So, our good Catholic is experiencing the burn of conflict between the "teachings" of Mother Church and the realities of her own gender "gifts." (Don'tcha just love euphemisms like "gender gifted"? Sort-of like "sanitary engineer" or "vertically challenged"...) I love it how Tina goes to the trouble to set her colony far in the future and on a planet far away, tells us how it devolved from a spiritual group something akin to the Amish into a rigid theocracy with an entrenched ruling priesthood, and then blows her efforts to remove her story from any known earthly religious institution by including lots of Bible quotes.

As if her story didn't drip irony enough from that, Tina adds more satire to the mix by having her main character (Goodman, who, though considering hirself to be a "good woman," proves not to be a personification of Prudence) discard hir acceptance of hir isolation as a test of hir faith at the earliest opportunity, when s/he pours out hir bitterness to a machine intelligence that will interpret hir protestations quite literally. The consequences for the rest of humanity, composed as it is of people who mostly tend to treat the "gender gifted" as something less than human, is something that may prove to be as satisfying to the reader as to the author. This is not the sort of overt humor that would tend to cause the reader to laugh out loud, but a sly thrust at The Church in particular and people in general, that ought to bring a smirk at the least, and perhaps maybe even a giggle or three.

Tina, I have read a few of his Berserker novels. You have  captured the  flavor of the series perfectly. Me, I wonder what would happen if this Berserker was to meet Babylon 5 or the Doctor. I can just imagine the misadventures from such a meeting.

TINA, I USED TO READ THE BESERKER SERIES. THOSE MOUNTAINS OF METAL WERE THE FORERUNNERS OF THE DEATH STARS. I DARE GEORGE LUCAS TO DENY THAT. STAR TREK HAD ITS OWN VERSION IN THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE. THAT BESERKER WAS A FORERUNNER OF THE EVEN BIGGER VERSION SEEN IN THE NOVEL VENGENCE. ME, I LOVE THE ORIGINALS. THERE IS SO MUCH STORY POTENTIAL IN THEM. THE WAY THIS MODEL WAGES WAR ON LIFE IS SO DELICIOUS. THOSE POOR SELF GUYS THAT SENT OUR LADY OUT TO THE STATION MUST REWRITE THE RULES SO WOMEN CAN RUN THINGS. NOW OUR LADY FRIEND CAN RETURN BECAUSE THE REASON FOR HER EXILE IS OVER

Nice story, Valentina!

Of course, fans of Star Trek: The Original Series know this story as the episode "The Doomsday Machine", and was also featured in one of the novels, but I don't recall the title.