Blood Impulse

Part 34.3 - ACE

Mississippi Sector, Battleship Singularity

The Admiral's Warhawk touched down gently. Only then did he release the slight tension that pinched his neck and shoulders. Gaffigan and Jazmine's Rhino sat ahead of him on the landing bay, its bulbous gray form completely undamaged. So, that could have gone worse, the Admiral supposed. The away team was back safe and sound with Crimson Heart's coordinates. He would have quite the mess to clean up with Zarrey and the bridge crew, but somehow, he'd manage.

'Welcome home,' the ghost told him. 'You may want to shut down the engines of your Warhawk.'

Right, he reminded himself. The engines weren't thrusting at the moment, but they still had to be disengaged before the elevator brought him down. He reached up can began to cut off the fuel feed, enacting the shutdown procedures. 'Thank you.'

Ordinarily, something like that would never have slipped his attention. He had made hundreds of combat landings in conditions far worse than this. 'Are you alright?' she asked.

'I'll live.' He would pay the price for what he'd done on that station, but he'd live. Below his craft, the elevator thunked and shifted, starting to draw the Warhawk in. It would pass through a series of airlocks before being brought down onto the hangar deck in the ship's interior.

Exhausted, Admiral Gives pried his hands off the control yoke of the Warhawk. He hadn't noticed it before, frustrated by the Jayhawker's ploy, but stabbing pains were running through his left hand. Burned and wounded in the Aragonian Sector, his joints ached with throbbing pain worsened tenfold by the tension he'd used to hold the Warhawk's flight controls.

Carefully, he nursed that hand a bit, trying to stretch the pain out, but the movement didn't help. It only made the ache more acute. The injury had bothered him off and on. As a hand wound, and third-degree burn, it was being incredibly slow to heal. Every time he moved his hand, he set the healing process back, no matter how many healing stimulants Macintosh put on it or how regularly it was redressed. He had hoped by this point to feel some improvement, but it still ached, even if he managed to ignore it most of the time. Perhaps the burns had dealt some lasting nerve damage. It was no matter at the moment. He couldn't afford to let it slow him down.

When the elevator lurched to a stop on the hangar deck, the Admiral unbuckled and made his way to the exit hatch. The movement was anything but graceful. His steps were clumsy and uneven, his movement and perception not aligned as they should have been. Not now, he thought, fumbling with the airlock controls, but he had no way to resist this.

With the adrenaline of facing down the Jayhawker now fading, the repercussions of what he had done on the station could take full effect. It didn't hurt, but it screwed him up pretty good. Anymore, it did not affect his mental faculties. He was still lucid when the worst of it hit, and could usually communicate just fine, but physical movements became challenging. Walking on a flat surface became harder than staggering through gravity storm fluctuations – forget climbing a ladder or anything else. So, when he made it out onto the wing of the Warhawk, he slid down to sit on the leading edge, hoping the movement did not look like the collapse it nearly was.

He latched one hand onto the metal panel below him and used the other to rub at his head. This set in way sooner than usual. Still, it wasn't as severe as it could be. The first few times he had done this, it had knocked him out like a light. It had gotten easier over the years – not that this was something he did often – but he still paid a price for it. While he could summon the ghost to him, and the ship with her, she described the process akin to overloading a transmitter. The level of power it took to pinpoint a location during an FTL maneuver... Well, the human brain wasn't equipped to handle it. Parts of the brain, such as his finer motor control, just shut down to protect themselves. He would recover in a few minutes, but the effort always fatigued him beyond compare.