Brimstone Sector, Battleship Singularity
CIC was dark. With the ship running on minimal power, the lights on the bridge and out in the corridors were dimmed. Lowering the power in the grid was just a precaution to ensure that no electrical signature betrayed the Singularity as being a ship, not an asteroid.
Though sound wouldn’t travel in the vacuum, similar thoughts kept the crew quiet, as if afraid that speaking would draw the enemy down upon them. The tension in the air was palpable, and at this rate Zarrey was sure the waiting was going to kill him before the actual battle got the chance.
It had taken two and a half hours to drift this far, moving at the fastest believable speed of an asteroid, but they were still another twenty-four minutes from initiating the next phase of the plan – or so the countdown on the view screen proclaimed.
The thought of having to wait any longer made Zarrey want to claw his eyes out.
“XO, if you begin pacing again, I will throw you off my bridge.”
The Admiral hadn’t even looked up from his report to make that threat. Zarrey wasn’t sure if that amused or angered him. At this point, he was just itching for a fight, but he knew better than to pick it with the ship’s commander.
During the last two and a half hours, the Admiral had spent his time working, as if they were out on some boring patrol, not drifting into the firing range of enemy ships. He had stood and calmly read through the reports, filling out all the necessary paperwork that came from running a ship, seemingly unconcerned with their current situation.
His unfailing calm reassured the crew that this plan was viable. As long as he was calm, no panic would rise up as the battle drew ever closer. He briefly looked up from his report, “Lieutenant Robinson, status?”
“I still have the signal, sir.” She answered, trying to decipher the static bursts with her trained ear. “I have a corrected heading to execute after combat.” Until they finished this plan and neutralized Squadron 26, they couldn’t risk reengaging the main engines to make a course correction. It this range, the ship’s engine signature – mostly the waste heat, would be easily identified.
“Understood, Lieutenant.” Admiral Gives trusted Robinson. She was one of the finest officers he had ever seen. She spoke several languages fluently, including Hydrian, and had a tuned ear that could hear the footsteps of a mouse. Like the rest, she had a history that had brought her to the Singularity, one that had left her demure and quiet. Robinson kept her head down, seeming to believe that avoiding the commanding officer’s attention was a survival tactic, and maybe on the Ariea, that had been true. On the Singularity, it was not so, but Robinson minimized direct contact with him anyway. The Admiral had elected to respect that, just as he elected to respect the fact that combat sometimes took time.
While they could have come out of an FTL maneuver in direct firing range of Squadron 26, they would have risked losing the signal to do so. The structural stress also had to be taken into account. FTL maneuvers, be them through subspace or hyperspace, taxed a ship’s structural integrity a great deal.
The more FTL maneuvers one undertook without giving a ship’s structure time to resettle, the weaker a ship became both in combat and through other FTL maneuvers. To avoid permanent damage, there was a cap on the stresses a ship could sustain within a given amount of time. The regulations in the fleet had been strict about such things, and their eighteen-hour search had already pushed the Singularity’s limits.
From here on, it was better to minimize the number of FTL maneuvers the ship had to undertake, especially as they headed into combat. It was critical the ship’s structure retain enough strength to sustain damage and execute an emergency FTL jump.
Monitoring the ship’s structural integrity was one of the many less-obvious responsibilities of the ship’s commander. He had to guarantee that their ship could endure whatever he planned to use her for, be it combat or retreat.
In the Singularity’s case, Admiral Gives wasn’t particularly worried. The structure was under some strain, but it was a long way from compromising the ship. He had already put the ship through worse. Sheer structural endurance was a hallmark of the Constancy-class design. The Singularity wasn’t as maneuverable through turns and evasive action as the other ships in the fleet, but her structure was designed to sustain unmatched forward acceleration and FTL endurance. She was the fastest ship in the fleet under raw acceleration and through FTL, with greater range and sustainability than any of her successors.
The Olympia came in an annoyingly close second, though the modern flagship was a great deal more nimble on impulse engines. The Keeper-class ships did not really compare. They were the mere cannon fodder of the battle fleet. Three on one against a flagship was not fair odds, but there was no doubt that with a few lucky hits, they could do real damage, even to the Singularity.
‘I just want you to know that I will entirely blame you if this plan doesn’t work.’ The ghost made her presence known with a combination of humor and annoyance. She was no fan of waiting for combat.
‘I think, if this plan doesn’t work, we’ll both be taking early retirement.’ It only took one bad plan, one poor move on his part to get his ship irreversibly damaged. It was simultaneously very difficult and very easy deal critical damage. Without a dock to make repairs, anything that would normally have been a complicated repair became a death sentence for the ship and crew.
‘Well, it’s only early retirement for one of us. For you it’s just normal retirement.’
Lovely. It seemed she had found her sass once again. ‘I’m not that old,’ no matter how she liked to make fun of him. ‘You and I are getting to be about the same age, you know. Relativity and all that nonsense.’ Anymore, he spent months of every year on patrol, often hugging lightspeed, and the time dilation had added up. Physically, he was several years younger than his official age made him out to be.
‘That’s not nonsense, that’s physics, and you’re still older than me.’ As a machine, she didn’t age, so she was always going to be younger.
He elected not to continue the argument. He could not recall a time when he’d ever won a debate or bet against the ghost. He shuffled the reports on the radar console, careful to ensure he looked busy reading their contents. ‘How are our pilots?’ Without radio contact, he had no way of checking on their condition.
‘They’re fine. A little sick of waiting, but they’re not the only ones.’ She wasn’t fond of this exercise in patience either, but for the moment, it seemed to be working.
‘And Fireball?’ How was the new leader of the pilots handling her responsibilities?
‘She’s nervous as hell, but eager to please.’ Captain Adams, now a member of the ship’s senior staff, held the Admiral in particularly high regard. She wanted nothing more than to earn his respect. ‘She’ll do well.’
“Twelve minutes and counting, sir.” Ensign Owens announced, monitoring the clock.
“Begin the charge,” Admiral Gives confirmed. The necessary modifications to the secondary power core and FTL Drive Two had finished an hour ago.
‘I do not like this plan.’
‘You had your chance to complain,’ the Admiral responded, beginning to clean up his work. “Correct all positions on the table,” he ordered the Colonel, “then I want a check-in on battle readiness.”
“Yes, sir,” came the confirmation as Zarrey wiped down the charts on the radar console, ready to update them.
“I have confirmation from all departments, sir.” Robinson called, “Condition One is set. Battle stations are manned and ready.” She had been monitoring their readiness constantly, anticipating that order.
“Understood,” the Admiral said. “Send a Marine to collect our civilian passengers. I want them corralled in the medical bay.” If things got messy, that was the safest place for them to be.
“Aye, sir.” Robinson knew who was on shift to be watching the civilians, “I will alert Sergeant Cortana-“
“No,” he caught Robinson’s gaze, “send someone else.” The civvies had shaken Cortana once, he wouldn’t risk it happening again. He already had enough to discuss with the new Sergeant.
To Robinson’s recollection, this was the first time she’d heard the Admiral express any distrust toward a particular member of the crew. He normally trusted all of them or none of them. She quickly buried her surprise. “Yes, sir.”
On one of the screens at the front of the room the clock ticked down, drawing closer and closer to zero. With crew ready, it was time to ensure the ship’s preparedness. The Singularity had a special role to play in this operation, and from the readouts, she was still right on target, slowly drifting closer and closer to Squadron 26 under the guise of an anonymous asteroid.
Jazmine was growing more and more excited, but beside him, Monty looked bored out of his mind. “Lieutenant Gaffigan,” the Admiral addressed him, “load the main battery with standard shells.” That would do nicely for a backup plan. “When that completes, begin shut down protocols.”
A chorus of acknowledgements answered him from every corner of the bridge. The crew knew their parts. They had served in odder situations than this and earned a respectable amount of experience though many of them remained young. At times, they resented the Admiral, but they were still a good crew. They were loyal, if not to him, then at least to each other, and like him, they had found a place aboard this old battleship, one they wouldn’t give up for the worlds.
The Admiral tried not to remember the odds of anyone on this bridge surviving a war with Command. They weren’t good, but his job was to play those odds, and he knew the demands of war. Hit fast, hit hard and never hesitate. Hesitation bred losses, and losses brought defeat. Then, if you want to live, leave before the enemy realizes you hit them.
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With FTL travel, it could be anywhere from days to minutes before enemy reinforcements arrived. That all depended on check-in schedules and the position of enemy fleets. At this moment, there were probably half a dozen other fleets combing the region for Fairlocke’s ships. One wrong step would bring every single one down upon them.
“Eight minutes and counting.” Owens announced, hugging her clipboard to her chest.
“Phase one shutdown commencing,” Alba confirmed, directly overseeing the procedure. For a moment, the lights above brightened, a surge running through the power systems as draws were removed. Chatter overtook CIC, the station handlers managing their departments.
Owens eyed the clock with severe concern, minding her responsibilities as time slid by. “Six minutes.”
“Phase Two shutdown commencing,” Alba said, beginning to type commands into the engineering controls.
Admiral Gives put his hand on the edge of the radar console and felt the pulse of the electrical systems weaken even further. The systems taken off the grid were pulled away like instruments from a melody. What was left were the most basic of parts, singing through with odd breaks and ends, working, but missing something.
“Three minutes.” Owens announced quietly.
Alba looked up from his controls. “Sir?” Confirmation to continue was necessary at this stage.
The Admiral was certain to check his watch. Three minutes. After this, they’d be losing the ship’s chronometer. “Commence the final phase.”
“Yes, sir.” Alba moved across the row of controls, clicking the knobs slowly, but surely into downward position. With each one, a main system went dark. First navigations, then sensors, and communications. The lights and main power went next, casting the bridge into darkness. Each piece was cut out from the harmony of the power grid. It was a palpable change to the Admiral’s experienced hand.
The engineering systems were the last. He felt them vanish: the power cores, the FTLs, even the air recyclers, and then there was nothing. The ship’s power grid was inactive, everything disconnected from it. The charge previously loaded would begin to slowly deteriorate without power feeding into it, but it would last just long enough.
Without lights, the emergency backups had kicked in, washing everything in garish red. Colonel Zarrey squinted into the darkness. “I hate this part.” Usually, the darkness of the emergency lights was a bad sign.
Admiral Gives didn’t particularly favor running a ship without power either, but he reassured, “All part of the plan.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.” It just felt wrong. It seemed counter intuitive to calmly stand aboard a ship without power as it drifted towards the enemy. Time would cruelly tell if this plan was a stroke of insanity or brilliance. That depended on whether or not Squadron 26 attacked in the next two minutes.
Logically, Zarrey knew that the ship’s armor was unaffected by the lack of power, but he still felt less safe. Without the main power grid, there would be no decompression alarms, no fire suppressors and no communications across the ship. And yet, the Admiral seemed unbothered, his calm supporting the crew’s calm. No doubt, he’d been through this before, but all Zarrey could think about in the darkness was the mess he’d woken to in the Aragonian Sector. He remembered it like it was a nightmare, a weeklong night terror that he’d only mostly woken up from. The very similarity made his skin crawl.
Zarrey closed his eyes for a moment, sparing a thought for the ship. Just get us through this one and I won’t ever doubt you again.
“One minute,” the Admiral said, watching the second hand of his watch begin its final circumvention. “Helm?”
Jazmine cracked his knuckles and stretched out his neck, “Standing by.”
So far so good. It was a pleasant surprise that this plan had gone so far without a hitch. He’d expected to have to accelerate his time table. “Thirty seconds.”
“Ready,” Ensign Alba called, confirming that the battery-backups for the inertial dampening systems had kicked in.
Zarrey forced a grin. “This is where the fun begins.”
With an intent and measured patience, the Admiral waited for the second hand to hit its mark. “Engage.”
Alba reached up to flick a couple switches, fully reengaging the engines. “Go.”
Jazmine had already wrapped his hand around the throttle in anticipation. “Brace,” he called with a grin, throwing the throttle control forward.
Outside the ship, the muted glow of the engines surged back into blue flames, briefly brightening as thrust was applied, the ship starting to inch slowly away in a disproportionate silence. She moved with an apparent ease, gliding faster and further away with every second. Fireball regarded it with a sense of dread and glee. The time had finally come. Her Arcbird lazily continued its endless rotation, and the Singularity slid out of view, replaced by the sprinkle of hazy stars.
Some time ago, they had drifted into the outermost edge of the Brontosaur Nebula. The gasses here were too sparse to interfere with local viewing or sensors, though it clouded distant constellations. The Brontosaur Nebula had an unusually dense core – dense enough to provide air resistance and a gravitational pull. The core’s superheated gasses were in sight now as the ships continued falling towards it, picking up a slight acceleration. With the nebula’s unique composition, it was not abnormal for rogue asteroid swarms to be drawn in, providing the perfect cover for this operation.
The glow of the nebula’s core looked like a distant wildfire, though no chemical processes had yet begun in the stellar nursery. It had been mere seconds since Fireball had lost sight of the ship, but the Singularity was already vanishing into the distance, identified by a shrinking blue speck against the glowing wall of gasses.
Familiar with the ship as she was, it still took Fireball aback to see something so massive move with such ease. For a battleship, the Singularity was more than fast. It was unnerving. Enemies swore she moved like a ship possessed, but it was nothing more than the raw capability of the main engines, powered by processes Fireball wouldn’t pretend to understand.
The next step in the plan had begun with the Singularity’s acceleration. It would take mere seconds for Squadron 26 to detect her engine signature at this range, but the Singularity herself would be on them before they could truly react, having drifted close over the last few hours.
Adams just had to wait for the signal. It would be another few minutes at the most. She could feel her palms start to sweat as she resisted the urge to squint. She wouldn’t miss the signal, even if she was facing away. It would reach her unless something went horribly, horribly wrong.
Dear stars, Adams begged, don’t let anything go horribly, horribly wrong. A little wrong was fine. They were always coping with that crap, but horribly wrong was a death sentence for her, her pilots and probably everyone on the Singularity too. With Command as their enemy, the stakes were much, much higher than usual.
Aboard the Singularity, tensions were mounting in the darkness. Without main power, the first warning they’d get of an enemy attack would be the impacts on the hull. Zarrey found himself grinding his teeth, uncertain what to do.
“Forty-five seconds to near-intercept,” Walters called, wiping the nervous sheen from his bald head.
‘Squadron 26 has taken note,’ the ghost added, feeling the turmoil of unfamiliar minds. ‘I imagine they’re powering up for a fight.’
‘Good.’ The more arrays and systems they powered up, the better this would work.
‘No, it’s NOT good.’ Squadron 26 was preparing to attack. In no universe was that a good thing.
‘Quit complaining,’ They were mere minutes from ending this engagement. If it all went according to plan, Squadron 26 wouldn’t have time to fire. And so far, for once, everything had gone according to plan.
“Fifteen seconds,” came the announcement.
Zarrey shook his head and grabbed onto the radar table. “I hate this part.” He hated a lot of the shit that their plans involved. “Next time I’m riding with the Warhawks.”
Compared to spinning slowly for over two hours, the Admiral felt this was the easier end of the deal. What he’d asked so far of the pilots wasn’t dangerous, but it was certainly uncomfortable. What he’d asked of their respective ships, however, didn’t even compare. The Singularity had the worse task by far. “Cease acceleration,” he ordered Jazmine.
At once the engines cut out and dropped to an idle hum, the sensation of high acceleration suddenly vanishing unexpectedly physical. “Detonate.”
Here goes, Zarrey thought as he closed his eyes and grabbed on tight to the console in front of him. He didn’t understand the mechanizations that made this work, all he knew was that he didn’t like it.
Deep in the core of the ship, the primary power core had intentionally overcharged one of the FTL drives. It hummed with power, its magnetic innards quaking under the polarization of capacitance they had never been designed to take.
That corralled energy was released in a single, instantaneous surge. It rushed along its predetermined path, finding the integrated machinery that should have used it to tear a hole into subspace, but those systems were inactive. The rampant, unused energy overloaded them in a mere second and detonated out of its containment in a tidal wave of pure energy. Directionless, some of it surged though the Singularity’s systems, to be met with and mostly dissipated by an empty power grid. The surge of it fried any active systems, the power core and FTL drive casualties of their own design.
Squadron 26 was less lucky. They’d reacted to the Singularity’s sudden acceleration and identification by moving into a combat-ready stature. Though it dissipated with range, the pulse of energy was more than enough to cause a cascade effect.
Conducted through the electromagnetic-sensitive arrays of communications, sensors and navigations, raw energy surged into the power grids, causing feedback and instability. The sudden overload of energy was fed into the active systems: computers, controls, even the lights. Some circuit breakers kicked in, but that only worsened the fate of the other systems.
In a few mere seconds, the battleships’ power grids tore themselves apart. The electricals were overheated and fried; critical systems left smoldering. Outward, the lights on their hulls flickered, then went dark. The engine reaction flames were slowly smothered out, electrical control systems no longer able to maintain the processes, and they began to drift, powerless, in the direction they had been flying. The Singularity’s void like hull sailed easily though the haze above them.
“Begin the power up sequence,” the Admiral ordered. “Any damage?”
Zarrey groaned. “Nothing smells particularly burnt.” Ruined electronics always carried that particularly acrid scent. He was glad to miss it now, but his head felt fuzzy, disturbed by the sheer volume of electricity that had passed through the ship moments before. There had been a transient charge in the air. Zarrey was always amazed that the ship managed to handle, let alone produce so much raw electricity.
Jazmine was arms deep in the helm, quickly switching out the batteries. Operating the helm on battery power had allowed them to maintain control of the engines, but the EMP the ship had generated had killed the active battery. Replacing it would instantly restore control, allowing orders to be transmitted along the ship’s optical command relays.
Every other system on the ship required the power grid to operate, regardless of whether or not orders were transmitted from batteries. The main engines were the exception. The Singularity’s engines, designed to be incorruptible, did not operate with electrical control components. As long as orders were transmitted from the helm, they would operate normally.
“Standing by, sir.” Jazmine said, finishing his work.
“Begin deacceleration, fractional power.” Without the main power grid, they lost the inertial dampeners. Maneuvering too harshly would throw everyone aboard. Initially, the batteries had covered their acceleration, but the EMP had taken those out. The emergency backup batteries – now active – would keep anyone from being killed directly by the acceleration, but wouldn’t protect from injuries.
“Aye, sir.” Jazmine carefully put the engines into reverse thrust, feeling the gentle acceleration take hold.
“First glance, all ships appear disabled, sir.” Galhino, still working on powering up the sensors, had pulled an optical feed. Squadron 26 was drifting in the dark.
“I bet they’re fuming,” Monty chuckled. It took a certain level of crazy to detonate an EMP in combat. Every ship involved, including the one that generated it, suffered the consequences. Even shutting everything down to prevent real damage meant that a ship would be sensor blind, lose navigational capability and lose their weapons systems: both defensive and offensive. Most also lost engine power and control.
“They’re about to hate us even more.” Zarrey grinned. The Singularity’s role had been to disable Squadron 26, but it would take her several long minutes to boot everything back up. Her systems were simply never meant to be shut down, but the same was not true for the Arcbirds and Warhawks they’d launched hours before. They’d be here in moments to finish what the Singularity had started.