Blood Impulse

Part 21.4 - THE FATE OF SQUADRON 26

Sitran Sector, Flagship Olympia

The Olympia dropped out of hyperspace with the ease of a knife cutting through water. Her hypersensitive arrays automatically realigned themselves to the proper angle. Receiving data...

She pulled the signal in, then transmitted one of her own, sending an all-clear signal back to Command. The check-in took moments, and the instant it finished, the Olympia leapt back to hyperspace, her course set for the distant Liguanian Sector.

To the crew aboard, such maneuvers were barely perceptible, but Charleston Reeter felt them. Even this procedure, normal and expected, was now done without his permission, without his orders. The thought made him too angry to dabble in the pleasures of food or women.

He was a prisoner. A prisoner aboard the decks of his own ship. His jaw clenched at the very sight of the technology surrounding him, leaving a constant, dull ache. His cathedral, his Olympia had betrayed him. The ship was no longer his weapon, but Manhattan's thousand pervasive eyes and ears, the vile thing that granted her power in the physical realm.

It disgusted him.

Even if Manhattan someday abandoned this host, he knew he would never look at the ship the same again. It, designed to suit his preferences and desires, created solely to be his command, had become something horrid.

"Charleston," the voice echoed from the walls around him, emanating from every speaker in the room, "there has been an incident."

He focused on the newsfeed playing silently on his data pad. "I don't deal with faceless ghosts."

Withholding an electrical sigh, Manhattan projected her usual avatar into the room. He struggled to accept that she and his precious ship were now essentially one and the same. He refused to speak to her unless he returned to a more human appearance.

It was a worthless waste of her resources, but she allowed it. Reeter still served some use. "There has been an incident," she repeated.

He set the data pad down to give her his full attention, satisfied that he could force at least her appearance to his preferences. "Let me guess, the Prince sank the fleets you sent to kill him?"

"No, quite to the contrary, in fact." In this little incident, "He's taken his first loss."

A grin pulled at Reeter's lips. "You have my attention."

"It came at a cost," as all things did. "Squadron 26 has been exterminated."

"Exterminated?" He leaned forward, the glass of his desktop cool on his bare forearms. "What is that supposed to mean? Squadron 26 has been missing in action for the last fifteen hours." All three ships had failed to check in after aiding Tyler's forces at Sagittarion.

"I'm aware of that." The Firon had her sister ships had vanished before confirming their orders to join the hunt for Fairlocke's refugee fleet and had not been heard from since. The anomaly had been thought to be a communications error, until all three ships repeatedly failed to complete their following check-ins. "Another squadron has happened upon their remains." With a wave of her hand, she projected the debris field into the air, the raw extent of it filling the room.

He watched the holographic wreckage spiral through the air. It was beautiful in a way, like snow on a frigid night. But there was something so dreadfully wrong about it. The pieces were so small. Nothing truly identifiable remained. Typical battle damage left hulks behind, identifiable structures, but this looked like the ships had been put through a blender. "What happened?"