I hope you and your family have had a Merry Christmas!

Bittersweet ending - looking forward to the next one! Thank you for all your work on this; it's been a blast to read.

Enjoyed it, please continue!.

Glad to see they’re taking things slowly. Hoping they all get their feet underneath them quickly before more trouble finds them.

A man adrift needs a mission, a goal to occupy his focus. For Cieran that’s always been tech engineering. Trena should have led with that!

Wow, this chapter held a few gut-punches in a row. I can't help suspecting Balak and the Hegemony, because they stand to gain greatly from Cieran's exile. Nynsi better be very careful with whoever courts her next, b/c there are lots of Batarian males who want control of her family wealth. It's a real shame.

More fighting before he's fully-healed... man, I just want Cieran to be able to rest, recover back to 100%, and then bulk UP! Put on some muscle, man. Can't do that if you're not eating and sleeping well.

Enjoyed it, please continue.

Nice touch with the naming of the club Forever. Many club names in the ME series follow a similar existential naming convention trend: Afterlife, Purgatory, Eternity... so “Forever” gots right in.

Enjoyed it; please continue

Thanks for another great chapter. I can't wait for him to speak with Trena/Ghai about his will and the REAL threat they should all be preparing for: the Reapers. Hold the line!

Enjoyed it, please continue. Being helpless is killing Cieran right now and taking action is exactly what he needs to do - whether it's constructing new armor, developing other tech, or some other project. He should also be attacking his rehab, not avoiding it! Come on, man - follow the plan and get yourself back into shape. Trust the process.

You wrote “Sixty-two hour work week last week pretty much left me comatose to the point where all I did for a few days was play Dragon Age to try and escape reality for a while.“

Gosh, sorry to hear that, man. I had almost the exact same schedule earlier this year, working 50-60hr work weeks and also doing my first DA playthrough (albeit slowly) during this time. The Party Camp was especially soothing — I’ll pull up that music on YouTube now and then when I need to relax. Life was pretty much just work, food, play a little, sleep; then work again. Over and over.

God bless you for getting through all that and still finding the energy to keep creating this awesome novel — I’ve only discovered this story years later, but it’s been a blast and deeply moving. Thank you and I hope your life has more balance in it by now.

Loved Trena’s POV... hoping Cieran recovers quickly

Dang, the severity of his injuries worries me that he won’t be able to get back into fighting shape soon enough to help Shepard. No commando work if you can’t sprint or kneel or smoothly blend in.

Note: one thing to support Cieran’s story of being from 2015 is the fact that his body lacks the upgrades common to most humans in this age — one of the doctors who examined him early in the story noted this. Adding skin/bone/muscle weaves, helpful nanites, etc. would strengthen his constitution .. but too little too late at this point?

Glad to see Nynsi’s skepticism and reluctance to trust Balak. I think Trena’s estimate may be right in the long run (assuming they make it back to Ilium and don’t keep traveling on), but we’ll see. I wonder how Nynsi will rationalize a split with no wrongdoing on his part.