Homebound Sector, Haven System, Base Oceana
After the alarms silenced, talk spread quickly on Base Oceana. Only minutes after the Singularity’s reappearance, there were a dozen rumors explaining her angry presence. Most blamed it on a new coat of paint finally refreshing the old ship’s looks. The other few muttered something about a demon and then refused to comment on the topic at all.
Alise Cortana was not sure what to think. Regardless of the why or how the ship had returned, it had, and now she was going to have to serve out that damned assignment. She was walking off the observation deck to get her duffel when the maintenance worker in front of her abruptly stopped.
“Bloody hell. I don’t believe this,” he said, throwing out an arm to halt his compatriots. He lowered his tone, seeing someone approach. “The fuckin’ Prince is already aboard.”
One of the other maintenance workers winced noticeably. “We’ll be damned lucky if he doesn’t decapitate anyone while he’s here.”
The mutters didn’t stop there. They continued as curious crowds lined the halls of Base Oceana, snapping to attention as the Fleet Admiral and his cohort passed.
Alise Cortana barely caught a glimpse of them from where she stood in the crowds. There were four: an engineer and three officers, led by the Admiral himself if the rank stripe on his uniform jacket was any indication. They moved purposefully by, paying the onlookers no heed as they headed for the secure part of the station.
Admiral Gives was not in the mood to be delicately maneuvered. He headed straight General Clarke’s office with no interest in obliging the bureaucracy. The guards stationed at the entrance to the secure part of the station made absolutely no move to challenge him or any of the people accompanying him. In fact, they made quite sure to be out of his way, recognizing the silver pins on the collar of his uniform.
At the General’s office, Admiral Gives knocked twice on the door and then walked in, not waiting for a response. Three other men were already in the room, politicians by the looks of their expensive suits. They stared at him in surprise. “We are in the middle of a meeting!”
They said that like he was supposed to care. Admiral Gives lowered his tone a fractional degree, “Get out.”
That was more than enough to turn their surprise into outright horror. They nearly tripped over themselves in their rush to leave.
Clarke just sighed, watching the door slam shut behind the Council members. “I see you’ve returned, Admiral.” Predictable. “You always did have a knack for bad timing.” It was a special sort of gift that made him a nightmare to his superiors, but especially talented at his job. “I just spent the last two hours trying to convince those Councilmen to put you up for the promotion over Reeter. You are not helping by barging in here and threatening them.”
Again, he said that like Admiral Gives was supposed to care. “I was unaware I had threatened anyone.” He had given those conniving politicians a simple command.
“Admiral, you ought to know that these days your presence is considered a threat. When you walk into a room, people get scared…” Clarke huffed, his breath rattling in his aging lungs. “Never mind.” It was clear that the Fleet Admiral simply didn’t care. Besides, it was because the worlds feared Admiral Gives that he became so useful. “Why are you here?” Clarke asked him, electing to ignore the three crewmen behind him.
Admiral Gives took the folder of evidence from Lieutenant Gaffigan and tossed a picture of the missile casing down onto the General’s desk. “We found that wedged into the Singularity’s bulkheads. It belongs to the Flagship Olympia.”
Clarke recognized it primarily due to the visible radioactive warning symbol. “Hell fires in heaven. That thing hit you?”
“That thing killed thirty-two of my crew.” Justice would be served. “Admiral Reeter has gone too far. Something has to be done, and if you will not do it, I will.” It went without saying that he was going to be considerably more savage about it.
Clarke closed his eyes, already exhausted by this argument. “Admiral, you know that I cannot speak out against Reeter. He has half of the fleet under his control. It would be suicide.” The moment he tried, Reeter and the other two Generals would declare him unfit for duty. “There is nothing I can do.” Well, nothing except force you to play your part, he thought bitterly.
“Then stay out of my way, General.” Admiral Gives told him. “You will give my ship a full resupply, and I will deal with Admiral Reeter.”
Clarke folded his hands atop the dark wood top of his desk. “I think we both know I’m not going to do that.” The Admiral knew what was coming. Clarke could see that in his eyes. “I’m decommissioning the Singularity.”
Ensign Alba saw the Admiral go perfectly still. Whether that was anger, shock or something else, Alba wasn’t sure. An odd moment of silence passed as Alba, Letts and Monty all looked at one another. Surely, they had the right to say something? Clarke had just leveled a threat against their home.
“General Clarke, sir,” Letts stepped forward, clipboard in hands, “with all due respect, given a new power core and a replacement defensive turret along with an otherwise standard resupply, the Singularity’s fit to serve.” He handed over the papers on his clipboard. “That’s the requisition list of what we need, including where to find a replacement Vigilante-type turret and the last known storage location of the Singularity’s original Primary Power Core.”
Clarke took it with a sigh, noting the Admiral’s continuous silence. “Lieutenants, Ensign,” they were loyal, he respected that, “your ship took a nuke. Most don’t survive that. I’ll admit, it was impressive, but that would have left microfractures along her superstructure. They may seem harmless now, but a year down the road, during some subspace jump, she’ll give out just like the Ariea did, killing all of you.”
“Sir,” Alba held out the engineering report, “if you’ll read through this, you’ll find we’ve checked the structure thoroughly. She’s just as strong as she was before.” And why the Admiral, out of everyone, wasn’t declaring that, arguing to save his longtime command, Alba did not understand.
“I appreciate your dedication, Ensign. I understand that the Singularity’s crew is quite attached to her. However, that is not the issue here.” Clarke needed Gives to step away from the old ship, and if that took decommissioning her, then he was decommissioning her. “I can make this easy, Admiral. You can ensure the Singularity gets the most honorable discharge the military has ever seen. You can keep your crew together, get them transferred to a new ship.”
The Admiral’s crew started to protest, but he beat them to it. “Give us the room,” he ordered.
Letts, Gaffigan and Alba immediately fell quiet, sensing the darkness that was gathering in the little office. A physical cold was setting in – the calm before the storm. Without other comment, they stepped quickly out of the room. None of them wanted to be caught in the middle of this.
Silence lingered in the room, a long uneasy moment from General Clarke’s perspective. There was a certain sharpness in the Admiral’s eyes, rare to see, but deadly.
Clarke expected him to plead the only way he knew how, to bring up logic and statistics, to wage a rational war in order to save his ship from the threat of being decommissioned. But Admiral Gives was through playing. He kept his tone low and cold, “You are making a mistake.”
Looking at the Admiral, Clarke saw something he recognized in that gaze: the promise of pain. “You and he were far more similar than you want to admit, Admiral.” Gives and his predecessor were twisted mirror images of each other. “You were both so possessive, it’s no wonder one of you had to die.”
“He was an abusive psychopath who physically and emotionally tortured his crew. He actively sought the most painful way to defeat an enemy.” He was an enemy. Admiral Gives would never consider his predecessor to be anything less. The marks Brent had left on the ghost were still there: her earlier breakdown a sad example. Those scars would probably never fade, giving Brent the undeserving immortality he had so desperately sought.
Admiral Gives admitted that he had his moments of brutality, but if he ever turned out to be that cruel, then he should have been allowed to put that bullet in his head.
This was a topic of amusement to General Clarke, one of few ways to really disturb the Singularity’s commander. “Do you regret what happened to him, Admiral?”
“No.” He would never regret the fact that Brent had died. Frankly, the man had deserved worse. It was the way it happened that Admiral Gives would never forgive himself for.
“No regret. No empathy. No compromise. You fought to the death for control of the ship that you both considered your own.” Truly, Gives and Brent were very alike, even if both of them had wanted to deny it. “Neither one of you were ever truly functional people.” A psychopath and a sociopath. “You were the same.” Reeter was not without his similarities, either. It was a fault of humanity that such people ended up in power.
Admiral Gives betrayed no reaction, refusing to let Clarke see the uncertainty that accusation brought. “I am not like him.” Or was he? He tried not to abuse. He tried to protect, but how was he supposed to know if anyone else saw it that way? How was he supposed to be good if he hardly knew what was right and what was wrong on his own anymore?
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
That is irrelevant. The Admiral had a job to do here. He would not let Clarke distract him with the memory of the past. “What do you want, General?” What was the price of his ship’s continued existence?
Clarke tapped his fingers on his desk, appreciating the Admiral’s control. “I should think that was obvious. I want you to take the promotion to General as my replacement.”
“I have denied that promotion twice now.” This third time was no different. He had made his choice obvious. Serving as the Singularity’s Admiral was his desired position.
“That is why, this time, I have taken it upon myself to force your hand.” This time, simply denying the promotion would not be enough. “The worlds need you elsewhere.”
“And if I take this promotion, will you leave my ship and her crew alone?” Would they get to keep their home? “If I take this job of yours, will you resupply my ship?”
He was negotiating the terms of his surrender, Clarke noted with satisfaction. Unfortunately, what he was asking for was not on the table. “Admiral, you are a logical man. Billions will die at the New Era’s hands, and we both know how to stop them.” It was the only way the human race ever stopping fighting amongst itself. “We need a monster to fight, one strong enough to threaten all of humanity, and we need a hero to stop it.”
It was unfortunate in some ways, Clarke supposed, but this was the way of the worlds. “That is why I think you already know that I can’t let your ship go.” She had a purpose to serve in this mess, as did he.
Admiral Gives steeled his gaze, “I will not allow that.” He knew very well what Clarke intended to do, but it was sick. It might be the one thing in the worlds the Admiral still knew to be truly wrong.
“This is not about what you will allow. This is about the worlds.” They had but one chance of surviving the New Era’s influence. “You know that it has to be done.”
Clarke was so calm, so certain, but this plan of his was wrong. It was so wrong. The thought of it riled an anger that Admiral Gives had not felt in years. “I am not a hero.” No one had ever called him that. He was a soldier, a killer, a bitter old man who didn’t want to live in these worlds. At this point, he was more akin to a villain than he was a hero. But his own fate was not the issue with this plan. “I will not let you turn her under a monster.”
“Her?” Clarke scoffed, “You’ve gotten soft. This… ‘ghost’ as I believe you call it, is a creature. It was an accident, a byproduct of the power we needed to win the Hydrian War. It mirrors the emotion and actions it sees around it. It reflects them in some attempt to blend in, to belong.” But that was nothing more than the vain attempt of a highly intelligent machine.
The infamous air of emotion that lingered around the Singularity was nothing more than the ghost reflecting the emotions of its surroundings: an echo. “Those are the redirected emotions of the people around it. It is not creating those emotions. It does not feel them and it does not understand them.” It was not sentient. It was intelligent in the way of a computer: knowledge without understanding. “It cannot even understand that it is not human.”
Damn the worlds. “I will not let you use her to your own ends.” He had told her that nothing would happen to her. He had told his crew that they would not be sacrificed for the greater good – there was no such thing anymore. The cost of saving the worlds was not worth them.
“I do not need your permission, Admiral.” The ghost was bound to obey Command. Any order it was given, it was forced to carry out without failure, a simple consequence of its existence. “Your predecessor proved that.”
“Need I remind you of what happened to General Brent?”
Clarke flinched, noting the coldness in the Admiral’s eyes. “I had thought you above leveling such ugly threats, Admiral.” That truly did sound like Brent.
“I am above nothing if it suits my needs.” There was no line he would not cross in this regard. “Stay away from my ship.”
It seemed that the great Steel Prince had been lowered to the same flaw as the rest of humanity: attachment. Unfortunate. “Your loyalty renders you blind.” There was a time Clarke would have found that absolute devotion respectable, but that had been a long time ago. That creature was playing him for a fool, cleverly withholding the once piece of information that would inevitably break them apart. A man so brilliant should have seen right through that farce, but it happened to be the Admiral’s only blind spot: his past.
“My loyalty is the only reason I am here.” If it weren’t for that, he would be dead. “And I will warn you now, if you pit me against her, I will lose.”
“You think you cannot defeat that creature?” Surely it had not grown that intelligent?
“Simply, I will not.” He absolutely refused.
“Your judgment is clouded, Admiral.” Clarke knew he would change his mind when he saw families being butchered and planets being stripped of life by the very creature he sought to protect.
“Everyone has their judgement clouded in some manner or another. Those who claim to see all and judge all fairly are liars.”
Clarke sighed, exhausted by this argument. “I had forgotten how standoffish you can be.” Gives always had a counterargument. Despite that, Clarke still held a high respect for him. “This is for your own good.”
“It is not your right to decide what is for my own good.” That was nobody’s right – not even his own.
“That creature is playing you for a fool. It acts helpless, hurt, it may even act like it needs you, but to it, you are nothing more than a toy.” Clarke knew that. He had dealt with the beast. “The power it wields is so far beyond ours, that our lives are insignificant to that creature, yours included. It is using you. You are little more than a means to an end, an end that we do not understand.”
“That thing knows you are perhaps the greatest tactician in the fleet, Admiral. It knows that you could destroy it. It pretends to need your brilliance to keep you loyal, to keep you from doing just that.” Only two people in the worlds had knowledge of that creature’s existence. The rest had been systematically eradicated. Admiral Gives was the last person in the worlds that could destroy it.
“Let me ask you, Admiral, who should be altering the fate of humanity? Should it be a creature that was never human at all? Should it be radical perfectionists prepared for selective slaughter? Or should it be you, a troubled man with the brains to make the best call?”
“That’s enough.” The Admiral silenced him. “You have no idea what you are talking about.” Clarke was a righteous old fool. “That power that will let you turn her into a monster? That power that will destroy worlds and unify humanity from fear?” That power that had made the ghost nothing more than a weapon? “It’s gone.”
Clarke stared blankly at him. “Gone?”
“I sealed that power away when I stole the War Key from then-Admiral Brent.” After the extreme loss of life he had seen it bring, and the toll that had taken on the helpless ghost, he had elected not to allow such abuse to continue: at the cost nearly losing his own life.
“I knew that you had taken the key, but I assumed under your command, that it had been returned to the ship.” With Brent gone, all of that power would have been Gives’ to control.
“You assumed incorrectly.” Admiral Gives would not be so careless. “Even if you were to order the ghost to use that power, she would be unable to do so. She no longer has access to it.” A safety precaution, nothing more, nothing less.
“Then all this time…” Twenty-seven years… “Your ship has been without her most powerful weapon?” Clarke was dumbfounded, “Then what the hell use is she to you?” Why would he fight so hard to protect that ship if it was little more than an empty shell compared to what it had once been?
“She’s one hell of a battleship.” She was not technically a flagship at the moment, but as far as Admiral Gives cared, she was the best ship in the fleet anyway. “You see, General, that monster of yours simply cannot exist. My ship is of no use to you. Leave her be.”
Clarke had been flatly outmaneuvered, a maneuver twenty-seven years in the making. “I see that you are not considered the greatest tactician in the fleet for nothing.” But to make that move twenty-seven years ago, when this had not even been a threat, it was clear Gives was still hiding his own intentions.
“Admiral, I know that you know where the War Key is.” Even he was not bold enough to throw that away. “You can still save these worlds. All you have to do is slay a monster. This is your chance to make sure what happened to you never happens to anyone else.”
“I never wanted to be a part of this game of yours.” Admiral Gives had refused to ‘save’ these worlds thirty years ago, and he was in no mood to change his mind. “These worlds are vile, self-serving and cruel. I have refused to be a part of them for a reason.” Running lame patrols in unknown space had been preferable to this heroic farce. “They do not deserve to be saved.” These worlds and everyone in them hated him. The feeling was mutual.
In the Admiral’s experience, the vast majority of the worlds were populated by people who served only themselves, with no care for others. “We humans cannot treat each other with kindness, respect or toleration. So how is it that you expect any peace other than extinction to last? We push for and fight over the future because we always despise the present. You have gone to great lengths to find a monster, but you are blind to the fact that you are surrounded by them.” Humanity was cruel, not by necessity, but by intent, and that made them a special type of evil.
Clarke sighed, after what he’d been through, the Admiral was right to be bitter, but, “Even you will come to realize that the existence of that creature is a small price to pay for the salvation of the human race.”
“I said, that’s enough.” They were through on that topic. The ghost was a part of his crew, and his duty was to protect her. Even in his sick mindset, torturing her and then murdering her did not qualify. “Do not make an enemy out of me, General.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Take it how you will.” Admiral Gives did not care. His loyalty was not to Command, nor was it to General Clarke. “If you hurt her, let alone any other member of my crew, if you inhibit or interfere in the operation of my ship, then you had better hope Admiral Reeter gets to you before I do.”
The threat was delivered with an eerie calmness, unemotional, factual. That made it all the more terrifying. “Something tells me that would be unlikely.”
“Very.” People who wronged his crew had exceptionally short lifespans. “Now, you will resupply my ship, and I will take your damned promotion, but I will do things my way, not yours.”
“Or?” Clarke prompted.
“Or I will gouge your eyes from their sockets with a pen and feed them to your cat.”
Clarke winced. “Very colorful.”
“That will not kill you, General. In fact, that still leaves me all 206 bones in your body to break.”
Clarke knew just how serious the Admiral was, and he hated it. If it took torture to win this fight, then torture he would. “You are a sick individual.” He considered his own species to be the worst enemy of all. “This is not the deal I wanted to make.”
“Then consider this a hostile takeover.”
Maniac. “You’ll have what you want. I won’t make any move against your ship and I’ll issue orders to have her resupplied, whatever good that will do her.” Knowing what he did now, a war against the Olympia was suicide. In her present state, the Singularity didn’t stand a chance.
“Good.” The Admiral turned to leave. His hand was on the door when he remembered what he had read in the situation report. “And General, the virus in the Liguanian Sector,” the one that had killed the Kansas, “someday, there will be hell to pay.”
“What the hell do you know about that?”
“I know that if that virus were to ever make landfall, there would be no saving the human race that you so treasure.” The unsuspecting masses would be wiped out with a cough. “My medical officer is investigating it, and I do fully intend to release that information, regardless of what damage it does to Command.” If he released that classified intel, then scientists could begin attempting to formulate a cure, a vaccine.
The Admiral left before Clarke could offer a protest and found his crewmen waiting in the corridor, their expressions deeply concerned. “I have negotiated for a full resupply,” he informed them. “The ship will not be decommissioned.”
“Hell yeah!” Monty grinned, “I won’t be out of a job!”
Letts was a little more skeptical, clutching his clipboard to his chest, “Is Clarke still alive?”
“For now,” the Admiral replied.
Letts breathed a sigh of relief. The last thing he wanted to do was move his inventory to a new ship. “Then I suppose all is well that ends well.”