Meloira Sector, Battleship Singularity
The ship’s chief engineer, Chief Ty greeted Admiral Gives at the airlock, the round helmet of his environmental suit tucked under his thick, muscular arm. “Sir, this truly was not an emergency. You did not need to come immediately. I simply thought you should see.”
“Show me the issue,” the Admiral told him.
“Issue is really too strong a word, sir,” Ty said. “There’s nothing explicitly wrong. It’s just that it’s not right.”
“Chief, I have very little interest in debating vocabulary at the moment. You deemed that I should see this firsthand, so here I am.” That, coupled with the ghost’s distress – which seemed a rather diplomatic term for her recent behavior – had brought him here in less than half an hour. Crossing such proportions of the ship’s length and throwing on an environmental suit in that time was something of a feat, but he’d sped up the process by not properly resizing the suit. He’d gotten it close. No competent spacer would spacewalk in an ill-fitting suit, especially into a damaged area where passages would be irregular and jagged edges might snag loose suit material. The environmental suit he’d donned was a little loose in some places, uneven in others, and it was not as comfortable as it could have been, but it would serve his purposes. “Lead the way, Chief,” he instructed.
Pulling the helmet over his head, the Admiral clicked it into place then checked the gauge on his arm before issuing the final pressurization test. The suit puffed up a little, but didn’t squeal. No air was escaping across the rubber surface of the suit or the seals between the suit-body and the gloves, helmet or boots.
In front of him, Ty pulled the round helmet over his head and ran the same checks. When he was ready, he turned to the Admiral. “Do you need any refreshers on spacewalking, sir?” he asked, voice now coming over the short-range radio equipped in his suit.
Admiral Gives quirked an eyebrow. In fairness, he could not remember the last time he had taken a spacewalk in Ty’s company. He would sometimes accompany the chief engineer for a hull inspection, but had not done so since Ty had taken over the position. As far as Ty was aware, he had not been on a spacewalk in months, so it would have reflected poorly for him not to ask, and then let the ship’s commanding officer get himself into trouble. That all said, Ty was used to officers that never bothered to leave the bridge. “I took a solo spacewalk less than twenty-four hours ago, Chief.” There would be no need for Ty to flit around him like a worried mother hen. To punctuate that, Admiral Gives reached over and punched the airlock controls, beginning the flush.
Ty recoiled a bit, “Yes, of course, sir. I did not mean to insinuate any incompetence on your behalf.”
“You insinuated nothing, Chief. You were doing your job. That is all I ask.” No insult had been implied, simply caution.
Ty nodded, the subtle movement nearly lost in the bulk of his environmental suit.
No further words were exchanged as they waited for the airlock to cycle. As the air was removed, the background noises of the ship began to sound distant and tinnier, now conducted to the air in the Admiral’s suit through the contact his boots shared with the deck. So acclimated to the background whisper of the air circulation systems and the hum of the engines, Admiral Gives did not appreciate the change, but if he withheld his breath, he could still pick out the Singularity’s usual sounds.
The indicator on the airlock went green and gravity released them. It was a gentle release, like the unwrapping of a comforting hand. The transition invoked a strange sense of vertigo, as if he were drifting free and soon to fall, but Admiral’s magboots keep him firmly affixed to the deck.
Ahead, Ty took a big step, and began to open the outer hatch. This airlock led to the space between the hulls, not to the ship’s exterior, and ordinarily, environmental suits may not have been required. The area between the hulls could be pressurized and heated to allow maintenance, embarking and disembarking, but this exact region of the ship could no longer be feasibly pressurized – damaged in the raid against Crimson Heart. That was not uncommon. By very nature, the ship’s primary outer hull, adorned with heavy armor, took physical damage. Its very job was to absorb damage and then be repaired. Punctures happened in combat, but the secondary inner hull, that which contained the ship’s living spaces and precious atmosphere were kept protected as much as possible.
Ty stepped across the threshold and the Admiral followed him, pausing only to seal the airlock behind them for someone else’s use. They had exited the ship’s interior in an area adjacent to the damage. It was never wise to trust an airlock in a damaged region of a ship. A malfunction could trap repair personnel and equipment or jeopardize the neighboring areas by leeching air. As such, the repair crews had to travel from the airlock to the areas requiring repairs. That walk could be lengthy, but was shortened as initial repairs and inspections were made on closer airlocks.
Ty took a few steps out onto the catwalk that ran between the inner and outer hulls. The mesh surface of the path was sparse enough to see through, but strong enough to provide a magnetic grip for his boots when he stopped and pointed up and to the right. “This way.” Twisting his mag-anchor to activate it, he threw it up onto the shape of the interior hull, then kicked off and reoriented himself to land and continue walking on the hull’s surface.
Admiral Gives followed, tossing his own mag-anchor up near where Ty’s had landed. He pushed off, making a point not to look down below. It was a pointless discomfort, given that there was no gravity, and without gravity he could not fall, but it always took him a minute to adjust to that realization – a fault of his planetary heritage he supposed. The space stretching out below him, crisscrossed by structural supports, was deep enough to have no visible end, a tribute to the ship’s massive size. After he landed in his new orientation, however, those dark depths became an open sky, and each beam a supporting branch of a towering forest. Everything truly changed with perspective.
Reaching down to retrieve his mag-anchor, the Admiral rested his hand upon the ship’s secondary hull. It did not have the paint layer that the outer hull did, left unadorned except by the beams and struts that emerged from its surface. The largest of those protrusions were the ship’s superstructure, a massive and irreplaceable skeleton. The superstructure, perhaps the most important part of any ship, was formed of continuous beams. It had been the first thing laid, and the decking, primary systems and supporting structures had all been inserted around it. The inner hull had been built within that structure, no small feat of its own in the way it sealed around the structural beams and provided all the necessary heat and radiation shielding.
The Singularity’s inner hull alone was far thicker than any civilian ship’s and was plenty enough to protect the ship’s internal systems and crew. The outer hull, which adorned the Singularity’s armor, added another magnitude more protection, but it was the inner hull that held the atmosphere and kept conditions survivable for the crew. It was the inner hull they owed every breath to, yet contact with it wasn’t the steady affair Admiral Gives expected.
The surface of the hull was shaking, nothing so severe as a shudder, but a subtle tremble that he could barely feel past the thick gloves of his environmental suit. There was always some degree of movement aboard ship: vibrations from the engines or other equipment, small shifts from acceleration or strain recovery. Admiral Gives could place those movements, those sounds, but this wasn’t one of them. It was new, unhealthy. He was certain it had not been there even a few minutes ago. “Chief, I ordered you and your teams not to proceed with repairs.”
Ty turned back to look at him, already a few steps ahead. “We haven’t, sir.”
“Yet something has changed.”
Ty regarded the Admiral’s crouched positioning. He seemed to have found something, but Ty would be damned if he could see what it was. “I don’t understand, sir.”
You are not meant to. Was that not the entire point? Was that not the secrecy the Admiral strove for and cloaked his intentions with? Admiral Gives added a bit more pressure to his contact with the hull, as if that motion would comfort a machine a million times his size. Hold on, old friend. He would sort this out.
Straightening, the Admiral motioned Ty onward. “Let us proceed.”
Ty stared at him for a moment, probably trying to make sense of his behavior, but eventually turned and continued his trek along the hull. He moved a little faster, probably intent on making sure none of his teams had disobeyed the Admiral’s orders, but he made the pace look effortless.
Hurrying in magboots was no small feat. There was a required rhythm to the magnetization and demagnetization of the boots that could not be disrupted, and hurrying often slowed a spacer more than simply keeping pace would have.
Making repairs to the ship, Ty certainly had a lot of practice spacewalking, and he had a height advantage the Admiral didn’t share. Keeping up with Ty proved to be a bit difficult, particularly in an ill-fitted suit, but the Admiral managed. The effort earned him a few blisters on his feet, but it wasn’t as if he could pause to readjust his socks in the vacuum. The boots had to stay sealed to the suit, and the blisters dealt with later.
Ty led them toward the ship’s bow, into an area where the damage became obvious. Floodlights had been installed to illuminate the region, casting everything in clear white light. The outer hull, resting above them in their current orientation, had a gap. Hours ago, it would have been a gash with nasty, jagged edges blown inward from missile detonations, but the debris had been removed, edges smoothed and prepared for welding. A new piece of hull material would be grafted on, armor added on top, and the interior structure would be straightened and rebuilt as necessary. It was a familiar procedure to all battleship crews, and the Admiral could see the repair teams around. The oily sheen on their environmental suits didn’t blend in with the nearly matte dark gray of the ship’s metals. They were hauling material in, preparing tools, checking dimensions and verifying drawings, but they were not interacting with the ship herself. They were abiding his orders, with one exception.
A tall, bulky figure knelt before one of the structural supports, using two gloved fingers to paint an intricate rune upon its surface. Ty led them to the same support and grabbed the figure’s shoulder, “Damn it, Havermeyer. You’re slated to be in the engine room.”
Havermeyer calmly finished the rune and murmured a prayer within the private confines of his helmet before turning his mic back on. “I had Malweh take over. I needed to see this for myself.”
There was air of wonder to his tone, which the Admiral elected to ignore, focusing instead on the symbol Havermeyer had drawn. The pigment was gold and glittered heavily in the light, a holy color, but the pattern, formed by intricate swirls and circles, was none that he recognized.
“Did the others not tell you we were at a stop?” Ty asked. “You know we respect your beliefs, Havermeyer, but we were ordered to halt repairs.”
“I have made no repairs,” Havermeyer told him. “I have simply come to honor my Saint.”
“Why?” the Admiral asked. He considered himself to be somewhat familiar with Havermeyer’s beliefs. He had thoroughly vetted the Technologist faith before allowing a tech-monk on board. In general, Havermeyer’s faith had little effect on his work. He offered prayer to his saint in words of gratitude or encouragement, and created art to honor her service, but mostly practiced his faith through exceptionally detailed repair and maintenance. Skipping steps and cutting corners was a cardinal sin to the tech-monk, which the Admiral would agree upon, but this behavior was new. Admiral Gives had never known the tech-monk to mark the ship with ritual runes, and while the Admiral was quite certain that Havermeyer would never bring harm to the ship, he did wonder if the monk’s attention might be worsening the situation. The ghost had never been comfortable with the ship’s status as a Technologist Saint. Given the ship’s deadly service in the Frontier Rebellion, she argued it was undeserved. Admiral Gives disagreed, but also knew it was not a welcome debate. In the end, he had allowed Havermeyer on board not because of he revered the ship, but because the monk was utterly loyal, and a bit of loyalty was always useful.
Havermeyer rose to his feet, now recognizing who stood in the suit beside Ty. “Has he not told you?” he asked, meeting the Admiral’s eyes through the faceplates of their helmets. “You, surely, would want to see this for yourself as well, for I know we are not so different.”
His voice held onto its whimsy, its awe, and the Admiral did not find himself appreciative. “No one has told me anything,” he said icily.
Even the cold in the Admiral’s presence could not dampen the Havermeyer’s admiration as he answered, “We have been blessed.”
And you’re about to be blessed by an order, the Admiral thought darkly. “Explain.”
“The railgun damage, sir. It revealed something to us,” Havermeyer answered. “Saintess de Ahengélicas, I believe her soul may have manifested a miracle.”
A miracle? Given recent events, Admiral Gives very much doubted that, but he did note that Ty was not disagreeing with Havermeyer’s interpretation of events. Yet, what sort of miracle manifested from a railgun strike? The Admiral glanced upward. The beam that Havermeyer had marked, a direct support to the ship’s overarching superstructure was roughly six feet across, not the largest the ship possessed, but no small joist either. It was tall enough to easily shadow them all from the floodlight placed beyond, but it had been holed. The hole was so clean it looked to have been drilled – a perfect circle. Other holes sat fore or aft of it in a perfect line. If he had lined up to look through it, he could have seen clear to the stars in either direction. Fortunately, the railgun strike had traveled at an angle, neither parallel to or perpendicular to the ship’s main structure. It had hit at a slight angle, and the ship’s battle armor had redirected it further. In the end it had travelled less than a third of the ship’s length before being shunted out. Still, it had holed or taken pieces out of any support that had been in its way, the one ahead of him included. This one however, had also been cut. The material remaining between the hole and the edge had been removed and anchored to the hull beside the base of the support. That was not so unusual, in fact, nothing about this was too unusual. The ship had suffered railgun impacts before. Railguns were some of very few weapons that could reliably penetrate a battleship’s armor, and had been a favorite of the separatists in the Frontier Rebellion.
“The miracle in question is this, sir.” Ty waved the Admiral over to the material that had been cut out of the support. He pulled his electronic torch from his tool belt and clicked it on, shining it onto the dark gray metal.
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The Admiral took care to study it. The cut edges of the material were smooth, and the part of the railgun hole that had been removed with it was clean. It looked as he would have expected it to. “This looks to be in good condition, Chief.” There were no obvious fractures, and there was no sign of oxidation or other chemical reaction.
“Yes, sir. It is in good condition. That’s the point.” Ty reached down to the edge of the material. “A support like this flexes a lot. It gets compressed in FTL, put into tension during other accelerations, and bent in battle. To some degree, it’s designed to do that. These supports flex so the primary superstructure doesn’t have to, and they’re not necessarily meant to be permanent.”
“Humanity has been building ships this way for hundreds of years,” Havermeyer interjected. “The Saint of Blue Infinity’s design used the same principle. It is rare a combat ship survives long enough to see it, but these supports fatigue out, and they get replaced, protecting a ship’s superstructure in the process. Given Saintess de Ahengélicas’ combat service, long and storied as it has been, we expect to see elements of fatigue. That would not be a sign of failure. That would not be a sign of disappointment. It would make her no less worthy. And yet,” Havermeyer smiled, “surely you can see what is missing?”
Ty readjusted the light of his torch, showing off the cross-section of the material. “Fatigue lines, sir. There aren’t any.” The extra light of his torch showed the dark gray metal was all a uniform texture and finish, no signs of the rings or layers that indicated an approach toward fatigue slip and failure. “The material looks brand new.”
It was an oddity. The Admiral would give them that. He was well-versed in astroengineering, particularly in the Singularity’s case, and knew very well that the ship, in most considerations, was not and should not appear to be new. “Have you verified the age of this support, gentlemen?” Many repairs had been made to the ship over the years. Battle damage may have forced its replacement not all that long ago.
“Yes, sir,” Ty answered. “This particular support is original. Repairs have been made along its length, but the support has not been replaced in its entirety. And this section,” he gestured up to the hole left by the railgun, “has been straightened on several occasions, but never otherwise damaged. Here,” he gestured lower, to a point just above Havermeyer’s rune, “there should have been a scar. The repair records indicate that a piece of this support was carved out during a battle in the Frontier Rebellion. It was filled in, but there isn’t any sign of it. We anneal the filling, sir, ensure that the metals graft fully to one another and sometimes retemper it, but it’s never perfect.”
“Those scars should be visible.” Admiral Gives knew that. Those scars weren’t signs of weakness, not if the repair was done properly, but they should have been visible, and the support before him didn’t have any indication of a repair done at any point. With the exception of the recent railgun damage, it was smooth, the material perfect, too perfect. “Is there any chance our repair records have an error, Chief?” Perhaps a repair never had been made there.
“I thought so too, sir.” Ty said. “So I pulled the records for the nearby supports and had them checked.”
“And?” the Admiral prompted him.
Ty made a motion with his hand, as if to scratch his head, but his hand bounced off the round shape of his helmet. “They’re the same, sir. They’re all the same. I had the crews spot-check them all over the ship. They’re all like this. Forward, aft, port, starboard, hell even the engine anchor points. The latest repairs are there. Anything less than ten years is decently visible, but the rest… It’s like they were never there. There’s no sign of fatigue, either.”
Ten years, the Admiral thought. That was a long enough period for the engineering crews to not personally recall the exact location where repairs had been made. Most crew didn’t stay longer than ten years anyway. This could have been going on for years. Until damage as clean and deep as a railgun impact brought it to their attention, the crew would never have noticed. “If the supports are not fatiguing, then the superstructure should be inspected.” Perhaps it, contrary to the intended design, had been flexing while these supports weren’t. “If it shows any sign of fatigue from the supports not properly flexing…” Admiral Gives trailed off, unwilling to entertain the thought. Fatigue on the superstructure would be fatal. There could be no undoing that. Ships did not recover from that.
“I had it checked, sir.” Ty said, eyes glimmering with the same understanding and concern. “The superstructure is in perfect health. The entire ship seems to be in perfect health, excepting her most recent wounds.”
“That does not make sense,” Admiral Gives said. He had an admiration for the ship. She was exceptionally strong and reliable, but he pushed her hard in combat, and stars, she’d seen two of the worst wars humanity had in its collective memory. He placed his trust in the ship, knowing that she had scars and would eventually require a structural rebuild and realignment. That was no betrayal to him, simply expected maintenance.
“Does it have to make sense, Admiral?” Havermeyer inquired. “Nothing is impossible aboard a Saint.”
“Your faith maintains that there is a logical explanation for every occurrence aboard a machine, does it not, Ensign Havermeyer?”
“Yes, sir, it does-”
“Then find me an explanation, gentlemen.” The Admiral gestured to the chunk of material cut from the pillar. “Take a piece of that to the material lab. Have the science teams verify its properties against what the alloy should be.”
“You believe the alloy has changed, sir?” Ty asked. “I’m not sure how that could be possible. We are very careful to mind the quality of the material we use for repairs.” Metals of substandard quality would be a poison, turning the ship’s bones brittle. As much as Command would have liked to give the ship cheaper material for repairs, even they had understood that switching alloys would have risked a slew of issues, not the least of which involved galvanic corrosion.
“Something has changed,” the Admiral said simply. “This entire ship recently took a blast of heavy radiation in the Kalahari Sector.” The lingering burn injury on his hand would not allow him to forget that. “The radiation from the nuke may have triggered a chemical reaction.”
“I would doubt it, sir. The metals that comprise this ship are rarely found in such purity. They are favored precisely because they are not reactive,” Ty said. “But we will look into it.”
Havermeyer turned once more to the nearest support, reaching out to trace a hand along its surface. “The explanation may be beyond our ability to understand, Admiral. There is nothing wrong with that.”
“This is not one of your sect’s ancient Saints, Ensign,” the Admiral told him. “This is not some lost technology. We are talking about our ship.” My ship. “We do not have another. If we fail to understand her needs and properly take care of her, then we shall be without one.”
“Perhaps this is not about our care for her, sir.” Havermeyer’s voice came softly for such a big man. “Saintess de Ahengélicas is a warrior. This is an unusual calling for a Saint. And yet, what could a warrior want more than to never be removed from the battle? To never tire of the fight?” It was a miracle indeed. “Her structure untarnished by age, untouched by fatigue. By some method, her warrior spirit has manifested this. A blessing to us. A blessing to you.”
Havermeyer paused with his hand upon the surface of the beam, looking once more to the Admiral. “Has she not delivered upon you what you most need, Admiral? A blade that shall never dull?”
Admiral Gives glared at the monk. For all the pretty words and untarnished faith Havermeyer offered, he suddenly understood why the ghost felt so uncomfortable in his company. “This ship is more than a weapon.”
“True," Havermeyer agreed. "She is a starship. One of the most complex machines ever built by human hands. I do not believe any of us can claim to know her as well as she likely knows us. She has seen our waking and sleeping moments, knows the needs of our lungs and bodies, but none among us can know so much about her. Each of us knows some of her systems, but none of us can imagine the picture it paints – how she must see the worlds, how she strives to fulfill her mission down to the first electronic impulse or optical command that initiates it. Though we have built her, she is beyond us. There is no shame in that, so long as we maintain our understanding, of not her every machination, but of her intent. That is understanding we must protect.”
Then we have already failed, the Admiral thought. This could never be about the continuation of the fight. This ship had done so much more than wage battle. She had escorted refugees, ended famines, cured plagues and protected every wayward soul that made its way into her care. No, this could never be about the fight, because wars were a means to an end, never the end in itself.
Stepping past Ty and Havermeyer, the Admiral reached out to the support. It was hard to know if he’d ever seen this particular beam before, or if it simply seemed familiar because he’d seen hundreds more just like it. I know why you’ve done this, old friend. It was an attempt to protect, to ensure these wayward souls never went without a home. It was not the reasoning behind this anomaly that concerned him, it was the method. He had seen evidence of fatigue on this ship, identified and treated it with his own hands. To find it all had disappeared… Something had changed, something had been done, and somewhere a price had been paid.
One of the thousands of anonymous beams that supported the ship’s superstructure, the beam was smooth to the touch. It was free of obvious flaws or cracks that would serve as stress concentration factors and lessen its loading capacity. Unpainted and untreated, this support, like all the rest, was entirely reliant upon the strength of its build alloy, a dark gray metal with a nearly matte finish.
Admiral Gives studied the support from the damage high above him, to the strangely unblemished surface before him. It was quite the contrast as he lowered his gaze to where the support met the deck. The junction should have been flawless, flush and free of obvious gaps, leakages or corrosion, and it nearly was, save the wriggle of movement that caught the light.
He knelt to inspect it closer, trying to identify the movement. At first, he thought it dust, or moisture, small and strangely tinted when it caught the light. Yet, the moment he reached out, the particles scattered, squirming away like inchworms before a flood. Only then did he realize what he was looking at: neurofibers. Thin, and a semitranslucent white, they barely poked above the surface level of the hull. They were an odd length, but their movement concerned him more. He had seen the fibers move before. In the compartment that contained the Black Box, they never seemed to stop shifting, but they did not scatter when he stepped near them. They didn’t slither away elsewhere on the ship when repairs were made. They weren’t skittish, or shouldn’t have been, and yet… Here they were, wriggling away, and pressing anything left of their length into the surface of the hull to hide.
He stayed there for a long moment, just watching, and the fibers began to calm. It’s alright, he encouraged them. He expected to see the neurofibers here. Whether they were seen or not, they were present everywhere on the ship. That was their very purpose, and the very thing that made them so potentially dangerous. If the Box and its fibers turned hostile, there was nowhere to hide. That threat lived vividly in the minds of the crew because of what they had seen on the Matador. He could not regret rescuing the Matador’s surviving crew, but a part of him wished his own crew had never witnessed that grotesque madness. Perhaps then they would not be so immediately inclined to see the Box as a threat.
It was shy at first, timid and uncertain, but a few fibers began to inch back toward the Admiral’s hand. They hesitated, cowering in a way that he could only describe as fear, but eventually, a single one, so thin it was barely even visible, reached out to probe his glove. When he didn’t flinch away, a few more joined it. It was nothing hostile. Their touch was so gentle he didn’t even feel it until they began to wind around his hand in greater numbers. That contact too, was nothing forceful. The fibers’ pressure was very gentle, so gentle he knew he could have removed his hand at any time. Yet, there was something about the way they moved, the way they gathered to him when he didn’t flinch away, it was almost as if they were seeking shelter.
The Admiral didn’t understand why until a shadow fell across the beam and he heard Ty curse. “Naddlethworfing beezlenac, sir, hold on.”
Before the Admiral could protest, Ty pulled a plasma torch off his tool belt and ignited it. Its arc of blue plasma ejected neatly from the tip. He swung it downward, carefully but quickly moving toward the neurofibers.
Havermeyer stopped him halfway there, grabbing his wrist. “Don’t.”
“Let go,” Ty hissed. “Just look at those fibers.” They shouldn’t be so active. They shouldn’t be moving – not on a ship where the system had been installed decades ago. “We need to cut them.”
Havermeyer raised his free hand peeled Ty’s finger off the torch’s trigger. The plasma ejection died out in silence, taking a blazing source of light with it. “I will not allow you to harm my Saint.”
“For the sake of the stars, look at the way it’s reacting to him,” Ty argued. “The fibers should have no interest in people.” Now, it was latching on, a few degrees shy of delving below the skin like the Matador’s Box.
“She’s not hurting him,” Havermeyer said.
“The Black Box is not a part of the Singularity. Do not allot it the same respect you allot her,” Ty replied, jerking his hand and the torch free of the tech-monk’s grip.
“Simply because it was not a component when she launched does not mean it cannot become one. If this component aids her functionality, then it is worthy.” Havermeyer placed himself deliberately between Ty and the fibers. “My people have never seen a Saint with the complex self-awareness that these neurofibers offer. They may prove to be another way of expressing her gathering soul. It would be a disrespect to deny her that, particularly if her reaction is nonviolent.”
“This is not the Matador,” the Admiral found his voice once more. It had been taken from him in the way the fibers reacted to that torch, tightening around his hand the way someone clung to a person they thought would protect them. That had taken him aback, due in part to the reaction itself, but also because nobody reacted that way to him. Nobody ever even touched him if they could help it. That was not surprising, and usually, he preferred it that way. But this… This was a part of his ship, a part of the one entity that he truly considered a friend. He knew how it looked. The fibers’ movement was an anomaly – a possible warning sign of the cataclysm dreaded by all spacers. Ty was right to be afraid because he didn’t have Havermeyer’s faith or the Admiral’s knowledge, and yet, “This ship should have earned your trust.” She had seen them all through so many battles, proved herself more than worthy.
“I’m not questioning her, sir, but you know that I worked research and development at Command. These fibers… They are experimental technology. They should never have been installed upon a combat ship, especially one that wasn’t originally designed to house them.” Ty had seen the remains of the Matador and its crew. “I’ve visited other ships, and compared to them, the growth of the Singularity’s Box has gotten rather prolific. We’re seeing more neurofibers now than we ever used to.”
The Admiral caught sight of something he hadn’t initially seen, buckled down to the deck behind the chunk of material that had been carved out of the support. A bundle of fine white fibers was folded up and secured so that their length did not drift freely without gravity. The bundle was as big around as his forearm and had far more ashen color than those that held his hand – dead. “You cut them.”
“Yes, sir,” Ty confirmed. “We needed clear access to the support, especially given the anomaly in the material. We’ll have to do the same for the others.”
Closing his hand carefully around the neurofibers he held, Admiral Gives turned to look at the next support in the damaged line. Holed clean through by the railgun, he could see now, in the lighting of the floodlights the repair crews had put up, that it was webbed with neurofibers. The next one down was the same way. The fibers hardly blocked any view of the material, their webbing sparse and thin. They may have been in the way of a weld, but would have been easy enough to move aside. However, that wouldn’t have been the engineers’ first instinct. They, terrified of what the Box represented, would have cut them.
“They don’t regrow if you cut them with a plasma torch,” Ty said proudly. “It should keep them permanently out of the way.”
The Admiral knew that very well. There had been a time when his standing orders were to cut the neurofibers with a plasma torch wherever they were found. He’d even held the torch himself, but that had been a long time ago, back when the Box was nothing but a parasite that threatened the autonomy of his ship. Now the Box was a part of that ship – a part of the very thing that he cared most about in these worlds. The bundle of fibers secured to the waved slowly, the energy they had been set down with yet to dampen out. They were grayed and dead, not at all like the translucent white ones he held, but as he looked upon those dead fibers, they weren’t evidence of some technological threat, they weren’t some spare material cut off and set aside, they were the mutilated nerve endings of a friend.
It took most of the Admiral’s self-restraint to keep his voice calm. “Chief, pull your teams back aboard. Give me an hour.”
Ty furrowed his brows. “Sir?”
Slipping his hand from the neurofibers’ embrace, the Admiral stood and yanked the inactive plasma torch from Ty’s grip. “Give me an hour. I will take care of the neurofibers.”
Havermeyer stiffened, seeing the torch in the ship commander’s hand. “Admiral, you cannot be intending to cut those fibers-”
“What I intend is not your concern,” Admiral Gives cut him off. “Go with the others. Do not make me repeat myself.”
The tech-monk would not be dissuaded, “You must not cut those fibers, Admiral. It would be a betrayal to Saintess de Ahengélicas. She is still learning. Until we know that the Box harming her, we must treat it with respect.”
Don’t talk to me about be betrayal. Admiral Gives dropped his tone straight into menacing, “Leave.”