>>5554251Your mind spins with vertigo, and your right temple pounds as you try to come to a decision. Your stomach begins to burn uncomfortably and phantom pains spike and fade, centred on your left side. Why now of all times does your command implant have to act up? Or maybe your Science Officer was right and the repair nanites splinting your cracked ribs weren’t such a brilliant idea after all. Perhaps an unfortunate combination of both?
Conflicted, you focus on what your ship - your still living crew - needs right now. You <span class="mu-s">need</span> power. The void core hungers and where your crew were proud to serve in life, you reason they would gladly serve in death - keeping their fellows alive with their sacrifice. At least that’s what you keep telling yourself, fighting the doubt and your own conscience.
Alternate ideas pass briefly through your thoughts and are just as quickly discarded.
Make do with battery power until the proper procedures are followed? No, a DEW beam could be on its way this very moment, we need power to manoeuvre.
Break up the enemy boarding craft for its presumably organo-metallic hull and feed that into the core? No, the elevators are still down and you’d never get enough material down the stairs in time.
Have the crew contribute their own organic personal effects and keepsakes? Empty the mess of all its rations? Dump the ship’s precious cargo into the core and abandon the primary lifesaving mission? No, NO, <span class="mu-s">NO!</span> All possibilities but there is no time! The bodies of the deceased are all on the fuel conveyor, ready to jump-start the ship’s heart. This is the optimal solution, why are you hesitating? Sentimentality will get what’s left of the crew killed if you let it. And. You. Won’t. LET. <span class="mu-s">IT.</span>
Your swirling, out of control thoughts reach a furious peak, and your vision begins to go dark around the edges. Through gritted teeth you manage to cut off the still rambling Acting Chief Engineer, “My orders… Let them do… what needs… doing!” You spit out, exercising every ounce of your willpower to stay conscious.
“But Sir-”
“JUST DO IT!” You bark desperately.
“Yes… Captain.” The Tyllano finally concedes and releases the interlocks preventing the cremation of the valiant dead.
Some of the worst implant sickness you have ever experienced is threatening to break your fragile psyche. You feel as if your body is in freefall and yet tightly constricted by binding chains. You experience a heartburn so fierce it feels as if a star is being born in your chest cavity. As the world closes in around you, your mind seems to slip free of your body and you begin to hallucinate. At least the pain has stopped.
