Cardioid Sector, HR-14 System, Battleship Singularity
Operation: start. Main battery loaded and raised. All systems manned – the ghost paused to correct the records subsystem. All systems ready. It was an easy mistake, really, more of a habit than anything. She was used to sailing with the crew manning all the operational stations. Today, however, many of those stations were empty, and not every station was being directly manned. That absence might have unnerved her, but the entire crew was still aboard, simply preparing to board the base rather than crewing their usual posts.
It was …different. The ghost could not say that she favored it, but she understood the necessity. Running a final check, she reached out to the Admiral, ‘Hybrid controls are performing nominally. Standing by for commands.’
Admiral Gives had already received such confirmations from the bridge crew, but as far as he cared, the ghost made it final. We’re ready. As ready as they could get, anyway. “Alright,” he said, laying a hand on the thick metal rim of the radar console, “Lieutenant Jazmine, take us in.”
“Yes, sir,” Jazmine acknowledged, edging the throttle forward.
The volume of the engines heightened, and the ship began to accelerate. It was a slight movement, the engines limited to a mere fraction of their thrust, so the crew felt none of it, but an enormous grin still blossomed on Colonel Zarrey’s face. “This is going to be fun. You never let me off the ship.”
Admiral Gives regarded Zarrey’s enthusiasm with a measured calm. There might be a reason for that. Zarrey was a loudmouthed, energetic Marine who wore his heart on his sleeve. If one tried, it wasn’t hard to get a rise out of him, and it never looked good when a battleship commander had to go station-side to bail his XO out of the brig for throwing a right hook at another ship’s commander. Still, Zarrey was a competent officer, and well-liked by the crew, even if ship operations were not his specialty.
Today, Zarrey stood beside him in the center of the bridge kitted out in a set of Marine body armor. His helmet, complete with the mounted bulk of night vision goggles sat behind him on the flat, glowing top of the radar console. There was a delighted fire in his eyes, lit by the promise of adventure. Admiral Gives never understood the Marines’ craving for combat. He distinctly preferred the calm of a long patrol, but it was relieving to see that they were primed for a fight. “Should you not be with the boarding party, Colonel?”
Zarrey snorted, shifting a head of sandy blond hair he hadn’t bothered to groom today. “And miss the fireworks?” he retorted. “Nah.” Grinning, he raised the silver flask in his hand and took a long sip.
By the pungent smell, the Admiral knew the flask didn’t contain alcohol, but some of the crew was taken aback his behavior.
“Hey,” Jazmine called, “shouldn’t you be saving that for the victory lap?”
Taking another, distinctly longer sip, Zarrey just grinned some more. “It’s coffee, dipshit.” He never went anywhere without it. “I couldn’t get my mug to fit in my pocket. And believe me, I tried.” Capping the flask, Zarrey turned to the Admiral. While Zarrey had on tactical gear, the ship commander was in his usual black uniform with the mere added addition of his sheathed sabre. “You sure you’re comfortable with this?” There was a potential for a lot of things to go very wrong on this mission, the boarding action the least of them.
Admiral Gives raised an eyebrow. “Would you care to switch roles?”
“Ha, ha, no,” Zarrey said drily. “The Old Bitch never behaves herself when I’m in charge.” He would much rather lead the boarding party. “It’s just been a long time since we took her off manual control. It’s dangerous.” With the Eran AI running rampant, that was more dangerous now than ever.
“It is a calculated risk.” No part of this operation was certain. He had manipulated the variables as best he could, but there were always unknown quantities. “I know this ship, Colonel.” If there was anything he could count on, it was that she would see them through.
Zarrey made a noise, one that while disapproving, was not contradictory. “I don’t like it. Running the hybrid controls jeopardizes everything that makes this ship secure.”
“I am aware of that,” the Admiral said, “but the time to voice those concerns has passed.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t complain,” Zarrey muttered.
At almost all times, the Singularity operated under a manual control scheme that isolated the electrical operations from the required commands inputs. In essence, without a crewman bridging the gap, none of the systems could activate. However, that required a significant amount of crewmen, particularly for damage and weapons control. At present though, the crew usually assigned to making emergency repairs as well as controlling the fire suppressors and defensive turrets had been reassigned to board the station.
In such a situation, everything on the ship could be controlled from the bridge, but that involved a degree of detail that was impossible to handle without the aid of a computer. A single crewman, no matter how talented could not run the individual fire suppressors in every compartment on every deck, nor could a single crewman dictate the speed at which every single defensive gun was reloaded, or which ammo store the rounds were taken from. In a time like this, with manpower severely limited, computers could automate some of those tasks, but it required limited networks to be brought online between certain systems. And that left the ship vulnerable to cyberattack. The controls of critical systems such as life support were kept isolated from the networks under the hybrid controls, but any networked system could be digitally attacked and potentially sabotaged.
While using the hybrid controls was a risk, now only a handful of people were needed to run the entire ship. The bridge crew, three engineers held back for emergency repairs, two yeomen staffing internal comms, and one guard posted outside the bridge would be all that remained on the ship. Every single other crewman had been assigned to either clear the station of enemies or move supplies. By result, they were not at their usual stations, instead lining up to board Crimson Heart’s base.
Their ability to seize the base depended entirely on the speed at which they could board. If the pirates were given too much time to set up defenses, the airlock would become a deadly bottleneck. That was why the boarding party was lined up and at the ready instead of manning their stations as normal. Still, Admiral Gives knew better than to bet the success of the mission on the fact that the ship could get docked without issue. Thus, a secondary boarding party, consisting of half the ship’s Marine contingent and most of the pilots would board through the base’s airlock and hangar.
Zarrey, much to his glee, had been assigned to lead the boarding party from the ship. The leader of the Singularity’s Marine contingent, Lieutenant Colonel Pflum, would lead the attack on the hangar. Naturally, that left Admiral Gives to command the skeleton crew controlling the ship. Zarrey loved an away mission, and Admiral Gives preferred not to leave the ship, so it worked out nicely.
“Ensign Alba,” the Admiral turned to the boyish engineer, “who do we have for emergency damage control?” Lots had been drawn to determine which engineers would stay on the ship under Havermeyer’s supervision. It had been a given that the tech-monk, in line with his beliefs, would stay with the ship.
“By the doctor’s recommendation, Ensign Malweh, sir.” The injuries she’d suffered from the commandos were still healing, so her eligibility for the boarding party had been revoked. “The third is Ensign Smith.”
Smith… That’s good, the Admiral thought. She was young and still inexperienced. While she’d been trained to defend herself, she wasn’t particularly good at it. None of the engineers were very good at personnel combat, but she was particularly vulnerable, and after her encounter with the commandos, she probably wasn’t ready to face another hostile.
‘You’re welcome,’ the ghost snarked silently.
‘For what?’ he replied, checking the ship’s progress as they moved into the asteroid field containing Crimson Heart’s base.
‘For assigning Smith to DC.’ Her name being drawn in the raffle hadn’t been random chance. ‘I know you worry about her.’
‘I worry no more about her than any other member of the crew.’ Worrying was his job. ‘Some of the crew are simply better equipped to handle hostile situations than others.’
‘Sure.’ She wouldn’t argue the point. ‘But, as a reminder, I’m a telepath and you’re an idiot.’
He made no effort to reply to that, just pointedly focused on the view shown by the big screen mounted at the front of the bridge. It was the visual feed of one of the telescopes on the hull, showing the path ahead.
Crimson Heart’s base was located in the midst of the HR-14 System’s asteroid belt. The solar system was old, centered around a fat red supergiant star. Large plasma currents erupted frequently, spewing from the aging star’s surface. The plasma eruptions were the same deep red color as the star, and their pulsing made it look something like a beating heart. In that, it didn’t take much creativity to imagine how the Crimson Heart clan had gotten its name.
The star would be dangerous if they steered too close, but the asteroid belt was far enough out system to be more than safe. Blessed by its ancient star, the HR-14 system was now sparse. If it had possessed a planet beside the orange gas giant and hellishly cold dwarf planet beyond the asteroid belt, the sun had since swallowed it.
The asteroid belt was calm and just as sparse as the rest of the system, only a smattering of plain gray rocks that lacked ice and useful ore deposits. Any asteroid small enough to be moved by stray comets or other forces had long been stripped away. Only a loose smattering of large rocks remained. There was plenty of room for the Singularity to maneuver between them and hundreds of different ways to approach the coordinates where the base was located. In that sense, Admiral Gives did not expect to meet resistance until they were closer to the base. It made sense for Crimson Heart to centralize their forces. There were too many approach vectors to justify guarding any of them, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be traps laid in the asteroids.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Standing beside the Admiral, Zarrey didn’t care much for the view of the asteroid field. Rocks were rocks in his book. He was just glad to know the rocks were big enough and old enough to have stable orbits. A stray shot from the ship’s main battery probably wouldn’t excite the local portion of the asteroid field. In all, Zarrey was more unnerved by the slight changes he observed on the bridge. The crew was there, same as usual, but there were a few extra lights pulsing on the consoles and an unfamiliar whine ran through the air. It was the computers, Zarrey knew. Working extra hard to run the networks for the hybrid controls, the computer processors drew more power. Their respective fans spun at higher speeds to cool them, generating a strange technological whine almost above the range of his ear.
“I don’t like it,” Zarrey said, picking out one of the unusual lights on the weapons console. “It’s eerie.” It was a subtle change, but it unnerved him because it left them weak to Manhattan. That and the fact that it just felt wrong. The networks, limited as they were, gave the ship a degree of autonomy that she did not usually possess. It gave the ship some awareness of her own condition, and that always made the little hairs on the back of his neck prickle, because it was one thing to order a machine to fight, but quite another to order an entity aware of the damage it sustained into combat.
No, Zarrey rubbed at the back of his neck, I’m acting crazy. The Singularity’s hybrid controls still minimized independent capability. Using them, she was effectively still a dumb machine. The hybrid controls’ only purpose was to allow a small crew to feasibly run the ship. In the same sense, the automated controls existed only to be activated if the crew was incapacitated. They tested them regularly, just to make sure they still functioned, but they weren’t particularly impressive. In fact, compared to any of her modern counterparts, the Singularity’s automated controls were rudimentary at best.
Still, the whole exercise creeped Zarrey out, probably because it was beyond his understanding, and he didn’t like that. He barely understood the ship on a usual day. The hybrid or automated controls just added another unwelcome layer of complexity.
“Relax, Colonel,” the Admiral told him. “Our ship will be fine.”
“I think you mean your ship,” Zarrey retorted, uncapping his coffee flask to take another sip, as if that would calm his technological jitters. It was odd how he could be so unbothered by potential personnel combat, and so disturbed by a slight change in the technology around him.
“As much as you are her crew, she is your ship.” That allegiance ran both ways.
Zarrey looked the Admiral over, surprised to find him offering reassurance. Ordinarily, he would have shut down Zarrey’s concerns coldly and strictly, but today, while there was a chill in the Admiral’s blue eyes, Zarrey knew it wasn’t meant for him. There was always a grim air about him on days like this – not hopeless, just dreadfully serious. Zarrey had to assume it was a consequence of history. Admiral Gives had been ordered into a lot of needless fighting, and seen a lot of needless death. Taking the ship into combat today, it was all too likely that people would die. Zarrey didn’t consider this mission needless, but he supposed, to someone like the Admiral, who had been through this all before, it all felt needless. The worlds never changed, and not for the first time, Zarrey wondered why the man bothered. Why bother with the fight if it had changed nothing last time, would change nothing this time, and he would end up here again in a few years?
It was a good question, but Zarrey supposed it wasn’t his place to ask. He preferred not to think in the big picture, because the wider his view, the more meaningless everything seemed. For now, he’d just be happy that this mission was finally letting him off the ship.
“Sir,” Keifer Robinson spoke from the upper tier of consoles on the bridge. “We’re being hailed. There’s no ID on the transmission, but it’s being bounced all over the asteroid field. Safe to assume it’s probably Crimson Heart.”
“Bouncing the transmission?” Zarrey screwed up his face. “Why?”
“To keep it from being traced,” the Admiral told him. An array of transmitters mirroring the signal between each other would keep it from being chased to its source: Crimson Heart’s base.
“Think they’ll surrender?” Zarrey wondered.
“Not likely.” This wasn’t the first outlaw clan Admiral Gives had dealt with. With an estimated 2,000 members, they weren’t a small group either. If they took their ships toe to toe with the Singularity, the outcome of the fight was a given, but the Admiral would be remiss if he did not take note of their homefield advantage. The outlaw clans were known to be crafty. The fleet had lost more than one battleship to their innovative traps and attacks. “Lieutenant,” he turned to Robinson, “attempt to trace the transmission as best you can.” If she managed to find the real source, it would confirm the base’s location. Failing to find the base, it would still identify which asteroids had been touched by the pirates, and by result, which were likely to be trapped.
Admiral Gives waited for Robinson to nod with confirmation. “Then, put it up.” It would be rude not to give these pirates the chance to surrender.
“Aye, sir,” Robinson said, adjusting her headset as she routed to the transmission to the bridge’s main audio and video setup. Still, as the large rectangular screen mounted on the flat wall of the bridge powered up, she paused. Something’s not right. She checked the controls around her again. The extra indicator lights of the hybrid controls were not unfamiliar to her, merely odd. Robinson had worked with them before, as the Admiral had been certain to drill his crew on all types of ship operation, but still, something was off. There, she found it, an unusually low power drain on the receiving arrays and their associated decryption banks – something that could only be caused by an oddity in the transmission.
She checked the signal frequency. She checked the amplitude. Then, she checked the corrective algorithms. In any transmission, there was some level of error. Depending on angle, range and orientation it was common for the arrays to not catch all of the signal, and other bits of the signal got corrupted by stray environmental particles. All the same, the corrective algorithms helped fix the transmission quality, and the percentage of the transmission data altered by the algorithms was tracked as a measure of signal quality and accuracy. Usually, the corrected percentage was very low, but right now, despite being bounced all around the asteroid field, the percentage of corrections on the transmission was nearly zero.
Lieutenant Robinson noted the oddity, and she knew the instant she looked up that she had hesitated a moment too long. Admiral Gives had caught the concern in her brown eyes. “Is something the matter, Lieutenant?”
“There is an anomaly, sir. However, it does not seem hostile.” Near as she could tell, the containment algorithm on the transmission was simply far better than any other she had seen, keeping the data neatly grouped as it bounced between arrays. “I will monitor it.”
“Very well, Lieutenant.” He nodded, trusting Robinson’s skills. Truly, she was one of the most gifted communications officers he had ever seen.
With that, the screen on the flat wall of the semicircular command center powered up, and she connected the live transmission. A red-faced pudgy man appeared, draped in rare furs of distant worlds. However, the sleek patterns of a jungle cat hanging on his shoulders did nothing to conceal the overt roundness of his glutenous figure. As he sat against the back of a carved chair, upholstered in satin and gilded with a crest of gold and diamonds, it was clear that this was a man of extreme wealth, and that he loved to flaunt it. “I am Baron Brome von Cardio,” he announced in an unexpectedly velvety voice. “And you,” he narrowed his eyes, “are trespassing into my territory.”
The Baron paused for a moment, clearly scanning the bridge, until he found Admiral Gives standing beside Zarrey. “I know who you are. That face of yours has been plastered all over the news. Still, when the Jayhawker said to prepare for an attack, I did not suspect it would be you.” The pirate leader gave one single joyless chuckle, barely enough to make his large jowls bounce. “I see your armed Marines and I can assume your intention, Steel Prince, but I will do you the courtesy of allowing you to admit that this is not what it appears, as we wanted men do have a code. It is uncouth to exterminate one another, for the more of us there are, the harder it is for the government to hunt us down.” And there was safety in numbers.
“Then let me put your mind at ease, Baron,” the Admiral said coolly. “This is exactly what it looks like.”
“Very well,” the Baron said, voice deep and unshaken. “Then let me offer you something else. If, in this fight, you find yourself bruised and battered, I will allow you to surrender and halt my forces at once.”
“Confident son of a bitch, ain’t he?” Zarrey muttered, holding his flask in front of his lips to muffle the sound.
Agreed, the Admiral thought, and odd as it was, he supposed Crimson Heart had not earned its successes with cowardice. “Baron, your forces may outnumber mine, but I assure you, the right to demand surrender belongs to me.” After all, the Singularity outclassed almost every ship in the worlds with ease. “You may fight if you choose but know your men would be a useless drain on my resources, so I have no intention of taking prisoners.”
The Baron regarded his emotionless countenance for a moment, then smiled. “I am so glad that you live up to your legend, Prince.” Practical and unshakable. “One must admire that in an enemy, wouldn’t you agree?” Partially hidden behind his fatty cheeks, his eyes glittered with interest. “Though I find it even more admirable for an enemy to surprise me with its strength. It tends to make the hunt more fun.”
“I have offered you a chance to surrender, Baron.” Admiral Gives moved a hand to rest it upon the guard of his sabre. “I will not offer again.”
“All business, hm?” the pirate sighed. “Pity. The rumors had made you out to be someone of respectable intellect, but it seems you have no interest in entertaining your host with a debate.”
Admiral Gives did not reply to that. He simply stood and studied the Baron’s expression. It was confident and relaxed, a little too relaxed.
“Truly, Prince, I get so few visitors in my remote sector. It would be my pleasure to disc-”
Without warning, the transmission vanished, taking the image of Baron Cardio with it. There was no static or distortion at its end. It was clean break, clearly cut off from one side, and knowing who had been interrupted, the Admiral assumed it to have been his. “Lieutenant, what happened?” Robinson wasn’t the type to sever such a communication lightly.
Robinson redirected the ship’s receiving arrays, mitigating their reception of the signal. “Sir, the data containment algorithm on that transmission, I wasn’t familiar with it, but as the Jayhawker spoke, I realized it was shifting. Little changes at first, then larger ones.” To bounce that transmission across the asteroid field without losing image or sound quality. “It was incredibly stable, sir. I’ve never seen a transmission behave like that.” Usually, attempting to change the containment on a live transmission caused it to become garbled and unrecognizable.
“What can cause a shift in the containment algorithms?” Zarrey asked, dropping his flask into the pocket of his protective vest.
“I am uncertain, sir,” Robinson said, pulling up the comm. records to study the algorithm again in more detail. “Since I could not identify it originally, nor predict what it was shifting into, I felt it best to cut it off.” She had been taught to do so at the fleet academy.
“Nicely caught, Lieutenant,” the Admiral told her. Without a dip in the quality of the transmission, many officers would have overlooked that.
Zarrey studied Robinson’s braided brown hair while she had her head lowered to study the details of the transmission. “Were they trying to sneak something in?” Working station security, he’d always been wary of anomalous communications. That was one of the most common ways to initiate a cyberattack.
“I doubt it, sir,” Robinson said. “The transmission error levels were too low.” She knew the symptoms of a cyberattack, the video got grainy, and the audio ceased to match up. The attack took up precious space in the transmission bandwidth, and it showed.
Zarrey wasn’t convinced, but he distrusted most technology, so he figured it was his job to be the skeptic. Still, it was exactly this kind of anomaly that should call their strategy into question. “Admiral, you know we’re in no condition to face a cyberattack.” The ship was usually immune, but right now, under the hybrid controls, too many of their systems weren’t. “Singularity is too old to fight that.” The ship didn’t even possess anti-virus programs. It would have been pointless to code such things during the Hydrian War. The Hydrian Armada’s cyberattacks had been far beyond anything humanity could hope to counter. That was the entire reason the Singularity possessed an optical control network.
The radar began to beep, picking up new contacts as they moved out of the asteroids’ shadows. Admiral Gives regarded it calmly, entirely unsurprised by their positioning. “Too late,” he told the Colonel. Strictly, it had been too late to back down the moment they entered the HR-14 System’s asteroid belt. Their movements had been shadowed ever since.