Blood Impulse

Part 14.1 - CHAOS AND STABILITY

Homebound Sector, Haven System, Battleship Singularity

Admiral Gives stepped out of the command center and took a sharp left, walking along the metal hallway as he had so many times before. He was pleased to note that someone had thought to clean the picture frames that lined the path to CIC. After the fires, they had been covered in ash and soot.

From the cleaned frames, the smiling faces of the ship's various crew departments looked down at him. Scattered among them were images of the ship herself. It was tradition to take the photographs every few years. Some of them dated all the way back to the Hydrian War. The closer to the bow the frames hung, the older they were, and the occasional picture of the ship contained less and less of the scars on the hull, the paint job even more vibrant than it currently was.

On his path to the bow, the Admiral paused when he reached one of the oldest photos. In it, the Singularity was remembered at the height of her prime. Her hull was smooth. The burdening sadness that lingered in the shadows of her scars was not present – not yet.

That was the proud Flagship Singularity, a ship that was little more than history to most. But Admiral Gives knew better. Every bit of that once-legendary flagship was still here. The Singularity, despite Clarke's accusations, was still a very relevant, very powerful ship.

It had been easy to let the public forget that strength. Years of taking backwater patrols had climaxed in the fact that Command's tacticians did not know what exactly the Singularity was capable of. She was a unique class of ship, and that meant that the only person who knew the ship's raw combat capability was Admiral Gives himself. Everyone else saw her age and her antiquated design and they regarded her as scrap – at least they did when the Bloody Singularity's unnatural anger was absent, as it usually was.

During those times, when the ship showed nothing but age and scars, many of the worlds' political and military leaders had considered Admiral Gives to be a fool – a once-brilliant officer driven mad by deep space. They thought his refusal to leave the Singularity was flawed and irrational. And, perhaps it was, but regardless of the real truth, be it theirs or be it his, Admiral Gives would never willingly trade the time-tested decks for anything.

He continued his walk, letting his feet guide him to a secluded compartment on the top of the bow. A set of wide windows dominated the long side of the compartment. Of course, they weren't real windows. The other side of the glass was not vacuum, rather more of the ship's internal structure. The Singularity was a combat ship. Glass windows would have been dangerous structural weakness. Telescopes on the outer hull collected this image, and it was reflected through a system of mirrors to be seen here. Still, it was a real-time view of the travel path ahead of the ship. They had maneuvered into a high orbit, but haze of the atmosphere could still be seen on the far side of the observation lounge.

Admiral Gives admired the stars for a moment as they twinkled innocently in the far-off distance. With a ship like this, that distance was nothing. Those closer stars were just one FTL jump away – minutes of travel with the power the Singularity had at her disposal. With such technology, humanity had spread fast, and spread far.

It should have been amazing, but that reach, and that power had rendered a great many members of humanity cruel. The void and its worlds had a nasty way of drawing people toward the extremes of ambition and hate. What should have been wonderous exploration had turned into bloody tragedy. Humanity had never halted its historic cycles of violence, and as far as the Admiral was concerned, they never would.

Perhaps that was why, faced with the New Eran coup, he'd been so apathetic. After seeing what he had in the Frontier Rebellion and the Dead Years that followed, it hadn't seemed to matter. At least not to him, which made the conversation ahead of him all the more difficult.