Read The Syn-En Solution for Free Online

Slowly, she pulled herself to a sitting position. Her fiber optic cable glowed orange. “Magnetic shields offline. Full stop calculations… incomplete.”
    Bei dug his fingers deeper into the round ports of the tactical bay. After rebooting the Starboard thrusters and stopping the Starfarer’s spin, he’d powered off the hub and ordered a reboot in one second. “Disengage from the com system.”
    Commander Keyes’s connection fell dark. “It was—”
    The next wave hit. Metal buckled. Bei diverted energy to increase the magnetic attraction of his floor to him and his crew. His skin felt raw beneath his uniform as he slid along the wall. Sparks sprayed in white bursts from the hubs before the room went dark. Even activating his nightvision upgrades in his ocular implants made no difference. He couldn’t see a thing. Something banged loudly in the vicinity of his feet. He hoped it wasn’t the commander being hurled across the room. Focusing on his hearing, he listened for Keyes’s breathing. Nothing. Damn.
    Tingles raced up his arms. Blue static electricity crawled over his armor, casting an eerie glow around him. A instant before the tactical hub hummed to life, Bei noted the change in the room. The Starfarer had stopped. So many dead and yet… His cardiac implant quickly compensated for the skipped beats in his heart.
    They’d done it.
    No synthetic enhancement needed. Data flooded into his cranial interface, now working properly. Emergency protocols quickly prioritized the damage and relayed implementation steps. Like the touch of a long lost friend, he felt the brush of other Syn-Ens in the fleet as captains, commanders, lieutenants and ensigns checked in through the wireless array.
    A groan came from near his head before an identification ping bounced off his interface.
    “Fricking implants.” Shang’hai’s voice growled through the darkness. She uttered a curse a second before he heard the scrape of metal against metal. “Sorry to miss all the excitement, Admiral. Stupid snap disconnect caused an emergency reboot. And humans think hangovers are bad.”
    He pinged her back, a sign of his sympathy. Emergency reboots fried circuits engineers had forgotten existed in an effort to prevent an electric surge from liquefying a Syn-En’s brain. “I’ve restored life support in inhabited areas, but radiation is rising and unless we can get the shield up, we’ll die of exposure long before we freeze to death.”
    “I’m connecting via the WA to engineering,” Shang’hai grunted. The soft rasp of a panel opening fluttered around the room. “Ninety percent of the hull is gone. Wardens are retrieving the larger chunks. Engines offline. Not responding to commands. Initiating manual override.”
    “ Starfarer’s com systems are down,” Commander Keyes hissed from his left. Light flooded the command deck emanating from her wrist. She set her detached right hand against the waistband of her trousers. “Stay.”
    The fingers looped around her belt and clung to her flat stomach.
    Bei grinned at the old trick used to disturb their human officers. Magnets had their uses, especially in battle when spare parts were needed and just lying around ripe for the picking. “I register four aft ships attached.”
    “They also report the least damage through the WA.” Shang-hai appeared in a blue glow as she removed her twisted synthetic right leg and tucked it under her arm. Using the captain’s chair as leverage, she hauled herself to a stand then hopped toward the ladder access near the briefing room’s entrance. “I’ve asked them to focus a five percent venting at the Starfarer’s hull. The heat should quicken the Alloy’s return to its programmed shape.”
    “Estimated time to restored hull integrity?” Bei found the emergency lights and powered them with the stored energy reserves. Orange light pulsed in the half-moon shaped room. It wasn’t much, but working by the light of amputated body parts had a