Blood Impulse

Part 41.2 - BLOOD

Cardioid Sector, HR-14 System, Battleship Singularity

The skeleton crew left on the bridge was busy. Ensign Walters, the ship's jittery navigations officer, checked and rechecked the jump coordinates for the Singularity and every single one of her FTL-capable support craft from where he sat in the back row of consoles. Ensign Alba, manning engineering, was seated one row in front of him and kept busy with damage control from the fight. Lieutenants Gaffigan, Jazmine and Galhino sat next to one another in the front arc of consoles. Gaffigan and Jazmine were primarily standing by now, but Galhino remained as busy as ever, taking scans of the base and helping direct the away teams with Robinson hovering over her shoulder to relay instructions. Ensign Owens passed documents and data between them all, and Kallahan stood guard. But besides the Admiral, that was all. The bridge currently had no spare officers to man the consoles, it had no extra yeomen, and it had no second-in-command.

Still, things were going smoothly, a little too smoothly for the Admiral's taste. Baron Cardio honored his surrender. His remaining forces, numbering sixty-seven in all, crowded into the area surrounding the base's control room, and the Marines disarmed them there. Those sixty-seven souls were all that was left of Crimson Heart's estimated two-thousand members. And in all honesty, the Admiral hardly cared what became of the remaining sixty-seven. Perhaps they'd starve out here. Perhaps one of Crimson Heart's other ships would return from a hunt and save them. Or, perhaps the Jayhawker would send aid from Midwest Station... for a price.

It was not Admiral Gives' concern. So long as the pirates resisted no further, he was content to leave them alive. Their execution would simply be a waste of the ship's now-limited ammunition supply.

With the pirates now under control, the supply movement had taken top priority. Scattered throughout the base, the crew was cataloguing and tagging everything that would need to be brought aboard. It would be a disorganized rush – not the type of resupply the ship usually saw – but once everything was brought on board, there would be time to properly inventory and store items before dividing them up for distribution amongst the refugee fleet. That would make for long hours and intense labor, but they would manage. Right now, however, all that mattered was bringing the supplies on board as quickly as possible.

That, though, was the supply officer, Lieutenant Letts', domain. He and his staff would choreograph the movement of lifts, carts and trolleys, for even without gravity on the base, moving the largest supply boxes took mechanical aid.

Communications for that effort were still being routed through the bridge, and the map the ship's sensors had generated was still being used to guide their teams, so Lieutenants Galhino and Robinson remained as busy during the supply movement as they had during the siege.

Galhino sat working the sensor console on the main level of the bridge while Robinson stood behind her. They were an effective pair. Robinson herself was speaking to and guiding every unit on the base, a feat of incredible focus, but she didn't need help, so the Admiral stood quietly beside the flat top of the radar console until Kallahan inevitably approached.

Ever attentive to his duties as the bridge guard, Kallahan took the long way around the radar console's flat top, coming to stand where he still had a clear line of sight to the door. Kallahan was not the most physically imposing. He possessed a near six-foot build that was average among the Marines, though taller than the Admiral himself. He stood tensely, always taking note of his surroundings, patiently awaiting and preparing for disaster. That never bothered the Admiral, in fact, it made him a highly-capable soldier on the occasions Admiral Gives chose to ignore the reason Kallahan remained so tense.