Blood Impulse

Part 37.3 - FULL AUTOMATIC

Cardioid Sector, HR-14 System, Battleship Singularity

Five missiles exploded into black armor of the Singularity's starboard flank, blossoming with flowers of orange flame. The entire ship shook, then it screeched like something possessed. Which, at times like this, the Admiral supposed it was.

Bracing himself on the sturdy rim of the radar console, he barely managed to keep himself upright. That's not right. The impact should never have been that severe. Checking the hull indicator chart on the wall, three new splotches of bleeding red greeted him. Those missiles should never have breached the hull. One of them, maybe, given a lucky strike at the right angle, but not three.

'That's to be expected.' The ghost told him, mentally shaking off the impact as she shoved reports of damage aside. Some things never change. 'Modifying missiles comes right out of their old playbook.' Truly, this entire attack had been a recreation of something she knew by the depths of her mechanical existence. The only change had been how the virus activated – a new and unwelcome step to a dance she knew well: the death march of many battleships.

They always started with comms., disrupted communications and secured their own venomous uploads. Then they moved on, using comms. to spread their filth wherever it could go, paralyzing every system they touched. Then, they tested the paralysis with a small attack, always making sure it landed before they revealed their true strength.

But there were few left who would recognize that old death march. Admiral Gives had no reason to. He'd fought many battles, but never one like this. 'Didn't you find it strange a trained computer officer was stumped by this attack? She has seen what Manhattan can do, and yet this... This she did not recognize until it was too late.' It was no fault of Foster's. This code was beyond anything Foster been trained to recognize, and the magnitude of this infection was nothing compared to Manhattan's capacity for absolute control, but it hardly mattered. It was not about suffering a cyberattack, or even the intention behind such an attack, it was all about who had written the code.

'Admiral, this code... It's Hydrian.'

The stone-faced Admiral nearly choked on nothing but air. 'Pardon?' Barely, he managed to hide his surprise in a cough that no one paid attention to amidst the damage updates and rapid beeps of the radar as it began to pick up a swarm of new contacts.

'This virus is Hydrian.' It was new, its code more complex and even more infectious than those used in the War, but the base programming and attack patterns were exactly as she remembered them. 'Honestly,' she huffed, 'I didn't think the so-called Almighty Queen's drones had the balls.' After their initial failures during the War, they had never again attempted to infect the Singularity with their viruses – certainly not after the ship became an imminent beacon of their death and defeat. 'And mind you, biologically speaking, they certainly do not have any balls.'

There had always been theories that the Hydrian Armada would begin to breach the Neutral Zone the instant their stealth technology was good enough. That said, Admiral Gives had not been prepared to face such an event in the middle of a raid against a pirate clan. 'You're certain?'

'Absolutely.' Foster would have caught Manhattan's attacks. Though advanced, they were still human in nature.

Dread had settled in on the bridge. Shaken by the last impact, the crew looked petrified as a new, larger group of missiles bore down upon them. With the hull breached by the first round and the railgun impact, chances of survival were effectively zero. Admiral Gives knew that better than anyone, but Hydrian involvement was another issue altogether. 'What's the play?' The ghost could not intervene directly. If she did, she risked revealing herself. And to expose the power that had turned the tide of the War... The Hydrian Empire would do anything to seize it and turn it against humanity, or at least destroy it, even if that meant instigating another war.