Mississippi Sector, Battleship Singularity
“It won’t matter if I find the damn thing and rip it out of the ship first.”
Perhaps that was not the first thing Admiral Gives wanted to hear when he finally stepped onto the bridge. It was strange how out of control things could get in five minutes. He had not been here to misdirect the conversation, so now the ship’s crew was on a witch hunt. That wasn’t so surprising, of course. The day’s events had been far from subtle and the Admiral expected that to cause problems, but that did not mean he was willing to let anybody rip anything out of his ship. “XO,” he said lowly, “would you care to repeat that?”
“Ooh,” Zarrey declared, “When I find that Box, I’m going to rip it out and smash it to bits with the biggest damn hammer I can find.” He cracked his knuckles in anticipation. “That damn thing always pissed me off.” Its very existence had been conceived to spy on and betray the crew.
“You will do no such thing,” the Admiral said, crossing the semicircular room with a gait that still felt awkward. He only hoped it looked normal enough as his body continued to recover.
A bit of Zarrey’s rage stalled as he registered the Admiral’s return. “You don’t want us to go after the Black Box?”
“Locating the Black Box would be a waste of time. It would be near impossible to fully disable.” There were millions of neurofibers running through the ship. Every single one would have to be found, cut, and removed from whatever system it was attached to in order to completely disable the Black Box. “The Boxes are designed to be unremovable.”
In that moment, Zarrey remembered why he sometimes hated the Admiral’s emotionless composure. “How can you be so fucking calm about this?” It was clear he knew. It was so clear. He had known all along that the Box was exempt from the Zero Strike override.
“Colonel, the Black Box is not a threat.” That should be obvious by now. “If it was going to betray us, it would have done so already.”
“And what if it’s intent is not to betray us?” Zarrey demanded, towering over the ship commander. “What if its intent is to protect you?”
“Why would it do that?” he asked, aware that every single set of eyes and ears in the ship’s command center was following this debate.
“Because Command wants you alive, and I think you are well aware of that.” As innovative as the Admiral could be, he remained a very logical tactician. “That’s why you left isn’t it? Why you insisted on meeting the Jayhawker alone?” Zarrey hated it, but Alba’s theory about the Black Box made a lot of sense. “I offered to go in your stead, but you refused because it wouldn’t work. If I had gone in your place, this ship – the Box – would know, because it hears everything.” Aboard ship, there was no hiding from it. “And you somehow used the Box to bring the ship here, didn’t you?”
“I fail to see how that would be possible,” Admiral Gives told him, not bothering to lower his voice. Whatever he told the Colonel would be relayed to the rest of the crew the moment he left the bridge anyway, so it was best they hear it from him directly. After all, Zarrey had clearly not come up with this theory alone. From the attentiveness of the other crew, every person seated behind the rings of consoles or standing on the edges of the room was invested in this witch hunt. They expected answers from him, but the Admiral had none to give them.
Zarrey rubbed at the old, pinkish scar on his jaw. “Look, I don’t care how you did it, Admiral, I’ll admit it worked in our favor this time.” He was not above that as he took a deep breath and heard one of the soft pings that signaled the end of the radar’s sweep. “But if the Box has been activated, if it has been modified in any way by you or anyone else, that is an incredible risk.”
“XO, I hold no sway over the Black Box. It is a clandestine system.” Not even Admiral Gives knew how it operated. “There is no reason to believe that Command has any sway over it either, considering the fact that it has not dropped us helplessly into enemy territory.” He preferred to gauge people and machines by their actions. Words and reports could be easily woven into lies, but actions were much harder to disguise.
As far as Zarrey was concerned, this entire situation had done nothing but prove something on the ship – likely the Black Box – was capable of overriding crew control of the FTL and weapons systems. Admittedly, that could explain a lot of oddities that he had brushed off over the years, but that did not mean such a force was benevolent. Not with history like the Yokohoma shadowing it. “The Box is a threat, Admiral, and it always has been.” Aboard every ship in the fleet, it was an unspoken threat. “We’ve all known that since the Matador,” even if none of them had dared to discuss it in Montgomery Gaffigan’s presence.
“The Matador hosted an experimental unit,” the Admiral reminded him.
“Yes, one experimental unit that ended in seven hundred ninety-three deaths.” Zarrey understood the paranoia that had prompted Command to install that technology across their fleet. It had been a fear of rebellion much like the one Admiral Gives had committed, but Zarrey could also see the insanity of such action. “The Black Boxes were and still are experimental, clandestine technology.” They were a risk. An insane risk, even if Command’s paranoia had necessitated surveillance and control. “Neurofibers may not be blacklisted tech, but after what we saw on the Matador, they damn well should have been.”
Nobody on the crew ever talked about it. They never discussed what they had seen out of respect for Monty, who had survived that hell. But every member of the Singularity’s crew was still well aware of what happened on the Matador. It had been a few years ago, but something like that didn’t get forgotten. The stories got passed down and around, spoken in hushed whispers as every storyteller wondered about the truth behind the words: would they ever meet such a fate? Would the Matador’s hell someday become their own?
The neurotic desperation of the Matador’s survivors to escape any ship that possessed a Box had spoken volumes. They had scratched and clawed and screamed, desperate to reach an airlock and flee, even in the midst of deep space where such action meant death. No one ever talked about the way they’d been restrained or how they’d been gagged to keep their shrieks from panicking their rescuers.
Montgomery Gaffigan had been the only exception. But his unbreakable silence and empty stare had belonged to a living dead man that no one had ever expected to recover.
So, while Zarrey admitted there may be another explanation behind the Singularity’s oddities, there was a reason he had fixated his attention on the Black Box. “I don’t care if you modified it or if Command activated it. It’s a threat that we should have gutted from the ship the moment we split from Command. Tell me,” he demanded, “what was the Matador’s Black Box modified to do?”
Ordinarily, this was the kind of question Admiral Gives tended to avoid because he could taste the stale anxiety in the recycled air of the bridge. However, this question was unavoidable because Zarrey already knew the answer. They had both been told during the inquiries that followed the Matador’s gruesome demise. “It was modified to aid in damage control, to reinforce damaged portions and keep the ship functional.”
“And how exactly was it made to be capable of doing that?” Zarrey asked him.
It was a trap question. The Admiral knew that. Zarrey’s intention was to protect the crew but this… This was a very dangerous subject. “Colonel, we should have this discussion elsewhere.”
“No.” Dangerous or not, the crew had a right to know, so he looked up to where the flat-screens of the radar displays hung. Behind them, concealed behind the metal plates of the bulkheads, were hundreds of the same neurofibers that had torn apart the Matador and its crew. Zarrey raised his voice for the entire bridge crew to hear. “The Matador’s Black Box was intended to make repairs by using its neurofibers to grow – grow new parts and new supports, to grow tendrils that could hold together and operate the ship’s failing mechanical pieces. It was an experiment in whether or not it was possible to create a ship that would never need to be repaired by human hands. A ship that would never wear out. A ship that could repair itself. And while the neurofibers are not made from organic compounds, that experiment was a violation of the Hydrian Bylaws in every way. The neurofibers themselves are a violation of the doctrine that forbids building technology that can replicate itself.”
Technically, since humanity had agreed to those bylaws as part of the treaty that ended the Hydrian War, a violation of those laws was grounds for retaliation from the Hydrian Empire, but that had never been humanity’s concern. They had fended off the Hydra before, and their pride insisted they could do it again.
No, humanity’s concern with the bylaws that governed the interaction of organics and machines had always been more direct, so Zarrey began to quote them, “Regardless of intelligence, anything that grows is open to mutation. In biologics, this usually leads to sickness and death. In machines, it prompts a loss of logic and control, which is exactly what happened to the Matador.” Those bylaws were taught to every member of the fleet, Marines like Zarrey included. It was critical to survival in dealing with lost technologies and unfamiliar or modified devices. “There is a term for that mechanical madness,” Zarrey said, looking toward Ensign Alba.
Pale and uneasy, the engineer spoke, “A cataclysm.” The result of such instances could take many forms, all horrifically grotesque, and the Matador had not been an exception.
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Zarrey nodded grimly. “The only modification made to the Matador’s Black Box was to allow more growth than strictly necessary on a Keeper-class ship.” All Black Boxes were programmed to protect Command’s assets, the only change to the Matador’s had been to allow it the means to physically intervene. “The large amount of growth from the Matador’s Black Box caused a cataclysm, and the one fact we’ve all avoided since that incident is the fact the Singularity is far larger than the Matador ever was. The Singularity’s Black Box has grown more than the Matador’s did before the cataclysm, and that means we are and always have been at risk of suffering a cataclysm of our own.”
It was a horrible truth, but a truth all the same. One that they had pointedly ignored since the Matador’s demise. “Isn’t that right?” Zarrey asked, turning to the Admiral. “So tell me, just how long were you planning on ignoring a cataclysmic threat that has the potential to seize the ship and kill us all, if we’re lucky?”
“The Black Box is not a threat,” Admiral Gives told him, though he knew how empty that assurance sounded.
“There’s no way you can know that,” Zarrey argued, his voice bouncing off the walls of CIC as it rose to challenge the Admiral. “There is absolutely no way you can know that.”
“No part of this ship would ever harm a member of this crew.” After all these years, this ship had earned that trust, not just from him, but from every member of this crew. The Box, concerning as it may have been, had been here for nearly thirty years without incident, decades longer than the Matador’s had been installed.
“I’m not questioning Singularity. I’m questioning the experimental equipment Command forcibly installed on her.” Zarrey knew the old battleship had an incredible amount of redundancies in place to protect the crew. As far as machines went, they would find none more loyal, if that meant anything in the case of a hulking machine purposefully designed without an overarching intelligence.
“Fine,” the Admiral said. It was clear Zarrey had made up his mind on the matter. He wanted to rid the ship of the Box, and nothing would convince him to ignore it. “Search for the Black Box.” You won’t find it. “But before you even consider doing so, let alone assign any other personnel to help you, I want FTL Drive Three checked over with a fine-tooth comb and all outstanding maintenance completed ship-wide – the engines, weapons, sensors, everything. We have sixteen hours before I intend to engage Crimson Heart and this ship will be combat-ready by then.”
Zarrey opened his mouth to argue, but the Admiral’s glare stopped him. Instead, he swallowed back the words because Admiral Gives was right. They couldn’t afford to stop and deal with the Box now. They were on a time sensitive mission that determined the fate of the refugee fleet in the Polaris Sector. They did not have time to be chasing their own ghosts. While Zarrey believed the Black Box was a threat, he understood it would be near impossible to eliminate that threat before the refugees began to starve. As much as it pissed him off, the Box was going to have to wait.
“Helm,” the Admiral ordered, “take us out into the dark planets. If anyone tries to follow, sink them.” Immediately, the helmsman obeyed, steering away from the station. “The rest of you,” Admiral Gives looked to the remaining bridge crew, “Find out what you can about Crimson Heart. Estimate their numbers and capabilities. We need as much information as we can muster.”
“Yes, sir,” was the collective response.
“Good, then, aside from that, I expect all of you to take a break at some point. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.” Admiral Gives turned back to Colonel Zarrey, “I will be in my quarters drawing up the battle plans. I will have them for you to look over tomorrow morning, and if I hear that you have been redirecting resources from our mission in the meantime, you will not like the result.”
Zarrey nodded, “Aye, I’ll get everyone working on maintenance. We’ll be ready for a fight.” He did not like it, but he understood that the Black Box did not have priority at this time. It was just another item to add to the list of rising concerns.
By the time the ship was out of Midwest Station’s visual range, Colonel Zarrey had distributed all the necessary orders. The yeomen were pulling through the ship’s records looking for details on Crimson Heart, the pilots were doing flight inspections on all the support craft, the Marines were running boarding drills and the engineers were hard at work finishing repairs and overdue maintenance.
Chief Ty, however, had been summoned to inspect the day’s only casualty: FTL Drive Three. When he arrived, the compartment still reeked with the bitter stench of burnt electronics, and the two young Ensigns originally assigned to disconnect the drive were hovering nervously beside its cylindrical casing. Ty wanted to be angry as he descended the metal stairs to the lower level of the compartment. They should have been standing by to reconnect that drive, just as he had been, but his fury died the moment he saw the petrified look on Callie’s face. She looked about ready to cry.
“I’m sorry, Chief,” she said. “I tried! I ran back when I heard the alarm, but I was too slow. I could hear it had already started to charge,” and the first rule of working with the FTL drives was to not be caught in the room during its charge and discharge cycles.
Ty sighed, reminding himself not to go too hard on her. “It’s fine, Callie. You did the right thing.” She hadn’t been hurt, and that that was all that really mattered. “The guys on the bridge said it wasn’t planned. They had no way to give us warning.” They’d mentioned something about a malfunction, but unless they involved him, it wasn’t his concern. Pulling on his work gloves, Ty knelt to observe the smoldering wires. “This is a mess.”
“Yeah,” the engineer beside Callie heartily agreed, “but it’s also incredible. Who knew that it was possible to charge a disconnected FTL drive by arcing the severed power lines? That changes everything we know about damage control on FTL systems.” Usually, when a drive was physically severed from the power grid, it was considered a casualty – dead weight until the drive was fixed.
Ty looked over to young man beside Callie. His orange coveralls didn’t zip closed around all the bandages on his waist. They padded his skinny frame with a few extra inches. “You the new guy?” he said, straightening back up. “I don’t recognize you.” His black hair and dark, narrow eyes were unfamiliar.
“Oh,” Callie jumped a bit, realizing they’d never been introduced. “Chief this is Okara Schmindaro. He came off the Gargantia, so he’s not too familiar with the Singularity’s systems yet, but he wanted to help out. I figured the FTL drives should be pretty similar to what the Gargantia had, so it was a good place to start.”
“Good call.” FTL drives were standardized across the fleet. Ty pulled off his glove and held out a hand to Okara, “I’m Chief Ty. We appreciate your help, Ensign Schmindaro.”
“Just call me Scooter.” His buddies on the Gargantia had come up with the nickname, declaring his last name to be a mouthful.
“Alright,” Ty agreed. “You and I can work on this. Callie,” he turned to her, “I’d appreciate it if you’d go help with the engines, especially the lower pressure release valves. Most of the boys don’t fit down there.” It took a small body to work comfortably in those enclosed spaces. The heat made it extremely claustrophobic for anyone that couldn’t easily move.
“Yes, Chief.” She grabbed her tools and checked that Okara was comfortable being left here without her, then left.
There was a bit of an awkward silence after that, but Okara didn’t feel unwelcome. He simply had the impression that new crewmembers were rare on the Singularity, so he decided to make idle conversation as the Chief returned his attention to the FTL drive. “Have you been chief for long?” Ty was younger than he’d expected for the chief engineer on a ship the Singularity’s age.
“Just a couple weeks,” Ty answered, trying to hide the sad memory behind a smile.
Okara blinked, remembering what Callie had told him about that time frame. “The nuke.” Ty nodded but kept his focus drive in front of him. “Sorry I asked.”
“It’s alright,” Ty said. “We lost a lot of good people that day, but we were able to pick things up and move on. Sometimes, that’s all you can hope for.”
“Yeah,” Okara agreed. He was too familiar with that sentiment, having lost his comrades on the Gargantia. “I must say, though, this ship isn’t what I expected.”
“Ah,” Ty chuckled. “We get that a lot.” People made a lot of assumptions. “The Singularity’s old, but she’s still got it where it counts.”
Ty reached forward and poked the mass of melted-together wires near his feet. It was still warm. A string of black slime stuck to his glove. He rubbed it between his fingers, contemplating his next steps as he made casual conversation. “Where are you from, Scooter?”
Okara flinched at the question of his homeland, suddenly regretting the fact he had invited small talk. Still, he knew it would be rude to ignore the question and this was no time to start lying about his past. “The Cassiopeia Coalition.”
“Interesting,” the Chief said, tracing the power coupling through the mass of electronics at his feet. “You don’t meet many people from there. It’s pretty far out.” He recalled the wealthy nation’s status as he tried to pull off the remains of the power coupling’s protective coating. It came off black and sticky on his gloves. “The Coalition has a pretty decent militia, if I remember right. Why join the allied fleet?”
“I… uh, ran away.” Like Callie, he had fled his homeland at the first opportunity, but his circumstances had been entirely different. Callie had fled the cruelties of Sagittarion’s polluted megacity, but he had fled the Coalition under threat of death. Hiding in the allied fleet of the centralized government kept him safe.
“Sorry to hear that,” Ty said, clearly preoccupied with the wire, and more specifically the black residue its coating was leaving on his gloves. It wouldn’t rub off. It was inky onyx, the color of oil, but it didn’t smell like oil. The engineering chief suddenly froze, remembering that same description from a liquid found elsewhere on the ship: Engine Three.
The chief looked at his glove in contemplation, then knelt to observe the puddle of the melted coating that had formed on the floor. Okara watched him dip his fingers in the black substance. “Something wrong?”
“I sure as hell hope not, but something tells me there might be.” He saw Okara’s confusion. “We found this same goo in Engine Three. We couldn’t figure out what it was, but it appears to come from super-heated wire coating.” That made some sense. In the Aragonian Sector, Engine Three had run alone for a time, powering the entire ship. It would have gotten hot, extremely hot, but it should never have gotten hot enough to start melting the existing wiring in the engine.
“The engines don’t need wiring to run,” not like many of the newer ships that had integrated electronics into their propulsion cycles. “But the command relays and monitoring sensors have wiring, and if their condition is this bad, then that engine shouldn’t be operating.” Especially not after the battle damage it had recently sustained. The teams had made mechanical repairs, and done spot wiring checks, but they hadn’t gone further than that, seeing the engine give nominal readings after it was reactivated. However, if the wiring was damaged than the sensors could be giving false readings…
“Stars,” Ty cursed, “I need to go shut down Engine Three.” He couldn’t risk leaving this unchecked. Chief Ty took off before Okara could get a word in edgewise, leaving the Gargantia’s engineer alone holding a pair of stained gloves and a power coupling.
With his injuries, he had to move slowly, but Okara eventually set down the wire and gloves. “Looks like it’s just you and me,” he said to the old ship, shuffling toward the FTL drive to begin his own inspection.
Truly, he didn’t mind being left alone. He thought there was no better way to familiarize himself with his new surroundings. In the end, the FTL drive didn’t appear to be damaged. The power regulator had done its job and protected the device from the electrical surges, so Okara was left to replace the ruined ends of the power coupling and reconnect the drive to the grid. At times, his wounds became aggravated and painful, but slowly and carefully, he finished the task at hand.