The Ghost Plague by Ben Wolf

Author:Ben Wolf [Wolf, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: X27
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2021-06-22T04:00:00+00:00

Admiral Sever took one final look at the screens in the bridge before he abandoned it entirely. Vesh had failed. Now the life-support systems in the bridge had ceased, and the room had grown bitterly cold as oxygen stopped flowing to the space.

It shouldn’t have been a problem; they should’ve been able to force the doors to remain open and allow the rest of the ship to provide air to the bridge, but some sort of containment failsafe had activated. They’d been forced to either leave within only a few minutes of the initial alerts blaring at them, or they could stay and risk death by freezing and suffocation.

What Sever would’ve given at that moment to have an android among his men. The android could’ve stayed behind and continued to operate the bridge, unhindered by the lack of atmosphere inside. Perhaps the android could’ve rerouted the ship toward the nearest ACM fleet, too—another area in which his men had failed him.

Now the bridge doors were slowly shutting before his eyes as he fumed, and a second set of heavily armored doors shut overtop those. A dial in the center clanked several times, and ascending blue lights in the center of the doors began to glow. When the final light blinked on, they all turned red, sealing Sever and his men in the corridor leading up to the bridge.

Sever cursed. What should he do now?

Without Vesh to override the changes to their navigation, he couldn’t redirect the Nidus toward the nearest Andridge fleet. They were still heading to Grostonia-13, according to the ship’s navigational systems. All in all, it was far from the worst possible outcome, but it wouldn’t dig him out of the hole he’d tossed his career into.

No, the only way to do that was to bring the weapon—these nanobots—to Andridge directly, himself. With the Avarice gone, he had to have something to show for that foolish sacrifice. If Vesh took them to Grostonia-13, he would receive all the credit, and Sever would take all the flack.

Perhaps it was a moot point now. No one could access the bridge anyway—not with the life-support systems down.

But ships like this—literally floating cities—had redundancies on top of redundancies. Backup life-support systems reinforced primary systems in case of failures like this one. And unless the ship’s architects were absolute morons, the redundant systems wouldn’t be housed in the same building as the primary systems.

Unless the Ikari had taken out the redundant systems as well, they should’ve activated by now. The bridge should’ve remained open and accessible.

So what had happened?

“I want four men guarding this door at all times.” Sever pointed at four of them. “If they reopen, go inside and resume operations for as long as the bridge can sustain you.”

By now it was nearly morning in Coalition Standard Time. Sever could tell by the weary looks on his soldiers’ faces and the fatigue settling into his own body as well.

“Sleep in shifts if you have to, but do not leave this door unguarded at any point.

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