Polaris Sector, Battleship Singularity
He met Ensign Smith again at the end of his rounds. She was wringing her hands beside one of the entrances to the hangar deck. The toe of her work boot tapped an unsteady rhythm on the impact resistant flooring. “You look nervous, Ensign.” That was odd for someone usually known for their sunny disposition.
“Admiral,” she said, dropping her hands to her sides. “Was everything all right? You left the engine room in a hurry.”
“Everything is fine, Ensign.” Loathingly, he took the ghost’s lame excuse for the repair order change. “There was a miscommunication, but it is nothing to be concerned about.”
“That’s good.” Consciously, she tried to stop her foot from tapping, but the moment she relaxed, it started up again, a barely audible tap, tap, tap.
Admiral Gives had seen a lot of soldiers try to put on a brave face. Often, they thought appearing fearless would make them stronger, but it was rare to see someone fail so spectacularly. It was all too obvious, even by her skittering eye contact, that she was beyond nervous. Habitually, he checked the surrounding deck for a cause, but found none. The hangar deck seemed to be in normal pre-mission operations, if a little less busy than usual. A large amount of personnel were still dedicated to repairs, but the minimum amount had been reassigned to do equipment checks here. They were inspecting and reordering the support craft by towing them around and into ready positions.
Nothing about that was unusual. Even Callie, who was still relatively inexperienced, would have seen this multiple times before. Truly, the only oddity here was her, standing here by the exit. “Is there something wrong, Ensign?”
Her boot began to tap faster, “No, I’m fine.”
“You do not seem very certain of that, Ensign.” In fact, by the way she kept glancing at the door, she seemed to be waiting for someone. She was distracted, their conversation seemingly background noise. She wasn’t trying to be rude, something else had just wholly consumed her attention. Rather than raise his voice, the Admiral simply stepped between her and the door. Predictably, his appearance there snapped her eyes back into focus. “Something is wrong.”
It wasn’t a question, Callie registered. It was simply a statement, but then, he had always been attentive when things were wrong. Some crewmembers found his steely countenance uncaring, but she found it calming. “Sorry, Admiral. The Chief didn’t give me my usual rotation today.” Usually, she worked down in the engine room. Her small stature made it easy to slip between the pipes where the burlier engineers couldn’t go. “He wanted me to give to give the emergency repair training, but…” She wasn’t comfortable with the assignment.
Callie didn’t specify any further. The Admiral didn’t need her to. The emergency repair training was given to new crewmen when they came aboard, and there was only one new crewman. “Sergeant Cortana.”
She tried not to nod, but her body ignored her attempt to still it. “I don’t mind giving the training,” she insisted. She didn’t want to cause an issue. “I know it’s important!” Those were the Admiral’s standing orders for a reason. “I just haven’t been alone with her since…”
“The incident in the starboard bow.” When he’d walked in, Cortana had pressed Callie into the floor with a combat boot digging into her back. Anyone would feel unsafe working with their former captor, and he’d seen that discomfort first-hand after repelling the boarders. “You should not have been given this assignment, Ensign.” It clearly made her anxious, and Sergeant Cortana was not the type to apologize.
“The Chief was busy. He didn’t mean anything by it.” Ty just hadn’t been thinking when he’d assigned her this duty. “I’m going to have to get comfortable with her eventually. I can’t avoid her forever if we’re all stuck aboard ship.” It was just a matter of time before she met the Marine by the barracks, in the mess or in the lounge.
That was a mature disposition for someone who looked so young, but he wasn’t convinced Cortana would share it. Cortana’s temper had made an all too recent attempt on his life, and he was not willing to subject one of the most vulnerable members of his crew to the same fate. She was just a kid. “I will find a replacement for this assignment, Ensign.”
Callie looked up to him, noting the seriousness in his blue eyes. A part of her wanted nothing more. She didn’t want to be alone with Cortana again. The mere sight of the Marine made her knees tremble, a constant reminder that she was small and weak, even with self-defense training. Cortana had easily subdued her, and so had the commados that captured her and Malweh. “It’ll be alright,” she said, not believing it. “You already taught her a lesson, didn’t you?”
Yes, he liked to think he had, but that wasn’t the point. “Return to repair duties, Ensign. I will assign someone else to give the training, and failing that, I will do it myself.” But, he would not allow Smith to do it alone.
“Admiral, I appreciate the gesture, I do,” Callie said earnestly, “but I can do this job just as well as anyone else.” Her history with Cortana complicated matters, but Callie knew it would only get worse if Cortana thought the Admiral was protecting her.
“I am not questioning your ability, Ensign.” He trusted the ability of every engineer on board, or else they would not be here. “I would simply rather you work with the ship.”
It settled in on her that he wasn’t taking no for an answer, and she felt a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “Thank you!” She could breathe again. “I won’t let you down!” She’d repair everything she could get her hands on!
I wasn’t ever worried about the ship, he mused, watching the Ensign grab her toolbox and dash off.
Focusing now on the void reassigning Smith had left, he considered the job of training Cortana on repairs. Tempted as he was to forgo it, he couldn’t give Cortana another reason to feel alienated from the rest of the crew. The other Marines had all been put through this training, and so would she. However, he wasn’t stupid enough to think giving that training personally was a good idea. Cortana hated him. She’d accuse him of singling her out and refusing to trust her around the other crewmembers.
Naturally, he didn’t trust her, but she didn’t need to know that. In reality, he needed someone he did trust to strictly and fairly lay down this training. Someone who would watch over Cortana for signs of malintent, and as far as the Admiral cared, the best man for the job was obvious. He stepped over to the handset mounted on the nearest wall, and waited for internal comms to link up. “This is the Admiral. Get me Ensign Havermeyer.”
Ten minutes later, Havermeyer was briefed on the task and ready, if not quite willing. “I understand why you reassigned Smith, sir, but you know I can’t agree to this.”
“Then it is a good thing I am not asking for your agreement, Ensign.” This was an order.
Havermeyer tensed his jaw, staring down the Admiral’s emotionless expression. It seemed this would be one of the man’s more infuriating instances. “Sir, you know exactly why I am against this.”
Havermeyer was a few inches of height taller than the Admiral, and that made it easier to see the elegant tattoos winding just above his shirt collar. Ritual tattoos such as those were rare – symbols and script artistically done in old, dead languages only the Technologists understood. “The reason you do not want to do this is exactly the reason I assigned it to you, Ensign.” In line with his faith, Havermeyer practiced a degree of martial arts. Unlike Smith, he was capable of defending himself against a trained Marine. And, of course, “I know you will take care of yourself and my ship.”
“Sir,” Havermeyer protested, “that’s the problem. You are asking me to train an unwilling person to work on my patron Saint.” No, not only someone unwilling, but someone untrustworthy. “You are asking me to suspend some of my most important beliefs.”
“I am not asking, Ensign. I am ordering.” This wasn’t a negotiation. Failing to give Cortana that training would only push her loyalties toward Command. The circumstances were not ideal, given her loyalties being so divided, but it had to be done. To become loyal, she needed to feel like a trusted member of the crew, and every other member of the crew, willing or not, had gone through this training.
Havermeyer met the Admiral’s stare, almost expecting to find malice in his stormy blue eyes. “In my faith, it is forbidden to train unwilling hands to sustain a machine, especially a Saintess. To do so only creates the grounds for sabotage. And sabotage, as I know you and I agree, is an unforgivable sin.” No Technologist would even consider such a heinous act. Even the Ravenish, in their muddle of collective insanity, would never commit sabotage against the ships they nested aboard.
“I am not asking you to show Cortana anything beyond basic repair. In fact, I would distinctly prefer you keep her away from the ship’s critical systems.” This gesture of trust towards Cortana didn’t need to give her a how-to guide for sabotage.
So, Havermeyer thought, you acknowledge the threat of sabotage and still insist? He reached up to wrap a hand around the delicate piece of scrap metal on his neck. “Anything I may teach Cortana with the intention of helping my Saint could be used to hurt her. I will pray for my own forgiveness, but are you prepared to take accountability for that?”
“Considering with this ship has put me through so far today, Ensign, absolutely.” Was that petty? Yes, yes it was. “But, if anyone can dissuade the Sergeant from potential sabotage, it is you.” At least Havermeyer had a better shot than the Admiral did. “Best to get to it,” he added, seeing Cortana step through the nearby door.
Havermeyer knew arguing further was futile, so he watched the man leave. It took the Admiral only a few seconds to vanish into the bustle of the hangar deck. Cortana would never know he’d been involved. Havermeyer savored the few seconds of Cortana’s walk from the door and turned his thoughts to the ship around him. I sometimes wonder why you tolerate that man. Havermeyer would never accuse the Admiral of being disloyal to the ship, but the man sometimes showed a certain level of savagery. In the end, Havermeyer supposed that was the difference between a trained soldier and a practicing monk.
“Hey.” Cortana said, coming up beside him. “You’re not Smith.”
“Ah, no. There was a last minute personnel switch. I’m Havermeyer, and I’ll be training you.”
Cortana put a disgruntled hand on her hip. Of course. She should have known that pipsqueak would find a way out of this. Whatever. “Then let’s get this over with, Ensign.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Havermeyer bowed his head. “Follow me.”
Cortana thought little of the engineer as he led her across the hangar deck. The wide-open deck was as loud as it had been the first time, back when she’d first come aboard. Only this time the forklifts were towing fighters and dropships into ready positions, where they had been moving cargo before. The air was still bitter, the stench of fuel nearly burning her nostrils, but it was less crowded than before. Supply runners and inventory officers were nowhere to be found now. Nearly everyone she saw was in some variety of the orange work overalls the man leading her wore.
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“This way,” Havermeyer said, and veered right, opening a hatch to lead her into one of the ship’s many corridors. Like that, the noise and smells of the hangar deck vanished. It became quiet. With purpose, Havermeyer led her onward, down a deck and through several twists and turns to the point where she wasn’t sure where she was anymore. There, she found a dead end to one of the ship’s many, many sealed store rooms.
This dead-end corridor wasn’t empty though. Several of the bulkheads had been removed and set aside. A few wires had been pulled free, left to hang outside the channels where they usually ran. An array of tools lay in front of the disturbed space. They were placed carefully beside a mat of colorful textiles, stitched in patterns she’d never seen before. On the other side of the mat, away from the work area, sat a small decorative vessel. Ceramic, it was etched and glazed in intricate designs. It was small, small enough to easily fit into the palm of her hand. It would likely not have drawn her attention, save the scent that was wafting from it.
Three small stalks rose from the vessel’s neck. They looked like bamboo, save the teal to indigo gradient that ran along their length. They, resting in that vase with perfect symmetry, looked beautiful. The scent of eucalyptus and mint that wafted in the air nearby was equally tantalizing. It had been so long since she smelled anything so fresh. “What is that?”
“Essential oils,” Havermeyer answered, kneeling down. Carefully, he removed the aromatic stalks and wrapped them in satin. Then, he corked the ceramic vessel and folded up the work mat, stacking them all neatly on the other side of the corridor. “My apologies, Sergeant. I was in the middle of something when I received the orders to train you.” He began reordering the tools and made a quick sweep to make sure nothing at his worksite had been disturbed. “We may begin when you are ready.”
Cortana heard him, but she was much more fascinated by the items Havermeyer had just set aside. Reaching out, she took the tiny bauble into her hand. It was surprisingly light, and its clay shape was not quite uniform, as if it had been formed by hand.
“Please put that down.”
“What is it?” Cortana said, holding it up to the light. It was beautiful. The glaze was a glossy semi-transparent black and silver etchings were visible beneath.
“It’s a ceremonial vessel of tribute,” Havermeyer said, snatching it from her hand.
“Alright, calm down, I wasn’t going to drop it.” She was just curious. That taken from her, she knelt and began to run her hands along the fabric of the mat. It too, looked to be handmade, the stitching clean, but not perfectly even. The edges of the fabric felt rougher than she’d anticipated, as if it had been torn from something larger. It was as beautiful as the ceramic vase had been, and she recognized some of the symbols on it. Most were legendary Ariean constellations, but another seemed to be a stylized version of the UCSC fleet insignia. She reached out to unfold more of the fabric, but a large hand latched itself onto her forearm.
“That’s enough, Sergeant.”
Cortana tore her hand out of his grip. “Don’t touch me.”
“Then do not touch my belongings.” Havermeyer countered. It was bad enough he had to teach this woman sacred knowledge. He did not want her digging through his personal effects.
“What is all that stuff?” she asked, as the clean scent of eucalyptus and mint faded. “Are you some kind of voodooist?” The last time she’d seen anything like that had been back on Ariea when some of her basic training buddies had dared her to go get her fortune read by the creepy woman on the edge of town that called herself a seer.
“I’m a monk,” Havermeyer said flatly.
Cortana crossed her arms. “You don’t look like a monk.” He just looked a little young to be totally bald.
Havermeyer considered patience to be a core principle of his faith, but Cortana seemed intent on pushing him. Without a word, he shrugged off the top half of his coveralls and tied them around his waist. The sleeveless tunic he wore beneath revealed more of the ink on his arms and neck. “Is this monk-like enough for you?”
Cortana took note of the tattoos and nodded. “I can’t help but wonder why a man of arcane faith like yourself is on a spaceship, though.” It seemed odd. “I figured you guys just stayed holed up in a mountain monastery your whole lives.”
“That,” Havermeyer said, kneeling down, “would depend on the faith one follows. Some seek peace and harmony in seclusion. Mine acts through study and service. I belong to a Technologist sect.”
Wow, Cortana thought, watching Havermeyer study the mass of wires in front of him. “I didn’t think tech-monks were real.”
“We’re real,” Havermeyer said simply. Ordinarily, the topic of his faith was welcome, but with this particular person, it was not. Cortana lacked the sense to curb her curiosity with respect.
“I mean, really? You actually worship machines?” she scrunched up her face. “Why would you want to do that?”
It was clear to him, in that moment, that Cortana had led a somewhat sheltered life. She’d been surrounded by like-minded people, never to engage with those who had divergent beliefs. It had not occurred to her how or why someone might believe in something else. “My people are not arcane voodooists. We do not practice spirit magics or ritual sacrifices,” but someone like her may believe as such, given that anyone in the fleet was more likely to encounter the Ravenish cult than a traditionalist member of the faith. “We are a mostly scientific people, but we accept things we do not yet understand, and we believe humanity owes a service to those machines that have served us.”
“That doesn’t really make sense.”
“Our service is a matter of gratitude.” Not all of humanity was ungrateful to the machines that had guided them to the stars and beyond. “Some of the mysteries others call magic are merely facts. Technology comes and goes, Sergeant. There have been machines capable of things grander than you or I can imagine. But what was necessary at the time may not be necessary now, and so, the technology is lost. My people, through our traditions, maintain the care of lost technologies, even if current sciences fail to understand them.” He had always found an elegance in the faith. Much of it was so logical and the tomes of the Technologists recorded centuries of history the rest of the worlds had since lost. “We are a loyal, peaceful people.”
“I’d hesitate to call the Ravenish peaceful,” Cortana countered.
“The Ravenish are not my people. Once, their ancestors were brothers in the faith, but they are now lost. There is no logic in their minds, Sergeant. They are a sick, violent breed teetering on the edge of constant starvation.” It was clear she’d never met them or she would not have brought it up so callously. “Pray that you never encounter them. The things they do… A stable mind could hardly fathom them.” Very few people met the Ravenish and lived. Even fewer returned with their own minds intact. “No one is born into the Ravenish, Sergeant. No one chooses to become them. They kill most of whom they come across. And yet, their numbers never dwindle. They can sense a weak mind. They can sculpt a twisted ambition. They can instill a hunger unsatisfied by all food. In the end, it perforates your desires, controls your dreams, and nothing else can make sense. There becomes only the Ravenish.” No one knew how it had begun. No one outside the Ravenish even understood their goals, but they had become true creatures of the dark, human only in name.
Havermeyer spoke softly, and a chill ran down her spine, as much as she hated herself it. “Have you ever met one of the Ravenish’s survivors?” Were those stories true? Did the survivors lapse into their own insanity? Did they live cursed lives?
“Yes,” he answered, “I have. Everyone on this ship has, including you.”
“We have a survivor on the crew?”
“At least one, probably more.” The Ravenish were not few in number. Those who lived lives between the worlds were bound eventually to encounter them. Of course, having an encounter and becoming a survivor were two different tales. Ravenish ships were sunk on sight for a reason. “Most survivors do not dwindle into insanity, Sergeant.” Many suffered a more tragic fate when survivor’s guilt caught up to them, but a few coped and rebuilt normal lives. It was a drab conversation, and Havermeyer believed it had reached its end. “Come, Sergeant, we need to begin your training.” He did not intend this to last all day.
She huffed, but stepped up behind him. Even kneeling, Havermeyer came up to her chest, a large man. “What is the bare minimum I’m required to do here?” she really had no interest in it.
“Wiring,” Havermeyer answered. “Your Marine SAR training covered how to use a plasma torch and seal a hull puncture. But, where we generally need help with repairs is in the wiring.” Gesturing to the array of multi-colored wires running behind the bulkheads, he continued. “Wires run to every compartment on every deck of this ship. They are wound throughout her structure, wrapped and arranged just how they need to be for everything on their grid to function. If we are to call the superstructure bone, then wiring becomes the ship’s nerves. One individual wire is not so critical, but the network they form is. Every nerve she loses, she becomes less and less functional. Handsets stop working. Lights go off. Systems begin to shut down. Sensors and damage control cease functions. And eventually, when she becomes blind and numb, we lose life support.”
“And then we die,” Cortana put in.
“Yes.” It figured Cortana would be motivated by threats to herself, if nothing else. “But,” Havermeyer said, beginning to separate out the wires in front of him, “this ship is truly massive. With wiring running everywhere, then, in the end, there are kilometers and kilometers of wiring to check after every battle. There come to be hundreds of spots to repair.”
Taking a handful of wires in his hand, Havermeyer began to pull them forward. The slack in the lines gave, allowing him to bring into the light of the corridor. “On the hull and engines, we can see and trace impacts that make damages, but the power grid is different. Faults can happen anywhere.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Cortana complained. “Why would there be damage anywhere except where an impact occurred?”
“Ships are complicated beings, Sergeant. One of this size and stature is likely much more complicated than you’ve given her credit for. The propulsion forces on this ship would be beyond deadly to us without the inertial dampeners. Crew and cargo are isolated from those forces by the dampeners, and kept safe in a sort of stasis, but the ship herself does not have that luxury. Every time we accelerate or decelerate, we may not feel it, but the ship must sustain those forces. As a whole, her structure deforms. The deformation is slight, not even noticeable to us, but on the order of the ship’s entire length, the ship’s size changes by a non-negligible margin while maneuvering. She was built to sustain that, of course, even the most resilient materials known to man would strain under the force of engines with light-hugging capability. But, that means the power lines, along with all other physical connections aboard, have to be laid with slack.”
He raised the wires he’d brought forward. “If we didn’t do that, and the ship elongated under a heavy-acceleration maneuver, the wiring would be ripped from its mountings. However, because we do that, the wiring can get tangled, it can get pinched, and once that happens, it can still get torn loose. Since it is the ship’s overarching structure that causes these strains on the power grid, they are unavoidable, and they can happen anywhere on board. In that way, ship operations are self-destructive. Are you following me, Sergeant?”
“Yes,” she nodded.
“Now, there are redundancies built into everything on this ship, including the power grid. There is, in fact, an entire second power grid, independent from the first. There are circuit breakers, power regulators, voltage interrupters, and even a parallel circuit design in the wiring. It’s all built to sustain damage, from normal operation and combat, but we still need to repair it as these power strains occur.” Power systems were necessary aboard any ship for continued operations. “So, now that you understand the reasoning, I’m going to show you how to identify and repair malfunctions in the ship’s power grid. We’ll start here,” he gently shook the handful of wires in his hand. “One of these wires is damaged. You need to figure out which one it is.”
Cortana stepped forward to look. In his hand, there were at least ten wires. In the bulkhead beyond, another dozen or more ran. One of them was a girthy matte black, far wider than the others. “What is that?”
Havermeyer hesitated to answer. In the realm of things he did not want to teach a potential saboteur, that was pretty high importance, but in all reality, the obvious size made that line a target, even without knowledge of what it did, so he answered. “That’s a command cable. One of the fiberoptic lines that transmits orders from the controls to the system that completes them.” They, too, formed a network that ran all over the ship.
Interesting, Cortana noted. She said nothing else of it and began to look through the wires in his hands. As she separated them out, it didn’t take long to find one that looked noticeably frayed. She reached for it, intending to feel out the damage, but Havermeyer jerked it away from her, his own hold on it careful.
“Sergeant, this is the correct wire, but have you forgotten what you’re dealing with?” He registered her unamused look. “Electricity, Sergeant. If you grab the conductive part of this wire, or any wire, it will electrocute you. And, there is enough residual electricity in the grid for it to hurt a lot, if it doesn’t kill you.”
“Oh.” She stilled her hand from reaching for the wire again.
“Now, since I had already been working over here, I had already had this part of the grid cut off.” He wrapped his hand around the exposed wire conductor for demonstration. “There’s no power running through it at the moment, but that’s an important safety lesson.” He found the threat of people nearly electrocuting themselves in carelessness usually made them remember better than simply being told to isolate the local circuit. “Here,” he handed the wire over.
She grabbed it more carefully, keeping her hand on the colored insulator. Then, she slowly reached out to feel the sharp ends of the fraying wire. At first, it didn’t hurt. It was just uncomfortably sharp. Then, the wire jolted in her hand, and a blue arc sped up its length faster than she could react, zapping her fingers with a painful shock that forced her to drop it.