Usually I prefer to avoid inflicting my dire drawing skills upon y’all, but what the hell, I’ll make an exception this once. The diagram to the right is my quick size sketch of the aforementioned Nelyn-class modular cutter (in blue) and the Élyn-class modular microcutter (in green). As
Because despite this and this, there are always a few modifications once you actually start beating brass and doing detail work: The 4 x “Slammer III” dual turreted mass drivers have become 2 x “Slammer III” duals and 8 x “Slammer III” singles, four up front, two in radiator-tip (wingtip)
Never Mess With Granny: Played straight an awful lot, albeit not with people who look much like little old ladies inasmuch as, well, immortality. As such, people can keep their physical fitness quite handily while accumulating a great many years of badass experience. (This is, of course, cheating – but then,
Oh yes, oh my, oh my, oh yes. Pages: 389. Words: 98,213. So, now that the content is ready, what else is there to do: Cover art: moving along nicely, should be ready soon. Permissions: waiting for. Blurb: need to write that. Cover: can’t do that yet. Submission
The Neutral Zone: Played straight, although given the nature of the stargate plexus as, essentially, a mesh network, it’s not so much a zone, but a list of Neutral Nexi. No-one tries to enforce deep space as a neutral zone, mostly because it’s just too damn big and
Second-pass editing: complete! Now just the final pages to insert into the formatted file, and then it’s down to me to build covers and e-book versions and ship off to jolly old Amazon. (Current proto-book-file-page-count: 325.)
Neuro Vault: Played straight. Only the old-time classical version, though, where you hide it in people’s memories using good old-fashioned memory palace techniques, or closely related gnostic overlays emulating them. The trouble with imprinting stuff on bits of the brain that aren’t the usual memory regions is that
(I’ve got the allergies today, so am reworking some of my notes and doing light editing. But here, have this wee snippet I ran across in the process:) “Sure, you could theoretically weaponize a nucleonic device, but what would be the point? Everyone knows they’d have no imaginable
“I once asked a Drake captain if he was worried about hostile boardings when on the ground. You know, because none of the main guns can range on the area in front of the landing bay doors, and it doesn’t have a security turret? So he handed me some
Proto-book-file-size: 301 pages. Editor: Tired. Other editor: sick as a sicker than the dogs. Work: ongoing anyway.
Nerds Are Sexy: In the Empire, almost universally so. It’s an emergent consequence, and an entirely predictable one, of certain other cultural characteristics: see, for example, For Science, Serious Business, and Wrench Wench. Also, thereby, self-perpetuating. Fic-wise and other-reason-wise, see also Nice Labcoat.
Proto-book-file-size: 251 pages. Longer story: all included. Everything referenced elsewhere: also all included. Requisite reprint permission: applied for. Cover art: In progress. Also, damn, guys, from these draft renders, it’s going to be awesome. …maybe another 180 pages or so awaiting final formatting, at this point. Woo!