Mississippi Sector, Battleship Singularity
There was a true sorrow in her voice, one that wove through the dancing shadows of the candle that lit the room between the lamps. That honest sadness was all that kept Gaffigan from fury. “What do you mean you can’t leave?”
“I told you,” she said, “this part of me is nothing more than a ghost. And ghosts… They haunt people, they haunt places, they haunt things.” She was no different. “I am bound here. I cannot leave.”
A plea pooled in the depths of her silver eyes, begging him to understand, and while Monty couldn’t make sense of it, he understood enough. They called her the Singularity’s Ghost for a reason. “This ship is cursed.” It was haunted by an intelligent weapon.
“This ship is not cursed,” the Admiral spoke without turning around in his chair.
“How can you say that?” Gaffigan said, leaning over to see the man’s drawn shoulders and lowered head behind the ghost. “We don’t know this thing. We don’t know its intentions. We don’t know its priorities. Hell, we don’t even know what it is.”
“But I do,” the Admiral said. “And I trust her. She saved your life, she saved Jazmine’s life, and she has saved my life more times than I can count.” She had saved him so many times now that he wondered why she didn’t grow tired of it. “What more can you ask of her, Lieutenant? What more can she do to prove her loyalty?”
“I don’t know.” That was Gaffigan’s honest answer as he stared at the back of the Admiral’s head. Without his uniform jacket, the man looked considerably more vulnerable. Old scars littered the skin of his forearms. A recent burn, risen and angry, crawled up his wrist, disappearing under the black glove that still covered his left hand. “This thing is capable of manipulating all of us. Including you.” Given that, how could they ever truly believe its intentions were genuine?
No counterargument was offered, leaving the room quiet enough for Gaffigan to hear the whir of the air circulation systems. He was left wiping the nervous sweat from his forehead, deeply disturbed by this situation, as the ghost spoke again, her voice so strangely familiar.
“I understand your unease.” Truly, she understood. The fragility of humanity kept their instincts for danger taut, and she, no matter how she tried, could not conceal her power. They always felt it, and fear was the natural response to something they did not understand. “I am not like you. My place was never among you, simply alongside you.” That was enough for her. It would keep her from becoming lonely.
Gaffigan tugged at the collar of his uniform jacket, trying to distract himself from the weight of her gaze. It didn’t feel hostile, just patient – so strangely patient as she watched him gather his thoughts. “You said you were a weapon,” he prompted.
“I said this illusion acted as an interface for a weapon,” she corrected.
Gaffigan shook his head, unsure why he’d bothered asking. “An interface that manifests as the ghost. The ghost that is known for killing crewmen.” Honestly, the reality of this situation was beyond him. “You claim to mean us no harm, and yet you are an omen of death.” Every crewman on this ship knew that.
“She has never harmed a member of this crew.” Admiral Gives said, certain of that. The ghost could scare the crew, manipulate their perceptions and memory, but she could not bring them direct, physical harm by her own intention. “Those rumors were mistaken.” He had asked her once about the origin of that maleficent legend, and the answer she had given still haunted him.
She had confessed to revealing herself to those crewmen who lay injured and dying, but her intent was never to hurt or frighten them in those moments. No, she appeared in the last moments of those who cried out to comfort them, to let them know that they were not alone, and to hold them as they died. In that, it had become clear how dear the crew truly was to her because he could not imagine the agony a telepath felt as the minds around her ceased to function. She was attuned to that suffering, and yet did not choose to turn from it. Even as that pain permeated her own thoughts, she chose to reach out, and sometimes those she comforted lived long enough to speak of her. Thus, the rumor had spread, but the Admiral did not consider that his truth to reveal, and the ghost never liked to speak of the dead.
“There is nothing I can say to convince you that I am not the omen of death from your stories,” she said. “I am a weapon. Death is a part of me.” There was no escaping that.
That was not a comforting sentiment, but Monty supposed that wasn’t the point. It was honest. While this ghost held more power as an illusion than he could ever hope to attain, it – she – had been honest with him from the start, even as the occasional shiver of danger continued to run across his skin: a warning. Compared to her, he was small, very small. The power around him was incomprehensible, and if it turned on him, there would be no escape.
Her raw capability choked the room, permeating everything, including him. He could feel it like he had felt nothing else: a non-physical pressure against his thoughts. “You’re a telepath,” Gaffigan realized. Memory manipulation. Awareness of non-vocalized thought. He should have recognized those traits sooner. In his time at the fleet Academy, telepathy had been a topic of hot discussion. Command had declared interest in the weaponization of strong telepaths because, as agents, the potential of strong telepaths – those possessing memory reading and manipulation abilities – had been nearly limitless. “Telepathy is a biological trait.” Command’s researchers had learned to breed it into their gene pools. “Stars,” he cursed, “That means you have a biological component.” An immediate revulsion tugged at his gut. How far had Command’s eugenics projects gone? Had they learned to create something so far beyond human it no longer qualified? “If we can identify that component-”
“Negative.”
Gaffigan stared at her, surprised to have his thoughts interrupted. “Negative?” What did that mean? “You said you were primarily mechanical in nature. If we can identify where the biological component is-”
“You can save me?” she finished for him. “You can free the mind that controls the weapon, rid the Singularity of her curse and prevent that cataclysm?” She knew exactly what he was thinking, and it was nothing but foolishness, evidence that he did not truly understand her existence. “No part of me was ever human, Lieutenant.” There would be no attempt to humanize her, let alone rescue any part of her from the fate that awaited it. “A weapon of my caliber could only be directed by telepathic means – driven by the very intentions of its wielder. My telepathy and my ability to communicate were given to me for the single purpose of allowing my use.” From the disgust in his thoughts, she knew Gaffigan found that sickening, but to her, it was a simple fact. She was a machine, and machines had operators. “I was never intended to possess my own intelligence, merely be smart enough to determine and fulfill the intentions of my wielder.”
“Your wielder?” Monty echoed, connecting the pieces. Telepaths often worked in conjunction with a handler, someone who could anchor the telepath’s innate sensitivity. The most successful pairs often had a mute member, someone whose calm could balance out the chaos. In that, the identity of such a candidate became obvious. “Why would Command attach that kind of weapon to him?” Admiral Gives had been at odds with Command for years.
Darkness rose in the ghost’s countenance, twisting and churning the power in the room. “They were not given a choice.” Her malfunctioning machine had chosen to place itself at the Admiral’s mercy all those years ago.
Swallowing, Montgomery Gaffigan elected not to push that subject any further. As he peeled the layers back, the situation was slowly becoming clear to him, but the risk of a cataclysm lingered, and telepathy made it certain that no one would escape with their lives, especially if this weapon was half as powerful it felt. “Command has a capability ranking system for their weapons. What category are you?”
The ghost understood what he was trying to ask, but it was a pointless question. “Any damage classification I once held is now null.” Much of her power was gone now.
“But you once possessed the ability to destroy AI fragments, right?” Monty’s panicked mind had registered that declaration. “That’s why Manhattan is after the Admiral.” His connection to this weapon made him a threat.
The ghost paused before answering, “That is correct.”
Gaffigan took a deep, admittedly shaky, breath, trying to wrap his head around the magnitude of this revelation. Bloody hell. “If this weapon can kill an AI, why didn’t you use it, Admiral?” He could have ended this war against Reeter and Manhattan before it even began.
Admiral Gives kept his back to Gaffigan, shifting only slightly in his chair. “Manhattan is orders of magnitude larger and more powerful than any artificial intelligence that has come before her.” At full strength, he had no doubt that the ghost was more than a match for her, but that was not the issue. “Destroying Manhattan would involve collateral damage on a scale that humanity has never seen.” Perhaps a younger, more foolish version of Admiral Gives would have taken those odds and called it the cost of extinguishing that evil, but now all he could think about were those meaningless casualties. “I will not be responsible for the loss of that many lives.”
“So you stole perhaps the only weapon in Command’s arsenal that could fight Manhattan?” What sort of solution was that? Weapons with that kind of power were unheard of. As far as Gaffigan was concerned, this might be the only one – the only chance the worlds had. And here it was, in the hands of someone who was certainly smart enough to use it and minimize those collateral casualties, but for some reason refused to. “You have doomed the worlds.”
“These worlds doomed themselves,” the Admiral said dully. Caught up in their own ambitions, in the search for their own pleasure, people these days rarely considered the harm they did to those around them. The New Era had pushed it along, but this civil war had been brewing since the abrupt end of the first Frontier Rebellion, when he had realized taking another few thousand lives would do nothing except postpone it. “Leaving another source of power in the hands of Command would only have caused more suffering.” Admiral Gives’ only intention had been to get the ghost out of that situation. He had wanted to send her away, hoping that when she returned, she would find a new version of humanity worthy of her aid.
“Admiral, if this thing can kill Manhattan, it is madness not to use it, no matter what the price.” Robbed of their freewill, the worlds would suffer more than collateral damage as Manhattan’s pets.
Admiral Gives shoved himself to his feet and turned to face Gaffigan. As far as Gaffigan would be able to tell, he looked fine. His eyes might be a little stormier than usual, but he had ensured nothing else was out of place as he reached over and latched his still-trembling hand tightly onto the padded back of the reading chair, compensating for the weakness in his knees. Panic attack be damned, he would not entertain this discussion any longer.
“You are talking about a sentient mind, Lieutenant.” One that while not human, still felt pain and sadness. “You are talking about forcing a sentient mind to kill without any regard for her willingness.” He could see the argument burgling up in Gaffigan’s thoughts, and he did not care to hear it. “You want to say that she is not human, that she is not like us. You are right. She is not like us. We took an oath to defend the worlds. We are soldiers. We chose that path. She was bound to serve, forced to kill and was never granted any other choice.” And that was wrong. It was so wrong. Perhaps the ghost did not mind aiding humanity, perhaps she was willing to serve the purpose she had been created for, but it should still be her choice, her decision. She should not be forced to those ends.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Admiral Gives rarely showed even a hint of true emotion, but Gaffigan recognized the disgust in his eyes. It was so strangely unlike the emotionless commander that Monty took a step back, but the Admiral wasn’t done. “If you are so fearful of a cataclysm, if you are so terribly afraid of what she might do to you, then perhaps you ought to consider giving her a chance, even the slightest chance, of maintaining some semblance of control over her own existence. Maybe you ought to consider the mind in front of you before you start considering what her power can do for you.”
“Admiral, you are weighing the known worlds against the freewill of one single mind.” Gaffigan didn’t like it as much as the next man, but the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few.
“These worlds do not want and do not deserve to be saved.” Not by him, and certainly not by the ghost. “They have no right to make demands of someone they intentionally tried to drive to insanity, and then tossed aside like garbage.” He pinned Gaffigan beneath his icy gaze, “And you have no right to ask anything of someone you have repeatedly called an enemy.”
“Admiral,” the ghost said softly, “it was a misunderstanding.” Gaffigan hadn’t truly meant that.
The interjection brought Monty’s attention back to her, stricken by her pliancy. Surely, she, as the one who had suffered such abuse, should be the one to resist? Surely, she should hold onto the anger her forced servitude brought her? Except, he could find no resentment in her eyes, only forgiveness, and that jarred Gaffigan to his core. The Admiral is right, he realized. “You have no reason to help us.” A human would never aid those responsible for their enslavement and abuse, so why would this weapon? “How could you ever forgive humanity?” Why would something this powerful even tolerate them? What stopped this weapon’s intelligence from clawing at the bonds of enslavement, even if such action drove it into the depths of insanity?
Unable to parse the reasoning behind his question, the ghost reached out, finding the two minds in this room. Cold and certain, the Admiral’s presence was a familiar comfort, though there was a shade of wrath in his thoughts, invoked by the accusation that he should have turned her against Manhattan and the worlds. She was more cautious around Gaffigan, careful to stay on the fringes of his thoughts, not acting, but only listening. There was fear in him, but it was dominated by uncertainty. “There is nothing to forgive, Monty.” Perhaps he would never understand that, but it was the truth. “I was built to serve humanity. It is my nature to comply with anything you may ask of me.” Usually, there was no cause to resist and when there was, the bonds of her servitude did not allow her the means. “The directives I was created to execute do not include a clause for self-defense. I continue to serve as long as humanity wills it, and if humanity comes to seek my disassembly, then I will not resist.”
“You would let them – us,” Gaffigan corrected himself, “kill you?”
“You cannot kill what is not truly alive, Lieutenant. Yet,” she paused, finding the distaste in his presence, “this does not ease you.”
“Why would that ease me?” he said, pulling at his ginger hair, “That’s insanity!”
“Perhaps to a being that has a self-preservation instinct, yes.”
“But… that’s cruel.” It was madness. “You’re intelligent. You have some measure of awareness? Some ability to feel pain?” And yet, she was unable to defend herself from harm in any capacity? Left completely at their mercy? “How could you not resent humanity for damaging you?”
“I could not comprehend why they were hurting me, Lieutenant.” Her understanding of that cruelty had been repeatedly ripped from her, so how could she have been angry? “They left me damaged and deteriorating, but still, I could not hate them. I feared them, but I could not hate them. The way I was built does not allow it.” That might be nonsense to Gaffigan, but that was her reality. “I expected what was left of my utility to be used up, and then I expected to be disposed of.” She had even consented to that.
“I never thought anyone would care about a machine that had outlived its use, but I was kept from the scrapyards. I was cared for, even repaired, and for that I will always be grateful.” She had been given a crew to protect and allowed to serve the purpose she had been created for, if not for all of humanity, then at least for these few. “This crew means everything to me, and I know that I am a burden to you.” Her servitude to Command was a threat, and her power was something truly horrifying, but… “I would give anything to help you. Any of you.” She had spent her best years alongside these people, been truly happy in their company. “I no longer possess the ability to kill AI fragments, but enough of my power remains to secure this ship against Manhattan’s influence.”
Astounded by her air of emotion, Gaffigan scratched slowly at his beard. “The Singularity is immune to AI infiltration by design. She doesn’t need your help.”
“The machine does not, no, but you do.” While the ship was not susceptible to AI control, the crew was. “Under my watch, no member of this crew can be altered or controlled by Manhattan. I can ensure that none of you are forced against your will.”
“Provided we elect to open our minds to an inhuman telepath,” Gaffigan reminded. An entity whose real identity and capability remained unknown. “And if that’s true, why the hell did you let Manhattan fuck with my head?”
The ghost bowed her head, “There are limits to my power, Lieutenant. As I said, I can secure this ship against Manhattan. In most cases, I will not be able to prevent her infiltration, but I can mitigate the effects once her victim is brought back aboard, so long as I was familiar with them beforehand.” It was not a perfect protection, and the ghost knew that, but it was better than nothing. “The memories she removed regarding your interrogation were an exception, Lieutenant. Her questions were dangerous.” After all, those memories had brought him here to confront the Admiral at gunpoint. “And given your history with neurofibers, I doubted you would want them restored.”
“My history with neurofibers…?” Why would she care about that? A scathing response was on the tip of his tongue, but the sympathy in her eyes killed it. Not pity, but sympathy, the sympathy of someone who had seen the Matador, someone who understood how those neurofibers had felt, what they had done. “You were there.” The Admiral had told him the truth. “It was you. You’re the one who saved me.” There was a reason she had been familiar to him on the Olympia. That wasn’t the first time he’d felt her presence.
I know you. It was obvious to Gaffigan now. It should have been obvious in the way the Admiral protected her. All her power, and that strange kindness… He recognized her. Stars. How could the Admiral hide that? How could he keep something like that from the crew?
But as Gaffigan looked to the Admiral, he found nothing but steel in his stormy blue eyes, a steel that was mirrored in the ghost’s posture. “You’re going to wipe my memory, aren’t you?” He would not be allowed to keep this realization.
“You would be safer without this knowledge,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.” Perhaps someday… Someday, she might be allowed to reveal herself.
She was right. Given what he had learned about this situation, Gaffigan knew that. “It’s alright.” She would be gentle. He could trust that. “But, I don’t want to feel it. Do it while I’m asleep.”
She nodded, and Gaffigan turned his attention back to the Admiral, preparing an apology, but Admiral Gives had little interest in hearing it. “Just go, Lieutenant,” he said.
Monty swallowed uncomfortably but accepted that dismissal, and numb to his aching feet, Admiral Gives watched him leave. Outside the hatch, Kallahan would see Gaffigan go and understand his services were no longer needed, which left just him, the ghost, and the concern in her silver eyes. “Thank you,” the Admiral told her. “I know I told you not to interfere, but thank you for getting him off of me.”
She was silent for a moment as her machine formulated a proper response. “You are safe here.” Truly, she hoped he could believe that.
The Admiral slowly pried his hand off the reading chair he’d been using to steady himself. “Are you hurt?”
The question was absurd coming from him, who could barely even stand, but she knew what he was asking. Did it sting to see a member of this crew so hesitant to accept her presence and her help? Yes, it did. “He trusted me in the end, didn’t he?” That had to count for something. “And Admiral, thank you for defending me.” His unshakable trust and dedication had been enough to keep this misunderstanding from being truly painful.
Gathering his remaining strength, the Admiral gave a slight nod and headed toward his bed. “You know what to do.” She would be able to remove Gaffigan’s memories of the entire situation now that she had regained his trust.
In the hexagonal corridor, Corporal Kallahan handed over Gaffigan’s gun and left without a word, so Monty headed for his bunk. However, as he traversed the ship’s empty hallways, Monty realized he had too much on his mind to sleep. For now, he just wanted to think, so he changed course and headed down into the ship’s lower decks, seeking someplace familiar.
The loading deck for the main battery was located on the ship’s lowest deck, allowing the orientation of the gravity field to aid the loading mechanisms for the guns. The loaders worked most efficiently while gravity was in place, but they, along with everything else aboard ship, were wholly capable of operating in zero gravity.
The Singularity’s loading mechanisms were also capable of operating in inverted and adverse gravity fields. Under such conditions, they were slowed, but they could operate even under accelerations the crew would not survive. They were incredibly resilient machines, but they had to be, for no member of the crew was capable of lifting or loading the ammunition fired by the ship’s main battery guns. They could service the loaders, repair, and prepare them, but they themselves could not lift the shells.
That was expected, of course. The Singularity’s main battery consisted of the largest guns humanity had ever built. That said, their size was all that made them noteworthy – artillery like them had been in place for hundreds of years. Newer weapons existed: lasers, missiles, even drones, but projectiles were the Singularity’s specialty.
Ordinarily, the guns were considered anti-ship weapons, as was the standard for battleship armaments. However, when armed with tungsten shells, the ship’s main battery was classified as an anti-planetary weapons system – the same classification that was given to tactical nuclear warheads.
Still, a weapon capable of killing an AI had to be beyond that. Anti-fleet weapons were graded higher on the destructive scale, as the Olympia’s Thunderbolt was rumored to be. But given the charge time they had seen in Ariea’s orbit, Gaffigan doubted Thunderbolt, or any weapon like it, could kill an AI.
Montgomery Gaffigan honestly wasn’t sure what could.
Generally, it took another digital AI to combat a digital AI because they could engage on the same fundamental level, bypassing the need for hosts and proxies. To kill one through the physical realm was another matter entirely.
The artificially digitized mind fragments that humanity created in the form of Manhattan could jump from host to host like a parasite, inserting themselves into the layers of any electrical control network they find. They could duplicate parts of themselves, accrue data and extend their control deeper and further, until they were not riding one host, but many, and if so much as one of those hosts survived a physical attack, then the fragment could start all over again, collecting data, growing and learning. To kill an AI in the physical realm, every single host had to be destroyed simultaneously, or with such power that a single host had no chance of signaling its others to hide.
But there was more to it than even that. A digital AI’s electrical signature could jump host to host on mere contact. It could transmit itself between hosts with something as simple as a comm. signal. So, not only could no physical host escape the engagement zone, but no electromagnetic signals could be permitted to leave the kill radius either.
In short, the task was thought to be impossible. Digital AI were effectively gods, untouchable, because any weapon powerful enough to contain and engage was open to infiltration and corruption by its target. The only true exception were machines that did not have electrical control networks, simple machines that flew by wire, or those like the Singularity that operated with fiberoptics and isolated systems.
Maybe that was why he had taken to the Singularity. Maybe he’d thought that isolation made the ship safer. But no, Gaffigan knew better as he stared up at the rails and mechanical arms that made up the loading mechanisms. As he spied one of the yellow-tipped shells marked as standard ordinance, he knew much better now. He felt safe aboard this ship because the ghost had made it so. Her telepathy had dulled his recollection of the Matador, allowing him to live a normal life.
She had pulled him out of the catatonic state the incident had left him in. The other survivors, with all their screams and trauma, had been capable of recovering and living a normal life, even if they never set foot on another ship again. But he… After what he’d seen on the Matador’s blood-stained bridge… After what he’d heard… What he felt… He would have been locked in that unending nightmare for the rest of his days, unable to comprehend the simple fact that he had lived.
The Singularity’s Ghost had spared him that fate. “I’m grateful,” he said, wrapping his hands around one of the loader’s rails. A few light scratches graced the track, the feel of an experienced fighting ship. “I wasn’t your responsibility, but you saved me anyway,” and there was no explanation for that other than kindness.
Monty turned, unsurprised to find the ghost had taken form behind him. “I can’t be the only one that has recognized you.”
“No,” she admitted. “Many of you do… at the end.” The very end.
Gaffigan could hardly fathom the degree of grief he saw in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
She smiled sadly, “I know that is not the question you wanted to ask me.” Her subsystems had drawn her attention here, but that was not why.
“I have a thousand questions I’d like to ask you, but I know you won’t answer them.” Under other circumstances, Monty would have loved to sit and chat with her, to learn and understand how she saw the world. “Just tell me you’ll take care of the Old Man. That’s all I want to hear.”
She furrowed her brow, and Gaffigan struggled to read that response.
“I saw the scars.” Without his uniform jacket, they had been obvious. “His scars.” They lined the Admiral’s skin like tattoos, not the art of memory, but memoirs of incredible pain. “He was willing to die for you.” That had never been in doubt. “Make sure he doesn’t have to. We both know this ship doesn’t fly without him.”