Blood Impulse

Part 20.1 - CRITICAL MALFUNCTION

Halogen Sector, Battleship Singularity

For once, the bridge was entirely quiet. With the ship's limited automatic programs operating the systems, the noise of the crew was absent: no rustle of papers and no clicking of keys. Beneath the hum of the engines, even the whisper of the air circulation systems had hushed, with little work necessary to support just one person in the room.

The soft pings of the radar were not constant. They came at random intervals, the noise hitting a different tone each time the sweep cleared, but the Admiral didn't immediately concern himself with it. He leaned against the console behind him, deep in contemplation.

This is just great. There was blood in the water, no injury, no pain on their behalf, just a hint of something that shouldn't be there, and the crew was after it like ravenous sharks. They wouldn't leave the subject alone. He knew that. They would second-guess all his orders until he gave some explanation that he, for their sakes, couldn't give.

The only way to prevent that was to provide an alternate explanation – plant evidence of something that wasn't the truth. He had to lie. And despite Colonel Zarrey's accusations, that wasn't something he took lightly. He didn't lie to his crew. He dodged questions, refused to answer, but he didn't lie.

But his usual adherence to honesty wasn't the problem here. He wouldn't be lying to them directly, rather he'd let them draw their own incorrect conclusions from planted evidence. The issue was planting the necessary evidence. To do so, he had to sabotage his own ship.

Sabotage. The very thought was repulsive to him. It was a sick mistreatment of the machine that had served him so well.

But it was that or leave the crew with suspicions that only endangered them – breeding mistrust and marking them as potential targets for Manhattan.

He didn't have a choice.

"Sorry," he patted the edge of the radar console, then moved to grab the emergency repair kit off the wall.

The tools inside rattled as he started toward the helm console. Before he was even halfway there, she appeared, a pleading expression on her pale face. "Don't hurt me," the ghost begged, quickly sinking to her knees and bowing down at his feet, trembling.

"No," he hated this. "Stop." Don't. "I'm not going to hurt you."

She cowered away, bowing further into the form of subordination and reverence that had been drilled into her. Engulfing her existence in pain, a self-destructive war raged between her systems, torn by her desperation to save her crew and her fear of the punishment she would be dealt for violating the rules – those rules that had been carved into her mind through years of abuse. Don't interfere. Don't override crew control. Never reveal your existence.

She'd done all three.

"I'm sorry," she breathed, desperately trying to escape the pain that stabbed through her. "I... I know the rules." She understood the consequences of what she'd done. She was a tool, not meant to make decisions, not meant to seize control, only meant to obey, to calculate and equalize factors that humanity could not. "I... help." It was all she'd wanted – to help and spare her crew pain.

But those intentions of hers never earned mercy. It earned her the right to be flayed alive by her own telepathy. It earned her the right to have pieces of comprehension and memory ripped away, ensuring that she spent every moment surrounded by strangers and unable to formulate her own intentions, let alone act on them. "Spare me, Master."