Okay, so don't flame me. This chapter is by far the longest in this volume. Really ought to have been two chapters. Hmm. Maybe more. And, hey, to be fair, it took the longest to write as well.

I'd be the first to admit - the style may have suffered a little because of my propensity to cram both broad strokes of the storyline and tiny fine-grained (ah I typed "finy" - new word form perhaps) details into adjacent paragraphs. It shows, yes, I know. On the other hand, packing things together at this level of density does move the story forward in a way that a complete 22-chapter novel might have done much differently.

Anyway. This chapter accomplishes (or is supposed to... ) a number of things. We start with Roger Simmons being pursued by no less than four Knight combat flyers keen on taking him out under orders, at all cost, no questions asked.

Well, the Knights may not ask questions, but you, dear reader, might. How many Starsiege-Universe flyers does it take to take out a Herc? A tank? Or, in our special case, a Predator? No idea, eh? Here I'm just guessing. Four ought to be plenty harassment enough.

The loose ends in the Prelude are also tied up here, as we see what really happened with the cyberspace thing and the orbital platform. Also, we get to see what happened to Roger's parents. I like the part about the SK's preparing for the Cybrid invasion - yes, that's what we do. But nope, we don't know what happened to Max Kayne and John Ghisler. Roger probably might not get to meet them again when he packs up and leaves onboard the [SSK] Predilection.

[SSK] huh, you ask. It stands for Ship of the StormKeepers. I'd say it's usually designated for space-going vessels, or at least dual-mode type of transports. All the way from lowly transports, to, to... uhh, whatever we're supposed to have in the higher end of the market.Might have to work out what we're going to call our ocean-going vessels though. No real worries on Mars though, not enough oceans to go around, yet.

I hope you like the twists in the story thus far. If you have followed the (gulp) previous version of my Chronicles, you might have noticed that some of the air-combat tactics are similar to what I have described. The ironical thing is that the situation now happens in reverse (i.e. the Immelmann multi-split burst. At least from the SK point of view).

The "string of revelations" part (parts!! yes! parts!!) was my own idea entirely, and if it does not sit well with you, I'd take the responsibility too (heh, but of course). This is what happens when you try to condense what should have been two, three or more chapters into one (okay enough complaining about *that* already).

I'm really itching to write the concluding chapter, because it's (yes!!) been all planned out. Prepare for some action, as the last line of this chapter seems to promise you (it does? yes! go read it again, heh). Okay let's not count chickens lest they turn into glitches (sheesh, must we really adapt all those common phrases into Starsiege-era terms? hope not!). Anyway. Keep posted.

Hope you liked this (really long) chapter. Comments? Please send them to louie@stormkeepers.org.