Blood Impulse

Part 33.4 - IMMINENT MANEUVERS

Paleon Sector, Battleship Singularity

So a fucking idiot and a soulless cockroach sat down for a conversation... It sounded like the start of a bad joke, but it had become unfunny all too quickly.

The next time he does something this stupid, the ghost thought darkly, I'm going to put an end to it. The reason she had tolerated this plan in the first place was well beyond her. It was an extremely stupid plan. Nathan Gadwood wouldn't negotiate. The man would never settle for anything less than his desired end, whatever it may be. The mere reminder of him disgusted her. She had been fine to never cross paths with that nasty little cockroach again, but when the Admiral called to relay new orders, she could sense Gadwood's grubby hands all over it.

It was in the Admiral's voice. That tone of his was calm. A less familiar ear probably never would have caught the annoyance underneath that façade, but the ghost knew better. Admiral Gives didn't appreciate being forced to give his own ship orders. She didn't need their bond to tell her that.

And then there was the matter of those coordinates. They pissed her off almost as much as the rest of the situation. She ran the safety checks. Only a very trusting idiot wouldn't run the safety checks in a situation like this. Those coordinates would have landed her in the middle of the Tomenta Sector's magnetic storms: certain destruction.

Of course, there were gaps in those magnetic storms – stable gaps that could last for months or years. Technically, the exact coordinates that had been forwarded were for one such gap. Or, rather, the most recent navigational data the ship possessed, downloaded from the cortex, indicated that a calm spot had been scouted at that location. She wasn't convinced, but Zarrey didn't think twice about it. The only thing that stopped him from ordering that jump was the Admiral's standing order regarding the FTL drives – an order that stood for another twenty-four minutes.

That order had initially frustrated her. She had not understood the Admiral's reasoning. Now she did. The Admiral had predicted this. He had known that the Jayhawker might force him to send the ship elsewhere, that the destination might even be dangerous. Then, there was also the fact that staying here kept the ship within single-jump range of the station. The forwarded coordinates would have taken them further from Midwest Station, forcing the ship to make two jumps to get to the station.

And maybe, since no ship could jump directly to Midwest Station, that was irrelevant.

Except that it wasn't.

In fact, that was quite critical because that too, was part of the plan. The order to disable the FTL drives was meant to keep the ship both safe and in single-jump range of Midwest Station. It even had a third purpose: an excuse, he'd called it. A so-called 'malfunction' was a lot more believable if the systems in question were being worked on or altered in some way.

So, in all, once the ghost was able to parse out the logic behind them, the Admiral's orders were not so unreasonable. He had done nothing except give her the means to act, and she fully intended to use them.

Settled deep in the core of the ship, the bridge crew was agitated. They hated waiting, especially when they had been specifically ordered to do so. That left the crew in the semicircular command center quiet as they sat behind their consoles. Clicking keyboards and whispered voices were the only noise, a soft background ambience. Things were calm, even if tense, right up until the alert klaxons began to shriek their grating howl.

Zarrey slammed down his copy of the situation report as the rest of the crew bolted upright. "What the hell?" he had to shout to be heard over the noise. Was this a proximity alert? Had something snuck into range? No, he threw that idea out almost immediately. This alarm wasn't only sounding on the bridge. He could see the yellow warning lights flashing in the corridor, but it wasn't until he heard the noise stop and restart that he recognized the signal. Imminent FTL maneuvers. "Alba! Walters!" Zarrey shouted to the two men at the engineering and navigations stations. "I did not order a jump! And Robinson, damn it, mute that alarm!" He was too annoyed to put up with it. It was too loud.