Argo Sector, Battleship Singularity
Admiral Gives closed the hatch behind him, this corridor noticeably warmer than the one he’d just passed through. The vacuum seal reactivated almost immediately, as if the ship had been struggling to hold the air in, then finally allowed to release it. That was close.
By the way Malweh was glaring, she had definitely noticed. “How did you force the hatches open?” Technically speaking, he should not have been able to intervene, and they both knew it.
“I did not force them, Ensign,” he answered, leading them onward. Not even he could override the mechanical seal. “The corridor was temporarily repressurized to disengage the pressure differential lock.”
Malweh struggled to walk, but managed, mainly out of spite, to keep the Admiral from having to help her any further. She leaned heavily on Callie, who was in much better condition, save a few ripped hairs and bruises. “But how did you repressurize the corridor?”
I didn’t. But he knew Malweh wouldn’t accept that. “The remaining air from the nearby, damaged areas was redirected. That corridor only had a small puncture, it merely bought time.” Redirecting the air had in no way solved the issue. Whatever the ghost had done to temporarily help seal the breach had extended the time, but eventually, the incessant vacuum had reasserted itself and the hatches had resealed.
“And you can redirect the air with the command overrides?”
“Yes, I can.” He hadn’t needed to use those codes with the ghost’s help, but technically, yes, he could use his own authority over the ship’s systems to reverse airflow and redirect pressure. It just would have taken awhile, considering the lack of a controlling computer network.
“Fine,” Malweh would buy that, as Callie half-carried her down the hallways. “But that doesn’t explain how you knew where we were.” Until roll call, she and Callie wouldn’t have been considered missing or in any danger. The engineers often split up and lost track of one another during damage control.
“You ask a lot of questions, Ensign. Is the manner in which I saved your life of particular importance to you? Or should you merely be satisfied that I did?”
“To be frank, sir. I don’t trust you.” She could see the element of control he had over the ship, and it just wasn’t natural. The command overrides and his experience explained it logically, sure, but with him, it always felt like something more. It always felt like he was hiding something, and he dodged and deflected her questions now like he always did.
“Malweh,” Callie sharply, appalled. Was now really the best time to be arguing with the man? Whether Malweh liked it or not, he had just saved both of their lives. She craned her neck to see past the engineer draped on her shoulder. “Thanks, Admiral.” He’d been there just in time.
Malweh rolled her eyes. Kiss ass.
“Think nothing of it, Ensign.” He didn’t keep score of the lives he saved, or took. “I was doing my job.” He protected the ship’s crew, even if that meant getting interrogated by the likes of Malweh.
Abruptly, he paused, throwing an arm out to stop the two engineers. Ready to draw it, he moved a hand to the grip of his sabre.
Recognizing his instincts for danger, even Malweh silenced herself, holding her breath. And a moment later, the sound reached her ears. Thud, thud, thud, thud. The impacts were rattling the deck plates, someone running at full speed down the adjacent corridor.
Quietly, the Admiral drew his sword again, the blade still glistening with red wetness. At his signal, Callie struggled to drag Malweh back a few paces.
Thud! Thud! Thud! The sound got louder.
The soldier barreled into the corridor junction, clad in a Marine’s armor, bloody scimitar in hand. The sound of his footfalls clanging through the air, he came to an abrupt stop, arms pinwheeling. Sniffing the air like a bloodhound, he turned slowly to them, teeth bared in a snarl.
“My lucky day,” he said, his voice as low and guttural, as if it was something he’d mostly forgotten how to use. “Wounded crew and an officer.” He lumbered toward them, a disconnected hunger in his eyes. “Three for one.”
This enemy Marine was easily bigger than even the commandos. He seemed to tower over Admiral, the curves of his sword wicked in the light. Still, the Admiral was calm, even at the feet of that mountain. “I will give you one chance to surrender.”
The Marine made no response, his blood-flecked expression disjointed, but fixated on the two wounded engineers as he moved toward them. Then, he looked down, as if remembering the Admiral’s presence, and swung.
Their swords met with an audible clang! The block was solid, but still, the scimitar started to inch closer to the Admiral’s neck, his own blade shaking. He couldn’t match his opponent’s sheer strength, even with both hands bracing his sabre.
With a grunt of effort, he pushed the scimitar upward and ducked beneath to leap backward.
The engineers were directly behind him now, and the Marine stepped closer, brandishing his blade. “Nowhere left to run,” he drawled, the words slow and worthless to a mind bent on killing.
The scimitar cut through the air with an audible whoosh, met again but not stopped by the Admiral’s sabre. The blades ground against each other, the Marine’s slash redirected just enough to keep it from making contact.
The moment the scimitar was clear of his body, the Admiral added his full strength, pushing the enemy’s weapon wide. In the opening, he leveled a kick at the Marine’s wide torso.
The soldier’s armor kept him from injury, but the sheer force was enough to knock the wind out of him. He staggered backward a few steps in surprise.
The Admiral didn’t waste the opportunity. He went for the neck, only for the thrust to be knocked aside. Instead, the sabre slid along the Marine’s shoulder armor, leaving a gouge in the composite alloy.
“You’re quite spry for an officer.” Often, ship board officers were trained, but not experienced in how they handled their weapons. Most fighting was left to the Marines. Casting a look to the scratch on his armor, it was quite noticeable, deeper than it should have been. Inspecting his glittering scimitar, it too, had been nicked wherever it had made contact with the enemy’s dark sabre. That sword wasn’t just sharp, it was made out of something far stronger than both his armor and the scimitar. “That’s a unique weapon.”
“Very,” the Admiral said. The Marine’s gaze was sharper now, as if recognizing a threat through the haze of bloodlust. Whatever Manhattan had done to him, it had left enough of his mental faculties intact to retain his skill. He appeared mindless in all things except combat.
The Marine slashed again, if only to test his adversary’s reaction time. The attack was easily deflected and dodged, leaving a new, obvious nick in the scimitar. “Given long enough, that blade of yours will probably shatter mine.” He loosed a flurry of slashes, raising his voice over the sound of clanging metal, “Do you think you can hold out that long?”
No, the Admiral thought, barely holding his ground against this attack. He was physically outmatched, older and weaker than his opponent. Even with enough space to dodge, he still had to keep himself between this boarder and the engineers. He couldn’t move the way he needed to in order to attack effectively. From this angle, all his thrusts would be easily blocked.
The Marine pulled back, sweating, but not panting. A new set of dents lined his sword, none of them big enough to present a danger. He looked again at this officer, recognizing the silver rank band on his sleeve for the first time. “The Steel Prince himself.” No wonder he could hold his own. “Your death would make me a legend.”
Admiral Gives steeled his gaze. “A dead legend.”
The Marine bared his yellow teeth in an ugly grin. “So the rumors say. Those who spill blood aboard these decks pay with their life. And,” his chest rumbled with laughter, “I have spilled blood.” It stained the edge of his weapon red. “I kill you, and I might just meet that ghost,” that spirit of blood and carnage.
The Marine brandished his blade, hearing it whoosh as he spun it. “They say that you can’t die aboard these decks,” that he’d made a deal with the Night Demon itself: power in exchange for his humanity. “I intend to prove them wrong.”
The Marine slashed again, his muscles rippling as he poured all his strength and speed into the attack, the blade little more than a blur of silver.
The Admiral parried, shoving the Marine’s arm outward, then spun to jab him in the neck with his free hand. The Marine stumbled, but brought his weapon quickly to bear, though not before the Admiral managed to yank his sidearm from its holster.
“Ha,” the Marine laughed, “what do you plan to do with that?” They both knew its stun mechanism was useless on armor and the bullets would be caught by the inertial dampeners. “Not so nice when your ship is against you, is it?” The inertial dampeners, say what anyone will, made it a fair playing field of skill and strength.
The Admiral’s only response was to flick the safety off, even knowing he couldn’t deactivate the inertial dampeners without jeopardizing other members of the crew. He didn’t intend to.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
The Marine lumbered forward, his scimitar at the ready, knowing full well that he had the advantage. He was bigger and stronger than the Admiral, his weapon heavier. He swung, brandishing the weapon with the speed of a fiddle player.
The Admiral’s sabre was lighter, and quick, but it took all his strength just to deflect the strike upward. It bought him precious time. He ducked, pressed that gun to the side of his opponent, and pulled the trigger.
Gunsmoke hit the air in the corridor, and the monstrous Marine staggered, the smile slipping from his face, as he felt the blood oozing from his side. He’d been shot. “How?”
“The homefield advantage is more than control.” It was knowledge. “I know this ship better than anyone.” The Singularity’s inertial dampeners, while reliable, took time to react. They decelerated things slowly, because they couldn’t make the calculations and react preventatively as a newer ship could. While the dampeners did arrest bullets, they travelled faster, longer, on the Singularity before that happened.
Fired at close enough range, a bullet was still deadly if he could get it past the armor, and a Marine’s armor was weakest on the side. It was simple enough. He’d just had to get the gun there and pull the trigger.
The Marine keeled over, breathing labored. “The bullet is still lodged inside. I would advise against moving.” The inertial dampeners had arrested its movement somewhere in the Marine’s guts. It hadn’t been allowed to pass through. In some ways that made it deadlier.
With a roar, the Marine climbed to his feet and went on the attack.
Blocking the wild swings, it was clear that there was nothing but rage in the Marine’s mind now. Another of Manhattan’s alterations had been triggered, erasing complex thought and nullifying the pain.
The Marine swung and slashed madly, without concern for defense, pushing the Admiral back. Blade to blade, their swords clanged rapidly, but slowly, the Marine’s attacks began to weaken. Manhattan’s personality alterations couldn’t stop his physical body from going into shock as all his movements allowed the bullet to shift and tear apart his internal organs.
Still on the attack a minute later, the massive man collapsed to his knees, and the Admiral thrust his blade between the armor plates on his torso, skewering him to the ground. The Marine was barely moving, but that rage was still in his eyes, even as his body failed to respond.
Admiral Gives placed a foot on the man’s chest. “Look away,” he ordered the engineers. Callie hid her eyes, Malweh didn’t, but he wasted no time, driving his blade into the Marine’s exposed neck.
Blood seeping onto the deck tiles below him, the Admiral regarded the sidearm in his grip, then tossed it to the floor, not bothering to watch the widening pool of red well up around it.
Malweh was staring, wide-eyed. “Did you actually know that would work?” Using firearms in combat with the inertial dampeners active wasn’t supposed to work, at all.
“I never did the math, but I suspected as such.” It was all in the details of how the Singularity’s systems operated.
There was a long pause, but eventually, Malweh nodded, “Badass, sir.” She didn’t like the man, but he’d just killed a skilled Marine at least twice his size in her defense. “What’s that sword made out of, anyway?” She’d seen him carry it, but never draw it until today.
He turned the blade’s width to face her. “You tell me.”
Its length was a uniform, dark gray underneath the blood, noticeably darker than the standard silver of the dead Marine’s sword. That shade was echoed around them in the bulkheads and deck. “Hull metals,” Malweh realized. That sword was cast from the same metals as the Singularity herself.
“Yes.” Once, this blade had been a part of the ship, so he trusted it, like her, to never fail him in a fight.
Of course it is, Malweh thought. “You have an obsession, you know that?” He was absurdly attached to the ship. He never left, always worked, and apparently had his personal weapons cast to match. “That sword must’ve cost your entire fucking year of pay.” Those were some of the rarest, most versatile metals in the worlds, highly-valued for their uses. The ship herself was worth more than a country, considering the purity of her build alloy. Melted down and diluted, the Singularity’s mass could have strengthened entire squadrons of ships.
“It was a gift.” The Admiral said.
“Meaning you stole it?” It was certainly within his ability to steal some of the ship’s metal supply.
“Meaning it was a gift, Ensign.” He would never have taken anything that would inhibit the ship’s operational status, even a piece of metal that could someday be used for repairs.
Thud, thud, thud, the sound of approaching footfalls reached him, these softer than the Marine’s had been. “Back,” he ordered the engineers, whirling to confront the sound.
It was Cortana’s surprise to run into that junction and be stopped by the wet tip of a blade at her throat. Barely, she’d skidded to a stop before impaling her own neck. “Sergeant,” its owner greeted.
He recognized her, but still, the sword lingered there for a long moment, indenting the skin of her neck. It stayed there for a long moment, far longer than necessary. Near as she could tell, he was contemplating something other than removing the blade. Perhaps removing her head?
But, the sword was eventually, slowly removed. “Admiral, sir.” She breathed, again recognizing that cold gaze. He felt just as dangerous now as he had in that compartment with the inspector. There was something just wrong with him, evil it seemed. The length of his sabre was smeared with red, recently wet at the tip, only evidencing the danger. It had left a sticky stain on her neck, warm blood not her own.
A hostile Marine was dead at his feet. …The very same Marine she’d been chasing across the ship.
“Where are your comrades, Sergeant?” None of the ship’s Marines should be operating alone, especially one so new to the crew.
Remembering protocol, Cortana sheathed her own sabre, and stood up straight, even if not at direct attention. “Wounded, sir.” The massive boarder had done a number on her group, and she’d given chase, unwilling to let him get away.
“Where are they now?”
“I don’t know, sir.” She had focused on chasing the enemy.
Given such an answer, it was his understanding that Cortana had left her wounded comrades behind. Unacceptable. Still, Cortana noticed his company before he could say anything of it.
“You,” she said, locking eyes with Smith. Why is it always you? She’d run into this particular crewmember more often than any other, and usually in the worst ways.
Callie shifted, the movement small but obvious as she was forced to drag Malweh with her, hiding behind the Admiral. Malweh, never one for subtlety, loudly cleared her throat, as if the movement itself hadn’t already caught his attention.
Cortana frowned. It was clear that the engineer was trying to avoid her, and using the Admiral to do it. It was beyond improper. She started, “Sir-”
“Stand fast, Sergeant.” Maybe working for Command in Eagle’s Talon, this behavior would have been unacceptable, but this wasn’t Command.
His crew was disrespecting both his authority and her own. They ought to be reprimanded. Why was she the only one who seemed to think so? “With all due respect, sir-”
“I would say your respect for me is naught, since you tried to shoot me aboard the decks of my own ship.” Ordinarily, he wasn’t the type to hold grudges like that. Most people reacted poorly to his presence. But he knew what Cortana saw in him: a twisted mirror of his brother. Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn’t, but she hadn’t only threatened him that day. She’d gone after crewmembers: wounded Alba and left Smith too afraid to look at her. “That said, I am still the reigning authority aboard these decks,” and if Cortana wanted to live, she’d do as told. “Return to your unit and escort the wounded to sickbay.” She should never have left them in the first place.
“Sir, I would be more useful hunting down the other boarders.” She was ready and prepared to fight.
“That is an order, Sergeant.” Unless she could be everywhere at once, the risk was too great. Her wounded companions were defenseless. If one hostile made it past Cortana’s perfect, overconfident, human perception, the wounded would be killed. No, it wasn’t the most glamorous job for someone trying to earn the respect she thought she deserved, but she’d failed to do that the moment she left her comrades behind.
“And Sergeant,” he added, “be in the training room at 2100 hours.”
“The training room, sir?” What for?
“That is an order as well.” He expected it to be followed, no questions asked. He would evaluate the Sergeant’s skill, her threat, himself. Likely, it wouldn’t match her confidence. But, if he put her in her place, word would spread to the rest of the crew that she was no danger. Smith would feel safer knowing that the Sergeant could be defeated. “Now, go.”
As much as she wanted to argue, the Admiral had made himself clear. These were non-negotiable orders. She kept her shoulders perfectly straight, acknowledging, “Yes, sir.” She spun on her heel and stalked off, turning just once to see that young engineer give a sigh of relief.
“Are you alright, Ensign?”
Callie let out a shuddering breath, “Yeah,” I think. It was a relief, once again to be free of the Sergeant’s presence. Looking at her, it was just a reminder of how helpless she’d been up in the starboard bow, how helpless she always was against someone bigger and stronger than her.
“You are safe aboard these decks, Ensign.” She was safe in his presence. He would never seek to harm a member of his ship’s crew, unless of course they, like Sergeant Cortana, placed their comrades in danger and left fear in their wake. Then, well then, he considered them nothing less than traitors, and he would correct that behavior by any means necessary, even if it was all he could do to ensure they were left totally incapable of further betrayal.
“I know.” That was the thing about the Singularity. Despite the ship’s inherent dangers as a combat vessel, it was still the safest place she’d ever lived. The ship was reliable and the crew was decent. Any unkindness was answered by the Admiral himself. No matter how uncomfortable Cortana made her, she knew the Admiral would have defended her.
“So,” Malweh said as they started moving again, “just to be clear, you’re going to be teaching that bitch a lesson, right? Not let her win so she can seem impressive and feel like she’s earned a place here?” Likely, that would make her more tolerable, but Malweh would rather see harsher lessons taught. “You know, in case I maybe wanted to place money on that fight?”
“I never said I was going to fight her.”
Malweh snorted, the movement extremely painful as Callie lugged her onward. “I might be rude, but I ain’t stupid.” He wouldn’t have ordered her to the training room unless he intended to spar her. “I’m also not blind. She fights with a sabre, same as you.” It was a decently common weapon, useful and easy to control in close quarters, but it took finesse and creativity to land killing blows on armored enemies with such a light weapon, not to mention a decent amount of strength to run them through. “I’d say that gives you an opportunity.”
Against someone with the same weapon and similar training, there’d be no doubt of his dominance if he won a sparring match with her. It would prove to the crew that Cortana could be put in line and he’d likely earn her respect as a swordsman. “Besides, you know the entire crew is going to be making bets on the rumors alone.” Most of them had never seen the Admiral fight. They would be simultaneously intrigued and frightened by the prospect. “I just want to place my money on the winning side.” After what she’d so far seen today, she had no doubt that if winning was his intention, the outcome was certain.
Predictably, he said nothing, leading them toward the medical bay without further incident. The defensive line that met them there looked ragged, but was unbroken. They greeted their own by lowering their bloodied weapons and tiredly parting the way. The medical bay beyond was rightfully busy, but not chaotic. The flow of incoming injured had slowed for the time being.
A pair of nurses took Malweh off Callie’s shoulders, but soon returned to drag Smith herself off for a checkup. They left the Admiral alone, so he began his rounds, greeting the wounded.
Wound in bandages or immobilized by a cast, most of them were victims of lacerations from the boarders’ weapons or broken bones from the combat maneuvers. The conversations were polite, nothing more. The crew had never seen him as personable, but coming to speak with the wounded, it was evidence enough for them that, on some level, he cared.