Sneak Peek: TLA:A Chapter 13 and short story (Patreon)

Hey all. Just a quick update to my work. Been slowed in doing the edit of All the Little Lost.... but I've also been working on TLA:A Chapter 13 and this as-yet untitled short story. I figured I'd give everyone a little taste of each of them. Hope you enjoy!

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This was an execution.

That was the recurring thought running through Nasham’s head as he walked through CSFWV Chameleon’s Gaze.

The scout cruiser’s corridors were dark and silent. The ship’s reactor had been powered down, but the vessel was saturated with levels of radiation dangerous for non-Tribunes. Survey drones were orbiting the ship’s husk, damage control teams examining the specifics of the scout’s injuries while medical personnel stood by, ready to assist survivors. They’d rescued eighty-four so far. The cruiser had had complement of a thousand.

There would be no more survivors on this deck; the gravitational plating and inertial dampeners had failed while the vessel was in the midst of a high-energy turn, attempting to escape its murderers. Anything and anyone that hadn’t been fully secured had been hurled into the walls like an ungainly cannonball. Depending on how fast the vessel was accelerating, the level of damage was variable. Blackouts. Circulatory and respiratory failure from the centripetal force. Broken bones and pulped organs. In the worst cases, there was nothing left of the poor souls but a smear on the walls, a mural of pulverised viscera and liquefied bones.

****

Every time he killed her, she smiled.

He’d snapped her neck this time, so fiercely that her head was now on backwards. She lay on the tiled floor, her red eyes staring up at him, a grin on her lips. He could hear the last pitiful thumps of her heart as it struggled… struggled… and failed.

Blink

He was kneeling, one hand over his eyes. Every time he moved it away, he hoped not to see her. Every time, his heart broke a little more. She was standing there, intact and alive. The knife was in her hands. The blade was hazy, going from sharp and distinct to fuzzy and faint. It was in a state of temporal flux. At least, that was what he’d decided to call it. He hadn’t really had the opportunity to find exactly out just she was doing to it. All he knew was a blade that had once broken against his skin was now capable of drawing blood. She’d learned how to do that on the 570th time. By now, she’d mastered it. She could always hurt him, but now she could kill him. She never stopped trying. He’d broken his vow to never take a life one thousand, four hundred and twenty-five times. Just because she came back didn’t make it feel any less awful.

“Justine,” he said as he stood.

“Apex.” The way she said his name made his heart break.

Every time he asked her. He still hoped he could find the right words, the right way to get her to stop. One time, just one time. “Please.”

“I got a piece of you that time,” she replied.

“I’m getting closer.”

“Please,” he told her. “Stop this. Just stop it.”

“No,” she whispered. “Never.”