Cardioid Sector, HR-14 System, Battleship Singularity
The skeleton crew left on the bridge was busy. Ensign Walters, the ship’s jittery navigations officer, checked and rechecked the jump coordinates for the Singularity and every single one of her FTL-capable support craft from where he sat in the back row of consoles. Ensign Alba, manning engineering, was seated one row in front of him and kept busy with damage control from the fight. Lieutenants Gaffigan, Jazmine and Galhino sat next to one another in the front arc of consoles. Gaffigan and Jazmine were primarily standing by now, but Galhino remained as busy as ever, taking scans of the base and helping direct the away teams with Robinson hovering over her shoulder to relay instructions. Ensign Owens passed documents and data between them all, and Kallahan stood guard. But besides the Admiral, that was all. The bridge currently had no spare officers to man the consoles, it had no extra yeomen, and it had no second-in-command.
Still, things were going smoothly, a little too smoothly for the Admiral’s taste. Baron Cardio honored his surrender. His remaining forces, numbering sixty-seven in all, crowded into the area surrounding the base’s control room, and the Marines disarmed them there. Those sixty-seven souls were all that was left of Crimson Heart’s estimated two-thousand members. And in all honesty, the Admiral hardly cared what became of the remaining sixty-seven. Perhaps they’d starve out here. Perhaps one of Crimson Heart’s other ships would return from a hunt and save them. Or, perhaps the Jayhawker would send aid from Midwest Station… for a price.
It was not Admiral Gives’ concern. So long as the pirates resisted no further, he was content to leave them alive. Their execution would simply be a waste of the ship’s now-limited ammunition supply.
With the pirates now under control, the supply movement had taken top priority. Scattered throughout the base, the crew was cataloguing and tagging everything that would need to be brought aboard. It would be a disorganized rush – not the type of resupply the ship usually saw – but once everything was brought on board, there would be time to properly inventory and store items before dividing them up for distribution amongst the refugee fleet. That would make for long hours and intense labor, but they would manage. Right now, however, all that mattered was bringing the supplies on board as quickly as possible.
That, though, was the supply officer, Lieutenant Letts’, domain. He and his staff would choreograph the movement of lifts, carts and trolleys, for even without gravity on the base, moving the largest supply boxes took mechanical aid.
Communications for that effort were still being routed through the bridge, and the map the ship’s sensors had generated was still being used to guide their teams, so Lieutenants Galhino and Robinson remained as busy during the supply movement as they had during the siege.
Galhino sat working the sensor console on the main level of the bridge while Robinson stood behind her. They were an effective pair. Robinson herself was speaking to and guiding every unit on the base, a feat of incredible focus, but she didn’t need help, so the Admiral stood quietly beside the flat top of the radar console until Kallahan inevitably approached.
Ever attentive to his duties as the bridge guard, Kallahan took the long way around the radar console’s flat top, coming to stand where he still had a clear line of sight to the door. Kallahan was not the most physically imposing. He possessed a near six-foot build that was average among the Marines, though taller than the Admiral himself. He stood tensely, always taking note of his surroundings, patiently awaiting and preparing for disaster. That never bothered the Admiral, in fact, it made him a highly-capable soldier on the occasions Admiral Gives chose to ignore the reason Kallahan remained so tense.
Turning to face the Marine, the Admiral prompted him, “Yes, Corporal?”
“You know I must protest the Hydra being brought aboard,” Kallahan said stiffly.
“You have made your feelings known on the subject.”
Kallahan frowned, the deep lines revealing his older age. “If that Hydra dies in our care, regardless of what it was doing here to start with, that’s war.”
“A war we cannot win,” Admiral Gives clarified. “I am aware of the risks,” but overall, he had more control over the Hydra’s safety aboard ship.
“You didn’t fight in the War,” Kallahan told him. Biologically, they might be the same age, but that was the trickery of cryogenic storage. “I did.” Bringing the alien aboard was a risk, partly due to the Angel’s potential reaction, but also because the Hydra themselves could choose to be deadly at any time.
“You did not fight in the Rebellion,” Admiral Gives reminded him. “I did.” Those wars, so different and so dire had forged them into very different people. Kallahan believed the Hydra wanted war – that they would use any excuse to get it, nothing but violent monsters. Kallahan never considered that humanity might be at fault, that some member of humanity might endanger the treaty for access to technology or territory otherwise forbidden. Given Kallahan’s history, the Admiral felt that should have been his first theory, not his last, but that was an argument for another day. “Corporal, my duty is to determine the honest cause of that Hydra’s presence on our side of the Neutral Zone. I will not assume wrongdoing on the Empire’s part when there remains a possibility that humanity is responsible.” War was on the line, and there could be no assumptions, no uncertainty.
Kallahan did not doubt the Admiral’s ability to conduct that investigation, but then, his problem was rarely with the Admiral. “And what happens if that Hydra dies before you interrogate it? You of all people should know it’s not safe here.” If the Angel couldn’t avoid turning on him – a person who had been nothing less than her resolute defender – then what would she do to a sworn enemy?
“The matter has been discussed,” Admiral Gives told him.
Kallahan narrowed his gaze. “Discussed?”
“Yes.”
That simple answer was just as stony as before, but Kallahan could read what he needed to from it. A perfectly silent discussion that he had not overheard was no discussion at all – it was telepathic communication. Kallahan took a step closer and lowered his voice to a whisper, “You’re still going to let that thing in your head?”
“I fail to see how that is your concern.”
“For the sake of the stars, Admiral. That thing killed you. It didn’t nearly do so. I watched you die.” With the exhausted shadows gathering under his eyes, the ship commander surely felt some part of that.
“And at which point did you think I cared?”
What kind of response was that? “Have you gone mad?”
“Your mistake was believing I was sane in the first place, Corporal.” A logical, stable person would have abandoned a ship haunted by an unstable weapon, not built a command here with a crew of misfits. “You disagree with my methods, and that is your right. However, it is also your job to serve and protect this crew and their mission.”
“I know my job,” Kallahan growled. “I’m not the one lying to them. I’m not the one-”
Kallahan ended his own rant abruptly as he heard the bridge door begin to click open, the sealing mechanism turning with a slight creak. He furrowed his brow in confusion.
Partial to the same confusion – knowing that everyone who should be on the bridge was on the bridge – the Admiral started to turn, but the hatch was flung open first.
Kallahan reacted instantly, grabbing the Admiral and throwing him to the ground before the buzzsaw sound of an automatic rifle tore into the air, carrying a spray of bullets with it. Kallahan tried to ready his own rifle, but the bullets found him first. Three tore into him, two caught by his chest armor and the third tearing into the weak point below the knee guard and boring into his shin. Blood spurted from the wound, and unable to support his own weight, the Marine fell. He landed atop the Admiral with little more than a shuddering gasp of agony.
Pinned below Kallahan’s weight, Admiral Gives could only watch the pirate step further onto the bridge, never letting off the trigger. He was dressed in a simple gray shirt and a set of utilitarian cargo pants held up by suspenders. A few small tools poked out of his pockets. Dressed like that, he could have been any spacer, but he handled that rifle like a professional. No pirate should have that kind of combat training, and that realization was only furthered as the gunman made eye contact with him, trapped there below Kallahan’s weight, and turned the rifle away to continue spraying the bridge.
That’s not a pirate. Once, twice, the Admiral tried to shove Kallahan off of him, only to barely shift the man’s weight. Damn it all. On the third attempt, precious milliseconds wasted, he managed to roll Kallahan unceremoniously aside and yank Kallahan’s side arm from the holster. The Admiral had meant to return it to him, but it hardly mattered now. Kallahan’s weight was still on his legs, so he took aim upside down, but the angle was bad and his coordination still wasn’t right. The first shot missed entirely, plinking off the bulkhead beyond, so he fired twice more without hesitation. The second shot drilled the gunman in the shoulder, wrecking his aim just as the rifle’s clip clicked empty, and the third shot, still not the headshot he’d been aiming for, ripped into the gunman’s throat.
Gurgling and spurting blood as he fought to breathe, the gunman collapsed. The spent rifle clattered to the ground beside him. He was dying, but not dead, and Admiral Gives wouldn’t give him the chance for any more carnage.
Uncaring of the Marine’s pained grunt, Admiral Gives kicked Kallahan off and rolled to his feet. Two steps put him above the leaking soon-to-be-corpse, and he took aim, first at the man’s head, then thought better of it. He put two bullets in the left side of the man’s chest, and watched the gunman’s mostly-still-attached head loll to the side, severed tendons allowing it twist a bit too far.
Around him, the hum of the ship’s power grid began to change, a heavy load being added to its damaged state. The ghost had activated the inertial dampeners, but they’d come on line just a second too late to change anything. ‘Don’t bother,’ he told her. This was already over. If a second gunman was coming, he’d have come in with the first, making a successful defense all the more unlikely.
Turning his attention from the corpse at his feet, the Admiral turned toward the crew. Alba and Walters had managed to duck behind their consoles, but they had a clear view of the door.
The front row of consoles – sensors, the helm and weapons – all sat forward of the door. The operators of those consoles were unable to see who walked in without turning around. The ship’s pilot and the ship’s weapons officer had followed their instincts and thrown themselves to the ground the moment the shooting started. But at the sensor console, Galhino sat closest to the door. Anyone who came onto the bridge passed directly behind that console, the shooter no exception.
The sensor officer had ducked in her seat, panicked and confused by the noise. In any other circumstance, she would have been hit – any circumstance but today because Keifer Robinson, the ship’s communications officer, had been standing right behind her.
Robinson stood and pawed cluelessly at the flyaway hairs that haloed her head where a bullet had whizzed by a moment before. It took a few seconds for her to realize that something else was wrong. She felt light, airy, as if nothing in this world could touch her, so when she felt the wetness on her stomach, she was surprised to feel how warm it was, to see how red.
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Staring at the crimson upon her hand, she didn’t even feel it when her legs buckled, but the Admiral was there by then. He caught her, and laid her gently down. “Stay calm, Lieutenant. You’ve been hurt.”
Robinson tried to nod, to speak her understanding, but no words would come out and her head wouldn’t move. She could feel her breath moving past her lips, fast and shallow. It couldn’t satisfy her, no matter how she tried to slow and deepen her breaths. It only brought her to flop about on the floor like a fish suffocating in the air.
“Stay calm, Lieutenant,” the Admiral ordered. “I am going to add pressure.” It was clear she was in no condition to give consent, and there wasn’t time. He pinned her down before her thrashing could cause further injury and began adding pressure to the wound on her stomach, trying to staunch the bleeding.
It didn’t help.
Blood soaked past his hands, wet and warm. He reached up with his free hand and pulled the headset off her head. He donned it clumsily, and hit the button for broadcast. “Medical emergency on the bridge. I repeat, medical emergency on the bridge.” He applied both hands to Robinson’s stomach, but still, crimson wetness seeped out, leaking between his fingers.
The Admiral tried to readjust his hands, but there was so much blood. It was near-impossible to tell where the original wound was, and it wasn’t just seeping from her stomach. It was flowing from her back as well, spreading along the deck to where it soaked the knees of his pants as he knelt beside her. The strongly metallic scent of it was gathering in the air as it seeped through the deck plates and dripped onto the warm electronics below.
Lying there, Keifer Robinson was surprisingly comforted by the Admiral’s presence. That unshakable calm of his, present even now, was not as strange as it was suddenly comforting. It’s alright, she wanted to say, it doesn’t hurt. But her lips would not move past the surprised part they had gained when she first collapsed. Still, she felt strangely at peace. Maria sat above her, frozen in some sort of shock, but slowly, she faded into the blur of the background. Another took her place, coalescing from the obscurity the world had taken on. In that, everything could finally make sense. She was dying, and the ghost had come for her as she came for all the Singularity’s crew.
And yet, Keifer Robinson found that presence not entirely unfamiliar. The spirit looked exactly as Keifer would have imagined her: pale snowy skin that looked like it had never seen the sun, and white hair that shone with the silver tint of distant starlight. Her eyes were an ethereal silver, filled to the brim with kindness and sorrow.
The ghost’s presence should have frightened Keifer. Her injury should have put her in agony as she bled. And yet, it didn’t. The ghost had pulled that pain from her perception, given her these last moments of peace. And strangely, that made Keifer feel safer than she ever had before. Thank you, she thought, feeling the world slip further away.
“Get me the first aid kit,” Admiral Gives commanded the nearest crewman, but Maria Galhino didn’t even move. She had locked up where she sat at the sensor console, tears pooling as she stared at the crimson pooling beneath her lover’s body. “Lieutenant,” he snapped, “the first aid kit, now.”
Still, Galhino didn’t move, shivering as she drew in breaths as shallow as Robinson’s. Damn it all. Admiral Gives turned to the next nearest crewman: Ensign Owens. “Get me the first aid kit.”
Breaking out of her own shock, Owens nodded shakily. Nursing a scraped arm, she rushed over to the wall of the bridge, grabbed the white box of the medical kit and brought it back, setting it beside him with trembling hands.
“Grab gauze and bandages,” the Admiral told her. Anything that can help stop the bleeding. Robinson was bleeding out. Her breathing was slowing down, eyes losing their focus. “Hold on, Lieutenant.”
His voice never faltered, but there was a strange fracture in the Admiral’s façade. The storms in his blue eyes had broken, revealing an uncharacteristic sadness. She knew this was more than an act to him, more than his duty as the commanding officer, but it was still in vain. Keifer felt that last breath leave her chest. She watched the ghost rest a pale hand upon the Admiral’s shoulder as if to comfort him, and then Keifer let her eyes slide closed.
Admiral Gives saw it the moment it happened, felt it the moment her heart stopped pumping blood past his hands. Damn the stars. He wouldn’t give up. Not now. Distantly, he heard a ping from the radar console, the sound notification for a new contact, but he ignored it. The medical teams would be here any moment. “Lieutenant Galhino,” he ordered icily, “if you want her to live, then get down here and help me.” Galhino stirred slowly, still shaking off the shock of being inches from the bullet that had burrowed into Robinson’s stomach. “Now,” he demanded.
Galhino stood, then half-fell into position beside him, sweaty and shaky. “I… I don’t know if I-”
“I do not care. Start CPR.” If they could keep oxygen flowing to her brain, then get her on blood transfusions and life support, there was still a chance that Keifer could be resuscitated. It was a slight chance, but still a chance. They just had to keep oxygen flowing to the brain or Robinson would suffer severe brain damage.
Galhino obeyed, first brushing Robinson’s brown hair gently out of the way, and then starting chest compressions at the rate that had been relentlessly drilled into every officer. The compressions jolted Robinson’s form roughly, but the Admiral kept his hands in place, trying to minimize the amount of blood that leaked on every jolt.
‘Admiral,’ the ghost interrupted.
‘Not now.’ However vain this action might be, he owed it to Robinson, to the ghost and the rest of the crew to try.
‘Contact, Admiral,’ she insisted.
He turned to confirm, and as he had heard, a new signature had appeared on the radar display. “Ensign,” he looked to Owens. She was still shaky, but altogether more present than Galhino. “Take over. Keep pressure, and do not stop CPR until the medical team gets here.”
“Yes, sir.” She moved closer and inched her slender hands into the warm mess below his. “Got it,” she said, feeling the entry wound as a wet hole.
Prying his hands away, the Admiral had not realized how much pain he himself was in from flexing and stressing his burned hand to try and cover Robinson’s wound. The scabs on his left hand had split, pain flickering along the splits like lightning. Blood had completely soaked the glove and the bandages he still wore beneath. It had soaked into his sleeves. Everything up to his wrists was coated in sticky redness, slick as it began to coagulate into slime. His knees were wet too, darker spots present on his black uniform pants where he had knelt in the pool of Robinson’s blood.
He had no choice but to ignore all of it, to tear away and disregard the thoughts and focus on his duty. He allowed himself two breaths, and slipped easily back into the logic processes of command. “Weapons, ready up five missiles. At the first indication of hostility, we sink them.” Patience would not be his default today. Not with blood staining the Singularity’s bridge. “Helm, standby to separate from the station.”
“Aye,” the helmsman and weapons specialist said, focusing their attention on their controls. As they’d been trained, they would focus on the immediate and ignore the carnage of their surroundings. There would be time for grief later.
The Admiral looked to the radar displays that hung above the radar console’s flat top. They had not been damaged, but the indicator charts on the back wall of the bridge had, lights flickering or broken between the bullet holes. He didn’t need them to know that the ship was wounded, and in no condition to start a new fight. Luckily, the size of the unknown contact was smaller than any of Command’s battleships and larger than any of their scout ships. It was also broadcasting an ID in the clear, meaning it wasn’t of Hydrian origin either – only a new, unfamiliar adversary.
There was nothing to wipe off his hands, so Admiral Gives elected to ignore the fact that everything he touched was left smeared in red. He was still wearing Robinson’s headset, and there was no one to hand off to, so he simply took over communications. “All hands,” he sent out the announcement, “make ready to reenter combat.” Strictly, the ship had never stood down from battle stations, but after so long, he expected the few crew members remaining on board may have drifted from their combat stations – particularly the engineers as they began repairs.
The strange ship was still at range, just now entering the outer edges of the asteroid belt. Compared to the Singularity, it was small, just a fifth of her size, but that still made it several times larger than most civilian craft. The radar system had given it the unknown marker, unable to match it with known friendlies or known hostiles. The radar ID read as ‘CRG-99’, but Admiral Gives didn’t recognize it.
‘The public registry has it as a national guard ship,’ the ghost said. National guard ships comprised the mobile patrol forces for individual nations. Such forces were regulated heavily by the centralized government, but individual nations did keep their own armadas. Command’s forces, battleships like the Singularity herself were the enforcing arm of the centralized government, and were given ultimate authority throughout all of humanity’s space. National guard ships were permitted no authority beyond their nation’s borders and it was rare to see them beyond their sovereign space. ‘CRG is the Cassiopean Royal Guard’s ID branch.’
Cassiopean? The Cassiopea Coalition was one of humanity’s most notoriously isolationist nations. It was a prosperous nation by all accounts – low unemployment, high quality of life. They commanded a national guard as formidable as any of the central worlds, but there was no reason for any of their ships to be out here. The Coalition was nearly a day’s travel away at best speed, and that was a pace that most ships wouldn’t dare attempt. It would take a traditional freightliner at least a week to cover the same distance.
‘There’s something else. The ship number: 99. It’s registered to the Coalition Royal Guard’s Flagship. The Startraveler Aurora.’ It was a pompous name if the ghost had ever heard one, but there could be no denying the ship’s standing.
A ship that size, likely, they were still out of its detection range, but not for long. Admiral Gives quickly stepped around the gunman’s corpse and bent over the sensor controls. He was more than familiar with them. He had the knowledge and experience necessary to run every station on the bridge. He ignored the sight beside the console, Galhino leaning in to perform rescue breathing on Robinson while Owens fought to control the blood loss. He concentrated the information the ship’s sensors were taking in. Passive inspection didn’t provide many details, just hot spots correlating to engine waste and power generation, no charged weaponry. Pulling the image stored on the Aurora’s public registration file, he compared it to the stabilized image the ship’s telescopes had pulled. They matched up perfectly.
The Aurora was the type of ship built by an advanced and wealthy nation. That showed in every line, curve and color of the ship’s design. Her hull folded over itself into layers of curving pleats. Her build alloys, or the coating placed upon them, shined silver and gold. Parts of her design looked fragile and purely aesthetic, but it was difficult to know without an in-depth engineering analysis. Regardless, the ship clearly didn’t favor the same brute force design characteristics the Singularity did. Its payload wouldn’t be primarily artillery. Missiles, drones and directed energy weapons, maybe, but he knew nothing about the Royal Guard’s typical tactics and now wasn’t the time to engage a new enemy – not with most of the crew still on the station and the Singularity already wounded.
He resisted the urge to turn the Singularity’s most powerful sensors on the Aurora, to dissect its build materials and capabilities, but that kind of active sensor sweep would be obvious to them. It might even be taken as a hostile gesture, and this was not the time to be carelessly antagonistic toward an unknown foe.
It was clear that the Aurora was here for a reason, however. As he studied it, the ship arced its way through the largest gaps in the asteroid field, heading doubtlessly toward Crimson Heart’s base, until she slowed to a stationary position in one of the asteroid fields’ widest gaps.
The Aurora stopped at further range than the Admiral expected. That meant their sensor range was greater than he would have guessed, and that they had found something to make them pause. Whether that was Crimson Heart’s base, the Singularity, or the mass amount of battle debris in the near vicinity remained to be seen.
The answer came via the overhead speakers on the bridge, still tuned to play incoming transmissions. “This is CRG-99, Startraveler Aurora to UCSC-14, Battleship Singularity. Request to speak with your commander concerning diplomatic matters.”
Diplomatic matters, Admiral Gives could not help the sheer absolute annoyance he felt concerning that subject. How wonderful. He had pried his hands off one of his ship’s dying officers for diplomacy. Did the Aurora not see the carnage strewn around them? Did they not see the mass of bodies that drifted through the region? Had they not bothered to analyze how utterly fresh they were? The Aurora had come seeking a battleship after all, and interrupting one mid-mission was never advised. Often, the interloper ended up collateral damage, their message undelivered.
Pressing a button on the comms headset enabled him to respond. The message would be broadcast in the clear – no direction containment or encryption without someone staffing the comms console. Anyone with a transmitter could pick it up, but they would be gone before the light-limited transmission found the outer edges of the solar system. “You have him, Aurora. State your intent.”
“Ah,” the response came after a short delay, light-limited as well. “Then allow us to hail you and introduce ourselves.” A different type of communication, the hail would eliminate the time-delay and allow visual contact.
“I find that unnecessary at this time,” the Admiral said coldly. The blood smeared across the entire bridge could hardly make a good first impression. Everything he’d touched was pasted in red, and blood had splattered all over the radar console when Kallahan was shot. It, dead center on the bridge and usually the focal point of communications, was hardly presentable. Perhaps the Royal Guard would find it garish, or perhaps it would prompt them to consider the Singularity a weakened target. Either way, revealing the state of the command center was a tactical unknown, and it was best not to roll the dice. “Now,” the Admiral continued, not liking to repeat himself, “State your intent.”