Sneak Peek - The Last Angel, Siren's Song Chapter 3 (Patreon)

I've been working on Siren's Song this week, and hope to have this third chapter finished today, and edited and posted by the weekend. But we'll see how that plan works out. In in the meantime, here's a sneak peek at what's coming. Liam's life continues to spiral downhill, but his situation isn't the only one that's getting complex... though in this snippet, we focus on him and how he's dealing with things. Or rather, how things are dealing with him.

Enjoy!

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The shuttle was finally almost empty and Liam was one one of his final trips, glad to have at least one thing done and one fewer reason for the supervisors to complain about. His shift was about three-quarters done, and it didn’t look like he’d have to stay late, so today, at least, something seemed to be going right.

Liam set his rig down on the shuttle’s open aft deck, carefully tromping it to the substantially-reduced pile of cargo in front of him. He checked his suit’s settings to confirm everything was good and was about to reach for one of the final pallets, when something caught his eye.

The monitor screens in the shuttle’s bay were flickering. They’d been in sleep mode since he’d started working here, but static and corrupted text flashed across them. Liam frowned. What...?

Then he felt it, even through the rig. The vibrations of a shuttle’s drive coming on-line. Error messages attempted to screech at him, their intended wailing cries strangled into despondent, choked-out squawks as the ship’s safety imperatives were overridden and suppressed.

Panic spiked through Liam’s body. If the shuttle’s main drive engaged, even if it’s primary thrusters came on-line while he was still in it...! It was clamped down. The shuttle would tear itself apart in its berth, along with everything – and everyone, which meant him– inside it. “Emergency!” he tried to warn dock control.

There was a harsh squeal of static in his ears. The comm was down! No,he suddenly realized as his heart skipped several beats. Jammed.It was the Ghost. It was reaching out again.