Meloira Sector, Battleship Singularity
The ship’s morgue was an unfortunate necessity.
It could never be anything other than that.
It was a drab room. The length of the longest wall was lined with cold storage tubes layered together in a honeycomb pattern. Each tube was large enough for one corpse. Before decomposition could set in, they were laid upon metal trays and slid into the tubes. The cold preserved them as they were, whether that was for investigation or to be prepared for formal burial.
Civilian ships were never designed with such facilities, but military ships required them. Even without the instance of a proper war, military ships saw a fair amount of danger. They were destined to lose crew, even if it was only through police or exploratory work. The Singularity had never been an exception to that. In the last month alone, due in large part to the nuke that had hit the ship in the Kalahari Sector, the Singularity had lost thirty-two crew members. In such cases, the recovered bodies had to be stored somewhere.
The ship’s morgue served that morbid purpose, concealing the dead from the eyes of the living, and the deplorable nature of that function showed in all aspects of the room. The lights were more hesitant to turn on, and the air tasted staler than elsewhere on the ship. The room had an inescapable chemical funk, and Admiral Gives had never been certain if that came from the disinfectant sprayed on the storage trays or if it was some strange preservative in the tubes’ preservation system. It wasn’t the sewer-stench of organic decomposition, but it stifled the air nonetheless.
Walking along the long wall of storage tubes, the Admiral located the active one and undid the latch. All the other tubes were empty. The dead from the nuke had been turned over during the ship’s last resupply. He wanted to believe those corpses would be returned to their families or given proper burial, but he doubted Reeter had been so kind. More likely, they had been tossed in the incinerator aboard Base Oceana.
Pulling the storage tube’s door open, a small cloud of freezing fog escaped into the air, neither worsening nor alleviating the scent of the room, only adding a physical chill. With his gloved hand, the Admiral reached in, took hold of the storage tray and yanked it back. It slid out along the rails it was mounted on, stopping when the track ran out and the corpse was presented in its entirety.
The Indigo Agent’s body had been stripped of his clothes and covered in a white sheet. The clothes had been taken elsewhere for examination and afterward, if their material was deemed fit, would be recycled.
Presented like that, the figure beneath that white sheet could have been anyone. The Admiral tried not to recall just how many bodies he’d seen stored like this – how many he’d come to observe in this very room. They blended together at times. Once the sheet covered them, they looked much the same, but there always exceptions. Brent had been one of them.
Admiral Gives remembered every detail of that corpse. He’d demanded to see it, ordered the sheet to be removed, and spent over an hour memorizing every aspect of Brent’s mortal wounds. A crushed and leaking skull, the contents gelatinizing upon the cold storage tray. The purple and green bruising of the abrasions on his neck. Admiral Gives had burned those sights into his memory to convince himself that Brent was well and truly dead.
And he had been.
At least, the Admiral had thought so, but the day’s events had called that into question, for there was no doubt in the Admiral’s mind who had possessed his body on the bridge. Every bit of that presence, down to his sickening laugh, had been Brent. There was no question of that, only the question of how that was possible.
The ghost had tried to tell him, even warned him that Brent was still here. He had brushed it off, assumed she spoke of trauma. Stars, he felt like an idiot now. He should have listened more closely, paid more attention. The ghost had never recovered from Brent. Her inability to forget what he’d done to her would have made that difficult, but there was more to it than that. He could see that now.
Perhaps that should have been his first priority, but it couldn’t be. The requirements of command did not allow that, which was a mercy, for Admiral Gives had no idea where to even start on the topic of Brent. The discussion necessitated a degree of gentleness, and gentleness had never really been his strength.
Compartmentalize, he reminded himself. Potential threats to the ship had to be handled before anything else, no matter how personal the matter. That had always been the arrangement. It was not meant to be cruel, not meant to deny healing, only ensure there was time to do it right. The ghost would understand. But then, she always understood. They had been through all of this before, even Brent, so he focused again on the threat the Indigo Agent presented.
The spy had turned an odd color since his death, though the Admiral couldn’t quite determine why it was so odd. The corpse’s face had not otherwise changed. A square jaw and strong cheekbones, the slightly crooked angle of his nose was his only flaw. Without question, his appearance had been artificially ‘corrected’ to match the standards of the central worlds. After that, Command had modified his nose to help him blend with those born outside the central worlds’ borders. The illusion worked. The man was left handsome, but not flawless enough to draw attention.
“We need to talk,” the Admiral said, not to the corpse, though he didn’t pause his study of it.
“…I didn’t sense him.” The ghost took form in the furthest corner of the room, cowering from it and all it represented. She hated it here, though she knew the circumstances could not be helped. “I don’t understand,” she said quietly. “I should have sensed him, felt his intentions.” What use was her invasive telepathy, if not that? Why was she forced to hear others’ thoughts if in this one situation she was deaf? “I should have been able to warn you.”
The Admiral paused his examination of the corpse, and looked to her, sensing distress. “This was not your fault,” he told her trembling figure. There had been a dozen other matters upon which to divide her attention.
“But I should have been able to warn you.” If she had just managed that, just managed for once to function wholly and cohesively, she could have warned him, and he could have protected the crew.
It was odd that the spy had managed to slip past her perceptions aboard ship, but it was not impossible. “Your attention was elsewhere.” The ghost was powerful, but not all-knowing. Aboard ship, she had a very intricate perception, but was not omnipresent.
“Don’t.” She shuddered. “Don’t make excuses for me.” She didn’t want to be excused or exempt. “If it had been one of the crew, you wouldn’t have instantly forgiven them.” The scolding they would have received for this kind of mistake would have been harsh. In fact, when Sergeant Cortana woke in the medical bay, having been dragged there by the engineering crew that found her beside the airlock, the scolding she would receive for her role in this tragedy would be harsh.
“They’re not you.” It was as simple as that. “We know Manhattan can harden personnel against your interference.” They had learned that from the boarders in the Wilkerson Sector. “It would be logical to assume she can similarly harden them to your perception.” Though telepaths were rare, Indigo Agents were surely trained in how to subvert telepathic detection.
The ghost shook her head. “Not here.” She was at her most powerful aboard these decks. “I have more than my telepathy here.” She had negligible sight in the visual spectrum, but there were other more reliable ways to determine presences. “I should have heard him. I should have recognized the power draw on the life support systems. I should have felt the micro-gravitational effects of his mass. I should have been able to warn you.” If she had, maybe Robinson wouldn’t be in the medical bay, barely clinging to life. “You could have died, Admiral.” He was only alive because Kallahan had yanked him out of the way and the spy had declined to shoot him while he’d been pinned below Kallahan’s weight.
“It’s not your job to worry about me.”
“But I told you that you would be safe here.” She had assured him that, and it was an assurance he held close to the heart. When the entire ship was threatened, of course he wasn’t safe, but she had sworn to derail plans of assassination, manipulation and abuse. Here, he was supposed to be free of those things – the overall welfare of the ship his only concern. That had been fair. That had been right.
“I am safe here.” As safe as he really cared to be, anyway. “Nobody’s perfect. We all have weaknesses. We all have blind spots. We just need to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” If they ever suffered another attack like that, half the command staff could be wiped out, and they didn’t have officers to spare.
“I will pay greater attention to detail. I will study life support, analyze the microphone data as closely as possible.” This would never happen again.
Paying that much attention to her surroundings, that could be maddening. Relentlessly studying what she usually comprehended as background noise would be destabilizing, even painful. That was like asking a human to look ahead, but never blink. “I won’t ask you to do that.” There were other ways. She should not have to stress herself to that degree. “We merely need to figure out why you didn’t perceive this agent.” He turned again to the corpse on the table, contemplating how to ask the doctor to do a thorough investigation without revealing too much. Perhaps it would be easier to do it now by himself. Then again, if any of the crew found him digging around in this man’s skull for reasons he refused to divulge, it would probably not reflect well on his sanity.
She read the dilemma. “I have spoken with Doctor Macintosh on several occasions, Admiral. I do not believe that requesting a cranial autopsy would prompt him to ask questions about your reasoning. He is aware of my perceptions.” Macintosh realized in some part that her perception was beyond the human senses, though he hadn’t asked any questions about the specifics.
“Then I will make the request. For now, I would ask that you sharpen your awareness if we dock. We don’t need another surprise, but out here it’s just us and the crew.” There was no call for concern. Someone would have to catch them to board, and having made an untraceable subspace jump from Crimson Heart’s base, that was unlikely.
“I understand,” she nodded. “And Admiral,” she said, pausing until he looked at her again, “thank you.” He gave the time and consideration to understand, to truly understand. He never asked for anything that might hurt her, anything that strained her unless it was absolutely necessary. Even when she suggested or agreed to it, he worked to avoid her pain. “Thank you for caring.” His predecessors had never shown her such consideration.
“Don’t thank me. That’s my job.” She was a part of his crew. She, like the rest, was his responsibility.
Even so… She was grateful. This man included her in decisions, asked permission, even valued her voice in these complicated times. The others had never been like that. She hesitated to say it, but the words were honest. “I’m glad you’re alright.” That was something to be thankful for, even in this despicable room.
Don’t get attached. That was the reply he should have given, but it didn’t reach his lips. Her eyes weren’t the cold steel of a weapon. They shone with all the kindness and honesty that characterized her more than anything else. It was as calming now as it had ever been. As much as he shrugged it off in front of the crew, the truth was that the attack on the bridge had shaken him. He’d had brushes with his mortality many times before, but that never made it easier. A sudden attack on the bridge that he’d commanded for nearly three decades, feeling one of the ship’s officers bleed out beneath his hands… Those were things that made trauma, things that broke people. And though he may act it, he wasn’t immune to that, but she was still here, still kind. She still cared. He knew the response was shallow, it was the best he could muster. “Thanks.”
The reply surprised her for a moment. She had been expecting that same old lecture. Though the response was curt, there was a depth to it and a very real gratitude. Perhaps he couldn’t speak to it, but it was there. Out of respect for her, for the complications that might result, he tried not to encourage her attachment, even tried to discourage it. But times like this, times that his normalcy was yanked from beneath his feet, it was nice to know that someone, anyone cared. She softened her gaze, looking upon the face of the one that called her a friend. Of course I care about you. She only wished that it could be less complicated. He took care of her, and she tried to take care of him in return – even if he often wouldn’t allow it. “I’m here, Admiral.” She wasn’t going anywhere, and she could assure him that. “If you ever want to talk…”
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“Thank you,” he replied sincerely. She meant well, of course. But all her patience, all her kindness, all her support, it just reminded him who she was: how she could never hurt him even if she wanted to, how she could never escape her servitude even if she tried, and how she had no choice but to endure whatever complaints he summoned her to hear. She was at his mercy every moment of everyday, and yet, she still cared for him. Somehow, she still managed not to see him as some cruel overlord. Too often, he wondered how much of that was the mission she’d been forged to complete, and how much of that was truly freewill. He supposed she herself may not know the answer to that.
To distract himself from that contemplation, the Admiral lifted the sheet off the corpse’s arm and picked it up by the wrist. The implant was still there, a noticeable bulge on the wrist – more noticeable than it had been before.
Admiral Gives traced over it again, certain. “It’s gotten bigger.”
The ghost tilted her head, confused. “The implant?”
“Yes,” he said, carefully feeling out the edges of the implant. Before, its veiny texture had vanished into the flesh of the wrist. It still did, but the veins were now larger and more pronounced beneath the corpse’s cold skin. That already concerned him.
And then he felt it move.
It was a small shift, just a little wriggle below the skin, something unnatural moving within the corpse’s flesh. He dropped the spy’s arm and looked to the ghost. “Switch this compartment to local life support and activate the decontamination filters. I don’t want this air mixing with the rest of the ship.”
“Aye,” she said, watching him stride across the room.
He picked up the handset on the wall and dialed the medical bay. “This is the Admiral. I need Doctor Macintosh in the morgue. Send him with a biohazard response team.”
The response was immediate. “Yes, sir.”
He hung up, then tried to wipe his hand off on his pants. He couldn’t feel any residue, but studied it all the same. “I should have worn a glove.”
The ghost watched him for a moment, a shadow of concern on her face, but eventually just told him, “You’re an idiot.”
“Well, I know that now, thank you.” How often did corpses present threats? It wasn’t like he’d been contaminating evidence. Both he and Zarrey had searched the corpse on the bridge without gloves. Of course, the implant hadn’t been moving then. “Anything in the air?”
“I would have told you if there was,” she answered. “But knowing these agents, it is wise to exercise caution.”
The ghost lingered for a moment more, then vanished.
Doctor Macintosh and his party arrived a few minutes later, clad in rubbery environmental suits that recycled air internally. They took sample upon sample from the air, swabbing parts of the corpse as necessary. They fussed over the Admiral too, checking his temperature and examining his eyes, skin and breath for any anomalies. Admiral Gives was patient with them as they did their work, and after an hour, they were satisfied.
“No sign of contamination, sir,” Macintosh announced, pulling the helmet off his suit. “Why the scare?”
“The corpse still has active implants,” he informed the doctor. “I am uncertain of their purpose.”
“Active implants?” the doctor asked. “Are you sure?”
“Feel his wrist,” the Admiral said. “The implant has grown since his death, and it is moving.”
Macintosh scowled skeptically, but picked up the corpse’s hand anyway. He felt at it for a moment, but sure as the stars, felt the slight writhing beneath the skin. “That’s not normal.” Implants typically ceased function when their host died.
“I am aware,” the Admiral said. “The growth and texture,” a veiny web-like shape, “led me to believe it may be organic,” hence the biohazard potential.
“Hm,” the doctor thought for a moment. “This may not be a contamination potential now, but if it continues to grow, it may rupture the skin.” For now, the corpse was containing it, but they couldn’t expect that to last. “We got off light during the raid - only a few wounded. The nurses can handle them. With your permission, we’ll seal this up and transfer it to the biolab. I’d like to conduct an autopsy as soon as possible.”
“Granted,” the Admiral said. “Try to identify the nature of the wrist implant and check for cranial implants. Take all possible precautions and alert me when you finish.”
“Aye, sir,” Macintosh said, turning his attention to the corpse laid upon the stainless steel tray.
The Admiral watched them shimmy the corpse into a biohazard containment bag, but it became clear his presence was no longer needed, so he left. Picking a random direction out of the morgue, he walked for a while, contemplating where he might be needed next, but paused when he realized his feet had taken him back to the corridor that held his quarters. He hadn’t purposefully come here, which meant that the ghost had guided him here. ‘Not funny,’ he told her.
‘You should rest,’ she said gently. ‘Doctor Macintosh is working on the autopsy now.’
There was no need to properly numb the patient before an incision if they were dead, so the autopsy wouldn’t take long. Admiral Gives wanted to be available the minute it ended, so it was best he not dedicate himself to repairs or interrogating the Hydra quite yet. ‘Fine,’ he said, taking the last few steps to his quarters. He could admit that he was beyond exhausted. His hand-eye coordination seemed to have recovered, but that didn’t mean he felt good. His head still hurt, and no matter how many times he washed his hands, he couldn’t seem to wipe the warm slickness of Robinson’s blood from them.
Spinning open the hatch to his quarters, the room smelled of greasy sausages and toast, both of which were now sitting cold on his desk – the breakfast his assistant had brought for him before the mission. He moved the plate aside, too disturbed to consider eating, and pulled out the ship’s leatherbound logbook.
It was the duty of the ship’s commanding officer to detail the ship’s actions and usage in the ship’s log. There would be other, more detailed reports of the day’s events, but the ship’s log was supposed to contain the high-level summary. It was written out daily, even on the most boring patrols. It was a rather mundane task for someone who had been doing it for well over two decades, so it hardly surprised the Admiral when the sound of the handset ringing on the wall jarred him awake less than two hours later.
He sighed at the half-complete log, closed the book, and picked up the call. “This is the Admiral.”
“Good. Come down to the biolab,” Macintosh’s voice answered. “I’m happy to report there’s no sign of biological contamination, but you’re going to want to see this.”
“I am on my way.” With that, Admiral Gives replaced the handset and stood. His back protested the motion a bit, having slept hunched over at his desk, but he stretched, smoothed out his uniform jacket and delayed no further.
The walk to the medical bay took him down one deck and slightly further aft. The medical bay was busy, but not with combat casualties. There had been surprisingly few of those – a few scrapes and bruises, a concussion and a sprain, but only a handful of injuries required any observation by the ship’s medical staff. In the end, most of the mission’s injuries had been jammed fingers and pulled muscles caused by shoving around cargo containers in a hurry. Those small needs were addressed as much as any other to keep the crew in fit condition, but were not life-endangering. In the end, Lieutenant Robinson had been the most severely injured crewman. Most likely, she would end up the mission’s only loss. Other commanders may have taken pride in that. To only lose one crewman on a mission where so many things had gone awry was a feat worthy of recognition, but Admiral Gives resented that. To lose even one crewman meant that he had failed his objective – that he should have taken other or better means to prevent that loss.
Robinson lay behind the drawn curtain in the corner of the medical bay, sustained by the life support machines. He glanced in that direction, but did not pause as he made his way toward the ship’s biolab.
Tucked behind the sterile surgery rooms of the medical bay, the biolab rarely saw use for anything but the most vile situations, and now was no exception. The room was negatively pressurized so that when he opened the door, air was sucked in and not transferred out, but the smell hit him almost immediately anyway. Metal and meat, there was the twang of disinfectant and an undertone of something else, a milder, less offensive chemical flavor.
Doctor Macintosh stood over the body in a rumpled white coat, a dour look upon his face. The spy’s corpse had been laid upon an examination table, an absorbent pad beneath it. An environmental suit hung on the wall, freshly worn.
His hands shoved into the pockets of his coat, Macintosh didn’t bother to correct his slouching posture as the Admiral approached. “What do you know about this man?” the doctor asked.
“He is an Indigo Agent. One of Command’s spies,” the Admiral answered.
“His implant told you that?”
“Effectively.”
“Well, you’re probably right.” He gestured to the corpse, cut open from the collarbone to the lower abdomen. “This man’s implant is nothing like anything I’ve ever seen. And notice, I did say implant, singular.”
Admiral Gives observed the body. Familiar already with the red bullet wound on the shoulder and the spy’s mangled neck, he looked higher. Incisions had been made on the top of the man’s head. The skin peeled way like a flower and the skull sawed open. “You found no cranial implants?”
“I didn’t say that,” Macintosh said. Turning to pick a small tub up off his tool cart, he set it down in front of the Admiral.
Riddled with chunks of viscera and gore, the little hairlike fibers squirmed. They were too thin to be worms, almost too small to be seen amidst the flakes of pinkish-gray brain matter and thickening fluid. It was almost as if the flesh itself were trying to knead back together, but in the bright lights of the lab, the fibers could be seen twisting through the mess, reaching out. They were starting to prod their way up the metal walls of the tub, searching for something to connect to. “Neurofibers,” the Admiral recognized them.
“Yeah. They look organic. They’re made out of nonmetal compounds, but they’re still artificial.” The doctor gestured vaguely toward the corpse. “Before I pulled them out, his body was riddled with them. The wrist implant seemed to be the hub, but his brain was netted with them too.” They had been threaded through his flesh like thread through fabric. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The central worlds were working on applying neurofiber technology for medical purposes, but this, this is something else.”
The netting of the brain could have acted like a faraday cage, not allowing telepathic thought to escape. Detection of such energies was beyond the range of human tools, but telepathy was still a form of remote sensing. There were ways to block or interfere with it, but suddenly that wasn’t the Admiral’s main concern. No, his concern was these neurofibers. They were invasive. Aboard ship, they penetrated everything, harvesting data for Command’s Black Box.
“You have a theory on what this implant does?” the doctor questioned, reading his silent study of the fibers.
“Knowing what these fibers do to machines, I suspect this implant aids in the information recovery of lost agents.” If the fibers had integrated with the agent’s brain, the implant could track the mission and status of the agent. “Likely, the growth triggered by the host’s death was meant to break free of the body and integrate into whatever system they find around them. Command, in tracking their agent’s demise should find them eventually and learn the agent’s cause of death.”
“So if we’d left him in storage, they would have grown into the Singularity?”
“Most likely.” There wouldn’t have been any other system to target, and the cold storage tubes where corpses were held until burial would not have contained the fibers’ invasive capability. Perhaps, that had been part of the agent’s mission. In death, perhaps he was intended to carry new orders to the Singularity’s Black Box or integrate with the ship in some other fashion. Or perhaps his orders had simply been to execute the ship’s senior staff and handicap their operational ability. Either way, the Admiral’s instincts were screaming to get that thing off the ship. “Seal it up,” he ordered.
“We should be able to contain it, now that we know what it is and what it was meant to do-”
“No.” The Admiral turned his voice cold. “Seal it up. Send it out on a Warhawk and order the pilot to dump it in the star’s gravity well. Scan the carrier Warhawk before it touches down and then again after. If it has any sign of neurofiber integration, have the pilot bail and dump the craft. I will not chance this implant contaminating the ship.”
“We should be able to contain it for study,” Macintosh said. “We could learn a lot about Command’s objectives and technology levels.”
“I will not condone the risk.”
“What risk?” Macintosh argued. “We’re already surrounded by neurofibers. A few more won’t change our fate. Rumor has it the Singularity’s Black Box doesn’t function anyway.”
“I trust this ship, Doctor.” She would never hurt her crew. “But that agent’s implant is a corruption incident waiting to happen.” Even if it wasn’t meant to be harmful, even if it was simply a memory recorder, he could not chance it integrating onto the ship. There was no telling what that might do to the ghost. Would she be forced to assimilate those memories? Memories of absolute loyalty to Command? Memories of being shot and killed by him? Would it alter her personality? That one that looked so devoutly after her crew?
The Admiral’s instincts told him it was a threat – a dire threat to the one entity that he considered a friend, so it had to go. “Get it off my ship,” he commanded the doctor. “I will not risk her to this.”
Even if that implant had no memory data at all, even if it was only meant to integrate and identify where the agent had died, it was still a threat. Any type of neurofiber integration risked exposing the condition of all the ship’s systems, and he couldn’t allow that. Not to Command, not to anyone.