Ao3 Lower Decks Novels & Stories

locations, not traveling through space as much as jumping over and around it. Beneath the deck, the command deck is glowing as bright lights twinkle like multi-colored stars. Two of my lieutenants are awaiting instructions as my mate and I take the helm. Ona presses a button, and four levers slowly rise from the control panel. “Wait for it,” I command, watching the dials move as I hear the shielding click into place. “Just a few more breaths.”

Videl.. The crossing felt like driving into the mouth of a storm that refused to break. The amphibious Breakers—low-profile, heavy-armored vessels designed for stealth—cut through the black water of the channel with a predatory hum. Inside the lead vehicle, the air was pressurized and silent, save for the rhythmic clicking of Oliver’s keyboard. For thirteen years, this stretch of ocean had been a graveyard. The energy field used to scramble navigation systems and shut down engines, leaving anyone who tried to cross to drown in the dark.

CRITICAL COLLAPSE IN NINE MINUTES. "We don't have time for a reunion," Caleb growled, his mercenary instincts instantly locking back into place as he hauled her to her feet. He handed her a spare tactical sidearm from his thigh rig. "The central AI core is on the lower sub-deck. It’s executing a full fortress self-destruct to ensure the Generation Two data doesn't leave the trench." "It wants to bury Arthur's future with us," Ava said, her voice turning into pure, unyielding steel. "Let’s go tear its heart out."

, or deck, but one of the smaller ones, since it was topside rather than lower down. The deck was split into four sections, each of which duplicated the others. The technicals spent each watch sealed into their own pod - an arrangement that made it virtually impossible to kill all of them with a single missile. Skene felt at home in his U-shaped console - which made sense, since nearly all of the previous two years had been spent there. A single light blinked on and off, his right index finger tingled as a mild current passed through it, and a tone sounded in his ear. Electromechanical activity had been detected somewhere in the darkness ahead. The sort of activity produced by a Class III or

A loud bang distracted me from my conversation. The rest had walked through the door and Xael and Luzo joined us quickly. "She's such a bitch." Luzo said with an annoyed tone. I didn't know if she meant Niran or Rana but it didn't really matter. They were both bitches in their own way. As if on cue, both walked through the door with Adrian right behind them. I immediately averted my gaze. "The deck is big enough to hold half the army. The cannons at the top can shoot at top speed. They can bring down any attacking force." The servant announced proudly.

Kael's pov That frightened me more than explosions ever could. Maia walked ahead of me through the lower access levels, her steps steady despite everything that had just happened. She did not look wounded, but I could feel how tightly she was holding herself together. I stayed close enough that my shoulder almost brushed hers, close enough that she would know I was there without needing to look back. Neither of us spoke. The corridor opened into an abandoned operations deck overlooking a section of the city core. Transparent panels stretched from floor to ceiling, revealing layers of infrastructure and traffic far below. Screens along the walls flickered with raw data feeds, uncensored and f

Glowing red markers highlighted each section of the platform. "The structure has three main levels," Elias reported, his voice steady above the drone of the machinery. "The lower pontoon level houses their submarine dock and underwater escape hatches. The mid-deck serves as the mercenary barracks and heavy weapons depot. Valdez himself is located in the main command center on the upper helipad deck." "Anti-air defenses?" I asked, checking the high-caliber sidearm holstered at my thigh. "Four modern automated turret cannons and two surface-to-air missile batteries," Elias said, with a dark smile on his lips. "However, Grandpa Thomas's naval fleet has already deployed electronic jamming drones

I was just looking forward to any kind of conversation. Jace pushed open the doors and I almost sprinted past him, so eager was I to get into a new room. I stepped in and froze in wonder at the floor-to-ceiling shelves of books as far as the eye could see. Directly in front of me was an open space where a long, polished, wooden table and chairs sat in front of a large stone fireplace. It was beautiful. Behind the table rows and rows of bookshelves ran to the back of the room. They looked like the perfect place to find a quiet spot to hide away in with a good book.

POV DARLENE The descent into the West-Abyss was not a fall into darkness, but a plunge into a clinical, white-tiled void where the air tasted of ozone and sterile ink. While the North’s Abyss had been a graveyard of forgotten screams, the West’s version was a Vault of Unrealized Gains—a place where the High Council stored the potential of every shifter they had ever "optimized" into a doll.

The command bridge of the Valiant’s Dawn, the Reapers' flagship dreadnought, hummed with the steady, heavy vibration of four anti-gravity turbines. Outside the floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass viewports, the midnight skies above the Eastern Trench were a churning abyss of black clouds and relentless rain. Below us, three thousand feet beneath the storm-tossed surface of the ocean, the red glow from the trench was no longer just a flicker. It was a massive, bleeding scar across the sea floor, illuminating the dark waves from below like a submerged volcano on the verge of eruption.