Aragonian Sector, Battleship Singularity
Admiral Gives stumbled into Compartment 24 on Deck Twelve, panting and weak. The last two hours had been fiery, smoky, irradiated hell. He had moved constantly, trying to find a way around the fires that consumed Decks Ten and Eleven without going any closer to the radioactive starboard bow, but the damage to the ship’s structure rendered some of the hatches impossible to open. It had taken far longer than it should have to arrive here, and his efforts had come at a price.
Radiation sickness – dizziness, fatigue and that lingering cough – had set in on him before he’d even left CIC. His constant movement had worsened that into radiation poisoning. That cough had turned more than painful, it had evolved into debilitating fits that had soaked his sleeves with his own blood. The dizziness was now constant, and fatigue muddled his thoughts. Because of that, he’d forgotten to check the temperature of a hatch before opening it. The flames on the other side had been eager to spread, and the mistake had badly burned his left hand and leg.
He’d gently covered his hand with his handkerchief, covering the oozing wound, but there was nothing he could do for his leg. The charred fibers of his pants had entangled themselves with the burn, sticking to the blood and puss. No doubt, it would become infected if not cleaned soon, but there was no time for that.
Grunting with exhaustion, the Admiral sealed the door behind him in case the fuel-fed fires continued to spread. He coughed tiredly onto his kerchief, now stained with crimson and ash. He had waded through the hellish mess with this compartment in mind, but he had taken so long to get here that his condition had badly deteriorated. Leaning against the bulkheads, he wasn’t sure he still had the strength to do what had to be done.
But he didn’t have a choice. If he stopped now, if he failed, then his crew was as good as dead. The damage from the Conjoiner drives’ failure would kill many, and the radiation would kill the rest before they woke up. Their only chance was if he succeeded in routing more power to the grid and got the decontamination systems online, which was why he’d come here.
This compartment housed one of the Singularity’s four FTL drives. In order to give the drive an unobstructed area to discharge its excess energies, this compartment extended across two decks. While he stood on Deck Twelve, the drive itself was technically bolted to the floor of Deck Thirteen. Three other compartments on the ship were designed in the same way. Two decks tall, the entrance for all of them was on the upper level, leading to an observation platform that lined one wall. Narrow stairs tipped in chipped yellow paint led down to the lower level.
Down below, the cylindrical chrome drive looked surprisingly delicate in the center of the dark, worn floor. Its spindle-like rotors resided in a casing whose colorful wires reached down into the deck plating and beyond like veins. Closer to the stairs, the entire wall was covered with maintenance and monitoring equipment. Every gauge and dial served a purpose to uncover errors within the drive’s operation and prevent a crippling FTL failure.
Leaning heavily on the railing of the stairs as he labored down them, Admiral Gives’ destination was neither the equipment, nor the odd silver drive. He was headed for the vacant area of the room on the far side.
The floor looked uselessly empty over there, but the one thing with the potential to save the entire ship was hidden there. Stowed beneath the metal deck tiles in the case of an absolute emergency, was the Reserve Power Core.
Officially, even in the battle fleet, ships were only allowed to carry two power cores. Command demanded absolute control over the technology that powered their ships, paranoid that the technology might fall into the wrong hands if it was not so carefully restricted.
The Reserve Power Core broke that rule. With it included, the Singularity carried three cores, and that was why Admiral Gives himself was the only person on board who was aware of its existence. It had been a secret passed down from his predecessor, one of very few that he’d bothered to keep, and one that he’d never needed to use - until now. Command, had they known of it, would have seized the third core, and in times like these, an extra power core was an invaluable asset.
The Admiral set to work pulling up the metal plating and dragging it a few feet away. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have struggled with the work, but the radiation poisoning was badly hindering his efforts. He barely managed to drag two of the tiles away before he collapsed, lungs aching.
He waited for the shuddering cough to pass, and then forced himself back to his feet. No way in hell was his ship going down like this. She’d served him too well to deserve this fate: to sink out here with her entire crew dying slowly. She was a battleship, and she, if nothing else, deserved the chance to fight back. So did her crew. They were decent people, odd, considering whose command they were under, but he supposed that might explain why they kept trying to mutiny. Overall, this crew hated him just slightly less than the rest of the worlds, but they were still the crew of his battleship, and it was his duty as the ship’s commanding officer to protect them.
Those were absurdly irrelevant thoughts in this situation, but they kept his mind off the pain. It came in crashing waves: burning from his hand, aching from his chest and splintering from his head, those sensations were made less relevant than his muddled thoughts. He had his mission, his job, and he would see it through until the end, even as the artificial gravity field was starting to destabilize even faster around him.
It wouldn’t be long now.
Creaks and groans from the decks above came in near-constant droves. The Conjoiner drives’ pull was becoming inconsistent. As he continued his labors, mentally detached from his own suffering, the gravity would bring him to his knees at times, then at others, seem assist him in his endeavor.
The metal tiles were scattered haphazardly around the edges of the room by the time the task was completed. Admiral Gives had taken on a sweaty, pale pallor, and dark bags had gathered beneath his eyes. Each of his limbs felt like a hundred pounds of lead. With the way he was exerting himself, he knew it wouldn’t be long before the radiation took him out.
Carrying on with the next step of readying the power core, he laid down to inspect it closely. The textured deck tiles bit into the burn on his leg, tearing further into the flesh. He could feel the drip of blood start to renew, just as he could hear the charred flesh on his hand crunching, but both his burns were third degree. The nerves had been burned away along with the skin. It made the punishment tolerable, as he fumbled to check the wires with fingers that had long-since gone numb. The last thing he needed was the core shorting out and taking down what remained of the power grid.
The wires only needed to be set in place, with their housings intact. He checked that by giving little tugs with his shaking hands. They held secure.
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Moving on to check the fuel line feeding the core, he forcibly ignored it when his hand brushed the engraving on the side of the metal. Etched irreversibly into the material was the identification of another allied ship: the Battleship Kansas. To anyone else, that name was a thirty-year-old mystery. To him, it was pain of an entirely different variety, a reminder that hope was foolish and stupid.
But he did not have time for those memories. Not now. They were reminders of another life. Reminders of someone else’s life, a life that had nothing at all to do with him now.
The fuel line connecting the stores to the core was intact. The needle in the little circular pressure gauge attached was nominal. The core had access to the fuel it needed to burn for power. There was just one more thing he needed: a connection to the main power grid. The Reserve Power Core did not have its own attachment, so it had gone undamaged by the power surges that had ruined the grid itself.
Gathering his fraying strength, the Admiral tried to climb to his feet, but fell immediately back down. Deeply focused, he hadn’t registered the toll this marathon had taken on his irradiated body. He Gasping for air, much like Ensign Delaney had, every small movement was a prickling of concentrated pain. Still, he dragged himself determinedly over to the FTL drive. Once there, he spotted the biggest wire and reached up, ripping it from its housing on the drive.
He struggled to drag the drive’s wire connection back to the waiting power core. It took time. He was sluggish and the compartment was starting to swirl around him in dizzying colors. Another fluctuation of the artificial gravity field lessened the cable’s weight enough for him to lug it the last few feet, but the sudden return of full gravity forced him back down onto his stomach.
He lay there for a minute, overwhelmed, the pain both emotional and physical coming back to him. He was so, so tired of this, and he couldn’t help but blame himself for the situation. He’d known the ship was a target, but had elected not to take action, some vain attempt not to be the monster the worlds told him he was. He’d had a choice. He always had a choice. He could have ended this thirty years ago, but something always stopped him – something he was certain the worlds would call fragile and stupid. But that was humanity by definition: stupid. And he was, despite his own best efforts, still very human.
It would have been better for everyone if he hadn’t been.
Trying to steady his own ragged breathing, he gave one last heave on the thick wire and earned enough slack to reach the port on the Reserve Power Core. Hissing from pain, he guided the power connection to its new housing and plugged it in, clicking the safeties on one by one. He secured the wire and reached for the activation switch, flicking it deftly to the opposite side.
…Nothing.
The power core hummed happily, but the indicator light for the connection to the power grid stayed dark. It took Admiral Gives less than a second to realize what was wrong, and cursed himself for not realizing it sooner.
The power fluctuations that had taken out the secondary power grid would have tripped any automatic damage controls that were in place. To protect the FTL drive from electricity surges, the system was set up to trip a failsafe when the current became irregular, cutting off the drive from the power grid. The system automatically reset when the electricity flow stabilized, but in this case, it had yet to do so, meaning the damage control protocols were still in place.
There were overrides built into the system which could be activated from CIC or main engineering, allowing them to use the drive under duress, but the Admiral knew he’d never be able to drag himself to either location. There was one other option, the last: a manual override located on the opposite side of the room.
He glared at the red switch where it was built into the wall, noticing the darkening tunnel of his vision for the first time. He strove for the suddenly far-off override, but his body refused to comply. Unbalanced, he managed two steps before finding himself sprawled on his back. Looking up from the floor, his surroundings faded in and out of focus, and the ship’s metallic shrieks rang painfully in his ears.
He must have blacked out, because the next thing Admiral Gives knew, there was someone standing over him. Her silvery-white hair spilled over her shoulders. “Admiral…”
“…manual override…” he gasped out.
She looked untouched by the radiation that was killing the crew, and nodded understandingly, activating the override herself without moving an inch.
The change was instantaneous. Power flowed into the grid, the uneven pull of the Conjoiner drives stabilized, and the groans of the above decks finally ceased.
Admiral Gives never saw the change. His directive to use the override had been the last of his considerable strength. He lapsed into unconsciousness, the radiation and exhaustion finally overcoming him.
It oddly concerned her.
After releasing the Admiral from the unconsciousness she had placed him under in CIC, attempting to stabilize the Conjoiner drives had taken her full attention. Those intense calculations had proved impossible to maintain without more power to maintain a steady gravity field. Eventually, there had come a point when there was nothing more she could do for the drives. It was then she had finally come to assist the Admiral, only to find herself horrified by his condition.
Radiation poisoning had set in some time ago, and he had continued to carelessly exert himself. All of that activity meant his body had processed a dangerous amount of irradiated air, even if what he’d done would save them all.
The Reserve Power Core’s energy was more than enough to stabilize the gravity field, and she used the excess to initiate the decontamination protocols and fire suppressors. Those two systems would prevent increased radiation exposure and keep the fires from spreading. Unfortunately, the radiation the crew had already absorbed would have to be treated later. There was nothing she could do about that. Now, it was a waiting game. It would take time for the decontamination systems to lessen the radiation back to safe levels for the crew.
It was illogical, pointless even, but she chose to wait in Compartment 24 by the Admiral’s side. The burns on his hand and leg looked so painful, the flesh blackened and oozing with puss and blood. She shouldn’t have needed to wake him. He shouldn’t have needed to endure those injuries. He shouldn’t have needed to watch his crewman die, and he should never have needed to be reminded of the Battleship Kansas. That power core should have stayed hidden below the deck tiles, where it again never saw the light of day.
But it had all happened so fast. The attack had come from nowhere, moving at maximum speed, without an enemy ship being detected. Even she was barely given enough time to react. And now, it was almost over.
The ship’s structure had finally stabilized, and most of the crew would now live, but she was worried. She shouldn’t be. She was not supposed to care. She had seen other commanders come and go without a passing thought, but this particular one had always been different. He’d been problematic, unpredictable and troubled since the very start, a coldblooded killer on his worst days, and a societal menace on his best, but he was still the ship’s commanding officer.
He was still the man who, despite his personal reservations and issues, would give anything to save his ship. “Thank you, Admiral,” she told him, knowing very well he wouldn’t hear. His predecessors had never been so loyal. “Rest easy. I’ll be right here.” A promise was a promise.
She cast a glance to the Kansas’ power core, feeling that terrible emotion she knew as guilt. Without that core, the entire crew would have died today, but even that could never justify the means by which it had come aboard. What happened to the Kansas had changed everything, the first step in the ugly, convoluted mess that was their shared history. She and the Admiral had been through so much, these last few difficult months that had turned the crew against him were the least of it.
The crew would come around. Once they realized what he’d been doing, they would forgive him for what they’d been through and resume their status as what had been the most loyal crew in the fleet a year ago.
She just hoped the Admiral lived long enough to see it. His condition was poor, but there was nothing she could do to help him – not with this non-corporeal form. She settled for standing sentinel at his side, but never knelt to check his pulse. She could tell he was alive, even if just by the fractional draw his breathing put on the life support systems. It was all she could do to hope he stayed that way.
An hour, then two and part of a third ticked by before the radiation levels had been successfully lowered. She had waited long enough.
It was time to wake the crew.