Sneak Peek - The Last Angel: The Serpent's Garden, Ch 3 (Patreon)

Mresk had been working on interstellar units for seven eight-years. Even before the first alarm screeched in warning, he knew something was wrong and he was half ready when the xebec heaved like a bucking kalnos, the abrupt movement exceeding nominal inertial dampening and he was pitched into the wall, but he tucked his legs and rolled with the impact.

He could hear more impacts and cries of pain from further down the hallway; not all of the crew had been able to react, but their distress was secondary to the disaster that had just overtaken them. All around him Emolument groaned with an unmistakable sound, a noise like the hull of an ocean-diver compressing as the water around it tried its best to crush the small, frail sanctuary that dared think itself safe from the power of nature.

It was a sound he’d heard once before, five eight-years ago, when he’d failed so cataclysmically and nearly doomed his crew in the doing, and he already knew what had happened before his operations coordinator’s panicked voice burst through the comm.

“Port rip anchor failure!” the man’s voice peaked. “Backups non-responsive! The rip’s pulling at us and we’re being dragged down!”

If you were caught in a riptide in the ocean, you didn’t fight it. It was stronger than you and you would tire before you made any headway. Instead, you had to swim parallel to the current until you were out of it and could get back to shore. In the rip, there was no choice but to fight and hope you were stronger.

“Pull us out!” he ordered. “Prepare for an emergency breach and get all crew to their stations. Get us back into real space!”

The last time this had happened, Mresk had failed his crew, his ship and himself. He wouldn’t let it happen again. He galloped back towards the bridge, feeling Emolument strain and shudder with every step. The xebec was a good, strong ship but the rip was stronger.

Secondary systems started to fail. The lights fluttered as the local power grid debstabilized, but that was the elast of the hierarch’s worries. Emolument’s rip shields were next. Mresk felt them collapse. It was like a comforting pressure had just been torn away and the raw, undampened power of the rip poured across the xebec’s unprotected flank. Radiation alerts pinged and ticked. Around him, crew floundered. Some ran to their stations. Others, like him at one point long ago, were panicking. He barked orders, never slowing. His place was on command and he needed to get there as quickly as he could.

Metal groaned louder. He felt the deck shift underneath him. No, not shift; twist and Mresk froze. “Evacuate this area immediately!” he shouted, grabbing a young woman who’d staggered out of her quarters in nothing but a bath-wrap, still dripping water from her interrupted shower. “Go!” He shouted at her, shoving her towards the section’s blast door. “Go!” He grabbed a rating who’d been headed in the opposite direction, doubtless trying to get to his duty station. “Get out of here, go, go!”

He led the way. “Breach imminent!” he informed the bridge. “Deck 12, section Ausk! Get the rip shields back up!”

The next voice he heard was that of his subsidiary hierarch. “Widespread system failures, hierarch! We can’t restore them, and we’re inside an eddy – you have to get out of there! Get out and initiate an emergency seal! The internal forcefields will be able to hold!”

“Negative, there are crew in here! Get the rip shields back up!” He was past the breach doors. His handprint would close them. “Come on,” he shouted past the open doors at the desperate, terrified souls running towards him. “Come on!”

“Hierarch, the hull can’t take this! If we breach without the forcefields in place we could lose the ship!”