Meloira Sector, Battleship Singularity
“Can I go now?” Sergeant Cortana asked for the fifth time.
“You know what,” Doctor Macintosh said, yanking the stethoscope out of his ears, “fine. Just don’t come bitching to me if you start dying.” Shoving the stethoscope into the pocket of his wrinkled white coat, he grabbed the rest of the swabs and equipment he’d been planning to use and threw the curtain open. “If you feel you’re well, then you are free to go.”
Thank the stars. Cortana swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, all too eager to leave. The doctor’s countenance was less than gentle, though in fairness, she’d never met a gentle fleet doctor. They were hardy people, tempered by the combat wounds they dealt with. Still, she was certain that Macintosh had kept her in the medical bay far longer than necessary. Despite the rude awakening she had suffered a few hours ago, and a throbbing headache, she was uninjured and eager to leave the medical bay. The cheap, scratchy sheets left her skin irritated and the reek of disinfectant was inescapable. Still, the doctor had not agreed to release her, citing that she may have an allergic reaction to the chemical that drugged her.
Maybe he was right, but Cortana would do anything to leave the medical bay. It was practically empty. She was one of only two patients that had needed a bed. Others had stopped by to get patched up: have their wounds sanitized and bandaged, but they had been walk-ins that promptly walked out. Every time the nurses finished with one of them, they had looked to Sergeant Cortana, and then to the curtain drawn in the corner of the room.
The medical staff never said anything. Perhaps that had made it worse. She might have preferred them to be rude, to be judgmental. The fact that they had looked after her with gentleness and kindness frustrated Cortana to no end, because she knew, given the way they looked between her and the gray curtain drawn in the corner of the room, that they blamed her. They blamed her for the fate of Lieutenant Robinson, and Cortana despised the reminder of it. She hated the look of that plain shale fabric, and the way it hung off the rail so limply and lifelessly, like the comatose body of the Lieutenant behind it.
Leaving the medical bay was Cortana’s way of distancing herself from her role in Robinson’s fate because, truly, it bothered her. Why had she been so clearly spared by the Indigo Agent when Robinson had not?
It didn’t make sense. As she left the medical bay, absently trying to rub the strange ache out of her wrist, she rounded the corner into the corridor and immediately bumped into someone. The surprised squeak, a rather pathetic sound for any member of a battleship crew to make, told her who it was before she had the chance to recognize more than the orange technician’s jumpsuit. Dark skin and spiky, short brown hair pulled back into an inelegant ponytail, the perpetrator was young and small. “You.” Again. What was it with this particular crewman always being in the way?
Springing backward, Callie Smith ducked her head. “I’m sorry, Sergeant! I didn’t see you coming.”
No shit, Cortana thought bitterly. Admittedly, she hadn’t been looking where she was going, but the corridor was otherwise empty. There was no reason this engineer should have bumped into her. “Why are you here?”
Callie took a few steps back, quite obviously trying to put a few of the textured deck tiles between them. “Sorry, Sergeant… I’m not sure I understand the question.”
She spoke quietly, and with an uncertainty that Cortana immediately resented. In the Marines, uncertainty was beaten out of recruits within the first week. There wasn’t any room for it. “This entire crew is made up of miscreants.” People that had been transferred here after making trouble on their last assignment. “What was your crime?” What could this tiny engineer have possibly done? She looked hardly older than her teenage years, twenty at the most.
“This was my first assignment, Sergeant.”
“Bullshit.” There was something about this engineer, something strange. An Admiral wouldn’t repeatedly come to the defense of a nobody, especially not an officer of Gives’ reputation. There had to be something Cortana had overlooked, but Smith was so very plain. She was small, young, and had no obvious anomalies about her. She had brown hair and brown eyes, the most common hair and eye colors. “How did you wind up here?” The Singularity wasn’t an assignment given to the finest soldiers. It was a place for criminals and fuck-ups who had no where else to go. Cortana knew that as well as anyone. Her failure to protect the Secretary of Defense had landed her here.
“Sergeant, I really should be going. Please excuse me,” Smith ducked her head and attempted to scurry further down the corridor.
Sergeant Cortana slammed a hand onto the scuffed metal of the bulkhead, preventing Smith’s escape. “No,” she wanted an answer. “The Admiral’s not here to bail you out this time.” This was the one crewman that Cortana truly couldn’t make sense of. The others were friendly and colorful, more than willing to claim the errors that had landed them here. This one just seemed too innocent, and no one on this ship could be that innocent. Anyone who walked this ship’s plain, labyrinthine halls was guilty of a crime. “Tell me,” she commanded, “why were you assigned here?”
“I-I’m sorry, Sergeant. I don’t know. I was assigned here after I finished training.” The Singularity was now her home, and Callie wouldn’t have traded that for the worlds, but she was aware of the ship’s reputation. It wasn’t somewhere crew straight out of training usually ended up. Not unless there had been extenuating circumstances. Except, in her case, she didn’t know of any such circumstances.
That’s not good enough, “You’re lying.” This tiny engineer had not ended up walking these halls by happenstance. That wasn’t possible. Cortana refused to accept it, because the one thing she liked most about this crew was how flawed they were. Next to them, she didn’t feel like such a screw-up. At least she’d never actively sabotaged a mission, embezzled fleet supplies or been on trial as a separatist agent. She would never be as low as their level. After all, she hadn’t intended for Secretary Gives to be killed, nor had she premeditated Robinson’s injury. But, the perfectly young, perfectly innocent Ensign Smith threatened Cortana’s self-confidence. She was just too innocent. Her hands seemed clean of any and all blame, suspiciously so. Adored by the crew, even the notoriously uncaring Steel Prince had intervened on Callie’s behalf. The little engineer was just too perfect for this situation, for this ship, for this crew.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant,” Smith said, “I didn’t have any control over where I was assigned.” Truthfully, she thought the Admiral had something to do with it, but she hadn’t asked him directly. “I didn’t expect to be here.” The Singularity’s reputation had been abysmal in the fleet training center on Sagittarion. The ship’s crew was legendary for a lack of graceful conduct, and a lack of respect for high command’s directives. The ship herself had held a reputation as a dilapidating dreadnaught leftover from prior wars. There was some truth to the crew’s reputation, but the rumors about the Singularity couldn’t have been more wrong. That had been made apparent the first time Callie had spacewalked and seen the main battery guns.
Cortana stared at the engineer, her safety orange jumpsuit almost painfully bright against the dark ashen color of the metal behind her. “You didn’t expect to be here.” That was a strange turn of phrase. “Where did you expect to be then?”
“The Ariea.” The previous flagship and Reeter’s former command. “I interviewed with Reeter,” and that’s where I should have been assigned, Callie knew. Since tours were so long, crewmen placed in the battle fleet interviewed with perspective commanders before receiving a permanent assignment to a ship or station. Traditionally, they were taken by whichever commander came to interview them.
“You interviewed with Reeter?” Now Cortana knew Smith was lying. Reeter valued skill over everything. He never would have looked twice a young and tiny engineer. Especially not one from an overpopulated backwater planet that pumped out factory workers by the hundreds of thousands because common sense and contraceptives weren’t readily available on the surface. “You can’t expect me to believe that.” That was an incredibly stupid lie. “But, I suppose I should know better than to ask you about your background. You’re a Smith, after all.”
Callie clenched her fists. “So what?”
“You Smiths just love spinning stories about how important you are.” Each of them was always the same, desperate to be seen, desperate to be known. They were so desperate they’d weave obvious lies about who they’d met, and who they knew. “But no story is ever going to change what you are. You’re still always going to be a Smith.”
Smith – the last name given to those who entered fleet service without proper records. They were children of the state, with no family and no history, not even a surname to call their own. The formalities of the fleet demanded a name be given, and so one was. It was the mark of an orphan so completely abandoned by their family, that said family could never be found.
Most days, Smith was just a name. Callie wasn’t often bothered by it, but moments like this, even the reminder of it stung. She had lived the life of an unwanted. Unwanted by her biological family, no adoptive family had taken her out of the orphanage either. That wasn’t uncommon on Sagittarion. There were simply too many children on the streets, and not enough adopters, but it still hurt. It just hurt, the very reminder of it an open wound that never really healed. Callie could feel her eyes starting to sting. It had been a long time since anyone prodded at that wound. “I’m going to leave now.” She sniffed, and pushed Cortana’s outstretched arm out of her way, “Please don’t talk to me again.”
Don’t talk to me again? “Hey, I did not dismiss you.” As Sergeant, Cortana had authority over all the ship’s engineers.
“I don’t care,” was all Callie said.
Oh, no you don’t. Cortana would not let this juvenile little liar off that easily. “The whole crew could learn some decorum, but that’s no way to talk to a superior.” She reached out and grabbed the collar of Smith’s jumpsuit, accidentally snagging some of her short brown hair with the motion.
“Ow!” Smith cried. “Let me go!” With Cortana yanking on her collar, she lost her balance and fell against the rigid bulkhead, the impact ringing out with a low clang.
Almost instantly, the corridor filled with a terrible, grinding noise, metal grating against metal. It lasted a few seconds, but was soon replaced by someone calling from down the corridor. “Let her go, Sergeant.”
Cortana turned to see the shiny, bald head of the tech-monk, approaching swiftly in his safety orange suit, tools poking out of his pockets. “My Saint is unhappy,” he said.
Yeah, Cortana thought, join the club. “I don’t really care.” What reason did she have to care? She had been an outsider before, and Lieutenant Robinson’s imminent death would only make that more assured. It annoyed Cortana to be disappointed in that. It angered her that she wanted to blend in amongst the crew’s ranks. She shouldn’t be so desperate for the comradery of ruffians. A few weeks ago, she been one of the most promising Marines in the fleet. Now, everything about that life was gone, and she couldn’t even earn the respect of a crew half-populated by criminals.
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Havermeyer could clearly see the way Cortana had cornered Callie. Her back to the wall, the young engineer looked incredibly nervous, but Cortana didn’t seem to care. Neither of them seemed to have noticed the way the overhead lights had begun to flicker in this corridor. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Like inverted lightning, moments of darkness seized the corridor, quicker than one could blink. “Tread lightly, Sergeant,” he warned. This did not bode well. He could feel the presence of his own shadow nipping at his heels. The Sergeant’s own seemed to leer up at her, tense and unmoving.
“Don’t lecture me,” Cortana snapped. She was tired of it. That was all this tech-monk seemed to do: lecture her on his faith. It constantly reminded her that all she was allowed to do was talk about her skill. Since arriving here, she had not been given the chance to demonstrate it. Not once. She had been relegated to the sidelines in every single encounter. That, or she’d had the misfortune of encountering the Admiral, which was arguably worse. And yet, the little engineer in front of her had the gall to seek the man out and use him as a shield. Stranger yet, the Prince allowed it. “What are you hiding?” What earned this short little Ensign such treatment?
Callie tried again to duck away, simply bent down and tried to flee. She’d never been much of a fighter, always smaller and weaker than everyone. But the moment she shrunk down, trying to escape, Cortana grabbed her collar again, uncaring of the hair she caught and pulled in her grip. Callie couldn’t help the cry of alarm that escaped her as she lost her balance and fell to the floor. In the corner of her eye, she saw Havermeyer react, rushing forward, but his reaction was slow compared to the instantaneous shudder than ran through the deck. A physical tremor, Callie felt the ship’s underlying structure quake as the lights overhead failed, dunking them all into inky blackness.
The red-tinted emergency lights flickered on a moment later, but by then, they weren’t alone. A presence hung over Callie, taking form from the shadows riddling the darkened corridor. The shades clamored together, twisting and swirling into a ghastly figure that leaned out of the wall. Far too thin to be human, its arms hung to an uncanny length, digits of unknowable number twitching and phasing between existence and non-existence on their ends. The wraith reached down and wrapped its shadowy claws around Callie’s shoulders as the young engineer sat, paralyzed. Peeling itself further off the wall, it revealed two wings jutting out of its spine. Rotten and rancid, they extended back into the wall, but pieces hung loose, sloughing and peeling off – black shadows given decaying form.
The shade looked down at Callie for a moment, a veil of long, thin shadows falling forward, eldritch hair hanging off an oblong skull. It had no face, just an empty, quivering void. Shimmering black oil leaked from where its eyes should have been, running down like tears.
Callie should have been terrified. She knew that. Yet, sitting there, staring at its writhing veil, she wasn’t. The long, constantly convulsing claws that wrapped around her didn’t feel like claws at all. Upon her shoulders, its touch felt like a warm and protective hand, a gesture whose memory she couldn’t quite place, perhaps because it had never been hers to begin with.
The twisted mass of shadows turned, cocking its head and rising higher to face Cortana. The Marine blanched as it leaned closer, but it did not pry its claws from Callie. It paused there, still as a stone, silent as the breath of the dead.
…And then it screamed.
A horrible cacophony of grating metal and gears drowned the corridor, the screech so definitively inhuman it became painful to behold. Faced with the full force of its eldritch howl, Cortana collapsed. As if physically yanked downward, she lay sprawled upon the textured deck tiles, limp and motionless. The stretching and contorting form of the shadowy angel began slowly drawing itself down toward her with all the patience of a spider that knew the fly could not escape its web.
Havermeyer was frozen, his thoughts pushed from his mind by the utterly incomprehensible nature of the wraith’s eldritch screech. Astounded and alarmed, he watched the clawed figure of darkness begin to unfurl, shedding tendrils of blackness. Each and every coil that unwound reached unmistakably toward Cortana’s still figure. There was nothing to say, nothing to do, as an ooze of dark power grotesquely choked the corridor. The feel of it was rancid and wrong, clinging to everything like the stench of rot.
Then Havermeyer saw the white fibers reaching up from below. Thinner than hairs, they were a strange translucent shade, as if made formed of a ghost’s phantasmal aura. They poked through the deck, unfurling to longer lengths. Slowly, and surely, they reached up toward Cortana’s body, reflecting the shadows’ every motion. Only then did Havermeyer recognize the power saturating the air. “My Saint,” he pleaded, falling to his knees and clasping his hand around the relic on his neck, “have mercy.”
The winged shadow paused, the neurofibers mirroring it going abruptly still. Then, it turned to him, unfathomable power leeching from its very presence. It pulsed and twitched, the darkness of a perfect void bleeding from its rotten form, but then it began to retreat, retracting itself back into the wall from which it had emerged.
It slowed only once, hovering around Callie as it released her shoulders. It withdrew its claws, detouring only to scratch them along the side of the Ensign’s young face.
Yet, however menacing the movement looked, Callie felt no pain. She felt only warmth, as if someone had reached out to caress her cheek. The memory wasn’t hers, she knew. She had never known such a gentle familiarity, but it felt almost maternal. Callie was entirely unfamiliar with such emotion, but she imagined that might be how the comfort of a mother felt, soft and tender.
The weeping shadow retreated further, and looked down upon her a final time. It was a void of featureless darkness, churning, as if unknowing how to present itself, but it was smiling, a small and sad smile. There was no way to tell below its inky black tears, but Callie knew. It was a smile intended only for her, meant to reassure her – a promise that she was safe.
And like that, the weeping angel of shadows vanished.
“Saintess save us.” Havermeyer murmured a prayer, then climbed to his feet, uncertain how to process what he’d just witnessed. “Are you okay?” he asked Callie.
Leaning up against the wall, Callie nodded. “Yes.” She was completely unharmed. Truthfully, she was less frightened now than she had been before. It was clear that shadow had no intent to hurt her, however terrifying its appearance. “What was that?” Who was that?
Cortana lay on her back some distance away, cradling her face in her hands. “The ghost.” She had met that putrid spirit once before, its very sanity so obviously decaying. The sadistic presence she had seen before was now too damaged to even speak.
“The ghost?” Callie echoed. Sure, she’d heard rumors of the ship’s haunting. But they never described a winged mass of writhing shadows. The stories always described a pale, white-haired woman, one that was never described as gentle or nurturing.
“It didn’t hurt you?” Havermeyer asked again, desperately looking her over for signs of harm.
“No,” Callie shook her head. It protected me. She, Callie corrected, protected me. But why? Why would a legend known for killing crew defend her?
Cortana pried herself off the deck, still trembling. “Why does it protect you?” her voice came breathless. “Why do they all protect you?” What made this little engineer so damn special?
Callie looked up to the point on the wall where the ghost had vanished. ‘Thank you,’ she thought after it. Truly, she felt safe. Cortana wouldn’t dare raise another hand against her. Not now. “I don’t know.” No one had ever protected her on Sagittarion. But that had all changed the moment she met Admiral Gives. For some reason Callie still couldn’t fathom, he’d chosen to intervene on her behalf when he could have simply walked away. She suspected he had interfered again to get her out of assignment to the Ariea, but she had no idea why. Though he seemed more willing to interact with her than he was with others, he maintained his distance. The Admiral never spoke of anything beyond their duties and the answers to any questions she asked. Callie never pushed him. If he had wanted to speak on some other topic, he would have. The fact he bothered speaking to her at all was still something novel. After all, she was probably the least experienced engineer on the entire ship.
Convinced that Callie was unharmed, Havermeyer moved toward Cortana, scouring the area for any remaining neurofibers. They were gone, and there was no trace that they had ever been there. Yet, Havermeyer was certain he’d seen them, moving here as much as they had between the hulls. There, he had understood it. The fibers been recently severed. But here? Deep in the core of the ship in an area that never saw meaningful damage? It was strange enough they be moving at all, let alone moving in accordance with a mad telepathic presence. Offering a hand out to Cortana, Havermeyer asked, “Are you alright, Sergeant?”
Cortana glared at his outstretched hand. “Tell your devil-god to leave me the hell alone.” She wanted nothing to do with it.
“She is no god. And though I serve Saintess de Ahengélicas, I do not speak for her.” But, Havermeyer mused, I know who does. The last time Havermeyer had seen those neurofibers, they had acted differently, moved differently, but they had been in the Admiral’s presence. Havermeyer’s Technologist sect had taught that the eyes of a Saint were both blind and pervasive. At once a Saint could see everything, but fail to comprehend it. And yet, for the neurofibers to act so differently, surely there must be some comprehension, some recognition? Or perhaps this was not the will of his Saint at all. Perhaps the sacred soul of his Saint had been tainted by another presence. “Something is amiss. A Saint could not be so twisted.” The soul of a Saint was holy, the pure essence of a machine that had served humanity well beyond its intended function.
Cortana staggered to her feet, nursing her wrist. It had been irritated before, but now it was throbbing. Still, she dismissed it, inclined first and foremost to leave this hallway and these people. Surely, she had fallen on her wrist when ship’s resident poltergeist attacked her. There was no other reason it would ache so profoundly. “Saint or not, that thing is rabid.” The very feel of it had been putrid.
“It is concerning,” Havermeyer agreed. Quite simply, he had never seen or heard of anything like it, even in the ancient tomes of the tech-monks.
“Concerning,” Cortana scoffed. Easy for you to say. “That thing’s going to kill me.” She was certain of it. “Be happy you’re not on its bad side.”
“It does seem that you have repeatedly put yourself in that position, Sergeant. Were you not warned?” Had her last encounter not been a brutal warning?
“I was trying to have a conversation.” An honest one, which the Ensign seemed very intent on avoiding. “But I won’t argue the point.” Why bother? “I’m an outsider on this ship.” She had known she would be before she even set foot on board. “Nothing I do will ever be good enough,” not even nearly dying to protect the airlock. She was destined to remain an outsider. The ghost had made that clear.
“I am sorry you feel that way, Sergeant,” Havermeyer said, uncertain what else to say.
“Keep your pity to yourself.” Cortana flattened down her hair and straightened her uniform. “I’m a Marine, and Marines don’t care for pity.” Whatever social pariah she might be amongst the crew, she was still a Marine, through and through.
With that, she walked away, a sour look drawn across her face. Havermeyer admired her bravery in some ways. He was deeply disturbed by the ghost, and he hadn’t been the recipient of its ire. Still, it did concern him. Greatly. Especially now that Callie had drawn its attention. “I’m going to speak to the Admiral,” he told Callie. “You should come. He will listen to your fears.”
Sitting against the scuffed gray of the bulkheads, Callie noted Havermyer’s worried expression. “I wasn’t afraid.” The ghost had appeared threatening, yes, and her power was something terrifying, but that power had not harmed Callie. “The ghost wasn’t going to hurt me. She was protecting me.” Regardless of her appearance, the ghost had made that clear.
“You are not afraid of the curse?” Havermeyer wondered. The ghost was known to be an omen of death, after all.
“No.” Surely, if the ghost had wanted to convey foreboding or fear, she could have. Instead, the ghost had altered the feel of its presence to be comforting, even if for Callie alone. While odd, Callie didn’t want to second guess it. It was nice to feel protected, particularly by a presence so warm. Perhaps the ghost was lulling her into complacency, but on the streets of Sagittarion, Callie had learned to trust her instincts, and those instincts told her the ghost had been genuine.
“Be careful,” Havermeyer warned. “I’m inclined to agree with the Sergeant. This entity is violently unstable. Until we know more about it, it would be best to keep a distance.” Anything possessing the ability to manipulate a Saint could exploit a human with ease.