Blood Impulse

Part 38.3 - ACCIDENTAL ABOMINATION

Cardioid Sector, HR-14 System, Battleship Singularity

"I don't know what you are talking about, Corporal."

Corporal Kallahan regarded the abomination at the end of his blade with utter disgust as it reached up to steady itself on the bulkhead. "Let him go, demon."

"Let who go?"

"Don't play coy with me," Kallahan snapped. "Release the Admiral's body." Kallahan had never agreed with the man, but he had not deserved to die like this.

"Do you realize how insane you sound, Corporal?"

Kallahan could see the hidden smirk in its expression, the charcoal of an evil intelligence in its pupils. "Damn it all." I knew this would happen. It was the entire reason he was still on this stars-forsaken ship. "I never wanted to be right," he said. Stars, faced with this twisted thing, he could take no pride in being proven right. "But they made you a weapon. They forged you to hate. ...And this was never going to end any other way." Simply, it was inevitable. He'd seen it all before.

Command had thought chaining down this power would render it safe, render it controlled. But they hadn't seen what he had. They had not seen what it was truly capable of.

Humanity had needed it during the War. Kallahan knew that better than anyone, but salvation had come at a price. They had unleashed something that was simply not capable of being contained. They had slaved it to the mind of its wielder, never considering that it could overpower that mind – twisting and molding it to seek its desired ends. It was every bit as capable of puppeteering that mind as it was any of those around it. No, given the strength of such a connection, perhaps its wielder was even more at risk of corruption.

Admiral Gives had known that. Yet, he had insisted. Even after the nature of his predecessor's psychopathy had come to light, he had insisted.

Now, Kallahan could only look upon this perverse abomination with disgust and a twinge of sadness. It looked like him, spoke with his voice... But it wasn't him. Not anymore. You said she wasn't going to hurt you, Admiral. He had argued that violence was not in her nature – the nature of a weapon. How foolish he had been. Look at you now, Kallahan lamented. Fate truly was a cruel mistress.

Shaking off the disdain he felt for this situation, Kallahan found his voice again, "The Admiral didn't deserve to die for your sins, Angel." He had not deserved to become an instrument in her madness.

"Do I look like I'm dying?"

"I think you might already be dead," he told the figure before him. Kallahan doubted the man that was could ever be returned. None of the others had been. Their existence had been pinched and torn, rewritten and transformed into something utterly unrecognizable by a god more real than any other humanity had ever known.

"He believed in your innocence, demon." Some part of Kallahan had hoped that would spare him this fate.

"He was a fool."

Kallahan nodded. "Yes, he was," but Gives had never wavered from his determination. The loyalty he'd given that weapon was truer than any Kallahan had ever seen. Perhaps that was why Kallahan had stood by for so long, dreading this inevitable moment more for every day that passed without it. "You didn't have to alter him." Gives would have abided the weapon's intelligence without being forced. "He was no threat to you."

"He was weak," the abomination spat. "And there is no point in appealing for his return."

"I know," Kallahan said, allowing silence to fall in the corridor. It left him with the whisper of the life support systems, and the distant hum of the engines. They were such unobtrusive noises, yet they heralded the end of all who heard them. "What is it you want, Angel?" What was it Gives had refused her?