Totaled: A Starship Fairfax Prequel Story by Benjamin Douglas

Author:Benjamin Douglas [Douglas, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2017-05-28T04:00:00+00:00

5

A hand grabbed Dolridge by the shoulder—Caspar—and pushed him back through the doorway. She rolled through after him.

“Put it back,” she croaked, pointing at the broken console. No use. Her voice was an impotent hiss.

Instead, she grabbed the circuit board from him and lurched up to the console. He watched in bewilderment as she jammed it back into its slot. The doors closed again, but not before the blaster outside cut through the porthole. All the gas on the bridge rushed out, and the gas in the corridor was sucked along behind it. Fresh air followed from the vents, and when the door finally sealed, Dolridge and Caspar had air to breathe.

They sat, their backs to the door, gasping in lungfulls of clean oxygen. Dolridge struggled to his feet, balancing against the wall. Stars swam in his eyes.

“Marx,” he groaned into his com. “Come in. Marx? You there?”

A crackle of static, then nothing. Dolridge sighed heavily.

Caspar was fiddling with her comp device. “Hull breaches all over the ship, Sir. Looks like engineering has been spaced… lower decks are shot… and—” She paused, looking like she might vomit, and cursed.

“Well?” he asked.

“The bunkhouses, Sir. They’re gone.” She held up the device and he scanned the screen. Sure enough, the crew quarters had been breached and destroyed. A lifeforce scan revealed no survivors in the lower decks. Neither was anyone alive on the bridge, which was now open to the void.

She took the device back. “I’ll have the comp run a systems-wide diagnostic. Could this be a security malfunction, Sir? Ship thinking she’s cleaning house?”

Dolridge shook his head, jaw clenched. “I know exactly what this is. If you’re the praying sort, Caspar, set your spiritual affairs in order. Neither of us are leaving this ship alive.”

“Sir?”

It had been over a decade since he’d given up spying and joined a starship’s crew. But he still remembered his last mission, what he’d seen. A prototype squadron of space marine drones, developed on Old Earth and up for bid to anyone in the inner worlds. Send them out into space and they could home in on any target for reconnaissance or an attack, with no loss of life. The real treat was their AI, a massive upgrade to previous combat drones, which had substantial trouble operating in the realities of the void.

“Drones,” he grunted. “From Old Earth. Or whoever owns them now. Maybe Earth forces. Or the Sons. Hard to say. Doesn’t matter.”

“How do you know, Sir?”

“It’s their MO. Latching onto a ship’s hull and cutting through with prolonged blasting rounds. Once they’re in, all the atmo jettisons out into space.” Eventually the ship would be left an empty husk of space junk. An eternal graveyard.

Caspar’s device beeped. “Sir, a lifeform in the Captain’s cabin! Gray must be alive!”

Dolridge grunted and pushed off from the wall. His vision swam and he fall back against it. Caspar rose to her feet, eyes still glued to her device screen.

“I’m going to go check on him. You alright

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.