LITERARY ANALYSIS: ALLIANCE by: S.K. Dunstall

excerpt from Alliance:

"A dark shape suddenly obscured the stars in front of Kari Wang. She pulled up midtumble, trying to work out what it was.

The chatter from the bridge continued.

 "There's no line eleven because it's a new line."

Then she realized. It was a ship.

Kari Wang opened her suit comms and cut across the chatter. "What in the lines are you doing on the bridge? Why hasn't someone said there's a ship out here yet?"

The talk stopped.

"No, ma'am," Kelan said after a two-second delay to check the boards. "There's no ship out there."

Another  black patch appeared among the stars.

"There are two ships out here now," Kari Wang said. She gave the coordinates as she fired her jets to raise herself above the ship. Sure enough, there was a black patch on the other side. "Three. Find them."...

"Looking, ma'am," Kelan said. "Still nothing."

What could hide a ship so well that only the naked eye could see it? "I don't like the way they're positioning themselves," Kari Wang said. It looked like an attack pattern to her. "Get our gunners ready." She gave coordinates of the third ship.

"Although I have no idea how far away from us they are." Visual references were almost useless in space when you had nothing to relate them to.

She heard the order go out, felt the ship mood change.  Five minutes to get back, and she'd never felt so helpless i her life.

Four minutes.

"Still no-" Kelan said, then, "Shit. They've uncloaked." Alarms started  clamoring. "That's some cloaking device. And it's four ships, not three."..."(Pg 7-8 S. K. Dunstall).

Already at the beginning of the book the character named Kari Wang, the captain of the ship, has spotted unknown ships in the distance and is giving orders to her people while leaving the ship. Her people could not locate the ships though Kari Wang could clearly see them in the distance. To her they seemed to form an attack formation. When the ships finally declocked the people finally saw the ships and were then shocked and terrified. I loved how the author wrote this scene it made me as scared as they were. The author held the suspense by varying their sentence structure. They would write short sentences when they were wanting to have some suspense. Then the diction within the characters voices you can feel that they have a hint of confusion, shock, and fear. This excerpt also introduces the reader to some jargon the characters might continue using thought the story. For example the lines are a frequency like thing where few people can actually read and talk  to somehow, so that it can be used to their advantage. People who have this ability are called the linesman.