Stellar

This is accurate! I am very glad you recalled such detail! However, in the intervening time, Shay's first perspective is not so simple. Let me quote: This should make clear that they are flexible in what they enjoy but that either will prioritise a certain position. Without being too crude, Shay likes being on the receiving end, and Mira likes being the one giving it out. The dynamic between them reflects this.

There is. The final book of the trilogy, Lucid Truth, exists in an incomplete form. Whether you read it piece by piece or wait until completion is your choice. Just a reminder than unless you SEE a character die in the text, you cannot assume they are dead. Like all Mishith, Mikom is very tough and capable of surviving much. You are most welcome.

Then I am doing my job as an author. This is all any writer ever wishes to hear. His escape from Lucere with Nyx was one of the most enjoyable stretches of the plot to write. I think you've misunderstood (or stated incorrectly) this part. Mira's train of thoughts included a fantasy of Shay being pregnant, not himself. He is a little obsessed, no doubt, but it's clear he wants much more with his beloved.

Oops, missed this one too. Sorry! Who's to say what tipped the arbiters off? Maybe they just thought something wasn't right. A hunch perhaps. This is answered in more detail in my chapter 17 comment. Well, returning to Earth might not be the top priority for Shay, as you will later see.

Forgot to respond to this one. Some of my favourite parts are just writing the two of them together; I get a lot of fulfillment from it.

The danger for Lucas is not from CorpSec but from the military hierarchy itself. He would be in a world of trouble if they knew he was undertaking political fraternisation and breaking rules. As for CorpSec's legal standing, it is has no legitimate authority beyond what exists de-facto through MFM's position. That is to say: CorpSec has no lawful mandate but functions as both a paramilitary and a police force (to some degree) because the monolithic corporation that controls it is a vested and irreplaceable part of the world system -- as was stated in an earlier chapter, it's like a parasite that would kill the host if removed. Thus, MFM shields CorpSec (again, in a limited fashion, not everything can be excused) from certain consequences. If MFM managed to gain full control of the federal government, CorpSec would be free from legal checks restricting its behaviour. Think of some combination of state security and secret police -- that is what they would become. So, no, CorpSec has absolutely no democratic input, and is literally commanded at the whims of MFM's directorate. On the other hand, the federal military functions something like those that exist in certain first world countries today. It is deliberately and outwardly non-partisan and both servicemen and the upper command are expressly forbidden from civilian political affairs. This is strictly enforced and taken quite seriously, to minimise the temptation for some ambitious ruthless admiral or general attempting to seize power. The strategic management, in normal circumstances, is done by an administrator appointed by the legislature and executive -- chapter 10 was all about how that happens. In the case of external threats, the premier is able to order limited operations, with broader actions requiring the senate's approval or emergency dispensation. For internal issues, the federal police or other state security forces must deal with any problems, and the military would not be involved out of constitutional principle. It would take a extraordinary threat to the government's basic integrity on a major scale for the army or fleet to be called in, and the requirements for this are so steep that it has never happened since the global union was formed. I hope this lengthy comment makes sense to you and clears any misunderstandings. A big theme of the plot as it progresses on 24th century Earth is about how the democratic system is functional but flawed, and heavily abused by competing interests that have nothing to do with social progress and the common good. I hope that's not cynicism in your comment? I can't tell. To be honest, if I were that age, I would find that kind of attention from someone like him very heart-pounding.

Well, not everyone will make it out alive, but be wary of writing off anyone who doesn't clearly die in plain view. This part of the chapter was hard for even some native English speakers to comprehend. It's very abstract and conceptual, so it may not be easy to immediately grasp. I took special amusement in Shay not realising how great his butt looks until Mira makes a thing out of it. It's the little things that bring us joy. Thanks for reading.

Thanks for reading. I am assuming you mean the dialogue between Yugan and Mikom is archaic? I would say this is true, mostly because you are reading an alien conversation rendered into human language. It will not have the word use, jargon, slang, contractions, etc., that make up modern English. There is a more formal style and a particular type of phrasing that the Mishith, and dagenith in particular will prefer, having spent so long in isolated and primitive conditions. As for the Sundering and what it meant and means for their race: yes, that is an ongoing plot thread and a very important one. More information will emerge on this in due course.

Thank you.

Except Elia knew they were not able to escape. She literally tells Nyx to leave so they aren't both captured.

Who said the sensors need to be physically connected to a system for either power or communication? This is 24th century human capability, not present day. This is correct. I will quote here a line from that final scene: Down through the night sky descended a ship. It was a larger breed than the scout-destroyer, one of the harbinger's own Emissary caste. The above-mentioned 'scout-destroyer' is the type of vessel Shay and the others have commandeered, and it hasn't yet received a classification name. However, what arrives to retrieve Elia on Lucere is larger, and is known to the arbiters as an Emissary type. It transported her to the Herald, which is too large to make planetfall itself.

Of course I have! The answer is that devising an entirely new annual calendar based on Lucere's orbit would have been a lot of work for very little point. This also occurred to me during the writing, but I opted not to do it. The in-lore explanation (existing in my mind, and not written anywhere) is that the local days and years would be similar to Earth -- Lucere is very habitable because it exists around a similar star to our own at a similar distance from its sun, with similar surface conditions. So, it is already very Earth-like in terms of its day-night cycle and orbital speed/distance around the parent star. Any differences that accumulate over a duration would not matter because there would be kept two separate calendars; a local Lucere variation and the original Earth calendar. Given that humans raised on Earth -- and this would be most colonists even in 2104 -- would think in terms of the Gregorian units and standard 24 hour times, for simplicity's sake, the dates you see in Hidden Sunlight are the equivalent Earth versions and are essentially transliterated. Something like this would probably be the standard on other colonies too, though I never had the time nor inclination to explore it in detail. Also, the colonies were wiped out, so ... the aliens solved that for me? Background information is certainly building here, though you will have to wait until Chapter 10 to get the lion's share of it. Lindani and Kenji are also getting some spotlight; they aren't quite in the middle of a starfaring adventure like Ayize and Rashid, but they have their own roles to play. Well, you'll just have to see! One would certainly assume this has to happen eventually, right?

To be fair, they were both able to fight effectively, but the situations were difficult. Whether Mira would have killed the arbiter he was facing without serious injury -- if Ayize did not intervene -- is an open question. Conversely, Rashid definitely saved Shay's life. What happened with him was more complex, as it was not simply new power being 'unlocked' through the stress of combat. Detail on this will be expanded in later chapters. Elia is much like Mira in that she is unafraid of sharpelings and has the natural combat ability to kill them. If you think back to their origins, you will know who that connection is to, he who had 'broken their chains.' Well, if they should appear on Earth, we're all in trouble. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

I took a lot of pleasure in their reunion, and how oblivious and instinctual their attraction to one another is. Ayize certainly wasn't expecting that. He has certainly realised that he is in a unique position to pull strings and change what is going on. He feels guilt because of what he did, even though it was justified in his mind as an act of future prevention and vengeance. It's an example of how even an intelligent mature boy might need the guidance of an adult from time to time; Ayize has seen a lot of this kind of thing. I will reiterate: they most definitely can hunt. They may not be creatures of bestial speed and raw power like the hounds, but they are absolutely able to do the dirty work. There is no reference list, as the novel is now several years old and during its writing I did not receive any requests for one, so it was my belief that such a thing was never needed. The cast of minor characters isn't actually too big. Outside of Shay, Mira, Konstantin, and Yugan, you will only need to really pay attention to: Ayize, Rashid, Lindani, Kenji, Lucas, Elia and Nyx. There will be a couple more peripheral actors who have not yet been introduced, but that's largely it. As for acronyms, they were generally meant to be realised through context by the reader, but I can break that down a little for you here: MFM is the mega-corporation that dominates a large chunk of human politics and economics; Manufacturing, Finance & Mercantile. RDA is the research branch of MFM, responsible for their scientific advances: Research, Development & Acquisition SDCP is the full acronym for Society, the main loyalist bloc that opposes the corporatists in politics and has been in control of most government bodies, i.e. the legislative and executive branches, for a long time: Society for Democratic Cultural Preservation. CS or CorpSec is a contracted portmanteau of Corporate Security and acts as both police and military under MFM's control. They are nominally subordinate to federal control, but in practice they are often acting with impunity.

A little trivia: Janaya was a real-life coworker of mine at the time this was written. She was the only one at my place of employment who knew I was an author, and asked if I could write her in. So, I did! Canonically I hold that she didn't get in any trouble, mostly because Mira killed all the attending federal officers, allowing her to leave the site unnoticed and able to tell the weird story of how she once met a blond blue-eyed European boy in Japan who cut down a bunch of cops like a mythical supernatural ninja. But ... who would believe a tale like that? As for the arbiters, well ... they are perfectly capable of getting their claws bloody and doing the work themselves when needed. Thanks for reading.

To be fair to Shay, he was in a high-pressure emotional situation where his priority was escape and survival ahead of any kind of negotiation. Given his experiences so far with people trying to control him -- especially when it involves Mira -- his reaction is quite understandable. Regarding his captors: they were RDA scientists hiding on a secret offworld base precisely in order to avoid Earth's federal law. Their employers are MFM, the monolithic corporation who kidnapped Shay and Mira. These people are free from ethical concerns in this pursuit and even explicitly encouraged by the corporate overlords to get results before anything else. The goal was, as this chapter should demonstrate, to reverse engineer aqumi. If they had been successful in doing so without Shay's disruption, once everything of value was learned, both boys would have been eliminated and disposed of. You will see this experience leave a mark on Shay's conscience though.

Oh, if you think there's commotion now, then just you wait until later! It will get worse before it gets better, of that you may be assured. I wish to note here that you are perhaps one of the only readers who explicitly noticed and named all five 'beacons' at this early stage of the second book. The assumption that Yugan might possess aqumi is a sound one, and the question of Konstantin's role will be answered before too long. I am glad you are enjoying it!

Ah yes -- Yugan is seeing something very dire in the future of this alien he's connected to. The question is if he's done anything to avert or warn about that bottleneck. Thanks for reading! I love that you're enjoying it.

The second book's plot expands quite a bit to include other places and characters not seen before. There's Earth, with the complexities of politics and human infighting, and you will see a lot more of this through Konstantin's eyes -- and also through others he meets. There are Elia and Nyx, who are indeed still on Lucere, having experienced an awakening not unlike Mira's own. There is the alien Mishith youth Yugan on the world Dagen's Grace. Lastly: Shay and Mira. They will appear, but it won't be straight away. There's a reason for this, and it will become clear once you do see them.

No problem. First-time readers tend to have commentary along the lines of 'how could you do that to Mira?!' only to take it back after chapter 12. Your reaction is completely normal!

I am not shy about graphic violence and uncomfortable material. If that's not to your taste, then that's unfortunate but it is still an integral part of the story. Konstantin was not captured, as I'm sure you have now realised. He managed to escape the initial encounter.

You're welcome, thanks for reading. It's true, the Herald just doesn't want to die. Literally throwing a planet at it doesn't seem to have been enough. As for Iskandar masquerading as Amal, there is definitely that chance. He does seem to be a rational human, and it's certainly a possibility that he could be made to realise how pointless human infighting is when the alien threat is right there. Thanks once again for reading. With any luck, chapter seven will have a much more reasonable production time.

Hah, of course you did. It's been a while, I know. This is very much the case. Shay doesn't want the trial of finding a way to end this thing, but with these three, his confidence is as high as it can get. Oh, and yes -- if you think this Lovecraftian moonlet is going to die offscreen, then you severely underestimate my penchant for a grand climactic spectacle. When the Herald meets whatever fate is coming, you -- the reader -- will definitely see it happen. Hedging your bets is a wise choice with me, because you never know when I'm doing the subverting expectations thing. It does look like Amal (Iskandar) is the guy, but could it be possible somebody else is the betrayer? Or might it also be possible I'm just saying this to gaslight you and make you doubt your own read of what Dagen told him because it's exactly as it appears? Or is Dagen being a manipulative alien mastermind and lying to him to get some other undisclosed result?! Narrator's warning: take all statements from the author known as Stellar at your own risk, he may in fact be fucking with you. Fair assumption!

Thank you for reading. It does certainly seem that Iskandar, the CorpSec double agent, is the subject of Dagen's implication. However, there's a counterweight here: do you believe that I'm about to kill him so soon after his somewhat consequential introduction in Ukraine and subsequent infiltration via Moldova? Admittedly, it is certainly possible, since I've certainly offed other characters in shorter order -- some within the same chapter, or even same scene as their introduction -- but Lucas has yet to meet him. Our Greek soldier is a man of professional discipline and reason, so he will want to at least judge this newcomer rather than prematurely act. Naturally, given that Iskandar's job involves deliberately deceiving people for intelligence-gathering purposes, this could make for a complicated interaction with some mind games involved. However, he is not a two-dimensional corporatist drone, so how he deals with any information about Nyx's identity might not be quite so cut-and-dry either. It is intended to be somewhat profound! In a philosophical sense, certainly, but also in other ways. Without being too heavy-handed through the author's 'Eye of God' perspective and going too deep on physics, I would say that it is a particularly Mishith framing, and not naturally an easy thing for humans to conceptualise. What Yugan is trying to communicate is some part of aqumi existing at any location in potentia, in theory able to be projected/manifested anywhere at all because there is 'no distance' -- a thought that explains such things as linking the gravity wells of stars, quantum network nodes existing between solar systems light years apart, and mental projection from Dagen's Grace to a feisty kitten on Lucere. This does have some serious implications if you consider that, with the right (or wrong) approach, certain physical limitations of scope and scale might be ignored completely. Oh, that's a neat idea, but it's nothing quite so esoteric. Shay knows the Herald will follow them wherever they go -- that much is inevitable. He just didn't want them to be sitting at the bullseye when he dropped Yahet on the leviathan's head, so he told Mira to jump them elsewhere in the Milky Way right before a planet's worth of molten rocks arrived.

Chapter 6 is now available.