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This is the first of your three posts I've looked at. I'll get to the other two presently, but I want to give each its due attention so I'm not rushing. I'll try and get to the next one within 24 hours.
I think this is a very solid start to a long-form story. It does all the things it's supposed to in terms of introducing the characters and settings and it leads the rreader in to more complex things to come. I was engaged early on with Abe, who seems to be a guy with whom I can empathise. He's probably my gateway character to get to know stranger cast members.
It is certainly worth continuing and developing this tale.
A few thoughts based on the possibility that you might send this for a publisher's appraisal:
1. I've been caught out before by some publishers' slushpile readers' dislike for stories that "open with weather reports" - in other words where the opening paragraph tells us it was thundering or raining or icy or whatever as a means of establishing a mood. I don't see anything wrong with it myself, but I've leared to be wary of it because it seems to trigger off some kind of doctrinal reflex in some editors.
The "fix" is to shift the subject of your opening paragraph from the weather to theb effects, and to get to your POV character right away, eg,: Abe's boot splashed through the muddly puddle left by the recent squall...
Your second paragraph is a good opener too, starting with the most striking visual, so you could just change the order in which you introduce the descriptive elements and pull back from the headline, a towering junkyard of spaceships.
2. There are three places where I felt you were so excited to get to the next plot point that you flickered forward a few paragraphs. The first was where Abe sees his ship for the first time. You describe his discovery of the interior in good detail in the next section but I felt like i wanted some idea of what it looked like from the outside too, and his first view would have been the perfect time for that. You could use Abe's assessment to inform his judgement that it might have been a pirate vessel and so on, and to add weight to the saleman's dialogue after.
The second "jump" is harder for me to explain, but I felt there was a discontinuity just before She Rae shows up. The sudden seque from one bit of world-building exposition to the next, introducing a key character, felt hasty on my first read. I'm not sure what could slot in first to add a beat, bit it felt like something should leaven the two establishing sections of narrative.
One fix if you don't want to write any extra material would be to shift the chapter break to when Abe heads into Abel colony.
By the way, do you want the similar names Abe and Abel?
The third was getting Shen Rae back to the ship and away. having signposted possible ominous problems I felt that I'd blinked and missed a bit when there weren't any.
3. Another bit of less-than-encouraging feedback I've received about manuscripts is "where's the bang by page 10?" That's another dearly-held publisher's doctrine that a short way into the story, something has to happen to make readers sit up; not neccessarily a literal bang or fight, but some twist, some reveal, some event that moves things past set-up and worldbuilding. I don't really agree with this arbitary rule but I keep getting slammed by it.
In terms of your structure there are two big events that might be "the bang". There's finding Nena and meeting Shen Rae. Both of those are mostly dialogue discourse and self-introduction. There is nothing wrong with this. However, for "the bang" there are several possibilities avauilable.
Clearly we need to sympathise with Nena's plight and agree with the decision to keep her around. If she's somehow been stuck on that ship as part of the package deal, confined motionless on minimum power, or otherwise diminished in such a way as she needs physical intervention to rescue and restore (say key components have been pulled to restrict her actions or even disable her) then there's something for the cast to do, a tiny mini-adventure in its own right, and a show-not-tell way oif legitimising the dialogue that follows.
Shen Rae comes with quite a lot of backstory that will presumably drive later plot points. She's being hunted, but her meeting with Abe is quite civilised and amicable, even open and honest. Ramping up that sense of imminent danger, requiring each party to test the other a little more, helps set up the Fed recall demand etc.
A more radical solution would be a cutaway to enemies actually hunting her through the Station, counterpointing their closing in on the ship and the interactions of Shen Rae and the crew.
4. A really tough part of establishing an SF universe is finding ways of introducing all the neccessary information about tech and future history. I think you do a very good job on the tech parts here. The political backstory about the Outer Reach would be stronger if we hear about it somehow before Shen Rae appears and admits to her association.
It could be as simple as mentioning that some of the junkers in the yard were scrapped after yet another conflict in the Outer Reach, or a casual mention on the Station that trading licenses to the Outer Reach are being restricted. In a TV show there would be a newscaster talking on a screen at the back of a scene somewhere, filling in viewers about the latest rumours of Outer Reach atrocities.
In any case even this early in the story, when Shen Rae says she's from the Outer Reach, there's points to be won by the reader not thinking "Huh? Where's that? Oh, someone tells me in the next paragraph." but rather, "Outer Reach? Isn't that supposed to be some kind of trouble spot?"
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