Aragonian Sector, Battleship Singularity
The unnatural screeching of twisted metal rang throughout the ship. The deck lurched, continuing to shift for seconds lengthened by worry, and when it eventually stilled, Admiral Gives knew the ship too well to assume that was the end of it. There was a shake, a straining tremble in her bones, that hadn’t been there before. “Report,” he ordered.
“Internal comms are spotty, sir.” Keifer Robinson answered. The stains of the nuclear impact had wreaked havoc on the wiring grid. “The main communications arrays have been knocked out of alignment-”
Abruptly, the floor vanished from underneath the feet of the crew, only to reappear some distance below. Gravity brough equipment and people crashing violently into the deck. The low shriek of crunching and deforming metal rose into the air, impossible to ignore.
Amid a shower of sparks from the power lines that had been ripped apart by the deformation of the ship’s surrounding structure, the Admiral picked himself off the floor. “Get damage control to the starboard bow, now.” He leaned heavily on the console in front of him, feeling that terrible shake continue.
“We’ve lost two structural supports, sir,” Alba, the young engineering officer, said from the his console. “The jump put too much stress on the damage. The starboard bow is in a state of collapse. The nearby supports have fractured and DC can’t get through.” The impact of the nuke had dangerously distressed the ship’s structure, but the stresses of subspace had gouged out the wound. “We have a fuel-fed fires in progress on three decks.”
Another painful groan sounded from the ship, another support readying to go. “Those fires will cook anyone who tries to get through alive,” Colonel Zarrey made his reappearance on the bridge with a split, swollen lip. “It’s melting the wiring as we speak.” That would isolate those decks from CIC. “The damage control teams won’t get through in time.” Nobody would. Zarrey wiped the blood from his face. “We need to consider abandoning ship now, while we can still make the announcement.” Once the wiring was gone, parts of the ship would be completely cut off from communications and power. If the evacuation order came later, they would never have a chance of hearing it. They’d be left there to die.
“No.” Admiral Gives said, voice carrying over the deafening creaks.
“Admiral,” Zarrey stepped closer, standing several obvious inches over the ship commander’s height. “I know how you feel about this ship. Believe me, I do, but-“
“I said, no.”
Zarrey took a step back, seeing the pure steel in his eyes. “We die if we stay, Admiral.”
“You die if you leave.” He didn’t mean to level it as a threat, but he saw the XO flinch. He only meant that as a declaration that he was not leaving and, “Our attackers will finish you off easily if you abandon ship.”
“They couldn’t have followed us through the jump.” That was impossible. Zarrey should not need to remind Admiral Gives that they couldn’t be tracked through a subspace maneuver. Wasn’t that the whole reason he had ordered the jump?
“They do not need to.” Clearly, no one else had deduced the identity of their attackers. Or maybe they were just in denial. Admiral Gives supposed he could not fault them for that.
CIC suffered another jolt, jarring Zarrey from their standoff in the dark emergency lights. We don’t have time to argue. Turning to the crew, he called, “Prepare to abandon ship!”
“Belay that.” Admiral Gives ordered. “Ensign Alba, shut down all the Conjoiner Drives. Negate artificial gravity field.”
“Sir?” Alba let his eyes wander to Colonel Zarrey. Would he sustain his contradiction of the Admiral’s orders?
The ship shuddered. Zarrey stared at his superior officer, absolutely horrified. “The consequences…” You can’t go through with that.
“That will tear the breach even wider, sir.” Alba agreed. There would be serious consequences with that course of action. “Without the AG field to pull them down, the bent structural supports will strain against each other.” They’d stop collapsing under their own weight but, “She’ll tear herself apart.” Did he or did he not have some compassion for their old ship?
“The cascade collapse will halt where it is.” That was the best he could do. Admiral Gives knew the resulting hull damage would be a trade-off. Best-case scenario was that the breaches would stay contained to the starboard bow. Worst-case, the misalignment in the structure would tear a set of new breaches in the hull all over the ship.
“Shit, Admiral.” When it came to the lives of the crew, Zarrey had never seen him act so callously. “We could lose a hundred or more to the resultant hull damage. And that doesn’t include the injured who will die without the gravity.” Wounds would cease to drain. Injuries that were minor planet-side would become a death sentence without the ship’s artificial gravity field.
“We either lose them, or we lose them all.” Abandoning ship would kill the entire crew. They would be gunned down before they made port. Admiral Gives was certain of that. “It is a numbers game.” He steeled his tone, “Shut them down, Ensign. That is a direct order.”
Alba shivered under the Admiral’s icy blue stare. “Aye, sir,” he acknowledged, feeling his hands begin to shake as he reached toward the tactile controls. This was sick, this was evil. He was being ordered to kill a hundred of his closest friends. At least Zarrey had some pity in his gaze, but the Admiral was stone cold.
Admiral Gives watched Alba override the safeties one by one. At least death by vacuum was quick. The crew would not have to be crushed by the cascade collapse of the ship’s starboard side, and their friends would not be forced wipe up their remains.
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There was betrayal in Alba’s eyes. Admiral Gives knew what the bridge crew must think of him now: that these orders were unnecessarily cruel, that he simply didn’t care. Maybe they were right. He probably had ceased to care the moment he realized he would be unable to save everyone. They probably thought he was being careless with the lives of their friends in his willingness to deactivate the ship’s artificial gravity. They might even think he wanted to do it, granted his reputation, but there was a difference between wanting to and being willing to.
The deck trembled. The ship was straining, struggling to keep the collapse from continuing, trying to halt it in its tracks. But it wouldn’t be enough. The FTL jump had deepened an already dangerous gouge. The machine was suffering in vain. That was an obvious fact as the indicator light for the next support down the starboard side flickered between maroon and black on the structural integrity chart, threatening to go out at any moment.
‘Sorry,’ Admiral Gives silently told the old ship. He had failed their mission once again.
Zarrey was so disgusted by the situation, he had gone deaf to the struggles of the ship. He couldn’t take seeing the Admiral revert to his stony silence without a hint of regret for what was about to happen.
He just couldn’t take it. “A fucking numbers game!” He grabbed the front of the Admiral’s black uniform jacket, “Is that all we are to you?” Just some form of entertainment for a cruelly brilliant man? “Fifteen years, Admiral. I have served with you fifteen years, and I believed that you weren’t what they all said you were. So why are you doing this?” Why now?
“Do not touch me.” Admiral Gives struggled to curb his immediate instinct to incapacitate and kill this attacker. This man was his executive officer, his second in command. No matter how strong the instinct, he would not attack his own crew. For all of his violence and for all of his crimes, he drew the line there.
Zarrey shook him, tightening his grip. “Then explain to me just what the hell is going through that thick skull of yours!”
“Remove your hands,” he commanded, feeling his self-control slip. Get away. He did not want to hurt his XO.
Colonel Zarrey abruptly realized his mistake. He released the Admiral instantly and took a cautious step back, suddenly remembering the Admiral’s aversion to physical contact. “Fine,” he said, “But you explain to me, right here, right fucking now why we can’t abandon ship.”
“Because we have nowhere to go.” Their attackers would easily finish them given a chance like that. Before, they could have retreated to the nearest allied installation. But everything was different now. He was the only one who understood that at the moment. “Now, do you trust me, XO?”
“No,” Zarrey admitted, knowing how easily the Admiral would have seen through a lie. “But I do respect you. And I know that mutiny would be a pretty fucking stupid plan.” They wouldn’t get far on this ship, no matter how damaged she was.
“Correct.” If there was one entity on this ship truly loyal to him, it was the ship herself. “We will operate at radio silence until repairs are complete. Make the proper arrangements. Once we have stabilized the ship, I will explain.”
There was a time, just a few months ago, when Zarrey would have followed Admiral Gives through the gates of hell and back without question. He had trusted the man with his life, but these last few months had been more than hard. They had been excruciating. The Admiral had become even more withdrawn than usual, gave orders with little to no explanation, and assigned his own ship to extremely remote missions that took them far away from anything they knew. The trust between him and the crew had whittled slowly to the point where not even Zarrey was certain of his intentions.
But, the promised explanation was good enough for him, so Zarrey turned to the engineering officer, “Alba, why do we still have gravity?” It should not take that long to override the safeties.
No response was made. It was only then that Colonel Zarrey suddenly registered the quiet that had taken over the command center. The ship was groaning and creaking with increasing fervor, the shudders clearly felt as the next structural support, slowly, but inevitably failed, but the crew had gone near silent.
Their murmurs had slipped into drawls as they slouched, heavy eyes fluttering. They seemed drugged. No, sleepy. “Rise and shine, maggots!” Zarrey shouted, “Now isn’t the time for a catnap! We got work to do!” What is wrong with you? Now was not the time to sleep. “Do not make me do this all on my own!” He took one a step toward Alba, “Ensign, I will shake you awake,” his second step was just as purposeful, “and then I will court martial you…” his third step faltered, “for dereliction of duty…” He couldn’t even take a fourth step. His foot felt like it was suddenly too heavy to lift.
Zarrey was suddenly so tired. He just wanted to sleep. Yes, sleep sounded wonderful. “What the hell?” he slurred, rubbing sloppily at his head. “Got to wake up, no time for…” he sank to his knees with the single-minded intention of curling up for a nap, “sleep.”
Admiral Gives took note of the situation at the same moment Zarrey had. The crew had fallen limp at their stations, not dying, but drowsy. They lay across their consoles, or sprawled on the floor, seeming to surrender to a coma-like state. Was this the radiation from the nuke? No, there was no way it could set in so quickly. Zarrey had gone from fine to comatose in less than a minute.
Wait. He had seen this before. But that didn’t make any sense. Why? Why now?
The Admiral could feel that same exhaustion start pulling at his limbs. No. This was wrong. Not now. He had more resistance to it than the rest, but he could not stop it. Exhaustion dragged him down. ‘Don’t do this.’ He understood knocking out the crew, but knocking him out with them was a mistake, even if it only temporary. But, the sudden, irresistible need for sleep only became more powerful.
Most of the crew was already in a deep sleep by the time the Admiral sank to his knees. He knew they were fine. They had been lulled into an unconscious state that none of them could break, unhurt, but for now mindless in thought. As a reflex, they could whimper in pain, but they would not feel it. They would not suffer. Still, seeing his crew lying motionless around him in the dark, it agonized him like something out of a nightmare.
They would remember none of this. They’d believe that they’d all been somehow knocked out in the structural failure when they woke. Admiral Gives knew better as he struggled to hold himself up on the radar console’s thick metal rim, but he would not remember much more than they would once this was over.
He did not register falling onto his side as he helplessly tried to fight off the unconsciousness. ‘Not me,’ he thought desperately. Something could go wrong. With their luck, something would go wrong.
A set of plain black leather shoes stepped into his view of the floor. “Especially you,” their owner replied, entirely unsurprised to find him fighting the most. It was a consequence of his position.
She knelt down onto the textured floor and softened her voice, ever so certain about this little betrayal. “You’ll forget about this soon enough, Admiral. Rest.”
The last thing he saw through his blurred vision was the unnaturally white color of her hair, and then nothing, nothing at all.
The next support in line failed a moment later. The power flickered, but once again condemned them to the darkness of space.
Another jolt, and sparks cast feeble illumination on unmoving masses for a small instant. The stench of fear weighing in the toxic air, the metallic screech of abused metal drowned out human cries of pain. And, giving a final labored heave, the Battleship Singularity succumbed to an unusual, perfectly still silence.