Aragonian Sector, Battleship Singularity
Two hours later, the damage control and search and rescue operations were mostly complete. All over the ship, crewmen were starting to scrub the hallways clean of debris and repair severed wires; minor, but necessary efforts after combat, if the events of the Kalahari Sector could even be called combat. Ensign Callie Smith was not sure it could.
They had never fired a shot in retaliation. The other engineers had taken to calling it a slaughter. Seeing the casualties they had taken and the overall condition of the ship, she could not bring herself to disagree.
A little over ten hours had passed since the ship had made the jump from the Kalahari Sector. Oddly, anyone who had not been in immediate danger from the subsequent ship damage or fires, had spent most of their time knocked out. Callie was one of them. She had no memory of anything after feeling the ship transition back out of subspace. The next thing she knew, she had woken to find herself sprawled on the hangar deck, an array fallen tools surrounding her.
She had been given little time to contemplate it. Damage control had been exhausting: darting from place to place, trying to stabilize and control equipment that was badly shaken, but necessary to sustain life and functionality aboard ship. Finished with that, she’d been immediately swept up with a large team of engineers who were now starting actual repairs.
This particular team had been assigned to assess the structural condition of the starboard bow and begin repairs, if it was possible. The prospects of it being possible were not looking good. It was near impossible, even under zero Gs, to even reach the structural support that had caused the cascade collapse.
It was hard enough to maneuver with the vacuum suits on, but the badly misshapen condition of the bulkheads and deck tiles made it even more difficult. They had to shift from walking along the floor to walking along the walls or ceiling just to get a good hold with their magnetic boots. Unsure what waited around every corner, they had to move at a slow, cautious pace. Someone moving too quick would only risk flinging themselves out into the void.
Working under zero G for any extended time period had always unsettled Callie. There was something about it that was inherently wrong, and they had left the Conjoiner Drives’ altered field just after the start of their trek. That said, Callie found the damage that awaited them even more unsettling than the lack of gravity.
A long, curved gash had torn through the ship’s numerous hulls, allowing them an uninterrupted panorama of the Aragonian Sector. The distant stars shone brightly, and there was one star, the sun and gravitational center of the nearest solar system, that glowed brighter than the rest, a colorful dot among the white pinpricks.
It was a newborn star, the culmination of drifting gasses that had gathered over the billions of years since the universe’s conception. The young sun burned a rich blue shade, its hue almost as vibrant as the Singularity’s engine plumes.
The sudden appearance of a Warhawk shattered the eerie stillness. The black and white reconnaissance ship brought with it a hull-mounted flood light that bathed the area in sharp, white light. It was a good change from the darkness in which they had made their trek, but the other engineers still added their electric handheld torches, casting visibility into every corner of the area. Despite the crisp, formal lighting, the ruined starboard bow looked like a wasteland. Struts and chunks of metal jutted out at odd angles, shrapnel from the explosion.
Casting the tallest shadow in the room was the broken, horrendously misshapen structural support. Tears, almost like claw marks, ripped across its face, the pillar’s payment for being directly exposed to subspace. They gouged deep into the support, the deepest of them causing the support to fold over onto itself under gravity, bringing the decks above closer than they ought to be.
Callie stared up at the collapsed support and the damage around it. Never once in training had she seen damage like this. The sharp, unnatural angles seemed to lance towards her. Many of the gouges were wider and deeper than she was. Her small stature seemed almost irrelevant against the devastation. What change could she possibly hope to afflict on an injury of that magnitude? It felt helpless.
But she had to try. This ship was her home. It had been a better home to her than her birth planet had ever been. She had nothing but bad memories on Sagittarion. If this damage proved irreparable, then she would be reassigned, and possibly even discharged from the fleet and sent back there. She would do anything to avoid that risk.
In training, her classmates had laughed and leered at her assignment to the old Singularity, but the year that she had spent here had been the best year of her life. Coming from the overpopulated, impoverished manufacturing world of Sagittarion, where the acid rain rendered unprotected eyes blind, this ship had been heaven. So, she could not afford to have doubts now, even as the other engineers were echoing them over the radio.
“Does Chief Carlson really think we can fix this?” someone asked.
“Chief Carlson is dead,” came the blunt reply from a voice Callie recognized as Malweh. “Jeff Ty is in charge now.”
There was a moment of silence for the engineering chief. Callie found herself staring at the spot where her magnetic boots met the deck. Carlson, and everyone else they had so far lost, they had all been family to her.
This was the first time she’d even had a moment to contemplate the loss. Now, she just wanted to cry, but she knew that would be problematic under zero gravity. Carlson had mentored her since the day she had set foot on the ship. He had not really been a proper father figure, but he’d been something close, maybe an uncle? Yeah. A weird, quirky uncle.
The reminder set her tears in motion. Instinctively, she tried to wipe them off before anyone saw, but her hand bounced off the visor of her helmet. She was left to furiously blink at them where they settled in her eyes, trying to clear her vision. They did not roll down her cheeks without gravity.
“Rumor has it,” Malweh continued, “with our losses and the damage as severe as it is, there’s been discussion about abandoning ship. Colonel Zarrey is unconvinced that we can carry out repairs on this scale solo.”
Usually, after an event this, the damaged ship would be towed to the nearest space dock for repairs and structural testing, but the entire crew knew that would end in the loss of their ship. Even if the damage was repairable at a dock, the ship would be decommissioned.
“Ty begged him to let us try, and Zarrey agreed because we have so many crew members with medical conditions too severe to risk moving them.” Malweh’s ill temperament became all too obvious in her voice, “Attempting these repairs is a way of keeping us busy until it’s safe to evacuate everyone. Zarrey thinks the old girl’s dead, but ask me and he’s just as scared as everyone else. He’s not thinking clearly.” Since the cascade collapse had been halted, the ship was most likely recoverable, even if it was currently in bad condition.
That was the worst order any engineer thought they might receive: abandon ship. They put so much time and effort into maintaining the ship, being ordered to leave was a nightmare. It was a testament that they were not good enough at their jobs.
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Callie would rather spend another four months on the ship, limping slowly back to port, then be ordered to abandon ship. “Admiral Gives would never allow that,” she found herself saying. “He would never let Colonel Zarrey give the order to abandon ship, right?”
“I’m not sure he’s got a say at the moment,” Malweh answered. “Nobody’s heard from him and Zarrey hasn’t said anything. For all any of us know, the old bastard is finally dead.”
“Watch it, Malweh,” Havermeyer said, his bulk finally emerging from the path they had taken to get here. His size had made it difficult for him to squeeze through the wreckage.
“What do you mean ‘watch it?’” Malweh demanded, a snarl in her voice. “He gave the order to jump, didn’t he?” And that jump had catastrophically worsened the condition of the ship. “It’s his fault we’re in this mess.”
“Admiral Gives gave the only order he could. We have no idea how many nukes were waiting for us in the Kalahari Sector. We don’t even know who attacked. Retreat was the logical choice,” and Admiral Gives was a very logical tactician. Havermeyer believed it had been the right call, but not everyone would, especially with the Admiral’s apparent absence. Since he had not defended or explained himself, some people, like Malweh, would read that as him completely ignoring the toll his orders had taken on the crew, distancing himself further from everyone under his command.
“That doesn’t mean he isn’t dead,” Malweh pouted.
Callie’s vision started to blur, new tears forming. She felt her throat tighten as she tried not to cry. Dead? Admiral Gives could not be dead. That was an impossibility.
“That’s enough, Malweh.” Havermeyer had rank on her and he was not afraid to use it. “Get back to work.” The rest of the engineers stopped gawking and scatted with Malweh. All but one. He knew it was Callie by the way she was staring at her mag-boots, trying not to look upset.
He tapped her shoulder and signaled for her to silence her radio before pressing their helmets together so the sound would travel between them. “You okay, kid?” Callie had over a year of service under her belt, but she was still a rookie compared to the rest of the ship’s veteran crew. She had never seen them take losses before.
“Yeah,” she said shakily.
Havermeyer could see the tears splattered on the inside of her visor. She was sniffling. “Just ignore Malweh,” he told her. “She talks too much. The senior staff has been briefed on the Admiral’s condition. Colonel Zarrey doesn’t want people to panic, so keep this to yourself, alright?”
Havermeyer was like a big brother to her, she would never betray his trust. “Okay.”
He sighed, wishing he had better news. “Admiral Gives is on life support in severe condition, but he’s not dead. He’s got a chance,” not a very good one, but a chance. “I know you looked up to him,” even if Havermeyer was not sure why, “but the best thing we can do for him is get his trusty rust bucket ready for a fight.” It was clear enough that someone had gone looking for one in the Kalahari Sector. “Take a minute, and then go start collecting scrap.”
“Okay,” she said again before Havermeyer released her helmet. He smiled understandingly, and then moved off, leaving her with her thoughts.
It was quiet. Without air to carry sound, the ever-present hum of the ship’s engines was gone. The only sounds Callie could hear were her breathing and the pulse of her heart, if she listened close enough. It had never been so quiet, neither on the ship nor on Sagittarion. It just felt wrong.
But then, what wasn’t wrong? It seemed her normal life had flown out the airlock in the time between a strange mid-afternoon call to battle stations and the impact that had killed too many of her friends. The ship she called home was in ruins, her responsibilities had changed entirely, and the ship’s commanding officer was probably going to die.
It was that last part that scared her the most. Admittedly, Admiral Gives had been a bit off for the last few months, giving strange orders and rescinding shore leave permissions on a moment’s notice, but Callie believed there was some reason behind all of that. She had no idea what could justify the struggles of the last six months, but did believe somewhere, somehow, there was a fitting explanation.
Some of the crew figured the Admiral had finally gone insane, some result of prior trauma and too many years in deep space. Malweh was definitely one of them, but then, Malweh had always had it out for the Admiral.
Callie disagreed. Every time she had seen the Admiral, he had seemed perfectly fine – or perfectly fine in his particular case. That was to say that he had remained perfectly polite to the crew, perfectly familiar with the equipment and perfectly stoic on his daily visits to the engineering spaces. No, he never offered an explanation for what he was putting the crew through, but Callie suspected nobody had ever asked.
That was the thing about Admiral Gives. He spoke little and gave his orders calmly, with the expectation they would be followed, but he was willing to explain, if prompted. Most people, including his own crew, were too afraid of him to engage him in any willing conversation, so they never asked. To her, it had always seemed odd. It was true that Admiral Gives could be scary, heck, she had seen him bring a grown man to tears in less than thirty seconds, but he never acted that way towards his crew.
The others said she had not been on the ship long enough to see what he was really like, but it had been over a year. Anytime she spoke with him, he never came across as anything other than patient and calm, and she had never heard of him being anything less than respectful to her crewmates. That was why she was afraid of his death, why they were all uneasy about it.
None of them could really claim to know the Admiral, not his thoughts or his intentions, and honestly, none of them really cared. What mattered was that, even when he was giving orders that made no sense, he still polite. He at least treated them like people, even if he was secretly contemplating the worth of their lives.
They could all have it a lot worse. There were far worse ships to serve aboard, commanding officers who abused and tortured their own crews, who threw away their lives like it was nothing. There was no one who doubted the Admiral’s ability to do any one of those things, but fact was: he didn’t. The Singularity had the lowest casualty rate in the fleet, and to the crew, that was not nothing.
She turned her radio back on, tired of being left in the silence with her thoughts. The group of engineers that had gathered at the base of the collapsed support were squabbling about the best way to repair it – something about a hydraulic jack and high-grade missile propellant. It was probably better not to ask.
She turned away to help start clearing away the rubble. Pieces of the splintered outer hull had been wedged deeply into the decks and walls surrounding the breach. Sparks flickered from plasma cutters as crew worked to free the largest shrapnel.
Other crew, including Callie, simply began picking up the pieces of usable metal that could be pulled free. Anything truly lose had been lost to the decompression after the explosion, so there were many gouges and holes caused by debris that was long gone, out drifting in the void. What was left would be collected, melted down and recycled.
She found herself scouring the wall opposite of the hull breach, trying not to remember that the surface was now effectively radioactive due to the nuke’s fallout. Her environmental suit would shield her from the radiation for a maximum of three hours, but she and the rest of her team would have to go through decontamination after they finished here. Walking upon the scarred surface with her magnetic boots, she added her flashlight to the directional lighting of the hovering Warhawk.
In the shadow of the bent structural support, she came across a piece of metal different than the others she had thrown in her collection bag. It was lighter in color than the other shards. It was also thinner, far too thin to be a part of the hulls or armor.
When she pulled it free, she could see that it was not the material of the antigrav plating either. She turned it over in her hands, expecting the gloves of her rubbery suit to wipe off the shale gray color, but the scrap’s coloring stayed firm. It was not coated in white ash, but rather charcoal smears. The metal itself was truly almost ivory in color, meaning it definitely had not originated from the Singularity. The entire ship was constructed from a dark gray metal with almost no variation.
Callie rubbed her glove on it, gently removing the remaining black smears. One side of the fragment had been wiped clean from the explosion, but the other side had retained some incredibly scuffed paint. She held her electric torch above it, trying to decipher the markings. Things abruptly clicked into place when she rotated it for a new perspective.
The knife-like edge in her left hand was dominated by a slice of the yellow and black circle that was the radioactive warning symbol. The rest was dominated by four letters written in royal blue: ‘UCSC.’ A hyphen tailed off the shard, trying to complete the ID of the ship it had come from, but the rest of the ID was long gone.
She looked around for another piece, but there was not one to be found. She clutched onto the one she had, recognizing it for what it had to be: a shard of the nuclear warhead’s casing. It was a piece of the spiteful thing that had nearly killed them all.
…And it was bearing allied markings.