Blood Impulse

Part 6.3

Aragonian Sector, Battleship Singularity

Alone at last, the first thing Colonel Zarrey did was punch the nearest bulkhead, hard. The noise was less than satisfying, and he could feel the bones in his hand fracture, but it was worth it. For a moment, that pain cleared his awful headache and his frustrations were spent.

Usually, he vented his emotions on a punching bag in the gym during his personal time, but he was quickly learning that commanding officers did not get personal time, especially in situations like this. "I blame you," he told the ship, cradling his painfully bruised hand. "He's your Admiral." He held the machine mostly accountable for the Admiral Gives' actions, since the man never did anything that did not pertain to his duties as the ship's commanding officer. Therefore, the Admiral putting himself into a coma to activate that power core was also her fault.

Zarrey turned and leaned his back against the bulkheads, speaking to the ship exhaustedly, "To be entirely honest, you're usually a temperamental bitch when he's not around, so I really hope he recovers." Zarrey really did not want to deal with the ship's odd quirks. He simply did not have the patience, "But play nice, and I might consider taking over and keeping you from getting melted down as scrap."

The ship creaked. As the structural damage settled, that was a common noise, but he read more out of it than he probably should have. "Fuck you too."

Colonel Zarrey pulled himself off the wall and started to make his way through the blackened hallways of the ship, feeling like a dead man walking.

Repairs were going slow, but they were going. In the corridors at least, the ship was starting to look more and more like her usual self.

The regular lights had been turned back on, following repairs to the main and secondary power grids. The fallen mountings and other hazards had been removed from the ground, but some of the light mountings had yet to be rehung, leaving the illumination of the corridors strangely uneven. Some of the loose wires had been reconnected and buried back beneath the bulkheads, but others still ran exposed along the edges of the hallway, bypassing the unrepaired regions of the ship.

The artificial gravity field remained lopsided, since the starboard bow had yet to be repaired, and it was playing hell with Zarrey's inner ear. He knew he was walking level to the deck, but he had to consciously resist the urge to lean against the unbalanced pull. He was certain it was going to drive him slowly insane.

The ship had been stabilized, due to the gravity field and the engineering teams' tireless efforts, but the demolished starboard bow required more than being stabilized. The collapsed support had taken five others down with it. Repairs on the other five would be easy, and had already begun, because the overarching superstructure, while strained, had survived.

But cracks and fissures spider-webbed the collapsed support. They could repair it and hope that the fractures did not split open again, or they could try to rebuild the support entirely, an action that normally would require the assistance of a shipyard.

Alone in the empty Aragonian Sector, they did not have the resources of a shipyard and they did not have the capability to get there without repairs. It would take months to limp to the nearest fleet facility without using any method of faster than light travel. Even their maximum acceleration with the main engines was limited by the damage, and that nearest facility was not equipped to help repair a ship of the Singularity's size.

And all of those issues completely ignored the fact that the fleet had tried to kill them.

With that, there was almost no point in returning to a shipyard or calling for help. If the ship that had nearly crippled their own heard the call and arrived first, there was no telling what would become of the wounded Singularity and her crew. Beyond that, there was no way to know who was allied with who. For all they knew, the entire fleet was set on killing them, not just one ship.