Originally published on Patreon
So, I said my piece about how I hate the timeline for this book last issue, so won't be going over that again here. One thing I will say, though, is that with that kind of not being a big thing this issue the series suddenly feels a lot more enjoyable.
Last issue we ended with Theta crashing her ship on an ice planet, trying to reach an outpost so that she can get more supplies and keep her ship running. Unfortunately, having crashed more than a hundred miles away, she's got days of walking across the frozen tundra before she can even get there. Thus begins a journey across the planet that sees her having to fight just to survive.
Not long into her trip, Theta gets attacked by a couple of scavengers who've stolen a hover bike from the outpost. Alien scavengers. I was honestly not expecting there to be non Yautja aliens in this series, but it looks like humanity found more than one species in the galaxy waiting for them when they left Earth. This kind of makes the condensed timeline feel a bit better, and it means that colonies, stations, and outposts that come up may not necessarily be human in origin, and thus could have existed a lot longer. It makes things sit a little better for me at least.
Theta takes the hover bike and uses it to cover the rest of her journey, reaching the outpost; where she finds no sign of life, blood on the floors, and headless bodies hanging. There's a Yautja here. Checking the security monitors, she manages to find a shot of the creature; one that shows it holding a familiar weapon.
So this issue really helped me to settle into this new world and story, and built the tension nicely as it set the stage for what's sure to be the main confrontation of Theta's journey. We get to know Theta a bit better on her journey across the ice, seeing her surviving in a harsh environment, and we get an insight into her head thanks to her pretty messed up nightmares.
But things are at their best once she reaches the outpost, and even though we're only there for a few pages the tension is palpable, with the cold, dark halls and empty rooms with small signs of combat reminiscent of the marines searching through the colony in Aliens. We know something bad has to be coming, and you're almost waiting for it to come around every corner.
It seems like this series has the potential to be really good, and this issue does show that. Hopefully, with conflict looking like it's going to be kicking off pretty quickly next issue, that's something that we'll get to see more of.
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