Cardioid Sector, HR-14 System, Battleship Singularity
Doctor Macintosh rushed onto the bridge with one of his most experienced nurses, a stretcher carried between them. He cursed upon seeing the state of the bridge. It was riddled with holes. Display screens had been impacted and cracked, and a light had been shot out and left flickering on the ceiling. A few of the padded chairs behind the console had holes where the white stuffing was now popping out. The smell of gun power was still laden in the air, slowly being whisked away by the air filters. Aside from the buzz, buzz, of the flickering light, it was quiet.
Admiral Gives stood in the center of the room, focused on the radar readouts, an equally focused weapons officer and tensed pilot in front of him. They weren’t untouched by the carnage. Jazmine’s ordinarily perfect hair was out of place, Gaffigan’s fiery orange beard looked more unkempt than usual and the Admiral’s hands were positively stained with red. Even from the door, Macintosh could see that the black glove covering his burned hand was soaked. Red smeared many of the nearby controls, and blood pooled below a body that the doctor didn’t recognize – presumably the attacker. There was no question of the body’s status as a corpse given what Macintosh could see of its neck.
Laying at the base of the radar console, Kallahan was fighting to bandage his own leg, a splatter of blood around him. Macintosh rushed over to him, but Kallahan just waved him off. “Not me,” he pointed over to a body that hadn’t been visible from the doorway.
“Stars,” Macintosh cursed. Robinson was pale as a ghost, two of her comrades kneeling beside her. Owens had a fistful of bandages pressed to Robinson’s front, and Galhino was beating upon her chest in sorry condition, sweat damping and plastering her curly hair to her forehead. Yet, it was apparent from the way she lay and from the volume of blood around her that Robinson was dead. “Make room,” Macintosh commanded, shoving himself into place along Robinson’s side. He wasted no time and tried to take vitals, failing because Robinson had none to take. She was, in that moment, very dead, even as Galhino leaned forward to push new air into her lungs. “Get the defibrillator,” Macintosh ordered his nurse.
Nurse June began yanking the defibrillator from the supplies they’d brought, and stringing the wires together. She worked quickly, giving the doctor just enough time to glance back to the Admiral. Admiral Gives’ stocky form didn’t look injured, tired perhaps, but not wounded. His cold blue gaze was simply focused on something else, doing as the commander was meant to: commanding. In some ways, Macintosh admired him for that. His ability to disregard the bodies, blood and turmoil strewn around him made him a force to be reckoned with. Few could maintain his calm control, but the mathematics of command required it. Before the Admiral could concern himself with any single member of the crew, he had to ensure the safety of the ship as a whole. Knowing that, Macintosh didn’t bother asking the situation, he simply did his own job and focused on the patient.
Grabbing shears from the pocket of his white coat, Macintosh watched Galhino perform rescue breathing once more, then pushed her and Owens away. “Move!” He dove in with the shears, and cut the front of Robinson’s uniform open. He pulled the fabric away so that Nurse June could lay the defibrillator’s pads directly on her bare chest. This was no time to concern himself with Robinson’s privacy, but Owens averted her eyes. Whether that was out of respect, or because of the gnarled scars that covered Keifer’s chest and torso, Macintosh didn’t know.
Those lumpy scars cut across her body horizontally. Some rose as mountains and some sunk as canyons carved into her skin. The fleet’s uniform concealed them on the daily, but Macintosh could never have forgotten them. They were some of the most severe scars he’d ever seen: reminders of a cruel man’s cruel deeds. The cuts that created them had gone untreated for weeks, just shallow enough not to kill her, but deep and wide enough to have desperately needed stitches. They were permanent memoirs of Robinson’s prior assignment to the Flagship Ariea, hurt carved so deep that even time could not heal it.
Nurse June handed him the pads of the defibrillator. “It’s charging.”
“Then dress the wound, quick as you can.” Anything to add pressure and mitigate bleeding. Every second counted.
June did little more than tightly wrap a larger amount of gauze all around Robinson’s stomach, pressing down the bloody bandages already placed there by Owens. “Clear!” she said pulling away.
Macintosh plunged down with the electrically charged pads. On contact, Lieutenant Robinson’s body bucked, but fell back to the deck just as lifeless as before. “Increasing voltage,” Macintosh announced, charging the defibrillator once more.
Diligently, June checked for a pulse, but found none. She pulled back, “Clear.”
Macintosh put the pads in contact, and once more, Robinson’s back arched under the charge, muscles contracting under electric stimulation, but she fell back, as limp as before.
June checked again for a pulse, but shook her head. “Still none, sir.”
Then fuck it. They couldn’t wait any longer. Macintosh reached over and pulled the biggest syringe from his medical kit. He yanked the cover off. They either brought her back now, or not at all. “Get a blood transfusion ready.” They had to get her breathing on her own long enough to transfer her to the medical bay. It was impossible to continue CPR during the trip, but if they could just get her there, the life support machines could take over and keep her alive long enough to operate.
From the corner of his vision, Admiral Gives watched Macintosh line the adrenaline shot up above the left side of Robinson’s chest. The Admiral could give the affair no more attention than that, ignoring all the noise as he waited for the Startraveler Aurora’s response. Perhaps his tone had caught them off-guard, or perhaps they were simply debating their options. Either way, he was in no mood to be patient while they plucked flowery words out of the dictionary and strung them together with artificial sweetness that tasted real to all but the most jaded people. “Aurora, I would advise a direct answer, else I may be inclined to disregard it – and you – entirely.”
The answer came quickly this time, the light-delay of the radio transmission aside. “Admiral Gives, your presence has been requested in Citadel City by Her Majesty, the Eternal Empress of the Cassiopeia Coalition. The Aurora has been sent to escort you.”
The Eternal Empress? There were hundreds of nations under the umbrella of the centralized government. They varied in size from parts of a continent on a shared world, to being independent stations or asteroids. The more prominent countries covered entire worlds, or solar systems. A few spread beyond that, branching out into multiple star systems – and the Coalition was one of those. He knew little of it beyond its size, rumors of its wealth and that its leader was known as the Eternal Empress.
Every nation had a seat on the council – the rule-making and governing body of the centralized government. That seat was either held by an official selected specifically to relay matters between the centralized government and their own nation, or by the de-facto leader of the nation itself. Those leaders varied widely in nature. Most were elected presidents or ministers, sometimes dictators, religious leaders or monarchy-empowered kings and queens. Near as any outsider knew, the Coalition governed on a monarchy, the Eternal Empress its head. However, the nation was distant from most of humanity’s other worlds, and notoriously isolationist. When the council gathered, the Coalition’s seat often sat empty, and it was one of very few nations that never requested fleet patrols. The Coalition had gone so far as to reject Command’s offer to station ships there. As a result, Admiral Gives had never been there. “I question why the Eternal Empress would seek the presence of a known fugitive, Aurora.”
“I cannot speak to Her Majesty’s intentions, Admiral, but I should clarify that while she seeks an audience with you, your entire ship is welcome. You need not come alone. It would be our honor to escort the Singularity toward our sovereign space.”
Now, that’s interesting, the Admiral thought. Why would an isolationist nation that had previously refused Command’s patrols want the Singularity in their space? The ship was an outlaw now, and if welcomed by the Coalition, then that was treason against the centralized government. The entire Coalition could be labeled as a separatist entity, an enemy to the central worlds as the Singularity now was. Admiral Gives could see no benefit that the Coalition stood to gain. Even in the obvious answer that this was a trap, the Coalition would gain nothing. Sure, they could attempt to seize the Singularity, but that would give them one ship. If the Coalition sent a simple request to Command, as many as six battleships could be dispatched there within the day. Even after Reeter’s coup, Command would be quick to respond to such a large and wealthy nation. If the Coalition was perhaps aiding Command in the Singularity’s capture, it still made little sense. The Coalition had never wanted to interact with the centralized government before. Why would that change now? Try as he might, Admiral Gives simply couldn’t make sense of it. “I will take Her Majesty’s offer into consideration.”
“Are you refusing the Empress’ generous hospitality?” the reply came tinted with confusion, and slight offense.
“Not entirely,” the Admiral answered. “Hold your position, Aurora. If we decide we are interested, we will contact you.” A game of patience might help reveal their true intentions.
“Understood. Please consider our offer as one made in goodwill.”
Sure, the Admiral thought bitterly. “Lieutenant Gaffigan, if they twitch, sink them.” Alleged goodwill or not, they were too vulnerable to take chances at the moment. Still, if the Aurora waited, if they reacted with patience rather than pushiness, that could be a good sign.
The presence of the Cassiopeia Coalition’s flagship could not be disregarded. Having commanded the Singularity during her own reign as flagship, Admiral Gives knew that gesture should not be overlooked. National flagships rarely left their sovereign borders. They often only did so to act as escort for their governmental leaders. The Coalition had sent theirs far, far beyond their borders in direct search for the Singularity. Likely, the Coalition wanted the Singularity for something, but what? Such a wealthy nation had no need to claim the ship’s bounty, and they had no obvious need for the ship’s fighting capability either, so what was it they were after?
He shook the questions from his mind and strode across the bridge, then up the stairs to the raised level of CIC where the comms console sat. A bullet had bored into the back of the console and a few of the indicator lights were flickering, but everything seemed to be in working order. He flipped a few switches, enabling the communications system’s recorder. The recorder would log and store every communication the system overheard: everything from background noise to adjacent communications would be filed.
The Singularity’s comms system was one of the ship’s more complicated systems. It enabled everything from general radio transmissions to the faster-than-light subspace links. The electronics and controls that made it work were at once more delicate and more sensitive than any component of the ship’s main engines. Consequently, the system could detect and trace communications in almost all spectrums across nearly the entire solar system. Catching and processing that much data at a constant pace would have been unsustainable, so the recorder was kept off until the communications officer happened upon an anomalous signal worthy of further study. With no one manning comms at the moment, everything would be grabbed for further study, including every transmission the Startraveler Aurora made. That, of course, was the Admiral’s interest. If the Aurora was transmitting to anyone, he wanted to know. With proper analysis of the recordings, they would be able to identify the contents of the transmission, and more importantly who it had been sent to.
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As the Admiral had dealt with the Aurora’s intrusion, Doctor Macintosh had not taken even a moment of his attention off of Robinson. With a steady hand, Macintosh pushed the needle past the outer layer of skin, deeper and deeper, applying careful negative pressure to the syringe as he went. When blood began flowing freely into the volume of the syringe, he pushed down the plunger, injecting the adrenaline directly into the heart. He then removed the needle and set its bloody length aside to restart CPR, trying desperately to restart the rhythm of Robinson’s heart. Her chest caved unnaturally now, ribs fractured, if not broken, but that was repairable. That could be healed. Brain death could not.
Macintosh pounded on her chest for two long minutes, bending over to continue rescue breathing at the necessary times. Even without a response, he’d continue for another eight. The full effect of adrenaline took effect anywhere from the instant it was injected, to up to ten minutes later. Luckily, two minutes of beating on Robinson’s chest was all he needed. As he finished one chest compression and tensed for the next, her brown eyes shot wide open and she heaved in a gasp – her first living breath in over ten minutes.
Then she began to scream – a horrible, keening wail of agony that echoed off the semicircular walls of the bridge. The scream was so loud, so pained, even Macintosh flinched away. There was no doubt that breathing or feeling anything in her condition – several broken ribs and an untreated bullet wound in her abdomen – was misery, but she didn’t stay conscious for long. She took another breath, and let out another scream, then collapsed – suffering, but clearly breathing once more.
Without wasting another moment, Macintosh and June rolled Robinson onto the nearby stretcher. The stretcher was light and could be carried between two easily, but it was also equipped with a battery pack and anti-grav plating along its bottom. The same plating ran through the Singularity’s hull, isolating the artificial gravity field. On the ship, it kept the generated gravity from bending light and increasing detection. On the stretcher, it enabled one person to lift up and push the stretcher back to sickbay with ease. “Go,” Macintosh ordered June, “get her on life support and prep for surgery. I’ll be right behind you.”
June took the stretcher, now floating weightless with its patient, and hurried out of the room. Macintosh then moved toward the center of the room and inspected Kallahan. His leg seemed to have stopped bleeding, the bandage wound tightly between his armor was not completely soaked. “Can you walk?”
“I’m not leaving,” the Marine said, pointedly picking up his rifle. “I’ll sit here and wait for the next son of a bitch.” And this time, he’d be ready.
Macintosh knew better than to argue. He turned instead to the remaining crew. “Anyone else need attention?”
A chorus of nearly uncertain, “No, sir,” answered him, and Macintosh decided to let it slide. Another medic would be sent up when they had one to send. They would see to Kallahan and anyone else as long as they weren’t immediately dying. Most of the bridge crew looked a bit banged up, and certainly frightened, but none as worse off as Galhino. She sat staring emptily at the puddle of blood on the floor beside the sensor console, arms violently shaking from both exertion and terror.
When Admiral Gives descended from the upper level of CIC and joined him in the center of the room, Macintosh nodded to Galhino. “Keep an eye on her.” This kind of trauma, of being forced to break a lover’s ribs to try and save their life, of being the one who arguably should have taken that bullet… It damaged people badly. There was no telling how she might react when the shock faded.
Admiral Gives only nodded. As inclined as he was to ignore Robinson and Galhino’s relationship, there was no denying it made this situation a hell of a lot worse.
“You did the right thing,” Macintosh told him. It was clear by the blood coating his hands, that he had tried to stop the bleeding. “It wasn’t pretty.” Resuscitations never were. “But you bought her time.” CPR was something of a cruel necessity. It injured the patient, but could ward off brain damage just long enough. “Her odds aren’t good.” Robinson had been dead for several critical minutes. “We’ll operate, do what we can, but…” Well, it usually didn’t go well when the patient had already died once. Macintosh would have put a reassuring hand on a friendlier officer’s shoulder, but he didn’t even consider touching Admiral Gives, just told his stony expression, “You gave her a chance.” In this situation, that was the best anyone could do. “Call Nurse Sanchez back. I’ll need her and June for this.” Robinson’s condition mandated his two most experienced nurses.
“Consider it done,” the Admiral said.
“And have you decided what’s to be done with him?” Macintosh inclined his head toward the unfamiliar body lying near Kallahan.
“Prep cold storage,” the Admiral ordered. Dissecting the corpse might answer some questions. With the way he had handled the gun, “I do not believe he was a pirate.”
Macintosh scowled at the implication, but withheld further questions. “I’ll send someone up to collect him when I’m able.”
“That will suffice,” the Admiral told him. “Go tend to your patient.” He could handle things here. That was, after all, his job.
Macintosh’s perpetual air of displeasure strengthened, but he turned and followed the stretcher to sickbay without further comment.
Admiral Gives watched his white coat vanish around the corner, then returned his attention to the radar screens. As instructed, the Aurora had come no closer. That, in the Admiral’s consideration, was a good sign. If they were willing to wait, then they were willing and wanting to negotiate, even if he still hadn’t quite figured out what they were after. It had to be something pertaining to the ship, but what? Or, perhaps, since they’d requested his presence before inviting the ship, they were after him?
Those were contemplations for another time. Admiral Gives hit the button on the comms headset that allowed him to transmit to the away team. “Lieutenant Sanchez, report to the medical bay. I repeat, Lieutenant Sanchez, report to the medical bay.” He considered for a moment, then realized they were in dire need of a replacement communications officer as well. “Additionally, Ensign Wilder to the bridge. I repeat, Ensign Wilder to the bridge.” Wilder was the next most experienced communications officer on the crew roster.
That taken care of, the Admiral moved on to the next order of business: the gunman’s corpse. He had barely taken a knee beside it when Colonel Zarrey came barreling onto the bridge, the deck plates shuddering beneath his footfalls.
“What the fuck happened?” the Colonel demanded. “Dear stars, that’s a lot of blood.” It was everywhere, splattered and smeared across the radar console, pooling on the floor in multiple places. Bloody smears colored the sensor console’s control knobs and keys. Still, the Colonel moved past it, taking inventory of the crew left on the bridge: Alba, Walters, Jazmine, Gaffigan, Owens, and even Kallahan were all sitting with their attention on the situation around them. Only as he stepped further onto the bridge did he see Galhino, still hunched over and trembling as she stared sightlessly at a darkening pool of crimson. The iron scent of it was overpowering the waning smell of gunpowder. “Robinson?” Zarrey asked, realizing the Admiral had the comms headset on.
“Alive,” for now. Admiral Gives didn’t divert his attention from the corpse. He knew time was limited to get answers. The Aurora could move at any second, and there was still the unknown matter of a Hydrian AI. Its core had not yet been found on the station. “You are supposed to be guarding our guest, Colonel.”
“For fuck’s sake, Yankovich’s team can handle the stars-forsaken lizard. You need all the help you can get up here.” With Robinson down, Galhino in that condition, and Kallahan immobilized, the bridge was three crewman short of what had already been a skeleton crew. Setting his own rifle aside, Zarrey sat down beside the Admiral. “This the shitbag that did it?”
“Yes.”
“You kill him?” Zarrey questioned.
“Yes.”
“Good.” Zarrey contemplated the man’s face for a moment. Damn, “It’s always the handsome ones.” This man was good looking – or had been until his neck got blown open and two more bullets to the chest turned him into a corpse. “Best looking pirate I ever saw.” Usually, the pirate underlings were rather unkempt. The lifestyle attracted odd ones – those like liked to flaunt their wealth like the Baron or those that put it toward less traditional uses like body modifications.
“I do not believe he was a pirate,” the Admiral said. “He handled the gun too well.” Admiral Gives had been in the fleet a long time. He knew what military training of all varieties looked like. “He was trained on that weapon.”
Zarrey picked up the rifle that had fallen beside the gunman and checked the chamber. Empty. Every shot in the clip had been fired, but it was the standard-issue Marine rifle. He pulled at the strap, picking through the nylon weaving to look for embedded wires. “Doesn’t look like one of ours.”
“Likely, it was Sergeant Cortana’s.” The rifles that belonged to the Singularity’s Marines had wire embedded in the strap. It wasn’t obvious unless one knew to look, and served many uses, but the important detail was that coming from Command, Cortana’s rifle would not have that wire embedded.
“Oh,” Zarrey said, putting the rifle aside. “I’ll get someone down to replace her at the airlock.” Cortana would likely get her wish: the young Cadet Santino would take over for her there. “She dead?”
“Unknown.” The Admiral didn’t bother to pretend he cared about Cortana’s fate as he patted down the gunman’s corpse. He found little in the gunman’s pockets, just a handful of small tools and a tiny flashlight meant for electrical work. Those tools could belong to any spacer and his clothes were also decidedly average, a plain shirt and thick cargo pants held up by suspenders. He had no ID on him – not uncommon for those working in the underworld, but Zarrey was right, the man had a nice face. The Admiral didn’t consider the corpse handsome in the slightest, but with the exception of a slightly crooked nose, the man’s face was perfectly symmetric. He had no scars and no hairs out of place on his brows. Pulling an eyelid open, he could see that the man’s eyes were brown, the most common, the most average color coupled with a face that was quite decidedly not average. “His appearance has been corrected.” It had been artificially tailored, as was traditional in the wealthier central planets. Later, other alterations had been made to make his perfect face blend in with the rest of humanity, resulting in a slightly crooked nose and average eye color.
Zarrey tilted his head, reconsidering the handsomeness of the corpse. “Well, that’s cheating.” No wonder he was so attractive. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but not many citizens of the central worlds become pirates.” And those that did wouldn’t bother altering their faces to blend in. The citizens of the wealthier worlds took pride in their perfect appearances.
Pulling at the gunman’s clothes, Admiral Gives checked over the man’s skin for any obvious marks or tattoos – any identifying features on an appearance clearly tailored to look average. Everywhere he touched was still getting slightly stained red. The color still caked his fingers, a constant reminder of what this gunman had done, but the corpse’s now lukewarm skin was unmarred by ink or scars.
‘Check the wrist.’
The Admiral stiffened a bit as the ghost made her presence known. She’d been unusually quiet, and even now, felt unusually mute. Perhaps that was grief, or perhaps it had some other cause. ‘I did.’
‘Check again. Knead the flesh. Feel for an implant.’
He didn’t question it, just picked up the gunman’s hand and prodded the flesh for a moment. So soon after death, no rigor mortis or bloating had set in. The hand just felt slightly cooler than it should have. Feeling nothing unusual on that hand, the Admiral set it down, and pressed at the other. This one didn’t feel quite the same. It had an extra veiny texture and a slight, nearly unnoticeable bulge. ‘There’s something here.’ And it was something that would have been missed in a usual autopsy. The wrist wasn’t a common place for implants, and this one didn’t feel rigid. It didn’t feel as though it were made of metal. It felt strangely fleshy, so it may not have shown up on the usual imaging done with an autopsy either. ‘What is it?’
‘An implant. I don’t know it’s purpose.’ The ghost had never seen its kind used or removed. With such subtle integration, it may simply be the ID marker the Admiral had been looking for. ‘But I can tell you what kind of people carry them.’
‘Government agents.’ He had been almost certain of that since he’d seen the gunman handle that rifle.
‘Yes,’ she confirmed. ‘That man is an Indigo Agent.’