The emergency sirens inside Hospital Barge Solace-04 had barely subsided. Just then, the central sky scrubbers began to cough.
It wasn’t a clockwork failure. A foul, oily mist, smelling of rotten shellfish, burnt copper, and decomposing organic sulfur, began to hiss from the ceiling vents. Inside the triage wards, patients who had just been steadied began to cough wildly, their skin flushing crimson as their breathing passages seized with acute bronchospasm.
Arthur Vance stopped dead in the companionway leading to the docking boat ramp, his Zeiss Loupe instantly rotating its triple prisms to analyze the aerosolized specks drifting through the air.
AIR QUALITY ALERT: Living CONTAMINANT DETECTED TOXIN PROFILE: CHIMERIC SIPHON-BLIGHT [AEROSOLIZED] AGENT: BIO-Man-made TETRODOTOXIN + AETHER-ACID SOURCE: COMPARTMENT 3 WATER-FILTRATION CYCLER LETHAL PROJECTION: 400 PATIENTS IN 00:08:45
“The viper-squids didn’t just breach the hull to kill soldiers,” Arthur realized, his razor-sharp mind connecting the careful clues instantly. “They were a diversion. They seeded their rotting egg-clusters inside the main life-support water-straining intake.”
Behind him, Surgeon-Commander Lauren Drake stumbled out of the ward, her hand clamped over her mouth as she coughed against the rising fumes. “Arthur... The whole air-flow grid is compromised! The straining cycler is pumping boiled away chimera bile straight into the oxygen supply!”
