I do love how expansive your world is. In many ways, this series reminds me of Turtledove's Darkness series... a mishmash of tech, different perspectives, and multiple arches happening at the same time. Well done, angel.

I'm glad you liked it. ;) This one I wrote before "Sierra Point" so I sort of had to work backwards. I'd always planned for one Lauren and one Chris based story during the war, but the Lauren plot came first in setting up some things for later on in the series. Plus it gave me an opportunity to introduce Starr properly.

I've always been a fan of multiple arcs, I believe it both provides story flexibility, makes you be creative, and at the same time helps avoid getting stale. If the whole team is always together it is like driving a truck, you can't make the sharp turns. If you've got an ensemble and a team that can be broken up, you have several paths at once so if any one becomes an issue the others can help pick up the slack.

Since I'd decided long ago that Lauren, Chris, and Topaz, do not all meet until the day she returns to the capitol city, this meant that I had to keep them separate in the prequel stories. To that end, when I started work on the short story series I hope to collect in book form when done, this meant a phase covering before the war and the war itself, and the second collection covering the occupation before Lauren's return.

Now I had some tentpoles, such as the day Lauren succeeds Lucas as the water master, and the last day of the war itself... I just had to fill in the blanks. I already knew my plans for the final villian, so this left me many threads to explore. I'm a big fan of taking things in different directions, and I started with just a plain Topaz origin story of sorts to fill in some mythology questions. Then I decided when I was planning Zenith and Nadir that rather than covering two separate missions, I could cover the same mission from both sides, which was tough to plan but it worked so well in tying them together. The rest fill in moments I as a reader would want to see, and wherever possible I try to make references to the other stories, where it is not forced but helps bind them together, like the last scene of Sierra Point, which was a last minute addition. In this one, they make mention of the Sierra Point mission, which at the time I had not planned.

The end result is though each and every story is standalone, together they have a cumulative effect. It's how I do all my work.

A very interesting chapter indeed, especially at the end. I really like how well you're able to build up a sense of mystery and maintain the suspense while providing just enough information as things proceed to keep things fascinating. I particularly like how you're able to layer it, so that even after it is revealed that Leaven hasn't just defected to the enemy, you still want to see how, or if, the characters will figure that out. Not to mention wanting to find out just what it is they're really up to!

I quite like how you handle combat in your stories, too, as I think you do a really good job of making it both quite realistic and rather exciting, but without dragging it out to unnecessary lengths. I liked getting to see Starr in action, too. He seems like a really nice person, and I imagine he's going to go on to be quite formidable in his chosen field as well!

You have a really interesting world, too, and it's always fun to be able to visit it for a bit.

I'm rather proud of the ending, both for tying into Relativity, and for setting up Lauren and Chris's eventual connection to each other. I've long been a fan of the theory of love at first sight, that sometimes you just know, even if you don't consciously realize it.

I must thank Joss Whedon and Ronald D Moore for that. They've taught me how to control the flow of information. If a series gives you the flexibility to plan things as I have, then I can control what they learn and when, and the more you learn, the more questions you think to ask. For example, until you know who Caspian is, you know Leaven has gone rogue, but if he's not working for the Ashurians, then why did he defect? When you learn he's aligned with Caspian, the question then becomes... When did he switch sides? How far back does that go? Then you learn new questions to ask about the possibilities that raises. Good guys may not be good guys, bad guys may not be bad guys... Just like real life, you can only go on what you know at the time. However, what you know can affect a lot...

That's what I try to do. You don't want to bore people with epic battles that go on for pages and pages, and you want to intersperse dialogue so it keeps the audience engaged, and while my world does have powers and martial arts and so on, it's as close to reality as I can make it, even if you're suspending disbelief to let Lauren's water abilities work. I had decided as I was casting this story that now that I'd established Starr's desire to enter the military, it seemed like a good idea to use him in this story and perhaps some other ones, I'd long considered the idea of him serving on the flagship to be seen in the second and third arcs in the comics. :)

Thank you very much for the wonderful comments, I hope Blue Symphony gives you ideas to integrate into your stories too. :)