Cardioid Sector, HR-14 System, Battleship Singularity
When the airlock had successfully made its connection, the ghost let out a sigh. Her part of the mission had at last been fulfilled, so she turned her attention to the boarding party as more and more of them pushed onward, into the unknown.
Unseen and unheard, she stood in that final airlock. I’m sorry this is as far as I can take you. Once past this airlock, they would be beyond her jurisdiction and beyond her aid. But still, she watched them rush by, out and onto the mission. Be safe, she wished each and every presence. Come back home.
It was never her place to stop them, but she never liked to feel the crew leave, especially not like this, into danger and battle. But they were her counterparts. They went where she could not. They did what she could not. For that, she always respected them. They rarely hesitated in the face of duty. They were more resolute than even she, for she had been built for this, constructed to battle and intended to fight. They had evolved to survive, and been born and raised places beyond combat. They were not bound by their existence in subservience. Every order they received, they chose to obey. It was their path, their choice, and they headed into danger willingly. For that, she always admired their bravery.
I’ll be here waiting, she reminded them with a gentle nudge to the subconscious. She was always the first to welcome back those that returned – her own silent tradition. Some felt it, recognized it, some didn’t, but she did it anyway.
It wasn’t often that so many of the crew left, but between Lieutenant Colonel Pflum’s Task Force Alpha and Colonel Zarrey’s Task Force Beta, most of the crew was gone. Of those that stepped off the ship, into that foreboding airlock beyond, and those that had launched on the Warhawk recon ships and Arcbird fighters, she kept a tally. She kept their names and ID numbers, hoping that each might find their way back to her unharmed.
In all, only a handful of crewmembers remained on the ship, and it felt so empty, so odd. Even on shore leave, the crew never left in such numbers. A skeleton crew always remained – enough to manage basic operations and rudimentary maintenance. But now, there wasn’t even that. Truthfully, the bridge was the only part of the ship that didn’t feel desolate. The rest all felt barren, devoid of everything that had given it warmth and color.
This wasn’t the first time the ship had been so vacant. This wasn’t even the most severe instance, but that emptiness still gnawed. It made her feel hollow, even as she dedicated pieces of herself to watch over each part of the mission. One, anchored there at the airlock, would follow Zarrey, Yankovich and Cortana’s group, and another, anchored on the flight deck would await news of Pflum, Adams and Johnston’s team. A third component of her watched over the base as a whole, searching for trouble and picking apart anything it found for signs of a Cataclysm or other danger. The rest of her inevitably watched over the ship, unable, as always, to move beyond it. That part of her, seeking some vain comfort found the biggest group of the crew it could and tethered itself there.
In that, she found her attention resting with the bridge crew. They were anxious, possibly more so than they had been during the naval battle, even when they had faced death via the explosive payload of fifty-two missiles. They hadn’t been in control then, but they had at least known the situation. Now, they were blind to the boarding parties’ odds, and left on the bridge, unable to help. Being unknowing and unable to help always made them doubly anxious, and truly, she understood. She always worried more when the crew went beyond her reach. Aboard ship, she could offer protection and comfort, but off of it… She could only reach out and hope that she would not feel pain from any of them.
Surrounded by that anxiety, dreading that pain, the ghost found herself drawn even more to the Admiral’s calm. And yet that calm, that steadying presence wasn’t in its usual state. It felt strained, blurred. The Admiral was ill, though not with any infection. He held his calm with dedication, a skill he had long trained, but the incident with Brent’s shadow had weakened him. His perceptions and coordination were still disjointed, leaving him nauseous if he moved too quickly, and constantly feverish as his body fought to normalize itself. That alone would have dulled what was usually, a cool, sharp presence, but there was more to it with perception like hers. The edges of his presence were frayed, damaged. Its edges were cut unevenly where they’d been torn – torn when her strength had ripped his mind out and displaced it.
A human had no way to recognize the severity of the damage. In addition to a sense of physical discomfort, it would only manifest as fatigue, though it would be a miserable, inescapable fatigue eased only by time and no amount of rest. In that time, as the fatigue lessened, the damage would heal. The human mind was a resilient thing, but knowing that did not ease her.
Dark coils of shame riddled her thoughts. Drawn as she was to the Admiral’s calm, it was impossible to ignore the injured state of his presence. It was constant reminder that she’d lost control.
I’m sorry, she thought, trying to smooth the torn edges of his mind. If she could manage that, just that, then perhaps she could deserve his forgiveness. But not even her power was capable of that. The necessary adjustments were too fine for her to make. She could see the damage in its full detail, but could not repair it. Yet, there was no resentment in him. There was no blame. There was only his determination to see this mission through, an objective that she could align with to steady herself.
Careful not to strain him too much, she reached out, ‘I’m going to disengage the automated controls.’ The virus had been purged. She was certain of that, and the antivirus programs she’d added to the computers should be able to fend off a similar attack.
‘Understood,’ he said. ‘Thank you for your help.’ He tried not to rely upon the ghost, not because he didn’t trust her, but because situations like this strained her and could expose her presence. From his perspective, if a mission necessitated her intervention, it was because he hadn’t properly done his job.
‘Don’t thank me,’ she told him. No one could have predicted a Hydrian cyberattack here. He had done nothing wrong, and lending aid to him or the crew was not a chore. She didn’t do it because she expected thanks, and in this case, hardly deserved it. Especially not from him.
Admiral Gives knew he was in no condition for a debate. This was not the time or the place, but he so badly wanted to have that argument. The ghost absolutely deserved his thanks, and the gratitude of the entire crew. If she had not intervened, there was a high likelihood that Crimson Heart’s missiles would have sunk the ship. What had happened to him was simply not relevant to that. What had happened to him was nothing to lament, nothing to be ashamed of, only an accident – one they would later discuss in depth, but something that could not distract them from the mission. ‘I can take it from here,’ he assured.
I know. Even in this condition, he was twice the commander any of his predecessors had been. While she stood on the brink of falling apart, exhausted, upset and altogether terrified of what she’d done to him, he would see them through. That kind of trust did not necessitate words, so she said nothing, only pushed the ship’s central computer in the right direction.
The mission plan dictated the ship would wait for supplies to be transferred and for the crew to return. No length of time had been specified for it to wait, and while there were ways to tell if the crew had returned, such as the level of carbon dioxide needing to be scrubbed from the air, it was easiest to wait for crew input. The computer’s limited logic analysis programs could determine that, just as they could determine that the only way to receive crew input would be to no longer operate under the automated controls. A limited number of crew could make the necessary inputs under the Hybrid Controls, and thus, it was under that control scheme the ship needed to wait.
Before the automated network printed its announcement, Admiral Gives could feel the old machine preparing to reroute power away from the central computer once again. He could hear the slight whine of the power grid altering its pitch. It was louder than it should have been. The damage lowered the efficiency of the grid, forcing more power to be pumped through the remaining conduits to meet the minimum requirements of every system. Even still, he could detect a slight warble in the sound, an instability rising in a slow crescendo. That would need to be one of the first things addressed, he decided.
“Eyes up,” he told the bridge crew. They looked at him oddly at first, but then the automated network reported its final directive.
‘Defaulting to Hybrid Controls in order to fulfill mission parameters. Stand by…’
Jazmine stared at that message. The white text sat on a plain black screen as all the previous ones had. The ellipses blinked in a patient rhythm. Still, he could not help but tilt his head. “I’m no computer expert… But is she supposed to do that?”
“No,” Lieutenant Foster answered. Automated systems were not supposed to yield back to manual control. That was a safety preventing ships’ capture and use by the enemy. In theory, the only way to re-engage crew control should be the overrides, an in-depth and lengthy procedure that required multiple crewmen with total familiarity of their respective systems. There was some debate on whether the command overrides, such as that invoked by the Admiral to put the ship on automatic, could be applied again to switch back. In this case, Admiral Gives had not applied his command codes. Still, “You knew,” she said to him, studying his emotionless countenance. “You knew she would do that.” Perhaps that was why he’d initiated the automatic controls in the first place.
Foster’s words were not an accusation. No, that was coming from Galhino, who he could feel silently glaring at the back of his head. Foster, the Gargantia’s former Lieutenant, was looking at him with tempered curiosity. “I did write the mission parameters, Lieutenant,” he reminded.
Foster bought that explanation. Shaking her head, she returned her attention to the tablet she’d jacked into the computer network. “That must be some quirk with the Singularity’s systems then.” She began to scroll through outputs that she’d collected throughout the cyberattack. “I’ve never heard of anything like this. It’s quite the peculiarity.”
This ship has a lot of peculiarities, and that’s putting it nicely, the Admiral thought. The crew didn’t know the half of it.
‘I heard that,’ the ghost complained.
‘You’re Exhibit A,’ he retorted. ‘And that was a private thought.’
‘Stop thinking so loud then, idiot.’
He withheld a sigh, knowing he wouldn’t win that argument, but pleased nonetheless to find some sass returning to the ghost. That was a good sign, but then, she was always more comfortable when the crew was in control. It freed up her attention for other things, he supposed. “Sound off for critical systems,” he ordered the crew.
“Comms. are functioning,” Robinson answered. “I have complete control back.”
“Helm is standing by,” Jazmine followed.
“Navigations fix is nominal. Standing by with emergency coordinates as ordered, sir.” The ship’s navigator, Ensign Walters had calculated and distributed emergency coordinates to every Warhawk that had been launched on this mission. The Singularity, also FTL-capable, had coordinates to meet them at the rendezvous. However, if it came to an immediate retreat, the Arcbirds would be left behind. The small fighter craft did not possess FTL drives.
“Weapons are operational, Skipper,” Gaffigan said, a pleased smile rising to his face. “That said, we cannot fire the main battery while docked with the base.” The recoil would break the docking connection, likely damaging both the pirate base and the ship.
“Sensors are receiving normal data,” Galhino added her part of the all-around.
“Hull and structural damage are moderate, sir,” Ensign Alba said, studying the ship’s engineering functions. “We have artificial gravity and all engines are operating within parameters, but the inertial dampeners…”
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“They cannot maintain the arresting field with the open airlock,” Admiral Gives finished for Alba as the young man dug deeper into the system readouts. With the fluctuations in the power grid, and a large amount of hull damage, that was no surprise.
“Correct, sir.” The hull helped shape the inertial dampening field, so some instability was expected in that system every time the ship took damage. The inertial dampening system as a whole was designed with redundancies to account for that. However, the open airlock was another type of instability on the system. The system was designed to handle one or the other, but not both an open airlock and sustained damage simultaneously. The instability would draw more and more power, eventually demanding more than the ship could provide, burning itself out in the process. “Recommend we disable the dampeners for the time being,” Alba said.
The Admiral nodded. “Proceed.” It was always a risk to disable the inertial dampeners, but docked with the base, the ship was not expected to be making any sudden accelerations. Once the airlock was resealed, the system could be reactivated, no harm done.
The inertial dampening system was one issue taken care of, but there was still another to consider: the Hydrian attack. Somewhere on that base or near it, there was an AI core belonging to a Hydrian scoutship, meaning the scoutship itself had likely been present at one point, even if it was no longer. Similarly the scoutship’s crew, even if it was a crew of only one, might be here as well.
That was a possibility Admiral Gives could not ignore. The Hydra were a far deadlier species in terms of natural evolution than humans were. They were stronger, faster, and even without weapons, had claws that could easily rend flesh and jaws that could snap bone. Their natural scales served as a rudimentary form of armor that only the sharpest martial weapons could pierce. If the crew encountered one on Crimson Heart’s base, they were ill-equipped and unprepared. Casualties were likely, and it was all he could do to warn them.
“Get me an encrypted channel to all teams,” he ordered Robinson. Regardless of what suspicion it placed him under, the Admiral would not delay that warning.
“Yes, sir,” the brown-haired Lieutenant said. Robinson adjusted her controls, making the necessary connections to the handset the Admiral usually used on the radar console. “Ready.”
Picking up the handset, Admiral Gives didn’t waste a moment. “All personnel, this is Actual. Be advised of Hydrian technology on Crimson Heart’s base. All foreign technology should be treated as hostile and quarantined immediately. Additionally, there is a high probability that at least one Hydra is present on the base. I repeat, there is likely at least one Hydra present on the base. Proceed with extreme caution.” As he returned the handset to its rack, Admiral Gives could feel the gaze of the bridge crew.
Galhino didn’t waste a second. Once she knew the communication had been cut off, she began her interrogation. “Hydrian technology? A Hydra on the base? What in the hell are you talking about? That’s insanity!”
The Admiral turned to face her, but stepped no further away from the flat, softly glowing top of the radar console. Exhaustion nagged at him, and he wasn’t sure he trusted his feet or his balance to move more than an arm’s length from the console’s sturdy rim. He often kept a hand on it when he stood on the bridge, so doing so now did not look like an oddity. Usually, that contact was a choice. Right now, it was the only thing that kept the room from spinning as Galhino’s raised voice bombarded his ears, disrupting his fragile sense of equilibrium. “To the contrary, Lieutenant,” he managed to say, voice kept as calm by sheer habit, “that is the logical warning to give at this time.”
“In what way?” she demanded, her curly hair bobbing furiously. “All you’re doing is spreading panic. No one has seen a Hydra since the War ended,” least of all here, in the middle of nowhere.
She was right. It had allegedly been forty-seven years since humanity had last encountered a Hydra, but that count only included official and confirmed sightings. A criminal group like Crimson Heart may not have reported theirs, and it would not have been confirmed. “The cyberattack that paralyzed the ship was of Hydrian origin.”
“There’s no way you can know that,” Galhino argued. “You haven’t even looked at the code! Foster’s the only one who has, and she didn’t say anything about it being alien.”
“The attack pattern was Hydrian.” Granted, Admiral Gives hadn’t known that until the ghost had told him, but that did not change the facts. The Hydrian Armada had thrived off of paralyzing cyberattacks during the War. They were known to modify their missiles in order to affect specific targets such as armor archetypes and electrical systems.
“Fine.” Galhino could believe that, but it was possible that Crimson Heart was only mirroring a Hydrian attack pattern. “Can Foster prove it? If she can analyze the code and prove there was Hydrian involvement on our size of the Neutral Zone, then that’s grounds for war. We’d have to report that, members of the fleet or not.” If the Hydra were crossing the Neutral Zone, it could be in preparation for an attack – one that humanity had long feared.
War. Galhino said it like that was something easy, like it would be their duty to wage that war if the Hydra had encroached on their territory. Too many people thought that was how humanity would be saved. But no, the only way to spare humanity was to prevent that war altogether. Humanity was too fractured, too busy fighting amongst itself to even survive another war with the Hydrian Empire. The power that had spared them last time, that of the Angel of Destruction, no longer existed. It had been sealed away after humanity had brutally turned it on each other during the Frontier Rebellion.
“We will gather as much information as we can before we take further action,” Admiral Gives told her. Technically, in allowing the ghost to counter-attack that AI, he’d already declared war, but there had to be some reason the Hydra were here, aiding a human pirate clan. Perhaps they’d crossed the Neutral Zone on accident. Perhaps the scoutship had suffered a malfunction. The Hydra’s intention may have been to start a war, but until that was known for certain, they had to negotiate for peace.
“Sir,” Lieutenant Foster said, looking up from the tablet in her hands, “I cannot say whether this code is Hydrian right now, but if I were allowed to consult the Singularity’s records, particularly those concerning the War, then I may be able to make comparisons and find commonalities that could prove one way or the other.” Truly, Foster believed the Admiral was right. She had not identified this code, and that meant it was likely alien. It looked and acted nothing like the cyberattack she’d witnessed on the Gargantia, which had been perpetuated by the Manhattan AI. Manhattan’s code had been designed to ascertain control, but this code had been designed to inflict confusion, trapping the systems in a paralyzed state where neither side could command them. “However, there were components of Crimson Heart’s attack that knew fleet protocol, sir.” If she had never compiled the suspicious code to analyze it, then its attack never would have been triggered.
“There is something more going on than an intentional Hydrian attack.” That much was clear. A mere scoutship would never have been sent to confront the Singularity. The Hydrian Armada well knew her capabilities. Still, if the Hydrian Armada was missing a ship for any reason, even by result of an accident, and they blamed it on any component humanity, that too, was justification for war. The Hydra did not care to differentiate between humanity’s government forces, and humanity’s criminal underworld. “Lieutenant Foster,” Admiral Gives focused his attention on the young cyber analyst. She had not been with the ship long, but she appeared objective, and he was willing to trust her with this. “The records you need are in the central computer. It will have the archival records on the Hydra’s known cyberattack strategies, as well as those used by other factions. Make the comparison, report back what you find.”
Foster began to pack up her equipment, yanking cords from the ports on the console she’d been using. “Aye, sir. While I’m there, I’d also like to check over the central computer for signs of tampering. I want to make sure it was not infected and that the anti-virus protocols it implemented on the other systems will keep us secure.”
He was quite certain Foster would find nothing amiss with the ship’s central computer, but there was no reason to refuse the request. “Permission granted, Lieutenant. Notify the bridge of any issues immediately.”
Her data pad and connection harnesses in hand, Foster headed for the door. Then she paused. “There is one issue, sir.” She shifted nervously, something the Admiral first identified as fear, then recognized as embarrassment. “I don’t know where the central computer is housed. I mean I know that it’s amidships near the archives, but I’ve never been. I’m sorry, I just…”
The Admiral held up a hand to stop her flustered apology. “I understand that you are new, Lieutenant.” He was asking a lot of an officer who had only been here a few days, barely surviving the battle that left her previous crew dead. She hadn’t trained on the Singularity’s equipment, yet she was the only cyber analyst they had on board.
Looking around the bridge, the Admiral knew they were short-handed. They didn’t have a spare crewman to walk Foster down to the computer. He could have given her the compartment number and sent her on her way, but he knew how confusing the ship could be for new crewmen. Every ladder, every corridor and every hatch looked the same. Given recent damages and fires, the painted labels probably weren’t that reliable either. Foster would be under enough pressure as it was, so it would be best to not let her stress about reaching the computer. Of course, that said, only three people on the bridge were not currently manning critical systems: himself, Ensign Owens and Corporal Kallahan.
Admiral Gives didn’t himself to walk down to the central computer, given his constant lingering dizziness, nor did he believe it was a good time to leave the command center in case one of the teams did find a living Hydra on the base. Ensign Owens was similarly needed here. She was doing the work of several yeomen, fetching papers and connecting the requested feeds to the displays. She was also making an excellent point of avoiding eye contact with him, and that would need to be addressed. By process of elimination, that left Corporal Kallahan, standing guard by the door.
“Corporal,” he called the Marine over. “Leave your sidearm and escort Lieutenant Foster to the central computer.”
Kallahan unclipped his pistol holster from his belt and set it on the flat top of the radar console. Freshly polished, the visible parts of the weapon shined in the console’s soft white light. “Sir, you know I have to protest leaving the bridge unguarded.”
“It will not be unguarded.” Admiral Gives took the holster and started attaching it from his own belt, but his fingers were clumsy, and Kallahan took note.
Kallahan kept his voice low, not wanting the rest of the crew to overhear. “Are you certain you can handle this, given your… condition?”
There was a distinct disgust in Kallahan’s voice, and it was clear what he considered the condition to be: a connection to a monster. One that had nearly killed him mere minutes. “My condition is not your concern.” It didn’t take perfect hand-eye coordination to fire a gun. That was why he’d asked for Kallahan’s sidearm, rather than relying on his trusty sword.
The Corporal scowled and leaned closer, not bothering to keep his tone polite. He twisted it into an uncaring accusation. “And what happens if you have another incident?” If Brent came to possess him once more? It was clear enough that Gives was still weak, and that the Angel was unstable. “If the Angel cannot control that shadow, and you cannot resist it, then who will stop it from attacking the crew?” If Kallahan had recognized the danger just a second later, Galhino would be dead, impaled on the end of the Admiral’s sabre.
“I suspect, armed with this sidearm, there would be very little you could do to stop me, even if you were here.” Every choice they made was a leap on faith and probability. This was no different. “If it concerns you, then double-time it back.” His orders would not change. “We need to know who perpetuated that cyberattack.” He trusted the ghost in that most of it was Hydrian, but even she had noted that parts of it were familiar with the fleet’s standard cyber architecture. They needed to know how that was possible, and who those components of the attack belonged to. Foster could get those answers, but only if she had access to the ship’s full records.
Kallahan didn’t move. “You know this is a bad idea.” A few inches taller than the Admiral, he stared down at the man’s unfailing calm. “There is absolutely no reason you should trust that weapon.” It had nearly killed him, and Kallahan refused to believe the Admiral was unaware of that. “After what it did to you…”
“She did nothing to me.” He was a little ill, and had a few old aches acting up, but he had not been permanently harmed.
“Great stars,” Kallahan cursed, “you are a fool. That thing is a demon.” One humanity had needed to win the War, but one that now stood poised to be the damnation of all of humanity. “If the Hydra are here, you know what they’re after.” The War had been a struggle against extermination. That would forever be the Hydra’s only goal. Humanity was an insect to them, an annoyance to be fumigated and killed. “We taught the Angel to hate them, to hate everything they were so that we could use its power. So that we could live.” That hatred hadn’t gone away, and every moment they stayed here, lingering in the presence of the Hydra, was another moment they inched toward losing control of the Angel. “If that truly was Brent, if he has truly been hiding here for all these years, then there is a reason he surfaced today. Today, because for the first time in forty-seven years, we are in the presence of a Hydra.” The very enemy the Angel had been conditioned to slaughter without remorse. “You may not want to acknowledge it, but you know as well as I do that if we find a true Hydrian presence here, the Angel of Destruction will seek to annihilate it at all costs.” The chunk blasted out of the asteroid belt was proof enough. “You refuse to force that weapon to heel, so staying here is a mistake.” One that could cost them dearly.
“Corporal, I would strongly encourage you to watch. Your. Tongue.” The ghost was privy to every word of this conversation. Kallahan perhaps did not mean it hurtfully, but Kallahan also did not believe the ghost could be wounded by such things. “Let us be frank for a moment,” the Admiral said coldly, “the only reason I have permitted your presence aboard this ship is because you knew too much for me to let you leave. You do not like me, you do not trust me, and this is not the first time I have considered returning you to the frozen state in which I found you. Mind you, I will personally ensure you do not have a stasis pod next time you drift through the void.”
Kallahan shivered, recognizing a cold promise in the Admiral’s tone. The ice in his blue eyes had become dangerous. The Angel might be a threat, but on his own, the Steel Prince was not to be trifled with. He’d executed allied officers before, and he was not afraid to do it again.
“So, Corporal, you are going to do exactly what I have instructed you to do.” He would escort Lieutenant Foster down to the central computer, then return to guard the bridge. “And if I hear you utter one more word against the one I am sworn to protect, I will toss you out the airlock.”
To think I defended you, Kallahan thought bitterly. “You deserve whatever fate that demon’s going to give you.” He had made his loyalties clear. Someday, perhaps today, the Angel would lose control and flay open his mind once more.
“Get off my bridge, Corporal.”