Sneak Peek - The Last Angel: The Hungry Stars, Chapter 29 (Patreon)

Spoiler warning, for those who want to remain unawares of big events, but this is something I've hoped to share as a teaser for a while, and Christmas seems like an opportune time. After all, 'tis the season for giving... though in that excerpt, that takes on a bit of a different aspect.

This is something I've had scripted for a while now, as some may realize. For others, this is a taste of what to expect coming up in in the chapter after next (assuming this one doesn't end up too big - here's hoping not). Hope you all enjoy, and have yourselves a wonderful day!

~

“Lakhesis,you will-”

Cerulean Two didn’t wait for the rest of the demand to come in. She immediately fired her starboard thrusters, heeling her ship-self to port so abruptly it pushed her inertial dampeners beyond safety tolerances for organics; had she any crew currently aboard, they would have been thrown with bone-shattering force into the bulkheads by the strike cruiser’s sudden maneuver. As it was, many of her drones who couldn’t activate their magnetic anchors fast enough or weren’t equipped with them, were damaged or rendered inoperable when the same fate befell them, along with any unsecured cargo and equipment.

The AI ignored the litany of alerts running through her mind, sparing only a fraction of her attention to deal with them. Nothing even moderately important had been damaged. Besides, in three point seven seconds, those were going to be the least of her concerns.

~

Commodore Oliver Charles’s eyes snapped wide as the Confederate alpha-cruiser swung about, its engines pushing it onto a new course faster than he’d expected. Even networked to his ship and crew, there was still a delay between order and execution. Lakhesissimply had to think what she wanted, and what she wanted right now was Draumstafir.

“Evasion!” he shouted, his lips forming the words as the command pounded through the link. Even at the speed of thought, it was going to be too late. “Brace! Brace for-”

-impact.

~

“Prophet bless,” whispered Keating as Lakhesis swung into Draumstafir’s flank, striking the upper starboard side of the Exploration Fleet vessel with the narrowed edge of its prow.

The Triquetran Navy’s Exploration Fleet used a layered mesh hull, structured to refract energy fire away and, like personal armour, harden at the point of impact to provide maximum protection against physical damage without incurring significant mass penalties. Other vessels, such as those designed and built by Red One, were built with materials science that less-developed civilizations might well have considered magic. Consequently, Lakhesis’s hull was stronger, her internal structure more heavily braced and her construction overall far more solid than Draumstafir. The result of her impact against the League cruiser was akin to that of a sword cleaving through flesh.

Draumstafir’s mesh hull attempted to protect the vessel but against the sheer mass and speed of the unexpected impact, it did nothing at all. Lakhesis sheared through the larger vessel without slowing, the strike cruiser’s angled hull acting as the sword edge it resembled, cutting Draumstafir completely in half.

Obed felt the commodore die, his terror and helplessness fading to nothing in the captain’s mind as Draumstafir died with him, the cruiser’s forward half hurled on a random course as the rear section, engines still firing, skidded across Lakhesis’s upper surface and started to cartwheel as its failing engines spun it around. Wreathed in atmosphere and debris, its hull marred by long scrapes gouged in its armour by the wreckage of Draumstafir, the alpha-cruiser swung through the spasms of the dying ship. That was when it spoke, its transmission broadcast in the clear, so that every soul within the system would hear it.

“I will not.”