Rebellion in the Stars: my sci-fi novel in progress (please critique!)

[TheBibliophile]

Hi, I hope this is the right place to put this. I'm working on a sci-fi book at the moment. New chapters as I finish them. Enjoy!


Rebellion in the Stars


By Ryan Stephenson


Chapter 1

It was the depths of winter. The heavy tank roared towards the entrenched rebel base, its hover-generators struggling to hold it up. A gunship soared above it, already raining its laser death on the revolutionaries below. The rebels fought back; an anti-atmospheric blast hit one of the gunship’s light cannon, destroying it. The tank’s cannon spoke once and silenced the arguments of the anti-atmospheric cannon. Then the brown behemoth stopped. The hoverjets deactivated and the tank set down. A hatch opened and troops poured out. They charged towards the rebel soldiers. The battle was on in earnest.

Rebel Captain Jake Miller, O.C. the Fourth Cohort of Foot of the ZLA (Zanatos Liberation Army), cursed as a missile struck the ground just next to the rebel base. The explosion rocked the rebel stronghold for a second, and then all was still, the silence broken only by the crackling of small-arm fire. Jake ran outside, thinking, “At least I can take a few of them with me when I go.”

Captain Miller was an athletic man, around thirty. His skin had originally been white, but after prolonged exposure to the hot sun of the planet Ferversita, where he had grown up. His long, dark-brown hair was kept in check with a green headband. He had a thin scar where his left eyebrow should have been, and across his back were strapped two scabbards, one of which was occupied by a longsword and the other by an Old Terran Japanese wakizashi, or shortsword. He always wore magnetic gloves, which prevented his swords from slipping from his grasp. His swords had various settings which gave the blade specific abilities, among them freeze, flame mono-molecular and laser. The laser mode could deflect bullets, while mono-molecular gave the blade an unbelievably sharp edge. The scabbards were specially modified so that they clamped on to their swords, making it impossible for them to fall out if the Captain did a backflip.
At his belt hung two blaster pistols, one a heavily-modified army issue light pistol, the other a custom-made heavy blaster. He wore a black shirt, green camouflage trousers and brown, calf-length, jump-enhancing boots, as well as a light red combat jacket, which would stop most small-arms fire from anything except point-blank range. He also wore a utility belt, with various pockets for all of his gadgets, and a pair of bandoliers, which doubled as the straps for his swords. Each bandolier carried fully charged cartridges for one of his pistols. When the pistol’s current cartridge ran out of charge, Jake removed it and slotted in a new one from his bandolier. Finally, on his head he wore a headpiece with a comdio and a targeting lens, which also had zoom, infrared and night vision capabilities.
Stepping outside, Jake swore again, as the government gunship swooped down on him, guns blazing. He threw himself onto the ground and rolled some distance, finally flipping himself upright and starting to run towards the nearest government trooper. He had not gone more than ten paces, however, when there was a huge explosion behind him, and a shockwave ran through the earth. “Damn, there goes the base,” he said to himself, and then: “I hope everyone got out all right.”
Meanwhile, the government soldier had heard Jake and turned towards him, finger tightening on his rifle’s trigger. Before he could fire, though, Jake unholstered his light pistol and shot from the hip, hitting the trooper’s rifle and shearing off its barrel. The soldier, barely fazed, pulled out his own pistol, but Jake fired again and the soldier fell. Jake put up his pistol, then remarked to no-one in particular as he stepped over the soldier’s body, “I thought that firing from the hip only worked in holo-pics, but I guess I was wrong.”

The Captain was interrupted in his ramblings by a laser that blasted straight past him, very nearly relieving him of his right ear. A squad of government snipers had spotted him! Quickly, he dived behind a rock, which he then abandoned, sensibly as it turned out, because no sooner had he rolled away did the boulder shatter, spraying debris everywhere. Jake huddled behind a bigger rock, cursing himself that he wasn’t carrying a rifle. Now how was he going to get the snipers? They were on top of a hill, and if he tried to get up there they would mow him down.

As if in answer to Jake’s thoughts, a proximity sensor in his headpiece bleeped. Spinning around, unsheathing his longsword and activating its laser mode in one smooth movement, Jake was just in time to deflect a blaster bolt from a government soldier who had snuck up behind him. Then Jake drew his heavy pistol, so that he had a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other. The two soldiers faced each other for a minute, and then Jake feinted a slash and stabbed the other man in the leg with the bayonet on his pistol. The soldier gasped and fell to the ground, where Jake disposed of him with a blaster bolt to the head. He smiled to himself. “I seem to be having good luck today,” he thought out loud. “I now have a rifle; government issue, what’s more! Those snipers will never know what hit them.”

The Captain looked through a crack on his boulder to aim at the soldiers, then jumped out, fired three shots and dived back into cover. Having halved the size of the sniper squad, Jake started to get cocky. He got ready to jump out again, on the same side of the rock. The remaining three snipers fired simultaneously and hit him in the arm. Jake cursed and fired three more times, eliminating the snipers, and dodged back under cover, where he inspected his arm. There was a hole, about the size of a coin, neatly pierced all the way through the arm. It hurt like hell. Healing it with his medikit, which now only had enough energy for three more fixes, he ran back into battle.

Seeing the hovertank, Jake stopped in his tracks as a crazy idea occurred to him. “Look at it this way, Jake;” he said to himself, “It may be a suicide mission, but if that tank doesn’t go down, we’re all going to die anyway.” The Captain nodded, though there was no one there. Then he holstered his blaster pistol, slung his pilfered rifle over his shoulder and unsheathed his wakizashi. He smiled grimly and ran towards the tank.

Jake dispatched the last trooper of the squadron protecting the tank, and then grinned. “I like the smell of warm blasters in the morning,” he said, referencing an old, old holopic that he had watched recently. He shook his head. “Solid-projectile weapons? I mean, come on! I don’t believe we were ever stupid enough to use those things,” he said to himself, then ducked as a missile whooshed overhead.

Snapping out of his reverie, Jake sheathed both his swords and drew his light pistol. Pressing a button on the handgrip, he extended the mini-missile launcher that slung underneath the main barrel. Switching trigger control to the grapple launcher that was in the middle of the mini-missiles, he pointed the pistol up at the front armour plate and fired. Propelled by the spring-loaded grapple launcher and the highly-compressed gas inside the launcher, the grapple-dart shot up and stuck into the armour plate, trailing a length of thin, strong cable. Jake hit the “reel in cable” button on his pistol and was jerked into the air. Then, standing on a small ledge on the armour plate, Jake fired his cable slightly higher on the plate. He took a deep breath and prayed to Pericluceptus, the god of risky enterprises, then jumped and swung out over the void, reeling in cable as he did, so that he performed a backwards somersault in midair and landed on top of the tank. Unsnapping a pocket in his utility belt, Jake pulled out a small red disc, an incongruous little thing, and put it on the tank’s surface. He twisted a dial on the disk, and then pushed it in, resulting in a beep from the disk, followed by a countdown. Then he activated his comdio, set it to the general rebel frequency and said, “This is Captain Jake Miller! Anyone in the vicinity of the tank, get out now! There’s a Catubomb on it that’s set to blow in sixty seconds!”

Hearing the gunship soar overhead, Jake looked up. He cursed as he saw that it was too far to grapple, but then another idea occurred to him. The Captain pressed a button on a device on his wrist, activating his jump-enhancing boots, and then leaped into the air, his jump amplified by the boots, which pushed off from the ground with additional force due to their projecting forcefields through their soles. At the apex of his jump, Jake flung his arm up and fired the grapple, the cable now just reaching the hull of the gunship. He hit the reel-in-cable button, and then winced as he heard a massive explosion. He looked behind him to discover that where the tank was before was now a rapidly expanding spherical explosion. He grinned. Catubombs were guaranteed to brighten up his day.

Looking up at the gunship, Jake saw a government trooper about to cut his grapple line. Holding onto his light pistol with one hand, he unholstered his custom pistol and pulled the trigger. The pulse of green energy hit the soldier on the gunship between the eyes, and he slumped backwards. Jake holstered his pistol again and as he somersaulted into the gunship, he reeled in the last of his cable. Three soldiers came at him, giving him no time to draw his weapons. He punched one, kicked another in the groin and body slammed the third, and then threw them out of the gunship.

The rest of the gunship’s garrison (about five squadrons) came at him. Jake grinned and unsheathed his swords, setting them to mono-molecular. He decapitated a line of soldiers at once, their newly-separated heads colliding in midair, and then sliced two others in half with a scissoring slash. The rest of them surrounded him, blasters trained on him. He gave a wide smile and ducked, causing most of the soldiers to shoot each other. The survivors closed in, slinging their rifles onto their backs and pulling out shock labyrses. A labrys was a twin-bladed, symmetrical axe, used in Terran Crete. The shock labrys was the same, except the head was electrified. Jake thrust his swords out to either side, stabbing two soldiers, and then spun in a circle, slicing the troopers in half. The garrison disposed of, he activated the swords’ cleaning mechanism and sheathed them, then drew his heavy pistol and headed for the cockpit.

There was the sound of a shot. It came again, then… silence. Jake holstered his pistol and sat down in the pilot’s seat. He activated his comdio. (They used to be called comlinks, but LucasTech copyrighted that, so they had to invent a new name, comdio, which is a portmanteau of communication and radio.) Setting it to the frequency of his second-in-command, Lieutenant Alex Spencer, he said, “Alex, come in. Come in, Lieutenant!”
“I hear you, Captain. You’re alive, huh? I didn’t think you’d survived the explosion.”
“Yup. Did we lose any men in the base or the tank?”
“A few from the Third Cohort in the base; none on the tank. That was a crazy stunt you pulled there, sir. Blowing up the tank, then rappelling up to the gunship… is that where you are now?”
“Yeah. I dealt with the garrison, but I can’t fly and strafe the governmenters at once. Can I pick you up somewhere?”
“Meet me at Secundus Hill. We’ve set up a campaign base there.”
“Will do. Over and out.”

Jake severed the connection and brought the gunship round, heading for Secundus Hill. He reached it without incident and picked up Alex, who kicked all of the bodies out of the gunship before seating himself in the gunner’s seat and taking control. He swivelled the one remaining air-to-ground turret until they were pointing at the ground, then fired. A squadron of the enemy were wiped out at once. Alex turned to Jake and grinned. “Let’s do some strafing,” he said.

[TheBibliophile]

Chapter 2

Jake jumped as a maroon laser, glistening in the sunlight, shot past the cockpit. It endured for a split second, and then was gone. He said to Lieutenant Alex, “Hold the fort here. I’m going to see who’s firing those lasers.” Alex took over the steering of the gunship while Jake ran to a viewport. He swore. “It’s a squadron of hoverbikes! The gunship must have launched them before I came aboard!”
“Look in the hanger, sir,” said the Lieutenant. “There might be a spare in there.”

Jake nodded and ran toward the top of the gunship, where the hangar was located. He punched in the security code that he had found in the ship’s password log and the door hissed open. The hanger was empty. Jake cursed and ran to the top of the gunship. There he threw himself to the floor as a hoverbike swooped above him, light cannon firing. Jake rolled and came up running towards the edge of the gunship. As he ran, he unsheathed his swords and said into his comdio, which doubled as a voice-controller for his gadgets, “Propeller scabbards activate!” This caused the scabbards to rise from his back on a sturdy metal strut and attach to each other. Then the propeller started to spin faster and faster. Jake reached the edge of the gunship and jumped off. He fell for a second towards the battle far below, then started to rise as the propeller compensated for his weight. Then Captain directed the propellerpack towards the nearest hoverbike.

Slicing the hoverbike’s pilot in half, Jake switched off his propellerpack and kicked the bottom half out of its saddle. Activating the cleaning function on his swords and sheathing them, Jake sat on the saddle of the hoverbike and gunned the engine. Blasting the bikes in front of the formation the government trooper had recently exited, Jake then spun the bike whilst firing to eliminate the rest of the squadron.

A voice crackled in Jake’s comdio. It was Alex. “Sir, the Fourth Cohort needs you! They’re taking heavy casualties!”
“Right, I’m on it. Can you get someone else to pilot the gunship?”
“Yeah, I’ll get one of our pilots to do it.”
“Oh, right.”

Jake landed his pilfered hoverbike on the battlefield, then abandoned it and drew his pistols. Smiling, he ran towards the fray, blasting as he went. Jumping straight into the melee, he stabbed a government trooper with his pistol-bayonet, then holstered his pistols and drew his swords extremely quickly and slashed three enemies in half, then jumped through the body halves in midair and continued on to the next governmenters. Rallying his troops with a cry of “Fourth Cohort, to me!” Jake charged towards the enemy’s field base.

A soldier slashed at him with a blastpike. Jake jumped the blow and dropped his wakizashi in midair. The short sword gleamed in the morning sun as it fell through the air and cut the pike’s blade off, then landed and stuck point first into the ground. Continuing his jump, Jake flipped in midair and landed behind the soldier. As the governmenter turned, Jake drew his light pistol and fired. The thin red line of laser scorched across the air and hit the trooper on his unprotected head (his helmet had fallen off). He fell, and Jake pressed a button on the sheath of his wakizashi. This activated a tractor beam that was effective within ten metres, and effectively found the wakizashi and pulled it back into its sheath.

Jake holstered his pistol and sheathed his longsword before turning to run towards the enemy’s base, only to find himself staring into the barrel of a long laser pistol. The red power core pulsed menacingly at the end of the barrel, ready to deliver a blaster bolt to Jake’s head. Jake raised his eyes to see a trooper (evidenced as a captain by his epaulettes and insignia) staring down at him.
“You have wiped out my cohort, rebel. But now, you die.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Jake. “But I think you’re wrong.”

As he ducked the maroon pistol blast, Jake was already unholstering his heavy pistol. He pressed a button on the pistol stock and the spring-loaded bayonet extended, punching a hole in the captain’s body armour right above the stomach. Jake then fired his pistol through the hole he had made, fatally wounding the captain. As the governmenter lay dying on the ground, he gasped, “Forgive me… great Ares… I have failed …my cohort.” Jake stood silently for a moment, honouring a brave opponent, then continued his dash towards the government base.

As he ran, a figure stepped out from the command tent of the government base. Jake screeched to a halt, then set his targeting lens to weapon scan and surveyed him, noting incidentally that his stacked epaulettes and elaborate helmet marked him as a colonel, and therefore the leader of the whole government force sent to quash the rebels. The lens registered a plasmaxe strapped to his back, twin vibroknives in leg sheaths, a morph cannon (which is an arm cannon that is normally an ordinary armour plate) on his left arm and a claymore at his side. The colonel made no sound, only raised his left arm and activated his cannon. Jake somersaulted to the right to dodge the first blast, ducked the second blast, jumped the third blast and prevented a fourth by firing at the cannon and destroying it, vaporising the colonel’s left arm protection at the same time.


His helmet showing no emotion, the colonel unstrapped the plasmaxe from his back and pressed a button on its haft. Immediately, white-hot plasma seeped out of hidden vents in the blade. Now it would melt whatever it touched. The colonel hefted the plasmaxe and charged. Not knowing the plasmaxe’s capabilities, Jake looked around for something to test it. Snatching up a freezepike, he blocked the colonel’s first strike with it. The plasmaxe melted right through the shaft of the freezepike. Jake dropped its two halves and cursed, resolving in future to always carry a retractable staff to block unknown weapons with. He wondered how he was going to beat this enemy. His usual tactic, of slicing some part of the weapon off, would be highly impractical, as getting close enough to do that would require sustaining some major burns. Jake thought over his inventory and grinned. He had just the thing for this guy…



Jake somersaulted away from the colonel, to gain breathing room. Then he flicked his left wrist, activating his bracelet. Small metal rods extended from the bracelet, the outer layer of which began to spin. The tiny laser barrels on the rods began firing, making a whirling vortex of laser. The vortex hit the plasmaxe and made it start spinning. The spinning rose to fever pitch, until the colonel was forced to let go of his plasmaxe. It fell to the frozen earth with a clatter; immediately, Jake blasted it to pieces with his heavy pistol. The plasmaxehead exploded, showering white-hot plasma all over the vicinity. Jake threw himself to the ground and rolled towards the enemy colonel, hoping to decrease the range of the fight. He winced as a vibroknife impaled itself into the ground two centimetres from his side. It hummed menacingly. Jake looked up, to see the colonel bringing his other vibroknife down straight at him.



Jake pulled the vibroknife out of the ground in a heartbeat and parried the colonel’s stab. The jar of the impact caused both of the vibroknives to fly out of their wielders’ hands, landing five metres away in the command tent. Meanwhile, Jake kicked the colonel’s legs out from under him, using the excess momentum to propel himself upright. The colonel rose to his feet one last time, and drew his claymore. Measuring 1.5 metres in length, the claymore was an ancient Terran Scottish broadsword. In this incarnation, it was deadlier than ever. Even in the age of energy fighting, the bigger your weapon, the more powerful it was. This was because if your weapon was bigger, it could support a larger energy-field generator. As such, the colonel’s laser claymore was powerful enough to smash through galactanium plate armour, up to a thickness of 10 centimetres. Luckily, both of Jake’s swords’ energy modes were powerful enough that they wouldn’t blow up when he parried the claymore. Still, it would rip right through his armoured jacket, so Jake would have to be careful for this duel.



Jake parried the colonel’s first blow with his wakizashi, gasping at the strength of the blow. The huge slash would have knocked the wakizashi clean out of his hand had it not been for his magnetic gloves. He retaliated with a stab with his longsword, which drove straight through the colonel’s armour. Narrowly dodging another slash, Jake cartwheeled away and then jumped back into the fray immediately, using his scissoring slash that had been so effective on the gunship. Before he had a chance to complete it, however, the claymore came down and sliced off first one arm, then the other, then laid open his back. The severed arms, still holding their swords, fell to the ground. The colonel raised his claymore for the final, finishing blow, while Jake lay helpless on the ground, where he had fallen in shock.



Suddenly, a cannon blast hit the colonel directly in the chest. The blast was so strong, it completely vaporised him, armour and all. As Jake passed out from the pain of his wounds, he was dimly aware of a hoverbike landing nearby and someone leaping off and running towards him. The last thing he saw, before darkness clouded his vision, was Lieutenant Alex bending over him, on the verge of tears.

[TheBibliophile]

Chapter 3

Jake opened his eyes. He seemed to be in a hospital, and a proper one as well, not just a camp bed in a tent. He tried to sit up, and was surprised when he automatically propped himself up on his arms. This seemed odd, given that his last memory before blacking out was the enemy colonel cutting off his arms with an energy claymore. He looked down and was surprised to discover that he seemed to have arms again, looking exactly like his previous pair except without the originals’ many scars. A nurse hurried over, dressed in rebel uniform but with a red cross sewn onto her sleeve.

“You shouldn’t strain your arms, sir. They need to fully calibrate before being used.”
“Calibrate?” Jake asked, puzzled. Then he understood. His old arms had been replaced with bionic ones, which were made to look like his original pair.
“Yes, sir. You have some visitors; I’ll go and tell them you’re awake.”

She hurried off, and returned a few moments later with Alex Spencer and his second-in-command, Sergeant Tracy Alameda.
“Captain, you’re awake!” said Tracy.
“Congratulations, Miss Alameda, you have just won the prestigious Most Obvious Comment of the Year award,” Jake said under his breath.
“Sorry, what was that?” asked Tracy.
“Nothing, nothing.”
“Okay. Weeel… would you like to know what happened after you passed out?”
“Sure.”
“Well, I don’t know since I was elsewhere on the battlefield mopping up the survivors, but Lieutenant Alex can tell you all about it!”
Alex sat down on a chair by Jake’s bed.

“It was I that took down that enemy colonel. I was flying overhead when I looked out the window and saw that you were duelling with that colonel. Figuring you might need help, I gave the gunship’s controls to my gunner and ran up to get the hoverbike that you’d abandoned, which we put back in the gunship in case we needed it when you ran off. Then I flew down to help. As I was landing I saw him get the better of you, and I fired the hoverbike’s cannon at him. Then I strapped you onto the hoverbike and flew to the field hospital, but they couldn’t do anything there, and we were falling back to the cave base anyway-“
“You mean we lost?” interjected Jake.
“No, but we saw no point going ahead with just the Third and Fourth Cohorts. We were the only ones garrisoning the valley base, remember?”
“Oh yeah. Sorry, go on.”
“There’s not much more to tell. I flew you here and the medics fixed you up. But I’ll let them tell you what they did.” Alex and Tracy left as the head medic of the ZLF, a non-combatant named James Green, walked into the ward.
“Hello, Captain Miller,” said the medic, inclining his head.
“Hello. Would you mind telling me what you did? I apologize for sounding hostile, but this is my body, and I would kind of like to have some say in these matters.”
“Fear not, Captain. We found the holo-tablet you left in your barracks room in the event that you were unable to tell us what to do. We read the section called “Injury.”
Jake suddenly looked very alarmed. “Oh gods, please tell me you didn’t read any of the other sections. They are extremely private and-“
“Do not worry, Captain Miller. I appreciate the privacy required for someone of your, shall we say, unusual past. I did not read anything except the paragraph entitled “In Case of Both my Arms Being Cut Off and my Back Laid Open”. You really are very thorough.”
“Yes, well, I had a long time to think about possible injuries and what to do about them a few years ago.”
“I understand. Now, as you wrote that paragraph, and as we followed it to the letter, there is nothing more for me to tell you, except this; you are a rare man, Captain Alex Miller. The wounds inflicted on you would have killed most people. I wish you luck in all of your endeavours.”
“Thank you, Mr Green.”
The medic made a half-bow again and walked quietly out of the ward.

Elsewhere, in Pregravo City, the capital of the planet Zanatos, a hoverbike drew up beside the governess’ palace and a trooper jumped off it. Hurriedly, he flashed the pass built in to his armoured gauntlet to the gate-guard and ran into the palace. Dashing down the marbled corridors, he bowled over several guards and ornate statuettes on his mad rush. Finally screeching to a halt before the audience chamber of the governess, the trooper panted for a few seconds and then flashed his pass again. The guard on the door, despite his dubious glances at the flustered trooper, removed his gauntlet and pressed his hand to a panel near the door. The door hissed open and the trooper stepped inside and genuflected.
“Rise, corporal,” said a harsh, cold voice.
“Hail, mistress,” said the trooper respectfully.
“Why have you come to see me, corporal?” enquired the governess. She was a tall, muscular woman, wearing the ceremonial armour of a field marshal, the rank she had held before being promoted to a governess. On her left hip hung a ceremonial, highly-decorated energy rapier, but on her right, in sharp contrast to the rest of her finery, a dull grey holster was clipped to her belt. In it lay a pistol, the pistol that she had been issued on her first day in the army, fifteen years before.
“Mistress, the force sent to quell the rebels on the Valley of Merdak…”
“Yes, what of it? How crushing was our victory?”
“Mistress… I am its only survivor.”
“What?” screamed the governess. “How did this happen? You outnumbered the rebels two to one, you had a gunship and a hovertank! How did this happen?”
“There was a man… I think he was a rebel captain. He blew up the hovertank and skyjacked the gunship. Then he killed his way to the field base and duelled with Colonel Wulfenbach. The colonel cut off both his arms with that claymore of his, but then he got vapourised by the gunship.”
“One man defeated a whole regiment by himself? Your tale borders on the unbelievable, Corporal…”
“Springer, mistress.”
“Corporal Springer. I find your story- wait a minute. Was this rebel captain wearing a red combat jacket, black tunic and green camouflage trousers and wielding twin swords and twin pistols?”
“That is an incredibly accurate description, mistress. He was indeed.
“Jake Miller. Captain Jake Miller is back again.”
“Pardon me, mistress?”
“Jake Miller was a captain in our army five years ago. I always thought that he didn’t care about promotion, he got to captain so he could choose his own uniform and then stopped. He was only in the army because of his lust for battle. He was an amazingly talented fighter, was Captain Miller. When you mentioned the devastation he caused among our troops, he was the only one I could think of who could kill that many single-handed. But I suppose his magnificent swordsmanship will be lost now that he’s armless. That is probably a good thing for our troops’ morale… You have done well, Corporal Springer. I shall add one hundred points to your army account directly.”
“Thank you, mistress,” said the corporal, bowing and hurrying out of the audience chamber. At the door he paused and looked back.
“If I may ask, mistress… why did Captain Miller switch sides?”
“You may not,” said the governess, and suddenly a sonic cannon had extended from the roof of the chamber and been aimed at the corporal. “Leave. Now.”
“Y-yes, mistress,” said the corporal, scurrying out the door in fear for his life.


***

Three days later, Captain Miller was up and about. His first port of call was his barracks room. He palmed the door open, noticing incidentally that it had been forced by a skilled engineer and then carefully put to rights again; presumably to gain access to his records. Walking into his room, the first thing he noticed was that the holo-tablet the medic had mentioned was lying on his desk. Scooping it up and checking the access log, he was relieved to find that only the paragraph relevant to his injuries had been accessed. Moving over to the wall, he was surprised and pleased to find that someone had taken the trouble to find his swords, scabbards and utility belt and bring them in. The pistols, however, had apparently not been recovered. Jake was sad for a moment, until he remembered that with his new arms, pistols were redundant anyway.

The scabbards were crossed and hanging on the wall in their usual places, and the belt had been hung under them. Buckling on his utility belt and strapping the swords to his newly-mechanised back, Jake walked out of the room. The door slid shut and locked itself behind him.

Jake set off towards the training simulator. On the way, he passed several soldiers in the halls. Some of them recognised him and nodded or waved. A few inquired about his arms and he explained that he had been given new, cybernetic ones. One old sergeant smiled when he heard that.
“So, what crazy gadgets have you got in there now, Jake?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out, old-timer,” laughed Jake
“You always was a mysterious one, Captain. I look forward to seeing you in action. Good luck.”
“Thankee, sarge. See you around.”
“See ya.”
Jake strode on, smiling. When he reached the training simulator he set the room to maximum difficulty and stepped inside.
“Let’s see what these arms can do,” he said to himself. “Battle mode activate!”
A voice sensor picked up Jake’s command and transmitted it to the arms. They whirred and the artificial skin retracted, showing the metal underneath.

The first enemy appeared, a flying hawkdroid. It started firing dual pulses of laser from its claw-cannons straight at Jake, who said “Jetwing activate!” Instantly a box-like object extended from his back and grew metal wings. Turbos at the bottom of the box fired and propelled Jake out of danger. “Disruptor cannon activate!” he yelled, and his right hand was retracted into his arm. The arm morphed into a cannon and a glowing ball of light-blue energy appeared at the end of it. Jake took careful aim and fired at the hawkdroid by imagining the cannon’s trigger and him pulling it, and a beam of the blue energy, ringed with vapour, fired from the cannon. When it hit the droid it started to shake, and a few seconds later the hawkdroid had completely shaken itself apart, revealing itself to be a hologram, made of solidified light, instead of a robot.

Jake smiled, but the smile was cut short when a laserbolt sliced past his ear. Spinning in midair and unsheathing his swords, he saw a squadron of thirteen hawkdroids led by a swiftdroid. He grinned and flew towards the droids, activating the laser mode on his swords. He slashed at the nearest hawkdroids, but they dodged his sword swipes and fired at him. Thrusting his hand out and yelling “Reflector shield!”, Jake voice-activated a glowing wall of orange energy projected from all around his wrist and flattening out in front of his hand. The laser blasts hit the reflector and bounced off, destroying the hawkdroids that had fired them. The swiftdroid was more canny, however, and fired homing missiles, which, being solid, could not be reflected. Jake sheathed his swords and activated his laser pulse cannon. The reflector shield disappeared and in its place, Jake’s right arm morphed yet again into a cannon, though this time with six smaller barrels. He fired three rapid shots, projecting balls of dark green laser that blew up the missiles one second after they had left the swiftdroid’s launchers. The droid emitted an electric scream and spiralled down to the simulator’s floor, out of control. Jake fired again and again, taking out the last hawkdroids, then deactivated his pulse cannon and ended the simulation, satisfied.

As the simulator door hissed shut behind him, there was a buzz in Jake’s ear, signifying that someone was contacting him via comdio. He took the call and Lieutenant Alex’s voice crackled in his ear.
“Jake, can you come to the main conference room please? General Mathieson wishes to speak with you.”
“I’m on my way.”
Jake ran over the base plan in his head. The main conference room was at the other end of the base, meaning he would have to use the channels. He strode to the nearest entry point and pulled a switch. That section of the floor rose up beneath him, propelling him onto the landing stage for the channels. He chose a board, calibrated to take him to the main conference room, threw it onto the charged plasma that the channels were filled with and jumped onto it. The plasma, sensing a metal object, started to move, and because the board was calibrated for the conference chamber, the plasma moved in that direction, carrying the board along with it. It began to pick up speed, and soon Jake was surfing along at a fair pace on his own current of plasma. When he arrived at the conference room, the plasmaboard nuzzled into the landing stage, and Jake jumped off. Scooping up the board (being careful not to touch the plasma, as it would give him a nasty shock), he put it in the boardrack and strode onto the lift at the end of the landing. It took him just across the corridor from the conference room. He walked over, activated the door release and walked inside.

General Mathieson, the second-in-command of the ZLA, greeted him.
“Captain Miller! Come in, sit down,” he said, seeming to be in a very good mood.
“Hello, sir.”
“I bet you’re wondering what I called you here for, Captain.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Honest fellow! Well, I heard about your feats on the battlefield, and I thought you needed a reward. “
“A reward, sir?”
“Of course! After almost single-handedly destroying an entire regiment, anyone deserves a reward. What would you say if I offered you a personal, custom-built starfighter?”
“… Could it be used in-atmosphere as well?”
“But certainly.”
“I’ll take it. Thank you very much, sir.”
“Don’t mention it. Oh, and one last thing… You don’t like command much, do you? Speak honestly now.”
“No, sir. I guess I just like fighting better.”
“Well, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. I was wondering, maybe I could relieve you of your command of the Fourth Cohort, and let you work on your own? You’d still be a captain and everything, of course.”
“Thank you again, sir. I think that’s a good idea.”
“Then it’s settled! Now, off you trot. I must think about who should command your cohort now.”
“If I could make a suggestion, sir?”
“Of course!”
“Lieutenant Alex Spencer, my old second-in-command. He’s the best person at getting people to do things that I’ve ever known, and a great strategist to boot.”
“Interesting. Charismatic, is he?”
”Very, sir.”
“I’ll consider it. Goodbye, Captain!”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Constructive criticism welcomed.

[An Enemy Spy]

What do you mean my writing is better than this?
In the first chapter, I wasn't fond of the way Jake kept talking to himslf. It didn't seem right.
Some of your wording felt a little awkward, especially the dialogue. Other than that, it was decent.

[TheBibliophile]

What do you mean my writing is better than this?
In the first chapter, I wasn't fond of the way Jake kept talking to himself. It didn't seem right.
Some of your wording felt a little awkward, especially the dialogue. Other than that, it was decent.

I needed some exposition and humour. That was all I could think of at the time.

[TheBibliophile]

Chapter Four


Jake boarded back to his barracks room, thinking furiously. When he got there, he sat down at his desk with a holo-tablet and a stylus, and began to sketch out plans for his new starfighter. Two hours later, he emerged from his room, and walked to the base’s shipyard, for it was not far, and he was in need of some exercise. When there, he sought out the master shipwright, Lieutenant Anthony Pearson. His title was honourary, given in recognition of his services to the ZLF. Jake eventually found him overseeing the construction of a SWT (Sextuped Walker Tank). As Jake walked up, Pearson yelled to a levi-crane operator, “Slowly now! Lower…lower… stop there! Quick, someone get up there with a laser-welding torch!”
“What temperature, Lieutenant?” asked Jake, configuring his right arm into a thin-beamed laser.
“About 5000 degrees, Manson, thank you,” said Pearson, mistaking Jake for one of his assistants. He jumped when Jake activated his jetpack behind him and rocketed up to the SWT’s turret, where the levi-crane was holding a heavy laser cannon above its foundation, ready to be welded. Adjusting his cannon so that the laser it produced was equivalent to 5000 degrees of heat, he fired it at the gap between the cannon and the turret, melting the metal together. Then he flew slowly along the turret, melting all the way, until he had completely welded the cannon to its turret. Deactivating his makeshift laser-welding torch and angling his jetwings, he swooped down to the shipyard floor, deactivating the jetpack ten feet above the ground and landing in a crouch, one metal hand on the floor to steady himself.
“Hello, Captain Miller,” said the shipwright, concealing his surprise. “I see you got yourself a new pair of arms, and a built-in jetpack to boot.”
“I did indeed, Lieutenant.”
“But you’re not here to nearly give me a heart attack and do some welding, Captain. What brings you to my domain?”
“General Mathieson saw fit to give me a reward after my ‘feats on the battlefield’. His words, not mine.”
“Oh? And what manner of starship did he provide you with?”
“Actually, he gave me permission to request a custom starfighter.”
“Did he, now?” asked Pearson, visibly impressed. “Have you come up with any ideas?”
“Actually, yes.” Captain Miller handed him the holo-tablet, which Pearson activated. Glancing over the holographic text that the tablet projected, his eyebrows rose.
“Well, this will make you formidable indeed on the battlefield, captain. You are an ambitious designer.”
“Thank you, if that was a compliment.”
“Oh, it was,” chuckled Pearson. “Ambition is very important in the army! I would be honoured to work on this fighter for you, captain.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. How soon should it be finished?”
“Well, let’s see,” mumbled the other man, counting on his fingers. “There are a squadron more SWTs that need to be supervised… call that two days. Then I’m free, so I can devote all my attention to your project… will a fortnight hence suffice?”
“Of course. I shall await its coming with anticipation.”


***

Meanwhile, the government of Zanatos had not been idle. When Corporal Springer had alerted the governess to the task force’s demise, she had immediately ordered the shipyards of Pregravo to work overtime, crafting heavily-armed and armoured ships and tanks for the next task force. The airborne force was to be made up of a squad (five ordinary units, plus a squad leader) of gunships and an AAC (airborne aircraft carrier) carrying two attack wings each of hawkdroids, bomberdroids, swiftdroid interceptors (to stop enemy bombers from attacking the government’s ships) and finally human-manned (the government of Zanatos was highly xenophobic, meaning that non-human organisms were shunned and banned from entering any job deemed “unfit” for them, including the army) dual- and quad-cannon fighters. On the ground, the government forces consisted of a squadron (two squads, plus a squadron leader) each of QWTs (Quadruped Walker Tanks) and hovertanks, plus a squad of enormous hovering troop carriers, each holding a full company (13 000 men) of soldiers, making the main force of government troopers number 78 000 in total. In addition to all this, the governess was putting the second-in-command of the entire army, General Erin Levine, personally in charge of the second task force, which would set out as soon as the position of the rebel base had been ascertained.

This, however, was proving to be more difficult than planned, as every squad of hoverbike scouts the government sent were ambushed and eliminated before they had time to relay information back to Pregravo City. The information stored within the helmet-computers of the scout troopers warned the ZLF of the impending government attack. This caused the shipyards to be cast into a flurry of activity, trying to get as many ships and tanks as possible built before the attack came. Luckily, most of the work could be done by the general mechanics, leaving Lieutenant Pearson to concentrate on Jake’s custom starfighter.

On the day that Pearson had said the fighter would be finished by, Jake strolled down to the shipyard, an anticipatory gleam in his eye. He stepped in and wandered around, watching various ships and tanks taking shape. Eventually he walked towards Pearson’s personal workshop and knocked on the door. It was opened by the Lieutenant, who smiled when he saw Jake and cried “Captain Miller! Come in, come in! Your ship is ready!” Jake followed him in and looked around. There was a long, oddly shaped object in the main room of the workshop, covered with a tarp. It came up to about Jake’s shoulders. Pearson stood by a rope tied to the tarp. He cried “Behold, your starfighter!” and pulled the rope.

The tarp came off, revealing a long, thin starfighter, with two symmetrical, wing-like protrusions at the very back, just behind the cockpit, and two more halfway down the ship. It had no visible weapons except for a missile-launcher on either side of the cockpit and one on the top, but that did not fool Jake. If the fighter conformed to his original plan, its most formidable weapons were hidden away beneath its gleaming metal surface. The main body was painted black, with the middle set of wings green and the back red, Jake’s signature colours. Jake started towards her, and then stopped, looking enquiringly at Pearson. The mechanic said “Go ahead, old boy, give her a spin. She’ll open if you tell her.” Jake ran forward and jumped into the air, shouting “Cockpit open!” as he somersaulted and landed in the now-open cockpit. Sitting in the pilot’s seat, which unclipped his swords from his back and held them for when he needed them, he closed the cockpit and fired up the engine. The heads-up display lit up, projecting an introductory message onto the cockpit window. Jake familiarised himself with the controls, then set the fighter to flight mode. The insectile legs upon which it was supported folded up into the fighter’s body, and its hoverjets activated. Jake fired the engine, and the fins at the back fired a pulse of propelling energy. The fighter soared out of the skydoor of the workshop. Jake accelerated and was amazed at the fighter’s speed. Spying the latest squad of hoverbike scouts far below him, Jake activated the pulse cannons on the middle wings. A three-barrelled cannon rose from each wing and clicked into place. The barrels started to spin and then started to fire green, spherical globules of laser energy as Jake swooped down towards the hoverbikes below. The squad leader, hearing a buzzing noise, glanced up and franticly gunned his engine, trying to outrun the death from above. The rest of the squad could not react in time, and each was hit. Since they only had light armour, the bikes immediately blew up, incinerating their riders. Pulling out of his dive and deactivating his pulse cannons, Jake pursued the last scout. Right now he wasn’t thinking straight, but it was only a matter of time before he contacted his headquarters. It was time to bring out the big guns. Jake accelerated again, until he was just ten metres behind the hoverbike, and activated his beam cannons. Armour panels in the nose of the fighter slid back, and the long cannons extended out into the air on metal struts. Since this was the squad leader, his bike would be more heavily armoured, and he would also have an energy shield to protect him. Therefore, more firepower was required. Jake got the hoverbike in his targeting lens (remotely linked to the fighter’s aiming system) and pulled the trigger. Two long, dark blue beams of energy lanced out from the cannons. They hit the pilot’s orange energy shield and pushed against it for a second before it dissipated before their might. The hoverbike exploded, throwing off the pilot, whose heavier armour protected him from the explosion. He hit a tree at terminal velocity and his neck snapped. Jake flew back to the base and landed. He had decided on a name for his starfighter. It was the Jetfalcon, named for its colour and speed.


***

Tracy Alameda, now a lieutenant following Alex Spencer’s promotion to captain, was a very curious person. She didn’t feel comfortable around people unless she knew things about them: where they were born, whether they had family, and so on. Therefore, at the moment her curiosity was eating her up, because of a certain Captain Jake Miller. No-one knew anything about him except the now-Captain Spencer, who was his best friend in the army, and who had a deep sense of loyalty to Miller, preventing him from telling anyone anything about the enigmatic captain. As a last resort, she searched out Miller himself and asked him about his past.
“My past is a secret, until such time as I choose to reveal it,” said the tanned captain. “And don’t pester Captain Spencer about it either. I have a right to privacy if I want it, Miss Alameda, and you would do well to remember that.” Whereupon his door slammed shut, and Tracy was left standing outside, nonplussed. Then she went off to scan the army records, hoping that they would give some clue into Miller’s past.

All they revealed, however, was that Miller was thirty, born on the desert planet Ferversita in the star system next to Zanatos, had joined the ZLF five years ago from the government forces and had brought all of his formidable equipment with him. Her appetite for knowledge whet, Alameda searched the quartermaster’s records, which listed the equipment belonging to each member of the ZLF and their skills and abilities. The public records, however, only mentioned the captain’s longsword and wakizashi under weapons, noting also that his pistols were lost in the Battle of Merdak Valley. The skills and abilities entry said only: “Highly skilled swordsman, specialises in dual-wielding and acrobatic techniques. Also an accurate marksman, though he prefers close-range fighting to sniping. Finally, Miller is a natural pilot, and is adept at piloting starfighters and hoverbikes; he is also skilled at dogfighting. ” There was more in the private records, but those could only be accessed by those of Miller’s rank or above.

Finally, as a last resort, Alameda boarded down to the barracks block and knocked on Captain Spencer’s door. “Come in,” came a voice, and the door hissed open. Tracy stepped in to find Captain Spencer reading on his bunk. As she came in, the captain put down his holo-reader and stood up. Tracy saluted and asked, “Sorry for disturbing you, captain, but I wanted to ask you something.”
“That’s all right, lieutenant. What’s bothering you?”
“Well, it’s just this, captain. I’m a bit worried about Captain Miller. I think he might be a government spy.”
“What? That’s absurd! He’s probably the most trustworthy person in the whole ZLF! Didn’t you see what he did in the Valley of Merdak?”
“That could have been a ploy to gain our trust.”
“All right, but what proof do you have?”
“Well, he did join the ZLF from the government army, after all. Also, no-one knows anything about him except where he was born and a little of what he can do.”
“All right,” said Captain Spencer. “I’ll tell you a little about him, just to allay your fears. But please, please don’t tell him I told you, okay?”
“Deal. Now, you were saying?”

Captain Spencer sat down on his bunk, gesturing for Tracy to sit beside him.
“As you know, Jake Miller was born on the desert planet Ferversita. He lived there until the age of eighteen, when he set out to travel the galaxy. He wandered for six years, without a place to call home. I met Jake when he was travelling, on a planet named Silvaplagiarus. Back then, he was an easy-going, extroverted guy, really fun to be around. I went back to Ferversita with Jake, thinking I might settle down. Eventually he returned to his home planet, expecting to find a wife and settle down.
When he came back to his family’s house, however, it was gone, razed to the ground by a local warlord. Have you ever been to Ferversita?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll explain. The whole planet is made up of warring nations. Each traditionally has one great enemy and one great ally, and is ambivalent to all other nations. However, one warlord decided that he would like to have a much greater empire than he did. So he attacked the nation that was his greatest ally. It was fighting a war with another nation at the time, and the warlord, whose name was Yolcari, marched a large division of his army to the capital of Captain Miller’s nation, under pretence of helping with the war. However, once he got there, he murdered the warlord of the Captain’s country and took over. Then he went on a rampage. He killed anyone who rebelled, anyone who was suspected to be rebelling, and anyone who was likely to rebel, leaving about one-tenth of the population. Among those he killed were Jake’s parents, siblings and his prospective wife. When Jake got back home, he found nothing but a scorched mark on the earth. He stayed on Ferversita for exactly one year, and in that time, he organised a resistance out of the hundred or so people that had survived the purge and were able to fight, overthrew the warlord, executed him and set up a new government. Then he left the planet… said he had too many bad memories. He travelled as a mercenary and joined the government army for a while, but then he left, because it reminded him of Yolcari’s army, which he’d joined for a while as a spy. He looked me up, and I invited him to join the ZLF. You know the entrance exam for fighters?”
“Yes, sir. The continuing wave of simulated droids, ending when you get hit once.”
“Yes. You know what happened when Jake did that?”
“No, sir,” said Tracy, inwardly putting her gossip generator on standby.
“They had to stop after three hours. He didn’t get hit once.”
“Really, sir?”
“Yes, really. That’s how strong his dedication to justice is… and that’s why he is not now, nor will he ever be, a government spy.”


***

Kimbal von Trimark, the governess of the planet Zanatos, waited beside the landing pad of Pregravo City’s military base. She was awaiting a shuttle bringing an ambassador from the capital planet of the Oomai system, Terra Nova, and was rather irritated that he wasn’t there yet. The governess valued punctuality highly and did not approve of being late. Suddenly, the whine of a shuttle engine came from above. “Finally,” she muttered, but then looked up, puzzled, as the shuttle’s engine noise was joined by a loud roar, as though there was a much larger ship following it.
“Captain, prepare to defend the base. We may have a problem,” she said to the purple-armoured trooper that stood beside her.
“Yes, mistress. Lieutenant Miyazaki!”
“Sir!” said a young trooper. He had added a mon, a Terran Japanese family crest, to his helmet, showing that he came from the clan Miyazaki, and also a pair of horns, so that he looked more like a Japanese samurai than anything else. A katana was sheathed at his side, completing the image.
“Ready the garrison and scramble the fighters. We have possible hostiles coming in and I don’t want us flat-footed.”
“Sir, yes sir!” said the lieutenant, running off. The shuttle came out of the clouds. It was a Delta-class Tri-wing shuttle, built for speed, though it did have two light cannons should fighting prove necessary. Following it was a SSC (Spaceborne Ship Carrier), the origin of the loud engine noise. A high wind, caused by the ships’ sudden arrival, whipped the governess’ gold-embroidered cape of state around her, almost strangling her. “Pull up your men around me and prepare to receive guests,” she said to the purple-clad trooper beside her. The captain saluted and turned to shout at the garrison, his voice magnified by the speakers in his helmet. “Form up, men! Four ranks, behind the mistress! Highest-ranked soldiers in front! Come on, move!”

The shuttle touched down, its bottom wings folding up to ensure a sturdy position. The SSC, however, stayed in the air, as there was not enough room for it on the landing pad. A door in the side of the shuttle hissed open and the Terra Novan ambassador stepped out, waving in greeting to the governess.
“Ms von Trimark! I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you.”
“Thank you, ambassador. If I may ask, why the ship carrier? We thought we were under attack, as you can see from the atmosfighters encircling your ship.”
“Well, the factories in Terra Nova had just finished their work on a wonderful new gunship, so I thought I’d bring you a few.” Turning, he activated his comdio and said to the SSC’s captain, “All right, captain, send out the gunships!” The captain pulled a lever inside his cockpit, opening a large hatch in the front of his ship. A squad of the new gunships floated out, and hovered down to land in front of the governess in concorde formation, with two gunships in a line in front and two pairs of gunships behind them. The gunships were a surprise. They were 13 metres long and their main bodies were dish-shaped, and had a light laser cannon on each side, facing forward. On the front of the dish, there was a square cockpit, with a swivelling double-cannon turret on each side and a medium-powered cannon facing the front. On the bottom of the disk, there were three retractable “feet” for landing gear, and two bomb bays.
“That is very impressive, ambassador. Thank you. These will be of use in our imminent assault against the rebel base. If I may ask a question, however…”
“Ask away, m’dear!” said the ambassador jovially.
“Well, where is the troop compartment and the cockpit?”
“The cockpit is in the nose. As for the troop compartment, there isn’t any. This is more of a gun platform than a troop carrier, and the only soldiers it can carry are a squad of troopers that can stand on the disk with magnetic boots on.”
“The thing in the front is the cockpit? But it’s tiny!”
“Actually, it’s the auxiliary cockpit. Normally, the ships are controlled by an advanced droid brain. It’s only if the brain is damaged or malfunctioning that the pilot controls the gunship manually.”
“Which brings me back to my original question: how do you fit a pilot in there?”
“Ah. This brings me to the second thing I brought from Terra Nova. Captain! Unload the droids!”
“Yes, sir!” The captain pulled another lever, opening a float-tube down to the ground. Figures began appearing from inside the gunship, and hovered down to the ground on a wave of force. As they landed, they got into formation, so that eventually there was a huge block of what the governess and assembled troops could finally see to be droids, painted in different colours for different divisions. The droids stood six feet high, and were vaguely humanoid in shape, except for their heads, which had large horns and fangs. They had no discernible weapons, but that meant nothing in the age of retractable devices.
“These robots do not seem to have any means of attacking, ambassador. Unless you expect them to defeat the rebel forces with their bare hands.”
“Oh, no. Can you get a training simulation out here please?”
“Of course. Lieutenant Miyazaki!”
“Yes, mistress!”
“Bring out a portable training simulator. Go!”
“Yes, ma’am!” The lieutenant ran inside and emerged, panting, with a large black box. He put the box down and pressed a button on the side, activating it. A list of options appeared on top of the hologram projector, and he selected “Rebel Tank” from the list. The projector hummed, and a life-sized image of a SWT appeared. It turned towards the ranks of droids and primed its main cannon. The Ambassador yelled “One squad, attack!” One squad of the droids stepped forward and raised their right arms as one. A circle in the middle of their palms retracted and a laser beam lanced out of each. They all struck the SWT at the same time, and it shuddered. Although its armour was pierced in places, its weapons systems were fully functional and it fired its six auxiliary cannons. The droids dodged with inhuman speed and ran towards the SWT. As they ran, they extended large axe-blades from the circles on their arms and activated the monomolecular mode. Leaping into the air and landing on the smaller laser turrets, they raised their axes and brought them down, once…twice…three times, until finally the turrets were completely severed from the main body of the tank. Jumping off the turrets as they fell, the droids activated jets hidden in their legs and soared above the SWT, where they fired all of their lasers at the SWT, piercing its armour. In a few seconds, the SWT’s armour was pierced, and a few seconds after that it exploded, the hologram fading as the simulation ended. The entire process had taken no more than two minutes.
“I am impressed, ambassador,” said the governess. “How do they fit into the cockpit of the gunships, though? After all, they are six feet tall.”
“Hmm? Oh, they fold up, but they can still pilot, and very well too.”
“Very good. With these on our side, the rebels don’t stand a chance.”

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As the demon roach would say, "Backstoryriffic!"


I would be much obliged if some more experienced writers than myself would offer their honest critique once in a while. Thanks in advance.

[The Gremlin]

Heh, nice. I'll watch this.

[chef781]

I've written a little. Like it, but every thing seems a bit over powered (AKA lay off on the flips and spikes). But other than that you're good. Oh, and spoiler chapters in the first post for easy finding.