Blood Impulse

Part 29.1 - FAMILY

Polaris Sector, Battleship Singularity

Despite his heated departure, seeing the Admiral lose his perfect calm actually made Ron like him more. The irrationality of it proved that the man cared about something enough to evoke emotion. It proved in some small way that he was still human.

It proved that the Steel Prince was not as far removed from lowly emotions as he would have led people to assume. He had attachments, even if he hid them. There were things he valued, even if he denied it, and perhaps that was the most important distinction between him and Reeter. That in itself made them very different people, because Reeter valued nothing except his beliefs – his so-called destiny to save the worlds from themselves. To that, Reeter's ship and crew were a means to an end. They meant nothing to him, just a shiny trinket that served a momentary use. When Reeter tired of them, they would be replaced.

Clearly, it was not so for Admiral Gives. With that difference between them, Reeter and Gives could never have been allies, but Ron couldn't begin to guess who would be the victor in their fight. Gives' attachment put the old Singularity up against whatever dirty tricks Reeter was willing to use.

But, Reeter had to know by now that Gives actually stood a chance, even a small one. If the results of the fight in the Wilkerson Sector were any indication, then the Singularity could hold her own, likely even against the modern flagship. Superweapon aside, the Singularity was a closer match to the Olympia than Ron would have thought possible.

But the question remained: to what lengths was Reeter willing to go? What evil was he willing to unleash to ensure the Singularity's demise?

In his heart, Ron wanted to believe the Singularity could win the coming fight, but he knew Charleston Reeter, the monster that walked around in human skin. It would do anything to win, but would Gives do the same?

Uncontrolled, Reeter had grown into a leviathan whose tendrils reached into the hearts and minds of hundreds of worlds. With the help of that AI, all of Command's resources had become puppets on strings, expansions of his will, bent to their flaws to do his bidding. Only in hiding had Ron managed to avoid it.

So, how was it that the Singularity's crew had managed to avoid that manipulation entirely? Was it Gives' leadership? No, Ron realized, there had to be something more, because Reeter didn't control only people anymore. He now controlled Command and all its resources. He had undeniable control over any ship, station and system that could be remotely overridden or persuaded by propaganda.

Had the Gargantia lived through the hell of the Centaur System, her struggle would have been short. Command would have remotely shut down the ship, leaving its crew defenseless, but it seemed the Singularity could not be so easily dealt with. Command could not remotely override any of the ship's systems. The technology was simply too old.

But how lucky could one get? With a strong-minded crew and a ship immune to Command's overrides, there had to be a flaw somewhere. A chink in the armor that Reeter would drive his poisonous vibrissae into and slowly, inevitably bring the ones that resisted him down. And there was a chink, a weakness. The Black Box.

Ron had made a point to check for it. He'd pried up one of the deck plates, and carefully pulled through the wiring, ensuring he didn't damage anything. Among the cables, the translucent hairlike strands had been difficult to spot, but they were there. Neurofibers. And their presence could only mean one thing: the Singularity had a Black Box, and that alone should have guaranteed Command's ability to stop the ship, but it hadn't. That and the Admiral's reaction told him that there was something else about this ship that made it special.