Blood Impulse

Part 5.4

Aragonian Sector, Battleship Singularity

Two hours later, the damage control and search and rescue operations were mostly complete. All over the ship, crewmen were starting to scrub the hallways clean of debris and repair severed wires; minor, but necessary efforts after combat, if the events of the Kalahari Sector could even be called combat. Ensign Callie Smith was not sure it could.

They had never fired a shot in retaliation. The other engineers had taken to calling it a slaughter. Seeing the casualties they had taken and the overall condition of the ship, she could not bring herself to disagree.

A little over ten hours had passed since the ship had made the jump from the Kalahari Sector. Oddly, anyone who had not been in immediate danger from the subsequent ship damage or fires, had spent most of their time knocked out. Callie was one of them. She had no memory of anything after feeling the ship transition back out of subspace. The next thing she knew, she had woken to find herself sprawled on the hangar deck, an array fallen tools surrounding her.

She had been given little time to contemplate it. Damage control had been exhausting: darting from place to place, trying to stabilize and control equipment that was badly shaken, but necessary to sustain life and functionality aboard ship. Finished with that, she'd been immediately swept up with a large team of engineers who were now starting actual repairs.

This particular team had been assigned to assess the structural condition of the starboard bow and begin repairs, if it was possible. The prospects of it being possible were not looking good. It was near impossible, even under zero Gs, to even reach the structural support that had caused the cascade collapse.

It was hard enough to maneuver with the vacuum suits on, but the badly misshapen condition of the bulkheads and deck tiles made it even more difficult. They had to shift from walking along the floor to walking along the walls or ceiling just to get a good hold with their magnetic boots. Unsure what waited around every corner, they had to move at a slow, cautious pace. Someone moving too quick would only risk flinging themselves out into the void.

Working under zero G for any extended time period had always unsettled Callie. There was something about it that was inherently wrong, and they had left the Conjoiner Drives' altered field just after the start of their trek. That said, Callie found the damage that awaited them even more unsettling than the lack of gravity.

A long, curved gash had torn through the ship's numerous hulls, allowing them an uninterrupted panorama of the Aragonian Sector. The distant stars shone brightly, and there was one star, the sun and gravitational center of the nearest solar system, that glowed brighter than the rest, a colorful dot among the white pinpricks.

It was a newborn star, the culmination of drifting gasses that had gathered over the billions of years since the universe's conception. The young sun burned a rich blue shade, its hue almost as vibrant as the Singularity's engine plumes.

The sudden appearance of a Warhawk shattered the eerie stillness. The black and white reconnaissance ship brought with it a hull-mounted flood light that bathed the area in sharp, white light. It was a good change from the darkness in which they had made their trek, but the other engineers still added their electric handheld torches, casting visibility into every corner of the area. Despite the crisp, formal lighting, the ruined starboard bow looked like a wasteland. Struts and chunks of metal jutted out at odd angles, shrapnel from the explosion.

Casting the tallest shadow in the room was the broken, horrendously misshapen structural support. Tears, almost like claw marks, ripped across its face, the pillar's payment for being directly exposed to subspace. They gouged deep into the support, the deepest of them causing the support to fold over onto itself under gravity, bringing the decks above closer than they ought to be.