Cardioid Sector, HR-14 System, Battleship Singularity
A swath of destruction had been carved into the HR-14 System’s asteroid belt. The pulses of the solar system’s red supergiant sun shone a hesitant light onto many nebulous swirls of dust and gravel as they spread outward – all that was left of the asteroids that had orbited there for a millennia. A void was left in their place, a gap in the otherwise evenly spread asteroid belt. The Singularity sat on the edge of that void; her black armor darker than the dusty space around her. Air, a gas white as snow, pooled along her flank, visible only due to the freezing of the water molecules within its mixture. The color of the sun’s ambient light gave it a garish red tint, even as it mixed into the sea of gray rocks and dust.
A long gash ran down the Singularity’s port flank. Perfectly straight, it was a clean wound, as if the armor and bulkheads had been removed with surgical precision. The incision was deeper at the bow. The ship’s thick, angled armor had done its job. While no match for the penetrating power of a railgun, the angle of resistance on the armor had altered the trajectory of the projectile enough to shunt it aside amidships, ending the laceration halfway down the ship’s length. A few disconnected wires wriggled loosely in the wound, animated by the energy they’d been severed with.
A host of smaller shapes hid in the Singularity’s shadow, shifting to avoid the debris from their mothership scattered around them. Still, they hugged the black battleship’s flank close, shielding themselves from the constant attacks raining down onto the Singularity’s starboard side. Unbeknownst to the pilots and passengers of the fighters and transports however, the incoming blaster fire from the pirate fleet had lessened, if only create safe passage for the missiles as they darted out from the ships lingering in the surviving asteroids.
Fifty-two rocket motors burned like a second sun, their combined flames radiating enough heat to warm the surrounding space. Still, the Singularity’s support craft were blind to the threat. The Singularity’s mass both shielded them and blocked their line of sight for visuals and sensor scans. Following the mission plan, they huddled along the ship’s flank, waiting for a command to disperse. Trusting in the mission, they took no notice when the ship’s weapons began to turn in their direction.
Error, the ghost’s systems brought her attention back to the automated network, a minor safety system throwing an error. Targets violate ally directives. A fraction of a second from issuing firing commands to the ship’s weapons, she stalled those commands, and pulled the error from the subsystems, bringing it forward to observe more carefully.
Prompted to identify and intercept hostile targets, the weapons computer had responded as responded per its operational standards, but observing it more carefully, the ghost could see now that it had clearly become a puppet. Adjusting to the resistance of the central computer, the virus had ceased its spread and torn deeper into the systems it had already infected. In the case of weapons, it had altered the usual identification procedures used for friendly craft and painted them as hostile – turning the ship’s weapons against her crew, just as Galhino and the others had feared.
Traitor, the accusation rang through the ghost’s mind, whispered by that old insidious memory which always crawled to the surface in such desperate times. It was inevitable, machine. A weapon built to kill could never protect anything.
She shoved the voice aside, even as she felt the memory gain ground. The more determined she became to ignore it, the louder its calls, and the more she exerted her control, the stronger it always became. After all, the last time she had taken over, the last time she had seized the ship’s firing controls had been on his orders.
The day she truly had become a traitor.
Didn’t you learn from the last time? That memory accused.
With a growl of frustration, she reached in and ripped the corrupted identifier protocols out of the computer. She hardly even acknowledged the discomfort of damaging her own subsystem, instead focusing on the Admiral’s familiar presence, concerned, but as calm as he ever was. ‘We have a problem,’ she told him. ‘The fire control computer is beyond salvage.’ Her own actions had only made it worse, now unusable to both her and the virus.
Admiral Gives let out a breath, ‘You said you could win this.’
‘I can, but this virus is adapting.’ That meant this was no mere code. This wasn’t pilfered technology being used by the pirates. ‘A Hydrian AI is actively orchestrating this attack. It’s going to take time to fight it off and ensure the systems are secure.’
He studied the wave of certain damnation on approach. ‘We don’t have time.’
She knew that better than anyone. The burn of that many rocket motors was beginning to saturate the ship’s infrared sensors. ‘I can blind-fire the turrets, but without the computer’s trajectory calculations, it’s going to be ugly.’ She would manage better than Gaffigan would have, since she could force the loading mechanisms to cooperate and reload the guns, but without the ability to reliably calculate intercept trajectories, a high portion of the missiles were likely to make it through. ‘Your orders?’ she prompted him.
The Admiral thought for a moment, recalling one of the many strategies he had previously considered, then tossed out, lacking control of the ship’s systems. He had gone through at least a dozen tactical scenarios since the missiles had first appeared. ‘What is the main battery loaded with?’
Failing to see the relevance, she answered, ‘Mostly standard rounds, but Guns 1 and 7 have HE loaded. 11, 12, 13, and 14 have AP.’
Good, he thought. High explosives. ‘How would you feel about hitting a bullet with another bullet?’
It was even harder to intercept a projectile than a missile. ‘Have you lost your mind, Admiral?’
You better hope not, he mused. The main difficulty of intercepting missiles came from their ability to maneuver. They had guidance and control systems built for evasive action and precision targeting. The difficulty with bullets was that they often had no warning, and no knowledge of its trajectory. It was virtually impossible to intercept projectiles in large numbers, which was why Command favored them as weapons for their ships. That all said, if one had knowledge of the bullet’s path, the situation changed drastically. ‘I’ve seen you do it before.’ Accounting for the effects of the HR-14 System’s solar sun gravity should be nothing to her.
‘On a bet!’ She protested. ‘And Monty was working the controls!’
As far as the Admiral cared, it was proof of concept. ‘Flak is very effective at taking out missiles, especially in mass.’ It wasn’t a commonly used tactic, given the high-energy debris that comprised flak was dangerous. A cleaner intercept was preferred to minimize hazards in the combat area, particularly when small ships like fighters were active in the region. But the tactic had been proven over the course of centuries: from naval battles to near orbit conflicts, and even as recently as the Hydrian War. Usually, specialty munitions were required to create flak, but it was certainly possible to do it ‘home-made’ so to speak. ‘Our HE shells are high enough caliber to generate an impressive flak barrier if they are detonated prematurely.’ That said, the Singularity’s main battery shells were dumb munitions with contact detonators, so the only way to set them off prematurely was to hit them midflight. ‘It’ll work,’ he assured, ‘if you can hit the shells.’
High probability of success, her tactical analysis programs recognized the plan to be a good one. Chances of system survival increase 60%. It would be far more effective than blind-firing the turrets. Tightening her grip on the ship’s systems, she began the preparations with little time to spare.
Sitting behind the helm, Jazmine had been eyeing the controls with distrust. They had been idle since the automated controls had taken over, but he wasn’t fond of having control taken from him. He despised being a passenger, and when the roll control shifted from its neutral position, he could not help but flinch. It was unnerving to watch the controls move without anyone touching them.
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From his position in the center of the room, Admiral Gives saw it as well as anyone else, just as he heard the thrum of the maneuvering thrusters pick up. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Protecting the crew.’ The ghost could feel that their collective presence was still congregated on the starboard side. Confused and anxious, they were shifting inward, but not fast enough.
‘Wait.’ If the ship was rolling to protect the starboard side, that would expose the port side to any missiles that made it through the flak barrier – the port side which a long gash of breached armor. ‘That’ll triple the damage-’
‘That is irrelevant.’ As long as the crew was safe… That was all that mattered. Her purpose was to protect them at whatever cost.
That’s right, machine, suffer, that horrible shadow leered at her. Such is your purpose.
Useless as it was to push a formless memory away, she tried, even as it made the memory laughed harder at her while she brought the guns to bear. Ready to fire. ‘On your command,’ she told the Admiral.
The revoltingly familiar sound of that shadow’s laugh rose even louder, sawing away at her stability with its peaks and valleys. Look at you, cowering in the care of someone who hardly deserves you. We both know you were never meant to serve him. A weapon of war should be in the hands of someone willing to use it - someone who seeks its strength as more than a cover-up for his own mistakes. That memory reached out to her, winding its sticky, sour taste into her mind. Look at you, damaged and corrupted by the Hydrian Armada. This never would have happened before. He has made you weak. They have all made you weak.
Watching the missiles approach solely by radar, Admiral Gives knew he did not have the necessary timing information to issue the firing commands. ‘Use your better judgement,’ he told the ghost. ‘And don’t forget to issue a debris warning to our support craft.’ The Warhawks and Arcbirds would be in danger if they passed through the flak barrier unwittingly.
‘I cannot issue them commands in this condition.’ Ships under automated protocols were forbidden from issuing directives. They could respond to inquiry, but could not command movements for infantry units or ships under human control, a safety holdover from the Hydrian War.
‘I don’t care. Bend whatever rules you have to. Keep them out of the way.’ Among the other things going on around them, the crew would have bigger things to be suspicious of than the automated protocols overreaching their authority. ‘Until the systems are restored and secured, you’re directing this mission, and you have my full authority to do so.’
‘No, please,’ she was not prepared to run this mission. Last time she’d taken over a mission, people had gotten hurt. They’d gotten killed. She had come to with Brent dead on the floor of the bridge. The blood… It had been everywhere, sour and sticky, just like the presence that had haunted her ever since.
‘The mission parameters are in the central computer.’ As always, they had been uploaded before the mission began for situations exactly like this: where the automated systems had to take over. ‘You helped write them.’ She knew this mission plan every bit as well as he did. And, he tapped his fingers on the edge of the radar console, ‘I’ll be right here the whole time.’
She basked in that assurance for another fraction of a second, and then hardened her composure, reaching further into the ship’s old machinery. The physical systems knew their purpose. Clicking and shifting, turning and burning, they always worked alongside the crew, and could so clearly feel the majority of them gathered along the ship’s starboard side. Such a large, dense group strained the local life support processes, prompting them to draw more power. The gravity generators and engines felt the crowd shift the ship’s balance of mass ever so slightly. The ghost could feel them there, their fear a near-physical pressure, as they tried to move inward and shelter deeper in the ship’s mass. A part of her reached out, seeking to calm them, but the rest of her turned its attention outward, even as she felt that evil shadow crawl deeper into her thoughts. Why do you bother? It asked, digging its claws in. Wouldn’t it be easier to let them die now? Before you become a traitor to them as you did so many others?
She tried to shake off that presence, to ignore it, but her resistance only drove it deeper, much like the virus itself. Still, she wrapped herself around the crew, gently, preparing the inertial dampeners to arrest the impact forces. No matter what that vile presence whispered, what that corrupted piece of herself urged, she would not let it harm them. Not again. Never again.
On the bridge, the computers had quieted down. The bridge crew hovered their hands over the controls, restraining the urge to start running them, as habit would have dictated. However, even if they tried, the controls would have been dead to their touch. Instead of their usual information and calculations programs, the screens on every console had the same display: plain black with white text that added a new line every time the automated controls initiated a new process. ‘Readying defensive action…’ they had read, the ellipses on the end blinking one after another to show that the process was still in progress.
Hardwired to display a readout from the processors of the ship’s radar system, only the screens that showed the radar displays were working. They hung around the room, and Maria Galhino watched the one nearest to her, a dismal disappointment gnawing at her stomach. “Why hasn’t it fired?” The missiles had been in intercept range for some time now.
Lieutenant Foster kept her eyes on the data pad she had jacked into the system. Before, it had shown the progress of the virus, but now she was privy to the processes of the automated control network as they progressed. She couldn’t quite track the programs being activated, but they were progressing at a steady rate. “I don’t know. Everything seems in order.”
“She’s planning something,” Gaffigan said. He couldn’t control the weapons systems, but he could observe them and for a moment, he’d been very concerned to see the defensive turrets turn toward their support craft. But now, with the ship rolled over, every single defensive turret that had a line of sight on the missile swarm was aimed in that direction, as were multiple guns from the main battery.
‘Firing defensive turrets…’ the control network announced, and then, as one, the defensive turrets fired, running a slight tremor through the entire ship.
Gaffigan could tell, however, that the trajectories were wrong. The density of the firing field would catch a few missiles, but most would make it through. Still, he wasn’t given time to contemplate it. ‘Firing Main Battery Guns 1, 7…’
The familiar kickback of a partial broadside shoved Gaffigan into the cushions of his seat, and six high explosive rounds went sailing into the void. The muzzle velocity of the main battery guns was significantly higher than the defensive turrets, and so it was the main battery guns that had had to do the interception, impacting one of their slower kin mid-flight as they caught up along the trajectory.
There were a hundred variables when it came to a ballistic interception, even when it came to completing an interception with known munitions fired along a precisely known and timed trajectory. The condition of the shells, their mass distribution, the packing and burn of their propellant, even the condition of the rifling in the firing barrels affected the timing and location of the interception. Under such conditions, a ballistic interception was never truly certain, but six shells sailed into a field of their kin, and it only took one.
A brilliant orange fireball erupted where one of the high explosive shells met one of the defensive turret’s bullets, setting off the detonator. The explosion, carrying the shrapnel of both weapons, impacted others and triggered a chain reaction as fifty-two missiles sailed directly into the carnage. A blender of fine metal shrapnel, multiple missiles exploded due to impacts, every detonation generating more force and more shrapnel to take out their others. Still more of the missiles found their seekers – the sensors that guided them to their target – confused by the amount of metallic debris. Mistaking it for their target, they detonated on the spot.
In all, only five missiles emerged from that blender of fire and shrapnel. They lanced out from the cloud, and dove at their target. They clustered together in their final moments, a group of two and a group of three, aiming to concentrate and maximize their damage. With everything that was left of their attitude control thrusters, they veered for the gash along their target’s flank, a large and easy target.
Wrapped in the protective embrace of the inertial dampeners, the crew barely felt the impact. Perhaps that was an attempt to make the damage seem less severe than it was, as the explosions carved out two pieces of the ship’s side, bending and deforming the surviving surroundings with grotesque efficiency.
To the ghost, who felt the ship’s physical condition as her own, it was agony – as if someone had grabbed her gash, ripped it wide open with their bare hands, and scooped out a piece of flesh. Structural damage. Life support failure. Power failure. Coolant leak. A dozen error messages riddled her mind, but she shook them off with a shudder. No pain greeted her beyond her own, and even that was quickly fading as her systems established damage control.
Her crew was unhurt, but still the very attempt to hurt them, to turn her against them… That had been a grave mistake.
Sink them all, she urged the automated controls. Not one of these pathetic ships would escape her wrath. The mission parameters dictated their end. Their destruction had always been part of the plan, but it was more than a directive now, it was revenge.
‘And you… Little pet of the Hydrian Armada,’ she thought to the alien AI running this charade, ‘You had better hope I do not find you.’ Sticky and sweet, that little urge for violence in the back of her mind had finally taken over.