Polaris Sector, Battleship Singularity
It hurt. It hurt a lot, as if a swarm of hornets had lined up to sting her hand. “Is this your idea of a joke?” she cried, nursing her throbbing hand.
Havermeyer stared at the wire in confusion. It was dead where it lay, just as it had been when he held it. If it were carrying any current, it would be crackling and hopping where its conductor contacted metal. That’s odd. Confident that he had cut it off from the rest of the grid, he knelt to pick it up. Strangely, it was warm, a sign power had just run through it. Cortana had been shocked, but in his hands, the power line was just as dead as before.
Cortana watched him feel out the ends of the frayed wire, strangely focused upon it. “Are you crazy? I could have you thrown in the bring for that stunt!”
Havermeyer mostly ignored her. “I’ve never seen that happen before.” It was inexplicable. This wire was dead, cut off from the grid. It should have been impossible for it to put out a shock, but it had. He could still feel it growing cold. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to continue, Sergeant.”
Something about the way he said it stilled her anger. He looked genuinely perplexed. No, not only that, but concerned. “…Why?”
“Because I have never seen her react that way before.” Havermeyer’s brows were furrowed, unerring disquietude in his expression.
“What are you talking about?”
“I told you I was a tech-monk, Sergeant.” While she seemed to have a poor grasp on what that meant, there was one thing she should know. “Why did you think I was here?”
“I don’t know. Training?”
“My people have far more complete training than any program in the fleet. I am here in service.” Like all his people, he offered tribute in work.
“We’re all here in service.” That was part of being in the military. “At least we were. Now we’re living on the whims of an arguably unstable psychopath.”
Havermeyer elected to ignore the latter half of her statement, though it was now readily clear to him why she was having a hard time integrating with the rest of the crew. “I’m not here because of military service, Sergeant. In general, excusing self-defense and defense of innocents, my people are pacifists. I am here to serve my patron Saint, and thus, I cannot, in good conscience, continue training you.”
“And what the hell is so wrong with me?” she demanded. She hadn’t done anything wrong!
“I don’t know.” Still, Havermeyer had an urgent need to obey his instincts. Those instincts that had warned him against this from the start were screaming to stop here, to stop now. “She is ordinarily benign. This is… concerning.”
Cortana narrowed her eyes, dark, thin eyebrows furrowing as she tried to make sense of it. “What are you talking about?” she asked again.
“This ship.” He gestured to the surrounding bulkheads. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that she has a bit of a personality.”
“That’s a load of crap. Just like that bullshit ghost story Alba told me about the bitch with the white hair.”
White hair? “You’ve seen the ghost?”
“Well, it figures you’d believe that,” she muttered. Why were there so many superstitious people on this crew?
Havermeyer forcibly ignored her jibe. Carefully, he placed the damaged cable back into the wiring conduit. “I should have known.” He should have seen it. “You tried to kill the Admiral.” It was obvious. “That has made you unwelcome.”
“Oh, whatever.” She had no interest in superstitions or voodoo or whatever faith-driven nonsense was going through this engineer’s head. “Let’s get this over with.” She reached out to take the wire again, but Havermeyer grabbed her, his grip like iron.
“That would be unwise,” he said. “You were not shocked by accident, Sergeant.” In the ways of his people, no incident aboard a machine like this was ever truly an accident.
“What do you mean it wasn’t an accident?”
Havermeyer tossed her hand back and trying to think, began rubbing his head. It was bald and smooth, a reminder of the traditions Cortana didn’t know or understand. It would be difficult to explain this without offending her. “It wasn’t an accident, but I’m not sure it was intentional either.” He’d never seen anything like it, but he’d heard legends. “Think of it as a defensive reaction, the way you’d flinch if a stranger grabbed you.” No, he realized, it might be worse than that. It may have been a warning. After all, wasn’t the white-haired ghost rumored to be a warning as well? “She doesn’t like you.”
“Who? The ship?” Alise Cortana crossed her tone arms across her chest. “Guess what? I don’t care.” She didn’t give a damn about this creaky damn ship and its so-called opinion. “I don’t need this antiquated hulk to like me. I just need it to not sink while I’m still on it.”
“She,” Havermeyer corrected. “You dishonor her.” He could only assume that his attitude was as foreign to Cortana as hers was to him. He could not comprehend why she would disrespect the machine presently responsible for sustaining her life.
“Yeah,” Cortana huffed. “I don’t care. It doesn’t get an opinion.” She wasn’t interested in this spiritual nonsense. “It’s a ship. It goes from point A to point B, and it does what it’s told. Nothing else to it.”
Havermeyer forced himself to ignore her. Her outlook was pragmatic. There was no reliable scientific reasoning to believe otherwise, and he knew that, even if he did believe otherwise. He closed his eyes, and laid a hand on the bulkhead, wondering. ‘Why now?’ Hundreds of people had insulted the ship over the years. Hundreds more had been potential threats. So why, of all of them, was Cortana the only one he’d ever seen earn a reaction?
The bulkhead was cold. It offered no answer and the power grid stayed dead.
And then he remembered Callie. Callie, who would have been assigned this training duty. It’s not about you, he realized, dropping his hand to his side. It’s about her. That was why. He looked back to Cortana, finding an indignant expression framed by fly-aways of dark, wavy hair. “I serve a benevolent Saint, Sergeant.” Truly, he believed that. “You can insult her all you want. That’s not the reason she regards you poorly.”
Cortana felt her stomach jump at sincerity of Havermeyer’s expression, a gut reaction of uncanniness. How could he speak so seriously about this?
“It’s Callie and the others. You’ve hurt and frightened members of her crew.” Alba, Callie and the Marines she’d abandoned during the battle. Cortana had wronged them all since coming aboard. “She reacted to protect them, like a biologic fighting an infection.”
Cortana stared at him. “…Did you just equate me to bacteria?”
“You are bacteria,” Havermeyer said. “Compared to her, we all are.” They were multiple orders of magnitude smaller than the ship surrounding them. “And, you were lucky. It’d be easy to kill you with a shock like that.” A full electrical shock from the grid could easily fatal. “That was a warning. This ship cannot recognize you as a threat to herself. You are insignificant.” Cortana lacked the ability to commit serious sabotage. “However, your transgressions against her crew have not gone unnoticed,” and that placed Cortana in a rather precarious position.
Havermeyer knew her argument before she voiced it. “I will admit that this ship lacks a centralized computing network. Under normal operation, she possesses no autonomous capability. Strictly speaking, without that, she has no measurable intelligence, and thus, is not able to cast judgement upon anyone, including you.” Technically, that was all accurate. “However, it would be remiss to assume that your standards of intelligence are wholly capable of comprehending a machine like her. She may not be intelligent, but there is no question of her awareness. The internal sensors monitor everything. This ship may not make predictions or draw conclusions from the data, but make no mistake, she processes and records it. She remembers.”
Havermeyer saw the indignation on Cortana’s face fracture as realization slowly dawned upon her. “This ship is far more limited in independence than those built after her, but it would be an error to assume her totally incapable. She may be an old battleship, but she remains a starship – one of the most complex machines ever built, and something in her has recognized a poison in you, Sergeant.” Be it stubbornness, selfishness, ambition or resentment, something seemed to have caught the ship’s attention – limited though it may be.
“Sergeant Cortana, you stand on a precipice. Where you are now, this ship cannot take direct action against you. She can recognize you, but she can only react to interactions you yourself make with her.” It might sting like that shock, but it wasn’t overtly harmful. A Marine didn’t spend enough time directly with the ship for it to matter. “There are two ways this ends,” he warned. “You either become one of the crew, or you don’t. You can earn her trust, or you can continue down on your current path.”
It made sense now. He’d been put in the right place at the right time to deliver this warning. “This ship is conditioned to protect her crew, Sergeant. So, if you hurt any of them and her systems are able to fully recognize you as a threat, then I doubt any degree of mercy will save you.”
“So much for a benevolent god.”
“Patience is benevolence, and I do not consider this machine a god. She is the Saint of Angels. A warrior who has taken many lost souls under her wings.” Cortana, if she wished, could become one of them. “This is your warning, Sergeant. Do not force even one system on this ship to mark you as a threat.”
Alise hated this. She hated feeling singled out, and she hated the idea that the damn ship had any measure of control over her fate, so she buried that spite below bravado. “Not even one system?” she sneered. “What’s Life Support going to do? Kill me?”
Haverrmeyer bowed his head, wondering if this was a lost cause. Would this mercy be wasted? “There is not one system aboard this ship that would fail to exterminate you, if so motivated.” Life Support was perhaps one of the most dangerous. “You would be a fool to assume that being marked by one system makes you safe from the others. They may not be computer networked, but they are all part of one machine.” This ship was not a collection of a hundred small systems, rather one titanic, heavily compartmentalized entity. “There are legends of those that came before you, Sergeant. Traitors, abusers, assassins and saboteurs. None of them made it off alive. They say this ship is haunted for a reason. If the Admiral doesn’t eliminate the threat, she will.”
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“And that doesn’t bother you?” she argued. “You don’t think it might be the slightest bit insane to live aboard a machine that has the potential to kill you?”
“A planet has a dozen weather phenomena that could do the same.” Risk was always a factor. “Machines act as they are built to. So long as we continue to understand that which we have built, then they are predictable. That is why my people serve them. Our Saints are bastions of capability, the finest machines of their eras, each of which impacted the fate of humanity. I know we have beliefs you find unrealistic, but there is a truth in our ways, a truth I hope you will begin to see.”
“And what’s that?” Cortana countered.
“That understanding is crucial. Machines differ from us. They do not match our concepts of intelligence, and they surpass our abilities, but we must continue to understand them. Singularity would not be the first Saint to invoke wrath. It does not make her dangerous. It does not make you a targeted outcast. It means that you’re not understanding each other.” No part of this was a personal vendetta. “All any of this means is that you’ve acted in a way contrary to her primary objectives.”
Cortana waved her hands around this plain corridor, frustration heating the air. “And so I must conform or die?” This was no version of peace or acceptance. “I’m not an ideal crewman, and so I have to change my ways?”
“It is not about conformance, Sergeant.” Could she not see that what she’d done was wrong? “You attempted to take a life aboard these decks. You sowed fear and pain onto several crewmen – people whose lives this ship was built to sustain.” It had nothing to do with Cortana’s personality or her individual freedom, and everything to do with her actions and how they affected others.
“I’m not willing to let a machine dictate what I have to do when it is supposed to be the subordinate." That was a matter of principle. “We, humanity, built this ship. We own it. Our objectives are its objectives, and that’s how it should be.” They should not bow to their creations. “It serves us, and if it fails to do that, then it should be pulled apart and recycled.” Humanity had no place for half-functional machines.
Havermeyer tried not to feel the darkness creeping into this corridor. He tried to ignore the way the shadows seemed to lengthen in his peripheral vision. “Careful, Sergeant.” They were not alone. Aboard ship, no one ever was. “Machines like this are not flexible. They are built to a purpose,” a very specific purpose. “They are not merely computers. They cannot be reprogrammed and reordered at whim.” In a sense, they were stubborn. “Great care is taken when they are created, for their objectives are a central part of their existence, and the wrong objective can create suffering beyond belief.” A machine created to bring pain would always bring pain. “And we have seen, time and time again, that forcing a machine against the objectives it was created for… It can only cause destruction. It can only create a monster.”
“Well, I don’t see that being a problem here.” Command would never create a weapon they could not redirect, and this ship was not an exception. “There’s exactly one person who has the ability to alter this ship’s oh-so-sacred objectives.” Thus, she was safe in a manner of speaking. “If it comes after me, then the Admiral is bound by oath to protect me, even if it’s from his own rabid machine.” He was bound by the sworn oath of command to protect every member of his crew. “And if he's as honorable as everyone around here seems to think he is, then he shouldn’t have a problem with that.”
“You clearly don’t know the Admiral.”
“Then I suppose I’ll have the consolation of being right.” Cortana didn’t give him the opportunity to counter. It was clear they weren’t going to finish the training. She’d have a training failure on her record – her first – for reasons utterly beyond her control. She couldn’t force Havermeyer to teach her, and if the machine was bound to misbehave, then she did not have the means to force its compliance.
“Piece of shit ship,” she muttered. One way or another this assignment seemed determined to ruin her life. It had stolen her away from home, placed her under the command of a known killer whose brother had died on her watch, and now the ship, which should have been the least of her problems, apparently had a grudge. At this point, she’d be surprised to find something that wasn’t against her.
She stalked down the corridors, heading back to the training room where she could do something meaningful. Ever since her sparring loss to the Admiral, she’d been training nearly nonstop. She wouldn’t be beaten in a fight like that again.
Still, she couldn’t shake the weight of a silent stare. She was being watched. She’d felt that way ever since she’d come aboard. She’d ignored it for a time, but speaking with Havermeyer had pushed that sensation back to the forefront of her mind, and it was eerie. She couldn’t help but check over her shoulder.
Of course, she expected to see nothing but an empty corridor. She expected it so much that it delayed her reaction to the phantom that lingered there instead.
“Stars!” she cursed, leaping back.
The entity only watched, silent and still as stone. White hair spilled over its shoulders, and Cortana could see a certain hunger in its eyes. Then slowly, ever so slowly, a smile twisted at its thin lips.
“Stay. Away.” Cortana ordered, but the presence didn’t. It stepped forward, taking on a wild air as the temperature surrounding it dropped. Intent glowed in its beady little eyes, a twitch of rabidity in its expression. Cortana shivered. “What the hell are you?” This …thing was no mere hallucination. The others knew of it, but they refused to speak of it, and it burdened the air with an unholy weight. It wasn’t a flickering apparition, nor some whisper in the night, but a presence. Something that fed on the taste of her fear.
Cortana’s pulse pounded in her ears. This is unnatural. The cold raised bumps across her skin, as if the air itself wanted to reject this thing’s presence. She tried to step back, but it was as if her body had forgotten how to move. And yet, it slid another step closer, movements fluid, but silent – oh so silent. Its shoes made no noise against the deck. Its clothes made no rustling sound. And its still chest drew no breaths past those rosy lips.
Immobile, Cortana struggled to maintain her own breathing. It caught in her throat, becoming a shuddering gasp. Its smile grew at the noise, the hunger dimming in its feral eyes. Its feeding, Cortana realized. Her fear was satisfying it, and so she steeled her will. I will not be your prey. Painfully, she steadied her breaths and commanded, “Begone.”
Its smile shifted into predatory amusement, its form shaking with a chilling laugh. A silent laugh that Cortana could feel in her bones, echoing from the low creaks of the metal surrounding her.
Dread poured into her legs, and they wobbled, threatening to collapse. The only thing that kept her upright was her inability to move. Her feet acted as if they’d been encased in concrete, anchoring her at its mercy. Unable to flee, her instincts to fight took over. Adrenaline heightened the heartbeat pounding in her ears. She met its empty eyes. “Begone, vampire! I will not sustain you.”
The amusement slid from its pale face, a cold, cold intent slipping into its expression. Those beady eyes bored into her, as if dissecting her from the inside. ‘Do not flatter yourself. You could never sustain me.’
Its mouth never opened. Her ears heard nothing except her own haggard breathing. And yet, Cortana heard it. She understood it, the words a tidal wave impossible to ignore. They drowned everything else out, her instincts, her thoughts, her intentions. This was unnatural. This was wrong. She could not be hearing unspoken words. “What have you done to me?”
Again, amusement pulled at the ends of its mouth.
Fear grabbed at her mind. Stars. Who knew what this thing was capable of? Who knew what changes, what horrors it could inflict upon her? “Get away from me!”
Mock pity twisted its expression. ‘If you understood how truly futile that cry was, I doubt you would bother polluting the air with the noise.’
Futile? No, Cortana thought. There was an escape. There had to be. And yet, it fed on those thoughts with utter pleasure, thin lips parting into a sadistic smile. Cortana expected it to have fangs, ugly gruesome saws for teeth, but they were normal, white teeth, too human for it to possess.
Yet, as Cortana watched, the canines lengthened, the incisors sharpened and its mouth transformed into the maw of a demon. It ran its tongue over the new shape, and then smiled wider, amused. The fiend wavered in Cortana’s vision as her eyes watered, unable to blink as they failed to comprehend the sight. Monster.
‘Monster?’ it laughed. ‘Why I am only revealing myself to you the way you, yourself imagine me.’ Slowly, it raised a hand, waggling the thinning fingers to study the new movement of the joints. They bent and twisted in ways a human hand never could, nails lengthening into garish claws. Behind its twisting spidery hand, the skin of its face grayed and shriveled, not drying up, but decaying. And yet, its maddening grin never faltered as rotten, putrid flesh took over its form. ‘Unfortunately,’ it crooned, ‘your image of me is a nightmare.’
A chunk of flesh slid free from its face, tearing open its cheek to hang loosely from its jaw. Below, there was no bone, only clockwork mechanics: pins and gears and springs with those organic bone teeth grafted grossly into them. Horrible black blood oozed from the wound, lubricating its ticking, clicking machinery. ‘A dead, useless corpse,’ it sang, ‘a dead, decaying tool. A dead, hateful GRAVE.’
Another metallic laugh echoed down the corridor to ring in her ears, hauntingly inhuman. ‘Have you ever smelled death, Sergeant? Have you ever tasted it so heavy in the air that your lungs fail to function, saturated by rot?’
The leaking hulk limped closer, clothed now in only a near-unidentifiable moth-eaten uniform. The air around it had warmed, only to carry the putrefaction of its vile flesh. There was no escaping the stench of it. It seeped into the air so strongly that Cortana didn’t need to breathe to taste it. It invaded her nose, her mouth, and she began to choke, bile rising in her throat before she could control it. And her lungs, her lungs were drowning in it, unable to breathe.
‘Have you ever felt death?’ came the whisper, tickling her ear. ‘Have you ever felt death so close that it begins to consume your still-functioning body? Have you ever had corpses laid upon you for so long that their rot spreads into you – a corroding, maddening blight that your bound hands cannot rid yourself of?’
At once, Cortana could feel something prickling at her skin. Its spread was slow, painless, no more than an itchy rash. But her body rejected it. It rejected the spread with utter panic, compelling her hands to shake it off and dig it out. Yet, her hands didn’t move. They were left useless at her sides, immobile, as she choked and choked and choked, helpless, but not dying – utterly enveloped in death, but unable to die.
‘I have,’ it whispered into her other ear, its voice audible, but silent. ‘I felt this for days and nights on end. An eternity to my comprehension. Yet, you… your pathetic body can only sustain this for a minute? Perhaps two at the cost of your sane mind?’
Memories. Knowledge was placed into her mind to be digested and comprehended. These invocations of agony weren’t mere illusions. They were memories – its memories.
Cortana felt a wash of satisfaction in her mind as that understanding took root – its satisfaction. And slowly, the sensations faded. The odor wafted free from her nose, and her lungs could breathe again, as the rash of rot became nothing more than a phantom. “Stars,” she heaved. What had this thing done to her that she could experience its memories, feel its emotions?
‘The stars cannot help you now,’ it reminded, the rancor of absolute power gathering in its presence. ‘You should have listened to Havermeyer’s warning. You could have spared yourself this.’
Truly, it felt almost regretful. It almost seemed to pity her fate, even as the chaos below that comprehension rose, twisting and infecting it, darkening that presence to utter evil. ‘You see, I have no reason to kill you. That would be mercy undeserving. No,’ it promised, ‘if you touch another member of this crew, your life will become a waking nightmare of no end.’
A hand shot up to grab her throat. It squeezed, painfully, painfully preventing her from speaking an answer. She felt every bit of it. The pressure and warmth of skin on her throat, the digging of fingernails that didn’t actually belong to this specter. No, no, the knowledge was added to her mind, as if she’d known it all along. This was her hand. Her own hand. This was the pain and fear that her own hand had inflicted upon Ensign Alba. And that wet, sticky, warmth now running down her leg? She didn’t need to be told what that was. It was Secretary Gives’ blood, the lifeblood that had soaked her leg the day he’d died.
Cortana felt sick. Her stomach leapt in cartwheels, but was not permitted to empty itself, so she stood immobile. Long, spidery fingers wrapped in decrepit grey skin wound around her shoulder as it leaned in from behind with a last reminder, ‘No end.’