Mississippi Sector, Battleship Singularity
Three deafening shots rang out.
The reek of gunpowder hit the air.
But Admiral Gives felt no impact. Instead, he found three bullets suspended in midair about a foot from his chest. Damn it.
Monty’s eyes were wide. “…That’s impossible.” The inertial dampeners were offline. He’d checked. He was not a fool. A gun was only a viable weapon aboard ship if the inertial dampeners were not active. And beyond that, the dampeners should have stopped the bullets near the gun, not most of the way across the room. It was almost like the inertial dampeners had been activated specifically to ‘catch’ these bullets, though that should be impossible.
Admiral Gives felt the ghost’s presence manifest in this room. He did not need to see the look of sheer discontent on her face. He just prepared himself for the inevitable scolding.
“You seriously didn’t even try to dodge?” Was he trying to die?
“He had nine more bullets,” assuming the clip had been full. The odds of dodging all of them had been effectively zero. Exhausted, the Admiral reached forward and plucked the bullets from the air. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he told the ghost.
“You think I am going to let him shoot you?”
Well, “It wouldn’t be the first time,” the Admiral muttered, placing the now-useless bullets atop his desk.
“Idiot,” she cursed. “You were wearing a vest last time.” Letting him get shot had been the plan.
“It still hurt.”
Oh, you naddlethworfing… She never finished preparing that expletive as she registered Gaffigan raising the pistol again. “Put the damn gun down, Lieutenant,” she snapped at him.
To Gaffigan’s surprise, he found himself instinctively obeying, as if someone he respected had just harshly scolded him. It took his awareness a minute to comprehend the reality of the situation. It’s here. They were no longer alone. The AI’s avatar had finally shown itself.
Montgomery Gaffigan whirled on it, but every scathing word he had died on his tongue the moment he saw her face. He had expected a menacingly perfect pixie face similar to that of Manhattan. He had expected long lashes and beautiful eyes. He was not expecting to recognize the face of the Marine who had freed him on the Olympia. “You…”
“Recognize me, do you?” she said, throwing her hands onto her hips. “Yeah, that’s twice I’ve saved your ass.” Or at least two times he was conscious of. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
Monty didn’t know how to react to that. He’d expected a lot of things: a nightmare, a monster, a death threat and hatred, but he had not expected sass. It was extremely off-putting.
“You get used to it,” Admiral Gives sighed.
Monty looked over to the Admiral, unsure he’d heard that correctly, but the man only reached over and grabbed the mug of his desktop. Now, he stood calmly sipping from it as if nothing was amiss. That was disconcerting in itself, but Gaffigan found his attention drawn back to the avatar. “You freed me on the Olympia. How are you here?”
“I told you when I freed you. Charleston Reeter is not my commanding officer. In fact, the idiot you just tried to shoot is.”
In the calming lamplight, Monty tried and failed to make sense of that. Humanity’s AI were not obligated to serve humanity’s needs. They possessed their own objectives. It made no sense for any of them to claim a commanding officer, which meant this could only be a manipulation. It was trying to gain his trust. “Why?” he asked. “Why did you free me on the Olympia?” What objective had that served?
“I didn’t want to leave you there. Is that so wrong?”
“Yes,” Gaffigan snapped. “It is.”
The ghost tilted her head. “Why?”
“Because you are the enemy,” Gafffigan hissed, watching that expression of hers shatter. It collapsed into something that looked impressively like hurt – real genuine hurt. Her, no its eyes dropped to the ground as its shoulders shrank down, physically cowering from him without taking a step back. It even shook a little. None of that disturbed Gaffigan. No, what disturbed him was the slight movement he sensed off his right shoulder.
Admiral Gives had lowered the dinted tin mug from his lips. Pinning Gaffigan beneath his most laden stare, he ordered, “Take. That. Back.”
Monty considered it. Faced with that, he deeply considered it. But then there was the fact that this AI hadn’t gotten here without his help. “Whose side are you on?” Monty asked him. “The Eran AI took everything from us.” Manhattan was the reason they were on the run, cut off from everything they had once known. “It helped Reeter kill thirty-two members of this crew – my friends.” Monty refused to forget or forgive that bloodshed.
“It helped Reeter imprison your niece and incriminate you, Admiral. It tried to help him take your ship.” Surely, that, out of everything, meant something to him? “And that damned thing messed with my fucking head while it interrogated me.” It had dug those writhing neurofibers below his skin and ripped his memories away from him, forcing him to betrayal. It was evil, and nothing but. “The Eran AI attacked us in the Wilkerson Sector with a perfect willingness to kill.”
“Does that look like the Eran AI to you, Lieutenant?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Gaffigan snapped. “This thing isn’t any damn different. It is using us.”
The Admiral set his mug down with a perfect measured patience, then straightened up to stare Gaffigan down. “She saved your life, Lieutenant,” he growled. “And she deserves your respect.”
“Respect?” Gaffigan argued. “We are toys to this thing. Puppets. Lives to be used and thrown away when we get inconvenient.” Any seeming loyalty or kindness was just an illusion. “We cannot let this thing stay here. It could be in any one of our heads, fucking with our memories, our intentions. We do not have free will while this thing is here.” They could not be certain any decision they made was truly their own.
To some degree that was true. That had always been true, though the Admiral preferred to ignore that inconvenient fact. The ghost was a great deal more powerful than any single member of the crew. They were entirely at her mercy, though few of them ever realized it. But the Admiral never concerned himself with that. She had earned his trust, but he knew this conversation had gone too far.
Gaffigan’s accusations were a poison to the ghost. Sensitive to the views of those around her, this was damaging to the ghost, painful even. “Knock him out.”
System error. That message rattled through her shuddering mind, but still, she heard the Admiral issue a directive. Uncomprehending, she reacted to it and reached out to Gaffigan, applying the force to his mind that should have rendered him unconscious.
Instead, the Lieutenant screamed. The pistol fell from his hands and hit the deck as he reached up to his head. His fingers tangled themselves in his red hair as he tried to violently shake the foreign presence from his mind. “Get the hell out of my head!”
Instantly, a dozen more errors rattled the ghost’s existence. Malfunction. Malfunction.
But, before the situation could slip further from her grasp, Admiral Gives leapt across the room, grabbed the big stellar chart book off the coffee table and slammed it into Gaffigan’s head. It hit with a dull thwack and the Lieutenant crumped face-first into the deck.
The next fraction of a second snapped clarity back into the ghost’s existence. “Admiral!” she protested, horrified.
“Relax, he’s not dead.” Probably. Admiral Gives tossed the chart book onto the couch and knelt down to check Gaffigan’s pulse. No, definitely not dead. The weapons officer’s pulse was steady, though he’d wake with a hell of a headache. “I thought you said Manhattan hadn’t influenced him.”
“She didn’t.” The ghost was certain of that. “She altered his memories of the time he spent aboard the Olympia, but that was all.” His loyalties had been unchanged.
“Then what was this all about?” Where had all this suspicion come from?
Unnerved, she could only shake her head. “I don’t know.” It had been chaos. “…I couldn’t make sense of his thoughts.” They had been hurtful and chaotic – locked in a whirl of hateful panic.
Admiral Gives kept a hand on Gaffigan, just in case the man started to stir. “Are you okay?”
She took a moment to conclude her internal analysis. “Yes.” A part of her was in shock, but she was not damaged. “It frightened me more than it hurt.” After all, she was a great deal more powerful than Gaffigan. “But, I’ve never had that happen.” The moment she had tried to make contact, his mind had turned on her like a rabid animal. “…I’ve never had a member of the crew reject me.” Sometimes they resisted, but they never rejected her, even subconsciously. Some part of them always recognized her presence as an ally. Had that changed already? “Have I become your enemy?”
“No,” he answered stiffly, “Do not think that way.”
“I am destined to betray you.” Willingly or not, her future involved turning against him and the rest of the crew. Perhaps they had begun to realize that. “I may not be now, Admiral, but I will become your enemy.” Did he truly understand that?
“You will never be my enemy.” Command may force her to turn on him, but he would not blame her for something she could not control. “You do not want to hurt me. You do not want to hurt this crew. And despite what he just did to you, you don’t even want to hurt Gaffigan.” Truly, she possessed a kindness that was well beyond reason. “You are not our enemy.”
She watched him nudge Gaffigan, ensuring the Lieutenant was deeply unconscious. “What are you going to do?” They couldn’t leave Gaffigan with these suspicions, but they possessed no means to dispel them either.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Whatever I have to.” The situation between the ghost and the crew was always on a precipice. Anything that endangered the balance was, for lack of a better term, a threat. It was a threat to everyone and everything aboard ship. One crewman rejecting the ghost was not such an issue, though it was concerning. However, if that hostility spread, then it would be crippling. The ghost was innately sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of those aboard ship – especially those that concerned her. On some level, she was forced to conform to those thoughts, but there were lines she could not cross, lines that went against her very nature, and becoming an enemy to the crew was one of them. If she were forced into that role, the repercussions would be cataclysmic.
Thus, this was no time to resist rougher methods, so he moved to grab the handset off the wall and dialed the bridge. “This is the Admiral, send Corporal Kallahan to my quarters on the double.” He waited for the proper confirmation, then replaced the handset.
Corporal Kallahan arrived not three minutes later, barreling into the room with the urgency of an emergency, since he knew the Admiral wouldn’t have summoned him without one. The first thing he saw was Montgomery Gaffigan face down on the faded rug. The second was the gun that had fallen beside him. That was all Kallahan needed to comprehend the situation. He glared at the Admiral. “What did you do this time?” What could possibly have prompted one of the ship’s most loyal officers to try and kill him?
The Admiral did not appreciate his tone. “Why do you think I called for you?” He and Kallahan had a respect for one another, but they were a far cry from friends, or even friendly. If this had been a genuine assassination attempt, he would have sent for the ship’s security officer, Lieutenant Colonel Pflum, not Kallahan. However, this particular situation called for Kallahan.
An old Marine whose light hair was streaked with gray, Corporal Kallahan was by far the most experienced Marine on the ship. If he didn’t refuse every promotion offered to him, he would have been an officer years ago. That said, Kallahan knew too much to want to be an officer, especially on this ship, and that was exactly why the Admiral had sent for him.
Kallahan’s expression grew grim. The Admiral had sent for him directly, and he did know exactly what that implied. “This wasn’t about you.”
“No, it was not.” He had been involved, of course, but Gaffigan’s issue had not been with him.
Instinctively, Kallahan turned to look for that presence, but as expected, it was nowhere in sight. Kallahan hadn’t seen the so-called ghost in years. Though he was perfectly aware of its existence, it chose not to appear before him, and Kallahan was perfectly fine with that arrangement. “How bad?” he had to ask.
“She is fine,” the Admiral told him with a glare. “The issue lays with Lieutenant Gaffigan. Currently, he believes this ship has been infiltrated by an AI.”
“And how exactly do you intend to disprove that?” They both knew the truth was far too dangerous to let loose.
“First, I intend to discover what led him to that conclusion.” Gaffigan’s reasoning, whatever it was, could not be perpetuated though the rest of the crew.
Kallahan pressed his lips into a thin, bleak line. “You intend to interrogate him.”
“If I must.” A full interrogation may or may not prove necessary. That would depend on Gaffigan. “But you understand I cannot be interrupted during this process?”
Kallahan let out a breath. “Yes.” If any other crewman walked in on him interrogating one of their own, he would be facing a mutiny within the day. Whatever else was said about them, the Singularity’s crew was quite protective of their own. “I will stand guard.”
“Thank you.” Late in the night before a mission, not many of the crew would be awake, but there was still a chance he could be interrupted, and there was too much at stake to take that risk.
Kallahan shook his head. “I’d prefer not to be thanked for this.” He pulled a set of handcuffs out of his utility pockets and knelt down to bind Gaffigan’s hands. The armory officer groaned as his limbs were shifted, but made no movement of his own. “I know what we stand to lose here, Admiral, but that doesn’t mean I like it.”
“I respect that.” He and Kallahan shared an understanding, even if they stood on opposing sides of the debate. “You think I am cruel. Perhaps you are right.” Neither of them would ever know for certain.
“Where do you want him?” Kallahan asked.
“The couch will do,” and together they lifted Gaffigan to the old sofa that sat against the wall.
Kallahan looked sadly to the weapons officer, then turned and dropped the key to his handcuffs into the Admiral’s hand. Next, he picked the gun up off the floor and secured it. “I’ll be outside.”
The Admiral nodded, and soon enough the hatch swung closed, leaving him and Gaffigan once again alone. Exhausted, Admiral Gives sank into one of the reading chairs near the couch. What have I done? He wondered, though he was often too afraid to ask. It had never been his intention to hide anything from the crew, but necessity had forced his hand.
Looking at Gaffigan, where the redheaded weapons expert was passed out limp on the sofa, guilt riddled the Admiral’s mind. The truth, stars, the truth could explain everything, justify everything, and yet that very truth placed everyone at risk, and that meant he could not tell it. Lieutenant Gaffigan’s situation was just the culmination of everything going wrong: the height of suspicion and misunderstanding.
This wasn’t Gaffigan’s fault. “You’re a good man, Lieutenant.” The Admiral knew that. The rest of the bridge crew still had some maturing to do, and were otherwise wrapped up in their own lives, but Gaffigan was skilled and loyal. He had reacted to protect his comrades from what he perceived as a threat. That was the only reason he was here, the only reason he was so upset.
It was because of that the Admiral would take no pleasure from this.
Half an hour later, Montgomery Gaffigan came to with a throbbing pain across the side of his head. “Uggh,” he groaned tensing inward against the headache. That slight movement was enough to reveal the cushions holding his weight, a comfort he found unexpected. Reaching up to his throbbing skull, he found that his hands were cuffed, and that was more than enough to jolt him awake. He heaved himself into a sitting position, locking his attention on the Admiral.
Gaffigan said nothing, but Admiral Gives could read the betrayal in his expression as he tested the strength of the metal handcuffs on his wrists. “I apologize, Lieutenant, but you did try to shoot me.”
Emphasis on ‘tried’, Gaffigan thought darkly. “You’re a damn traitor,” he spat. “Assuming you’re even still you.”
“Corrupted or not, I have done nothing to harm you, Lieutenant.” Realistically, he could have done an array of horrible things while Monty was unconscious, but he hadn’t. “I suggest you remember that.”
Gaffigan glared at the man as they sat in the warm light of the lamps that lit the room. That calm of his was utterly disturbing. There were no physical tells to determine if this was or was not the same man he’d served under for years. “There is no way that thing got aboard without help.” That would be impossible. “You brought that AI onboard, which means that you have willingly compromised this ship and everyone on it.” That was nothing less than a betrayal, so Gaffigan preferred to think that Admiral Gives had been manipulated into it.
“Lieutenant, for someone who is convinced that I harbored an AI aboard these decks, your theory has a lot of holes.” In some ways, yes, it made sense, but in others, not so much. “To begin, the level of modifications that would have to be made in order to allow an AI like Manhattan to reliably control this ship would not only have taken years, but would be completely obvious to the repair crews.” There was no way to hide that degree of networking. “Then there is the matter of holographic projectors. The Singularity does not possess any.”
“I’ve seen the damn thing with my own eyes!” Monty snapped. He knew their enemy was here, and he would not be convinced otherwise. “It might wear a different face, but it has that damned white hair, just like Manhattan!”
White hair? Was that what this was about? “Lieutenant, you do realize that the appearance of an AI is entirely subjective. They can choose to appear however they like.”
“But the Hydrian Bylaws stipulate they should only maintain one primary appearance, and it stands to reason that since all the AIs fragmented from the same greater whole, they would make similar design choices on their avatar.”
Like the color of their hair. So, perhaps Gaffigan’s theory had a decent amount of thought in it. “Then, you tell me, beside the color of their hair, how alike did they actually look?”
Where he sat tensely on the couch, Gaffigan didn’t want to think about it. His most detailed memory of Manhattan came with the utter violation of his interrogation, with the memory of the neurofibers crawling up his leg, then inevitably under his skin. Still, he remembered the predatory glare in her violet eyes and the unerring flawlessness of her pixie face. The other, well, her face was longer, formed by sharp and soft lines that while pretty, was not beyond the means of natural beauty. She was taller too, and her silver gaze had an unexpected depth.
Truthfully, beyond the color of their hair, they looked nothing alike, and the Admiral knew it. “There is an old legend, Lieutenant. It states that the stars’ chosen are born with white hair and the ability to wield unnatural power.” It was an old folktale, one that was now mostly extinct. “Someone possessing ultra-human ability might favor that hair color with respect to that legend.” In that sense, it was not surprising that Manhattan had chosen to appear that way. “The angels of old were often portrayed with that characteristic as well, so there a few different reasons someone may choose to appear that way.”
Gaffigan clenched his fists. “Justify it however you please, that thing is not human.”
“And why should that matter, Lieutenant?” Being human was not some glorious miracle. “Should we not judge someone based on what they have done, rather than what they are?” No one chose how they came into these worlds. No one had any control over it.
Monty didn’t want to confront that question. It raised too many doubts. “The Manhattan AI is hunting down the other fragments, and it will not stop until it has them all.” His time on the Olympia had made him certain of that, if little else. “I say we give it what it wants.”
So, Manhattan planted these suspicions, the Admiral realized. That was not surprising, but how had Gaffigan become so certain of them if the memory of his interrogation had originally been removed?
‘Subspace exposure,’ the ghost answered. ‘I have observed cognitive effects from subspace travel before. Our repeated jumps must have knocked the memories Manhattan tried to bury loose. Her methods of memory manipulation are much harsher than my own. Consider it the difference between doing surgery with a spoon versus a scalpel. Her alterations would have distorted the nearby parts of the brain, and when they went to correct themselves after subspace exposure, his actual memories were returned. Unfortunately, those memories led him to suspicions that something wasn’t right aboard ship, so his mind was less pliable when I attempted to lull him to unconsciousness on Midwest Station.’
The Admiral leaned back in his chair, contemplating what that meant for Montgomery Gaffigan’s fate. ‘Could you wipe his memory again?’
‘No, not now. Trust is instinctive. It, more than anything else, is like a hardwired instinct. I could manipulate his memory, but he would always know something was wrong.’ Knowing Gaffigan, he’d start over and dig up an explanation once again. ‘You’re going to have to earn his trust before I can do anything.’
Easier said than done. Admiral Gives could see the poison in Gaffigan’s eyes, and he knew Gaffigan saw him as tainted. “Has it occurred to you that Manhattan told you these things to sow dissent aboard my ship, Lieutenant?”
“Don’t bullshit me,” Gaffigan spat. “It’s all been true so far. You may not be the host, but you are hiding an AI aboard this ship, and that thing is the enemy. It is manipulating you to get away from Manhattan.”
A bit of frost crept into the Admiral’s tone. “She is not the enemy. She has saved your life repeatedly.”
“Then why are you hiding her?”
The Admiral opened his mouth to argue, but thought better of it. Instead, he reached up and rubbed his temples, exhausted. “I cannot answer that, Lieutenant.”
“Because it won’t let you reveal it? Or because you are afraid of the truth?” Monty knew he had hit a nerve. He had never seen Admiral Gives lack an answer. “Wake up, Admiral. It doesn’t matter what that thing does, it is still a danger to the ship. It will always be a danger to the rest of us as long as it hides here.” Maybe that was a cold truth, but it was still a truth. “Throw it off the damn ship.”
“Are you suggesting we throw everyone Manhattan wants off the ship? Because you do realize, that includes me,” the Admiral said darkly.
“Be real, Admiral. Manhattan only wants you to get at that AI.” He was a means to an end. They all were, even Reeter. “Throwing it off the ship will probably spare you a horrible fate.”
That AI. He kept calling her that as if she were some stranger. “You never realized it, did you?” Of all the memories that had come loose, that hadn’t been one of them. “I was not the one that saved you from the Matador, Lieutenant. I do not possess the authority to disable a Black Box.” Considering the trauma he’d gone through, Gaffigan had not given it much thought, but there had been as many abnormalities in that situation as there were in the current.
Tiredly, the Admiral reached down and unlocked Gaffigan’s cuffs. “No, the one that stopped the Matador from wriggling under your skin and ripping you apart from the inside out was not me. That was your enemy’s work. She is the one that saved your life. I was just the one that dragged you to safety.” Removing the cuffs, the Admiral continued, “It is because of that,” that and a thousand other reasons, “I will not treat her as an enemy under any circumstance. So, if you want to get to her, you will have to go through me first.”