Blood Impulse

Part 20.2 - ALL OUR FLAWS

Halogen Sector, Battleship Singularity

"Return to your stations." The order had been given with the usual amount of neutral calm, so the crew shuffled back onto the bridge in a heavy silence. They looked around, trying to spot a change, but afraid to get caught doing so.

They wanted some clue as to what had occurred in their absence, but they wouldn't find one. With the exception of the sabotaged wiring under the helm console and the notes he'd left out on the radar console, nothing had physically changed on the bridge. He'd made sure of that.

Zarrey took a moment to drown his nerves in a fresh cup of black coffee, then approached the center of the room with a head of uncertainty. "So," he said carefully, "how are... things?"

The Colonel seemed particularly wary of him at the moment. It wasn't as if he'd brandished a weapon, so Admiral Gives quirked an eyebrow. "Things are fine, Colonel." He was on the run from the government that controlled the entirety of human space, and the largest military within it. What could be better?

Zarrey cleared his throat awkwardly, "Uh, good... I guess." Zarrey felt a little conflicted about, and slightly terrified of the man in front of him. Kallahan's words were still ringing in his ears. What kind of crime could be worse than killing millions of innocent people? Did things even get worse than that?

As amusing as the Colonel's terror would be normally, at the moment it was just a nuisance. "Begin FTL prep. We are initiating a search for Fairlocke's fleet of survivors." No doubt, Command's forces would do the same. "This was plotted along the vector Tyler gave us." He handed over the plotted navigational data. "Prepare to execute a multi-jump FTL sequence. Combat is a possibility."

"Since when do you give a flying fuck about some lost civvies?" This didn't feel like the Admiral's usual style – not that Zarrey was complaining.

"XO, this ship's mission is to save humanity. Those civvies happen to be human." It was quite simple. "As you say, I may be a 'piece of work who has a problem with just about everyone,' but I will not dishonor this ship and I will not force this crew into the moral ambiguity where I prefer to live." They would aid those survivors if they were able.

The Admiral was an unfalteringly calm commanding officer, who, at arbitrary times, could be tempted to do the right thing for the strangest reasons. As much as Zarrey sometimes wanted to resent the man, he could never seem to manage outside of his flares of anger. It was better to proceed as normal, so he turned his attention to the FTL sequence data packet. "You plotted these?"

"Who else would have, XO?"

"Point taken." Zarrey regarded the packet. It was thick, the FTL sequence containing multiple mid-range maneuvers. Calculating this had almost certainly taken the entirety of the time the Admiral had spent alone on the bridge. Zarrey didn't know what he suspected had happened in that time, but it wasn't this. This explanation seemed too innocent.

Sensing a lingering doubt, the Admiral added, "I prefer to plot FTL maneuvers in silence." At the time, the crew had been making quite a racket, panicking about the events of the Centaur System.

"Sure," Zarrey allowed, well aware that the Admiral wouldn't have had enough time to do anything else while he was on the bridge alone. So why didn't he trust that? Why did he feel like something was wrong with this picture?

The rest of the crew was carefully eyeing their exchange, a strange tension in the air. No doubt, if Zarrey called for a mutiny, he'd get it. At least for the better part of five minutes, the Admiral mused. A mutiny on this ship was going to be the mutineers' problem, not his. He didn't feel particularly threatened by the crew's distrust. "XO, manage the search. I will focus on combat preparations." It was extremely likely that they would encounter Command's forces during this search.