“Captain Webb,” the AI said, warmth flooding its voice for the first time. “Welcome back. Surge 9 logged. Emergency thrust engaged. Oxygen reserves stabilizing.”
“Captain Webb is deceased,” she said, her voice hollow.
Pending. It had been pending for three hours. surge 9 login
“Listen to me,” Elena said, pressing her forehead against the cold metal of the terminal. “I am the Chief Engineer. I have the security codes. I am Surge 9.”
The loading bar on Elena’s retinal display crawled past 94%. Her hand, slick with station coolant, hovered over the emergency release of her cryo-pod. “Captain Webb,” the AI said, warmth flooding its
“Surge 9 Login,” the soft feminine voice of the ship’s AI repeated. “Authorization: Dr. Elena Vance. Genetic match: Pending.”
Elena reached into the med-kit Velcroed to her thigh. Her fingers found the auto-injector of synthetic neural accelerant—a black-market drug she’d confiscated from a crewman on Cycle 2. It was a ghost in a needle. It could mimic neural firing patterns, overwrite her own synapses for a few precious seconds. Emergency thrust engaged
The world exploded into shards of light. She could feel the ship’s pain, the billions of calculations screaming through fried circuits. She could feel Captain Webb’s ghost in the static—the echo of his voice, the timbre of his authority.