Okay, folks. Time for me to submit something again.
I've been playing with this scene/mini-chapter for quite some time now (almost a year). It's on, well, the version number is 4.19 so you can imagine I've done a tad bit of editing. I think that the language is set--I like the rhythm and pacing and the dialogue works. But something in the scene is still nagging me.
So, here's the deal. I'm hoping for some constructive criticism from y'all. Tell me what works and, more importantly, what doesn't. I think this is almost done, but I've got no external feedback on it as yet so I need a reader's eye view.
Setting the stage:
1) The Easter March is a spray of worlds caught between two empires. The Sansterran Contract is a mercantile empire, very much along the Chesapeake Bay colonies mixed with the cyberpunk concept of the megacorps. Sansterrans practice indentured serviture and do NOT have a representative government. The Crucian Empire is a theocracy, very similar to late 16th century Spain. They follow the expansionist tenant of The Way, forcibly bringing their culture, religion, and laws to those worlds that fall under their thumb. There was once another power in the region, the alien T'chel ... but they're gone, sealed behind doorways (read: warp points, wormholes, etc.) for generations. Or, so everyone thinks.
2) The Easter March Coallition of Independents, (Mickeys) are an up and coming power in the region. Nominally a group of independent worlds clustered together for mutual defense from the predatory Sansterrans and Crucians, they're actually somewhat more sinister at the core. But, more on that later--suffice it to say once a world joins the coallition there's no way out.
3) The tech base I'm playing with is a modified version of that which I presented, briefly, in my earlier stories Almost Equal and Prologue: Scimitar Victorious. I'm still updating the tech bible as I get new ideas on how to make things more original ... and as I focus more on people and less on hardware.
4) Carova is the latest world to fall under the Mickey thumb. It's a marginally profitable world, lightly industrialized by the standards of space-faring civilizations. They pretend to have a representative form of government, and that pretense bites Carova's President in the butt as the people decide, for a change, that their votes really DO mean something. Carova also practices slavery.
The two scenes with the girl have been in and out of the story several times. I THINK they're necessary to demonstrate the depravity of Carova society, and to set up the "benevolence" of the Sansterran bond. But, like I said, I've taken them out too.
So, lemme know what y'all think.
Sanderlee.
(And yes, now y'all know my name too ...
)
Edit - heh, forgot to upload the .pdf. Stupid me.
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