This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Proximal_Flame on 2024-10-29 21:28:20+00:00.

My patrons voted for it, so here it is. Another chapter of The Last Angel: The Hungry Stars. It was SFDebris who first pointed it out in his reviews: during a heist movie, if the audience knows the plan, then the plan will go horribly wrong. If the audience doesn’t know the plan, then the plan works perfectly. I wanted to try and do a hybrid approach, where the audience learns of the plan piece by piece and sees how it is accomplished. Things aren’t going horribly wrong or perfectly for the cast; they’re accomplishing their goals, but their losses are mounting.

And, like Echo said, all of this so far is the easy part.

Below is a snippet from the chapter as one more part of the plan is put into motion, and we see the League’s reaction to it. For the full scene and story, check out the links above and enjoy!

~

The first warning was the flashing of the hazard lights around the inner airlock doors followed by warning klaxons.

“Alert. Uncontained fire hazard detected. Emergency venting initiated. All personnel withdraw to designated safe rooms immediately. Alert. Uncontained fire hazard detected…”

As those words echoed through the cavernous hangar and the orange flashes of alert lights cycled like prison watchtowers, evacuating engineers and dockworkers, advancing security teams and armsmen details all looked up in horror as they realized what was about to happen,though they didn’t know the full scope.

Across the bay, every door, hatchway and access panel that could be remotely controlled was opening, cowering administrators and hidden hangar staff glancing at each other in confusion as their requests for information went unanswered and their link connections fragmented. Each of them would learn soon enough what was going on, most too late to do anything about it but scream, their voices swallowed by the roar of air cycling through hallways, chambers and bays with hurricane speed.

Aboard Wolfssegen, Commander Briem was trying to hack into the hangar’s controls and override the orders. Three ships. Three Observers and three cyber-specialist teams. They should be able to-

“Commander!” Lieutenant Commander Walstrom, Wolfssegen’s Computer Warfare chief,said. His expression was strained with the frantic admission. “They’ve severed the wireless access points to the hangar’s systems. We’re trying to route around them, but-”

Ottie didn’t need to hear the rest.*We don’t have the time.*Her hands balled into fists. Warnings of imminent cerebral-cyber connection disruption pulsed in her mind. She wanted to do something about them, but the surge of fear and anger that came with her sudden realization was too strong.*They knew where to hit us.*This wasn’t a random terrorist assault or some desperate, vindictive flailing from defeated infiltrators.This was calculated and planned, and whoever was doing this, they weren’t done yet.

“Security Team Barton is ready to deploy,” Sackton put in hurriedly. “They can take a portable extender and get us back in contact with-”

“No,” Briem told her,her voice barely more than a whisper. She glanced at her confused second officer from the corners of her eyes. “It’s too late.”

~

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