Aragonian Sector, Battleship Singularity
As Colonel Zarrey looked down from the observation platform, it was immediately obvious that some disturbance had occurred in Compartment 24. Metal deck pieces were displaced and scattered about the room. A thick wire ran across the deck to a strange piece of equipment, and the ship’s commander lay sprawled on his back a couple of steps from the unfamiliar device.
Zarrey took off running, his headache and nausea instantly forgotten. “Admiral!” he called, thudding down the metal mesh of the stairs. Jazz, Galhino and Alba darted after him.
On the ground floor, Zarrey careened to a stop so suddenly that the others nearly ran into him. Despite how it had first appeared, the Admiral was not alone. A white-haired woman stood above his unmoving body. Colonel Zarrey met her eyes, a colorless, lifeless gray. “Witch.”
Her face never twitched, but a flicker of abhorrent power flooded the air as she took a half-step forward. The hairs on the back of his neck danced a warning. His very instincts whispered incessantly: run, but he met those dead gray eyes with all the anger he could muster. “Back off, ghost.” He lowered his voice to a growl, and took a step forward, “He isn’t yours for the taking.”
She, no, it, stared at him, unfocused eyes boring deeper into him than anything should have been able to go. It probed his thoughts, sliding coolly across them like the dull edge of a knife on skin, dissecting, studying. Then, that foreign presence pulled away and its thin lips curled into a small, knowing smile.
Silently, it stepped back, alien satisfaction soothing the goosebumps on Zarrey’s skin. Intent stirred in its empty eyes, and slowly it raised a hand of long, pale fingers.
It moved no further than that, but the gesture was clear. Take him. Zarrey blinked in surprise, finding that he could swallow on his dry throat for the first time since he’d recognized this presence. Its power had fled the air for now, so Zarrey shifted his focus to the Admiral’s limp form. His wounds were obvious: burns, a bloody hand tied in a stained kerchief and a swollen, oozing leg. The sickly color of his skin contrasted the black spider webs of grotesquely swollen veins. Blood poisoning. That alone was enough to make his condition severe, and that discounted the messenger of death lingering nearby. I don’t give a damn what you are, he glared at it. “I swear, if you hurt him in any way, I will personally exorcise your ass back to hell.”
Expression drawn as blank as a porcelain doll, it seemed uncaring of Zarrey’s threat. Slowly, its steel gray eyes shifted from Zarrey to the bridge crew behind him, and then finally to the man on the ground.
‘They will take care of you,’ the ghost promised him silently. My obligation is complete.
Without warning, it vanished, robbing the air of the uncanny warmth that had tainted it. Zarrey hardly even questioned it, dashing to the Admiral’s side. He expected to find the man dead where he lay. That presence, he and the three officers behind him all knew exactly what it was: the Singularity’s Ghost. It? No, he supposed since it always presented as female, it was a she, and she was known for killing off wounded crew. Finding that legend standing above the Admiral meant the man was probably dead.
Yet, the ship commander’s chest was rising and falling shallowly. “He’s alive,” Zarrey breathed, at first unsure if he believed it. But that uncertainty was quickly replaced with frustration. Oh, who am I kidding? “Wake up, asshole! You owe me one hell of an explanation.”
Galhino came up behind him, noting the extent of the black veins on the Admiral’s neck. “Stage Three blood poisoning,” she announced. “With the blood loss, it might even be Stage Four. He’ll die without immediate treatment. And even then, he might die anyway.” Blood poisoning was extremely difficult to treat, especially once it progressed that far.
“Guess that explains the ghost.” Jazz said, his voice lacking all traces of its usual humor.
Zarrey ignored him. “How did it get so severe?” The rest of the bridge crew, including the Colonel himself only had radiation sickness. Radiation poisoning, let alone the blood poisoning had not set in on them.
“It’s a side effect of physically exerting oneself in an irradiated environment,” the sensor officer answered, then gestured to the state of the room. “If I had to guess, doing this is what did him in.” The deck tiles were hefty, and quite a few of them had been scattered.
Reminded of the room’s condition, Zarrey looked around, but found his gaze locked on the space the ghost had disappeared from. What the hell was going on aboard this ship? For the first time in a long time, Colonel Zarrey felt he did not have a clue. But now was not the time for such thoughts. “Alba,” he snapped, “What the hell is that?” He pointed to the machine humming in its spot under the deck.
“It appears to be a power core, sir,” Alba answered shallowly. His empty stomach churned uncomfortably, squeamish at the sight of the Admiral’s bloody wounds.
“I can see that, Alba!” Zarrey shouted, his thunderous volume pulling the engineer out of his shock, “But what the hell is it doing here?”
“Unknown, sir.” Alba said.
“Figure it out,” Zarrey ordered. “I doubt that it was intentionally built into the flooring.” He motioned to Jazz, “Help me take the Admiral to the medical bay. You two,” he glared at the remaining bridge officers, “Stay here. See what you can learn about that core, and make sure it’s good to go. We’re going to need it for a while longer.” Judging by what he’d seen on the walk down, repairs to the ship could take weeks, if it was possible at all out here on their own.
“Wait,” Galhino protested, not wanting to be left here, “what if the ghost comes back?”
“What? Are you scared, Galhino?” The helmsman crossed his arms. “She didn’t seem that hostile.” It had been eerie, the inhuman presence suffocating, but despite the rumors, none of them had been attacked.
She had just seen something impossible, but she had seen it, so was she not right to feel afraid? She turned to the Colonel, “But it’s real!” They had all seen it. That was just wrong! “It’s not supposed to be real! I thought that was a scary story we told rookies!”
“It doesn’t matter!” Zarrey didn’t have time to argue the science of spirits with Galhino. Admiral Gives was dying on the floor. “She’s not coming back. You’re not wounded and you’re not alone. She won’t come after you. Besides, you’ve got Alba here to protect you.” He clapped the boyish engineer roughly on the shoulder, nearly knocking the lightweight over.
“We’re unarmed!” Galhino argued, and it wasn’t like Alba was any good in a fight. He could barely stand the sight of blood without fainting.
Colonel Zarrey resisted the urge to ask what good a weapon would be against a ghost and instead tossed a pair of wire cutters that had been on the floor nearby to Alba. “Stab her with those if she comes back.” He then turned pointedly away and helped Jazz carry the Admiral out of the room before anyone could offer another protest.
The sensor officer looked sourly after them. “Let’s get this started,” she said to Alba. “The sooner we finish, the sooner we can report back to CIC.” She didn’t want to be in this compartment any longer than she had to be.
“Right,” Alba said, turning the wire cutters over in his hands. They looked just like his own missing pair. He pocketed them and laid down to inspect the power core. Judging by the nearby smears of blood that churned his stomach, the Admiral had done the same.
Galhino took to pacing, her footfalls rattling the deck as she observed the core from a distance. “It looks just like the old Primary Power Core.” Command had ordered that core to be replaced with a newer make, but this one looked just like the old one had.
“It’s not the Singularity’s.” It looked similar to the untrained eye, but that didn’t mean much, just that it was older than what the fleet used these days. “This one’s even older than ours was. I recognize the make. It came off one of the old Battleship-class ships.” It was very similar to what the Singularity’s original primary core would have been, but it was smaller and had a lower output. Despite those drawbacks, it was still a better fit for the ship than the new core Command had given them. That new core was finnicky as hell with the ship’s old systems.
“A Battleship-class?” Galhino echoed. “That makes it sixty years old,” practically ancient in the realm of ship-building technology.
“Fifty-eight,” Alba corrected, rooting through the wires. “The original battle fleet was commissioned in the early years of the War.” The Singularity herself had come in at the later years of the War, making her just eight years newer than the Battleship-class ships, but none of that explained this power core.
He crawled around to check the engraving on the side. All major ship equipment including FTLs, power cores, and artificial gravity drives had the ID of the ship they belonged to engraved upon them. It assisted in identifying ship wreckage and illegal salvage. The unworn lettering read ‘UCSC-04’ quite clearly, halting Alba in his work. “Galhino,” he called, “what do you know about the original Battleship Kansas?” Something about this felt off. It felt dark. Any mention of the Kansas always did.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
The sensor officer paused her pacing midway through gathering her curly hair into a ponytail. Knowing and identifying ships was her job, so she had committed most of the active fleet to memory, but she did not care much for the retired ones. She started tapping her foot, racking her brain for anything she could remember, “Battleship-class, two main engines, one landing bay, dual FTL drive system, single power core, AG field was Spinner technology…” she trailed off, “Why?” How could that possibly be relevant?
“What about history?”
Maria Galhino eyed Alba, but continued to inform him, “The Battleship Kansas was constructed on Ariea by the country of Kansa. She fought in the Hydrian War and survived, but vanished without a trace fifteen years later. She’s been missing in action for more than thirty years.”
“And no one ever found her?”
Galhino shook her head, “No, she’s still marked as MIA, but presumed sunk.” The Kansas’ myth was considered bad luck for sailors to even mention these days. The ship and her entire crew complement had vanished without a trace from a sector of space that ships were now forbidden by law to enter.
“You’re sure?” Alba asked.
“Yes,” she answered curtly, not liking to repeat herself. She saw the engineer rubbing his head, confused. “Why?”
Alba checked the ID on the core again, but it was very clearly legible. He pointed to the ID scratched into the generator’s shell, “This is the Kansas’ Primary Power Core.”
“That’s impossible!” Scouring the device for some evidence of deceit, she eventually spotted something odd wedged almost invisibly into the wires.
Galhino began to dig in, trying to grab it as Alba protested, “Hey! Be careful! Those wires are set exactly the way they need to be, disconnect just one and it’ll take me half an hour to repair it!”
Focused only on finding answers, Galhino shoved her forearm deeper into the tangle of wires. Her fingers eventually brushed something that was neither round nor metal: a sheet of paper. She dragged it out and held it up between her fingers for Alba to see. “So, what’s the power core of a ship that’s been missing for thirty years doing on the Singularity?” Their answer was likely on that sheet of paper.
The whole idea of the Kansas made Alba nervous. A ship with a crew of more than six hundred couldn’t have just vanished, but the Kansas had been missing longer than he’d been born. It was not something he liked to think about, and he had a grim feeling about the paper in Galhino’s hand. It had worn yellowed edges and carried a dark rusty stain.
Holding it up to the light, she began to unfold it as Alba looked over her shoulder. The moment it was properly unfurled, Galhino dropped it with a gasp, and it fluttered softly to the ground. The paper had very little writing on it, but the brownish stain dominated the paper in the likeness of a hand.
Blood.
Galhino knelt to pick it up again, now taking care to touch as little of the sheet as possible. Alba squinted at it, studying the page. “It’s an official document,” he offered, seeing the watermark printed behind the words, “that’s the official seal of the UCSC.” It was the eight-pointed star of the fleet they served.
“Stars,” she cursed, having begun reading the words off the paper. “Tom, this is an order for the Kansas’ destruction.” A direct order to sink the ship and kill all six hundred souls aboard her.
Alba began reading the fine print for himself.
‘Code: Orange
Battleship Kansas (UCSC-04)
Liguanian Sector
As the reigning authority aboard the blood-stained decks, I am solely to blame for the actions that must now be taken. I am to be held responsible for my own damnation and those comrades I must now take with me.
Under my jurisdiction as the commanding officer, with all necessary force, I have ordered this alimented vessel’s destruction. I have been left with no other choice. The crew is dead. Those that cling to life beg me to end this festering hell. Death is no escape for the living, but we have already been tormented beyond life’s limits and will welcome Death’s sweet embrace.
To save others from this twisted reality, I will sink this ship for the worlds. Make no attempt to halt our intent, for I, Commander Mattias Reddy, have given these orders. And should this be found before we can carry out our own destruction, I am ordering you to fire upon the Kansas an continue until nothing remains.
Long live Ariea and her countries,
Commander Mattias H. Reddy’
“They must have ejected the power core to use as a capsule for the order, knowing that it would be recovered and the order with it,” Lieutenant Galhino said, her voice shaking. The very idea of a commander destroying his own ship, killing his crew, it horrified her. What kind of situation could ever justify that?
“But the core never was recovered. It ended up hidden beneath the floorboards our ship, and the order with it.” Alba didn’t know what to think. Galhino held in her hands the final desperate orders of a dead man. Orders that had been hidden for decades. “What’s a Code: Orange?” He had never heard of it. Code red was an enemy attack, yellow was an equipment failure and purple signified an accident, but orange?
“We should get that to the Colonel, or the Admiral, someone.” She handed the paper over for Alba to stick in one of his many pockets. She wished it could be out of sight, out of mind, but there was a sick sense of wandering curiosity to it.
Would their own commander ever be desperate enough to take the lives of his own crew? Knowing the Admiral’s complete lack of attachment to anything, he’d probably do it without a second thought. He had not reacted at all to the loss of his own brother. Galhino doubted the crew was any more than a means to an end for him, so she tried to banish the thought as she climbed the stairs to the upper level of the compartment, “Let’s go.”
Alba followed without a word. The power core was extremely compatible with the ship’s systems. Despite its mysterious origins, it would function as necessary.
As they left Compartment 24, even in the red emergency lighting, Alba could see that the fate of the Kansas still bothered Galhino. It bothered him too, but it wasn’t the only inexplicable thing they’d found in that compartment. “So, the ship’s haunted?”
“That’s what they say,” Galhino answered, uncertain she liked this turn in conversation. “The Haunted Singularity.”
“I didn’t think they meant that literally.” The ship had quite a reputation. The rumors of a haunting were the least of them. On the Frontier, the ship was equated to a demon, so Alba never put too much stock in the rumors. Far as he’d seen, the ship was perfectly normal. At least, had been, until today.
Galhino rolled her eyes, sidestepping a fallen bulkhead. “The ship’s not haunted.” Ghosts weren’t real. Sure, she had seen something in that compartment, but to automatically attribute that to superstitious beliefs was annoying. There was certainly some other explanation.
Alba could read the certainty in her expression. It would be useless to argue with her, but ghost or not, they had both seen something in that compartment. Something that matched the rumors of the ship’s haunting to a horrifying degree, because those rumors were anything but pleasant. As the engineers that had trained him told the story, the ghost appeared before dying crewmembers, a messenger of death.
They said an officer had a gruesome death aboard ship, suffering long enough to become a tortured spirit. They said she continued to haunt the decks of the ship that had taken her life, but the only crew who could see her were the ones about to die. They understood their wounds were fatal when they saw her nearby. But the darkest rumors claimed the ghost didn’t just warn of death. She ensured it by killing those crew caught wounded and alone.
There was a reason the sight of such an entity had been so disturbing, but as Ensign Alba contemplated those rumors, what he’d seen in that compartment didn’t seem to align. “Did she seem malicious to you, Galhino?”
“It.” Galhino spat. Whatever she’d seen in that compartment hadn’t been human. “And it seemed plenty evil.”
“You think she wanted to kill the Admiral?”
“Personally,” she muttered, “I’m pissed it didn’t succeed.”
“But that doesn’t make sense.” Colonel Zarrey had clearly believed the ghost had been attempting to take the Admiral’s life, but Alba didn’t share that conclusion. Zarrey’s deep concern had come off as downright hostile. Maybe she’d been defending her right to her next victim, but if she had wanted to kill Admiral Gives, why not do it hours ago? The Admiral had clearly been out of it for a while. “She surrendered him to us,” and in the context of the rumors, that made no sense at all.
“Alba, does it fucking matter right now?” She gestured around them to the charred decks and wounded crewmembers slowly limping toward the medical bay. Further up the corridor, two orderlies were loading an unidentifiable mass into a long black bag. “Look around you. We are in a waking nightmare. People are dead. And they weren’t killed by some freakish thing. They got killed by a nuclear warhead, and if we aren’t careful, we’re going to join them, with or without the ghost’s help.”
Though stabilized, the ship was still in critical condition. Any further damage could restart the cascade collapse. And the crew, light radiation sickness was the best they could hope. If the hull wasn’t eventually cleaned or the decontamination systems stopped working, the remaining radiation would continue to cook their insides. Casualties were a fact, not a possibility. The ship’s haunting was the last thing they ought to be worrying about.
Alba said nothing else. Galhino was right and he knew it as they made their way back to the bridge. When they arrived, Colonel Zarrey’s thunderous voice was filling the room and spilling into the corridor beyond. “The old girl’s in rough shape, ladies and gents, and quite frankly, it’s dishonorable. This ship deserves far better than to have the look of an ash tray on three of her decks. She deserves better than to have a gaping hole and half collapsed structure for her starboard bow. She deserved better than to be critically damaged by an unseen enemy without firing a shot in retaliation. So, you lazy spacers, we’re going to fix her up just like new, we’re going to find the sons of bitches that did this, and we’re going to blow them out of the sky!”
He roused a few cheers from the exhausted crew, which Colonel Zarrey deemed good enough. The dark rings under their eyes could be seen from across the room. Eight hours knocked out on the floor had not done them a lick of good and Zarrey was not as gifted with words as the Admiral could choose to be.
“The Singularity needs to be structurally reinforced before we can start going back to duty shifts. It’ll be all hands on deck until then,” Zarrey announced at a lower tone. “The engineering chief has told me that we have the supplies and capability to make full repairs. We’re due back at Base Oceana for reassignment by the middle of next week, so let’s make sure we’re there in tip-top condition. You know how important it is that the old girl looks beautiful in the presence of our superiors.”
Colonel Zarrey, despite his gruff attitude and vulgarity, was well liked by the crew. They happily put in full effort at his request, even if they knew the engineering chief had said no such thing. Word had come down half an hour ago: Chief Carlson was dead. There was absolutely no promise that they could repair the ship, no matter how right Zarrey was.
It was important they arrive in the Homebound Sector with the ship in flawless condition. For years, Command had been searching for a reason to decommission the Singularity. Structural damage would be the only excuse they needed.
Not one single member of the crew wanted that to happen. If the ship was decommissioned, they would be reassigned, and new assignments were completely unpredictable. It might lead one of them to an assignment on the Olympia, and no matter how desirable an assignment to the flagship might seem, they were all desperate to avoid it.
The Colonel ducked under the radar console to assist with repairs. It granted him enough privacy to let his worry show on his face, because he couldn’t stop flashing back to the medical bay. He and Jazz had hauled Admiral Gives there, and Zarrey was still reeling from the visit. Among the chaos of painful writhing and mournful screams, Doctor Macintosh had been quick to give a diagnosis.
Delivered with the insincerity of a medic who had lost too many patients, all Doctor Macintosh said was, “Congratulations on your promotion.”