Exodus Chapter 001:
“So macabre,” I say wryly, shoving Diesel away from the body. Our suits are the only barrier between us and the maggots devouring its flesh in seconds. Green blood contrasts with purple rock and black sky. Colors of the Future, they called it.
What have we gotten ourselves into?
“Quite,” he mutters, nudging the body with his shoe before we walk onward, guns pulsing with blue light and ready to fire at the next thing that attacks us. I’ve killed before, but something about this Quest seems different. More serious. Which is why I can’t shake the face of the man we just shot.
“You ok?” Diesel, my Questmate of four years, glances at me from the corner of his eye. “You look sick.”
“I’m fine,” I say, batting the air—or lack thereof— to prove my point. “This place just gives me the creeps.”
Miron is a quiet planet, the steady hum of its core the only thing giving us the certainty that the whole thing won’t disintegrate into nothing with us on it. My bravado falters when a dim light illuminates the otherwise dark atmosphere, the night sky above us already infested with enemy ships.
“A gas station? Here?”
“Not just any station, too,” Diesel spits, his eyes darkening. “It’s for A1s.”
“A1s?” The word rings a bell, but I can’t place where I know it from.
“It’s a ship category. They’re the strongest and the fastest—mostly high-level battleships and Super-Explorers.”
“So, not something we want to run into,” I say, turning around and marching back to our pod, my boots crunching the rocky soil. A tug on my ponytail stops me in my tracks. The audacity of my Questmate astounds me.
“Exactly what we want to run into—A1s are easy to hijack if you know their systems. It’d give us an advantage. A huge one.”
“Anything is easy for you to hijack.” Eyes rolling, I turn back to face him. I’m not excited about whatever he’s going to ask me to do. Nonetheless, I arm my gun and crouch, not waiting for instruction. We’ve done this many times before.
The gas station’s colloquial name doesn’t do it justice—with seven levels and tens of compartments for the galaxy’s most advanced ships, it’s hardly anything less than a military base or museum.
The ships are beautiful—intricate curves and fully loaded guns used for a variety of things—wormholes, blasts, or just light-bullets. The tangy smell of metal and Cosmocide wafts into my nose, and I cover it with my mask to keep myself from throwing up.
This is going to be a long day.
***
Planning out the infiltration of a base full of the best intergalactic military vessels in the Universe proves easier than I expected. Get in, get up, get out. It’s just the prospect of actually carrying out the plan that gives me pause.
“You want me to WHAT?”
“It’s not as dangerous as it seems, Morgan,” Diesel protests, grabbing my shoulders to make me look at him. “All you have to do is hijack one of those carts, drive it over to the entrance, climb through the main Sector when the elevator’s beneath you, then get in one of the ships and pick me up… here.” He marks our makeshift map with symbols I can barely understand, pointing at random squiggles with such earnest I almost roll my eyes out of my skull.
I snatch the map from his hands, huffing as I stand up. “Walk with me.”
He stands, and I almost regret making fun of him earlier. Diesel towers over me, but I try not to show that it gets to me sometimes. His head is already big enough. Especially since I’m staring.
“You like what you see?” He grins, and I groan as if I’ve been shot.
“You’re disgusting.”
“The feeling is mutual."
"Ugh." I straighten the map, huffing. One of these days, Diesel’s plans are going to get us both killed. I’m surprised we’ve lasted as far as we have—our Institution recruited us as paired Questmates four years ago. Unsurprisingly, I haven’t felt physically safe in four years either. Coincidence?
Loud, persistent whirring startles us back into our cover, Diesel holding me back as I peek to take a look at the ship in front of us. Sleek, metallic black, shaped like a diamond. Its razor sharp head and tail perfect for piercing through space, I finally understand why Diesel was so hellbent on us stealing a ship from here. This could change our lives. The Academy’s life, I chide myself, remembering my pledge to the Institution. Anything we retrieve from here would legally belong to them. We are nothing but soldiers, and nothing if not soldiers.
"We don't have all day, Morgan."
"Yeah yeah, I know."
*** 4 years ago
I stare at my new partner, wondering how in the world the Institution had thought it’d be a good idea to abolish the same-gender pairing rule the same year I’d be joining as a soldier. Pure evil… but not quite. Diesel Carrigan, I read from his name tag. D, Carrigan. The same cadet who’d ranked just above me to take the top recruiting spot during training. My arch-nemesis. This should be fun.
“Diesel, huh?” I say, walking down the hall towards our living quarters. “I recognize your last name. Recruiters wouldn’t shut up about you these past three years.”
He shifts his gaze and looks at me blankly, his mouth opening and then closing.
“Not a talker, huh?” I whisper under my breath, turning my gaze away from him and looking for our room. “We’re here.”
The room isn’t exactly spacious, but it’s enough for basic privacy, and the beds are reasonably spaced from each other. “Nice to know they put some thought into it,” I murmur out loud. Fitted white sheets, black pillows and purple blankets adorn the glorified blocks they call mattresses in this place. The bathroom is clean enough, but the water is only slightly lukewarm at its highest level. Beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.
Diesel is standing at the doorway, pale as snow. I chuckle, tossing him a rag. We best get to cleaning so we can catch a few winks of sleep before our inauguration. “You good?”
The rag hits his chest, sliding down to Diesel’s stomach before he awkwardly catches it, gulping before nodding in reply. “I’m fine.”
God. If there’s one out there, he might as well suck me out one of the vacuum engines.
***
I fumble with the keys, entering the password written on the back of the ID-card of the woman I just knocked out into the touchscreen of the cart. I pray a silent prayer that Diesel will be smart enough to hide while I definitely screw up this mission. At least one of us should make it out alive.
Driving slowly, I take a moment to gawk out the window at the array of ships held at this base. Wide, flat explorers, sleek, dart-shaped jet-ships… It’s like a museum, proudly boasting the progress humanity has made over the long centuries since the inhabitance of the first exoplanet. Things have been… going, since then.
A buzz of my walkie talkie jolts me from my awe. “Are you inside?” Diesel’s voice crackles into my earpiece.
“Give me a moment.”
Parking the cart in an inconspicuous slot, maybe fifty feet away from the doors of the base, I take a deep breath, placing my feet on the turf-like walkway.
“Alright, Diesel. What the hell do I do now?”
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138,546 Literary Works • 672,156 Reviews
Hia! Your summary has made me very curious about your story while it was still in the Green Room so here I am to finally read it!
I already like the intro paragraph and the somewhat done, dry tone the narrator employs!
Ah for a second I got excited about the planet name Miron. I have a Mirûn in my story~ (eventually)
I just thing it’s a pleasant sounding name, both Miron and Mirun :3
Also interesting that apparently if the planet is too quiet it’s a sign of imminent disintegration. I wonder what the cause of that would be…
I’m a bit confused about this: “the night sky above us already infested with enemy ships.“ Werent the two MCs just fighting something… so how did they not notice these ships? How do they know they are enemy ships (that might come later) but the question about how these ships are a surprise to them… I don’t know. I think part of my issue is that you didn’t really describe their imminent surroundings or if they are even inside or outside. If they are out of sight for these ships or not. I have no idea ☹
Oha, battleships and exploration ships frequent the same gas stations?
Feels like the 4 yrs is redundant information here since you mentioned earlier that they have been working together for 4 yrs: “our Institution recruited us as paired Questmates four years ago.” Better to focus on a different piece of info, like the fact that they seemed to know each other before or something?
Uhm this might be English not being my first language but I don’t understand this sentence or its context: “If there’s one out there, he might as well suck me out one of the vacuum engines.“
I wish we would have gotten a better idea what specific role Diesel has in their heist. Morgan mentions that he can “hijack” any ship but it actually sounds like Morgan is doing all the work and just picks him up? Maybe you could have made that clearer?
I think your characters themselves are solid. I wonder why Diesel was so quiet in their first interaction? (My current guess: she pretty and he speechless xd) He seems to have grown out of that tho =D
I also have so many questions about their Institution. What are they? Why do they make their graduates steal stuff but not for themselves? Why did they join up? Why did they have a same-gender policy and what made them abolish it? How did they decide on who to pair up? Always Top 1 and 2, and then Top 3 and 4 etc?
Writing style is also fine and I’m curious where you are going with this :3 Have you considered writing some reviews and posting something more?
Hey Calaway! Welcome to YWS, I hope you enjoy your stay. Now, for the review:
I know it's meant to set the tone for a futuristic sci-fi, but the 001 just makes me worry that this story is going to have more than one hundred chapters in it and that makes me uncomfortable.
Opening scenes are extremely important, because if they don't work, they won't hook the reader. This is a jarring opening for all the wrong reasons.
1. I don't know where they are. In a science fiction, there are a lot of possible settings, so it is essential that within the first paragraph, we know where we are. "Green blood contrasts with purple rock and black sky" suggests that we're on some alien world, but that is insufficient. We need more than just colors to convey the physical location the characters are in.
2. I don't know who they are. "Diesel" is an odd name. I gather that he (she? they?) are a person since theu and the protagonist are in suits (although it isn't clear what sort of suits they are. Space suits? Combat suits? Business suits?) But there isn't any kind of physical description of what Diesel looks like. We don't even have a name for the protagonist, much less a description.
3. I don't know what they are doing. The protagonist shoves Diesel away from a body. Why was Diesel over a body? Were they investigating a dead person they found? If so, why are we starting here, instead of back a couple moments to when the body was discovered? Were they out searching for this body? Or did they come across in while they are doing something else? Did they kill this person?
My best guess right now is that Diesel was investigating the body when those flesh-eating maggots emerged from the body, at which point the protagonist shoved Diesel away from the threat, but this is hardly clear and that is a problem.
4. What is the deal with the flesh eating maggots? On the one hand you say that they can devour a person in seconds, but if that's true, then how long ago did those maggots arrive? If they only require a few seconds to devour a body, then why are they or the body still here? Did our characters only just show up to a fresh corpse? Or did they kill this person?
Better question: why didn't you start the story a few moments before when they were shooting the guy? If we see the decision-making process behind killing the guy, we might get a sense of the motivations of our characters: are they assassins with orders to leave no witnesses, policeman on the search for criminals, or just ordinary people trying to make their way through a dangerous area?
Another question: what was it about the face of the man they just shot? Was he scared, familiar, or just ugly? Whatever the case, this is a good way to explore the feelings your character is having in a way that reveals more about them.
1. This would have been a great place to introduce the protagonist's name.
2. Depending on the nature of the suits they are wearing, it might limit the ability of the other to read their expressions. A space suit with a reflective visor isn't going to show that kind of detail, though it may still come through via audio. In which case, "You sound sick" would be employed in place of "You look sick."
Again, the lack of information about the nature of the suit: if it is a space suit, why doesn't it have its own air supply for operations in vaccum or non-breathable atmosphere?
A quiet planet with an audible hum from its core? Sounds pretty dangerous to me.
Imagine if you had opened with a line like this:
Spoiler
1. Wait, they use gasoline for big ships? I was expecting atomic power or something a bit more exotic than a gas station.
2. Instead of saying "It's for A1s" wouldn't it have been better to say "It's for the Capital ships."
3. Does it make sense for the bigger ships to use a completely different fuel source from the smaller ones?
1. Okay, so if the ponytail is accessible, does that mean they are in business suits? Also, it has taken exactly this long to establish the protagonist might be a female. Can't be sure though, ponytails aren't the giveaway they used to be.
2. Knowing the systems of a ship undoubtedly gives one an advantage in hijacking it, but I feel like this would be a good time to explain some of the other considerations that go into hijacking something like a warship.
To get to the point where you can access its shipboard systems, you have to board it, which means dealing with security around the ship and onboard the ship. This includes any crew on the ship, who even if they aren't able to defeat you in battle, could still cause major systems damage or even resist your efforts to control the ship, something they would have an advantage in because they know their own ships systems better than any stranger.
One more consideration: even if you control the ship, you also have to be able to get away with it. You need to be able to avoid being destroyed by any other battleships that might not want to see their hull being put to use against them. You have to avoid being tracked by them, either with a tracking device or by having them monitor any gas stations in the vicinity with the ability to refuel them.
Any or all of these things (and likely a host of things I haven't considered) would be excellent for the protagonist to bring up, especially if any of these areas happens to intersect with their areas of expertise.
Which brings up the question: what is the protagonist's area of expertise? So far they are extremely passive in their role to the point where their role is hidden. Diesel is a hijacker, Diesel is making heist plans, our protagonist doesn't even have a name yet!
As for the heist plans, it is fine for them to talk about what they'll do, but I think it is also a good time for them to talk about contingency plans as well. If their stealth mission fails, do they regroup at a fall-back point? Or do they go loud and go in guns blazing? The point isn't what they pick, but that they discuss it, which they aren't doing.
1. Morgan! What a beautiful name!
2. Grabbing the shoulders of a heavily armed woman so you can patronize her seems like a risky maneuver, even if it does dramatically show off your clever plan.
3. Points off for Morgan being only barely capable of understanding Diesel map markings, despite being partnered with him for years. If you're a professional on a job that has the potential to kill you, then you ask some pretty important clarifying questions rather than remaining ignorant of what symbols mean.
I'm not going to talk about what happens in this flashback. Why? Because it needs to be deleted. The story of how Morgan first met Diesel can be told in later chapters, the reader will care about it then. Right now though, the reader is interested in the heist. Don't cut away from the heist to do this, it will just break their concentration.
This is why the flashback has to die, we missed a scene of her knocking out a woman and perhaps acting competently for the first time! Also, why is she thinking "Well, at least one of us should make it out alive" instead of "I'm definitely making it out alive if this all goes bad?"
A walkie-talkie is an extremely short range radio, with a range that is line of sight. This is an important consideration because the moment they enter the ship, a walkie-talkie's already limited range would probably fall to nothing in the face of all the metal that is likely to be inside.
I think this line is a good one to end this review on because I feel like all I've done this story is watch Morgan run around and then ask Diesel what she should be doing next. It is so frustrating that after an entire chapter, that her character is so... sparse. Is she really just a stupid follower that does whatever Diesel tells her to do? Or does she have her own expertise that Diesel consults with her on? Are they really partners? Or is he her superior?
We need Morgan to have more of her own voice. She should remember things without flashing back to them. She should talk about the things that she knows and ask intelligent questions about the things she doesn't. If she doesn't take this seriously, then why should we?
Hello, Calaway! I was told I can copy your work below and then do in-line feedback texts. I'll put them in {braces}, so if you want a quick way to find them, just CTRL+F+{. After that, I'll put some comments below to hopefully make the feedback more consolidated and organized for you...
Exodus Chapter 001:
“So macabre,” I say wryly, shoving Diesel away from the body. Our suits are the only barrier between us and the maggots devouring its flesh in seconds. Green blood contrasts with purple rock and black sky. Colors of the Future, they called it. {Green, purple, black, what a great way to paint an alien setting. First reader reaction: How far into the future are we talking here? Exoplanet-colonizing level?}
What have we gotten ourselves into?
“Quite,” he mutters, nudging the body with his shoe before we walk onward, guns pulsing with blue light and ready to fire at the next thing that attacks us. I’ve killed before, but something about this Quest seems different. More serious. Which is why I can’t shake the face of the man we just shot. {Oh shiz? the reveal of the capitalized "Quest" is interesting bcuz scifi ppl usualy call it mission, etc. i always like it when this happens}
“You ok?” Diesel, my Questmate of four years, glances at me from the corner of his eye. “You look sick.” {slight confusion on who was talking here}
“I’m fine,” I say, batting the air—or lack thereof— {you put a space between this em dash and the word "to"}to prove my point. “This place just gives me the creeps.”
Miron is a quiet planet, the steady hum of its core the only thing giving us the certainty that the whole thing won’t disintegrate into nothing with us on it {Why would the hum of a planet's core give the certainty that it won't disintegrate in the forseeable future? i'll be dropping comments like these. It's up to you if you want to make them actionable bcuz i'm just a regular dude with his own opinions, you know?}. My bravado falters when a dim light illuminates the otherwise dark atmosphere, the night sky above us already infested with enemy ships. {So are the enemies green blooded? If you wanted to make the answer to that a mystery right now, you're doing a great job, lol, but my reader-brain is hungry to make the connection between the dead green blooded thing that they just killed and the ships above}
“A gas station? Here?”
“Not just any station, too,” Diesel spits, his eyes darkening. “It’s for A1s.”
“A1s?” The word rings a bell, but I can’t place where I know it from.
“It’s a ship category. {I recognize that you've done a great weave here, for the reader, since the reader doesn't yet know A1s, and you weaved it into the character conversations nicely. You're thus far doing a great job weaving informational bits that are necessary for reader understanding because it doesn't seem expositionary, and if it does, it seems to be the good type of exposition, in my humble opinion}They’re the strongest and the fastest—mostly high-level battleships and Super-Explorers.”
“So, not something we want to run into,” I say, turning around and marching back to our pod, my boots crunching the rocky soil. A tug on my ponytail stops me in my tracks. The audacity of my Questmate astounds me. {sorry maybe i missed it but what audacious proposal did this Questmade propose for this reaction to happen here in this paragraph? Ohhh so the tug on the ponytail was enough for the protagonist to recognize where the Questmate is gonna go from there at the pony-tail tugging. Also, they must be really familliar bcuz pulling ponytails doesn't seem to be an action that would be welcomed by the one who's ponytail is being tugged upon, lol}
“Exactly what we want to run into—A1s are easy to hijack if you know their systems. It’d give us an advantage. A huge one.”
“Anything is easy for you to hijack.” Eyes rolling, I turn back to face him. I’m not excited about whatever he’s going to ask me to do. Nonetheless, I arm my gun and crouch, not waiting for instruction. We’ve done this many times before.
The gas station’s colloquial name doesn’t do it justice—with seven levels and tens of compartments for the galaxy’s most advanced ships, it’s hardly anything less than a military base or museum.
The ships are beautiful—intricate curves and fully loaded guns used for a variety of things—wormholes, blasts, or just light-bullets. The tangy smell of metal and Cosmocide wafts into my nose, and I cover it with my mask to keep myself from throwing up.
This is going to be a long day.
*** {i'm a fan of scifi, but maybe not as big as i should be, because Cosmocide doesn't ring that old bell that tells me what it is just by looking at the name. Just a heads up there for ya, and then i wanted to tell you that maybe you can put transitionary prose instead of doing a linebreak midchapter. In my humble opinion, putting transition/travel prose rather than scenebreaks makes a nice immersively continuous exp for our readers. up to you, but you can weave the following aside into novel-ready prose, and i think you'd get more word-count, as that's important to certain novelists, and i think your readers and yourself might even like the result}
Planning out the infiltration of a base full of the best intergalactic military vessels in the Universe proves easier than I expected. Get in, get up, get out. It’s just the prospect of actually carrying out the plan that gives me pause.
“You want me to WHAT?”
“It’s not as dangerous as it seems, Morgan,” Diesel protests, grabbing my shoulders to make me look at him. “All you have to do is hijack one of those carts, drive it over to the entrance, climb through the main Sector when the elevator’s beneath you, then get in one of the ships and pick me up… here.” He marks our makeshift map with symbols I can barely understand, pointing at random squiggles with such earnest I almost roll my eyes out of my skull. {lol you know the voice of the protagonist is very umm he has that good old je ne se quoi the french be talking about}
I snatch the map from his hands, huffing as I stand up. “Walk with me.”
He stands, and I almost regret making fun of him earlier. Diesel towers over me, but I try not to show that it gets to me sometimes. His head is already big enough. Especially since I’m staring.
“You like what you see?” He grins, and I groan as if I’ve been shot.
“You’re disgusting.”
“The feeling is mutual."
"Ugh." I straighten the map, huffing. One of these days, Diesel’s plans are going to get us both killed. I’m surprised we’ve lasted as far as we have—our Institution recruited us as paired Questmates four years ago. Unsurprisingly, I haven’t felt physically safe in four years either. Coincidence? {plus ten points for internal monologue that has logic that any reader would likely agree with}
Loud, persistent whirring startles us back into our cover, Diesel holding me back as I peek to take a look at the ship in front of us. Sleek, metallic black, shaped like a diamond. Its razor sharp head and tail perfect for piercing through space, I finally understand why Diesel was so hellbent on us stealing a ship from here. This could change our lives. The Academy’s life, I chide myself, remembering my pledge to the Institution {I think this is the first mention of the Academic Institution. Again, y you've done a great job of weaving in pertinent information without making it feel info-dumpy}. Anything we retrieve from here would legally belong to them. We are nothing but soldiers, and nothing if not soldiers.
"We don't have all day, Morgan."
"Yeah yeah, I know."
*** 4 years ago {bcuz of the opinion i expressed earlier, i'll would say the same thing here, but also, i think at this point, your chapter is getting to that proverbial limit of how many "things" a chapter could hold. In other words, I'd say put the flashback in its own chapter and expand on the stuff above, bcuz at this point, I feel like the stuff above needs a bit more screen time. We went through the setup too quickly, methinks. It's up to you though. I am not exactly a writer of scifi, so i haven't developed any following in that category, so take my suggestions with grains of salt.}
I stare at my new partner, wondering how in the world the Institution had thought it’d be a good idea to abolish the same-gender pairing rule the same year I’d be joining as a soldier. Pure evil… but not quite. Diesel Carrigan, I read from his name tag. D, Carrigan. The same cadet who’d ranked just above me to take the top recruiting spot during training. My arch-nemesis. This should be fun. {amazing. this plot twist or reveal makes things interesting. I didnt know that the protagonist was a female. I missed it, if this was aforementioned. But now you're adding a possible romance in the mix. Just letting you know reader reaction from my perspective}
“Diesel, huh?” I say, walking down the hall towards our living quarters. “I recognize your last name. Recruiters wouldn’t shut up about you these past three years.”
He shifts his gaze and looks at me blankly, his mouth opening and then closing.
“Not a talker, huh?” I whisper under my breath, turning my gaze away from him and looking for our room. “We’re here.”
The room isn’t exactly spacious, but it’s enough for basic privacy, and the beds are reasonably spaced from each other. “Nice to know they put some thought into it,” I murmur out loud. Fitted white sheets, black pillows and purple blankets adorn{ed* This is an adjective, so it has to be the past-tense version of the verb, lol, sorry to get grammatically technical on you} the glorified blocks they call mattresses in this place. The bathroom is clean enough, but the water is only slightly lukewarm at its highest level. Beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.
Diesel is standing at the doorway, pale as snow. I chuckle, tossing him a rag. We best get to cleaning so we can catch a few winks of sleep before our inauguration {inauguration is that like the officialization like a graduation?}. “You good?”
The rag hits his chest, sliding down to Diesel’s stomach before he awkwardly catches it, gulping before nodding in reply. “I’m fine.”
God. If there’s one out there, he might as well suck me out one of the vacuum engines. {to me, it's unclear which emotion she's expressing with "God" and the rest of it. Is it like DAMN HE'S HOT THE WAY THAT TOWEL SLID OFF HIM. Or is it like Jesus Christ I super hate this slow dumb guy}
***
I fumble with the keys, entering the password written on the back of the ID-card of the woman I just knocked out into the touchscreen of the cart. I pray a silent prayer that Diesel will be smart enough to hide while I definitely screw up this mission. At least one of us should make it out alive. {omen foreshadowing}
Driving slowly, I take a moment to gawk out the window at the array of ships held at this base. Wide, flat explorers, sleek, dart-shaped jet-ships… It’s like a museum, proudly boasting the progress humanity has made over the long centuries since the inhabitance of the first exoplanet {Oh, yeah. I love it when I'm extremely spot on with my initial guesses, lol. The mention of exoplanet solidifies reader suspecion that this is indeed an extremely far future setting. Well done, methinks!}. Things have been… going, since then.
A buzz of my walkie talkie jolts me from my awe. “Are you inside?” Diesel’s voice crackles into my earpiece.
“Give me a moment.”
Parking the cart in an inconspicuous slot, maybe fifty feet away from the doors of the base, I take a deep breath, placing my feet on the turf-like walkway.
“Alright, Diesel. What the hell do I do now?”
{Alright, well done overall! I think you did a terrific job painting the picture for the reader. The protagonist voice, whose name is Morgan, and I thought was a male this whole time, is very good. It's the type of good that'll get the reader wanting more. It's a good voice to follow, to be honest. Furthermore!!! Umm... The beginning (in my humble opinion. BTW, everything i write has an invisible "in my humble opinion-comma" in front of it, lmao) should be extended. Maybe it's a scifi theme that you're purposefully sticking to, but from my experience, being descriptive with things, almost like, well idk if this is a real category in the world, but almost like description porn? I have to be really careful expressing this idea, but i found that readers really like it when their imaginations are fed. It's up to you, but for me, it seems like the start could be extended a bit more, have the reader spend more time with those concepts. It's up to you. I know doing that can be near impossible at times. I am curious about Quests and Questmates and the Academdy Institution that I pressume gives them out. I always like institutions like that. They interest me the same way a Warriors Guild from Marrowind entertains me. I think it's the possibilities therein. The reader wants to know how an A1 Ship looks like. I think you described it as a diamond shape with pointy ends, which is fine. But I think i would challenge you on becoming more granular in your descriptions. I think you are set up, as you've set yourself up, to be more granular in your descriptions bcuz I suspect that you actually have pictures on these things in front of you as you write, right? lol maybe not. Going back to the start, "Colors of the future as they call it" is a really quick way to say this is an extraterrestrial land, but in my opinion, the reader is hungry for more description. maybe expand on that if you feel it doesn't take away from your goals. The flashback moment works but interrupts the tension of the heist. you mentioned the Quest is more diff and serious; however, i think you can place the stakes higher on the page bcuz the reader, in my experience, needs the stakes to be somewhat high enough for them to want to continue reading. It's that old relationship between tension and reader-motivation to turn the page. If things are low stakes and seems like it don't make no diff, they'll lose motivation to turn the page. To end my feedback, my main advice, really, is for you to expand on the concepts. Let it breathe. If the chapter gets too long, divide it into two. If those get long, divide them into more. But in my exp, you wanna milk the story for everything that it has. What does "it" point to? Good question, friend. This "it" points to the amount of interesting beats that a premise contains. Each premise has a limited number of interesting ideas in it, and it isn't really OUR opinion of what interesting is. It's the readers. Readers are kinda fickle. You can't just keep hitting them with the same beat that flows from the same premise. Novelists usually try to remix those beats to extend the life of the story, extend how many words it takes to tell it completely, but for me, I just try to have more premises. But then a story runs out of those too. That's why long episodic serieses like the show Supernatural kinda gets SAMEY. Sorry, idk why i got into all that. Your stuff definitely is not SAMEY. You have the opposite problem. We want you to expand, methinks.}