Aragonian Sector, Battleship Singularity
“We’re going to be okay,” Lieutenant Keifer Robinson murmured between kisses. Another twenty hours had passed since the nuke, and slowly, very slowly, things were returning to normal.
The ship? Well, it was still nothing short of a wreck, but the crew members that had survived without major injury were continuing to do what they usually did. For Lieutenants Robinson and Galhino, that meant stealing kisses in the corridor.
“I never said we weren’t,” Galhino told her, wrapping her fingers up in Keifer’s soft brown hair.
Robinson pulled Galhino just a little closer, “You tried to mutiny, Maria.” They were both exceptionally lucky that the rest of the bridge crew had not told Colonel Zarrey. The ship’s XO was brash and vulgar, but while he had his odds with the Admiral, Zarrey remained loyal to him.
“So what?” Maria said, going in for another kiss on the lips, “It’s not like it matters as long as everyone keeps quiet. The Admiral’s effectively dead.” Zarrey didn’t have the guts to terminate the man’s command and take over officially, but chances were that the Admiral’s coma would be fatal. “Good riddance.”
Keifer pulled away from her lover. “Maria, I would not be here without him.” She admitted that she found the Admiral terrifying, but she still owed him a great deal, and because of that, so did Maria. “If he hadn’t accepted my transfer request…”
“The old bastard didn’t know what he was doing, Keifer. He doesn’t know you, and he doesn’t care about what you went through aboard the Ariea.” Such things were below the Steel Prince. “We don’t need him. No one will care when he dies.” In fact, a great many people in the worlds would be quite relieved to hear of his passing.
“Maria…”
“He took people with transfer requests into his crew because he knew that those people would feel indebted to him, because he knew that they would be loyal, no matter what sick thing he ordered them to do.” His order to turn off the artificial gravity and unnecessarily murder a hundred of the crew was a prime example. “You heard him as well as I did. We’re a numbers game to him.”
Keifer had heard him say that, but it did not make sense. “Then why would he give his life to save us?” If they were just game pieces to him, why would he go activate that power core instead of grabbing anti-radiation meds and abandoning ship while they were unconscious?
If Maria could have blamed him saving them all on an accident, she would have. “It was probably because he wanted to save the ship, not because he wanted to save us.” Saving the ship had just happened to entail saving the crew as well. In that way, she supposed it was a happy accident. “You know how he is about that,” she said resentfully.
Admiral Gives rarely corrected anyone on anything, unless it was decorum that dealt with the ship. The man had not even cared about the pilots throwing streamers in the Marines’ barracks or the Marines taping ‘KICK ME’ signs on the back of the pilots’ flight suits, but the moment someone was getting casual with the Singularity’s controls, he set them straight with unparalleled efficiency.
“That’s not fair, Maria,” the communications officer said. “It’s really easy for someone to get hurt when they handle the ship.” It made a whole lot of sense to correct people in those cases. “He kept his distance from our personal lives, sure, but there is nothing wrong with that.” Coming from a previous assignment where the commanding officer failed to keep such a distance, she was more than grateful for it.
“That doesn’t change the fact that nobody’s going to miss him,” Maria countered. “The man is a sociopath.” They were lucky that they had not yet been put in an expendable position. He would have killed them with little thought about it.
That just didn’t feel right. Was there seriously not one person that would mourn his death on a personal level? She supposed not. Admiral Gives was extremely neutral in both his demeanor and actions, so people overall felt extremely neutral about him.
Beyond his worth as a tactician, and his rarely-used ability to frighten people into submission, nobody really gave him much thought. Most of the crew was personally indifferent, even if they had grown used to his presence. Those that were not indifferent seemed to actively dislike him, Malweh and Galhino included.
But Malweh actively disliked most people, and Galhino… Well, Keifer was not truly sure what Maria’s problem with him was. At a guess, it pissed her off that Admiral Gives was undoubtedly smarter than she was, but that was just a guess.
Still, it just didn’t feel right. How could someone who affected so many people die without a single person to mourn them? It seemed impossible. …Unless that was by intention.
Maria read into her contemplative silence with a sigh. “Don’t tell me you feel bad for him.” She rolled her eyes, “You have compassion for everyone, don’t you?” Keifer was too kind. It was no wonder she had been abused on the Ariea. “That’s why I love you,” she smiled, initiating a deeper kiss as they stood in the corridor, securely wrapped up in each other’s arms.
They leapt apart when they heard someone round the corner. Galhino’s cheeks burned as they stood awkwardly toe to toe.
Colonel Zarrey huffed amusedly. Those two thought they hid it so well. That in itself was kind of endearing. He stalked past without pause. “Get on with it, ladies. You know I don’t give a fuck.” Their illicit office romance was cute, even if frowned upon under military regulations. “But you know, Galhino, if you’re done consuming our comms. officer’s face, you’re supposed to be in a meeting.”
“The same meeting you’re late for?” Galhino retorted, as defensive as ever.
“Not as late as you’re going to be,” Zarrey replied, “Besides, I do have a reputation to uphold as the worst XO in the fleet.” He wasn’t doing his job properly unless he was late to every meeting he scheduled and the crew was breaking more than twelve regulations an hour.
“More like the worst officer in the fleet,” Galhino retorted.
“You flatter me,” Zarrey said, swooning as he continued down the hallway.
His feet thudding down the ship’s bland corridors, Zarrey did not give another second’s thought to Robinson and Galhino. Most of the ship knew they were sleeping together, and nobody cared. Zarrey was fairly certain that even the Admiral had known, despite his distance from the crew. He too, in disregard to the regulations, had let it slide.
That was not unusual. Admiral Gives normally left his crew’s personal affairs alone, provided they were mature enough to keep it out of their work. It didn’t matter who was involved, even if it was two female bridge officers – the Admiral simply declined to care.
Command would have resented their inter-personnel relationship, and the worlds’ political climate did not tolerate gays, bisexuals or lesbians, but the worlds were a screwed-up place. Zarrey would attest to that firsthand. The Admiral’s refusal to take part in such political bigotry had earned the Colonel’s utmost respect. That was probably why, even now, he remained loyal to the ship’s commander.
Even after the last few months of struggle, and the actions taken after the nuke, Zarrey still could not turn his back on Admiral Gives. The very thought that he might have to take over the Admiral’s longtime command greatly unnerved him. He knew he could not fill in the Admiral’s shoes, and he was not unconvinced the ship would kill him if he tried.
Don’t be ridiculous, Zarrey chastised himself. The Singularity was just a machine. Fifty years of sailors heavily personifying her did mean that most of the crew considered the ship to have a personality, but it was not anything more than that.
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Admiral Gives might seem damn near telepathic when it came to the ship, but he had been living aboard for nearly forty years. That earned him some right to just know when things were off, as he always seemed to. When it came to the operation of this ship, Admiral Gives had no equal, but Zarrey knew that was all skill and experience, no matter what the ugly rumors said with their accusations of black magic and voodoo.
For a civilization that had mostly replaced religion with science, Zarrey had always found that odd. Without belief in spirits, magic, religion, or the afterlife, they still found some way to accuse Admiral Gives of performing some sadistic ritual of the dark arts. Apparently, when not running a ship, deploying the fleet or writing new military procedures for the Academy, the Admiral spent the remaining hours of his day perfecting the ritualistic sacrifice that bound a demon to the metals of his ship – bleeding separatists and children dry of blood to appease it, but always finishing the meal with a drop of his own.
It was absolutely ridiculous. As per usual, the great deal of misinformation and contradictory rumors that surrounded Admiral Gives made no sense, held no accuracy and painted a lovely picture. Zarrey knew the Admiral was a lot of things, a killer of separatists, an unquestioned genius, a quiet enigma, but he was no occultist. And he did not murder children – at least not that Zarrey had seen anyway.
It was probably best not to think too much about it, Zarrey admitted to himself, stepping into the ship’s materials lab. The place looked like it had been tossed by a careless police team. Analysis vials and microscope lenses were everywhere. The printer lay on its side, a big dent left where a light mounting had fallen on top of it. Looking at the mess just made Zarrey’s preexisting headache worse.
“You’re late.”
“Yeah, fuck off, Monty,” Zarrey snapped, his pounding migraine abruptly returning with a vengeance. “What do you have?”
“Well,” Montgomery Gaffigan stepped aside, revealing the specimen on the table behind him. “The evidence would indicate that you’re looking at a piece of missile casing from the nuke that hit the starboard bow.” The triangular shard had been decontaminated and handed over for analysis. “Ensign Smith brought it in.”
“Good catch for a rookie.” That kid would have gone far. Unfortunately, with Sagittarion, her home world, in open rebellion she was more likely to end up on a penal colony. Command did not tolerate potential separatists among its ranks. “But if that came from the nuke, shouldn’t it have been, you know, blown up?” The entire point of the missile was to violently explode, so how had a piece of the weapon been recovered?
“Yeah, that occurred to me as well, so I had the tactical analysis computer run through some data. It took about twenty hours,” the ship’s computers were old, and that type of processing had taken most of its available power, “but it found this.” Monty handed over a packet he’d printed off from the fallen printer.
Zarrey stared at the tactical scenario. The pictograms seemed simple, but it was not his specialty. He was not sure what the diagram was supposed to tell him. “What am I looking at, Monty?”
Gaffigan coughed. “Right, my apologies, sir.” He was used to just handing off the raw data to his superior officer. Admiral Gives didn’t need help to interpret it.
Monty took the packet back, “This was the trajectory of the warhead, and this is where it should have impacted.” He traced his finger along the line to the dot on the hull of the ship, then backtracked an inch, “But this is where the missile had to detonate in order to cause the damage spread we have on the bow.” He tapped the ‘X’ on the trajectory line, “Long story short, the missile was intercepted here, on the intersection of our Minimum Defended Airspace Perimeter and its trajectory.”
“It wasn’t a direct hit?”
“Near direct, but not direct. The missile was intercepted at the last possible point it could have been intercepted by our weapons systems. Once anything passes the Minimum Perimeter, its considered to be at Spitting Distance, and we cannot guarantee an interception with the defensive turrets.”
Monty scratched his beard, continuing to explain, “The interception destroyed that missile, creating the shard we have. The ensuing detonation of the nuclear mechanism was delayed long enough for that shard to be in front of the blast, and thus, flung into the bulkheads where Callie found it.” It was exceptionally unlikely, but it was forensically possible.
“This also explains why we didn’t see any atomization of the outer hull. The nuke detonated at close range, so we took most of the blast’s full force and the fallout radiation, but we managed – quite luckily – to avoid the atomization.” It was difficult to explain just how lucky they had been. “With a nuke of that size, if it had actually hit us, there would be no starboard bow of which to speak of. We’d be dead.” The ship would have sunk. Monty had no doubt about that.
The weapons officer could not state this with enough emphasis, “Tactical nukes are not to be trifled with, sir. They are classified as an anti-planetary weapon. The ones we have on board could strip a planet of life in just two or three impacts.” That element of uncertainty was present because such an attack had never actually been carried out.
Zarrey’s stomach churned uncomfortably. It was weird to realize their ship was powerful enough to doom colonies when all they ever did was run lame patrols. That fragment looked so innocent where it sat, oblivious of the deaths it represented. “Forget who intercepted this and how, we need to know where this came from.” Discovering the identity of their attackers had to be their top priority. “You mentioned the Hydrian Armada as a probable suspect?”
“Aye, as far as we know, there are only two fleets that operate or have previously operated in the Kalahari Sector with access to nuclear weapons of that caliber. The UCSC was one, and the Hydrian Armada was the other.” Monty flipped the shard over where it sat, revealing the scuffed paint. “However, if you will take note of this, sir.”
The clear labeling of ‘UCSC’ stared him in the face. Zarrey’s mind stalled. “When did the Hydra start painting their warheads with our markings?”
“Uh…” Monty was not exactly sure how to break this news to him. “Sir, the markings would imply that this was indeed not a Hydrian warhead.” It was one of their own. “We have a set just like it.”
“You can’t prove that.” They could not afford to level such accusations lightly. It could be a trick.
“But I can.” The door slammed behind Maria Galhino as she stepped into the room. “After running three full series of material analysis tests, I can confirm that the alloy of that shard is an exact match to the alloy casing of a UCSC tactical nuclear missile, and it is less than twenty-five years old.”
She stepped up to the table, fixing her collar to better hide the hickey on her neck. “The material means it is of human manufacture. Only one ship equipped with tactical nukes is presently MIA: the Battleship Kansas. However, the Kansas is over twenty-five years of age, so the age of this fragment disqualifies her.”
“Not to mention, nukes are built specifically for the ship they’re given to,” Monty picked up where she left off. “They have to be fired from that ship’s launch system to activate, disregarding the other required authorization codes and safeties.” And there were too many issues with that to count. “It is impossible for the weapon to have been stolen.”
“What are you trying to tell me?” Zarrey asked them.
Monty and Galhino shared a look, but it was again Monty who spoke, “Unfortunately, sir, I very much doubt that the Hydrian Armada would have gone after us. If they had already penetrated this far into our territory with a weapon like that, they likely would have gone for the kill on one of the central worlds. The same goes for any separatist or terrorist group that managed to somehow acquire a nuke. We’re simply not a worthy target compared to worlds like Persephone, Terra Nimbus or Bonita.” A nuke deployed there would kill millions when compared to the hundreds that made up this crew. “So what I’m saying is, someone in our own fleet wanted us dead. They wanted us dead bad enough to use a nuke, and we’re damn lucky we survived it.” Their own fleet had tried to sink them.
It took Zarrey a minute. It took him a long minute, but then it all made sense. “Son of a bitch.”
“Sir?” Monty said.
“That sick, sick son of a bitch.” Zarrey was just now realizing it, just now realizing everything. “He knew we wouldn’t believe him.” Zarrey may as well have spat in the man’s face. “Dammit! That’s why he never said anything!”
He looked to the lieutenants, “Don’t you get it?” Of course, they didn’t. They had no idea what he was talking about. “Admiral Gives knew. He knew the fleet was planning on attacking us. The Old Man has had us jumping randomly all over the worlds for months, taking random missions, and cancelling shore leave at random times, because he was trying to keep us out of the line of fire. Think about it. We haven’t seen another allied ship since any of this started.” It had been months.
It all made sense now. If they were moving randomly, then the New Era could not strike them, because the New Era simply did not know where they were. “He was trying to protect us.” And they had all, quite literally, spat upon his efforts and treated him like a villain. They had all accused him of some downright nasty things. It was sick in the way that the Admiral had chosen to suffer that treatment rather than try to explain himself.
But he was right. They would never have believed him. They would have called him paranoid. “That’s why he refused to abandon ship. With the fleet after us, we have nowhere to go.” They would have all been killed.
Zarrey curled his fists. How could he not have seen it sooner? Poorly disguised self-loathing rose up as the immediate need to punch something. “Damn it all straight to hell.” He felt so stupid. Every order Admiral Gives had given had been an attempt to save as many of the crew as possible, including his controversial order to shut down the Conjoiner drives. “He was just doing his job.” In a sad way, his job was all Admiral Gives ever did.