Halogen Sector, Battleship Singularity

“Return to your stations.” The order had been given with the usual amount of neutral calm, so the crew shuffled back onto the bridge in a heavy silence. They looked around, trying to spot a change, but afraid to get caught doing so.

They wanted some clue as to what had occurred in their absence, but they wouldn’t find one. With the exception of the sabotaged wiring under the helm console and the notes he’d left out on the radar console, nothing had physically changed on the bridge. He’d made sure of that.

Zarrey took a moment to drown his nerves in a fresh cup of black coffee, then approached the center of the room with a head of uncertainty. “So,” he said carefully, “how are… things?”

The Colonel seemed particularly wary of him at the moment. It wasn’t as if he’d brandished a weapon, so Admiral Gives quirked an eyebrow. “Things are fine, Colonel.” He was on the run from the government that controlled the entirety of human space, and the largest military within it. What could be better?

Zarrey cleared his throat awkwardly, “Uh, good… I guess.” Zarrey felt a little conflicted about, and slightly terrified of the man in front of him. Kallahan’s words were still ringing in his ears. What kind of crime could be worse than killing millions of innocent people? Did things even get worse than that?

As amusing as the Colonel’s terror would be normally, at the moment it was just a nuisance. “Begin FTL prep. We are initiating a search for Fairlocke’s fleet of survivors.” No doubt, Command’s forces would do the same. “This was plotted along the vector Tyler gave us.” He handed over the plotted navigational data. “Prepare to execute a multi-jump FTL sequence. Combat is a possibility.”

“Since when do you give a flying fuck about some lost civvies?” This didn’t feel like the Admiral’s usual style – not that Zarrey was complaining.

“XO, this ship’s mission is to save humanity. Those civvies happen to be human.” It was quite simple. “As you say, I may be a ‘piece of work who has a problem with just about everyone,’ but I will not dishonor this ship and I will not force this crew into the moral ambiguity where I prefer to live.” They would aid those survivors if they were able.

The Admiral was an unfalteringly calm commanding officer, who, at arbitrary times, could be tempted to do the right thing for the strangest reasons. As much as Zarrey sometimes wanted to resent the man, he could never seem to manage outside of his flares of anger. It was better to proceed as normal, so he turned his attention to the FTL sequence data packet. “You plotted these?”

“Who else would have, XO?”

“Point taken.” Zarrey regarded the packet. It was thick, the FTL sequence containing multiple mid-range maneuvers. Calculating this had almost certainly taken the entirety of the time the Admiral had spent alone on the bridge. Zarrey didn’t know what he suspected had happened in that time, but it wasn’t this. This explanation seemed too innocent.

Sensing a lingering doubt, the Admiral added, “I prefer to plot FTL maneuvers in silence.” At the time, the crew had been making quite a racket, panicking about the events of the Centaur System.

“Sure,” Zarrey allowed, well aware that the Admiral wouldn’t have had enough time to do anything else while he was on the bridge alone. So why didn’t he trust that? Why did he feel like something was wrong with this picture?

The rest of the crew was carefully eyeing their exchange, a strange tension in the air. No doubt, if Zarrey called for a mutiny, he’d get it. At least for the better part of five minutes, the Admiral mused. A mutiny on this ship was going to be the mutineers’ problem, not his. He didn’t feel particularly threatened by the crew’s distrust. “XO, manage the search. I will focus on combat preparations.” It was extremely likely that they would encounter Command’s forces during this search.

“Right,” Zarrey found himself saying. “I’d rather not give Reeter another chance to smite us.” Their escape from the Homebound Sector had already put Thunderbolt too close for comfort.

“I doubt the Olympia will engage us directly.” It was far too early in the game for that. “After what happened in the Centaur System, Command will send bigger ships and more of them, but they will not commit the Olympia.” Reeter might want to take on the Singularity personally, but such action would be reckless. Overwhelming the Singularity by sheer numbers was a sounder plan. “Command is wary of us,” as they should be.

“I think you mean that they’re wary of you.” It was no secret that Admiral Gives and Command had never seen eye to eye, and where respect of his position and record failed, the Admiral was quite willing to use fear to keep people in line.

“Us,” the Admiral said, tapping the console under his hand. Compared to the Olympia, the Singularity was old and boasted a mere fraction of the weapons capability – unable to operate combat drones, and lacking a computer-aided, high accuracy defense grid – but a duel between two flagships was not to be taken lightly. It didn’t matter who won. The battle itself would be devastating.

“Always the ship with you, isn’t it?” Zarrey said, handing off specific orders to begin their search. The action felt normal, as did this conversation. It all felt almost perfectly normal. The strangeness of what happened in the Centaur System felt like distant past now, almost unimportant.

But it shouldn’t feel that way. By the stars, Zarrey knew he should still be on a witch hunt, but instead, he stood here feeling comfortable, at ease, and he could feel the anomaly slipping from his mind. That in itself was wrong. He knew it was, and yet that fact felt less than troubling. It simply was. It was not concerning or disturbing, just a simple fact.

Zarrey found himself looking around at the familiar controls, remembering the long and frequently boring years he had spent here. “Tell me, do you really think this old bucket can take on the Olympia? I mean, they gave her that name for a reason.” She was designed to be the most powerful ship humanity had ever built – the very castle of the gods, looking down upon her people.

“I don’t want to diss the old girl, but we’ve had some issues recently: random malfunctions, power fluctuations… And she did fail structural inspection.” However politically motivated the decommissioning had been, the ship had justly failed preliminary inspection. Repaired or not, the nuke had dealt severe structural damage. “I have to wonder where we’d be if you’d taken Clarke’s offer to command the Olympia.”

“Dead.” The better half of this crew would be dead. Command would have seized control of the Olympia and ended this months ago. “Trust is something to be earned, not given, Colonel.” And regardless of his general inability to trust anyone or anything, he did trust this ship. Over the years, she had earned that the long and hard way. Now, absolutely nothing could blemish the trust he held in this machine. “She’ll see us through.” A commander that couldn’t trust his ship was as good as dead from the start.

Zarrey wished he could be so certain, but as normal as everything suddenly felt, he couldn’t shake the distant feeling that something was off here. He couldn’t forget the week he’d spent putting this barely functional ship back together in the Aragonian Sector. The Admiral hadn’t seen her then. He couldn’t forget the conversation he’d just shared with Kallahan – the hint that Brent’s legacy lived on. He couldn’t forget the last words Fairlocke had said to him. Can’t you feel it?

“XO,” the Admiral said, “issue ship wide orders to stand down to Condition Three for the duration of the search, but the moment we detect any unnatural phenomena we go to Condition Two.” That would allow the crew to return to duty shifts, but remain on high alert. “And do not forget about your two hours of maintenance tonight. It seems you need to be reacquainted with my ship.”

“What’s the point?” Zarrey complained, “She hates me.” After the doubts he’d just voiced, working maintenance was going to be a nightmare. Regardless of any logic or reason, there was wasn’t any doubt that the Singularity had a personality. Most ships did, usually falling somewhere between bitchy and reliable. In Zarrey’s experience, the Singularity somehow managed both simultaneously – constantly making his time on maintenance hell while never truly throwing a real error.

A few of the crew snickered, well aware of the Colonel’s ineptitude for maintenance. Some things never changed, no matter how many times the Admiral assigned him to extra maintenance work.

Admiral Gives took their chuckles as a good sign. If they were amused, then they weren’t feeling particularly threatened, and were less likely to mutiny. No doubt, next time there was a ‘malfunction’ aboard ship, suspicions and tensions would multiply, but for now, the danger had passed.

Of course, if the Admiral did his job right, then no ‘malfunctions’ would be necessary. The ghost would never need to interfere. While the Admiral didn’t mind her interventions, the crew certainly would if they discovered the real cause of the Singularity’s mysterious errors.

Told the stories passed down from their predecessors, who had devoutly feared what they didn’t understand, the crew thought the ghost a malevolent, evil force. While that couldn’t be further from the truth, realizing that an entity they neither knew nor understood, had the power to usurp control of their ship at any given moment would send them into a panic. That paranoia was justified, since the ghost could abuse that power in a thousand different ways at any given second.

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But that was just the start of the issue.

Even if the crew managed to accept her presence, somehow not wounding her with initial fear and rejection, they’d begin to ask the dangerous questions. Who or what was she? Why was she here of all places? What exactly was she capable of?

Just a hint toward any of those answers and both the crew and the ghost’s positions would be jeopardized. The crew would become a direct target for the enemy, to be pried apart for their knowledge, and the ghost, if identified to the enemy, would be forced to their whims, regardless of her own will.

The situation was… complicated. It was extremely convoluted, with a new problem on every layer of the issue. At any given moment, the Admiral was playing a very delicate balance, but he’d have to be a fool to assume that was going to last. Manhattan would unravel the complexities of the situation eventually. It was only a question of how and when. Admiral Gives was under no illusions that he could misdirect or outmaneuver Manhattan indefinitely, but that wasn’t going to stop him from trying.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” Zarrey announced, “Start the countdown. It’s time to find those civvies.” It could take days to find those ships, if they ever found them. Plainly, space was too vast to be sure of anything.

Thirty seconds later, the ship leapt into subspace, jumping to a new sector. The crew groaned, the strange pressure of subspace unwelcome, but it was over in just a second. The confirmations of safe jump completion were read out with practiced rhythm, but it was immediately obvious to the Admiral that one of the crew was glaring vehemently at her controls.

“Is there something wrong, Lieutenant?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know,” Galhino snapped. You always know. Often, she wondered why he bothered to ask. “Our data processing capability is pathetic.” She had taken as many broad, multi-range active sweeps as she could on Sagittarion, but the ship wasn’t equipped to process, let alone analyze that much data.

It was a fault of the Singularity’s age that her computer systems were somewhat lacking. While they were capable of everything their modern counterparts were, their processing power was just a fraction of what the Olympia had at her disposal. The Singularity’s hardware functions, engines, weapons and sensor arrays were still on par with the best, but the ship’s automatic controls and analysis functions were severely handicapped by design.

In the end, that rendered the ship capable of raking in and storing more data than it could process at any given time. For targeted sweeps, the delay was inconsequential, but when it came to trying to analyze the condition of an entire planet from orbit, the process time became a substantial consideration, especially since the ship had to continue running analyses to search for the fleet in the meantime.

Genuinely, the entire situation pissed Lieutenant Galhino off. She’d joined the fleet to meaningfully interpret the sensor analyses’ output, finding patterns, identifying causes and effects, unraveling the threats and issues at hand. She’d never signed up to babysit a computer twice her age as it trudged through stockpiles of data. “This ship is too damn stupid for this kind of work.”

Jazmine looked over to her, unsure if he should be impressed or horrified she had the guts to unapologetically insult the ship in the Admiral’s presence. Her curly hair had been pulled up high onto her head, embers of frustration alight in her dark brown eyes. Well, she’s in full-on bitch mode, so this should be good.

“Galhino, somehow I doubt you’d be any faster.” Zarrey retorted.

“The difference being I’m not supposed to be able to analyze raw data.” That was this system’s entire reason for existence. “I wasn’t designed for that, so I’m not the useless failure here.”

Useless failure? That accusation riled an anger in him that he had felt in years. “Lieutenant, the next time you speak of my ship,” he lowered his tone, invoking the very darkness his crew had learned to fear, “choose your words very carefully.” They might be your last.

Galhino visibly gulped and turned away from the Admiral’s cold blue gaze. It was an act of cowardice. He considered it nothing but. A word against this ship was a crime to him, after all that they had been through.

The sensor officer swallowed, beginning to remember the threat of his wrath. “Sorry, sir.”

Sorry isn’t good enough. “This ship has earned my trust, Lieutenant.” You have yet to do so. The Singularity was old, but he understood her limits and her flaws. He tended to be ruthlessly overprotective, and Galhino should have known to tread lightly on the subject in his presence. Still, he forced the calm the crew had come to expect from him. “Lieutenant, have the raw data from Sagittarion transferred to the central computer. It can run the analysis and free up resources for our current objective.”

The Singularity’s central computer was not usually linked into the rest of the ship, unlike its modern counterparts. Its main use was record keeping: ordering and storing the ship’s half-century of operating records and background information. The most powerful computer on board, its processing power was often lent toward high-order analyses. It could process the data from Sagittarion in a fraction of the time it would take the sensor computer.

“You think I don’t know that?” Galhino snapped. “I can do my job, that is unless you don’t trust me to do it?” It was clear enough the Admiral didn’t trust any of them to stay on the bridge, since he’d ordered them off earlier. “I don’t need you looking over my shoulder.”

There were times that the Admiral really wondered why he put up with this particular officer. This was definitely one of them. Her attitude towards him had always been spiteful, and he had no recollection of doing anything that would cause such a seemingly personal resentment. “Lieutenant, I never implied that you were in any way incapable.”

“Well, I don’t see you standing over anyone else’s shoulder, sir.”

Perhaps because they didn’t threaten a mutiny last week? He trusted the rest of the bridge crew within limits, even as he felt them watching, anxious to see how he handled this. For some reason, they expected violence from him. It seemed, to them, he would always be Brent’s unholy shadow. The thought made him sick.

As much as he had tried to escape that reputation, tried to be different, no one cared to distinguish him and his predecessor from each other. And yet, not one of these people had ever met Brent. He had been dead long before their time. They knew nothing the desperate way Brent sought his immorality, nor the horrific way he had earned it in the end.

“Do you have anything to say, or are you just going to stand there?” Galhino said, unsure if the Admiral’s silence was more or less concerning than anything else she’d seen from him today.

Just stand there and watch. The orders of his predecessor, forcing him to stand by as he saw people tortured and killed. Brent had smiled amidst the carnage, grinning as the decks had run red with blood. The Admiral shook his head, trying to clear those thoughts. No one had the right to invoke Brent’s memory. Not Tyler, not Zarrey, not Kallahan and certainly not Galhino.

“Lieutenant, with me.” It was time to address this attitude of hers.

“Sir,” Galhino said, definitely unsure where this was going, “I need to monitor-”

“It was not a suggestion.”

“Yes, sir.” She stood, waving down the reserve officer to take over. She swallowed and cast a quick glance to Keifer on the upper tier of CIC, relieved to find that the communications officer didn’t look fearful. Trained to read body language, Robinson stood the best chance of predicting the Admiral’s intentions. If she wasn’t worried, then odds were, it was nothing violent.

Much like their previous meeting, the Admiral was waiting in the corridor. Only this time, she found him arms-deep into the bulkheads with a knife and a severed wire in one hand. Seeing the knife that had been up against Colonel Zarrey’s throat earlier that day gave her a twinge of nervousness, but he looked busy enough.

Galhino wasn’t sure if she liked the sight of this. There wasn’t any doubt that, if so inclined, the Admiral could easily sabotage his own ship. His control of the machine was uncanny, “What are you doing, sir?” The local life support system that ran to CIC was not far from there, and that proximity made her a lot more nervous than she wanted to admit. Surely he didn’t intend to suffocate them as punishment for her actions?

“Relax, Lieutenant,” he said, his perfect calm almost eerie, “the local main of life support is two bulkheads to the left.” While it would be easy to cut power to it from here, that was not his intention. “I heard an electrical strain. I am correcting it.” This was nothing more than a moment of maintenance, since he’d rather deal with the ship than his spiteful sensor officer.

“You heard it?” She queried, watching him bare two wires and twist them together before covering them with electrical tape.

“Yes. You might be surprised to find that if you listen, this ship can tell you many things.” From here, he could identify the status of the engines and power grid just by listening. The ship’s usual soft creaks were an obvious indicator of the ship’s structural integrity. “I have served on this ship for thirty-nine years.” She’d been his first assignment out of the Academy. “I trust this ship with my life and everyone on it for a reason, so when you doubt her, you doubt me.” He met Galhino’s dark brown eyes, “Do you doubt me, Lieutenant?”

She sensed it was a loaded question, not one she wanted to answer while the deadliest officer in the fleet was holding a knife.

“Do you doubt my ability to effectively command a ship and lead a crew?”

Clearly, insulting the ship was the fastest way to get under his skin. Perhaps that’s what it took to make him truly mad. She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out, no matter how curious she was about the monster in human form that was Admiral Gives.

“Sir, there are a lot of days I think you couldn’t give a shit about the people on this ship. We’re just lucky you have some incomprehensible determination to protect the ship itself.” Near as she could tell, that was the only reason they were alive.

She regarded his stony expression before continuing, “I suppose I should be impressed that someone like you managed to get attached to anything.” That didn’t come naturally to sociopaths. “But the attention you allot this machine is unfounded and irresponsible. It is going to get everyone here killed because this ship is getting more unreliable by the day.” He should have moved his command to a newer ship, one with a sufficient amount of processing power. “This is an extremely flawed machine.”

“Much as you are an extremely flawed officer,” he countered.

The comment hit her like a slap in the face, delivered without a moment’s hesitation. She spluttered, simultaneously affronted and surprised by the quick retort.

“We all have our flaws, Lieutenant,” the Admiral continued calmly. “Myself included, so all I ask is that you mind your tongue. Do not stir up discontent aboard my ship. My patience is vast, but it is not endless.” If she continued to act out, a punishment of his choosing would eventually be dealt.

“If you’re going to throw me in the brig, just do it.” She had attempted a mutiny. She wasn’t in the mood to fence with him.

“I do not believe a life in the brig is in store for any officer that threatens the security of this ship.” A punishment of his choosing would be a great deal more creative.

“So, you’ll just kill me flat out? Execute one of your own officers?”

“Perhaps,” if you’re lucky. “Now, I believe I have made myself clear on the subject. Disrespect me all you feel you must, but do not utter a word against this ship or anyone else on it in my presence.” He had no tolerance for it. “Return to your post.”

He let her get a few steps down the hall before he called after her, “And Lieutenant, do not think me oblivious. I know exactly why you stayed.”

“You don’t know shit about me.” Galhino snarled, ducking back onto the bridge.

That’s where you’re wrong. Galhino’s mindset was more than familiar to him. It wasn’t so different from his own. Like him, her attitude was often misinterpreted as something it had never been intended to be. Her constant concern for the people she cared about made her standoffish and rude.

But unlike him, her loyalty to the ship was second-hand. She remained here because the one she was loyal to had refused to leave. And from the Admiral’s perspective, that made her dangerous. That made her very dangerous.