If I ever clean this story up and realign it to fit Imperial Space more closely — a huge if, mind — clearly one of the survivors on board should be Bradley McCourt. I doubt he’d become the viewpoint character, however.

Force Commander Drew Paradis is based in large part on a friend of mine who I went to High School and College with. Andrew Paradis did indeed join the United States Marine Corps, just in time to see service in the first Gulf War.

Last I knew Andrew was married, with children, was doing graduate level work in Physics, and was in the process of building his own full sized harpsichord. I have a depressing tendency to befriend polygots.

Other friends of mine inspired at least the names of Captain Bankert and C.P.O. Godfrey.

If I were to seriously consider revision, I’d want to cut at least 4,000 words from this. And I’d redo Ibanz’s insanity — it’s too ham handed for my tastes. Oh, and I’d work to make the actual situation a little more plausible. I’m not sure how I’d manage to justify having multiple transition points in an essentially straight line that the Hephaestus just happens to fly through, but it’s possible that it’s at most two T-points, the entry point and the exit point, and what the Hephaestus is passing through are outlying windows into using the point.

Of course, I suppose there’s a reason this intervening system doesn’t see much traffic, despite being between Planet Excalibur and a significant enough planetary system that it’s a sure fire ‘we’re saved’ when they arrive, and not a ‘the Orgalin follow them through the T-point and kill them three weeks later.’

Meh. Why do I get the feeling I’m the only one who cares about the mechanics of transition points?