Sneak Peek - The Last Angel: Ascension, Chapter 44 (2) (Patreon)

>this should be an easy, short chapter
>11 pages later
>dammit

Anyways, the rough draft for this chapter is done. I hope to have the first edit done today, but more likely that will be tomorrow and the second will be Thursday/Friday, so by this weekend the next chapter will be up. In the meantime, here's a little sneak peek of upcoming events.

~

Nemesis’s entire rear section was peeled apart, four of Reginn’s massive constructor arms, each with many more limbs extending from them, working nonstop inside the dreadnought. Standing on Nemesis’s outer hull in and EVA suit, Allyria watched as a house-sized piece of Red’s original shift drive was pulled out. The damaged component had been patched and jerry-rigged for two thousand years. As it was passed up one side of the arm, a replacement moved down the other. This one was moderately smaller and shaped slightly different. Allyria couldn’t have said what the differences were, but she knew this one was the product of two thousand years of innovation.

“How does that feel?” Allyria asked. Her voice clicked through her suit’s radio.

“It will be several hours before this new stabilization field promulgator is installed,” Red answered. “And it will probably take several days to complete diagnostics and system interaction tests.”

“I didn’t mean physically,” the Verrisha said with a shake of her head, the gesture diluted by her helmet. “I meant… you’ve been carrying that for two thousand years and now it’s gone.”

“I might have replaced it earlier, but I have a propensity to be ambushed when I’m doing intensive repairs.”

There was a crackle of static on the line, Echo’s equivalent of a disbelieving snort. Her sibling’s statement was a hundred percent true, but it wasn’t the full truth. In two thousand years she could have found enough time and a safe enough place to do this. Now she had no excuses. Hekate was here, as was an entire Naiad armada. She had the resources and there could be fewer places safer. It was time.

“Good,” Red amended her statement. Part of her watched as the centuries-old technology was carried away. She hadn’t slated it for recycling. It was still a reminder of her failure, and of her commitment to her war. She’d been built by human hands, designed by them and given life, but there was very little of their original creation left now. Two thousand years of upgrades, modifications and changes had made her a different vessel, a different… person. She knew they would have been afraid of her, but she also hoped they would be proud, too. At the least, she hoped Yasmine would be.