orion1836 wrote:A possible story direction occurred to me a long time ago, and seeing Beryl's shocked reaction brought it back to me: what if the shuttle gets shot down, and Alex and company have to survive on a hostile world?
This trip to Seren is supposed to take "many days." Weeks' worth of conversation on a shuttle does not make for a compelling story. Unless there's a time skip (possible), I don't think the good ship Highland-Seven is going to make it to the sector capital.
I'm going to laugh if that's what ends up happening. Even if it doesn't, it'd make for a good fic. I could see Alex vastly underestimating the Loroi's survival skills, not knowing about their caste initiation rites.
There'll almost certainly be shenanigans and complications en route to Seren, but the trip isn't going to be in the Highland. In the last panel of page 105, Beryl tells Alex that the shuttle will be rendezvousing with a frigate that will be actually transporting them to Seren. Beryl states that meeting up with the Frigate will take 19,000 Solon. Assuming that a Solon is roughly equivalent a second, the shuttle trip is going to be fairly short. Granted, there's still a window for trouble there.
Personally, I think that Beryl and Talon's apparent surprise has more to do either with either the data they're all going over, Stillstorm's strike group, or possibly another ship.
The "Data Surprise" possibility has been talked about. In the case of the other two, we could see Stillstorm's strike group being called away before being fully resupplied, indicating that yes, things are looking bad for the Loroi. Another possibility is that the frigate "Clearbrook" which is stated to be the crew's transport to Seren might not be the only ship waiting for them. Picking up something like an Imperial Guard cruiser or Historian ship waiting at the rendezvous point would likely elicit some surprise on the part of the Loroi.
Just throwing stuff at the wall here: There's been a change of plan that the crew hasn't been informed of, and Ashrain's ship "Black Razor" has been pulled off the line to escort Alex to Seren. Ashrain is a relative of the Emperor, and might be seen as a bit more reliable in the current climate of caste and personal politics. This would explain Beryl and Talon's surprise, and Ashrain's presence on the dramatis personae sheet.