Community Event / Creation Elite: Dangerous – Space Storm (working title)

[drew]

Just one more comment on second read-through:
- on the touchscreen of the Cobra’s computer; Hari skipped through the pages of his personal archive looking for an idea -
Suggest you keep the "furiously" (or was it frantically?) - it's a -ly word, but it worked here. "Skipped" is a little leisurely for the mortal danger he's in. Make sure all the adjectives and descriptions add to the urgency and the sense of looming danger. "Satisfaction" does not, for instance. Make us jump in our seats for everything that happens.

That was my last comment for today, and that's a promise

Folks,

Don't delete all -ly words! They're only problematic when modifying speech, or when you're being lazy in description. Feel free to use them as necessary, just ask yourself - 'Is there a better way to get this across?'

So

'Look through the list of ships,' he said, furiously - Is naff.

Furiously looking through the list of ships he stopped in disbelief. - Is fine.

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[Darren Grey]

Also rules exist to be broken and trampled upon at any point you think necessary! :-D

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

Folks,

Don't delete all -ly words! They're only problematic when modifying speech, or when you're being lazy in description. Feel free to use them as necessary, just ask yourself - 'Is there a better way to get this across?'

So

'Look through the list of ships,' he said, furiously - Is naff.

Furiously looking through the list of ships he stopped in disbelief. - Is fine.

Cheers,

Drew.

Thanks, already added back in though the current incarnation of that line reads

On the touchscreen of the Cobra’s computer Hari scanned furiously through the records of his personal archive looking for an idea

'scanned furiously' or 'furiously scanned'? also looking at it i think 'through' is superfluous as well so i'm thinking this scans better:

On the touchscreen of the Cobra’s computer Hari furiously scanned the records of his personal archive looking for an idea

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

ok MASSIVE spoilers warning on this one, if you dont want to ruin the yet to be written ending of chapter two I'd close the page now because the end of the next bit gives the game away.

this bit is from a later chapter after they leave Leesti and have a bit of time to chat while they are traveling to their next destination. this bit is going to be quite dialog heavy between the two of them and i want to try and develop a hot/cold will they/wont they dynamic that makes interaction between the sexes a lot more authentic as even in situations when it isn't everyone imagines that's what real life is like.


Provisionally titled chapter three in this bit we also find out how Hari's ship go it's name.

5200 words

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

Chapter Three

‘Farthest star, its nice; what made you pick that name?’ said Cassy, looking up from the star chart filling the screen of the co-pilots console. ‘she was my mother’s ship, named for something my father wrote for her, he was out beyond the frontier with the explorer corps at the time but still managed to get a letter back every week without fail.’ Said Hari, he turned to face her as he began to recite.

I would travel to the farthest star
To worlds unknown and unexplored
To pluck for you a single rose
And show how much you are adored


your beauty blinds me like a sun
A nova bright across the sky
You are my everything my love
Without your touch I’d slowly die

For my life would be complete
If that rose lay at your feet
And I was down on bended knee
Pledging my eternal love for thee

‘they were joined the day he returned from the frontier.’ Hari’s face turned in a moment from a smile to a scowl ‘I hope I get her back.’ The glow of warm reminiscence fled as Hari’s thoughts returned to the farthest star left locked down under impound back at Leesti station. It had been his home since his graduation from flight school and made him the envy of every pilot in his unit during his two years of mandatory service; but it was gone now, locked away behind a quarantine seal that couldn't be broken without blowing the station to star dust. In a galaxy where whole systems had been wiped out by plague the authorities took even the smallest hint of a bio-hazard seriously and would sooner loose thousands of lives than billions.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

it's looking increasingly like Hari is going to spend a lot more time than I first thought on Leesti station, up until now nothing I've written except the opening chapter has really jacked up the feeling that Hari is being pursued and when i do split things up in to several chapters i'm going to need some good break points.

I've come up with a slight twist drawing inspiration from the bit of chapter 3 i just wrote to both increase the feeling of pursuit and give his time aboard the station a little bit of action to get the adrenalin pumping again and give the reader the impression that he just jumped from the fire of the sun to the frying pan of the station

the break point that sets this up follows, and i'm about to start it's rejoinder which i'll post later.

In the docking bay of the farthest star a countdown ended; a glass vile was broken, and throughout the whole station all hell broke loose.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

hot off the keyboard i bring to you a dose of fear with a hint of chaos, a little bit of death and a lot of really bad punctuation.

5600 words

In the docking bay of the farthest star a countdown ended; a glass vile was broken, and throughout the whole station all hell broke loose.



Across the station night turned to day in the blink of an eye; in Up-town gaudy signs of space clubs whose bright neon letters moments before had carried invitations to pleasure and passion all carried but one word flashing in ominous red letters up and down the concourse.

BIOHAZARD

Speakers that blared music stuttered to silence before bursting to life once more; adding further to the panicked looks of the crowds who stood like statues, all with eyes fixed on the signs.

‘Station lock down Biohazard detected in docking core, Station lock down Biohazard detected in docking core….’ Boomed the voice of the recorded warning so loudly it drowned out the first screams as people began to run in all directions, panic overtaking all reason. For in a lock down just where was there to run?

in the core as the lights began to flash in a different way dock workers, tech’s and customs officers as if driven by a single mind all donned their remlok’s and began walking towards the bay that held Hari’s ship. They converged from all sides guided by the trail of lights that flashed with such urgency in the direction of this one lone Cobra. As each person arrived a canister of sealing foam was unclipped from work belt or sling; adding its content to the entombment of the biohazard detected within.

In the med bay the news was greeted by some with concern, others with indifference and by a much smaller group who had known when the next drill was due as they had been the ones to schedule it a rising sense of fear. Within moments of the alarm the scene became one of rapid preparations, portable life support units and bio containment chambers vied for corridor space with the throng of non-essential personnel and visitors being herded to the emergency shelters in the level below. One by one the clean lines of hospital uniforms became the bright orange bulk of envirosuits as the staff geared up for what may come.

In the captain’s private office deep within the administrative heart of the station a fear far worse than of a slow death prevailed, a biohazard lock down would mean an investigation and that was sure to uncover all his elicit dealings over the years. Reaching into a desk draw he pulled out his service pistol, sat back in his chair; calmly brought it to his mouth and pulled the trigger.

 

[PaoloMariani]

Said Hari, he turned to face her as he began to recite.

Suggest you go easy on the stage instructions. This one is unnecessary and feels a little unnatural. Would he really do that in all seriousness?

Do people read poetry in novels? I always skip it. Make sure there's a very good reason it's there. Also, amateur rhyming poetry like that of his father is likely to be so bad it's funny. Hari has to acknowledge that. It's not Shakespeare, but it's important to him. So important, in fact, that he's learned it by heart. There has to be a good reason for that too. Perhaps it contains a hidden clue to something important?

Hari’s face turned in a moment from a smile to a scowl

Suggest you lose the facial expressions unless they're really needed. We will know how he feels from what he says. Your job is to make us feel his emotions, not tell us how he feels.

‘I hope I get her back.’ The glow of warm reminiscence fled as Hari’s thoughts
...
loose thousands of lives than billions.

I like that back story, it's interesting and adds depth.
This is an old ship of his, right? So his current one would be the Farthest Star II?

I would suggest less wistful melancholy and more determination and urgency at this point. The hunt is still on, and you have to put on some pressure

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

Suggest you go easy on the stage instructions. This one is unnecessary and feels a little unnatural. Would he really do that in all seriousness?

Do people read poetry in novels? I always skip it. Make sure there's a very good reason it's there. Also, amateur rhyming poetry like that of his father is likely to be so bad it's funny. Hari has to acknowledge that. It's not Shakespeare, but it's important to him. So important, in fact, that he's learned it by heart. There has to be a good reason for that too. Perhaps it contains a hidden clue to something important?



Suggest you lose the facial expressions unless they're really needed. We will know how he feels from what he says. Your job is to make us feel his emotions, not tell us how he feels.



I like that back story, it's interesting and adds depth.
This is an old ship of his, right? So his current one would be the Farthest Star II?

I would suggest less wistful melancholy and more determination and urgency at this point. The hunt is still on, and you have to put on some pressure

points taken in for the rewrite, I was sure you would get it but at this point its getting harder to remember the bits i've written and those i've yet to write so there is a good chance i didn't give enough info for you to connect the dots.

FS is still back on the station under lock down, Hari and Cassy got away and are in a different ship they stole to leave Leesti station, think back in Cassy's story about the one ship she could of had access or reason to be added to the flight computer as an authorized pilot and everything should start to fall into place

 

[PaoloMariani]

FS is still back on the station under lock down, Hari and Cassy got away and are in a different ship they stole to leave Leesti station, think back in Cassy's story about the one ship she could of had access or reason to be added to the flight computer as an authorized pilot and everything should start to fall into place

Right, that makes sense. Intricate stuff, nice

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

Right, that makes sense. Intricate stuff, nice

one of my favorite things about reading a good author is the 'oh yea' moment you get when 20 different pieces of the plot suddenly collide illuminating a thread that runs throughout the whole story.

I've sprinkled in a fair few bits and bobs like that to pick up later, some during the exit from the station others afterwards in later chapters.

I have a whole list of bullet pointed notes to make sure i don't forget to tie up any loose ends

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

I don't know, don't you just hate it when people wont let you get to sleep, two am this morning and Hari is shouting in my ear hole that I need to get up and write because he cant stay in the sun much longer and wont let me rest until he is on his way to Leesti.

some people can be so inconsiderate at times.

no, don't worry I haven't gone completely round the twist just yet its just my long winded way of saying that i finally came up with the way it was going to be written and couldn't go back to bed before it was done.


so, without further delay here is the raw text ending to chapter one leading off from 'On the touchscreen of the Cobra’s computer'

1000 words added 6700 words total

On the touchscreen of the Cobra’s computer Hari furiously scanned the records of his personal archive looking for an idea, some clue to how he could escape the trap he was in, it wouldn’t be long before the disturbance he created in the chromosphere on his way in would rebound and it would be time to leave; the respite bought at such cost from the pirates all too brief. When he left they would still be waiting for him; unless he managed to quickly break through their lines they could coral him against the sun and this close to such a massive gravity well any attempt to open a hyperspace window would result in it turning back on itself, depositing him squarely in the middle of the blue giant he was trying to escape. The problem was shields needed time to adjust to the changing atmosphere as you rose through the layers so quick could be just as dead as slow if he made one mistake.

4.9 light years

Nodding his head he turned back to the ship’s controls ‘gonna need a lot of luck, and I hope those pirates didn’t move too far’ he said to himself. Fixing his eyes on the view screen he waited for the tell-tale ripples that would be his cue to leave

‘Ready, set, go’ He slammed the Cobra up to full throttle and yanked the control column back with such force the straps of his harness were all that kept him in the pilots chair, as the G’s began to bite he was crushed backwards and had to fight the bucking pitch and yaw of his craft, thrown around as it was like a Jontybass leaping waterfalls to reach the spawning grounds of its home world.

5.6 light years

One G, Two G’s; the pressure started to bite as Hari fired his craft towards the hole that was beginning to open above him. Muscles standing out like cords on his arms as he fought a desperate battle with the controls to keep the ship aimed on target. The roar of the engines became a howl as farthest star powered its way free of the stars gravity; fingers of force reaching like claws from the core could not hold on to its prize against the mounting thrust it possessed.

Three G’s four G’s, upward and onward the Cobra flew; it’s wake a stream of fire dragged after it like a line of cargo canisters towed behind a honeymoon barge. Passing through the chromosphere he slammed the control column forwards once more and fired all the manoeuvring thrusters on the top of the Cobra at once bringing the climb to a bone jarring halt in the stars upper atmosphere. Blood rushed to Hari’s head as he strained against the harness holding him in his seat, his vision closed in like a tunnel stretching before him as he struggled to stay conscious.

As suddenly as it had arrived the pressure was gone and Hari felt a little light headed as his blood pressure returned to normal again. He checked the scanners, behind the Cobra the star spat an angry lance of fire out into space filling the spot the ship had just left with column of crimson burning death a kilometer wide, ahead of him right where he expected them to be he saw the echo returns of three vessels waiting for him above the stars atmosphere. Fingers dancing across the control console he set his systems for what was to come and aimed his craft towards the pirates.

5.9 light years

he moved off slowly beginning to rise up through the corona, the cockpit once more filled with the noise of systems on the edge of overload striving to cope with the changing conditions as he climbed towards his quarry. Now on the very edge of the star IFF signals began to resolve and the types of ship he was facing flashed onto the screen: A Python flanked by a Mamba and a Cobra Mk 1 waiting in a triangular formation for him to reappear, all popular pirate vessels.

Ship to ship com system crackled and warbled to life as he broke the surface of the star. ‘tr…flee…..capt…..’ Hari cut in the filters and adjusted the gain to compensate for the background interference being generated by the star. ‘Trade fleet captain Harris calling cobra mark three, do you require assistance over.’ ‘’trade fleet my ar…’ began Hari before realising he hadn’t activated the com. ‘if you’re a trade fleet captain I’m the emperor of the galaxy, we both know why you’re here pirate and we both know why you can’t afford to just kill me - over’ he spat the . ‘Okay your highness since we are being direct’ said Harris; ‘give me the dataclip you got from EXPLORERCORPSADMIRAL and I’ll let you live, your life wont be – over.’ ‘It’s in a cargo canister, I’m sending it right – over’ Harris wasn't the only one who could play word games with radio protocols. Checking the computers status screen he paused a moment, timing would be crucial if he were to pull this off. Counting down in his head he activated the ejection system and reversed thrust; a cargo canister tumbled end over end on the view screen propelled by the momentum of the cobra at its moment of release. ‘That wasn’t so hard now was it?’ crowed Harris over the com system, he began to bark orders to the crew of the Python. ‘Scan that cargo container, lock on the grapples, and activate the cargo scoop’ he continued oblivious to the still open channel. Hari flicked on the cobra’s heads up display and activated his targeting system locking one of his missiles onto the Python. Harris stopped abruptly mid order to listen to one of his officers make a report, ‘what? Hydrogen, why the scrawny little - Just what stunt are you trying to p, targeting us? Targeting us? Oh that’s funny, that’s so funny’ Harris broke out laughing, his guffaws echoed in the background by his crew. ‘You may think you have a lock on us but this close to the sun you could aim at the side of a colossus space station and miss by a kilometer’ he chuckled. ‘Amateurs, the galaxy is full of amateurs’ said Harris, in reply Hari stabbed the launch key and fired a missile at the python slamming the engines to full power as he did so. Pulling back on the control column he sent the Cobra vertical as the missile arced away towards its target.

Harris could still be heard laughing loudly over the com, he watched the missile streaking towards his ship as its nose started to dip; dragged towards the star by the immense pull of its gravity. ‘Amateurs bloody amateurs, I told you kid – I did tell you.’ He broke off in a fit of laughter. Hari checked the scanner as he climbed, watching the arc of the missile curve away from the python towards the sun. ‘You couldn’t hit me if my ship was the size of a planet!’ shouted the pirate captain as his ships started to move off in pursuit. ‘I wasn’t aiming at you’ Hari replied his voice hard iron. ‘Eh?’
There was a massive explosion below the Python as the missile struck the cargo container full of hydrogen, a swirling cloud of fire so intense it was visible against the backdrop of the blue giant flashed, and then was gone. ‘you mis…’ Harris was cut of mid brag as his fleet was engulfed in a massive solar eruption bursting their shied envelopes like a hammer to an egg and incinerating every atom once protected within.

‘Told you I wasn't aiming at you - over and out’

As he flew from the star on his way to a safe distance from which to make the hyperspace jump to Leesti he glanced at the picture on the touch screen interface, a laughing child held close to his mother against the storm raging all around, in the background the spire of the sector university of his home world haloed with lightning attracted by the copper rod extending from its tip. ‘Thanks mom’ he said placing his hand on the picture.

6.9 light years, he was on his way.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

Done another 4-500 words on Hari's arrival at the station and worked in some more memories of flight school, a bit of trader type stuff from his early history and info about the farthest star all wrapped in a warm glow of nostalgia and then tied with a bow of intrigue

7070 words

Hari waited in the airlock of the farthest star for the decontamination cycle to finish scrubbing the residual radiation from its hull, the whirl of the decon equipment at work little more than a whisper through the thick outer door before a hiss of escaping air marked the breaking of its seal. Holding his breath against the lingering stench of harsh chemicals he crossed the docking bay in a single bound and landed by the doors to the bays inner airlock that led away into the station proper. At 0.1 G it was a favourite pastime of traders everywhere to treat stepping on-board like an acrobatics display and after some of the larger trade convoys came in med bay was always filled with fractures and breaks, even the occasional corpse where the body in question had been just that little too keen to outdo shipmates and had broken his neck instead of just a limb.

Slapping the cycle button he hung off the safety rail waiting for the airlock to open and looked around the bay at the trading interface that would normally have been his first concern, he shuffled his feet squirming in place uncomfortable visiting a station without trading anything. ‘I can show you some tricks, make you a good pilot’ his flight instructor had told him; ‘but traders are born, it’s in the blood; you won’t find out until you hit the space lanes if you got it in ya and there is many an honest trader who met his end in some pirate infested hellhole for want of a better way of makin a credit than bounty.’ Hari had it in him, the first week he took the controls of the Cobra he made 3000 credits shuttling machinery to the mining bases of the STARSYSTEM2 from STARSYSTEM3 18 light-years away; their main supply route at the time ran through a feudal system and piracy got so bad that even the massively inflated mark-up the corporations were offering wasn’t enough to tempt even the most gung-ho of cargo jockeys into making a run.
Hari had thrown the traders manual out of the airlock. one advantage of inheriting a ship was its level of equipment; His mother had been trading in the farthest star for over twenty years so it had all the extra hardware you could pack into the space frame: Extra Energy Unit, enhanced combat shields, fuel scoops, augmented heat shields, uprated lasers and targeting computer but most important of all for a trader an extended cargo bay. With the ink still wet on his discharge from planetary service and his newly minted traders licence in hand Hari had ignored the established trade routes that crisscrossed the cosmos between the more stable main sequence stars of the G K & M classifications and instead took a page out of the explorer corps leaping from type F to type A and even a few of the hotter type B stars bypassing the pirates all together.

He gave in and hopped over to the traders interface sliding his licence into the slot provided; ‘No harm in checking the market prices while I’m here’ he said to the machine as biometric sensors confirmed his identity.

Deep within Downtown in a shabby housing complex a screen sprang to life, events were set in motion and two fates became intertwined.

 

[PaoloMariani]

Done another 4-500 words on Hari's arrival at the station and worked in some more memories of flight school, a bit of trader type stuff from his early history and info about the farthest star all wrapped in a warm glow of nostalgia and then tied with a bow of intrigue

7070 words

Very nice. Suggest you cut this:
- events were set in motion and two fates became intertwined. -

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

I kind of liked it to be honest but i can see how it could be a bit cheesy


problem is

Deep within Downtown in a shabby housing complex a screen sprang to life

doesn't stand alone too well and it's a bit of a lynch-pin

how about this, i think its a great improvement:

Deep within a shabby Downtown housing complex a screen sprang to life; inquiries were made and a decision was reached.

basically it's Cassy's hacker friend getting the info for her update but we don't find that out until later - tension builder, keep em guessing

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

what did you think of the ending of chapter one? i thought it works very well with the laughing pirate captain and the na na you missed me you n00b attitude

the 'Eh?' is a page of text in two letters i thought, you can imagine him going abruptly from laughing to confusion and the mental picture paints more than a thousand words ever could

 

[PaoloMariani]

what did you think of the ending of chapter one? i thought it works very well with the laughing pirate captain and the na na you missed me you n00b attitude

I agree.

the 'Eh?' is a page of text in two letters i thought, you can imagine him going abruptly from laughing to confusion and the mental picture paints more than a thousand words ever could

Very economical

 

[PaoloMariani]

I kind of liked it to be honest but i can see how it could be a bit cheesy


problem is
doesn't stand alone too well and it's a bit of a lynch-pin

I disagree The entire purpose of that little snippet is to let us know that something more is going on. Nothing else. So you can keep it snappy.

how about this, i think its a great improvement:


basically it's Cassy's hacker friend getting the info for her update but we don't find that out until later - tension builder, keep em guessing

That's better than how it was.
Less is more

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

creative juices still flowing and another 699 words come to you raw and wet from the press, up to 7750 words and now that the first draft of chapter one is done i'm starting to converge Hari and Cassy's story.

Chapter Two and we rejoin Hari as he is about to hyperspace into the Leesti system

Clear of interference from the blue giant’s gravity well he set his navicomp onto the Leesti system then let it take over the controls; In the viewer the stars twitched, twisted and span like the aft view of a docking manoeuvre into a space station slowly turning in the night. All the ships thrusters fired at once locking the Cobra on its target six and a half light years distant as the countdown began to witchspace crossover.

Witchspace, where the laws of Newton, Einstein and Hawking hold the most tenuous dominion; a magical place where vision becomes taste and sound becomes twisting patterns of fractal colour before your mesmerised eyes. An experience that can only properly be described to another who has shared it; for how do you convey to someone the taste of red? It was said that in the early days of the hyperspace jump these hops over vast distances often took hours, and many a pilot had gone mad imprisoned in that swirling mix of confusion; centuries of refinement had winnowed this interlude of insanity down to less than a second and on ships with the latest generation of drives the interval between leaving one part of real space and arriving in another was so near to instantaneous that you thought you’d imagined purple tasting remarkably like chicken.

Hari had kept farthest star up to date, sick bags would never be needed on his ship.

As the countdown neared the end ships thrusters fired once more propelling the craft forwards with a lurch; as it reached full thrust the viewer blinked out before returning with a new star system filling it from corner to corner.

Leesti; corporate state system and high tech industrial hub of the sector, the spires of its capitol on the planet sharing its name shone like jewels against the backdrop of clear weather controlled skies. Its citizens among the best educated in the quadrant the worlds of this system were lawful and peaceful; many considered it a boring place but it had the quirk much to the chagrin of the ruling classes that worlds with a high standard of education often suffer; it not only produced the best programmers and engineers with letters after their names and the most current knowledge money could buy but as an almost mirror image by product also produced the best hackers, codejackers and tinkerers money could never buy; with their devil may care attitude and penetration, infiltration and detection evasion software that was unrivalled simply because they had yet to write a better version.

This was the reason Hari had come to Leesti, hating as he did even the thought of changing the IFFID of his ship like some filthy pirate scum he had to do it or he would never shake them off his tale. As soon as he hit space his location would pop up on the darknet for all to see, lifted right from the DataStream between the Syscom network of monitoring satellites throughout each inhabited realm; self-contained and so small that you could fly right past a cloud of a thousand of them and would never notice them on either scanner or viewer. It was ironic that the most lawful systems were the easiest to monitor in this fashion as with a larger number of these micro the complexity introduced opened up more holes the jacker’s could pry their code into and the hackers could extract data from. This was considered the price of monitoring every ship in system from the moment it appeared out of hyperspace until it departed again, its business done and filed away in some deep data store for later retrieval. With the speed of response provided by the generously funded local Galcops pirates seldom dared temp the sting of lasers from the vipers they flew within the boundaries they patrolled but once you’d hyperspaced away such detailed information could be used to plot the likely destination of any vessel you knew the IFFID of; and by now the Farthest star’s was known to every brigand and cut throat in the quadrant.

Setting his autopilot to Syscon controlled he settled back for the long flight in to Leesti space station.

 

[Cmdr Andy B]

Hari & co are starting to take the micky, i may need to get some tablets just to get a full nights sleep at this rate.

i wouldn't mind so much but I was woken from a nightmare of being trapped inside a cryogenics tube frozen for an eternity (it's a writers thing - even your dreams start drawing from what your writing) to find sitting in front of my eyes the first few scenes and the entire plot of something I cant use until at least Book three!

it also gave me most of the plot out line of book two four five and six while it was at it (very information packed my dreams)

the basic synopsis of book 3 is Harri and Cassy get trapped in the event horizon of the central black hole/loose the ability to hyperspace and are force to travel faster than light or whatever while delivering something important to countering the space storm weapon.

coming out the other side some 2000 years later they find themselves in a galaxy turned to hell incarnate and all that is left of humanity are a few pitiful worlds whose inhabitants scrape an existence and tell tall tails of great warrior heroes of the past who crossed the heavens in a single step and walked among the gods themselves.

This was before the time of demons when man was cast from the heavens for his sins bla bla bla

the myths will have all the features of religious dogma and i have most of the main lynch pin myth sketched out already

Hari & Cassy hear a myth about a grieving warrior who attacks the demons in revenge for the death of his love using a snake whose fangs spit lances of fire, the warrior is defeated but not killed and the snake ends up hanging by a fang from the hole in the sky out of the reach of the warrior.

the demon lets the warrior go telling him to return should the snake ever shake itself loose to finish the fight and now the warrior sleeps the eternal slumber of the righteous and waiting for the return of the snake.

Hari soon realizes the snake of the myth is his Cobra MKIII 'Farthest Star' and somewhere someone waits for its return, Cassy dismisses it at first out of hand but as they talk the logic behind Hari's reasoning becomes clear and they set off on a quest in search of the warrior.

oh forgot to mention the warrior plans to grab the snake when it grows long enough to reach (as it was only a young-ling when it got stuck there) and use it to turn the whole in the sky back to a time before the demons came so the snake can prevent them from beating the gods and restore the warriors lost love to his arms

all very mythical and heavily influence by Andromeda. they find the warrior in the final chapter, get the info they need to go back in time and save the galaxy (it's always saving the galaxy) and find out why the warrior was grieving (and i got some REALLY good dialog worked out for that scene i can tell you, gonna be tissues time for that chapter)

Book three ends when they set off again on their new mission, set off , dodge a few enemy ships and play a bit of hide and seek in an asteroid field - be forced to set down for repairs on a planet that looks like the dark ages are in full swing, get put in jail, get out of jail, run away and hide to heal wounds got in the escape then circle back to the ship, finish repairs and set off for the final destination they need to go to to travel back in time. i can imagine the last page of book four being something like:

Join Hari & Cassy as they battle their way across the galaxy, the fate of mankind hanging by a thread in:

Space Storm Book Four: The Return

book five has them making the trip back in time and crossing the galaxy again to deliver the message/hardware from the future and the space storm is finally defeated in book six

then i'll have to come up with something else for them to do