Blood Impulse

Part 20.2 - ALL OUR FLAWS

"Right," Zarrey found himself saying. "I'd rather not give Reeter another chance to smite us." Their escape from the Homebound Sector had already put Thunderbolt too close for comfort.

"I doubt the Olympia will engage us directly." It was far too early in the game for that. "After what happened in the Centaur System, Command will send bigger ships and more of them, but they will not commit the Olympia." Reeter might want to take on the Singularity personally, but such action would be reckless. Overwhelming the Singularity by sheer numbers was a sounder plan. "Command is wary of us," as they should be.

"I think you mean that they're wary of you." It was no secret that Admiral Gives and Command had never seen eye to eye, and where respect of his position and record failed, the Admiral was quite willing to use fear to keep people in line.

"Us," the Admiral said, tapping the console under his hand. Compared to the Olympia, the Singularity was old and boasted a mere fraction of the weapons capability – unable to operate combat drones, and lacking a computer-aided, high accuracy defense grid – but a duel between two flagships was not to be taken lightly. It didn't matter who won. The battle itself would be devastating.

"Always the ship with you, isn't it?" Zarrey said, handing off specific orders to begin their search. The action felt normal, as did this conversation. It all felt almost perfectly normal. The strangeness of what happened in the Centaur System felt like distant past now, almost unimportant.

But it shouldn't feel that way. By the stars, Zarrey knew he should still be on a witch hunt, but instead, he stood here feeling comfortable, at ease, and he could feel the anomaly slipping from his mind. That in itself was wrong. He knew it was, and yet that fact felt less than troubling. It simply was. It was not concerning or disturbing, just a simple fact.

Zarrey found himself looking around at the familiar controls, remembering the long and frequently boring years he had spent here. "Tell me, do you really think this old bucket can take on the Olympia? I mean, they gave her that name for a reason." She was designed to be the most powerful ship humanity had ever built – the very castle of the gods, looking down upon her people.

"I don't want to diss the old girl, but we've had some issues recently: random malfunctions, power fluctuations... And she did fail structural inspection." However politically motivated the decommissioning had been, the ship had justly failed preliminary inspection. Repaired or not, the nuke had dealt severe structural damage. "I have to wonder where we'd be if you'd taken Clarke's offer to command the Olympia."

"Dead." The better half of this crew would be dead. Command would have seized control of the Olympia and ended this months ago. "Trust is something to be earned, not given, Colonel." And regardless of his general inability to trust anyone or anything, he did trust this ship. Over the years, she had earned that the long and hard way. Now, absolutely nothing could blemish the trust he held in this machine. "She'll see us through." A commander that couldn't trust his ship was as good as dead from the start.

Zarrey wished he could be so certain, but as normal as everything suddenly felt, he couldn't shake the distant feeling that something was off here. He couldn't forget the week he'd spent putting this barely functional ship back together in the Aragonian Sector. The Admiral hadn't seen her then. He couldn't forget the conversation he'd just shared with Kallahan – the hint that Brent's legacy lived on. He couldn't forget the last words Fairlocke had said to him. Can't you feel it?

"XO," the Admiral said, "issue ship wide orders to stand down to Condition Three for the duration of the search, but the moment we detect any unnatural phenomena we go to Condition Two." That would allow the crew to return to duty shifts, but remain on high alert. "And do not forget about your two hours of maintenance tonight. It seems you need to be reacquainted with my ship."