Blood Impulse

Part 36.4 - SHAKEDOWN

Mississippi Sector, Battleship Singularity

Admiral Gives barely gave the stars a moment of consideration. Training dictated he move out and reseal the airlock, since it was a vulnerability as long as it was open. So, he grabbed the magnetic anchor from his belt, twisted the ring on its base to activate it and felt it whir as the electromagnets within used electricity to build their charge. Then, keeping his feet planted on the edge of the airlock, he reached out and stuck it to the hull, tugging on the cable to make sure it was secure.

Only then did he pull up his heels and disconnect the mag-boots. Then, with a hand on the cable, he kicked gently off into the void. He drifted for a moment, moving further and further from the ship's flank even as he stayed alongside her course. Drag did not act in space, and the ship was under no acceleration, so it was possible to fly alongside, even if only for a moment.

Soon enough, the slack he'd allotted the cable ran taut and it jerked his drift to a stop. Then, with a tug, he pulled himself back towards the ship and landed feet-first on the hull, feeling the mag-boots reactivate as he bent his knees to absorb the force.

'You know that's not how you're supposed to do that,' the ghost told him. The magnetic anchor was supposed to serve as a safety, lest someone lose contact with the ship while making the awkward climb from the airlock's orientation to that of the hull.

He reached down and grabbed the magnetic anchor, clipping it back onto his belt so it didn't drift away. 'Is that your way of telling me that you aren't going to come get me if I drift off?' Most experienced sailors preferred to jump and tug themselves back with the anchor, safety regulations be damned. Clambering from the airlock to the hull using mag-boots quickly got annoying.

'I didn't say that,' she said. 'I was simply under the impression you were trying to avoid Pflum's lectures.' Drifting off would earn him a lecture of yet unheard length from the ship's security officer.

That was a good point, he supposed, leaning down and pulling up the shield that covered the airlock controls from impacts. He took a minute to crank it closed and secure everything, and then, finally, turned his attention to the stars.

Here, in deep space, without the haze of atmosphere, they were inconceivably bright. Scattered across the sky, they glinted: some big, some small, some so faint he could barely spot them in the endless night. They ranged in color, most white but some blue or yellow-tinted. A rare one even presented as orange. The dark planets of the Mississippi Sector covered discs of them with strange blackness, as if holes had been punched in the starscape. It was beautiful, but that wasn't why he'd come out here. Any of the ship's telescopes could show the stars in better detail from the bridge, so he turned his attention to the real reason he had come out here: the ship herself.

The ship's height stretched out below him, but he could only see half of it, as the ship was widest at the halfway mark. Even still, the ship's armored hull stretched out at an angle, forming an artificial plateau. The armor was dark, coated in a scuffed coat of black paint. Red stripes highlighted the edges of the Singularity's shape, revealing subtle curves while she looked hard and angular from a distance. Looking down the ship's length, the view varied. Forward, the ship's heavily armored bow dominated the view, towering above and angling outward. Looking aft, the boxy shape of one of the four main engines greeted him. It wasn't as tall as the bow, allowing the bow's angled armor to shield it from incoming fire, but it was still utterly massive in its own right. And here, amidships, the engine and the bow remained a great distance away.

Down the ship's flank, forward of where he stood, he could make out white lines that stretched far taller than he could reach. From here, they looked like nothing, perhaps only abstract streaks, but from a distance, they formed the lettering of the ship's identification. 'SINGULARITY' it read. Admiral Gives had seen it a thousand times. The lettering was mirrored across the ship's center and painted again so that it could be read from either orientation. The same was done on the port flank. Looking at the ship, the lettering was proportional, but standing on the hull, it was so massive that only one letter could be looked upon and identified at a time.