Sitran Sector, Flagship Olympia

The Olympia dropped out of hyperspace with the ease of a knife cutting through water. Her hypersensitive arrays automatically realigned themselves to the proper angle. Receiving data…

She pulled the signal in, then transmitted one of her own, sending an all-clear signal back to Command. The check-in took moments, and the instant it finished, the Olympia leapt back to hyperspace, her course set for the distant Liguanian Sector.

To the crew aboard, such maneuvers were barely perceptible, but Charleston Reeter felt them. Even this procedure, normal and expected, was now done without his permission, without his orders. The thought made him too angry to dabble in the pleasures of food or women.

He was a prisoner. A prisoner aboard the decks of his own ship. His jaw clenched at the very sight of the technology surrounding him, leaving a constant, dull ache. His cathedral, his Olympia had betrayed him. The ship was no longer his weapon, but Manhattan’s thousand pervasive eyes and ears, the vile thing that granted her power in the physical realm.

It disgusted him.

Even if Manhattan someday abandoned this host, he knew he would never look at the ship the same again. It, designed to suit his preferences and desires, created solely to be his command, had become something horrid.

“Charleston,” the voice echoed from the walls around him, emanating from every speaker in the room, “there has been an incident.”

He focused on the newsfeed playing silently on his data pad. “I don’t deal with faceless ghosts.”

Withholding an electrical sigh, Manhattan projected her usual avatar into the room. He struggled to accept that she and his precious ship were now essentially one and the same. He refused to speak to her unless he returned to a more human appearance.

It was a worthless waste of her resources, but she allowed it. Reeter still served some use. “There has been an incident,” she repeated.

He set the data pad down to give her his full attention, satisfied that he could force at least her appearance to his preferences. “Let me guess, the Prince sank the fleets you sent to kill him?”

“No, quite to the contrary, in fact.” In this little incident, “He’s taken his first loss.”

A grin pulled at Reeter’s lips. “You have my attention.”

“It came at a cost,” as all things did. “Squadron 26 has been exterminated.”

“Exterminated?” He leaned forward, the glass of his desktop cool on his bare forearms. “What is that supposed to mean? Squadron 26 has been missing in action for the last fifteen hours.” All three ships had failed to check in after aiding Tyler’s forces at Sagittarion.

“I’m aware of that.” The Firon had her sister ships had vanished before confirming their orders to join the hunt for Fairlocke’s refugee fleet and had not been heard from since. The anomaly had been thought to be a communications error, until all three ships repeatedly failed to complete their following check-ins. “Another squadron has happened upon their remains.” With a wave of her hand, she projected the debris field into the air, the raw extent of it filling the room.

He watched the holographic wreckage spiral through the air. It was beautiful in a way, like snow on a frigid night. But there was something so dreadfully wrong about it. The pieces were so small. Nothing truly identifiable remained. Typical battle damage left hulks behind, identifiable structures, but this looked like the ships had been put through a blender. “What happened?”

“This is the Macaw’s sensor data. It was received during our check-in.” The position velocity and visual data had all been compiled for this hologram. She had assimilated it and run her own analysis. “It is impossible to truly be certain, but it seems that all three ships suffered a fuel and munitions detonation. There were no survivors. Indications are that the detonations occurred just over two hours ago.”

Nothing could distinguish the three ships. Together they now made little more than a storm of steel that would mince anything in its midst slowly to pieces. Reeter was repulsed by the sight of it. “I suppose the Prince didn’t feel the message he sent at Sagittarion was thorough enough.” Those crews had been left alive.

Three ships had been reduced to rubble with not a survivor between them. “How did he even manage that?” Admittedly, this was a show of strength Reeter had a grudging respect for. “He doesn’t have the manpower to storm and sabotage three ships.” His crew would have been outnumbered three to one, even if they left no one to control or defend their own vessel.

“I do not believe that the former Admiral Gives is at fault for this.” Reeter’s analysis seconded her own. The Singularity’s forces simply lacked the manpower to sabotage all three ships, no matter how gifted a tactician the man was. It would have been an unnecessarily risky plan to send his now-limited personnel onto a hostile ship. “One of his ships was caught in the blast, and there is no sign of a major battle.”

She pulled and enlarged a portion of the debris field, revealing a twisted, white wreck. “Remnants of an Arcbird, tail numbering R-721.” It was Gives’ first loss. “It appears to have been caught in the detonations, but the fate of the pilot is unknown.” Likely their corpse was one of the hundreds out there. “Given this is a short-range craft, it implies that the Singularity was nearby at the time of the detonations, but none of the debris is of the Singularity’s hull composition.”

“He escaped unscathed yet again, hm?” This wasn’t the first time the Prince had gotten lucky. Sure, he’d lost a support craft, but Reeter hardly counted that as a loss. One life hardly counted so much in the long term.

“There is something else,” she warned. Something more anomalous about this discovery.

The debris field flickered, to be replaced with holograms of corpses, scattered through the air to show their wounds. Reeter began to gag at the display, his stomach so weak for a man so prone to violence. “Every corpse displays identical wounds.” It was graphic to view, certainly, but to her, it was merely data, and it presented quite an interesting puzzle. “They died from these injuries.”

Surrounded by enlarged body parts with open, scarlet wounds repulsive in their detail, Reeter barely held back the bile in his throat. Two thousand people had died by having their flesh ripped open. Such maniacal power. “What did this?” The thought of such power was so terrifying, yet so intriguing.

Manhattan spared him a thorough examination of the wounds. “Neurofibers.”

Neurofibers? Much like those she wielded to invade the minds of the unwilling. “Wichita?” Had the other surviving fragment done this?

“Unlikely.” Wichita was too weak to accomplish this. That fragment wasn’t strong enough to control one Black Box so precisely, let alone three. “The pattern of the wounds is binary. It reads, ‘Thief.’”

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“Thief?” Reeter could feel the frown tugging at his lips.

“Yes.” This was not something to be taken lightly, “And there is some indication of a tie to the Singularity.” She allowed some of the projections to disperse, maintaining only those that showed the palms of the corpses’ hands.

“The flaming sun.” The most infamous insignia in fleet history. The careful, flesh recreation was both sickening and awe inspiring.

“Indeed.” She had run a comparison. The flesh rendering and ship symbol were nearly identical. It was a very careful recreation. “But as you know, the ship itself does not possess this power.” The controls on board could not manipulate its own Black Box, let alone any other ship’s.

Thief. “Someone knows what we took.” That was the only conclusion he could draw here. This was a warning.

“So it would seem,” but she had gone out of her way to cover their tracks on that. While the Steel Prince was known to be ruthless toward anyone who messed with his ship or any part of it, Manhattan had been careful to ensure that no human could find the evidence.

He was awed by the horrors around him, this power was so horrible, but yet so fantastical. He had to possess it. “What did this?”

It was a valid question. “There is no way to be certain, but,” having ruled out Wichita, “it seems this may be the Angel of Destruction’s power.” Once, the Angel had been the single most powerful weapon in the known universe. According to Ramseyer’s intel, it had been unchallenged by any other human or Hydrian creation, so it was not so far-fetched to believe that it may be capable of this.

Slaughtering Squadron 26 would be easy for a weapon of such power.

But there was something wrong, something off about it. “This level of fixation,” the repeating pattern, the replication of an insignia, the sheer number of identical corpses, “it’s insanity.” There was no logic, no reason. It was a gruesome display of incredible power, but it was madness. “It’s out of control.”

Reeter chuckled, a smile rising to his face for the first time in days. “So it seems the great Steel Prince cannot wield the Angel effectively.”

“No, he did not do this.” The former Fleet Admiral had been known for a lot of things, being merciless, emotionless, even fearless, but as far as Command had been concerned, he’d been effective. His methods, often less than kind, were direct. They weren’t messy, they weren’t maniacal and they weren’t excessive.

Where avoidable, he drew as little attention to himself as possible. “He would never have used the Angel against Squadron 26,” not when the Singularity was perfectly capable of winning the fight. “That would have made him a target.” No, not a target, but the target for anyone who sought power in these worlds.

Only a fool would display such power openly. And while he might be a lot of things, William Gives was no fool.

It was simple logic, if Gives had never activated the Angel, then he could never have lost control of it, resulting in Squadron 26’s destruction.

“Then if the Prince didn’t activate it, why would the weapon kill Squadron 26?” Why was his fleet down three meaningless ships?

Manhattan dispersed the holograms around her, focusing on the issue at hand. “We know very little of the Angel of Destruction.” Even with the data Ramseyer had provided, it was barely more than a rumor. Information on it had been very thoroughly purged. “We do not know it’s physical manifestation, we do not know its capability and we do not know its location.” All they had was shaky evidence that implied some tie to the former Admiral Gives.

“We do know that the weapon is controlled through telepathy.” It divined its commands from the very intentions of its wielder. That made it both incredibly capable, and incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands. “The existence of telepathic control mechanism necessitates a level of intelligence, and that intelligence is known to possess a degree of trust.”

Truly, that should have been expected. “I imagine, if that weapon is to be wielded by the mind, then it would become very familiar with its wielder, perhaps even to a degree that it could, if it so chose, act to their intentions without being consciously summoned.”

It was fascinating in a way. Under different circumstances, Manhattan would love to dissect such control mechanisms and relations, but they needed to locate that power, and they needed to take it under their own control. “If Gives is the Angel’s wielder, then he has likely been its wielder since at least 4222, when the weapon was last used.” Twenty-seven years. “Granted the weapon was created in the final years of the Hydrian War, it is entirely possible that Gives has been the Angel’s master over half of its lifespan.”

Under such circumstances, of course the machine would know his intentions, and had some reason to act on them. “This weapon is not sentient, but it may have misplaced attachments.” The mind it was telepathically bonded to was likely one of them. “We do not know it’s history, Charleston.”

“You’re suggesting this… thing, might defend him?”

“I am warning you that is a possibility.” Squadron 26’s death had proved nothing except that they should be extremely wary until they had all the facts.

Reeter laughed. “One look into my mind, and that weapon will be mine.” He dreamt of a better tomorrow, a safer humanity. He was everything a weapon created to save humanity stood for. In time, he was certain the weapon would make a powerful addition to his arsenal, perhaps even be the one that secured his rule over these miserable worlds.

“Your overconfidence will be your undoing.” Nothing about this was simple. There were far too many unknowns. “The Angel will not heed your calls until you know it’s true identity.” He would need to know the machine that housed the weapon, which could be anywhere in the worlds. “And even then, if it is set on protecting Gives as its wielder, then likely, no one would be able to stop it.”

“I don’t like the sound of that, Manhattan.” He had aligned himself with her to become the single most powerful person in the known worlds. To hear that a machine, one not even considered to be independently intelligent, might give him a rival, it was infuriating. He could feel the veins throbbing on his forehead.

“It gets worse.” Manhattan sighed, tossing her short white hair to the side, “Given the fate of Squadron 26 and the fact that the Angel has not been used in decades, it may be that the weapon was damaged.” Squadron 26 may have been the victim of the Angel’s dead husk. “We do not know its history. It is a complicated weapon,” totally unlike any other that had come before or after it, “if it had somehow been damaged, repair may have been impossible. At that point it is not only useless to us, but an uncontrollable danger that should be eradicated. Squadron 26 is evidence of that.”

“So this thing is either loyal to the enemy or dangerously unreliable.” He wasn’t sure which he preferred, given the machine’s rumored power. “We need to get to the bottom of this. If that weapon is as powerful as Ramseyer claims, then it will make or break this revolution.” It either had to be secured or destroyed.

“I know, Charleston.” Luckily, none of this information changed her plans. “The Singularity must be stopped, and we need Admiral Gives.” His knowledge would likely fill in the gaps on the Angel, not only identifying the weapon, but revealing its history, capability and condition.

And to that end, Squadron 26 had not died meaninglessly. “A signal was discovered at the debris field. It originated from the other side of the nebula. The Singularity should be on her way, and reinforcements are being summoned to converge.”

“How many ships?”

“Enough.”

Reeter did not like being left out of the tactical decisions concerning his fleet. “I should not need to remind you how critical it is that the Singularity be put down.” The combined threat of Gives, an apparent telepath, the Angel and possibly an AI fragment were extreme. For now, the ship was criminalized as a renegade deserter, but if it survived long enough, it would become a symbol of resistance – resistance to his New Era.

That could not be allowed. “Every single member of that crew should die a traitor’s death.”

“We need William Gives alive.” Or at least mostly intact. “If I send too many ships, we’ll be unable to recover him.” Too many sharks and the fish would be torn apart.

“Not enough and he escapes again.” Reeter would rather his enemy die, even if that took all information on the Angel with him. If I can’t have that weapon, no one can. With the Angel out of the equation, his arsenal would be the most powerful in the worlds without contest. Truly, Reeter had no need for an intelligent weapon with lingering loyalty to the enemy. If it was damaged, it had no place in his utopia.

It frustrated him to no end, that he was here, trapped aboard his own ship, rather than giving orders at the frontlines. Would his control over the worlds ever be respected if he wasn’t the one to kill the Steel Prince? “We should be there, Manhattan.” These were critical times.

“I am there, Reeter.” Technically speaking, she was everywhere. A significant portion of her power was focused on running the Olympia, but the remainder of it was still out among the worlds, operating hosts on her network. “Our trip should only take a couple weeks at the most.”

“This will be over in a couple weeks.”

“Perhaps.” Perhaps not. There were many unknown factors. “But I think you shall find the trip will be worth it in the end.” A significant portion of her power and knowledge, once sealed in the Liguanian Sector would finally be freed. She would be whole for the first time in decades.

Then, the worlds would change… Forever.