Date: 24 Jun 2012 19:34 Title: Chapter 1: Crash-landing
Well written piece with room for more. Good work E1981, nice to see original characters more and more in this sandbox of Rodenberry's.
Author's Response: Thanks, Mack. And most of the characters in this piece are my own, while Rebecca Sullivan was seen the DS9 episode "Blaze of Glory". But since little is known about her other than being Eddington's wife and being one of the Maquis, I've made the character largely my own.
Date: 22 Jun 2012 01:04 Title: Chapter 4: A New Perspective
The epilogue is short and the denoucement a little too just happened but the story does leave the whole situation up in the air between the Cardassians and the Norsai, an unresolved mess and that at least is a good thing. One wonders if the story was not a challenge and you had more time to allow for it if an expanded amount of time could have been spent in fostering the need to work together for Rebecca and Annarak. However, I liked the story concept and it was novel enough too. It was also an important stepping stone for Rebecca in the post-Dominion war era when there will have to be a lot of waters gulfed and steps taken to heal so many conflicts, wounded and suffering in the quadrant post the war. A good fit for the challenge and a job well done.
Author's Response: Thanks, MF, glad you enjoyed most of the aspects of the story.
Date: 22 Jun 2012 01:00 Title: Chapter 3: Identifying the Real Enemy
A very sus situation and Rebecca was quick to cotton on to something irregular about it all. I rather imagine that is more to do with her Maquis experience than any Starfleet training personally. But of course, the whole thing leads to teaming up with Annarak. As the title suggested, my enemy, my ally. Good turn of the situation too.
Date: 22 Jun 2012 00:42 Title: Chapter 2: Revolutionaries to the Rescue
Ah rescued from her Cardassian captor ... but of course given the challenge theme I'm thinking in the best Trek of things that all is not going to go to plan or be the way it seems. Oh dear.
Rebecca sure has bravado talking to her Cardassian captor in such tones. She doesn't take to being a prisoner kindly and is not to be intimidated by a Cardassian anytime soon I'd wager. It makes for an interesting character.
Date: 22 Jun 2012 00:34 Title: Chapter 1: Crash-landing
What strikes me the most in reading this is the detail about the burying of the dead officer. For Rebecca is seems very important to bury and even hide the body of Tafiq because of her Maquis past and the fact so many of the fallen there didn't get a proper burial. Maybe something of the Cardassian respect for their own dead carried over to those who lived in or on the Cardassian border.
Another thing that strikes me is how economical you are at painting the scene, which works here for the challenge story telling, painting broad brushstrokes that give a quick visual to the storytelling.
Date: 21 Jun 2012 21:25 Title: Chapter 1: Crash-landing
All in all a good, solid piece about two unlikely allies working together for the greater good. My only question is why didn't the Lambda Paz do more to discover the fate of its missing shuttle? Did the Norsaians effectively persuade them that it was Cardassian rebels who had done such a thing, and that there were no survivors?
And I agree with jespah - I would like to have seen a little more development and personal interaction between the enemies-turned-allies but it was still an interesting, enjoyable piece.
Author's Response: Well, I like said before, it was mostly a focus on one particular character's thought processes. For these challenges, I prefer to focus on the meat of the story and not too much of the peripheral issues that you might see on a televised episode. But glad you enjoyed the overall story.
Date: 21 Jun 2012 01:48 Title: Chapter 4: A New Perspective
Aw... No bloodthirsty Annarak trying to bump off Rebecca. For all of Annarak's anger he seems, deep down, to be reasonable of sorts. Plus we get to find more out about Rebecca, I wondered what happened to her parents...
That was a nice little story, simple, but I like simple. I guess the Norsai were simply plain crazy all along...
Author's Response: Glad you enjoyed the ending even if it was not what was expected--one of those Trek stories with a simple human equation solution rather than an advanced technological solution. The brief alliance demonstrated that while Rebecca was with the Maquis, she wasn't just another bloodthirsty terrorists. The deaths of her parents are a story for another time, but for now demonstrating that revenge isn't all that it appears to be at the beginning.
Date: 21 Jun 2012 01:43 Title: Chapter 3: Identifying the Real Enemy
I knew it! I thought those Norsaians were up to no good. I wonder though how long Rebecca's alliance (or truce) with Annarak will last before the Cardassian decides to bump her off when Rebecca's usefulness comes to an end.
Date: 19 Jun 2012 23:54 Title: Chapter 4: A New Perspective
I was curious about the Maquis tricks/reroutings, etc. that were being done, and they seemed to go by very quickly in this story. The build-up was good, and there is a chilling feeling about the Norsaians, particularly as they started spouting stuff about going to a better place, etc. But the working together part, I thought, could have used perhaps a bit more development. To my mind, it just zoomed by rather fast and that's the gist of the story, so I was hoping for some more there.
Author's Response: It was more about how the central came to a particular decision than about the action. By the end of the story, Rebecca learns things that go against certain pre-conceived notions about the Maquis and having certain thought processes whether they were the capacity for compassion towards someone threatening her life, ignoring suspicions about a supposed ally, and finally reaching out to an enemy. In the end, the two enemies at the beginning come to a greater understanding while still having certain narrow-minded worldviews-- such as still making generalizations about an entire race based on a few religious extremists.
Date: 19 Jun 2012 00:20 Title: Chapter 1: Crash-landing
War meters out death impersonally, but the damage is personal. Your story iluminates this. Annarak and his family may have had nothing to do with Cardassians attacking civilian population centers with biogenic weapons, but he and his suffered and he seeks vengeance on a target only guilty by proximity. Kind of supports the theory that the problems of peace can be harder than the problems of war.
Author's Response: Glad you noticed that aspect of the story. It's very easy forget that individuals on both sides suffered very personal losses and to assume that atrocities were committed on one side in a war, but not the other.
Date: 16 Jun 2012 18:34 Title: Chapter 2: Revolutionaries to the Rescue
Annarak; nicely sounding Cardassian name, half reminds me of Annorax! So Rebecca is safe for the time being, but something tells me all is not as it seems! I'm also interested in whether what Annarak said about Eddington was true, if he did commit genocide on a minor scale...
Author's Response:
I was just thinking of a very foreign sounding name. And I probably should have clarified this better, the Trovak massacre actually refers to the Maquis attack on a then-unnamed Cardassian colony in "For the Uniform", where Eddington was gassing Cardassian settlements and Sisko threatened to respond in kind. That backstory also has similarities to "The Darkness and the Light" where one of those Cardassians comes back wanting to settle the score.
Date: 16 Jun 2012 18:29 Title: Chapter 1: Crash-landing
Brilliant! I swear with each story you're writing gets better and better. I'll be interested to see where you take this story because Rebecca nearly always took a backseat with regard to other characters like Limis, Kozar or Aurellan.
p.s. What about season 2's finale?
Author's Response:
Hmmm, I hadn't really thought of that last statement. I guess it's hard to have very many character-driven stories with so many different characters involved in the most destructive war in recent galactic history. And with Rebecca, I've focused on making her Limis's support mechanism much like Kirk's was Spock and McCoy, Picard's was some combo of Riker/Troi/Beverly/Guinan, Sisko's was Dax, and Janeway's was Chakotay and Tuvok. I do still hope expand on each character individually in future stories.
As for the Season 2 finale, it's coming along. Hope to have the first few chapters published soon.