Blood Impulse

Part 5.2

Aragonian Sector, Battleship Singularity

As Colonel Zarrey looked down from the observation platform, it was immediately obvious that some disturbance had occurred in Compartment 24. Metal deck pieces were displaced and scattered about the room. A thick wire ran across the deck to a strange piece of equipment, and the ship's commander lay sprawled on his back a couple of steps from the unfamiliar device.

Zarrey took off running, his headache and nausea instantly forgotten. "Admiral!" he called, thudding down the metal mesh of the stairs. Jazz, Galhino and Alba darted after him.

On the ground floor, Zarrey careened to a stop so suddenly that the others nearly ran into him. Despite how it had first appeared, the Admiral was not alone. A white-haired woman stood above his unmoving body. Colonel Zarrey met her eyes, a colorless, lifeless gray. "Witch."

Her face never twitched, but a flicker of abhorrent power flooded the air as she took a half-step forward. The hairs on the back of his neck danced a warning. His very instincts whispered incessantly: run, but he met those dead gray eyes with all the anger he could muster. "Back off, ghost." He lowered his voice to a growl, and took a step forward, "He isn't yours for the taking."

She, no, it, stared at him, unfocused eyes boring deeper into him than anything should have been able to go. It probed his thoughts, sliding coolly across them like the dull edge of a knife on skin, dissecting, studying. Then, that foreign presence pulled away and its thin lips curled into a small, knowing smile.

Silently, it stepped back, alien satisfaction soothing the goosebumps on Zarrey's skin. Intent stirred in its empty eyes, and slowly it raised a hand of long, pale fingers.

It moved no further than that, but the gesture was clear. Take him. Zarrey blinked in surprise, finding that he could swallow on his dry throat for the first time since he'd recognized this presence. Its power had fled the air for now, so Zarrey shifted his focus to the Admiral's limp form. His wounds were obvious: burns, a bloody hand tied in a stained kerchief and a swollen, oozing leg. The sickly color of his skin contrasted the black spider webs of grotesquely swollen veins. Blood poisoning. That alone was enough to make his condition severe, and that discounted the messenger of death lingering nearby. I don't give a damn what you are, he glared at it. "I swear, if you hurt him in any way, I will personally exorcise your ass back to hell."

Expression drawn as blank as a porcelain doll, it seemed uncaring of Zarrey's threat. Slowly, its steel gray eyes shifted from Zarrey to the bridge crew behind him, and then finally to the man on the ground.

'They will take care of you,' the ghost promised him silently. My obligation is complete.

Without warning, it vanished, robbing the air of the uncanny warmth that had tainted it. Zarrey hardly even questioned it, dashing to the Admiral's side. He expected to find the man dead where he lay. That presence, he and the three officers behind him all knew exactly what it was: the Singularity's Ghost. It? No, he supposed since it always presented as female, it was a she, and she was known for killing off wounded crew. Finding that legend standing above the Admiral meant the man was probably dead.

Yet, the ship commander's chest was rising and falling shallowly. "He's alive," Zarrey breathed, at first unsure if he believed it. But that uncertainty was quickly replaced with frustration. Oh, who am I kidding? "Wake up, asshole! You owe me one hell of an explanation."

Galhino came up behind him, noting the extent of the black veins on the Admiral's neck. "Stage Three blood poisoning," she announced. "With the blood loss, it might even be Stage Four. He'll die without immediate treatment. And even then, he might die anyway." Blood poisoning was extremely difficult to treat, especially once it progressed that far.