A new chapter for The Serpent’s Garden, tying off (for a while) events at Depot 15. I debated interspersing this with what was happening in Three Oceans and Meer Colhara, but that made the timeline wonky as the former and the latter will happen over many days and the situation with Depot 15 is one of hours. Besides, I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of events aboard Ascendancy to jump around quite so much.
This section is one of the parts that has been redrafted the most as characters and events shift to juggle around who does what when and how. Hopefully you enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. Below is an excerpt as Elint explores a vessel. Sabein did so earlier, but their circumstances and experiences are going to be much different…
For the full chapter and story, check out the link above and enjoy!
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The first place Elint stopped was a small mess hall. The computer system was only intermittently functioning; its basic interfaces were lagging and often non-responsive. Primary systems appeared locked. He still hadn’t encountered a single soul, though he’d been travelling through crew decks towards what he thought were lift cars that would take him to the command level. He should have met someone by this point, but it was like everyone had collectively decided to leave their posts and hide like children playing find-and-grab.
Elint looked inside the mess. His sense of unease didn’t get any better at what he found there. There was still food on the tables and dining slings were pushed back as if those present had risen abruptly from their meals and never returned. More unsettling than that was that every plate and drink was cold. The food had been sitting out for hours and no one, not even one of the interstellar unit’s own servicers, had returned to clear the tables.
Suppressing a shiver, the young man continued through the corridors towards the elevators. Almost everything about Pledge of Sedulous Ascendancy felt normal. The lights were on, the vessel showed no signs of damage. The only hints that anything was wrong was the flickering on a handful of computer screens and the complete lack of crew. To be fair though, one of those was a much larger issue than the other. His fingers rapped nervously on the stock of his carbine. He didn’t feel comforted by its presence, but he felt even less comfortable being unarmed given everything he’d found – more specifically, what he hadn’t found.
He tried his comm, but received no signal. That worried him more than anything else, especially given what Sabein had gone through. He’d hoped to be there when she woke up, but she’d passed through the worst of it and they needed to find out what was happening with Pledge of Sedulous Ascendancy as quickly as possible. If there were any other surprises in store for Elint and his people, they needed to know if the UTC vessel was an asset or a hazard and he was the only one who could go.
Part of that, of course, was male pride. It felt wrong to send a woman in his place, but he could justify that on several grounds. First, he had more combat training than either his operations solutions coordinator or engineering solutions coordinator. It didn’t qualify him to lead Venators by any stretch, but it gave him a little more experience in such situations. Pursuant to that was that, yes, as a male he was larger and stronger and if the worse should happen, then those attributes could be valuable. The third was the most pragmatic of all. Discounting any consideration of physicality matters of recent injury, Tinsay-Wroeth was a computer systems specialist and Sabein-Dresh was an engineer. Despite his position as intendant prelate, between the three of them, he was the most expendable.
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