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.
The Admiral stood in silent contemplation, patiently waiting for the ghost. He very well could have summoned her, but he refused to force her hand in anything, even that.
It took a few minutes, but she eventually appeared behind him on the deck. Bowing her head, she said nothing and simply awaited her fate.
This silence of hers was unusual. Something was wrong, but then, he’d already known that. Their return to the Homebound Sector had not treated her well. Like him, she’d taken a preference to the distant systems of the galaxy.
He kept a hand on the frame of the window, feeling out the trembles of the Singularity’s structure. “Do you know how the Ravenish treat their ships?”
No response.
“They revere them like queens.” The Admiral answered, noting the ghost’s silence. “The Ravenish chose one, then gut every other they come across to keep her flying. No matter how old she becomes, or how outdated, they stick with her.” It was the only thing he and the cannibalistic cult would ever see eye to eye on. “As they pilgrimage from their hunting grounds and back, or as they orbit the toxic star that is their god, they will do absolutely anything to keep their ship flying.”
If they ran out of resources, then they made some from their flock: liquified the bodies and burned them as fuel, cut off their limbs to carve spare parts from the bone. Firsthand, Admiral Gives had seen them wind nerve endings from corpses into wire. It was disgusting, but he respected the dedication of the Ravenish’s collective insanity.
“I think you already know that I would do anything for this ship.” If he thought it would make a difference, he would drain the blood from his veins and use it to lubricate the engines. He did not care how useless others said she had become. Dammit, she was his ship.
The ghost stared at the ground, the emptiness within her staring back. “Then why are you leaving?” Her fragmented mind understood so little at the moment, but it understood that. It understood that he was leaving.
Clarke must have summoned her and told her, likely in some sick form of manipulation or abuse. No wonder her voice sounded so hollow. Damn him, the Admiral thought. “Did he hurt you?”
She closed her eyes, as if that could block the memory of all the orders Clarke had wanted to force upon her – as if that could block the false memory of her slaying a colony of families in cold blood or the very real memory of her doing just that twenty-nine years ago on the orders of Master Brent.
A sob escaped her. When had she turned so evil? When had she become humanity’s monster? She had never wanted to hurt anyone.
He could sense it in the air of the room: confusion and pain. That’s it. Clarke was dead, very dead, the next time Admiral Gives saw him. “I want you to understand why I took that promotion.” Carrying those new rank pins, even in their case, felt like a betrayal, but he was taking that promotion for a reason: “I’m going to get you out of here. You and every member of this crew.”
The crew might hate him for ordering them on another long patrol along the border of known space, but there, they were safe. It was the best thing he could do for them while he stayed to wage this brewing war.
Fragments of understanding had been yanked from the ghost’s mind. She stared at the Admiral, blankly uncomprehending. “Traitor.” She held up her pale hands in confusion, “I am a traitor.” Why would he help her? “I…” her voice fell to a whisper, “I betrayed you.” Just like everyone else.
“Did you mean to?”
No. She wanted to be loyal, to help, but all she did was harm. All the data on the Scarlet Flu was gone, destroyed, because of her. She shook her head, the wrongness of Clarke’s thoughts still lingering.
“Then it doesn’t matter.” She could not help it. She could not stop Command when they sought to use her, and it harmed her more than anyone else would ever know. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” He owed her that.
The ghost stared, her mind struggling to heal and understand. Clarke had bent pieces of her out of shape, contorted her to his whims. There were thoughts she did not recognize in her consciousness, impulses that may have belonged to her, but may have belonged to others drifting around. Her very mind was unrecognizable to her after such events. It grew chaotic and confusing, but Admiral Gives was always calm.
In that, he was gentle. When her telepathy found him, she was not flooded with foreign intentions. With him, she was safe. He was not the monster the worlds thought he was. All this time, he had just been trying to scare people away from her.
“Admiral…” the last thought that Clarke had forced on her, it was the very thought of killing the only person in the worlds that treated her well. But… I can’t. Her mind would not survive that. She had more physical power than every nuclear warhead in the galaxy, stronger telepathy than any other known entity, and an unlimited lifespan, but her mind was fragile. It was weak. Her desires, her affections and her thoughts were easily disfigured by others. Her individual awareness was barely strong enough to survive the power of her own telepathy. She knew she was a horrendously flawed creature.
There was a certain hesitation in the ghost that he was not used to seeing. The logical conclusion in this situation was that he was the cause. The Admiral could hardly blame her. In her place, he would be hesitant to trust an unstable old soldier’s word. “I would understand,” he said quietly. “I would understand if you wanted to join him.” Admiral Gives’ current strategy was about as likely to succeed as a doctor trying to save a patient who was already dead. “Admiral Reeter is trying to save the human race.” That was her mission, her reason for existence, so he would understand if she wanted to join that cause.
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It wasn’t often that the Admiral let his voice go so soft. The ghost blinked. “Would you come with me?”
He bowed his head. “I doubt Admiral Reeter would allow that.” Reeter had made his disgust quite clear, but if she desired to side with the New Era, then Admiral Gives would dutifully step back and lay down arms.
The ghost found herself at an impasse. The fate of humanity weighed upon part of her, but the other parts of her were incoherently throwing thirty-nine years of memories at her, a hurricane of safety and weakness.
I’m not going to let anything happen to you.
He kept saying that, and she trusted it. She trusted that when she fell apart. She trusted in him when everything was going wrong.
And everything was wrong. This shouldn’t have been a debate. Her duty was to save humanity. She raised her hands to her head. She was malfunctioning. She didn’t understand the thoughts and feelings rushing through her mechanical mind. She did not understand and let out a cry.
Her struggle was very, very real. “Stay with me.” He kept his voice very carefully steady. At a time like this, she reacted best to stability.
The ghost just sobbed and turned away. Chaos. Her mind was chaos. It was thousands of processes a second, all different. The broken pieces of thought and emotion were littered among those processes like debris. There was no coherence, just anguish, anger and thousands of processes a second, all unrelated, all driving onward without pause. “Error.”
The simple happiness Admiral Gives so often felt from her was gone. The playful expressions he usually saw had entirely disappeared. Clarke had taken that from her. He had shattered her ability to understand anything. The man was more than dead the next time the Admiral saw him. He should expect to suffer painfully as he died very, very slowly.
“I should have stopped him,” Admiral Gives told her. “I’m sorry.” He should have been here. Reeter was right about him. He was a dysfunctional failure. He couldn’t even protect a ghost. “Dammit.” What the hell was he even doing? He should have finished what Brent had started years ago, and ridded the worlds of one more villain.
“No!” The ghost sobbed. “Please, no.” Not that.
Admiral Gives looked to her. Anguish and concern pooled together in her eyes. Pain twisted her expression, but there were no tears on her face. She was a machine. She was incapable of tears. It made her emotions no less real, but no matter how deep her pain, she could never shed a tear. That useless waste of water was reserved for humans.
“I…” she struggled for the words. “I want to stay with you.” You keep me safe.
That invisible presence of hers was reaching out, tugging at his mind. The Admiral did not resist her. He was used to the demands of her telepathy. It came with the job. Only rarely was she not present in his mind, but that constant presence had never bothered him. It kept him from being alone.
Still, allowing her to stay here, allowing her to take on this battle, it would tear her apart. “I cannot let that happen. This is not your fight.”
“Yes, it is.” She understood little at the moment, but she knew her purpose. She had been created to save humanity. Any fight they had was hers as well.
“This,” he gestured towards Base Oceana, “is not your fight.” This was a sick, twisted affair of humanity being incapable of accepting its own pitiful existence. “There is no ‘saving’ humanity here. All that’s left here is blood. It is not something you need to see and it is not something you need to get involved in.” This was nothing but the ugliness at the core of the human race. “Humanity will want your help, humanity will need it, but not now and not here.” His job was ensuring his own sadistic species didn’t tear her apart before then.
Slowly, some coherence was returning to her mind. The bond she shared with Admiral Gives was healthy and stable. It helped her slowly and painfully pick up the shattered pieces of her consciousness. “It’s not your fight, either.” She knew that much. His heart wasn’t in it. He hated this aspect of humanity, and he did not want to fight this battle. “You don’t have to-”
“Yes, I do.” There were a hundred worlds of people out there who needed him to do his job. They needed him to stop this brewing war before it began. If he turned away, then he sanctioned the creation of a thousand poor, tortured souls just like himself. And the last thing humanity needed was a thousand hateful people like him. “I am a sworn officer of the United Countries Space Command. My duty is to stay here and hold the line.”
“I’m a part of the fleet too.” By that logic, it was her fight as well.
“But you did not take that oath. You did not make that choice.” She had been created a slave, a slave to a corrupt, self-destructive species. “You deserve better.”
“And you don’t?”
“I deserve a hell of a lot worse.” For the things he had done, he deserved a yet unimagined punishment.
No, “That’s not true. You saved me.”
“One good deed does not exonerate a bad man from his many sins,” and there were a great many people that believed helping the ghost had been yet another sin.
“You’re not a bad man, Admiral.”
“Would it surprise you to know that I have lost count of how many people I have killed?” He was merciless, even oblivious to the crimes he had since forgotten. He was the worst monster of all. “I don’t know how many people I’ve killed with these hands of mine. I can’t remember all the different ways I’ve strangled people to death, or all the different ways I’ve spilled guts onto the floor. I don’t remember their faces, their names. I can’t even remember how I killed them, let alone why.”
The years and years and years of struggle had taken more than a toll on him. They had transformed him into someone he didn’t even recognize. “You say I’m not bad, but how can you say that?” How? “You believe that my predecessor was evil, that he was bad, but I am not any different than he was.”
The Admiral shook his head, disgusted. “He killed. I killed. We both killed so many. He tortured. So did I. He stole so much from so many, and so did I.”
The ghost turned away from the memory of her previous commanding officer. She did not want to remember. Those memories frightened her. “He hurt me,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“So did I.” Intentional or not, Admiral Gives had hurt her. “When he went to war, he took you with him, and dammit, so did I, but I won’t do it again.” Not now.
“I am a weapon-”
“I won’t do it again.” He would not be responsible for bringing her any more pain. After all that she had been though, all that she had done, she deserved a moment of peace. A war might be looming, but he would die before he dragged her into it. “I can’t be responsible for what that will do to you.” All of her kindness wouldn’t survive another civil war. It wouldn’t survive having to slaughter thousands more of the people she had been created to protect.
The ghost tilted her head. “I know you’ll take care of me.” He always did.
“You don’t understand.” Her faith in him was blind and wasted. “There is no good side in this war. There is stagnancy, and there is ruthlessness. Clarke and the New Era. Try as I might to stop this war before it starts, I have a one in a billion chance of success.” It was too late. “People are going to die. They are dying for no reason, senselessly and stupidly. There is no good side, no right side, hell there probably won’t even be a winning side.” She had been put through enough meaningless violence. “I will not involve you in this mess.” She deserved better.
The Admiral took a step toward her. “Consider this my way of thanking you for everything you did. I know I cannot repay that debt, but I can keep you out of this disaster.”
The ghost furrowed her brow, looking down at him. “You don’t owe me a debt.”
“Yes,” he sighed, “I do.” She had given a sick, terrible man a home. She had given him the chance to finally do something right. He was not going to waste it.
A dull ache returned to her chest. It was the ache of loss. She recognized it from that terrifying moment in the medical bay when she had been watching him die. “You’re not planning to come back, are you?”
Her heartbreak wasn’t even concealed. It sat out in the open along with all the words that had gone unsaid between them for so long. “I’m sorry.” He was so, so sorry.
“But…” a terrible fear started to claw again at her mind. “You have to come back.” You have to come home.
She was immortal. “People will always come and go.” She had to understand that. People would leave her.
“But not you.” He had come to stay.
“Even me.” He was not immortal. It was a given that someday, he would have left for good. Going like this had never been the plan, but it was unavoidable.
It didn’t compute. She didn’t understand. “Not you.” The ghost’s fragmented mind could not process this reasoning. One piece of her kept crying out, over and over again: don’t leave me. “I don’t want to be alone.”
“You won’t be alone.” She would have her crew. “You’ll have a new commanding officer.” Probably some dumb bright-eyed ensign straight out of the Academy.
No. She shook her head. “I don’t want a new commanding officer.”
Immediately, the ghost lowered her gaze, awaiting a reprimand. Such a comment had been woefully out of line. She was a machine, meant to take orders and accept directives, not contradict them.
Behind his façade, Admiral Gives was honestly too surprised to say anything. He had never expected something like that from her. “Why?”
“I-I,” she turned away, “I…” The words were there, lingering, but she was forbidden to say them. I like you. Among everything else that had ever been said about him, there was one ultimate truth. Admiral Gives was a good commanding officer.
When she looked back at him, affection was warming the depths of her gray eyes as she silently begged him to understand.
He sighed. You say that I saved you, but it was quite the other way around. There was a reason he owed that debt. Despite his best efforts, the ghost had become the only creature in the worlds that truly cared about him, and that was why he had to leave her. That was why he was so determined to do the right thing for her, even if it condemned him to a fate he considered worse than death.
“Admiral Reeter will never let you go if I go with you.” His purpose in staying to delay that war was simply as a distraction. Reeter would forget entirely about the Singularity and her crew once that war was underway. All Admiral Gives had to do was buy time for his ship to reach the border of known space. There, they’d be out of the bloodbath.
In that moment, the ghost’s damaged mind had healed enough to finally realize his intentions. “You’re leaving to protect me.”
“Yes.” Admiral Gives didn’t give a damn about the fleet, about the worlds. He only cared to do right by her. He didn’t want to leave. The Singularity was his home, but he would do anything for this ship, for this crew.
A silence fell between them. A part of her refused to analyze the situation. She wanted to reject this reality, this understanding, but she could not. There was not a better option. She could not protect her crew from the New Era unless Admiral Gives stayed either to stop the war or misdirect Reeter once it began.
She had told the Admiral to find another way, one that did not involve him outrightly murdering the leaders of the New Era. This was the other option. But that bloodshed was likely still going to happen. Admiral Gives leaving granted a one in a billion chance of stopping it. That infinitesimally small chance of peace had cost her commanding officer.
But… This wasn’t what she wanted. When she had asked him to find another way, this had not been her intention.
“Three days,” the Admiral spoke. “I leave in three days.” Maybe by then he would have the courage to say goodbye.
It took the ghost a moment to register the sound of his receding footfalls. Wait! “Admiral,” she called.
He paused and turned to face her.
Though he did that every time she called after him, it took her aback. The words she’d so carefully gathered disappeared. Her mind reflexively spat out the answer to an unspoken question. “Amelia’s in the medical bay.”
“Understood.” His niece was next on his list of problems to deal with. Briefly, he wondered why she wasn’t still waiting in his office, but ultimately decided he didn’t care enough to ask.
“She went to see our other visitor, who came aboard seeking medical attention for his daughter.”
Admiral Gives did his best to resist the gut feeling that was going to be trouble and headed towards the medical bay.