Cardioid Sector, HR-14 System, Battleship Singularity

Kallahan left with Foster, and the Admiral was more than grateful for it. Kallahan’s constant pushing exhausted him more than he already was. He understood Kallahan’s perspective. The fact of the matter was the ghost was exceptionally powerful. The fact she had nearly killed him with mere telepathy was not lost on him. Her power made him and the rest of the crew look like less than children, only bacteria riding around in the gut of something far greater than them.

But what had happened to him had been an accident, the ghost more shaken by it than he was. Admiral Gives had long known he would likely die in service to the ghost, whether it was by her capability, or by someone else seeking it. As far as he was concerned, every day he had was borrowed time. Rightfully, he should have died years ago and the only reason he was still alive was because the ghost had kept him that way. Given that, he would not resent her because she’d endangered him. In his mind, that only made them a little more even.

Kallahan recognized the ghost’s power. He claimed to know it in ways the Admiral did not, and perhaps he did, but there was no universe in which fear was a kinder response than forgiveness. Fear was the natural reaction when faced with something powerful enough to rewrite one’s existence. That was human nature at its finest, but that reaction was cruel to someone who could feel it, who could not ignore it. Surrounding the ghost with those who feared her would only make her more wary of her own existence. It would only injure and destabilize her further, leading to more accidents and more fear. That would be a cruel spiral, one Admiral Gives would take no part of.

Not everyone could restrain their fear in the face of such a powerful entity, but he could. Thus, it became his responsibility to do so and offer forgiveness to the ghost. That had always been his choice, for the ghost had no other home, no other companions. She had known no other life. Too many of her choices had not been her own. She suffered in the care of a species that was, for all intents and purposes, incompatible.

And still, she had looked after them. Looked after him. She had no reason to care, no reason to bother, yet she did. She cared what trouble the crew got into, what struggles his irrelevant self endured. She was happy to be near the crew, even when they barely acknowledged her. To fear someone like that, to abuse someone like that, it was a black stain on humanity, a mark of utter selfishness.

Admiral Gives resented humanity for that. They were no great species, touting high morals and loyalty, regardless of what they claimed. They were bottom-dwellers who thrived off each other’s suffering. One failed colony meant more space and resources for those that neighbored it. One brutal loss meant another’s celebrated victory. True kindness, where one expected no reciprocation, was a rarity, a logical flaw. He should know. After all, he was the once-great Steel Prince, the butcher of New Terra and a dozen other worlds. He'd massacred an unknown number of allies and enemies during the Battle of Tantalus. He’d lied under oath to suit his own objectives after the Yokohoma sank, and he was absolutely the man who would throw Kallahan out the nearest airlock if he uttered one more curse against the ghost.

The Admiral supposed that should have brought him shame. To so willingly take another life over a disagreement, over an argument with no right answer, was certainly one of humanity’s faults. Despite the threat of the Hydra now so close, the fact they would still fight amongst themselves was a flaw without redemption. But, of course, he was human, and he was not above those flaws, no matter how clearly he saw them.

Settled up against the wall in Kallahan’s usual position by the door, Admiral Gives had an easy view of the bridge. The consoles were aligned in neat arcs. On the main floor, there were three rows, one in front of the open space in the bridge’s center, and two more behind. A few more workstations lined the edges of the room, used by the yeomen to keep things organized, or connect physical data transfer lines. A final ring of consoles, including the main communications console lined the edge of the room, slightly elevated above the rest. This put comms in line with the center of the room, where the operator could clearly see and hear everything, but could also isolate themselves to study the subtle audio cues of detected transmissions.

At present, that console was empty. Keifer Robinson had set it to the necessary settings and attached her headset. The wire snaked across the floor to where she now stood beside the sensor console, the physical connection cord required since wireless networks were not in use aboard the Singularity. All incoming communications were being played over the bridge speakers as the boarding parties made their way through Crimson Heart’s base. The mic on the headset was simply enabling Robinson to respond. She stood over Galhino’s shoulder, studying the locations of the teams that called in on the map they were building.

Working so closely together, it was a good thing the sensor and communications officers got along, and that they, along with the others on the bridge, knew their tasks. Gaffigan was inventorying weapons while preparing to defend themselves and the station if necessary. Alba was working on damage control. However, without the full complement of engineers working below decks, there wasn’t much he could do. He could only seal off damaged areas and redirect the air pressure. After all, out here in the void, air was a precious resource. More could be made by processing the waste byproducts of the engines, but that took fuel and time. It was better to make sure they lost as little air as possible.

As all that went on, Admiral Gives kept his attention on the bridge door. It would be a few minutes until Kallahan returned, and he did not expect trouble in the meantime. They had a guard positioned at the airlock to warn them if any hostiles made it through their teams’ sweep of the base – a position he had personally assigned to Sergeant Cortana. Most of the other Marines would read that as an offering of trust. She would likely see it as her being singled out, but hopefully, she would come around. That position, sacrificial in nature, usually earned a few drinks at the ship’s bar, assuming she lived, of course. But then, the Admiral supposed, if she didn’t, that was one problem taken care of. He would never have to concern himself with her again.

It was a cruel logic. He realized that. But Cortana had made herself unwelcome aboard this ship. The crew might tolerate her, but they did not trust her, and the ghost was having a similarly negative reaction to her, which was never a good thing. It wouldn’t end well for the ghost, and it certainly wouldn’t end well for Cortana. However, the potential resolution of the matter rested entirely in Cortana’s hands, whether she knew it or not. His duty was merely to monitor the situation until it reached its conclusion, then, if necessary, throw Cortana’s body out an airlock and decline to specify why.

It would cost him. Such things always cost him. He’d lose the crew’s trust for a while, be regarded as some less-than-human monster. They would shy from dealing with him for a while, leave him alone with his thoughts and cast sidelong glances his way. It hardly bothered him. His standing with the crew was always in flux. They didn’t understand his motives, even if they were relatively simple: he had taken an oath as the Singularity’s commanding officer to protect her and protect her crew. He stood by that oath. He would not endanger the ship’s crew, would not harm or injure them, hell, he would hardly even scold them so long as they respected one another. But, if they fought, if they injured one another, then it became a matter of consequences. Cortana fell into that last category, hurting others through her inaction, unknowingly poisoning the ghost. If push came to shove, if it became a choice between Cortana’s safety or the ghost’s sanity, then there was no decision to make. Cortana would have to go.

Perhaps that too, seemed crass. But, of course, Admiral Gives had never cared to maintain the appearance that he was any variety of sympathetic. His loyalty was to his ship, to the ghost, and to the crew in that order. He was here to do a job, one that he realized he had sorely botched in the case of Ensign Owens. Or, rather, Brent had, using his body. To Owens, it was the same difference. She was wary of him, more frightened than she had ever been. And while that Admiral admitted to being callous, it had never been his intention to control his ship through fear. There were far more efficient methods already in place.

“Ensign,” he said as she finished her tasks. “A moment of your time?”

“Yes, sir,” she answered, coming over to where he stood beside the bridge’s sealed door.

Owens stopped a step further away from him than she ordinarily would have, safely out of reach – not that his intention ever would have involved grabbing her the way Brent had. “Is your hand injured, Ensign?” She had been rubbing it on and off, as if it ached.

“No, sir,” she answered, purposefully dropping her hands to her sides.

She stood somewhere near proper military attention, but not in it. Admiral Gives did not require such things from the crew. He found that and saluting wasted too much time. Other commanders enjoyed the formality, the sense of superiority. He didn’t. “I must apologize, Ensign, for grabbing you. That was improper.” Maybe it was pointless to apologize. The actions had not been his, and their true perpetrator certainly felt no remorse. But of course, Owens didn’t know that.

Owens shifted on her feet, both uncomfortable and uneasy, two feelings that were new to her in dealing with the Admiral. She knew his reputation, as did everyone else on the ship, but she had always found him to be strangely predictable, not in his tactics, but in the way he dealt with the crew. It was the predictability of someone who purposefully acted that way to avoid alarming those around him. But him grabbing her, the tone he’d used to demand coffee, even the look in his eyes, those had all been odd breaks from what she expected of him. Perhaps this flawless return to normalcy, to calm, was what unnerved her most of all. “Why?” Why had he done that to her, only now to apologize?

Sometimes the Admiral wondered how he got himself into these situations, these conversations. Or perhaps the better question was why he bothered. It only ever made more problems for him. Sure, apologizing seemed like the proper course of action, but it had now invited questions he didn’t want asked.

Owens read what she needed to from his silence: he would give her no answer. Whether that meant he had no answer, or simply couldn’t reveal it, she didn’t know, but it cut in a way she never expected. “You gave me your word,” she reminded him. When she had accepted this post, she had trusted that. “You said you would tell me the truth.”

I know. He didn’t need to be reminded of that. Owens wasn’t the only one he had given that assurance to. Usually, he did everything he could to be upfront with the crew. The nature of their missions was always disclosed to them, but this… This wasn’t so simple. He could answer Owens truthfully, simply say that his predecessor had commanded those actions, but he couldn’t expect her to believe that. And even if she did, he risked her asking how that was possible, which was a question he hadn’t yet gotten the chance to ponder. Barring the ongoing mission, that would have been his priority, but at the moment, he’d backburnered it, uncertain he even wanted an answer. Yet, he still owed Owens a response, one as candid as he could be. “I was not feeling myself when I grabbed you,” he said, knowing that answer was lacking. “For that, I will apologize.”

Owens took a moment to study the Admiral. If one knew how to look, it was clear he was exhausted. His stony countenance couldn’t hide the dark rings taking form under his eyes, or the imbalance in his posture. Whatever had happened, it had taken its toll on him. Even minutes ago, when he’d grabbed her, he hadn’t looked so tired, and she was grateful for the apology, even if she found his explanation lacking. Not many commanders would bother apologizing to a support crewmember like herself, not when they were so easily replaced, but he’d always been a little odd about such things. He held a respect for the yeomen that was very uncommon among the fleet’s higher-ups, and since he’d been the one to grant her a second chance in the fleet, it seemed unfair to judge him too harshly for his first infraction. “If you have a crazy bipolar personality, it’s a little late to tell us, sir.”

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“I am sociopathic, not schizophrenic.”

Owens studied his undisturbed calm. “And you’re sure about that?”

“Quite.”

The response was clipped, not by hostility, but by a matter-of-fact confidence. Owens couldn’t help the amused exhale that left her, an involuntary reminder of how much she wanted to trust him and how comfortable she had been under his command. “I won’t hold it against you, sir.” Him grabbing her remained so out of place, she hardly knew what to make of the memory. “…Just don’t do it again.”

“Understood, Ensign.”

His gravelly tone was calm, but it gave her the answer she had expected – the one she had wanted to hear. “Then I will tend to my duties now, sir.”

He gave Owens a single nod, and she moved off to work with Galhino and Robinson. He stayed where he was, back to the wall beside the door, watching the mission progress. The crew didn’t specifically need him for this portion of it. An extra voice would only have been a distraction. His presence would only become necessary when something went wrong, as it inevitably would. Until then, he would remain on standby, much like the ship.

That wasn’t a comfortable situation for him. He preferred to stay busy. He had never liked being left with his thoughts, and in this case, boredom only reminded him how weary he felt. His arms and shoulders felt like iron weights, his feet ached and his head throbbed as if he’d been struck like a bell with a sledgehammer. However, his hand was the worst of it all. The fragile scabs on the lingering burn wounds had split open when Brent had used that hand to grab Owens. Sharp pain crackled down splits like lightning, and he could feel ooze seeping into the bandages beneath his glove once more, all of it a constant reminder of what his body had done without his consent. It brought up a feeling of disgust quite like no other, a loathing for his body’s betrayal, alongside memories he’d done everything he could to forget.

At the moment, he was grateful to not be the center of attention, to be standing against the wall. It allowed him to reach back, and lay his injured hand against the bulkhead, and let the coolness of the metal sap the heat of the pain away. It calmed him, but he had always found being aboard ship calming.

He stood like that, monitoring the door and studying the progression of the boarding party, for a few minutes. A substantial piece of the ghost’s presence lingered nearby, perched upon the wall like a vigilant gargoyle. She had no visible presence for the moment, but he knew she was there all the same, drawn to linger near the crew, even if her perceptions reached far beyond.

He nearly flinched when that gargoyle ferociously redirected its attention, gnashing its teeth, yet an instant later, the ghost had stilled, returning to her watchful perch. The change was so abrupt, he wondered if he imagined it, until a few minutes later, the gargoyle flexed its claws and snarled before snapping back to its guard post once more. ‘Is there something wrong?’ he asked the ghost.

A piece of the ghost’s attention broke off to settle on him, the equivalent of that gargoyle turning its head to drill him with those gray granite eyes. ‘I thought I felt something.’

Admiral Gives was unfazed by the cold, gothic form her presence had taken. That almost-threatening nature was not directed at him. It was an anger directed to the worlds for putting her crew in harm’s way. ‘Anything more specific?’ he inquired. Feeling something didn’t exactly narrow it down in her case. That could be anything. Telepathically, it could be a bleed-over of someone else’s sensation, or even a memory or emotion. Physically, well, suffice it to say that didn’t narrow anything down either.

‘No.’

It was clear to him that she wanted the conversation to end there. However, that was an immediate indicator to him that the conversation should not end there. He checked the progression of the boarding party, but nothing odd had been called in. ‘Tell me,’ he instructed.

‘You’ll think it’s crazy.’ He’d think she was going mad, and she didn’t want that. She wanted to be stable, to be helpful, to not cause anymore issues on this cursed mission. Had he, in particular, not suffered enough?

‘Try me.’ He’d been possessed by his dead predecessor. His day could legitimately not get any weirder – probably.

‘Something moved,’ she said. ‘Something that shouldn’t have moved, moved.’

Perhaps that didn’t sound particularly vexing, but he understood the implication. ‘All crew are accounted for?’

‘Yes. This was nowhere near any of them.’ The ship, with the exception of the handful of engineers working down by the main engines, the crew on the bridge, and now Kallahan and Foster down by the central computer, was empty. ‘It was in one of the long-term storage holds.’

To follow Occam’s Razor, the simplest explanation was meant to be the truthful one. In this case, he knew most of the ship’s holds had been visited recently as the supply crews made preparations to store whatever supplies they gleaned from Crimson Heart. The simple explanation was that something had simply been left unsecure, and had now fallen. But anything unsecure should have been shifted or thrown during the combat, and the ghost had perceived movement not once, but twice, several minutes apart while the ship had been stationary. Given that, the simplest explanation was not a viable explanation. ‘You’re certain all the crew are accounted for?’

‘Yes,’ she answered curtly.

‘That was a confirmation, not an accusation.’ If a crewman had been hiding there, perhaps afraid to join the boarding party, it would have been a suitable explanation. ‘Possibility of boarders?’

‘Near zero. No airlocks have cycled in that region, and it is quite distant from the airlock mated to the station. Life support is in standby.’

With life support in standby, nothing was consuming air. A boarder would have to be in a self-contained suit, which was not difficult considering the availability of vacuum-rated suits aboard the ship and station. However, if no airlocks had cycled, that meant a boarder would have had to walk from the joined airlock to the long-term cargo hold without being perceived by the ghost, which was exceptionally unlikely. Her telepathy was very sensitive, and aboard ship, she had other means of perception as well. ‘Odd,’ he noted.

‘I told you you’d think it was crazy.’

‘I never said that.’ It was an oddity, not insanity. ‘If you are concerned, send Kallahan to survey the location.’

She did not reply to that, but she made a face as much as a presence that did not currently have a face could. Fair enough, the Admiral thought. He didn’t enjoy dealing with Kallahan, and she had all the reason to like it even less. ‘Remind me later, I’ll take a look.’

‘It’s no issue,’ she decided. ‘My physical perception is not particularly sensitive.’ This likely meant nothing, but she could not deny the incident with Brent had shaken her more than combatting Crimson Heart’s fleet had – even with that pesky Hydrian AI running amuck. The realization that Brent lived on in any way that could affect anyone else… It made her wary. For if that parasite was still lingering, then what other evils lurked in the shadows? Every anomaly suddenly was a concern, even movement where they should have been none. But she had to admit that physical perception was not her greatest strength. While she felt what the ship itself did, it was not a particularly sensitive machine. It did not possess an underlying nervous system, nor sensory receptors the way human skin did, simply strain gauges and accelerometers to measure impacts. In most cases, telepathy was a far better method of perception, and her telepathy insisted that there was nothing there. But then, her telepathy had also insisted that Brent died not too far from where the Admiral was standing over a decade ago, so it could hardly be called flawless. Truly, for all her capability, she held a great many flaws.

‘Kallahan is on his way back,’ the ghost said, bringing an end to the movement issue.

Admiral Gives withheld a sigh from that announcement, instead choosing to ask, ‘How is the boarding party doing?’ He was quite well aware that while a part of her remained here, monitoring the ship and all associated with it, another part of her was watching over the boarding party. She could not affect happenings on Crimson Heart’s base, but she was well aware of them, sensitive to the thoughts and concerns of the crew, even at range.

‘There have been pockets of resistance,’ though nothing the crew couldn’t handle. ‘There are indications that Crimson Heart has advanced technology at their disposal – both Hydrian and human, but there’s no indication of how or why they acquired such things.’

Interesting. A pirate clan should have no need of advanced technology. Assuming they did not make themselves too much of a menace on the shipping lanes or publicly reveal their base’s location in some way, they were not expected to encounter anything more than the base technology used by their victims. As far as Command had been concerned, some degree of piracy was allowable. Given the vastness of space, and the other demands made on the fleet, a few merchant ships lost here or there had been an acceptable loss. There was no reason Crimson Heart should invest so heavily into cyber technology. ‘Keep an eye on it,’ he instructed. Something here wasn’t right, and likely, the Hydra were involved, which could mean nothing good.

‘Aye,’ she confirmed.

A moment later, Kallahan knocked on the door to the bridge, a warning before he spun it open. The Admiral tensed, moving his hand to the gun on his hip, but only for the second it took for him to recognize Kallahan’s light hair and uniform.

Kallahan sealed the door to the bridge closed behind him, and glanced over the room with the eye of a trained soldier before deeming that nothing was out of place. With that, he turned to the Admiral, and opened his mouth to speak.

Or at least Admiral Gives assumed he spoke. It was impossible to know, given that the wraith watching over the bridge bore its claws in the same instant, leaping from the wall and tightening its grip on those around it. That pressure shouldn’t have hurt. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t have, but the incident with Brent had overtaxed him so badly that even this territorial motion made his head spin. It wasn’t a threat, not like it had been earlier. This was a fiercely protective gesture, a sudden weight he could barely sustain.

‘Well, well,’ the ghost chuckled menacingly, ‘I’ve finally found something interesting.’ It was about damn time.

And like that, the pressure of her presence was redirected elsewhere. Admiral Gives found himself halfway to falling, but managed to catch himself before anyone other than Kallahan noticed.

The Marine did his best to hold a straight face, but his brows dipped downward a bit with concern. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call the doc up here, sir?”

“This is not that kind of issue, Corporal.” These circumstances fell outside Doctor Macintosh’s expertise.

Kallahan pressed his lips into a thin, grim line. “Do you really know what this is doing to you?” It was clear enough his connection to the ghost was taking a toll. Did he truly understand the cost of such a connection? Did anyone?