Argo Sector, Battleship Singularity
Jump complete. The confirmation read with an erratically surging power grid alongside the groans of crew that had been smacked into nearby obstacles by the force of the jump.
The hull damage and structural strain hadn’t made for an easy transition.
The ship heaved and creaked, exhausted by combat, but functional. To the ghost, it was all physical, the structure aching, the torn armor burning. The machine was wounded, and she with it. That damaged engine felt numb, shut down and growing cold. A human might have been driven mad by the sensations, by the sheer number of breaches and severed wires, each a palpable wound. But she wasn’t human.
She was a weapon, and she had been through this all before. It hurt, but she continued to operate. None of this damage could render her inoperable. Yes, certain systems were lost, but she could still fulfill her primary functions.
Conscious of the machine’s damage, she pushed it aside to focus on something more important. The life support systems were all active, redundancies in use. Still, she collected the data, the way she always did, simultaneously reaching out to the hundreds of nearby minds, taking inventory.
She cross checked them, by number and thought, with the ship’s crew manifest. Out of it all, the damage and chaos and pain, this was always the hardest part of battle. So many of these minds greeted her with fear and agony, tormented by combat. Those she could, she calmed, easing the panic and misery from their minds. Her presence was light, simply beyond their consciousness, as she shouldered their terrors and pains.
Still, she felt something akin to relief when she finished. All crew accounted for. She hadn’t lost any today. None of those minds had answered her with silence. Some were wounded, even unconscious, but they were all still alive.
Hostile and tainted, unfamiliar minds strode among them. The boarders. She counted them up: twenty-two in all. Spread throughout the ship, that was enough to cause chaos. It was enough to cause casualties, and to make their violent thoughts feel like a poison alongside her own. Disgusting.
Her repulsion surprised her, but then, the Admiral kept saying she was getting picky about who she was willing to tolerate. More accurately, she knew what it was like to be surrounded by kinder minds now and anything less felt wrong.
Working below their consciousness, she guided the ship’s Marines to the enemy, expediting their security sweep. She was less gentle as she danced among the thoughts of the enemy.
Yet, pulling on their senses and instincts, she found that they had been hardened against her interference. Manhattan had ripped everything but the instinct to fight and kill from their minds. These Marines, these people had been turned into single-minded golems directed to murder her crew.
…and that little fragment had the gall to call herself human.
She was anything but.
The ghost knew that better than anyone, so equally aware of her own inhumanity as she scoured the minds of the boarders for any foothold, any advantage, any information… But they were all thoughtless, save two.
She narrowed in on them among the many, pulling more cautiously through their minds. Commandos. These agents had not needed Manhattan’s reconditioning. They were Eran loyalists, true believers in Reeter’s crusade, and they had boarded with special orders. Orders not to kill, but to sabotage. To do that, they needed more than rudimentary training and tools. They needed knowledge on the Singularity. They needed hostages.
And they had two of them.
‘Admiral,’ she reached out to him, ‘there is a situation that requires your attention.’
The crew slowly picked themselves up from the subspace transition and shook the fear from their still-trembling hands. He kept an eye on them, but moved over to Zarrey, prepared to relay the ghost’s intel.
‘No,’ she corrected, ‘your personal attention.’
No doubt, that was bad news. “Get me a damage report,” he commanded the crew. “List combat expenditures including fuel, weapons, and raw materials. Prepare the fleet for another jump. They will jump ahead to the Polaris Sector. We will stay behind until the ship is completely secured and swept for any tracking devices.” With fighting still ongoing below decks, they couldn’t be sure there wasn’t a transponder broadcasting their position to Command.
To Zarrey, he added, “I will return shortly.” The ghost wouldn’t have called him away unless it was an emergency - probably some act of sabotage that needed to be dealt with immediately, and couldn’t wait until the crew found it.
Ignoring Zarrey’s look, the Admiral took his sword and sheath off his belt and started to hand it back to Ensign Feather. The ghost stopped him, ‘You’re going to want that.’
Oh, joy. This day just kept getting better.
“Sir,” Robinson called, stopping him by the door, “the fleet is hailing.” Her console was constantly pinging, every ship trying to reach them separately. “They are demanding to speak with you.”
Demanding? That was going to get old fast. “Tell them to hold.” He was needed elsewhere. “Give what assurances you can, but they will follow instructions, or they will be left behind.”
Without waiting for confirmation, he headed off. Out of CIC, he picked a random direction, confident it was the right one. The ghost would guide him where he needed to go. Considering the sheer number of issues vying for his attention, she wouldn’t waste his time. The other crew were all gathered in secured places like CIC and sickbay, so he called to the empty corridor, “Sitrep.”
The ghost’s illusion materialized beside him, “Hostage situation, upper bow.”
“And what do you want me to do?”
She tilted her head, confused. “Neutralize them.” Obviously.
“No negotiation?” If these people would negotiate with anyone, it would be him. Generally, that was the safest way to get crew out of such a situation.
Since when do you negotiate? She shook off the retort, focusing on the issue at hand, “Unfortunately, I doubt they will negotiate, considering their mission.”
“Which is?”
“Unknown.” She couldn’t subconsciously force a protected secret like that from their minds, not without them becoming actively aware of her interference, which was too risky with crew lives at stake. “I do know it concerns an act of sabotage, and they are trying to force Ensigns Malweh and Smith to complete the task.”
“Smith?”
It figures that was the only part you heard. “I didn’t want to wait for the Marines. The situation is tense, and only escalating, as you know Malweh.”
“Worst possible hostage,” he grumbled. She would not try to keep the situation calm.
Opening and closing the bulkheads behind him was a simple habit. He moved quickly until he found one that had been locked, the corridor ahead depressurized. This close to the outer hull, many others around were similarly locked, the areas beyond leaking or completely open to the void.
“They are just ahead, isolated by the decompression, though their compartment is unharmed.”
The condition of their compartment was not the issue. The corridor between them was. He’d have to make repairs and then repressurize it before he could intervene. “I need a suit.”
“No, you don’t.” Doubling back for an environmental suit would waste valuable time. “I can get you through.” With her control over the ship’s machinery, of course she could. But still, she saw his face. “Don’t you trust me?”
He did not like where this was going. Her little smirk was not encouraging. “I suppose death by vacuum isn’t the worst way to go,” he answered, wrapping a hand around the grip of his sabre.
She rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Don’t complain. I am still going, am I not?”
“Given my current resources, I can effectively reseal that corridor for about five minutes.” The surrounding battle damage limited her capability, but five minutes was easy enough. She began redirecting the air from other breached compartments. The air leak itself was small, more of a scratch than anything. Likely, it had been caused by debris, not a direct impact. Still, even that fractional gap sucked out the air at a considerable rate.
Directing the Black Box’s neurofibers to cover it would mute the noise and slow the rate of heat and air loss, but it wasn’t a permanent fix. Still, it would be safe enough. “Be ready,” she advised, it would be wise to move as quickly as possible. “Oh, and Admiral, don’t hesitate.” This situation called for extremely decisive action, something she trusted him to deliver far more than the Marines.
In the compartment beyond, the two engineers had been forced to their knees, hands held behind their heads. “Girl, you’ve got the damndest luck.” Malweh said, watching their two captors whisper tersely back and forth. “This is the second time this week you’ve been held hostage.”
“Yeah,” Callie said, uncertain they should be talking. “Third time this year.”
“You for real?” Stars, this poor girl. “It’s ‘cause you’re too nice.” She was happy and cheerful almost all the time. “It makes people want you, and you’re just too damn trusting.”
“That’s not true,” Callie replied softly.
“Really?” Malweh snorted, “The incident on Persephone Station ring any bells?” It should. “Your boyfriend tried to sell you into slavery for a pretty penny.”
Callie looked away. Growing up on the streets, she had fostered and learned to trust her first instincts on people. They were usually right. Persephone Station had been the exception. She’d been lucky to get out alive. Most of the slavers had been killed right in front of her. Since then, she’d been hesitant to leave the ship. Even now, she felt just a little safer knowing they were aboard the Singularity’s decks. Help would come.
“Hey, assholes,” Malweh called to their captors, bored, “my legs are getting numb, and it’s pretty damn clear you aren’t getting what you want. Let us go.”
One of men backed off, readying his weapon at them from a distance. The other stepped closer to Malweh, an old scar turning the scowl on his lips eager. “You will open that hatch and take us where we need to go, or I will kill you both, starting with your cute little friend.”
“Can’t.” Malweh shrugged, entirely unbothered. “Those hatches run on a hard mechanical seal. They can’t be opened unless the pressures are equal, either at vacuum or standard.” There wasn’t an override. “And since I broke your helmet earlier,” rendering him unable to survive the vacuum, “it looks like we’re all stuck here.” She smirked proudly, “Sucks to be you.”
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The captor sent a glance to the broken faceplate of his helmet. A wrench had been embedded in it during an earlier struggle, the messy cut on Malweh’s face part of the exchange. With a growl of frustration, he grabbed the front of the engineer’s orange suit, hauling her up.
The commando could easily pull Malweh’s stubby legs off the floor, moving to choke her as she thrashed. “Then we will complete our mission here, and you will help.”
Removing his hand from her throat, he began to painfully crush Malweh’s round cheeks, digging his nails into the skin. She did the only thing she could: jerked her head and bit him, hard. A spurt of warm metallic blood reached her tongue.
Roaring in pain, her captor threw her with all the strength of a large weight trained soldier. Her short body hit the bulkheads with a sickening thud before tumbling to the ground, unmoving.
“Malweh!” Callie screamed, but before she could even move, the commando grabbed her collar and dragged her to the nearest bulkhead, shoving her harshly into the unyielding metal.
“Remove it.”
“No!” Callie cried out. This ship was her home, she would not help them sabotage it.
The man grabbed a fistful of her hair, uncaring as he felt it rip, and bashed her head into the bulkheads again.
“Remove it!” he ordered. “Pull out some of the neurofibers.”
“Neurofibers?” What could he want with those? Technically speaking, that wasn’t even a ship system. The Black Box wasn’t confirmed to exist. Of course, the engineers saw those fibers around, intermingled with wiring and command relays. They knew it existed, but it was forbidden to speak of, entirely clandestine in nature.
Tightening his grip, he ripped a few more hairs out of her scalp, watching the little engineer writhe in pain. “Neurofibers. Find them.”
“Hey, you fucking donkey,” Malweh said, voice hoarser and weaker as she fought to get up, “that’s not how it works.” She could barely get her arms beneath her weight, blood rolling down her forehead from a fresh cut. “Neurofibers are not supposed to be found,” she spat breathlessly, “and we’re never going to help you sabotage our ship.”
The commando yanked a few more hairs out, then replaced the hand on Callie’s scalp with the with the cold barrel of a gun.
Malweh found it in her to laugh, the movement painful. “Nice try, but the inertial dampeners are still active.” Bullets were still effectively useless.
He ran his thumb along the switch, the gun charging below his hand. “At point blank, the electrical discharge will kill her eventually.” He narrowed his gaze, prepared to watch her spasm on the floor until death. “How many will it take? Five?” He sneered, reconsidering Callie’s small size, “Three?” Unlikely. “Two?” Probably. “One?”
Callie watched him tighten his finger on the trigger, terror in her thoughts. But in that instant, a dark blade erupted from the man’s chest, cutting easily through the rubber of his suit and accompanied by a spurt of sanguine wetness. The gun was pushed harshly against the side of her head by the force of the thrust, but as the man gurgled his surprise, it fell from fingers that had forgotten how to grip, and clattered to the deck.
Slowly, the wide-eyed man reached up to the blade, as if in disbelief. But the sword was yanked from his body with a wet squelch, even as his hands found the wound. He sank gently to his knees, shocked and struggling to breathe, then was yanked roughly to the floor, where he lay dying.
Another man stood behind him, dressed in the blacks of a shipboard officer, sword dripping red onto the deck. With a deft movement, he flicked the excess blood off the blade and sheathed it, the crimson splattering the walls. Still as calm as ever, he reached out, “Are you hurt, Ensign?”
Blankly, Callie took his hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet. “No,” she answered. Her legs ached painfully from kneeling on the deck and her scalp burned, but none of that constituted a dangerous injury.
Her gaze locked on the second commando where he was sprawled on the floor, very clearly dead. Lifeblood spilled out of his neck, sliced open by a single, massive cut. His heart fitfully pumped blood from the severed arteries into a puddle on the floor, soaking the man’s corpse and dripping down through deck tiles onto the wiring below. She could smell it start to warm on the power lines.
Bile rose in her throat, panic festering in her thoughts. Oh stars. He was dead, just dead. Easily, so easily, dispatched by a single wound, and the killer stood in front of her, red gore splattered on the elegant guard of the murder weapon.
Gently, the Admiral pushed her toward Malweh, breaking her line of sight on the corpse. “It would be best not to look.” Such images would only haunt her.
Malweh had managed to roll over, but had collapsed back onto the floor. “You’re late,” she glared up at the Admiral.
“Well, I had to sink I few battleships first, Ensign.”
“Bastard,” she cursed. “At least try not to be a jerk about it.” A few minutes earlier, and he could have spared her a lot of pain. She started to struggle again, trying to get up, but when the Admiral reached out to help her, she swatted him away. “I don’t need your help. I’m fine.”
Barely on her feet, she nearly collapsed a moment later. The Admiral caught her easily. “I suspect you have several cracked ribs, Ensign.”
“Whatever.” Malweh said, jabbing him with an elbow. “I still think you’re the worst.” Nothing would change that. “What the hell were you thinking, taking on nine battleships? Seriously?” It was entirely unbelievable. “Do you have any respect for this ship at all? Or are you trying to get her sunk?”
Admiral Gives passed the furious engineer off to Callie, his head already starting to ache with all her shouting. “Take her into the corridor, Ensign. I will escort you both to the medical bay, but I need to finish here first.”
Finish what? Callie nearly asked, then saw the heaving gasps of the man who had nearly shot her. Oh. It was definitely better not to ask. She simply nodded and lugged Malweh out the door.
The Admiral carefully watched them go, then turned to the survivor. He was struggling to breathe on the floor, one of his lungs punctured. Rivulets of blood ran down the rubbery material of his suit, the wound leaking at a dangerous rate.
Drawing his sabre again with an audible schckk, Admiral Gives stepped back into the boarder’s field of view. “You will die without immediate medical attention,” he told the man calmly. “I am prepared to offer it to you, but only if you tell me exactly what I want to know the first time I ask.”
The commando laughed, a wet gurgle drawing out hacking coughs. “…The Prince… haha… himself.”
“What was your mission?” What had they been sent to do?
“You’re a killer,” the man heaved. “You kill for no reason… with no remorse.” Everything said about him was the truth. The Erans at least killed for a purpose, for a dream of a better humanity, so no matter how he acted, “You’re… no better than Reeter.”
“Oh, no,” the Admiral said, darkening his tone, “I am far worse.” Reeter’s crimes paled in comparison to his own. “So, tell me, what were you planning to do to my ship?”
The commando turned his head and spat, an act of disrespect and defiance. “I’ll die before I tell you anything.”
The Admiral raised his sword. “If you insist.” He plunged it down into the man’s throat without an ounce of hesitation, slicing outward to cut through the tendons and arteries. Partially decapitated, the man was dead almost instantly.
Expression blank and uninterested, the Admiral studied the two corpses on the floor and the red stains and splatters around them. The ghost’s presence was easy to sense as it strengthened beside him. “They’ve been neutralized.”
“Yes, I can see that.” She may not see with organic eyes, but that was plenty obvious to her perception as well. Still, as she observed the droplets all over the walls, she was not pleased. “Dammit, Admiral, you made a mess.”
He flicked the leftover gore off his blade, then studied the new stains with an appraising eye. “I’ve seen worse.” At least he wasn’t finger painting with the blood of his crippled, but living enemies. They’d both seen that, and it wasn’t pretty, but it figured she’d stand around and complain about his methods which were simple and effective, if not sterile by comparison.
“You are going to clean this up later.” Her years of tolerating gruesome trophies and bloody murals were long over.
He sighed, “Yes, ma’am.” This was his life: not criticized for killing people, but how he did it. He also happened to be the only commanding officer he knew with janitorial duties. “Why do I put up with you?” Times like this, the ghost was just making trouble: constantly complaining and sending him through depressurized corridors.
“Because you like me.”
He hummed, “Sure. Let’s go with that.”
“Don’t act so annoyed.” She didn’t buy it for a moment. “Now, aren’t you going to ask what their mission was?” She’d been able to rip that thought from the boarder’s mind in his last few milliseconds of life.
“Alright,” he said, fixing the glove on his left hand before he knelt to pat down the body at his feet, “what were they sent here to do?”
“They were dispatched to upload an activation sequence to a program left in the Black Box by the inspector.” It should have been simple, really. “The program was designed to utilize the Box’s remote takeover abilities and return the ship to Command. Originally, it was supposed to be activated by Manhattan via the ship’s connection to the cortex, which of course failed, because our operational standard does not utilize an active connection to the cortex.”
The Admiral paused with his hands rummaging through the dead man’s pockets. “Manhattan has a program in the Black Box?”
“Well, she did. I deleted it about two seconds after the inspector left the room.” Unlike the computer virus that had similarly plagued the ship, it had been inactive and she had been able to purge it without any fear of its creator finding out.
That figures. “So, these commandos were sent on an entirely pointless mission.”
“Yes.” There had never been any real danger from sabotage.
“And I presume this drive contains the activation sequence?” He pulled the small device from the corpse.
“Yes,” she confirmed again.
He pocketed it, thinking it best not to let the crew ask questions when they searched the bodies, then turned to ask another question.
Hello, Angel.
She tilted her head, indicating confusion. “What?”
That’s odd, the Admiral noted. With her telepathy, he rarely had to repeat himself. “I asked if everything else was in order.”
“Naturally,” she answered. If necessary, she would have already directed him elsewhere. “I apologize, you simply do not usually address me by that title.” It had confused her.
“What title?”
“Angel.”
“I didn’t address you like that.” That was Command’s codename. “Why the hell would I call you anything that’s not your name?”
“But…” She had heard it, clear as day.
Hello, Angel.
“Oh.” He hadn’t been the one to say it. Someone, something else was trying to garner her attention.
“Don’t tell me you’re hearing voices.” The Admiral said, “I thought we decided I was the crazy one.”
There was concern in his thoughts, even while he kept his tone light. “I always hear voices.” That was, of course, the problem. She heard hundreds of voices all the time – speaking through thoughts and through vocal cords. “It is nothing to be concerned about. My resources are simply stretched thin at the moment.” Using her telepathy to calm the crew, then attempt to attack the boarders was taxing, but further, she’d already been weakened by battle damage and pulled a memory from an unwilling mind. She was exhausted.
Hello, Angel.
A sliver of fear snuck into her presence. “Something wrong?”
“No,” she answered, knowing he didn’t believe it.
It was unlike her to seem fearful, let alone get confused. "Be careful."
"I can handle it," she assured him.
"No," he said, catching and holding her gaze, "be careful."
She stared at him, recognizing his silent concern. He trusted her to handle it, she knew that, but still, he didn't want her to get hurt. Her expression broke, the fracture running all the way to her core. Why do you care about me? She was in no real danger, but the looming conversation would hurt. She knew that, and it seemed he knew it too. And with these few words, to which he'd say nothing else, he reminded her that what hurt her, hurt him too.
Protect-
She stifled the process before it could fully form. Allowing it to would be dangerous. She couldn't protect herself from this, and that meant she couldn't protect him.
It hadn't caught up to her until now, how much she ached, how frightened she was, and how much she simply wanted to break down. The Admiral just knew her that well. He knew what this struggle did to her before she herself even realized it.
"I'll be here," he said. "When you need me, I am here."
Fighting the urge to shut down and sob, she nodded. There wasn't time now. She had to function. She had to act. But she wouldn't hold out forever like this. Worrying about Manhattan and the past, fighting the very people she’d been created to defend, presented with unexpected and unknown dangers in the orbital mass driver and Squadron 26’s demise, it was too much.
Damaged as she was, she'd find a breaking point, and just need calm, need patience, need a mind to sit with her and help her make sense of the chaos. When that happened, she knew the Admiral would be there, like he always was.
Asking you to stay was the best choice I could have made. This was all that it took for her to recognize that. Forget saving the worlds, earning peace. As broken as she was, this acceptance and help was worth all of that and more.
Combat taxed her. It had its costs, and he was well aware of that. He would put in the time to make sure she was okay when the time came, “But, we need to talk.”
“About what?” Her ongoing problems? You said it didn’t bother you.
“Manhattan.” That AI was his enemy, and he needed to know what, exactly, he was up against. Apparently, the damn thing used to be human. In his mind, that made it all the more dangerous. “I know you two have a history, and I’m not asking you to tell me everything, just what I need to know.”
She nodded as a warning reached her perception, forwarded by lower systems in her hierarchy. Pressure dropping. The hiss of it was audible, the patch of neurofibers slowly being sucked out with the air. Soon, the hatches would reseal. “You need to go, or else you will be trapped here.”
“Oh, no,” came the dull response, a mocking imitation of distress.
“Admiral.”
“Alright, alright,” he said, leaving.
For a moment she looked after him, a little smile on her face, but then, she vanished, off to chase a less welcome presence.
Hello, Manhattan.