Main Sequence

The stories in the Main Sequence are the "main" stories, for want of a better description. They are the stories which take place on Dauntless herself, the vessel who gave her name to the series, and about the "core" characters - Ivy, Ren, Lena, Slate and Onyx. Short stories and "offshoots" - stories set in the "Mirrorverses", or about characters in the Dauntless universe but not strictly part of Main Sequence - are found in Parallel Lives.

Those titles currently greyed out in the side menu are those for which nothing has been uploaded (yes, it is most of them). Dark grey indicates there is just a "placeholder" link, paler grey indicates there is some art or a sample section of text but no actual chapters.

Main Sequence Titles

#1     Ride the Avocet - set almost immediately after the ship and her meagre crew leave their homeworld in search of pastures new. After being contacted by an alien intelligence, Dauntless makes an unexpected and rather sudden stop on the Nivariian homeworld, where they meet the crew of the much larger Coalition ship Avocet. Getting back offworld looks to be a problem, however, when it is discovered that there are forces at work greater than merely the stupid-looking and primitive natives.

#2     Pole to Pole - badly needs a plot revision. I'll put a description here once I've got the plot ;)

#3     Firebreaker - Slate has attracted the attention of an unsavoury little creature - Nyova, an "emotivore" Chaos Nymph like Neev - who seems attracted to the fact he has a minute fragment of "dragon DNA" in his genetics. Ever-greedy, Nyova coaxes and bullies her chosen prey into less and less savoury tasks, and it is up to his friends to work out the enigma of his behaviour and get him back out of his "arrangement" with Nyova before his increasing violence and criminal activity gets him arrested, injured, or worse.

#4     Empire of Fire - the crew of Dauntless were warned long ago by their Coalition allies to keep clear of the galactic core, due to the dangers posed by the mysterious "Vei Imperium", but an unfortunate clash of coincidence takes them well within Imperium borders, where they attract the attention of those they sought to avoid. With her friends taken prisoner, it is up to Ivy to strike unwilling friendships in order to get them back, and at the same time prevent her ship from falling into enemy hands.

#5     Moonpool - after the drama of the "Empire Incident", it's nice to relax. Dauntless' crew (and a few new friends) are getting a little well-deserved R&R on a pleasant - if rather primitive - forest world, when Onyx discovers that not all the wildlife is cute and sparkly; infected by a "sentient fungus", he sets himself up as a quasi-emperor - which the natives are all too happy to believe, seeing "the monster" (Slate) he has tamed. The only way to find and cure the recalcitrant Onyx is to go native and follow the rumours. Which is all eaiser said than done when all the natives have six limbs, and you only have four.

#6     Haze - a "kink" in Infraspace, the werid dimension through which Coalition vessels travel, plunges Dauntless into another universe. Coincidence brings them together with their Mirrorverse duplicates, which is hard on the nerves of all, especially Ren, whose duplicate lost the love of his life with the death of his beloved Lena. Poor judgement brings the group into contact with pirates, who they must then somehow outwit, in order to both escape and return home, and foil a plan to hold an entire planet to ransome.

#7     Stargazer - ghosts from the past are apt to come forward to haunt you. Finding friendship, and love, in the arms of a Stargazer, Ivy thinks she may have found her place in life, but the Kiravai are close by, and they are very interested by this "little Siinu" on their doorstep. And money is a very persuasive, sweet reward to a great many people.

#8     Frostbitten - Ivy has found that her unusual nature has made her the target of almost every cybernetics corporation and research institute in her half of the galaxy, Coalition mandate be damned. Blackmailed back into the company of an old enemy/lover, jealous and bitter that she would not forget her first love for him, and isolated from her friends - who have intense enough problems of their own to sort out - things are looking very bleak. Help comes from strange quarters, though, and all the least likely of people come to her aid.

#9     Darkness Absolute - returning to their homeworld in order to seek out Rosuva, Ivy's elderly creator, Old enemies must work together - if reluctantly - in order to discover where their children have been taken. (Small parts of this were written in collaboration with Sl'askia/R Beaudoin, to whom the characters "Spider", "Malice" and "Spike" belong)

#10     Hawkeye - Ren's new and unfortunate disability makes him an attractive subject for a new advance in Coalition technology; cybernetics. So far the plot is lacking, but I'll get there. ;)

#11     Latent Images - the relief of disabilities comes with a price; when Ren begins "seeing things" aboard Dauntless, things that nobody else sees, there is the question of whether it is a fault in the technology, or rather something more disturbing. After all, the species from which he was "built" were not famed for their mental stability...

#12     Undaunted - <in progress>

#13     Snowblind - Ivy has been kidnapped by a young male Kiravai. When the pair of them are subsequently lost on a world neither of them know, they must help each other recover from their injuries in order to rediscover their vessel, and escape before the "Night Folk" come looking for them.

#14     Darkling - <in progress>