>>5558023>>5558086>>5558063>>5558154Your first priority is, naturally, to prevent any further harm to your ship and its occupants. While you may have damaged crew morale by putting the needs of the ship first, it has allowed you to make a breakthrough in your ability to command your vessel - and you are determined not to waste the opportunity. In your mind’s eye you picture the mental command space as a vast switchroom. Many of the boards lie dark, burnt out or even missing entirely but even more have various lights, dials and buttons - all connected to their own aspects of the ship no doubt.
This is the part your father taught you about, not how to reach this space - no, that part was meant to come naturally, of course - but how to filter out all the meaningless and irrelevant information and grasp exactly what you need to control. The only issue is you can't seem to concentrate while maintaining your fierce suppression of the ship's mind. Already you feel the link you are sustaining through anger alone begin to slip, and reaching out to touch even the nearby figurative switches is almost outside of your ability, let alone finding the correct controls.
But maybe there is another way… Instead of splitting your concentration, you focus on your connection to the ship itself. The strange feeling of foreign emotions lapping at your consciousness is somewhat unnerving as you begin to lower your fiery mental shield and instead extend a stern yet gracious olive branch to seemingly sulking intelligence - a chance to redeem itself in your eyes. Wary and waiting for your plan to backfire at any moment, you remain on the defensive as the connection swells and you begin to feel shame, hurt and perhaps a touch of loneliness wash over and through you. You let it pass, keeping a firm mental grip upon your red hot core of indignation to remain centred.
Unable to form words as such in this strange arena of the mind, you fix your desire in the centre of your thoughts and press them upon your ship. Just as it had earlier demanded fuel, you implore it to fire the starboard mavs for but a few moments. An extremely basic evasive manoeuvre but more than effective enough to throw off the aim of a five minute delayed directed energy beam. Any more and you might give away your newly restored power status to the enemy, though you're unsure if you could have communicated a more complex demand to your ship in the first place.
A grudging acceptance is conveyed back to you through your link and you know your ploy has been successful. You can barely feel the thrust vibration travelling up your legs from the deck below, the ship’s inertial dampening systems online and fully functional once more, but it is enough to know that you’re a sitting duck no longer.
