Paleon Sector, Battleship Singularity
When Chief Ty reported his orders to the bridge, Zarrey cursed louder than Ty had ever heard him. “Are you fucking kidding me?” A clatter came through the comm. line, as if something had been thrown. “That’s naddlethworfing insane!”
Ty had distanced the handset from his ear, a small crowd of technicians standing around him in their orange coveralls. “What do you want us to do, sir?”
Zarrey mumbled another stream of curses. “That’s going to leave us stranded here.” Without the FTL drives, they couldn’t retreat through subspace or hyperspace.
“Well, yes and no, sir.” Chief Ty rubbed the stubble on his face. “We can’t jump if the drives are disabled, but the easiest way to disable them is to just disconnect them from the power grid, and if we’re not disassembling them for inspection, that doesn’t take very long.”
“What does it matter how long it takes?” Zarrey snapped. “It’s insane.”
“Colonel, disconnecting the drives is a very short process both ways. It doesn’t take long to implement, and it doesn’t take long to reverse.” Those drives were designed to disconnect from the grid to prevent them from being damaged in power surges.
“So,” Zarrey realized, “this won’t maroon us here?” It wouldn’t leave them stranded at sub-light?
“No,” the Chief said. “It’ll delay an escape, but it won’t make it impossible. To go to FTL, we would only need to reconnect the drive and charge it as usual.” These weren’t dooming orders, but they were very strange. “However, is delaying our ability to retreat worth following the Admiral’s orders?”
“What the hell kind of question is that?” Zarrey growled, raising his voice again.
Ty leaned away from the handset. “That’s why I called, sir.” Below decks, the engineers did everything they could to follow directions without an explanation. They usually weren’t given one. But this was beyond odd, and they all knew it. “Do you want us to carry out those orders?”
“Do I want-” Zarrey cut himself off with a sharp intake of breath. “What the hell are you saying, Chief?”
Ty swallowed, too aware of the ears that surrounded him. “With all due respect, you know those orders were out of line, even for him.”
“No!” Zarrey said. “Damn it all! Just do as he said!” This was no time to be contemplating a mutiny.
“Colonel, you have to realize this doesn’t make any sense,” Ty argued.
“So what?” Zarrey replied. “Half the shit that happens on this ship makes no sense!” Nobody questioned it then. “Follow your damn orders, Chief. The Admiral had to have a reason. He must know something we don’t.” Zarrey had to believe that. “And one of these fucking days, I’m going to get him to explain before he up and leaves.”
Ty shrugged, “Yes, sir.” He hung up the handset and turned to the crowd. “The order stands. Take your teams and get to it. But, for the sake of the stars, stay nearby once you disconnect those drives!” If the order came down, they’d need to reconnect them so the ship could jump. Proximity to the drives would be the difference between a successful retreat and a failed one.
“Aye, Chief!” they chanted, breaking up into predetermined pairs of two and three.
Chief Ty rubbed the dark stubble on his chin as he watched them go. This is madness. For the sake of the stars, they were the most wanted ship in the worlds. Disabling any of the ship’s critical systems was the last thing they ought to be doing. What was the Admiral thinking?
Ordinarily, Chief Ty followed orders without question. He had a great respect for Admiral Gives. Ty had never met another commander who knew so much about ship engineering, maintenance and operation. Ty had also never met another commander who was so familiar with their ship.
True, the best commanders took the time to study and learn how their ships operated, but Admiral Gives didn’t just know the ship, he understood it. He understood how the ship’s systems operated, why they’d been designed that way, and how damage affected them. The ship’s engineers looked up to him. It was a fact that he, out of anyone, knew the ship best, and it went without saying that he usually had the ship’s best interest in mind. A ship like the Singularity didn’t remain serviceable without a commander that took care of her.
Ty had seen that over and over again within the fleet. Combat ships were generally considered disposable. Their days were considered numbered, especially if they saw heavy kinetic loads through maneuvers and battle damage. The average age of ships in the battle fleet was roughly ten years, and most could only hope to make it to twenty. Battleships simply weren’t built to endure like the colony ships that had come before them. In most cases, it was easier to melt down and replace the ship than to make serious structural repairs.
Considering all of that, the Singularity was effectively ancient, so it was no wonder the fleet had circulated rumors that the ship was ready to fall apart. Ships half the Singularity’s age had fallen apart, and despite her longevity, the Singularity wasn’t ageless. If he looked in the right places, Chief Ty could find places where corrosion and wear had set in, the result of poor and incomplete maintenance. Those were old scars now, reminders of the ship’s previous commander, but not weaknesses, never weaknesses.
There wasn’t a sailor in the worlds crazy enough to sail on a ship with a weakened structure, and despite decades of repeated strains and damages, the Singularity had managed to escape that fate. The engineers kept an eye on the structure, and it went without saying that the Admiral did as well. As rough as he could be in his orders, he never took it too far. Perhaps that was why Ty found the order to disable the FTL drives so strange. It was even stranger considering the recent shake-up in the repair orders. Those were not the type of orders Ty had grown accustomed to receiving from the Admiral, but if Zarrey was still going to back him, there was nothing to be done, so Ty grabbed his tool kit and headed for the compartment that housed FTL Drive Four.
A gust of metallic air greeted Ty as he opened the hatch. He was the first to visit this compartment in some time. The engineering teams had been so preoccupied repairing the parts of the ship damaged in battle, that those unaffected had been overlooked. They simply did not have enough people to cover the usual inspection rotation on top of battle damage.
That was always the issue with large ships: they required large crews. The Singularity had a sizeable crew in comparison to a scoutship’s, but had merely half the manpower the Olympia did. At full capacity, the Singularity should have carried a crew even larger than the Olympia’s, due to the lack of automated systems, but because of the way crew made their way to the Singularity, their numbers had dwindled over the years. Command, seeing no reduction in the ship’s capability, had not seen fit to supplement the ship’s complement. The smaller crew size kept the engineers busy, but outside of damage, the ship rarely required anything other than scheduled upkeep. As a result, the crew’s smaller numbers only became an issue in situations like the present, when Chief Ty had to very carefully choose what maintenance was done on top of repairs. The FTL drives, though critical, had fallen near the bottom of the list since the ship possessed four of them, and at a minimum, only required one to jump. The radar, sensors and main engines had been given higher priority.
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Chief Ty believed in that prioritization, and true to form, nothing seemed out of the ordinary as he looked down at the silver casing of FTL Drive Four. As a whole, the Singularity had been doing a lot more FTL maneuvers than usual, but this particular drive had only been used once during their marathon from the Polaris Sector. They had been rotating the use of the drives, trying to lessen the strain on each of these irreplaceable devices. So far, that directive seemed to be working, because everything here seemed to be in order.
One of four identically designed compartments on the ship, the room was two decks tall. The entrance and a walkway from it were built at the height of the upper deck while the FTL drive was bolted to the deck below.
Hefting his toolbox in one hand, Ty descended the metal mesh stairs to the lower part of the compartment. Before heading to the drive itself, he stopped by the wall closest to the stairs, which was covered in monitoring equipment. He set the toolbox down and set to work checking the gauges, circuits, and relays for any sign of deterioration. It was a simple-minded task, one that the Chief found himself enjoying. It had been a while since he had the chance to work by himself without the immediate threat of engine damage or structural failure.
Chief Ty welcomed the occasional challenge, but he preferred hands-on remedial tasks like this one. That was why he had taken to ship duty rotations, rather than using his high training marks to go work for the research and development branch of Command. He had found a niche on the Singularity, since the older ship did not have computerized diagnostic systems. The engineers had to dig around until they found out what was wrong. Perhaps that made his job harder, but relying too much upon technology was a weakness, one that was all too easy to exploit.
The Olympia was a castle of all the planets’ riches. She was the paramount of software engineering and integration, but when someone stormed that castle, Ty knew it was the software they would go after. Compared to a machine physically armed to the teeth and filled with Marines, the software was a weak target. Although, the Chief supposed as he moved on to inspect the hardware attached to the drive, maybe not if the Eran AI is reinforcing it.
After a few minutes checking the surrounding equipment and making preparations, Chief Ty found himself staring at the drive’s cylindrical casing. What’s the point of this? How was there any wisdom in taking away the ship’s FTL capability? Without the drives they had no access to hyperspace or subspace. Warping or jumping would be impossible, and while the Singularity was impeccably fast on her sub-light engines, it still stranded them at relativistic speeds. Ty hesitated to disconnect the drive just in case they needed it. What harm could possibly come from leaving it plugged in? As long as CIC didn’t activate the drive, there was no real difference, but orders were orders. He sighed and opened up his dented toolbox.
Still, the instant he reached for the drive’s connection to the power grid, he became keenly aware of a drastic change in the mood of the room. He paused, tool in hand, and turned to look around, suddenly feeling as though he was being watched. The sensation wasn’t unfamiliar, but this time it was different. Usually, this sensation came with a feeling of complacency or amusement. Now, it was cold, inhospitable. The temperature of the compartment seemed to have dropped ten degrees, leaving him shivering. The shadows in the corner of the room crawled in the peripherals of his gaze, but when he whipped to face them, it seemed nothing at all had changed.
The often-amiable feeling that came from working alone with the ship had disappeared. It had reversed polarity the instant he reached for the drive. Chief Ty shook his wrench at the empty room, more annoyed than anything. “You really are cantankerous, you know that don’t you?” he said aloud.
As expected, no response came from the empty compartment, so Ty rolled his eyes. Chief Carlson, his predecessor, had warned him about this. Carlson had always said the Singularity fell on the temperamental side, and that it would be immediately clear the moment he did something wrong.
Nevertheless, Ty ignored that feeling of discontent and returned his attention to the drive. Immediately, the room seemed to darken even more, not quite hostile, but definitely contentious. It was a burdensome environment, burning with enough irritation to make Ty turn back around. “What?” he shouted, annoyed. “I don’t want to disable these drives, and neither does anyone else, but those were the Admiral’s orders. So, if you’ve got a problem with it, take it out on him.” Really, Ty imagined this as an argument with himself, trying to rationalize this task. The strangeness of this compartment was just a convenient foil to his inner debate about this order.
Still, he started working on the power coupling. “You better not be this damn rude to the others,” he said to the ship. They probably wouldn’t take it as well.
Finally disconnecting the drive from the power grid, the feeling of icy displeasure intensified. It grated on his nerves like snow shoved below his shirt collar, freezing and uncomfortable. He slammed down his wrench. “Look, we’ve established that I don’t like this any more than you do, so I am going to stay right here with the power line in this hand,” he held up his left, “and the connection to the drive in this hand,” he held up his right, “that way when CIC calls, I can immediately plug them in and we can be on our way.” He spoke the words more for his benefit than anything else, but the dark, leaden feeling of the room did dissipate. “That’s what I thought,” he said.
Eventually, Ty settled into the promised position, with one side of FTL Drive Four’s power coupling in each hand, waiting patiently to receive a call from the bridge and reconnect the two. He never gave another moment’s thought to his debate with the empty room. He attributed the mood of the compartment to his own internal debate.
That said, the ghost remained apologetic. She hadn’t truly meant to pressure Chief Ty. It had been more of an instinct. Being ordered to disable the drives was not his fault, and she, bound to obey, ought to understand that more than anyone. In the end, she was grateful to him, staying with the FTL drive he had disabled.
The entire situation was frustrating. Admiral Gives wasn’t even the main cause of that irritation. No, despite his lack of explanation, she knew he had a plan. He always had a plan. Whether it was a good plan or bad plan was debatable, especially since he had left the crew out of it. But, still, he had his reasons. He had reasons for everything he did, so he was not the problem.
No, the problem was the Jayhawker. The stationmaster of Midwest Station. Who the hell did he think he was, delaying a critical mission? Taking crew members hostage? Luring the Admiral out alone?
Soulless cockroach. Zarrey had invented that insult. The ghost had taken a liking to it, and it suited the Jayhawker perfectly. Nathan Gadwood, or the Jayhawker as he’d branded himself, was a pathetic little creature, but a rather difficult infestation to squish. He was clever, and that made him dangerous, but he was a selfish insect. He was a common criminal who had built a throne in the city of evil, but he was playing the game three levels below the rest of them. He was playing for chips, and they were playing for keeps. The Jayhawker had no measure of the forces at work aboard the Singularity or around her. Hell, he probably didn’t even realize that the ship was effectively at war with a digital god in the form of Manhattan.
No, the truth of the matter was that this was personal. It was personal for the Jayhawker. It was personal for the Admiral, and it was personal for the ghost too. Neither of them had liked this plan to move discreetly through Midwest Station. Even with Jazmine’s background, prior history had made that a risk, a risk that had now become reality. The Jayhawker had found them out and made his move.
Admiral Gives had met the stationmaster’s demands, but not without intentions of his own. Naturally, he intended to remove Don Jazmine and Montgomery Gaffigan from Midwest Station, offering himself as a prisoner in exchange. Honestly, she had no idea if that would work. Nathan Gadwood, the little cockroach, had proven to be anything but predictable.
But in the end, it wouldn’t alter the Jayhawker’s fate. She’d known it by the way he left. Admiral Gives wasn’t in the mood to play around. With the lives of two crewmen on the line, not to mention the history of their last interaction, no method was off-limits to bring this situation to an end.
The ghost found herself eager with anticipation. After all, Nathan Gadwood had stolen something from her. She wanted it back, and he had fooled her once before, but nobody managed that a second time.