7 hours later, Polaris Sector, Battleship Singularity
They were laid out before her like spinning kaleidoscopes, every shape a thought, every color an emotion, every shift a memory. The thousands nearby formed a prismatic ocean that threatened to drown her in its depths. The strength of the tides was extreme, her telepathy too sensitive to endure the forces.
Keep watch, the ghost had been directed, as if holding vigil over these few thousand minds were that simple. They were strange, unfamiliar. To try to pull a thought from any single one of them would be to dangerously submerge herself in the sea.
Even as she sought merely to map the currents, only the feelings of the masses and not the minds themselves, it was difficult. The task painfully strained her damaged existence, but still, she sought to complete it.
Admiral Gives rarely asked such things of her, so she could, would fulfill this objective, even as it chipped further and further away at her sense of self. It made her of some use, and for that she was grateful.
After all, they were only here because she had wanted to rescue these ships, because she had wanted to save these people. But, sparing and protecting these lives hadn’t made her feel any better. Maybe it was because she could feel the fear wafting so vividly from every mind in the fleet, or perhaps it was because she knew the danger she herself posed to them, but the ghost could feel no satisfaction in saving these refugees.
But still, she watched over them, every bit of their anxiety twisting and churning around her, the effects tainting her own thoughts. It was a sensation that no one would have understood. There were eight hundred souls aboard this ship, a thousands more out in the fleet, and still, she was alone in that. Others’ terror weighed upon her like the gravity of a sun, endlessly pulling and pulling.
She calmed herself by anchoring her presence to one place, one instance: a lingering illusion in a compartment up on the forward bow. Decades ago, it had been a crew lounge, but the size of the crew had shrank over the years, and this compartment had become empty and unused. The crew gathered in other places now, leaving the ghost to look out this compartment’s wide windows alone.
Here, she could look out at the path ahead and study the distant stars in peace. The star clusters, mere specks far beyond the thinning edges of this system’s drifting ice fields, were familiar. She knew their names, had even visited many of them, though that history always felt so unimportant. Often, it was nothing more than tragedy.
Looking down, the ship’s armored bow was partially visible, its recently inflicted wounds obscenely obvious. Lights flickered in some of the gaping holes, torches sparking as crew members worked to repair the outer hull. A few Warhawks had been launched to lend their spotlights and haul new armor plates into place. The damage was all repairable, merely a few new scars and craters to add to the old ship’s collection.
Still, it hurt. Damage was a type of pain she knew to expect. Every repair strengthened her, but her shoulders slumped, her machine aching with errors and exhaustion.
“Are you okay?”
It took the usual few hundred processes to realize that question had been addressed to her, so she focused again on the place she’d anchored her presence, expecting to find the Admiral, as he was often the only one that addressed her. But while this face reminded her of him, it had a sprinkling of freckles, and lighter, brown hair. Its owner was also over a foot too short. Harrison.
What was he doing here?
A dull memory answered her, unimportant to her mechanical existence until this very moment. He and Anabelle had been running all over the ship, playing tag, despite the damage. They’d found her, standing like a statue in front of the windows, during their game.
There was no fear in his presence, uncertainty perhaps, but no fear. Of course not, this child didn’t know who, or what she was. “I’m just tired,” she answered the boy as Anabelle fidgeted beside him. She reached out to calm the young girl’s mind, “I’m not going to hurt you.” Her illusion may wear the uniform of Command’s fleet, but that had never been by choice or shared intention.
Harrison spent another moment studying her, as if some part of him realized her oddities, but soon glanced out to the repairs occurring below. “The Singularity sure took a beating yesterday.”
“Yes,” she agreed. Combat was difficult, painful even. Against the fleet she’d served for decades, it had been so much worse. Something clawed at her mind in its wrongness.
“I bet the bad guys look worse, though.” Harrison grinned, excited by the tall tales he’d heard from the crew. “Uncle Will is the best!”
Uncle Will… It was so odd to hear him referred to that way. Even so, “Your uncle is without a doubt the finest commander this ship will ever have.” Yet, that hurt the ghost in its own way. What was so wrong with her that she knew that and still couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth?
Unaware of her concerns, Harrison scratched the back of his head, the grin never falling from his face. “But, it probably helps that he’s got the best ship in the fleet on his team too.”
The ghost had to chuckle at that. It had been a long time since anyone had accused the Singularity of being the best in the fleet. It was an echo of a different time. Truly, these two kids had a unique perspective. They saw this as the ship that had saved them and nothing else, oblivious to its history. To them, it was all black and white, good and evil. In their eyes, Reeter and his Olympia were hellions of chaos, corrupted to the core.
It was refreshing to know that someone could still see this conflict in such terms, but this was no simple struggle between good and evil. The Singularity could never be a rouge, dashing hero. She could never fly to the aid of those who needed her when the ghost could be ordered to kill them all in the next instant. The ship was cursed.
“What’s your name?” Harrison asked, stalling her thoughts.
The question was innocent enough, but it presented the ghost with an irresolvable dilemma. “I am no one.” While that wasn’t entirely the truth, it was the easiest response to give. After all, she was no one, not a person, but a thing. She was a tool that would be used to betray everyone around her, to kill and kill and kill even more.
No. She shoved those thoughts from her mind. Not now. With these children in front of her, she couldn’t handle those thoughts.
Unsatisfied, Harrison pouted. “You can’t be no one. Everyone is someone.”
Anabelle cuffed him on the ear. “Don’t be an idiot,” she hissed, “her name can be No One.” There was nothing wrong with that.
The ghost found herself laughing. These kids could see every way of interpreting something. “I suppose you are right,” she told Harrison, scanning through her list of aliases, and finding a suitable one. “You can call me Soldier Black.”
“What a weird name,” Harrison said, only to receive another smack from the young girl behind him.
The ghost didn’t mind his remarks. It was merely nice to be addressed, and it didn’t surprise her to find that she liked the kids. She liked many of the people she had met over the years, but they were too often overshadowed by the cruel ones.
But, as she stood beside Harrison and Anabelle, it was an ironic thing. She’d had extensive contact with the rarest of cosmic phenomena, but until today, never spoken to any children.
Together, the three of them looked out at the ice as it glittered like dewdrops on the field of stars. Calmed by the ghost’s telepathy, it was Anabelle that broke the silence, “Soldier…” she started, then hesitated.
“Yes?”
“Are we gonna be okay when the Olympia finds us?” Anabelle remembered her months on the run, hearing stories of the Olympia’s incredible power.
Looking upon the young girl’s freckled little face and worn-out denim overalls, the ghost hesitated to answer that question. It would be wrong to lie, but the truth, she knew, was too harsh. In all reality, the Olympia likely would never find them. Why bother when the ghost could be ordered to end this struggle?
It would be so easy to end this once Manhattan remembered and revealed her identity. No. It wouldn’t end like that. It couldn’t. She was capable of more than killing. She was more than a weapon. She could help. She could protect.
Focusing on the kids beside her, she said, “You two will be just fine.” She had to believe that, for her own sake. Because if she couldn’t spare the children at least, there was little point.
Silently, she aligned her eyes along the heading to the distant Liguanian Sector. Somewhere out there, Reeter was drawing ever closer to releasing Manhattan’s full power – a critical mistake. Reeter had no idea what he was releasing back into the worlds.
Once, the ghost had been able to stop it, but now? She was a shell compared to what she’d once been. What chance could she truly stand against something that had only grown in power?
A few minutes, and a few questions later, the kids left, off to continue their game. The ghost looked after them where she stood, unable to play with them, even if she had wanted to. She stood instead, contemplating the meaning of it all.
If she was fated to become nothing more than a traitor to what anchored her, was there any meaning to this rebellion from Command? Was there any point to fighting? Was there any point at all to lying?
Yes. There was. Days ago, when she had stood in the Admiral’s quarters trying to say goodbye, it had been as painful as taking an undesired order. She found it so hard to let go of him, because he was the one person she’d hurt the most, and the only one she thought might someday forgive her.
But, in these moments, at this time, the Admiral didn’t know what she’d done. He didn’t know that she needed to be forgiven at all. She was too afraid to admit that Samantha Scarlett’s blood was on her hands, because as desperate as she was for his forgiveness, she also knew that his kindness was the only thing that had kept her sane. If that turned to hatred, no matter how righteous, it would break her.
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So, there was meaning in this pointless rebellion. It had bought her time. It had bought her days to linger in the company of her beloved crew, days to work up the courage to tell the truth and earn that forgiveness. But even now, in the waning hours of her freedom, of the only existence she wanted to remember, she was still afraid.
Maybe it would be better to spend her eternity in uncertainty, never offered forgiveness and never offered hate.
But no, the Admiral didn’t deserve that. He deserved his own closure about what happened to Sam. He deserved to make that decision himself. He deserved to be able to blame someone, anyone, for what had happened.
But still, the conflict raged, too many of her parts desperate to not be hated. She was not designed to contemplate such emotional debates, yet this was unavoidable. It consumed her processes, an endless resource drain that would devour whatever she fed it.
Humans were much better suited to weigh such concerns, and the ship’s old cook, a woman known almost solely as Mama Ripley, was one of the few that acknowledged her, so the ghost diverted her attention to the kitchens on the mess deck.
She found the old woman standing over a pot, stirring an extra-large helping. “Crew’s going to be extra hungry today with all the repairs,” she commented by way of greeting.
Watching the cook reach up and grab the salt container, the ghost hesitated. As Ripley shook salt into the pot below, it was clear she was busy. It can wait. There was no need to waste others’ valuable time.
“What’s on your mind today, dear?” Ripley asked, pausing to meet the ghost’s gray eyes. I’ve always got time for you, she focused on that thought, knowing the ghost’s telepathy would pick it up, some indirect nudge for the ghost to speak her mind. Ripley knew the ghost reacted better to gentler cues than a command.
Truthfully, the aging cook should have been mustered out of the fleet years ago, but the Admiral had allowed her to stay onboard well after her years of being technically fit to serve. In part, that was due to Ripley’s willingness to speak to the ghost, and they had discussed this debate before. It had haunted the ghost for years.
Ensuring that the other chefs were deaf and blind to this conversation, the ghost stepped closer, “I’m running out of time.”
Ripley lowered her ladle to the pot of boiling water and gave it a stir, able to manage the kitchen despite this interruption. “Do you want to tell him, or don’t you, my dear? It’s that simple.”
No, it wasn’t simple at all. “I want to tell him.” The Admiral deserved to know what happened to his fiancée. “But I’m afraid.” She knew how he got when he set out for revenge. For a man so known for being stoic, his anger was beyond terrifying – even to her. No means and no methods were off-limits when his emotions got involved.
Ripley paused, “You’re afraid of what he’ll do to you?”
A swath of shame rose up, but the ghost couldn’t deny it. “Yes.” As much as she treasured the Admiral’s company, she knew just how dangerous he could be. Just yesterday, he’d killed three boarders without even blinking. And she knew, knew from his predecessor’s cruelty, just how horribly her commander could choose to hurt her.
Some part of her mind insisted that she deserved it. No matter how severe, the Admiral’s punishment would be just.
Ripley slowly removed the ladle from her pot, shocked by the ghost’s answer as it rang in her ears. She found herself staring up at the silver pans that hung above the lines of stoves and ovens. Her own face looked so worn, wrinkles framed by curls of gray hair. Beside her, the ghost didn’t appear. The illusion she cast to communicate looked real in direct sight, but it was far from perfect.
Still, the cook looked onto the pans’ mirrorlike surface, reminding herself that this presence, this ghost, was far from human. This poor soul did not feel things the way a human did, it did not understand or react the way a human might. The ghost had kept this terrible burden, this secret so long because it could poison her bond to the one she trusted most of all.
…But she was innocent of her words and their weight.
She might fear the Admiral’s wrath, but Ripley knew no knowledge could devastate the man more. The ghost might be right to mistrust after everything she’d been through, but to mistrust him, who had seemingly never contemplated anything except what was best for her, was a gross miscarriage.
“I have never seen anyone more loyal than Admiral Gives. He cares a great deal about this ship and everybody on it, including you.” They were all precious to him. The ghost struggled to understand it and the crew struggled to see it, but the Admiral protected all of them in so many ways, even, at times, by keeping his strange distance.
The ghost bowed her head. “I know.” She knew the Admiral’s intentions. She knew them better than anyone. He never wanted anything but to protect his people, his crew. Even his rare acts of revenge were spurred from that. But that was the problem. Sam had been precious to him, perhaps more so than anyone else, so would the vengeance he sought for her also be more powerful than any other? Powerful enough to turn him against the ghost?
Ripley looked again to this illusion, this mind inhuman. She stood tall and thin, not with flawless curves of a siren. Her posture was exhausted, silver eyes near fearful. And still, she stood. Despite everything, she stood. “My dear, I know that you have been through so much.” For such an innocent mind, she had gone through arguably too much. “But I hope you know that Admiral Gives would never, ever, try to hurt you.” The man was dangerous, and at times, utterly ruthless, but he was also unquestionably loyal.
How long had he spent trying to help the ghost recover from his predecessor’s abuse? Decades. Decades of the pitiful human lifespan.
How many times had he put his life on the line to defend his ship and crew? Hundreds. Maybe more.
And, yet, his intentions and loyalties were still questioned.
The ghost averted her gaze to the floor. “You didn’t know him before.” Sam’s death had changed him. Given his fractured background, it had broken him in many ways, and after so long, the pain had faded, but it wasn’t gone. “You don’t know him like I do.” She was in his head. Her telepathy often divulged his thoughts and feelings, even those unspoken.
He was a family man, who, because of her, had no family. He was a protector that, because of her, had lost what he had sought to protect the most. “He loved Sam more than anything.”
“That’s not true.” Yes, the Admiral had loved Sam and probably still did. Yes, that loss had changed him, turned him colder and more guarded, but Sam had never been alone in his affections. “She wasn’t the only one he cared for.”
After so many years, did her mechanical mind still not see it? No, Ripley supposed an entity that couldn’t see its reflection in the mirror must be blind in some ways. “He cares about you a great deal, and he has spent his life trying to make sure he doesn’t lose you too.”
“If it hadn’t been for you, don’t you think he would have left the fleet?” This life was nothing but trouble and pain for him anymore. “The man is brilliant, my dear. He could have become a great scientist or scholar, done anything. But,” Ripley sighed, “you couldn’t leave. You couldn’t go with him, so he stayed.”
Really, the long hours and dangerous work of ship command should have been below him. “But he saw what Brent did to you. The torture. The abuse. The confusion. And he vowed to fix you, to help you, and he has spent his life doing that without any sort of payment. Simply because you matter to him.”
It was a terrible thing for the ghost to fear him. “My dear, you are his everything. No part of him, even in anger, would ever want to hurt you.” After all Admiral Gives done for her, it was unfair to believe otherwise.
“But…” That was illogical. “I am a tool, an object. I am unworthy of affection and incapable of change. People do not care about objects.”
“People can be strange, my dear. They can be odd, act illogical, even when they often seem so rational.” Surely, the ghost had seen that in her years of observation? “And no one who knows you thinks you’re an object.” There wasn’t any question of the ghost’s mind, her sentience. Not to Ripley and not to the Admiral.
“But I am an object.” That was a fact. “I am a weapon, built to kill and destroy, and that is all I will ever be capable of.” In her fifty years of memory, that was all she’d truly done. It all boiled down to that, to making people suffer, either on orders or on accident. “I cannot change and I will never be fully functional again.” Her power was gone and Brent had broken her.
The cook threw her hands on her hips, frowning. “You take that back, right now.”
But, the ghost stared blankly at her. It was clear enough she considered that the truth. “You sound like Brent.” He had convinced her that she was incapable of growth, utterly unworthy of even a single ounce of affection or kindness. “You have changed,” change was the only constant in this universe. “Maybe you are blind to it, but I am not.”
The ghost had come so far. “The first time I saw you like this, you were clothed in rags.” Soiled, they had hung off a form so mutilated it never would have passed for human. Knowing that this illusion was a mirror of the intelligence’s true condition, the mere thought of those wounds still churned Ripley’s stomach.
“Now, look at you.” The ghost’s skin was flawless, her pale complexion healthy. She was clad in uniform, and not just any, but that of an officer – the critical crewmen whose unique skillsets were essential to the ship. On some level, that meant she considered herself essential.
The change had been slow, but the difference was night and day. “Just listen to yourself, dear. You can share your thoughts and concerns without fear. You speak with a beautiful voice, but when you first tried to speak with me, you couldn’t talk at all.” Her speech had been broken, and at times, unintelligible. Her voice had been a terrified whisper, rough and unused. “It is wrong to say you are an object incapable of change, because you have changed more than you know.”
“I am not meant to change.” Her entire purpose was to be an unwavering constant, one that served to protect humanity without failure. “Any change I have shown is by result of damage,” and that was nothing positive.
“Those are Brent’s words.” That lingering shadow was all too real. “I know Admiral Gives would never have said something like that to you.” He was careful to mind his words with the ghost, all too aware of their affect. “What did he tell you?”
“That I was someone to him.”
“Someone, not something,” Ripley stressed.
The ghost blinked, the meaning of those words settling in on her once again. The Admiral considered her worthy of attention and kindness. And yet, she had lied to, used him to help herself, to ease her own pain. She had stolen those years from him, destroyed what should have been his life, then been utterly dishonest about it. “I’m not human. He can and should do better than a creature like me.”
“Last I checked, the Admiral wasn’t too fond of humanity, my dear.” He saw his own people as something like an enemy, or perhaps a necessary evil. “I think he deserves a chance to forgive you.”
“But what if he doesn’t?” She did not want to be torn back apart, thrown into the damaged state Ripley had first seen her in.
The cook turned back to the pasta pot with a sigh, the steam warming her skin as she stirred. “Fear is a powerful motivator.” There was a reason the ghost had kept this secret so long. “But, has the Admiral ever let you down?” No, of course not. “That man has gotten all of us out of more tough scrapes than we want to admit.” He had helped bring the ghost out of a gut-wrenching state of abuse, strengthened her into a mind that could once again speak and understand. “I suppose you just need to have a little faith.”
Faith. Her mechanical mind generally failed to compute its value. With neither mass nor energy, she could neither affirm nor disprove its existence.
“Ask yourself,” Ripley said, “Do you trust him?”
Yes. The ghost did trust him. She had to. They gambled life and existence together constantly. Without trust, everyone on this ship would be long dead. But this, this was different. She had already violated his trust by hiding her role in Sam’s death. That infallible trust between them had already been broken.
“I watched him kill three people yesterday. He didn’t even hesitate.” Those were merely the most recent victims. There had been others over the years. Many of them. He was perfectly willing and capable of hurting people more real, more human than her.
“He is a soldier, my dear. The reality is that sometimes soldiers have to do terrible things to protect their homes.” Ripley didn’t doubt that the Admiral was, on some level, a sociopath. It was probably the only reason he could do what he did and maintain his sanity.
But, sociopath or not, he always did his damndest to give the ghost every ounce of respect and support she needed. He always treated the crew decently. “Like it or not, this ship is his home.” He would do absolutely anything to protect it.
Ripley took a deep breath, tasting the aromas of the kitchen. “My dear, so long as you are determined to hate yourself and your past, there is not one that can help you move on. Not even him.” The ghost would be forever fixated on everything that had gone so wrong. “Be grateful you have time enough to make closure.” The cook closed her tired eyes, softening her voice, “Many of us were not so lucky.”