Blood Impulse

Part 21.1 - SILENT RUNNING

Brimstone Sector, Battleship Singularity

CIC was dark. With the ship running on minimal power, the lights on the bridge and out in the corridors were dimmed. Lowering the power in the grid was just a precaution to ensure that no electrical signature betrayed the Singularity as being a ship, not an asteroid.

Though sound wouldn't travel in the vacuum, similar thoughts kept the crew quiet, as if afraid that speaking would draw the enemy down upon them. The tension in the air was palpable, and at this rate Zarrey was sure the waiting was going to kill him before the actual battle got the chance.

It had taken two and a half hours to drift this far, moving at the fastest believable speed of an asteroid, but they were still another twenty-four minutes from initiating the next phase of the plan – or so the countdown on the view screen proclaimed.

The thought of having to wait any longer made Zarrey want to claw his eyes out.

"XO, if you begin pacing again, I will throw you off my bridge."

The Admiral hadn't even looked up from his report to make that threat. Zarrey wasn't sure if that amused or angered him. At this point, he was just itching for a fight, but he knew better than to pick it with the ship's commander.

During the last two and a half hours, the Admiral had spent his time working, as if they were out on some boring patrol, not drifting into the firing range of enemy ships. He had stood and calmly read through the reports, filling out all the necessary paperwork that came from running a ship, seemingly unconcerned with their current situation.

His unfailing calm reassured the crew that this plan was viable. As long as he was calm, no panic would rise up as the battle drew ever closer. He briefly looked up from his report, "Lieutenant Robinson, status?"

"I still have the signal, sir." She answered, trying to decipher the static bursts with her trained ear. "I have a corrected heading to execute after combat." Until they finished this plan and neutralized Squadron 26, they couldn't risk reengaging the main engines to make a course correction. It this range, the ship's engine signature – mostly the waste heat, would be easily identified.

"Understood, Lieutenant." Admiral Gives trusted Robinson. She was one of the finest officers he had ever seen. She spoke several languages fluently, including Hydrian, and had a tuned ear that could hear the footsteps of a mouse. Like the rest, she had a history that had brought her to the Singularity, one that had left her demure and quiet. Robinson kept her head down, seeming to believe that avoiding the commanding officer's attention was a survival tactic, and maybe on the Ariea, that had been true. On the Singularity, it was not so, but Robinson minimized direct contact with him anyway. The Admiral had elected to respect that, just as he elected to respect the fact that combat sometimes took time.

While they could have come out of an FTL maneuver in direct firing range of Squadron 26, they would have risked losing the signal to do so. The structural stress also had to be taken into account. FTL maneuvers, be them through subspace or hyperspace, taxed a ship's structural integrity a great deal.

The more FTL maneuvers one undertook without giving a ship's structure time to resettle, the weaker a ship became both in combat and through other FTL maneuvers. To avoid permanent damage, there was a cap on the stresses a ship could sustain within a given amount of time. The regulations in the fleet had been strict about such things, and their eighteen-hour search had already pushed the Singularity's limits.

From here on, it was better to minimize the number of FTL maneuvers the ship had to undertake, especially as they headed into combat. It was critical the ship's structure retain enough strength to sustain damage and execute an emergency FTL jump.