quote:

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Captain Hollywood pulled himself back up to his console. "Their ships have purple lasers!" he raged. "Why didn't we know? What have those bed-wetting MI slobs been doing, playing with tinker toys?"

Langley Davis stared at his own console, wondering who would be stupid enough to speak up. Sure enough, Mackey did.

"Sir, it's not the purple that's doing it."

"Oh?" the Captain snorted. "What's this here on my console about our shields being at twenty percent? I suppose green did that?"

"Um, sir, we've had purple shields for a while now." Somebody hand this guy a shovel, thought Langley as Mackey pressed on, apparently intent on rediscovering China. "Mr. Davis figured out how to get them at two simultaneous wavelengths..."

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The first sentence threw me. I had a hard time picturing the action.

I don't usually say this, but I think there's too much dialogue and not enough explaining. Some of the questions that went through my head: What is MI? What is green? Is it a group or an item or a joke? By "them" does he mean the shields or the colors or (I know this is a stretch) the enemy?

The phrase "apparently intent on rediscovering China" threw me out of the story. It didn't seem to fit and didn't convey any meaningful information to me in context. That's probably just me, though.

It is a humorous opening. The "China" comment also stuck out for me. It just doesn't quite work.

The first thing that glared at me was the name CPT Hollywood. If this is his real name, it might be too cheesy for me to finish the story. If it's a nickname the crew uses, that'd be fine, but I think we should be told that up front, or learn the nickname later.

The colors are odd, but I'm OK with them as long as the next thing I read is Mackey (or maybe Davis) explaining why color matters.

One part that I find confusing, is the "we've had purple shields for a while now" along with "how to get them at two simultaneous wavelengths." I'm assuming "them" refers to the shields, but it seems oddly worded. If I'm correct, maybe something like "Mr. Daivs figured out how to adjust the shields against purple." Then, an ensuing explanation of all the colors can mention the details (just make sure its not an info dump).

As for China, I liked it. Maybe "digging your way to China" isn't commonly known. I'd recommend making it a little less subtle, and see if it works more for others.

Oh, btw, I'm interested in reading the whole thing (pjp@gentoo.org).

I hope like heck nobody takes it as anything other than a parody, because if they did, they'd think I was really, really stupid.

Thanks for the comments so far, everybody.