Blood Impulse

Part 25.4 - A DEAL

Twenty-three years ago, Rico Sector, Knight Industries System 01, CT Titanica

For minutes, they sat, staring up at the weapon above them. No one cried. No one screamed. No one begged to run. It would have been pointless.

Menaw, the proud, once-charismatic leader of this protest sat in his chair, seeming to shrivel up more the longer he was made to watch the debris twist and turn around them. The Titanica's panoramic windows revealed everything with horrifying ease. No matter how far away it truly was, no matter what the wreckage was made from, he could only see bodies. Every dark shadow in the haze of dissipating smoke was a person that he had brought here and inspired to die.

They had believed in him. These people who had answered his cries protest, these people had stayed here, believing they were safe in his crass overconfidence. And that made them as much his victims as they were the Bloody Singularity's.

"Captain," someone called, the voice of the living now sounding so unbelievably fragile. "We're being hailed."

She never specified who it was from. There was no need. There was only one other functional ship left in this system. "Answer it."

When the communication appeared, the bridge of the military ship was horrifyingly tidy. There was not one item out of place. The frame was dominated by the controls of a well-oiled killing machine. Standing alone among a cadre of pale, blank crewmen, the ship's commander didn't announce himself. He didn't demand anything. He only said, "I am willing to make a deal."

Broken, Captain Menaw managed a chilling outward calm to match Commander Gives'. "I'm listening," he answered, barely registering that he was still alive.

"You will leave this sector, you will never return, and you will destroy the records of your stay here." He skimmed the raw and desperate expressions of the Titanica's crew before settling again on Captain Menaw, his position obvious as he sat in the traditional blue suit of civilian captainship. "You will tell no one that you were here, and if someone asks, you will tell them that you have never met the Singularity except in distant passing." They would hold themselves to complete, unbroken silence for the rest of their days. "You will swear to do these things on each and every one of your lives, and I will allow you escape with those lives."

He drilled Menaw with his gaze, "But remember this, if I ever hear any word of what happened here today, I will tell Command that you are radical separatists. Then, the biggest, last manhunt you will ever see will spread across the worlds. And it will not stop until you. are. All. Dead." He pronounced those last words very clearly, ensuring that it was more than a promise, simply the prediction of a possible future where one of them, any of them, opened their mouths. "Am I clear?"

Life had all but fled Captain Menaw, leaving him numb. "Yes, sir," he answered in a dead tone, eyes flickering with the shadows of corpses only he saw outside the windows.

"Good," Commander Gives answered, his voice stone cold. "You have five minutes to get out of this sector." He ended the communication without bothering to specify what would happen if the Titanica failed to disappear within that time.

The lone survivor of a protest once a hundred ships strong vanished into subspace as soon as her FTL drive was charged. They called it a deal with the devil, but none of the crew, not even the fiercest defenders of the protest, intended to utter a word. They knew it would be their death, and a few hours later, a young Dean Merlyn found the once-unshakable Captain Menaw in his quarters. Shot by a gun still clasped in his own hand, the failure of his protest and massacre of his followers too much for him to bear.