She could feel herself falling forward into the vast, empty oxygen tank. An eternity of a second later her hand hit the ground. It closed around something instinctively and securely despite the gloves. 15 minutes at most. If she was lucky and didn’t move that was. Still, staying wasn’t an option. She wouldn’t just give in to an invisible enemy and die here if there was even a fraction of a chance to make it out alive. Gas mask was still working. Still time left to somehow find more oxygen. Trying to calm herself, staring at the small object in her hand, it took her a second to realize it wasn’t a rock or a piece of wood. It wasn’t even dirty but she had no time to think how the small data package would have gotten into the burst tank. Habit slotted it in. The sky invisible through dust and debris outside, this may well be the end of her world. Her heavy armour pulled her out of the wreck and onto the battlefield.
Metal scraping metal, piercing her ears as if to drown out explosions and commands. Just blend everything out. Dead men walking, but still fighting, still able to pierce her suit seal her fate and render her just another name, a fraction of a statistic. No light, no colours, just the ground. Five minutes maybe, blood rushing in her ears. Five minutes to find a miracle.
Without thinking she took off towards the next wreckage. An even deeper crater, front missing and wings obliterated, engines still smouldering. At least it seemed like a part of the cargo bay and midsection had stayed intact. Maybe, just maybe…
Even her heavy footsteps didn’t make it through the noise of the battle. Something passed by her leg, she rolled out of the way of a charging exoskeleton. The weight of her own body the only thing giving her certainty that she was still alive. Red flashing before her eyes, warnings battering her eardrums, the air was becoming more and more suffocating. Her armour desperate to extend her supply. God, Fate, please, anything just to see the light of another star.
Rolling down crater walls, she could feel sharp rocks hitting her armour. Heartbeat even louder within her ears, lungs straining, but she couldn’t give up now. There was a hole, an entrance. The suit gave her the power to pull herself up and stumble inside. Half blind, rushing through deformed hallways, praying for the three blue dots of her salvation. The door was still in its frame, warped and battered but neither melted nor charred. She threw herself against it, gave it the last burst of her boosters. No matter. If there was nothing inside the room she would be doomed one way or the other. Don’t think. Just a little more, just a bit further.
No...
Yes. Blue tanks, large blue tanks without as much as a dent in their metal surface and three dots clearly visible on one side. Charging with every bit of remaining strength, she nearly fell against the huge, cold containers. Near unconsciously separating her own smaller ones as she went along, twisting the valves blindly and closing her eyes just as she reached for the dark carbon hose. Her heart was pounding desperately, lungs straining and the pain inside her chest filling her consciousness. Fingers shaking worse than ever before finally failing her.
She didn’t know how, her mind already on its way out, but on the third attempt it finally connected. The seal closed and fresh lifesaving oxygen flooded her armour. It was as if it was a new life streaming into her, lungs expanding within the breastplate her vision cleared, the warning noise was gone, red lights within returned to normal. She could hear the sounds of the battle over her own heart once more, but it was strangely distant. Here in this ruin of a transporter she had found the closest thing there was to peace in a battle where neither party stood to ever leave the battle field again. No matter who was going to win, he had gotten to them all.
One more odd thing struck her, the small icon showing some data finished loading, but what data? It must have been there for a while. But what was it? She couldn’t remember inserting anything and yet there it was, without a name. A tiny data chip slipped from its slot, securely wrapped despite carrying almost no information. Where did it come from? It certainly wasn’t hers, looking rugged as if made for rough handling. She couldn’t even remember, where she got it, unless… The last wreck, of course, she’d picked it up didn’t drop it again, so maybe she’d put it in. There was only one file. Tiny and plain text, without encryption or anything beyond basic formatting, labelled simply ‘Information’.
She had time didn’t she? What’s the worst that could happen?
To whom it might concern…Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Hey Zar! Seeing as we're exchanging chapters, I'll review too!
Ohh, yay, sci-fi! I'll always have myself a bit of sci-fi <3
So nit-picks (cause I do them):
For me, you kinda need a comma after 'Still', and shouldn't it be chance instead of change?
I have to agree with Star... "Just behind everything out." doesn't mean much >.<
Okay, so I kinda get the vibe that you're trying to miss out connectors, and you're doing in in a pretty swish way, but this one bugged me:
For me this really really needs a 'was' after 'the weight of her own body' cause it seems a little clunky anyway.
is that first 'her' meant to be there? the one after 'suit'...
Can we change 'gotten'? pretty please? "He had captured them all"? "collected them all"? idk, but please?
Ohhh, the "What's the worst that could happen?" ending. Something bad aaaaaallllwwwaaayyysss happens!
Okay.
I found the beginning slightly confusing, but it raises a looooot of questions that I can't wait to learn the answers to! Why did she crash apparently on a planet, seeing as she didn't just take of her suit. And over all: what's the information about?
This is a very good introduction that entices the reader into reading more, but you need to clear up a few things, cause some of it's a little confusing.
See you at the next chapter!
Auxii~
fixed I hope
fixed I hope
Hey Zar!
So just a simple review here! Thought I would attempt to clear out some pieces in the Greenroom
I'm not sure if it's just me but I don't get this sentence. -__- I've thought about this back and forth and I still don't get it.
There should be a comma between suit and seal
Did you mean, misspelled? Or, it spelled? Hmmm, I have no idea.
Otherwise, I really loved this. I had to review this so that I can review your next piece xD
I didn't see to many spelling or punctuation errors. This was so beautiful and I couldn't stop reading it. Lovely!
Well, that's all I got.
Keep on keeping on.
Much love,
Star
Here as requested.
I'm going to read the second one since it doesn't make much sense to read the less edited of the two.
I'll jump right in. Don't worry. Good things are at the end.
First, a reread is definitely in place for some typos. You've got a lot that could really easily be handled with a run through with a fine toothed comb.
So, I love starting in the middle of things. I love reading things like that, and I love writing like that, but you've dropped us with too little information.
Maybe I'm being stupid, but I can't tell if this falling is a literal or not. Is she actually falling into an oxygen tank or are you talking about how she's suffocating because her oxygen tank is running low. Just some different wording could make this a lot clearer...
No. I'm afraid I can't believe it. She just happened to 'instinctively' grab onto a vitally important object for the story? No. Have her see it, think it's weird and pick it up. Have it fall on her head from the sky. Anything more believable.
That being said, the line between those two sentences:
It's beautiful. I like it a lot.
Also quite beautiful.
...I thought it was fifteen... Those ten minutes went by really fast. Maybe slow down the pace there with some description, so your readers feel like the appropriate time has gone by.
Again, a little unbelievable. I would suggest mentioning her slipping it into the drive in a small, forgettable sentence when she first finds it, then bringing up the icon where you have here. Then she can be like, "Oh yeah, that weird drive. It's all mysterious."
I love the ending though. It's pretty fantastic.
The main struggle I see with you is that when I read your intro, I get a moving camera that doesn't focus on anything. You've dropped us into this story and haven't given us the tools to help us find our feet. What is she doing? Where is she? What does it look like? It's really exciting and that's cool, but the actions are really confusing. I don't really know what's happening a lot of the time. You need to slow the pace down just a bit.
Your intro does it's job. It makes me curious. I want to know what happens next. You also get us attached to your character by immediately putting her in a near-death situation. I think this is a good start.
Let me know when the next part is out,
Megs~
Hai Zar, Laure here to review as promised. So I'm going to break this into two parts, content and technical details.
Content: I'm going to echo Iggy here, the piece had a dramatic opening and the fast pace was steady throughout the whole chapter. I though the descriptions were in fact all relevant and vivid, because it describes the area and atmosphere she's in quite clearly. Giving the readers a background to built the story around in their heads, the emotions were captured in a subtle way in my opinion. Through the rocks that hit her armor, or the constraining oxygen supply l how her blood drowned out everything else. You controlled your descriptions well too, so that it didn't slip over the border into overloaded details. I also liked the fact you kept this short, because if it were long, too much action would have bore the readers.
Technical: This part will be divided into another two sub category. The content and grammar. So, as Baal pointed out. What exactly is falling into an oxygen tank? And if she was airborne, how did she clutch onto something? So, that was a bit confusing at the start but I'm sure you can sort it out. Probably rushed it a bit or something.
Hm, grammar wise I didn't have too much problem. Only one place where you wrote 15 and not fifteen, always try to keep numbers in words rather than in numerals. Numerals just juts out oddly.
Well, my overall impression was that this chapter had a promising start, especially that cliffhanger at the end. So keep it going, I know you have great plans for this.
Kudos.
-Laure
Redone, hope it works better, oxygen tank issues should be fixed.
Hello!
A minor nitpick:
Should be forward*
Okay, so you do have a tendency to comma splice often, so be careful and go through this. Find these mistakes and fix them.
But other that that, I just have to say... wow. A truly amazing beginning. The imagery in this was so powerful! Everything was intense. The action described here was fast, yet with a steady pace; it's like we were there on the battle field. You have us enthralled, wondering who this girl is, what her name is, and what she's doing. Why is this battle going on? What or who is she fighting for? Is she a good guy, a bad guy, both, or neither? We want to know, and we are left with so many questions from that awesome cliffhanger, so don't disappoint! Do let us know what happens and why this is happening, and soon!
Overall, this is really good. It's off to a great start, and I just adore the way this was written. So many juicy details to devour. I love it.
Hope this helps!
Minor nitpick fixed. I also put in an entire rewrite, hope it's an improvement.
hey hey Zarhail, here to review as promised.
This is an interesting start, right off the bat we have a dramatic situation, we're tossed right into the action. I like that. I haven't seen any grammar mistakes either, not that I look for those too hard. Onto other business.
I didn't actually feel the drama of this piece as I read it. I think this is mainly because of how it is structured: generally, when events are moving at quite a fast pace, the sentences will reflect how the character feels (desperate/angry/not lucid) and as such be shorter, broken. They should capture emotions with quick brush strokes. I'm not sure if I'm making sense here, but I would have appreciated a more fragmented style, as the character is, after all, in quite a stressful situation, near-death, in fact. I doubt, in her mind, there are neatly organized paragraphs, and I doubt she is thinking of her comrades dying, while she herself is dying.
Another thing, at first I thought she was on a plane or something, because of that 'falling into'? I'm not quite sure what's going on there, is she falling out of an airship, or stumbling? It's not clear, perhaps some more words on that might be good. So yeah, shorter sentences, less elaboration, I think that might work best.
I realize this is an intro, but perhaps some more light on the situation at large might have been interesting, even if only fleeting, as the character does have more pressing things to deal with. Are there separate factions fighting? Is it a rebellion? Where are they, ish? If these could be worked into the piece without being jarring, cookie points to you sir. Otherwise, it's quite a promising piece, the way it is presented just needs to be touched up. I look forward to reading more.
Hope this helped
-Ita
I made an edit and put in both original and rewritten version.
the second version is beautiful
//NOTBIAS
bias?