voice out loud all this information about the notorious raconteur they already now. Nor do we cut to an expository inner monologue on either of those parts that would probably have run just as long.

It was good writing and I enjoyed it, which is probably what I should have just said without the folderol, but, well, me.

>Gotta go. Some dude's giving me the stinkeye over in the corner and I
>think I'ma go see what the hell his problem is.
>
>Later, cuteness,
>MAKRA
>!

Oh my god, Makra's entire letter. Her ENTIRE letter. "Sorry, I digress, pretty drunk." That was nothing but pure gold all the way through.

>"Blue Harvest" - a Golden Age Mini-Story by Benjamin D. Hutchins

So I'm pretty stoked about Azula's presence just in general. She might have worked better kept as a villain (I mean, lets face it, she would be motherfucking running Muspelheim within about ten minutes of arriving there. We're talking a rise to power that makes Akio look like he took his time) as UF often has a paucity of smart, sharp, evil people. There's Akio and... I want to say MAYBE two members of the Magnificent Ten? On a good day? but I've read all of the famous "Azula becomes a tolerable human being" fanfics (big shout outs to Broken Dragon and the Heart/Path/Soul of Fire Azula Trilogy) and there is always, always room for one more on the pile.

-Merc
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