James Neidlinger

What a somber, yet fitting goodbye. It is easy to grow close to a place, to feel it was a part of what made you, and you captured that feeling perfectly. I love this quote too, the sort that feels like it's actually a quote: "Ships serve their time. Captains serve a purpose." But as much as I enjoyed this goodbye, I also think you did a great job here in balancing also what comes next, contextualizing for us why the change in ship, not just why it matters to leave, but why it matters where she's going next.

A million planets, or a billion even, and yet still it always leads back to Kyban doesn't it? Even just of late, the Vaadwaur set up shop there, Lewis died there the second time, and now dinner for two? Must be something in the water.

But also, an updated masthead for the flotilla and some congratulations in order. Exciting times for Canopus and for Tikva!

What I'm digging so much about this is how you've turned a cosmic cluster into something so intimate and personal, and you've made it all so natural. I can see and feel every moment of this, and it just works.

Science operating from different fundamental bases always makes for a jolly good time. Sort of like when you put a twistor guy and a strings guy in a room and ask them how the universe works. Enjoying how they're trying to make sense of how it all, and even the little fourth wall break calling it all "science fiction".

I love the moment when they're trying to piece together what we take for granted. To the reader, it's this reality with its jumpdrives and pulsecomms that is confusing, but to them, it's everything that is normal to us. That meta aspect of this makes it a quite enjoyable read, and now they come face-to-face with a great bird of our galaxy!

WOW! What a reality they come from! Every stage of the reveal, I was eating it up, and then I hit the bit about Fleet Admiral Reyes and the entire Polaris Flotilla getting wiped out. What a nice touch to see Reyes going out in a blaze of glory, true to form! Also, Admiral Nate Beckett, President Sadovu, and the entire Odyssey family... this is like a future-jump BF-style post-apocalyptic version of Picard Season 3 with all the faces involved, and I'm here for it. As you keep moving the plot along, don't forget to give us more tidbits of the history of this future!

I enjoyed the imagery of the launch, and the creeping they were doing felt quite creepy as the universe around them opened up. This reality is not a friendly place, and now I'm quite hungry to learn more about how it all ended up as we are seeing it here.

The idea of one little Kitty Hawk versus all of this, I know it's called the Crazy Horse, but the odds do not seem much in their favor. We're going to have to see if they can live up to their name if they want any chance of getting out of this alive.

A reality where the Frontier Day signal was not stopped and where we get to see what the Federation would have become? Oh this is gonna be a fun one (for us, but not for the crew of the Crazy Horse)!

By giving us that little tidbit about Cadet Hart, the Pythagoras has new meaning now. It's not just delivering staff and maybe joining the squadron. It might also be baby-making material. And now McCallister knows it too. Love the choice to do the drunk call right in the midst too, in order to get this moment here. Beyond the personal drama, I also found the squadron command staff discussion interesting. Up until this point, I haven't put much thought into what day-to-day squadron ops means for my own squadron, but this gives me some thinking to do...

I connected so much with this drunk call to the parents. So cringe, and too real. Been there. And could see their reaction so vividly too. But for now, grandparenting will have to wait. We've got a well and good little mystery on our hands. The galaxy is not big enough for multiple Odysseys!

A mindfuck for McCallister and Reyas for sure, but imagine being Alfie when you find out that you're going to have a child with a cadet you haven't even met yet. Sure, this child may be from an alternate universe, and things might not go the same in this universe, but that would certainly get you thinking, wouldn't it? An excellent bit of scene setting in general to kick us off here too, but ultimately, with where you took us in the latter parts of this post, that delightful lead in sort of just floated away given how interesting the actual reveal itself was.

A freshman class? This premise hits in the feels, not just a ship and crew on a new adventure but rather lost *kids*, and you do a great job throughout reminding us that they are just kids, for instance the bit about "We’ve got counseling teams sitting down with the other two squadrons. Four months is enough time to make friends and connections across squadrons and classes, sir." Very different setting in that regard, and look forward to seeing how the kids comprehend this experience as they go through it.

The slow build of the reveal was excellently done. Loved the attention to detail, noticing the change in skin and hair before we get more clarity. The choice of setting this during the First Battle of Chin'toka also gives us movement to orient around, so we now know sort of what lies ahead... but by not addressing that this is an alternate reality, rather just that she's out of time, I find myself even more hungry to know how she comes to the second half of the realization - and what it is that is different.

That our captain here goes for a sword on first discovery of a duplicate, an interesting first move. That her opponent parried, quite expected given their shared fascination with such an archaic weapon piece. Hopefully, these two will soon move beyond the blade and work together to figure out whatever it is that has happened here!

No sleep for Wren, but oh how she has grown over the years. The experience of all she's been through was epitomized in this one simple line: "We’re alive, Ensign, and undamaged. Let’s keep a level head." The fact that everything is gone, that's a fun starting point too. Looking forward to what you have in store for us!

I like the tension you establish here in the opening, the first officer who dreams of bigger things than a glorified freighter as he sees it. To want more, to aspire higher, is natural, but for his first posting as an executive officer, it's still more than a Norway. And who knows... there might still be much he can prove here. As opposed to a more "glorious" posting on some highly capable heavy cruiser, on a California, if they get into a pickle, he'll be forced to prove himself.

Wow, this is gold. The shock of who's lying in the bed, and then the pull back to realize they're the imposter in the wrong body. I too am totally here for it!

And the Vallejo gets underway! What jumped out at me here is that experience common to so many parents of when work pulls you away and the kids are the ones that feel it the most. We don't see much of this on screen, but across Starfleet, it has got to be fairly common (and for long periods of time). Between schooling, two working parent families not lucky enough to be on the same ship, etc., can't always have your family just ride along. Nice to see that as an added element here as an underlying thread that can pop up throughout your storyline. Having non-shipbound personal contacts can also open up opportunities for her to try to explore her experiences as interpreted by those not there with her.

I appreciate that here, counter to the negativity of that captain who described this as a "someone has to go" mission, here Sheppard can't help but blurt out "it's beautiful". Strengthening that sense is your prose, which does justice to helping us see the beauty of this place. Still, there are stakes, and you pull us back around to them, plus a curious notion of a "heartbeat". Patches don't have heartbeats... or do they?