Legot Sector, Battleship Singularity
Okara Schmindaro woke to the weight of the worlds. It had settled upon his chest, and no matter how he heaved, it would not ease. But, as he panted, he felt a gust of air, the mask atop his face dispensing oxygen-rich air, and slowly, ever so slowly, he began to calm, satiated. Eventually, he realized there was no weight upon his chest, but his torso was tightly bound.
His hand felt foreign to him, clumsy, but he dragged it up his body, recognizing the feel of cheap sheets and gauze before finally landing on the breathing mask covering his unshaven face. I lived. Hours, he had hovered near death, and now, he just wanted to feel truly alive. With a trembling hand, he took hold of the molded plastic mask and dragged it down, gasping in the stale air around him until he thought his lungs would burst. The sensation of it flowing past his chapped lips was heavenly, compared to what he’d been though, and he was content to drink it in for several long minutes. Only then did he open his eyes.
Looking up, a completely unadorned gray ceiling hung above him, but the fact there was an ‘up’, was surprising enough. He’d spent the last few hazy hours of his memory pinned and weightless, praying that the filters in his helmet wouldn’t fail, subjecting him to drown in his own blood. Still, his inner ear gratefully registered the pull of gravity, relieved to be alive.
Pain was a constant to him, but this was nothing compared to what it had been before – immobile, feeling life slip further away with every beat of his heart. Once he’d felt the metal spear go through his back, he’d thought for sure he was dead. The Gargantia had been dealt a fatal blow, and he had watched the bodies of his crewmates drift into the infinite sea of space wearing blank looks and slack jaws tainted blue from ice and asphyxiation. He’d expected to die with them, given a slower, grosser fate.
But, somehow he’d lived. Rescue must have come, but that seemed unlikely given who had caused the damage that forced the Gargantia to collapse on top of him. Not a rescue, then, he supposed, a prisoner recovery.
Yet, he found his hand in front of him again. He wasn’t bound to this bed, and there was a beautiful blonde woman asleep in the chair beside the bed. The Gargantia’s ship patch, ringed in gold, was sewn onto her sleeve, but he didn’t recognize her. Why was she here? She wasn’t bound either, and she looked healthy, but this wasn’t the Gargantia. He’d known that the instant he saw the ceiling above.
Carefully, he studied his surroundings in greater detail, wondering if they may reveal his fate. The ceiling and the floor were both a dark gray. They were clean, but not unblemished, and the floor, he recognized the sectional pieces of flooring by their size and texture. Deck tiles. Ship to ship, the material changed, but the design rarely did. That and the low hum behind him promised he’d found himself on another ship, and the tasteless gray curtains hanging from the rail were standard-issue. A military ship. Even the distant sound of the engines supported that conclusion. Their hum was quiet and constant, but the tone was foreign to him, lower than the Gargantia’s engine sound had been.
But if Command had recovered them, then why wasn’t he bound? Did Command think one engineer was not much of a threat? Too unimportant to restrain as he was transported back to Ariea for execution?
Their reasons didn’t matter. Okara refused to be caught helpless again. With a shaking hand, he threw the blankets off and stood, wound stabbing at him in protest. Satisfied he could stand, even if it was hunched and cradling his stomach, he took an experimental step, but the needle in his arm pulled him back. Tracing the rubber tubing bandaged to his arm, he found a nearby IV stand. It would do for a cane, he realized, and grabbed it to help steady himself. Next, he found the monitoring sensors below his thin gown, taped purposefully to his skin, and with a deep breath, he tore them off. The alarm began to screech almost immediately, reading the patient now lacked a heartbeat, but Okara didn’t wait to listen to it. He took off in the fastest hobbled run he could manage.
Lieutenant Elizabeth Foster, the Gargantia’s only other survivor, bolted awake to the cry of the alarm, a sound she had been dreading night and day since she’d come aboard. But, she quickly realized this wasn’t the death she’d been afraid of. The cardiac monitor was wailing because it’s patient had gone missing, the curtain left rippling behind the clap of his bare feet.
Foster jumped up and ran after him. She threw the curtain wide, revealing the main room of the medical bay just in time to see the engineer’s shadow round the corner into the hallway. He was fast for a man who hadn’t moved in days. “Wait!” she called, chasing that shadow, but by the time she crossed sickbay, he was gone. Even listening for the sound of his footsteps, there was no way to tell which way he’d gone.
Quickly, Foster ducked back into the medical bay, ready to call the ship’s doctor, but he was already exiting his office wearing a sour look that said he’d been woken by the monitoring equipment’s obnoxious beep.
Doctor Macintosh saw the unevenly drawn curtain, the empty bed behind it and Foster standing by the exit, and clenched his jaw with a grumble. “Why do they always run?” He walked over and pulled the nearest handset off the wall, dialing the bridge with no further explanation needed. “CIC, Macintosh. The Gargantia’s damned engineer just walked out on me.”
The comms. officer on the other side made a note. “Should we call general quarters and begin a search?”
Macintosh considered it, but ultimately shook his head, “No. He’ll turn up when he gets hungry. Just let everyone up there know. They can spread the word. He shouldn’t be in any immediate medical danger, but approach with caution. He doesn’t know us and we don’t know him. He’s going to be disoriented and distrusting.” He waited for the officer’s confirmation before he hung up, feeling the return of his migraine.
“What do you mean he’s not in danger?” Foster cried, making her way back across sickbay’s waiting room. “He nearly died!” The man had an incredible number of stitches in his abdomen. If they came loose, he could bleed out!
“He took his IV stand with him.” That would keep him alive for a little while. “Besides, if he’s healthy enough to walk out on me, he’s healthy enough to go for a walk.”
“That’s careless!” Foster argued. She could not deny feeling responsible for the engineer, having looked after him for the last few days. After all, they were alike, the Gargantia’s only two survivors. She’d been welcomed by the Singularity’s crew, but she still wasn’t one of them. She was an outsider, and so was that engineer.
“Look,” Macintosh said, “when they run like that, it’s because they’re damn scared. There is nothing we could say that will convince him we aren’t going to put him in irons and haul him back to Ariea for trial. It’s best we let him work it out.” He popped one of his half-gnawed cigarettes back into his mouth. “Honestly, Lieutenant, you were unexpectedly calm when you woke.” But he supposed Foster had not gone through such severe and violent physical trauma. That always amped up the survival instincts. He put a calming hand on her shoulder. “He’ll be alright.”
True to that, Okara Schmindaro meandered the halls unpressured and unpursued, but unsure where he should go. Trapped on a ship like this, where was the best place to gain information? The bridge? Tempting as that was, it was bound to be guarded. Perhaps the engineering spaces? That was as good a spot of any to hide, he supposed, but it would serve no other purpose. Until he knew more about this ship, he stood no chance of inflicting meaningful sabotage to protect himself.
Undecided, Okara just walked, pleased to be on his feet. He didn’t mind drinking in the sights and smells without other concern for a little while. After hours near death, that was satisfying enough. He studied the uniform lighting fixtures and drab bulkheads as he wandered, but they told him little. The build metal was darker than the fleet’s standard, but he wasn’t sure if that was because it was stained or if it genuinely had a different composition. The bulkheads were worn, a few were scuffed visibly or dented, but they didn’t look worn-out, merely weathered where the Gargantia’s had been smooth and pristine.
The sounds of other crew echoed down the halls, footsteps and voices, but he saw none of them. Dressed in his medical gown and hunched over the aluminum IV stand, he supposed that was for the best, but it was surprising. To space out crewmen so sparsely, this ship must be utterly massive, but, their hushed tones, along with the occasional analog clock mounted on the wall suggested it might also be nighttime.
As she was aware of most things, the ghost was aware of his plodding footsteps. Okara Schmindaro, as his thoughts identified him, was no danger. He was uncertain, scared, but his intentions were not immediately violent. As such, the ghost paid him only a passing interest. Often, she sent the Admiral to calm these terrified visitors, but he was asleep, and she found no call to wake him the night before a mission. Likely, the next few days would be long for him, and Okara’s memory insisted the solution did not require him. In fact, as she studied the presence of this newly conscious mind, it was clear there was someone else Okara would rather find along his path, so gently, she lured him the way he himself didn’t know he wanted to go.
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Okara’s feet carried him with a destination seemingly in mind while his thoughts wandered. His footfalls echoed off the undecorated walls, and soon enough, he found himself at the door of a compartment on the top of the ship. He stared at the closed hatch for a moment, but something urged him to open it, so he spun the locking wheel. When the door swung wide with a barely-audible creak, he found a panorama of windows stretching across a long and narrow compartment. Once, he could have guessed it as an observation lounge, but now it was strangely empty, save the young woman silhouetted as she sat on the thick windowsill.
She was small, curled up in the corner, reading a book in the illumination that splashed off the hull beyond the windows. A short ponytail poked out the back of her black hat, and strangely enough, she looked familiar to him. No, more than familiar. Did he dare hope? The inquiry left his lips before he could stop it, “Callie?” And like something out of a dream, she reacted as if someone had called her name.
There was a man standing in the hatch way. Average height and skinny, he was clothed only in a hospital gown that didn’t even reach his knees. He wasn’t standing straight and he looked sick as he clutched the IV drip like a silver staff, but he recognized his face. She would have known it anywhere. “Okara!” she exclaimed, jumping from the window.
Before he could react, she ran across the room and grabbed him into a wonderfully warm, if gentle, hug. Tears welled in his eyes before he knew what to do with them. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
She laughed, resisting the urge to jump up and down in excitement. “Well, I thought you were dead!” Seeing the Gargantia sunk had hit her hard. “I tried to check if they’d pulled you out, but your name didn’t come up in the database.” She had been left to assume the worst.
Presumably Command had not wanted to reveal who survived. And knowing that Callie, an old, true friend, would give him the truth he had to ask, “What happened to the Gargantia?”
Callie loosened her grip unwillingly. “I’m sorry,” she said solemnly, “the Gargantia didn’t make it out of the Wilkerson Sector. We only found two survivors.”
So, the blond woman who had been waiting by his bed must have been the only other survivor of a crew that had been more than eight hundred strong. He expected to cry. He expected that to break him, but the news landed like a pulled punch to the gut. Some part of him had already known, he supposed, and he had other problems now. “Callie,” he said, “we’ve got to get out of here.”
She heard the pain and determination in his voice. “What? Why?”
“Because they’ll try everyone associated with the Gargantia for treason.” The death penalty might be stayed if he claimed to have only been following his superiors’ orders, but he would still probably suffer life imprisonment. The fleet did not take disobedience lightly. “And if they realize that we’re friends, they’ll charge you too.” The fleet would purge anyone they thought possessed even the slightest sympathy for the Gargantia’s choice. “How long do we have?” Still, despite his urgency, Callie only looked confused. “How long until we reach Ariea?”
If possible, she grew even more confused. “We’re not going back to Ariea.”
“Then where are they taking us?” Where would he and the other survivor be put on trial? Stars. Would they even be tried?
“Uh, well, we’re heading toward the Mississippi Sector.” She was not entirely sure what it meant for him, though.
“The Mississippi Sector?” What was there? “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Me neither, but I guess it’s some sort of black-market hub.” She shrugged, “Not the weirdest place we’ve been. I mean, Command sent us bug-hunting once.”
He remembered that. They’d become great friends during training, but had been split up after graduating. Given the thousands of potential assignments in the fleet, they had never expected to work together again, but they had kept in contact through letters. She used to regale him with tales of the missions she’d gone on. They were so wildly removed from the Gargantia’s mundane escort missions, some part of him had assumed she had them up so they would have something to talk about, but now he wasn’t so sure.
Okara focused on her hat for the first time. It was black, in good shape and clean, but silver embroidery decorated the front. He’d seen hats like it before. They were decently common attire for ship-board personnel. An unfamiliar ship’s silhouette dominated the front, long and lean. Below, it gave the ship’s call sign, the formally assigned radar ID: ‘UCSC-14’. Above, in an arc, the ship’s title was stitched: ‘Battleship Singularity’. That was all it took to tell him where he was. Oh, stars. “Callie, you didn’t leave?” This ship was criminal – wanted dead by every human authority. “I thought you’d gotten off!” She’d have to be crazy not to!
Callie crossed her arms. She was young. She knew that, but she was just as loyal as those crewmen that had been here years. “This ship is my home,” she told him. “She’s been a better home to me than Sagittarion ever was.” Unlike her home world, the ship had air that was safe to breathe, water that was safe to drink, food that actually nourished, and a bed that kept her warm.
Slowly, Okara turned his attention from Callie, to the panoramic windows behind her. The stars were as clear as he’d ever seen them, pinpricks of white on black velvet. A few closer suns were tinted other colors, but they didn’t hold his attention. The visible portion of the bow did. It was flawed, pockmarked with deep, numerous scars underneath a layer of black and red paint. It gave off a gruesome ambience. The red reminded him of blood, and the scars, they were acts of unforgivable violence. Okara shuddered at the thought of the battles that had created them. Prior to the Centaur System, the Gargantia had not seen much combat. The ship was too insignificant, an anonymous one of over one hundred Keeper-class ships, but the scabrous hull he looked upon now… This was the flawed, bombarded armor of a ship of war, a ship of violence.
It occurred to him then, with his own discomfort. He had seen this ship before. Only once. Only briefly. He had only just been out of training, in transport to the Gargantia. There had been a number of ships in orbit, but he remembered this one. He hadn’t known its name, but he could recall the savage, macabre appearance. Its dark aura had been hard to forget. At the time, he had pitied the recruits sent to join her crew, because she had looked fresh off a nonexistent warfront, and with that intimidation, had looked forlorn and alone. Her colors hadn’t been the neutral gray donned by the rest of the fleet, and her presence hadn’t been full of pride and purpose. It had been somber and destitute, a taste of real life among lofty ideals. “This is the Singularity?”
Slowly, Okara shuffled forward. Eventually, he reached the windows and continued to stare down at the powerfully-shaped, marred hull. “The way they talked about her in training…” He hadn’t expected this to be the former fleet flagship.
“I know,” she had been surprised too. Back in training, the old Singularity had been the butt of a lot of jokes. The ship’s systems were known to be antiquated, and rumors of her dilapidation were decades old. The ship was considered outdated and expendable, so the fleet crewed her with delinquents and near-washouts. The ship often received extended patrol assignments, and most had assumed that was to keep the old scow out of combat.
They said it was a mercy to the ship. However, looking at her now, Okara couldn’t help but wonder if maybe that was a mercy to the enemy.
Back in training, Callie had been relentlessly teased for this assignment, given the reputation of the ship and her crew. They’d both thought Okara received the better assignment, but Callie had changed her mind the instant the ship had disobeyed orders and detoured to pick her up off Sagittarion. “She’s a powerful ship, Okara,” she had tried to express that to him in her letters, though doubtful he’d believe her. “I’m proud to be on her crew.”
Clinging to his IV stand, he let out a sigh of relief. “I guess this means I won’t be standing trial for treason.” The Singularity, a renegade ship, had no reason to turn him over to Command.
Callie smiled a bit. “Probably not, no.” He’d be safe here. “But, even if we were still serving Command, I doubt the Admiral would have turned you over.”
The Admiral, Okara remembered. That’s right. He’d never given it much thought, but the Singularity hadn’t gone rogue by her lonesome. The Fleet Admiral had helmed her into rebellion. “I forgot the Singularity was his command.” It was an often-forgotten fact within the fleet. The Singularity’s decaying reputation didn’t make her a prime suspect to be the Fleet Admiral’s personal command. Those that did know the Admiral’s choice of ship usually presented it as evidence that he had lost his sanity in deep space, because no sane person would willingly fly on a dilapidated battleship crewed by misdemeanors. Still, “Commander Fairlocke always spoke well of him, but he never talked about the Singularity.” If anything, the Gargantia’s young commander had avoided the subject of his former ship.
“Why not?” Callie wondered. “The others told me Fairlocke was stationed here for a few years. He was really well-liked. A lot of them actually thought he’d be the Admiral’s successor.” She found it hard to imagine the Singularity under another commander, but she had also never met Fairlocke.
Okara shrugged. “Who knows.” He hadn’t been privy to most of the command-level discussions on the Gargantia. “Not sure it matters now.” He was now, just like Callie, stuck on this ship.
“Well, then, come on.” Callie grabbed his arm and led him away, “Let’s get you some real clothes, and then I’ll show you around.”
In passing, the ghost acknowledged the result of her gambit. Reuniting Okara with his best friend from basic training had calmed him. Committing sabotage and fleeing was no longer even a thought in his mind. The situation was resolved, so she turned her attention outward once again, ensuring the ship maintained the plotted course. The journey had already been long and taxing. Barely half the distance had been covered and strains were already showing themselves. Still, as she registered one of the FTL Drives drawing power for another leap to hyperspace, she sought to keep the journey easy and quiet for as long as possible. The crew needed the rest.