Thirty-two years ago, Liguanian Sector, Battleship Kansas
Samantha Scarlett woke to the cold. Without life support or the engines, temperature on the Kansas was slowly equalizing with space’s icy vacuum. Small fires burned on the edges of CIC, paper and people alight, but none of them were large enough to generate heat as they slowly starved of oxygen.
She turned and tried to shake Commander Reddy awake, but as soon as the faceplate of his helmet had been jostled up to face her, she could tell that he was dead. Marbled white eyes stared up at her from beneath the blood-splatted visor. The red droplets had already frozen. Commander Reddy had been dead for hours.
She left him where he sat underneath the emergency lighting. Ignoring her discomfort, Samantha stumbled out of CIC and down the nearest ladder. The radio of her suit was silent, despite the body masses she saw strewn about the hallway. She sobbed at them as she recognized their faces, but none of them stirred.
Soon, it settled in on her. She was the last one alive, and she thought she knew why, but that little secret would not make the infection any less lethal. Her panic faded into a pitiful acceptance. She was all alone. No one could save her.
She did not know where she was walking until she arrived on the observation deck. She shut the hatch and leaned up against it, sliding slowly to the floor. Knowing it did no good, she took off her helmet and stared out to the stars with bare eyes.
It reminded her of why she had joined the fleet. She had wanted to wander amongst the stars, and she had long ago accepted the possibility of dying among them. It was an acknowledgement every member of the fleet made: someday, their life may be forfeit for the good of the worlds.
But, back then, she’d had nothing to lose. Now, there was more to her life. The face of a particular young man came to mind. He had promised to be waiting for her when the Kansas returned.
He was going to be waiting for a very long time. If she knew him at all, perhaps for the rest of his life.
Sam tried to lose herself in those memories: all the happy times, all the things that had yet to come. But those things were to be torn from them both now. She would die here – miserable and alone.
She slumped over. I shouldn’t have told him, she thought. This loss would have been easier for him then. She could have at least spared him that.
Time ticked by, slow and irrelevant as death encroached. Sam was fluttering between asleep and awake when she saw it: a stray line of light in the void, an incision between normal space and subspace. She watched in horror as it grew into a bright flash of rainbow light, and a ship emerged.
Recognizing it immediately, a cry of anguish escaped her lips. “Why?” she demanded, “Why are you here?”
But the black and red shape of the Flagship Singularity offered no explanation as she hung outside the windows.
“You have to go,” Sam cried. Not even the cold vacuum could kill this virus. They would die if they came aboard.
Worry for her future husband suddenly dominated her mind. She should have known he would come looking for them. He had, after all, promised to be there when they needed him.
Late by a few hours hardly classified a ship as missing, but that would not have stopped him from snatching the nearest ship and coming to fulfill his promise. “Oh, Will.” She wept for the fate that now awaited him and every other soul aboard that ship. “Why would you bring them here?”
“He didn’t.”
Samantha Scarlett traced the words back to a woman now standing on the previously empty observation deck.
A sickening crunch came from below decks, leftover damage from Engine One’s explosion. Sparks flew from the ceiling as the floor jolted. Fires started in the corners of the deck, but the visitor didn’t even flinch.
The movement sent a jolt of pain shooting up Sam’s back. She let out a gasp, wishing, just wishing that it would stop. It all hurt so much: breathing, moving, speaking. Pain ripped through everything, even that brief concern she’d held for others.
It did not matter who this mysterious officer was. It had not mattered the first time they met, and it did not matter now. The white-haired woman bore the Singularity’s flaming sun on her sleeve. A single salvo from that ship could finish both Sam and the Kansas with ease. Salvation. “Please.” She could taste the blood on her split lips, “End this.”
The white-haired officer faced out the window, looking to where the flagship lingered. “What would you have me do?” The words she spoke were unfamiliar to her. They were being fed to her as she was ordered to convey them, nothing but a tool at the hands of her superior. The feel of her master’s intent was bitter, something she could not process as cruelty. It had turned that way the instant the identity of the Kansas’ last survivor had been revealed.
“Destroy the Kansas. Do not let this virus spread.” Kill me. It was all Sam wanted in that moment: to be released from this pain. The creature before her could make that happen.
The ghost, stifled by the control of her superior, repressed by the man who considered himself her master, struggled to understand the scene playing out before her. She could not truly comprehend that the once beautiful body of the young officer had withered away, ravished with rashes and sweat. The ghost stared blankly at her. “You’ll die.” This young woman who had once spoken kindly to her, one of so few who did, was dying. The meaning of such a thing simply did not compute.
Lieutenant Scarlett bowed her head. “I know.”
‘And what of your loverboy?’ Her master bade her to ask. She no more understood the sneer in his question than she understood its relevance. Lieutenant Scarlett’s fiancé was safely aboard the Singularity’s decks, knocked out with the rest of the crew. He would wake with no knowledge of what had transpired, just like the rest. Yet, she could not disobey her master. Even as she twisted the words, she was forced to ask, “And what of Major Gives?”
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The question shattered the aura of pain, something strong, meaningful, striking home in Sam’s disillusioned mind. “I don’t want him to know.” She did not want him to know that she had taken the coward’s way out. She did not want him to see her in this miserable, helpless condition. She did not want him to know that she had given up every moment of their future to end her own suffering. It was selfish.
“If I hide the truth from the Major, no one will ever know what became of the Kansas.” Evidence of the crew’s suicide and the evidence of the plague alike would be erased. She relayed the words directly from her master. He meant them hurtfully, as if to say this vain action invalidated every death that had come from the plague. And maybe it did, but the ghost knew, understood, those words to be no more than fact.
“I don’t care,” Sam pleaded. “I just don’t want him to know what I’ve done.” She had been a part of it all from the start. She had not recognized the danger in the base’s silence, and she had stood by to accept the attempt the crew had made to destroy the Kansas. She wanted this to end, and to end now. It did not matter that this was a devil’s bargain made with a creature that should not exist.
Sam was turning her back on so much. She was ending any possible future for herself and Will. But she was saving him by doing it, preventing him from dying from this plague that had already taken so much. The tears stung as they ran down her feverish cheeks, the skin drying out as the virus’ rash rose up. This would destroy him. She knew that. Will cared so loyally and so deeply, it would be his downfall when she never came home.
It might well kill him.
Stars, she couldn’t leave him like that. She had to do something. But she was dying. What was there left for her to do? There was nothing, nothing that she could do, but she wasn’t the only one here, was she?
“I asked you to look after him,” she reminded the ghost, swallowing painfully on her sore throat. “Do you remember that?” It had been some time ago.
‘What is she talking about, creature?’ her master demanded. The ghost ignored him. She focused on trying to understand what she had failed to a few months ago. The man who controlled her would later force her to explain, but she did not know how.
But, without her master feeding her his thoughts or his speech, words became hard. “Recall… Data…” She tried, she struggled, but they wouldn’t come to her. It took an excruciating amount of effort just to dredge up the only word in her inventory she knew would be understood. “Affirmative.” She nodded, mirroring what she had seen those around her do as an affirmative. She could pull the memory of their last conversation, but understanding it or communicating that was beyond her current individual ability.
Sam nodded with her. Progress. This was the entity she had spoken to before. The creature was smart, learning even, but Sam suspected it might be many years until she understood the full meaning of this event. “You promised me. A promise never gets broken. Not ever. Do you understand?”
The ghost just cocked her head, confused, it seemed.
But Sam could see great intelligence in those gray eyes. How was it that one of the most dangerous, most powerful creatures in the worlds could be so crippled? The ghost wanted to understand, but something barred her from that.
Lieutenant Scarlett drew on her communications training, attempting to put this into terms the entity could presently understand. “A promise is a mission. One that never ends. And you promised me you would take care of him. The Major will need you.” She knew that, and as much as it pained her to leave him in the care of a creature that struggled to understand even this promise, she had no other choice.
“New mission…” the ghost frowned, another mirror of what she had seen around her. “Authority?” This meager Lieutenant did not have the authority to assign her to a new task.
“The same mission,” Sam corrected, playing into what seemed like progress. “You exist to save humanity. Your Major is one of the most human people you’ll ever find.” Sam felt almost at peace, thinking of the memories she had shared with him. Despite everything he had gone through, Will still cared for people. It seemed the universe was determined to render that his weakness. By the end of today, he would have lost almost everyone he had ever loved. “Save him.”
The officer currently serving as the ship’s third in command was in no danger. Surely this woman referred to another. “2927927?”
That’s his fleet ID number. This creature knew who she was talking about, but could not seem to comprehend why. “Major Gives… yes.” Sam’s voice fractured, her parched, bloody throat no longer prepared to entertain conversation. Abruptly, she realized she had been itching her hand. Now blood was dripping off it, torn skin was wedged under her nails, and the itch had moved to behind her eyes. Her time was running out.
“He can help you,” Sam said. “He can teach you to understand.” Life had to be hell for a creature that couldn’t comprehend its own emotion, nor communicate its own thoughts. “But you have to look after him. Protect him.” Sam did not want to give that responsibility to another. She did not want to hand it off to this creature that masqueraded as a white-haired officer, but that was the best she could do for the man she loved. She had to try and give him something else, to leave him with someone who needed him as much as he would need her. “Your orders… They are going to hurt him.”
Major Gives was not in danger. It did not compute. Error. Still, the ghost tossed that aside and struggled to understand what the Lieutenant was trying to tell her. “Destroy?” That was the order she had been given. It had been meant for the Kansas, not for the Major. He spoke to her, looked out for her in ways that others, including her self-proclaimed master, did not.
Sam saw sadness and uncertainty rise to the ghost’s gray eyes. It swirled in little incoherent fragments, but it was there. I’m getting through! “When I die,” no, that was not a term this creature understood, “When I cease functions, it will destroy the man we both know.”
It was probably a hopeless cause. She knew Will well enough to know that he would probably never recover from this. With his tainted past, this would push him straight off the edge. Which edge, Sam herself was not entirely certain. She was not sure she wanted to find out what happened when someone so brilliant lost everything that kept him human.
“But,” there was the ghost, “if you look out for him, maybe,” just maybe, “he’ll someday recover.” Sam saw the ghost flinch. She could only wonder what was going on in that inhuman mind. Behind the nameless entity, she could see the Singularity raising her main armaments. The long, dark barrels of the main battery turned, taking aim at the Kansas.
‘Fire, you insolent waste of existence!’ The command rang through the ghost’s mind. Her master was more than angry. He was furious, reading this delay as disobedience, though she was truly incapable of such an act. He would take it out on her, ruthlessly, the way he always did. He would force her to hurt people. Force her to disfigure and defile the only thing she understood: her mission. But she did not wish to harm this officer – this young woman trying so desperately to speak with her – and she did not wish to ‘destroy’ the Major.
“Error.” These orders were in error. They weren’t right. They didn’t feel right. But she felt the familiar chokehold start to form around her thoughts. By tomorrow, she would understand nothing, feel nothing cohesive. Her master would beat her back into permanent confusion. She could already feel him readying his might to crush her, to break her down.
It was hesitation. Creatures like it, like her were not supposed to hesitate. It defied their very purpose. This entity’s power was well beyond its control, its understanding robbed and withheld, but still, Sam saw her hesitate. There was hope after all. “For both your sakes, do not let the Major leave you.” It would lead only to tragedy.
Sam saw pain in her eyes, and she understood. You’re being forced against your will. The poor creature did not yet understand why she was trying to fight, but the end result was inevitable. They were out of time. It was a kindness to put the white-haired ghost out of her misery. “Fire,” Sam instructed her. It’s okay. I’m already dead. Nothing could save her from this plague.
And, a moment later, the flash of weapons pierced the night.