Twenty-three years ago, Kuya Sector, Flagship Singularity
The abominable orders weren’t given in person.
They weren’t even given over audio.
They were sent encrypted, received and decrypted, only to be handed off. “New orders, sir. Immediate priority.”
Immediate priority, he sighed inwardly. They always were. “Thank you, Ensign,” Commander Gives answered, taking the paper from the yeoman’s shaking hands. Were they shaking from fear of him, dread of these orders, or mere exhaustion? He had to wonder as the crewman scurried away.
Stars, how long had it been? How long since anyone on this ship had seen home? Not months, but years. The crew around him was beyond exhausted, they were breaking. Some had resigned, a few went AWOL and a couple had even turned mutinous – no doubt encouraged by the damn XO.
For the first time in years, he’d been ordered to bring the Singularity back to the central worlds, allowed to let the ship and crew rest, but now this. Once again, they’d be diverted, ordered and shunted away to handle some other problem, as if Command didn’t even want their flagship to come home.
No, it wasn’t ‘as if.’ That was exactly their intention. The central worlds wanted nothing to do with a flagship that had won their wars, slathered in the blood and barbarism of slaughter. They wanted no reminder of what their victory had cost.
Command wanted to break this crew, drive them to mutiny and abandonment of their posts. They wanted to destroy his command and end his career. After all, he wasn’t supposed to be here.
“You going to read that?” the executive officer said, clicking her tongue with an annoyed sigh. “Or are you still illiterate, dirt buster?”
Belle’s lithe form towered above him in her heels, beautiful in a dangerous sort of way, with cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. But he pointedly ignored her jibe, and flipped the sheet over to read the orders, only to find the letters blurry as they swam in his vision.
Colonel Belle twisted her maroon lips into a sneer, “Forget something?”
Calmly, he started to pat down his pockets, looking for his glasses. It had been years, but he still wasn’t used to needing them. He struggled to keep track of the thin frames, and was half-convinced the XO consistently moved them just to torture him.
She snatched the orders from his hand. “You’re incompetent.”
“Four years, and I have not sunk us yet.” Neither the Colonel nor Command would admit it, but he handled the ship well. “And as I recall, that is four years longer than you have held a command.”
Belle’s glare turned venomous, but she straightened the orders in her hand with flourish as she read them off. “Proceed to Knight Industries System 01. Eradicate the threat. Leave no survivors.” She ran her tongue over her teeth and threw the paper back to him. “Time to end another rebellion, little Prince. Do it well, and maybe Command will pity their token second-class citizen enough to give you some Admiral’s stars.” She laughed mockingly, tracing a finger along the console. “As if this ship isn’t enough of a gift. It’s already more than your people ever had.”
“My people built this ship.” She was Kansa’s greatest pride. No, the nation of Kansa wasn’t wealthy enough to own this ship or any like her, but they had built her, and poured the life of the nation’s once-impressive shipbuilding industry into this one vessel.
“That means nothing if you can’t direct her.” The ship served only Command, and his competence was constantly in question by result of his unfavorable background. “You’re nothing but a placeholder.” She leaned in close, “One error, one mistake, and this ship will be mine, so I’d advise not delaying your immediate orders.”
He held his ground, keeping his own gaze sharp and steady. “You had your chance to command her, Colonel, but she rejected you just like she did Admiral Prometheus.” Dozens of commanders had tried to take over before him, and dozens had failed.
“This was supposed to be my command.” She, not he, had been selected as Brent’s successor. She struck out like a viper, pinning his jaw between her claw-like fingernails. “Do you like knowing that your tenure was by result of an accident?” She dug a little into the skin, “I can’t imagine a crew that has suffered so long a tour would take well to that knowledge. Hell, they might even mutiny… again.”
Like that isn’t your plan, bitch. She and Brent had spent the last four years conspiring to break his command. The XO existed to give him trouble, and when he tried to reassign her elsewhere, General Brent simply assigned her back. There was no getting rid of her, but at the least, he did not have to allow her here. He steeled his gaze, “Get off my bridge, Colonel.”
Scraping her nails painfully along his jawline, Belle removed her hand. “So you intend to work as the commanding officer, first officer and second officer all at once? Good luck.” She hissed. Without her, and with the Major confined to the brig for his part in the recent mutiny, he’d be running the ship alone. Heading into combat, that would be no easy task.
“Go ahead, dirt buster. Cripple your only command. Waste the lives of your crew because you are unwilling to admit you need help.” Unmoving, the Colonel crossed her arms, knowing the Marine guarding CIC would never intervene between them. But, as she heard the ship’s structure subtly shift, it wasn’t the Marine she was afraid of.
Commander Gives lowered his tone. “Get. Off. My. Bridge.”
Belle just smiled, knowing she’d said enough to undermine the functionality of the crew. A hand riding on the whip looped at her waist, she waltzed calmly out of the room.
Once the clicking heels of her non-standard shoes had faded to silence, he planted both hands on the radar console, reveling in the coolness of the metal as he calmed. “Navigations, plot a jump for the edge of Knight Industries System 01. Engineering, charge one of the drives.” There wasn’t time to waste. “Set Condition One.”
“Sir,” the engineering officer said, “it is an extreme violation of protocol to engage in combat without a secondary command officer.” If something happened to him, the ship would be left without direction and be a weak target in the chaos.
“Would you prefer I call Colonel Belle back up here, Ensign?”
The engineer winced, the red marks of a recent lashing visible on his arms. “No, sir.” He reached out to work the controls, “Charging FTL Drive Two.”
No one else argued. Not one member of the bridge crew would defend Belle. They were terrified of her, and they were afraid of him too, though to a lesser extent. Behind his back, Belle had made a point to spread all kinds of rumors about him.
The discomfort of the crew was something he had learned to ignore. It wasn’t preferable, but that was the result of his predecessor’s reign. That was the result of inheriting the ship from a psychopath.
Times, it felt like nothing had changed. Through Belle, his predecessor still held influence. Crew were still whipped and beaten under his command. They were still kept exhausted and afraid, simply because he couldn’t manage put a stop to it. He couldn’t run the ship, put down a mutiny and keep Belle under his watch at all times. Belle knew that, and she abused that, continuously working to undermine him.
So, in the end, his command had changed almost nothing, efforts or intentions be damned.
“Ready for FTL,” the engineer announced, keeping his gaze intently on the controls.
Bracing himself on the edge of the console, the Commander closed his eyes, dreading this mission as he had dreaded so many others. “Jump,” he confirmed.
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Twenty-three years ago, Rico Sector, Knight Industries System 01 , CT Titanica
News of the military’s intention spread quickly. “Captain,” a crew woman approached with a trembling lip, “the military… They’ve dispatched a ship.”
Captain Menaw held a calm façade. This was his revolution, and he would hold his ground. The Rebellion may have ended years ago, but the central government had to know that annihilating this fleet would only worsen tensions on the Frontier. “Which one?”
The young woman looked ready to cry. “The Demon.” The media had been quick to report it, and the Frontier quick to publicly protest.
The flagship. Something broke behind the Captain’s expression. “Was she sent with or without reinforcements?” he asked, certain he already knew the answer. The flagship was the only one posted out this far, and there was a reason for that. She was all that was needed.
“Alone, sir,” came the answer. The worst things tended to happen when the flagship travelled alone. But terrible was the way Command preferred it on the Frontier. That was why she was always sent alone.
“Heaven help us all.”
The prayer was echoed by a dominantly non-religious group, much to Dean Merlyn’s bewilderment. “They can’t do that.” He looked to his mentor, brushing his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes. “We have hundreds of ships in orbit. They can’t sink us all.”
“The Demon could.” Menaw said quietly. The same ship that had won humanity’s impossible war years ago had shown a horrific efficiency at eviscerating human ships in the Frontier Rebellion. “If she was sent to sink us, then we stand no chance. But,” he raised his voice, letting it carry to all those on the bridge, “We are protected by the bonds of our brethren on the Frontier. Hundreds of hungry worlds, thousands of embittered ships and billions of wronged people will answer the call to war if the damned flagship of the central worlds spills blood here!”
The whispers of fear shifted into murmurs of agreement as the Captain projected his voice with purpose. “We will hold our ground. Not even the central worlds’ power can dissuade our determination.” If Command gave orders to attack and even one single ship escaped the carnage, civil war would erupt once again. So, surely Command had only sent that ship to frighten them? Not even the Demon could guarantee every ship in this system sunk, and ending this protest wasn’t worth another civil war.
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“My friends,” Menaw declared, “we will end Knight Industries’ tyranny over our worlds! We will free the Frontier, free our homes once again!”
Those on the bridge, and those on the hundred ships orbiting that world below rallied to Menaw’s cry. They believed that this cause was righteous and inevitable. Merlyn himself was proud to be part of such a movement.
…How quickly that changed.
The Flagship Singularity made her appearance in the Rico Sector by dropping out of hyperspace in a magnificent pillar of golden light, but her shape could never be mistaken for holy. Her black and blemished form was spiked, not with ramming spires and arrays, but with the shadow of raised guns.
By the time Menaw recognized the attack stature for what it was, it was too late. The first shot alone punched clean through the blockade, fire and devastation in its wake. There were no bluffs to call, no threats made. The flagship’s orders had not been to deliver a warning.
It was all Dean Merlyn could do to stare, frozen in place as he watched a swath of fire burn where a dozen ships had been, quickly swelling to engulf a dozen more. A rain of precision fire fed the flames, breaking apart ship after ship to add their fuel and oxygen to the blaze. A stray missile chased down those who lived long enough to try and flee.
It was a clean, methodical sweep across the most populous orbital paths. Fire and smoke spread out so thick that even the battleship was invisible amongst it, and the wreckage took care of the rest. Twisting and spinning, debris rained onto the lower orbits, crushing ships and peppering their hulls with holes. Damaged, they were destined to fall into the atmosphere and burn away.
Any ship that escaped the ablation cascade was quickly picked off from within the smoke, the explosion of their death barely bright enough to expose the silhouette of the wraith beyond.
It took mere minutes to sink more than half of the blockade.
“This is a massacre.” Menaw breathed. Just like so many others. It was the same executioner sent by the same self-righteous government. The flagship had been sent to gun them down and deny the cause of their protest. “Damn them.” The central government was so flawed, a puppet to the wealthier worlds and corporations, but no one could deny it, for the Ariean Central Government drew all its power from the monster created by the War, the Bloody Singularity.
None could rival that machine’s dominance over the skies. The flagship had proved to be so powerful that even the power-hungry government hadn’t desired to build another Constancy-class. There was no need for one. Even after more than two decades, she held the prestigious title of Command’s Flagship with no real challengers.
It had been the hope of the Frontier, of those billions that lived there, that once the flagship’s former master, Admiral Brent, moved on, things would change for the better. They had hoped that killing fields like the one being strewn before them would cease to exist.
They didn’t.
If anything, they became worse. The government, so desperate to avoid another Rebellion, mowed down any target without question to quell even the rumor of a separatist presence. And the flagship’s new master?
Well, to the Frontier and the rest of the poorer worlds, he was nothing more than the promise that power could corrupt anyone and turn their laboring citizens into dogs of the central worlds’ agenda. He was seen as nothing more than a traitor, hated for not taking a stand with his people on the Frontier and hated more by the central worlds for not being born among them.
But that was the game – a match that no one born outside the upper class would win. Every choice they could make was wrong. Menaw saw that now, as he watched the soft glow of an artillery tracer end on a blocky ship and detonate in an orange fireball.
Explosions riddled the sky like flak, denser than the appearance of the Spindle Galaxy’s distant stars. The smoke had grown dense enough to render the Singularity’s titanic form completely invisible until backlit by a vivid eruption of fire. She disappeared and reappeared in the ashen pillars like a ghost. The dust and debris had grown so thick that it was impossible to see the ships flanking the Titanica, their fraction of the blockade yet untouched.
Those on the bridge waited and stared, shakily breathing in the smell of anxious sweat. They waited and stared for minutes, seeing the flashes of explosions out in the swirling murk, and slowly, as impossibly slow as time lengthened by adrenaline and the fear of certain death could pass, the intervals between explosions began to lengthen, then altogether cease.
It took minutes, but steadily, the billows of obscure smoke began to clear, leaving only a haze between the once-proud leader of the protests, and the ship sent to put them down.
Thicker bands of ash pulsed on the gravitational fields of the planets like driving sheets of rain sprayed by the wind. The remains of vessels drifted in and out of view within the fog, flickering with the dying remnants of electricity.
The air was heavy and hot, like the pause before a storm. Aside from the Titanica, only one other ship remained. The others, a hundred of them, thousands of lives, had been reduced to rubble on the cosmic winds.
Silently, it was all they could do to watch the flagship realign for another pass. The ship was stoic as she went about her business, killing and executing. The Bloody Singularity’s famed aura of ferocity and bloodlust was absent, as if this event was not important enough to reveal it.
Dean Merlyn, standing off Menaw’s shoulder could barely breathe. It was as if the vacuum had already taken him. The massacre had been too sudden, those deaths seemingly so distant. Why should everything look so dull and gray when this ash should be tainted pink by blood?
Neither of the surviving ships tried to run. They’d seen their brethren make the attempt and fail. It would have been useless.
A single round flew, its tracer glowing red-orange. It barely seemed to nudge the other ship until it suddenly collapsed with a puff of oxygen, the decompressions wrenching it apart.
Aboard the Titantica, no one screamed, no one gasped. They’d gone numb to the violence, having seen a hundred other ships similarly slaughtered before them.
“I never pictured it would end like this.” A massacre that would never be martyred. Menaw had never imagined the government would send their man-made grim reaper to slaughter them all for protesting one of these worlds’ many wrongs.
But it was all he could to watch the Singularity raise her guns, her black hull so dark it looked like a piece had been cut out of the ashen sky. The red stripes on her armor were nothing more than the representation of blood, the blood of his people, of the ones he had led to this fate, led to be slaughtered like animals.
The battleship fired another single round. Like those that had turned the blockade to bloody, pulverized remains, it was a standard round, not armor-piercing or high-explosive. Against such ships, that wasn’t necessary. And like the others, it found its target.
Jarring the entire ship, the Titanica suffered a brutal hit. Even a glancing blow was enough to nearly cripple the ship, but still, they lived. Menaw, Merlyn and those on the bridge, they lived. They all lived, left to tread amongst disbelief and confusion.
“Did she miss?” came the question.
“No,” Captain Menaw answered, looking up to the warship with dread. The flagship had grown old, yes. She’d aged in a very conflicted era for humanity. Maybe the central worlds chose to believe her guns had lost their accuracy as they cried for a replacement, but they were incompetent fools. Time held no dominance in space as it did on planets, especially not on a metallic beast. The Demon had just put down a hundred ships without wasting a shot, so why miss now?
Far below, the shell that had scraped the Titanica’s side skittered into the atmosphere, following the curvature of the planet like a dripping dew drop in the dawning sun. Those on the bridge watched it go, now more certain. “Hell fires in heaven. She missed.”
“No.” Menaw shuddered, “That was no accident.” They were the lead ship of the protest. Whatever sick punishment this would entail was undoubtedly intentional. He narrowed his eyes at the warship. What’s your game?
But only silence and a picturesque stillness answered him.
The warship didn’t fire any further rounds, nor did she lower her guns. She merely waited. She waited for orders, not from Command as they had already given their final decree, but she waited on her commander. She waited on him, while he stood on the bridge, surrounded by officers turned visibly ill as they watched wreckage and bodies drift before them.
Commander Gives had entered the Rico Sector with purpose: not to hesitate, not to think. Command had to know what it was doing in giving these orders. They had to. But this blockade had been wholly unprepared for an attack. He’d been ready to order an execution, but not to create a massacre.
These people… They had crossed a dangerous line with their blockade targeting Knight Industries, but they weren’t criminals. They weren’t murders. And they sure as hell weren’t separatists.
He had done his job. Despite the wrongness he felt, despite the way it tore at him, he’d given his orders. He’d eradicated this blockade. But now, face to face with this ship, with the last ship, spared by a firing error – or so the weapons officer claimed, he realized he couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t.
His predecessor had done these deeds. Brent had reveled in joy during these tasks, killing and torturing. But, I’m not him. He’d never wanted to be.
From the nauseated expressions of the crew around him, they were no more fit for this type of immoral work than he was. They were waiting on him to tell them to stop, to let the civilian ship go.
But, it wasn’t that simple. Command would find out. Command always found out.
To debate, to delay this anymore than he already had, it was suicide. Command would execute him for treason. This would be the only excuse they needed.
Likely, that was the reason Command had given these orders the way they had. General Brent was only proving a point: that some descendant of the poorer worlds was not capable, was not strong enough to decide who lived and who died out here in the void. And Brent was right. He was not able to take these lives without reason, without hesitation.
But still, he could feel a soothing presence among the madness of the Rico Sector. Recognizing that calm, it was enough to give him another moment of pause, surprised that the ghost wasn’t outraged, furious with him. After all, he had just murdered thousands of civilian protesters. But no, she wouldn’t hold that against him. Those orders had been given by Command.
It was understood. We do what we have to, what is necessary. He followed Command and she followed him, as expected. So, as he stood in turmoil, she remained objective and calm, waiting with endless patience for his commands.
She had already shown her opinion. The non-lethal impact on the Titanica was proof of that. Only the ghost could demonstrate such precise control over the ship’s weapons under the guise of an error.
She knew that this was wrong, just as he did. These protesters need not have died. I should have refused. No doubt, General Brent had expected him to refuse these orders entirely.
But it was not that simple. If he refused orders, or failed to complete them in the slightest, Command would see it as treason. They would remove him from the ship and execute him for what he knew. Worse, they would hand the ghost over to someone else, slave her unwilling mind to another potential abuser. And that, above all else, was the one thing he could not allow.
It would drive her mad.
But was this any better? Following orders like this, forcing her to take part in another few thousand deaths, letting her blindly trust that something, someday would change… It was the same cycle of misery. She was still being subjected to death after death after death.
Nothing was going to change. He would never have the power to truly end this cycle. Command would never grant him that authority. But right now, he had the power to spare her this, to spare her the deaths of those aboard the Titanica. If that was all his command would amount to, if this was what it took to finally get him executed, then it was better than nothing.
He had to take a stand, and truthfully should have a long, long time ago. “Hold fire,” he ordered the weapons officer. This is my choice. He had no interest in those lives aboard the Titanica. Truthfully, they were probably forfeit no matter what he did, but he would not subject the ghost to taking one more life against her will. Not one more.
“Commander…” the communications officer protested, privy to the contents of Command’s orders. “That is a direct disregard of our orders.” If Belle had been on the bridge, this was grounds to remove him from command. Upon return to Base Oceana, it would be justification for a court martial against him.
“Hold fire,” he ordered, certain of this choice. The ghost could not disobey those orders no matter how badly she wanted to. He had to do it in her place. That was the only way to spare her this meaningless violence. “I will not finish this massacre.” If this was to be what ended his life, so be it. “Put the systems on automatic,” he ordered the crew. “Let the records show that none of you were involved.” He would not drag the crew down with him in this act of disobedience.
He watched them reach up and switch their controls off their usual manual setting, trusting the ship to her minimal automatic guidance and control systems. When the deed was done, he picked up the nearest handset and began feeding vocal commands to the ship, all too aware of the crew’s horrified stares.