Didn’t get a notification for this one – seems emails are on the blink.

I’m not sure about that last sentence. Aren’t they the same thing?

Not really. I’ll update that line in a bit to make what I meant a little more clear.

What are you using RO for? I assumed “radio operator” or similar, but it strikes me that it could be anything.

Radar Operator. I defined it back in “Ghost” but it passed kinda quick, so it probably just slipped under the radar.

(See what I did there?) ;-)

Ah – I thought so, but they could have been separate characters.

(And no, I think it passed below my detection threshold) ;)

And yup, the sequel email notifications definitely seem to be on the fritz. I didn’t see that you’d written a follow-up.

Sorry for the multiple posts, my vision has a hard time reading black on white.
Your punctuation is excellent, and not overused, making for a nice read , my eye’s ride the waves easily.

One thing, a pet peeve. I love that you use the sparingly. But your line, “Aye, sir,” came the reply, might be changed to his. You have already identified who the is in your first sentence i.e. male, so it might be relevant, to identify or not to identify. Or, did you mean to write, Harking looked at the RO, shaking his head ?, that would clear it up too.

Harking looked at the RO, shaking his head wouldn’t work, because that indicates it was Harking who shook his head. It wasn’t. It was the RO communicating, nonverbally, that there was nothing to report.

I think this may be the first time I’ve ever seen someone get pedantic over the use of the word ‘the’. In this case, it was not a grammatical mis-step, but rather a specific stylistic choice (and one, I might add, that sees fairly common and regular use in literature).

I hope i have to taken to many liberties with my sequel