Actually I didn't find it _too_ awful...probably because it was so low down the ranking list that I was expecting it to be indescribably boring, and was relieved when it was just not very good. And at least it gives an explanation for the Doctor being so miserable for the whole of Nightshade, which is more than Nightshade itself ever bothered to do.

Ace is three years older, by the way, not five.

I always wondered if Arcadia was a nod to that Duran Duran side project of the same name, formed when Andy and John Taylor went to do the Power Station project with Robert Palmer.

Strictly speaking, this isn't Darvill-Evans first novel. It's his first Who novel, sure, but he used to be editor of the erotica line and he also wrote a book in that genre, to test his guidelines as he did here.

It's amazing how many Who writers started out in the erotica scene.

I believe Craig Hinton also wrote for Virgin's erotica line but I believe it was after his first few Who novels.

He did. I have it on good authority he wrote four.

And he's very embarrassed about it.

Rebecca Levene in DWM: 'Peter was already a published author when he wrote Deceit' - I notice she tactfully omits to say WHAT he was writing...'and [Deceit] was written for a number of reasons: he was testing his own guidelines, and he was showing writers how he wanted the New Adventures to be written.' - well, it certainly ended up a classic example of how NOT to do things.

Hmm. Checking that embarrassing Afterword, he says the same thing himself: 'I ain't easy on those guys. Uncle Joe Stalin's gulag maintenance programme got nothing on the guidelines I send out to writers' - so what WERE the guidelines, exactly? And how far were they responsible for the fact most NAs were so bad?

'It was, it turns out, a very worthwhile exercise' - maybe for YOU. Not for the unfortunate READER.

'We will of course use our influence to prolong the conflict, but nothing we can do will maintain the Daleks at viable deep-space battle strength for more than six years' - NOTHING? They're DALEKS! They shouldn't be being beaten by mere humans in the FIRST place! (Especially as the Doctor seems inexplicably disinclined to get involved in said conflict.)

And given how much influence the Spinward Corporation turns out to have with Earth's Government, isn't supporting THE DALEKS a bit too drastic a way to ensure that said Government keeps its nose out of their affairs for a few more years? It was sheer bad luck that a combination of stubbornness and friendship and suicidal determination and conveniently-cut-off messages resulted in Defries's ship going anywhere NEAR Arcadia, and even THEN the Corporation blew up said ship without any problems.

(Well, OBVIOUSLY Defries, Ace and Abslom Daak Dalek Killer made it to the planet's surface and foiled their Fiendish Plans, but the only way they'd've realised THAT was bound to happen is if they'd REALISED they were in a Who story, in which case they SO shouldn't have bothered with any Fiendish Plans in the first place.)

'She knew that Earth had always been the wealthiest and most exclusive of the planets' - ALWAYS? Even when it was choking to death on its own overpopulated pollution, as in The Mutants? (Um...when IS the Mutants? THIS is mid-twenty-fifth century.)

'Have they found out -' 'About us? I don't know' - hmm. If Christina thought that she (a lady) and Francis (a scribe) being lovers was such a defiance of custom that it was responsible for him being packed off on a journey to Landfall that few survived...why the hell did she spill the beans to the Prince ('Christina tells me you're not usually bashful. Not usually bashful, are you, eh? Like a game of forfeits, so I'm told, eh?') AND how the hell could he think anyone was in ignorance of their relationship after THAT, AND how come he'd got away with having loads of high-born lovers for so long?

What on earth is the POINT of giving soldiers ID implants if they can be easily removed from your body and inserted in someone else's without any problems?

'That wide-boy traveller on Heaven' - THAT'S the way Benny thinks of Jan?! They were good friends. They practically had SEX (very rare for Benny in THOSE days, believe it or not). He did the noble-self-sacrifice thing and EVERYTHING!

'I've never come across stairs in a space station before' - well, why the hell NOT!

Five was in a 'bath chair' in Castrovalva? And not, in any way, a common-or-garden WHEELCHAIR?

'A real cathedral, a place of worship built in the pre-industrial, superstitious interlude between the stone age and the stars' - lovely thought, but...who the hell d'you think you're fooling? Stone Age people were pretty superstitious (Orb! Worship Orb!). Cats are worshipping a homophobic Jehovah in the year five billion and fifty-three. Getting to the stars IN NO WAY cures humanity of its tragic delusion that it requires any deity but the Oncoming Storm.

'Not so much as a head cold or a hangover. Not for years. Not since before she left [the Doctor]' - Ace has SERIOUSLY never noticed this before? Even though she's a hard-boozing trooper? And whatever jab the Doctor gave her obviously doesn't work so well for Benny, who manages to clock up hangovers during her Doctor- AND post-Doctor-careers like there's no tomorrow.

Why doesn't the ship's doctor just TAKE Ace's blood while testing her instead of all this BARGAINING?

'Here she was, about to leave some Gallifreyan super-bug in the hands of a doctor who probably knew just about enough to realize what he was dealing with. And to spread it all over Earth-colonized space' - and the Doctor should perhaps have thought of THAT during his desperate (and surprisingly secret) attempts to prevent a recurrence of The Ark.

'Few survived the transmat' - shouldn't humanity have invented WORKING transmats by now? Or at least bought 'em off some aliens or something?

Ace searches the whole of sickbay before realising, by a process of deduction, that the LIVING WEAPON must be in one of the coffin-shaped capsules, aka the cryopods...? How stupid IS she!

'VERSION THREE' - and yet Ace promptly thinks 'time travel!' rather than 'clone!' to explain away the fact Daak is still alive despite blowing himself to smithereens?

ALRIGHT, HE CUT A HOLE! I GET THE PICTURE! YOU CAN SHUT UP ABOUT IT NOW!

Well, I suppose the Doctor suffering from amnesia was a little more original in these pre-McGann days...

'It infected the TARDIS, you see. And that meant it was in my mind, to...I've had to shut down the TARDIS and myself' - I think you're over-estimating the symbiotic link between Sexy and her Thief. House taking HER over certainly didn't mean HE was taken over too. And all this sensing-where-she-is going on in Deceit is fairly unprecedented.

'You needed me, so you let Jan die. And then you made me leave the TARDIS. I thought I was making the decision! But you wanted me out, and so out I went' - er...if the Doctor needed Ace, why did he promptly chuck her out, exactly? And why does Ace leap to this particular conclusion?

'She'd long ago consigned both Robin and his bicycle, and Jan and his snake tattoo to the lucky escape category of old lovers' - ouch. I mean, Ace was ENGAGED to Jan. He did the noble-self-sacrifice thing LONG before she had a chance to get sick of him, in one of the VERY FEW genuinely moving scenes of the NAs. She's still MADLY in love with him in No Future. Could Darvill-Evans not just have resisted the temptation to desecrate their romance? And given that he COULDN'T resist said temptation, shouldn't he have removed the still-so-in-love scenes from No Future?

'And all you can do is blame me for your boyfriend problems' - would any Doctor be REALLY reckless/stupid/self-centred enough to say this to a REALLY pissed-off marine (and old friend)'s face? Given that said 'boyfriend problems' consisted of him a) KIDNAPPING HER away from boyfriend #1 and b) sacrificing the life of boyfriend #2?

'But the tesseract was programmed to react as soon as I entered the Zero Room...You know, Ace, I feel as though I'm being manipulated again' - so has IMC (of all things) REALLY got the clout to interfere with the workings of Time Lord tesseracts or will we get another explanation...?

'I told her to stay in her room. She must be safe' - and, er, the Doctor thought PROFESSOR BERNICE SUMMERFIELD was the type to STAY MEEKLY IN HER ROOM LIKE A GOOD GIRL FOR SEVERAL DAYS because THE NEAREST MAN TOLD HER TO why, exactly...?

'Give her my love' - New-Ace doesn't strike me as the type to send ANYONE her love, let alone someone she knew only as 'Doctor-and-TARDIS-stealing-git'*.

*OK, so I don't exactly remember how Ace n'Benny felt about each other in Love and War, I may possibly be projecting the feelings I'd have about MY TARDIS-successor...

To be continued...

If everyone in this society is so incredibly short-lived, why do none of them show any urgency about having babies?

Gravity's near Earth normal, atmosphere is breathable - so Benny considers it 'almost suspiciously suitable for humans' - what, is she used to Sexy giving her a tour of uninhabitable planets, or something?

'I'm not sure I could live with the guilt, anyway' - Benny would rather starve to death than eat an animal?

'She had never seen a real castle before' - really? Didn't she get some old flame killed (turned into a tree. Whatever.) during her youth when clambering around in some booby-trapped Earth castle or other in Sword of Forever?

Benny would REALLY be stupid enough to mistake some idyllic agricultural scene (with totally the wrong sky) for Middle Ages Earth - just cos it's got a castle?

How come Ace has survived so long as a soldier if she takes so long to wake up when someone's yelling and smashing her door down?

'If only I could find Bernice' - yeah, if only either of you had one of those crazy futuristic MOBILE TELEPHONIC DEVICES...

Wouldn't it be QUITE SENSIBLE at this point for Benny to mention that she DOESN'T HAVE PLAGUE?

'Hell and damnation, they're going to shoot those things, Bernice realized. She couldn't think of anything to do or say' 'Footsteps were approaching. Bernice shrank into the armchair' 'She wished the Doctor was here' - look, I know she only recently started her TARDIS-adventurings but Benny led a pretty extraordinary life BEFORE then so should be a BIT less pathetic.

Benny sings a LULLABY so loudly to herself that the girl with the leather bag over her head chained up on the upper floor of the STONE CASTLE can hear her?!

Plus Elaine is REALLY good at snapping out of her weeks of catatonia when Benny arrives.

'By the Rod and the Sash, what have I done this time?' - No Doctor EVER says THAT sort of thing.

'Atmosphere. Good.' 'If the heat shields can take it' - what is humanity DOING in space if it hasn't even invented decent heat-shields on its spacecraft?

'The transmit journey had been as brief, uneventful and nauseating as she had expected' - if most transmat journeys killed, shouldn't her expectations have been a trifle less...optimistic? And if most transmit journeys killed, why do the Counsellors use transmats as a matter of course? (Honestly, this is what comes of trying to tie your book in with some stupid COMIC. Don't. Just...don't.)

Why on Earth, when trying to discover if Elaine's in the next cell, does Benny first pound on the masonry with her fist and THEN use the heel of her boot and THEN think to shout 'Elaine!'...?

'Landfall has always been' - why the hell would Francis say that when he KNOWS his people were originally colonists from another world?

'I don't know what Ace sees in him' - what the hell makes Defries think Ace sees ANYTHING in Daak? (I'm talking about BEFORE Ace yells 'Daak! I love you!' Obviously.)

There's one major problem with filling half your (over-long) book with battle scenes of Ace n'chums fighting off hordes of androids and hallucinations. (I mean, ASIDE from the fact that battle scenes are extremely tedious on the page unless the writer is REALLY good.) Pool has always made it clear that IT WANTS ACE ALIVE. Rendering all of said battles not only pointless but massively self-contradictory.

Why would it take Daak 'a few minutes' to kick the remains of the pilot out of the cockpit?

'"I'd rather not kill colonists." "That goes for me," Daak threw in, to Defries's surprise. "Me too, I suppose," Ace said, as if she didn't care' - great, the genocidal brain-damaged rapist clone has more respect for human life than ACE does?

Anyone else wishing she'd just been left to walk off into the sunset with the Seventh Doctor? (And what the •••• have they DONE to her on that COVER?)

The TARDIS is NOT 'oddly heavy'. Also, the Doctor can't sense its presence like this.

'Doctor, both you and the TARDIS have been going ga-ga for months. Ever since I've been on board. I began to think it was something to do with me' - but Ace SAID she was leaving cos the TARDIS was going well weird! And Benny's been in the TARDIS for months? But it NEVER took her to Earth?! And if the Doc's been like this for as long as she's known him, why should she assume it has anything to do with HER?

'Bernice thought she detected more than a suggestion of injured pride in his rigid stance. Escaping from prisons was one of his specialities, but this time he had conspicuously failed' - so GET A NEW SONIC, loser!

'Only a few miles, but it might as well be the other side of the galaxy' - THE DOCTOR seriously believes that getting to the nearby space station that the Counsellors keep going to is as impossible as tracking the TARDIS to the other side of the galaxy?

'We must let them steal the shuttle we've prepared for them' - well, all I can say is, it's REALLY nice of you to stock it with grenades for them to fight their way through your troops with.

'I'd like to think that at least one of my travelling companions had a functioning intelligence' - what a git. I don't mind him calling 'em stupid apes, but...TRAVELLING COMPANIONS?!

What's the POINT of Britta? Other than as a receptacle for info-dumps, obviously. And to please anyone who gets turned on by lesbian sado-masochism, which can't be THAT much of the readership...?

How come Benny pockets cheese when leaving the cell, when we're specifically informed that prisoners only get bread and water?

'Some of the universe is pretty much cut and dried. All of the past, for instance. Although that's still rather small, compared to the future. And there are long strands of fixed points, a bit like beads on long strings' - er, credit for thinking up the fixed points long before PROPER Who did, but what the HELL does THE DOCTOR mean by THE PAST?

'If you're thinking of nipping back a century or two and uncreating this interesting aberration of yours...' - how could Benny possibly think the Doctor would do THAT? Did she learn nothing from the destruction of the Seven Planets?

'The destruction of the Seven Planets would live with her forever' - well, I don't remember 'em crossing her mind during the last decade of her books n'audios?

'Ace felt very small, perched on the muscular thighs of this bear-hugging, hairy giant. Oh well, she said to herself. Lie back and think of - where?....You had to laugh, really. Perhaps it wouldn't be too bad. He was so big. And muscle's heavier than fat, too. If she could just stay on top...' - er, has Ace just resigned herself to getting raped rather than mess up the Web of Time by killing Daak? Couldn't she just have wounded him quite seriously with her surgical knife? Or yelled for Defries, who's well within earshot? Or just decided, SCREW the Web of Time?

'With eyes that weren't set in sockets but instead hung loose' - ah yes, I was wondering when you'd get round to doing SOMETHING gruesome with eyeballs.

'Giant prawns can't live in space. Well known fact. That thing's not real' - Ace never heard about The Invisible Enemy...?

'When Elaine had looked at her sister's body, the head had been empty. No brain' - how would Elaine know that skulls were supposed to contain brains anyway? Sure, Francis has illicitly taught her the rudiments of literacy, but basically she's a kid on a planet where everyone dies young and pig-ignorant.

'Daak was always the same: without reference to the creed, colour, gender or opinions of whoever happened to be around, he was rude, randy, rebellious and always ready for a fight' - how does Ace know? She hasn't seen Daak interact with any men. Or god-botherers. Or non-whites, as far as I know.

'Ace thought she could hear Defries shouting. She had never felt so helpless' - yeah, the boss you don't like getting temporarily trapped in a wall WOULD make you feel WAY more helpless than, say, watching the love of your life immolate himself.

'Ace had been in a situation like this before: in a VR game called Horror Walk 3. The funny thing was, this was less frightening, even though it was real' - great, now even Darvill-Evans's CHARACTERS are critiquing his giant-spider-padding as WORSE THAN A STUPID COMPUTER GAME.

'Last one in's a droid-bunking bastard' - they're still prejudiced against robot/human relationships in the twenty-fifth century?

'The front rank of androids, four abreast, had started shooting again. Four beads of light swept across the junction, each bearing blinding pulses of energy that burst against walls, floor and ceiling' - yeah, you're STILL not quite getting the whole 'don't hurt Ace and Benny' message, are you?

'One grenade, that means just one chance. We can't risk a throw' - Daak SERIOUSLY thinks it's better to TOP HIMSELF than to trust that he or Ace can throw a grenade straight at a force-ball-sized pitch?

'Good heavens! Yes, of course. It's been staring me in the face. Pool is an agglomeration of human neurons' - It took you TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-EIGHT PAGES to work THAT out?!

'She saw Daak lower the grenade and alter its programming....he hurled it, harmless now, into the void' - he WHAAAT! Instead of, say, KEEPING IT FOR FUTURE EMERGENCIES??

'Glory be, Bernice thought. He's up to something. He's been bluffing all along' - well, DUH. And since when has Benny been the 'Glory be!' type?

How fortunate that Pool spots the fake-memory the Doctor has (somehow!) inserted into Benny's head, but not her 'Hey, that's a fake memory!' thoughts two seconds later. On balance, it would have been QUITE A LOT more sensible for the Doctor to let Daak blow the Pool-brains to Kingdom Come instead of messing with his Companions' own brains and relying on Pool getting careless and not sending a search program down the cable before going itself.

And all to keep Pool's 'unique intelligence' alive - and imprisoned as a furious time bomb roaming the universe...? This is the guy who blew up Skaro, remember? I'm SO not convinced he's suddenly on a sanctity-of-life kick.

'When I think how much energy the TARDIS uses to create and maintain that simulacrum of a police box' - don't be ridiculous. It's her NATURAL STATE.

'Pool was incapable of telling lies. It was self-contained. It had no way of making objective judgements. It couldn't lie because it had no concept of truth' - does that make any sense?

Um...when IS the Mutants? THIS is mid-twenty-fifth century.

Mutants is 30th century, in the last decades of Earth's empire.

is she used to Sexy giving her a tour of uninhabitable planets, or something?

Benny is probably comparing it to all the planets she knows about in her own time.

The TARDIS is NOT 'oddly heavy'.

Isn't the Tardis's apparent weight variable? Her real weight was given as several hundred thousand tons, but she can choose how much of that weight manifests in the normal world.

Also, the Doctor can't sense its presence like this.

Some Doctor's can't, but that doesn't mean none of them ever can. The Doctor can gain or lose abilities when he regenerates, and the Tardis may be able to hide herself from his senses if she feels like it.

'Atmosphere. Good.' 'If the heat shields can take it' - what is humanity DOING in space if it hasn't even invented decent heat-shields on its spacecraft?

If the engines are good enough, heat shields aren't needed. Our space ships only got hot on re-entry because they're reliant on atmospheric friction to slow themselves down, but if the engines are good enough they can act as brakes instead. Just point them at the planet, firing them just hard enough to almost cancel out gravity, and the ship can drift down from orbit at a few mph, cool as a cat.

how would Elaine know that skulls were supposed to contain brains anyway?

Experience with animal carcasses? If she's spent much time around a butcher, she'll have noticed that pigs and sheep normally have a brain in their skull. Since human heads don't sound hollow when hit, it's a reasonable guess they've got brains in too.

It couldn't lie because it had no concept of truth' - does that make any sense?

Sort of. Not all false statements are lies; some are metaphors or fiction. To be a lie, there has to be an intent to deceive, which requires some concept of the truth.

Mutants is 30th century, in the last decades of Earth's empire.

Oh yeah. Still, Earth was pretty hideously overcrowded and polluted by the time of Colony in Space. (Obviously I'm going mainly by the infinitely-more-memorable novelisation, but given that the colonists were on that godsforsaken dump in the first place, AND were determined to sit in that quarry and starve to death rather than go back to Earth, I'm betting it wasn't all rainbows and kittens.)

Benny is probably comparing it to all the planets she knows about in her own time.

But Benny'll only have VISITED the suitable-for-human-life planets, surely? Sure, she KNOWS most planets don't have identical-to-Earth atmospheres, but we all know THAT and we still expect Sexy to land somewhere her Thief and his Pets can BREATHE.

Isn't the Tardis's apparent weight variable? Her real weight was given as several hundred thousand tons, but she can choose how much of that weight manifests in the normal world.

Well why didn't she choose to be a LOT heavier when those K9-decapitating Marsh-lunatics were using her as a battering-ram, then?!

Some Doctor's can't, but that doesn't mean none of them ever can. The Doctor can gain or lose abilities when he regenerates

Yeah, but generally speaking he gains abilities (and bodily organs. And sex-appeal.) as he goes on. And if TENNANT didn't notice Sexy was alive and well and right behind him in The Satan Pit until he accidentally bumped into her, I don't see why the Scottish Gnome should be able to give everyone a blow-by-blow commentary of her movements.

Also, the idea that what happens to her has such a profound effect on him too gets rather blown to bits in Shadows of Avalon where he doesn't bat an eyelid when she's, well, blown to bits. (Of course, something similar happened in Frontios, for anyone who's gonna get ridiculously pedantic about Shadows not having been written yet.)

and the Tardis may be able to hide herself from his senses if she feels like it.

She wants to play peekaboo with the Doctor? How old does she think he is, TWO?

If the engines are good enough, heat shields aren't needed. Our space ships only got hot on re-entry because they're reliant on atmospheric friction to slow themselves down, but if the engines are good enough they can act as brakes instead. Just point them at the planet, firing them just hard enough to almost cancel out gravity, and the ship can drift down from orbit at a few mph, cool as a cat.

Ooh, interesting. Admittedly this is an escape pod, so it might not have state-of-the-art engines, but it should bloody well have good heat-shields in lieu or what's the POINT of it?

how would Elaine know that skulls were supposed to contain brains anyway?

Experience with animal carcasses? If she's spent much time around a butcher, she'll have noticed that pigs and sheep normally have a brain in their skull.

She's a young female member of the aristocracy. So I'm guessing she hasn't spent her time hanging round with butchers.

Since human heads don't sound hollow when hit, it's a reasonable guess they've got brains in too.

Elaine MIGHT POSSIBLY have been vaguely aware that skulls had some squishy grey stuff in them, but as someone-or-other so wisely said in Audios: Eleventh Doctor: The Jade Pyramid: 'It's not immediately obvious that brains are what people think with.'

Not all false statements are lies; some are metaphors or fiction. To be a lie, there has to be an intent to deceive, which requires some concept of the truth.

Of course, in context - context being 'Can we really gamble our lives and the fate of the galaxy/universe/whatever and take the word of this crazy pool of brain soup?' - such philosophising is interesting but NOT MUCH PRACTICAL USE AT THE MOMENT THANK YOU SO MUCH DOCTOR.

Ooh, interesting. Admittedly this is an escape pod, so it might not have state-of-the-art engines, but it should bloody well have good heat-shields in lieu or what's the POINT of it?

Escape pods are used in cases of emergency, attack, ship destruction, explosions, that sort of thing. They could sustain some damage under those conditions, including damage to the heat shields that could degrade their performance.

Something like that happened with Apollo 13. The explosion that disabled their service module could also have damaged their heat shield. Since they had no way to check, and there was nothing they could have done to fix it anyway, they just crossed their fingers, executed their reentry procedure and hoped for the best.

Well why didn't she choose to be a LOT heavier when those K9-decapitating Marsh-lunatics were using her as a battering-ram, then?!

Perhaps she thought being a battering-ram would be fun. As 'Edge of Destruction' demonstrates, she has some pretty strange ideas.

She wants to play peekaboo with the Doctor? How old does she think he is, TWO?

Again, remember 'Edge of Destruction'. She definitely has some peculiar ideas.

She's a young female member of the aristocracy. So I'm guessing she hasn't spent her time hanging round with butchers.

Not when her parents were watching, anyway. Aristocrats under the influence of teenage hormones can get crushes on people their parents definitely wouldn't approve of.

Suppose when Elaine sneaked down to the kitchens for a midnight snack she spotted the butcher hard at work, his sleeves rolled up to keep them out of the blood exposing bulging muscles, from swinging an heavy axe when killing cows and sheep.

That may not appeal to you, but I understand some teenage girls would find the sight quite tantalising.

Escape pods are used in cases of emergency, attack, ship destruction, explosions, that sort of thing. They could sustain some damage under those conditions, including damage to the heat shields that could degrade their performance.

*Hastily double-checks* Well, there's no MENTION that the escape pod is damaged when the rest of the ship is, um...you know...*embarrassed pause*...ripped to pieces by the giant space-squid.

Perhaps she thought being a battering-ram would be fun.

I have to admit, even as I was typing that I couldn't help but think it might made a refreshing change from all that repetitive wheezing-and-groaning-through-time-and-space stuff.

And it's not as if she has moral objections to harming things, every journey she makes causes a rip in the fabric of the universe...

Suppose when Elaine sneaked down to the kitchens for a midnight snack she spotted the butcher hard at work, his sleeves rolled up to keep them out of the blood exposing bulging muscles, from swinging an heavy axe when killing cows and sheep.

In which case, she should have been a bit less hysterical AND catatonic when she saw the Counsellor cut a hole. (Alright, so it was a hole in her SISTER'S HEAD to remove her SISTER'S BRAINS, but STILL...)

Darvill-Evans in DWM: 'When Bex started at Virgin I asked her to use Deceit as a benchmark for submissions - as in my opinion, anything that was better than Deceit was probably worth considering. I considered the book to be a minimum standard for a Doctor Who novel rather than one of the greatest entries in the range' - what modesty! And so sensible. And yet we STILL got Parasite...

THIS is mid-twenty-fifth century.

Um, well it SAYS it is, but Bookwyrm points out that Deceit also says that 'Arcadia was colonised 379 years earlier, which must have happened after the Eurogen-Butler warship launch in 2112, meaning Deceit must take place after 2491. Mention of the Draconians means it has to take place after 2520...' - *sigh*