Halogen Sector, Battleship Singularity
For once, the bridge was entirely quiet. With the ship’s limited automatic programs operating the systems, the noise of the crew was absent: no rustle of papers and no clicking of keys. Beneath the hum of the engines, even the whisper of the air circulation systems had hushed, with little work necessary to support just one person in the room.
The soft pings of the radar were not constant. They came at random intervals, the noise hitting a different tone each time the sweep cleared, but the Admiral didn’t immediately concern himself with it. He leaned against the console behind him, deep in contemplation.
This is just great. There was blood in the water, no injury, no pain on their behalf, just a hint of something that shouldn’t be there, and the crew was after it like ravenous sharks. They wouldn’t leave the subject alone. He knew that. They would second-guess all his orders until he gave some explanation that he, for their sakes, couldn’t give.
The only way to prevent that was to provide an alternate explanation – plant evidence of something that wasn’t the truth. He had to lie. And despite Colonel Zarrey’s accusations, that wasn’t something he took lightly. He didn’t lie to his crew. He dodged questions, refused to answer, but he didn’t lie.
But his usual adherence to honesty wasn’t the problem here. He wouldn’t be lying to them directly, rather he’d let them draw their own incorrect conclusions from planted evidence. The issue was planting the necessary evidence. To do so, he had to sabotage his own ship.
Sabotage. The very thought was repulsive to him. It was a sick mistreatment of the machine that had served him so well.
But it was that or leave the crew with suspicions that only endangered them – breeding mistrust and marking them as potential targets for Manhattan.
He didn’t have a choice.
“Sorry,” he patted the edge of the radar console, then moved to grab the emergency repair kit off the wall.
The tools inside rattled as he started toward the helm console. Before he was even halfway there, she appeared, a pleading expression on her pale face. “Don’t hurt me,” the ghost begged, quickly sinking to her knees and bowing down at his feet, trembling.
“No,” he hated this. “Stop.” Don’t. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She cowered away, bowing further into the form of subordination and reverence that had been drilled into her. Engulfing her existence in pain, a self-destructive war raged between her systems, torn by her desperation to save her crew and her fear of the punishment she would be dealt for violating the rules – those rules that had been carved into her mind through years of abuse. Don’t interfere. Don’t override crew control. Never reveal your existence.
She’d done all three.
“I’m sorry,” she breathed, desperately trying to escape the pain that stabbed through her. “I… I know the rules.” She understood the consequences of what she’d done. She was a tool, not meant to make decisions, not meant to seize control, only meant to obey, to calculate and equalize factors that humanity could not. “I… help.” It was all she’d wanted – to help and spare her crew pain.
But those intentions of hers never earned mercy. It earned her the right to be flayed alive by her own telepathy. It earned her the right to have pieces of comprehension and memory ripped away, ensuring that she spent every moment surrounded by strangers and unable to formulate her own intentions, let alone act on them. “Spare me, Master.”
“No.” Don’t. “Don’t ever call me that.”
She flinched away, shaking even worse as she heard the edge in his tone. She reacted to that like he’d brandished a weapon. After all, to a telepath, that was one and the same. “Forgive me, Master.”
“Don’t call me that.” I’m not him. The Admiral softened his tone, “Look at me. You know me.” Once, you trusted me.
Slowly, she moved, peeking up at him. “Master,” she acknowledged. Obediently, she stared for a moment, but her eyes remained blank with terror.
There wasn’t an ounce of recognition in her expression. He was left staring at his own reflection. Have I truly become so much like him? If even the ghost saw him that way, he’d become nothing but cruel. “Listen to me,” he said carefully, kneeling down in front of her, “it’s the year 4249. Right now, no one is going to hurt you.” Least of all, me.
She stared for a long moment, struggling to understand. “I…” she faltered, the war inside slowing to a crawl. ‘The rules.’ She had broken the rules, and even in the agonizing wreckage of her mind, she understood that what came next was punishment.
“Those aren’t my rules.” They were his predecessor’s. “I’m not him.” He wanted to be anything but that. “And someday I hope you’ll really understand that.”
I never wanted this. He had never wanted her to be afraid of him. After all that she had done for him, the last thing he’d ever wanted to become was her abuser, her master. And yet, that was exactly what she saw in this moment. All she saw in her eyes was her fear and a reflection of himself.
It hurt. It hurt in new and terrible ways, no matter how much he wanted to deny it.
“You know me,” he promised softly. “I was younger.” That had been so many years ago now, so many battles and so many crimes. It was no wonder she couldn’t recognize him. The simplest changes had confused her back then. “My hair wasn’t gray. I was your executive officer.”
The war in her mind stalled. Could that be? Could that be true? No. Error. She screeched, “No!” It wasn’t possible. It was a lie. He was toying with her. “You died.” The sad, blue eyed officer she’d known was long gone. “He took you away, and… and…” Error.
“Is that what he told you?” the Admiral asked, “That I had died?”
System error. The same message read back to her over and over again. Malfunction. It was shadowed by the thoughts of a parasite. You’re a broken machine, it laughed. You will never save anyone. You are a tool meant to destroy and you will never do anything but. To prove it, her beloved XO, the traitor, had been hauled away in chains, and she was ordered to do nothing but watch.
She screamed. Critical malfunction. It hurt. This confusion, this pain, it hurt. “Leave me alone!” How was this fair? “How can a ghost be haunted?” How could she have her own ghosts? Her own demons?
It didn’t make sense. Nothing ever did. But the man in front of her was a ghost, a memory, and nothing but. He was just another face of her thousand dead. Another life she’d once known, then seen ripped away, violently and irreversibly.
How could she be so haunted? “I’m not even real,” she sobbed.
“Yes, you are,” he promised. “And so am I.” This wasn’t some trick, some torture, it was reality. “I am here to help you.” Let me. “You’re confused. That’s okay, but stay with me.” So far, the physical realm had been left mostly out of her breakdown, but if that changed, no explanation he concocted for the crew would ever be good enough. “It’s the year 4249 and you just saved the entire ship and everyone on it. I’m not angry.” He was so grateful she had been there to cover for his mistake. “Thank you. No one is going to punish you, and I need you to understand that. You’re safe.”
Safe? Could she ever be such a thing? Yet, as she investigated this ghost’s presence, it felt so real and so honest. It was calm. Sad, but calm, just as she’d remembered it. And as she sat there, just processing, processing nothing, only processing, recognition trickled in.
This officer was no ghost, nor was he her master, who had left her so scarred. He wasn’t the one who had picked and pulled at her until she’d broken. He wasn’t the one that had left her unable to function without the aid of another mind.
This was the sad officer who had decided to stay with the ruin his predecessor had left behind. This was the sad officer who had called her beautiful and promised to help. This was the officer who cared more than he had a right and took care of her, no matter how badly she broke down. This was the commanding officer who had nearly committed a war crime with the single intention of ensuring that Tyler and his fleet were never given the chance to harm her or her crew.
This was the officer who was pained by her thoughtless instinct to bow at the feet of her superior and beg for mercy. This was the officer who was hurt that she’d bowed down to him and mistaken him for his predecessor.
“Admiral…” She hadn’t meant that. “I’m sorry.” You’re not like him.
It wasn’t fair that after so many years, every instance of struggle took her straight back to him. “I know you’re not him, but I was confused.” The price of interfering without orders was high. It tore her apart from the inside.
“I was lost.” She hadn’t known what year it was. The simplest data had been corrupted by panic, but she knew what she’d done was perhaps the worst insult she could throw at him.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
He slipped on his glasses and stepped past her to begin his work. “It’s fine.”
But it wasn’t fine. She knew that as she watched him pull off the cover that protected the wiring below the helm controls. She had hurt him. What was so wrong with her that she had brought harm to someone who only ever wanted to help her?
Maybe they were right. She was broken. Dangerous. Maybe she couldn’t be trusted after what had happened. No, what had been done to her. Years of abuse didn’t just happen. Every bit of it had been purposeful, done with sadistic glee. She had been tortured and left unable to comprehend the reality of her suffering. For years, she had existed in agony without understanding why. She had known only the pain, never any reason and never any relief.
Admiral Gives had saved her, and no part of her could ever forget that. “Tell me how I can make this up to you.” He and his predecessor could not be more different.
“Leave it,” he said, grabbing a few tools and crawling under the helm controls. He didn’t want to discuss this. What did it matter if she couldn’t tell them apart? It wasn’t like it mattered, no matter how much it felt like a betrayal. He was every bit of the monster his predecessor had been. With the blood of an entire country on his hands, he’d taken more innocent lives than even Brent. Humanity hated him for a reason, and he had never blamed them for that.
He wove his hands through the multicolored wires below the console, carefully singling out the ones he needed. The little electric lantern he’d pulled out of the repair kit was just enough light to work by, casting snake-like shadows behind the wiring.
He brought up the wire strippers and peeled off an uneven chunk of the protective coating. He did the same to another wire, then set to twisting them together. He was careful to make the damage look as natural as possible, as if the wires’ contact had melded them together, creating an electrical anomaly.
Taking out his knife, he sliced the next wire alone its length as if the casing had become brittle and split from age. At the end of his cut, the wire sparked, and he dropped the knife, fingers left numb and tingly. It was either too much current or too little to hurt, far from the dangerous amount that the wire should have carried. “Do you mind?” The longer this sabotage took, the more suspicious the crew was going to be.
The ghost scowled, “I’ll zap you again, Admiral.” Don’t think I won’t.
This must be how Colonel Zarrey feels. Thanks to the ghost’s control over the machine, the ship herself was out to get him at the moment. With a groan, he pulled himself out from below the helm. “What?” he prompted, flexing his numb hand.
She wished she could take back everything she’d done in that episode. Cowering away from him and mistaking him for Brent was cruel to both of them. The Admiral tried so hard to help her and protect her. “I’m sorry.”
“And I’m busy,” he retorted. “Are we done here?” Without waiting for an answer, Admiral Gives crawled back under the helm controls. He tangled the wires, making it look like they’d fallen loose, then caused others damage with their weight on a hard acceleration.
“And you wonder why people tend to slap you.” He was flatly infuriating at times. “I was trying to be nice.”
“You just electrocuted me,” he responded flatly, focused on the wires above him. He wouldn’t consider that nice.
The ghost turned away. “I’m sorry,” she said again, the whisper barely making it past her lips. She couldn’t do anything right. “I just…” She had wanted a moment of his attention in order to apologize. She had wanted to make it better. But she couldn’t even do that. All she ever did was make things worse. She was just a malfunctioning weapon of war. She was broken.
“You are not broken.” The Admiral quickly finished his work and sat back up. “You were traumatized by what he did to you.” There was nothing wrong with that. Considering what had happened, that was perhaps the most normal reaction she could have. “I’m sorry that I remind you of him.” No matter how much he didn’t want to be like Brent, he knew deep down that he and his predecessor were not all that different. As much as he resented it, those comparisons were not unfounded.
She had every right to fear him. As the ship’s commanding officer, he now held the power that had so painfully torn her apart. That alone tainted him in her eyes. It made him a potential threat. Her blind trust had been irreversibly shattered. Try as she might to move on, those scars would always remain.
While the memory of a human’s trauma would fade, allowing them to heal, hers would not. The memory of that abuse would be as potent in a thousand years as it had been the moment that pain had been inflicted. She would never be entirely free of her wounds.
As a result, she struggled through episodes and breakdowns, even occasionally relapsed into the condition she’d been in under Brent’s command. But they used to go months or years between these episodes. By his count, this was the third major breakdown she’d suffered in the last seventy-two hours.
“I know something’s wrong.” This instability was unlike her. “Whenever you can trust me enough to tell me, I’ll be here.” He would not force the subject. She was allowed her secrets. He certainly had his.
“It’s not an issue of trust-”
“Don’t give me an excuse,” he wasn’t interested. “Just tell me when you’re ready.”
He made it sound so easy. But it wasn’t. What she had here was fragile, so fragile. This inherently complicated relationship might seem less than desirable, but it was all she had. The Admiral’s personality was difficult, and his past was as tarnished as her own, but he treated her with respect and patience. She treasured their relationship, but some part of her insisted the truth would turn it to poison.
She was compromised. Manhattan would identify her and force the truth to light. Trying and failing to prevent Manhattan’s escape, she had sunk the Kansas and killed Samantha Scarlett. The blood of the only person Admiral Gives had ever truly loved was on her hands, and she had kept that truth from him for thirty years.
“I…” I want to tell you the truth. She wanted to come clean. He didn’t deserve to have that secret kept from him. It felt like manipulation, like mistrust and disloyalty.
But she was too afraid. The Admiral’s company was precious to her. He was attentive and kind in ways no one else had ever been. Over the years, she’d become the only one in the worlds that he truly trusted and she couldn’t bring herself to shatter that trust. She couldn’t bear to hurt him like that. No part of her had ever wanted to hurt him.
“I’m sorry.” After all these years, she didn’t deserve that trust. She was still taking advantage of him, just like everyone else. She was no better than the rest of the worlds, but he didn’t see it that way. He saw her as good and beautiful, no matter how many flaws she had.
“When you’re ready,” he repeated. He had no intention of forcing the truth out of her. “I can wait.” He had enough problems at this moment that he wasn’t eager to add another.
He grabbed the repair kit and returned it to its storage place, then turned to look out at the bridge. The room felt larger when it was empty, but it felt peaceful. The officers weren’t here to bicker or argue with him. There was only the ghost, standing in the middle of the vacant room. It was rare to see her lanky white-haired form here at all, let alone looking so conflicted. “Are you doing alright?”
She tilted her head, “I am operating within normal parameters.”
“Are you sure?”
The question was poised with a business-like mask, the concerned nature of it perfectly concealed. “Yes, Admiral, I’m sure,” she said with a little smile. “You don’t need to worry.” Even with her ongoing struggles, she was far from fragile.
“Then I need you to increase the current going into the helm. Melt those wires together.” Under normal circumstances, it would take a few days for the wires to meld together, but that was the point. He wanted this damage to look a few days old, as if it had happened during their escape from the Homebound Sector. With the evidence he was falsifying, and a probable cause of it, the crew would be forced to draw the conclusion that the events of the Centaur System had been a very lucky malfunction.
“Consider it done.” The least she could do was help him hide her presence.
“Thank you,” he said, now laying out the navigational charts for this quadrant of space. The soft white light of the radar console lit up the transparent sheets nicely. With a marker, he began to cross off the sectors with regular military patrols and prioritize those that remained.
She recognized the work almost immediately. A search pattern. “What are you doing?”
“My job.”
Very helpful. No doubt, he was trying to be cheeky. “You’ll have to forgive me if that fails to clarify anything.” All he ever did was work.
He didn’t look up, continuing to mark down distances and obstacles around the areas of interest.
She studied his notes in greater detail, recognizing the heading that he had focused the search along. Tyler had forfeited it in the Centaur System. “You’re searching for Fairlocke’s fleet?”
“No, you’re searching for Fairlocke’s fleet. I’m just helping you.” He couldn’t care less about the fleet. “Besides, the crew would never forgive me if I just left those people to die.” They were annoyingly good people. They wanted to help anyone they could. He merely played along and cleaned up the inevitable mess when things went wrong.
“Personally speaking, I would much rather turn pirate and live the good life, but that is not my choice to make.” He met the silver eyes of his companion, “It’s yours.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You are not my slave. You have your own thoughts and opinions, your own desires. You have as much right to make this decision as I do.” After all, he wasn’t getting anywhere without her support.
She blinked, her mind slowly putting the pieces together as she looked down at the Admiral. I’m… free. Finally, she was allowed to choose her own path. Without Command to give either of them their orders, they were able to control their own actions, and the Admiral was yielding to her wishes above his own.
He had always done that on the rare occasions that Command had allowed them a choice, but this felt entirely different. Back then, she’d always assumed he didn’t care enough to have a preference, but now that was clearly not the case. He simply seemed to value her happiness more than his own.
For probably the thousandth time, she reconsidered the Admiral. He hadn’t bothered to directly ask if she wanted to go after Fairlocke’s fleet because he already knew the answer and chose to respect it. “You know me so well.”
“I should hope so.” He’d only known her for forty years. Separated from Command, she had finally been freed from fifty years of effective slavery. It figured that the first thing she wanted to do was go help some poor unfortunate souls. Nothing about that was surprising at all to him. “Your intentions are always good.”
“Much to your annoyance, I know.” Her mission to save humanity, or attempts to save as many as possible, frequently got them in large amounts of trouble, but he put up with it. “I’ll plot our FTL trajectories, since you’re not the best navigator.”
He shrugged, continuing to mark up the charts with the preliminary work of their search pattern. “I have other skills.” If their survival ever came down to his navigational expertise, they were probably sunk regardless of what he did.
It took her all of a few seconds to plot a sequence of FTL jumps that would follow the Admiral’s marked search pattern. He continued adding to the charts and began working out the preliminary equations, generating all the necessary work to make it seem like he had plotted those trajectories.
To his credit, she only found two errors in his work, and teasingly pointed them out. He glared a bit but accepted the corrections without argument, and soon enough, everything was ready for the crew’s return. The evidence of a malfunction was waiting to be discovered, and the plotted FTL trajectories gave the Admiral an alibi for what he’d done on the bridge alone. It would make everything seem normal enough.
Shortly, they’d begin a rescue mission of her choosing. The ghost would be given the chance to do good in these worlds, to be something other than feared. For once, she would be something other than a destructive war machine.
“Admiral,” she said, offering out a smile, “Thank you.” She didn’t know how to repay him for his kindness. It would be so easy for him to force his own intentions onto her, but he never did. He followed her will as if it was his own without exception.
For him, her smile was payment enough.