A Spoopy Love Affair With Books

So, the story opens with space Artful Dodger running a Serenity-type scam with his band of teenage misfits in tow. They're intercepted by a Spectre from Mass Effect (here, an ECHO) who ominously warns them that their space kingpin is going to have an interesting job for them, and he wants in on it. Things go typically Firefly-ish from there, and get effed to hell. Back at their home base, the kingpin, or space Bill Sikes if you will, and there's reason to stick with the Oliver Twist analogy, gives them the mission, and they consult with space Fagin before they're off to space Bermuda Triangle. And then, BAM! Wow, it turns into space survival horror, and everything gets more interesting. They travel through a Mass Relay from Mass Effect (seriously, they're even made with unknown methods and material by an ancient race. Was it the Protheans?) and take the Serenity into space Bermuda Triangle, where weird things begin to happen.

They're there to salvage the Event Horizon, and burst of white noise with voices mixed in come over their intercoms at unpredictable interludes. Suddenly, the proximity alert goes off and they almost run right into the ghost ship, which didn't even seem like it had been there a minute ago! (Wow, this really is Event Horizon.) They go aboard and see that the place has been totally Philadelphia Experminet'd, and gnarly bodies rest half in and half out of walls. And that's when they run into Newt from Aliens. That's the first 109 pages.

And it might seem like I'm being snarky about it being derivative, but I'm actually interested to spot all the influences. And, hey, as a friend said the other day, Star wars is sort of like Gilgamesh fanfic, so making it modern pop culture references doesn't devalue it. Liking it so far better than I thought I would.