Hyperspace, Battleship Singularity

  By the time Admiral Gives had handed off his orders for the ship, gathered the supplies he needed and eaten, there was only an hour left until he had to depart. There was remaining time on the deadline the Swordbreaker’s AI had given them, but the away team still had to make one more jump and then hike to the rendezvous, where they could not afford to be late. For the necessary timing, that meant the away team would depart just moments after the Singularity descended from hyperspace, and the old ship would stay behind, where she would be hidden from the Hydra.

  …At least that was the theory. That theory only worked if Zarrey and the rest of the crew had found all the drones. Otherwise, the drones, controlled by the Swordbreaker’s AI would be able to reveal the ship’s location.

  As the Admiral sat, working to bandage his blisters from the previous evening’s spacewalk, he asked, “Status?”

  “187 drones have been accounted for,” the ghost answered, leaning against the empty wall in his quarters. She had been helping as best she could, pushing the subconscious minds of search parties to look in places they might otherwise forget. “It will be taken care of.” She refused to tolerate the threat of the drones’ infestation. “The remains of two more Hydrian drones were identified in the bow, a third near internal comms, all nonfunctional.” So far, Swordbreaker’s AI had kept its end of the deal. All the drones had been inactive. Whatever the Hydra’s intent, it did not involve indiscriminate slaughter. But, of course, the Hydrian Empire had never truly been indiscriminate. The Empire had harvested the healthy for food, and culled the ill to burn as fuel – preventing their sickness from reentering the environment, even as fertilizer. Their treatment of captured populations had always been methodical – divided by those who were fit for consumption and those who were not.

  “Very well,” the Admiral acknowledged. “Best we play oblivious.” The Hydra’s intent was clearly war. There was no doubt of that. Intentionally crossing the Neutral Zone for a mysterious delivery to human space was a violation of the peace treaty. That itself was an act of war. But, to keep the Hydra from accelerating any plans they had, the negotiations could not acknowledge that. They could only acknowledge that a freak accident had led to Rowin’s capture by an isolated group of humans who did not obey the law of the government that signed the treaty. The Hydra had to be convinced there was no evidence of an intentional treaty violation. That was the only way to stall their plans. If he acknowledged an intentional treaty violation, then the Hydra would accelerate their plans to attack before a warning could be transmitted to humanity’s main populations.

  Her lanky figure leaning against the wall, the ghost said nothing. She had little to offer regarding the negotiations. That had never been her function. She was a combat-oriented machine, capable of tactical, heat-of-the-moment adjustments, not strategic predictions. That was the Admiral’s forte, so she continued to lean against the cold steel of the bulkhead, clad in battle armor, and folded her arms across her chest as she watched him wrap bandages on his feet, regretfully practiced in burying her concern. Those blisters of his looked painful. A few remained red and risen, but most had been popped and mangled, now oozing slowly. He said nothing of it, but she knew wearing mag-boots to hike on the surface of Azura would be painful. The way he moved his hand, clenching and unclenching it at strange intervals indicated that it still ached too, wrapped in its own layer of healing ointment and gauze. Add to that, two long but shallow cuts on his forearm from Gaffigan’s interrogation and a puncture in his shoulder from the Swordbreaker AI’s magnetic projector, and the Admiral had accumulated a number of small injuries that, under better circumstances, should have kept him off the away team. No one with open wounds should be headed for Azura, but any situation where the ship’s commander was required on the away team was always to be dire. That was not meant to be his role, but the situation on Azura required him, and there was no use arguing about it.

  The Admiral finished bandaging his feet, pulled on a pair of socks and began wedging his feet into the mag-boots set on the floor beside the couch. These were his pair, better sized than the standard ones he’d pulled from the equipment locker to spacewalk with Chief Ty. He took great care to cinch them down properly, but he knew walking any distance was going to worsen his feet. Of course, he rarely found being planet-side to be pleasant, so that was no surprise. Mere blisters would be manageable. All fleet personnel learned to ignore them in training.

  Standing up from the old green couch in his quarters, the Admiral began meticulously checking the seals of his environmental suit. There was no point in waiting to put it on. He was due to take off in an hour, and still needed to collect the Hydra, meet up with the team, and do the pre-flight checks. At this point, the ship’s greater whole was no longer his immediate concern. He’d handed his orders off to Zarrey, and would not set foot on the bridge again before he departed. Still, the ghost lingered. Save direct questions, she had been strangely quiet, no doubt displeased by the situation. He knew very well that she did not want to send anyone to Azura, least of all him, though she knew better than to say it aloud. “You’ve been to Azura,” he reminded her, “any advice?” Galhino had given a fine briefing, but there was no substitute for first-hand experience. To stand in the room with someone possessing it, and not query it was to squander a tactical advantage.

  “Check the seals on your suit,” she said, as if he weren’t already doing so. “Don’t take it off for any reason.” The suits were mandatory, but not for fear of Azura’s churning seas. “And you’ll want to carry at least three medical kits.”

  “Three?” A team of five should only require one.

  “At least,” the ghost reiterated. “Any open wounds that get exposed to Azura’s environment should be sanitized immediately and often thereafter.” She did not relish the thought of sending him down there at all, but especially not with open wounds. If the worst happened, and his suit wound up punctured, he’d be at high risk of infection. “The situation on Azura was contained, but it was never cleansed.” Any disease that existed in the populations affected by the cataclysm still existed on Azura’s surface.

  “This continues to sound more and more fun,” he said dryly.

  The ghost did not react to that sarcasm, simply continued, “Believe nothing you see down there, Admiral. There may be things still functioning, but there is nothing still alive.” That was a fine line, particularly within the Quarantine Zone. A look of utter loss swept across her pale features. “Azura was a world borne of suffering, and there are things worse than the Hydra upon it.”

  There was a sadness to her in that moment, a dread. In that, Admiral Gives knew that this journey would be far from easy. Kallahan had made the accusation that the ghost knew more than she was saying about Azura, about the cause of the cause of the cataclysm that had ruined this sector of space for organic life. Undoubtedly, Kallahan was right. She knew more than she was telling. The difference was that Admiral Gives trusted her not to withhold anything of tactical worth. She’d tell him what he needed to know, and as far as he cared, anything beyond that was optional. It was her right to discuss or not discuss it. It was obvious that sending personnel to Azura discomforted her. That was understandable, because the planet sounded like a watery hell, and he was none too happy about visiting.

  Checking the seals of the environmental suit once more, the Admiral began layering pieces of armor over the suit’s thick, rubbery hide. The armor plates were rigid on the outside, but layered with shock-absorbing material. It was meant to help catch or deflect bullets, but that wouldn’t be its primary purpose on Azura. No, amidst Azura’s wreckage, the armor’s rigidity would help prevent the team’s environmental suits from getting snagged and torn amongst the ruins. The suits had minor self-sealing properties and were easy to patch, but with contamination concerns on Azura, it was best to do everything possible to prevent a suit puncture entirely.

  The ghost watchedhim secure the armor, piece by piece, covering the largest surfaces of the suit: chest, thighs, shins, shoulders, forearms. It had the silvery crosshatched appearance of carbon fiber, made from a material engineered for this lightweight, protective purpose, one of those things that was simple, but tried and true. Personnel armor hadn’t changed much in in the last half century. What the Admiral wore now would have been standard in the Frontier Rebellion and in the Hydrian War before it. Hell, it was entirely possible that armor set, pulled from the ship’s storage, had seen both those conflicts firsthand. But, to the ghost, it still looked fragile. Compared to the level of armor she was used to considering – the layered and angled armor of battleship hulls – it may as well have been decorative. But she forced herself to recall that forces on the human scale were many orders of magnitude smaller. His armor was meant to combat small arms fire and martial weapons, not missiles or artillery. Generally, a ship would be present to do that.

  Finishing with the armor, the Admiral next grabbed his weapons belt and layered it on top. It was standard issue, on the right side, there was a holster for his sidearm, and slots for extra clips of ammunition. He checked it all over. The clips were full, the pistol loaded, with the battery for its electric discharge at full capacity. The left side of his belt had an empty attachment for the sword that lay on the table in front of him. He lifted it, but hesitated, wondering if it might be better to take a sabre from the ship’s supply instead – one he would care less about losing.

  “Take it,” the ghost told him. “Fine weaponry is a sign of status amongst the Hydra. They will expect humanity’s representative to be adorned appropriately.” The more respect he commanded, the better chance of success any negotiation would have. “Besides, I wouldn’t want you to forget me while you’re away.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Decision made, he secured his trusty sabre to the proper spot on his left hip, then drew it to check the length of its freshly sharpened edge. Its dark gray length was flawless, as expected, considering the strength of its metal. He sheathed it once more and faced the ghost. “Good enough?”

  “Well, you almost look like you know what you’re doing,” she offered.

  “Ha-ha,” he said humorlessly. “Why don’t you go planet-side? See how you like it.” He had trained with this gear. All fleet officers were combat-trained – though not to the extent of the Marines – but all this gear still felt clunky. He was not acclimated to its weight, to the places where it slightly constricted his movement. It had been a long time since he’d geared up in armor.

  “Jokes aside,” she said softly, “When you are down there, stay on the surface. Whatever you do, do not delve into the colony’s depths.”

  He nodded, “Understood.” And then it was time. He called in a request for two additional medical kits and marched down to retrieve a chemical storage bucket before heading toward the Hydrian prisoner. As he traversed the Singularity’s familiar hallways, crew moved aside, recognizing someone moving with purpose. The few that paid more attention than that did a double-take, many not immediately recognizing him. Admiral Gives only ever dressed in full uniform, so the rare instances where he was without his black duty jacket made them struggle to recognize him, as if it were impossible that anyone without that uniform might actually be the Admiral.

  It would be a lie to say their confusion did not somewhat amuse him.

  Arriving to the state quarters that housed the Hydra, with a chemical storage bucket, he was greeted by the young face of Cadet Santino. The young Marine looked exhausted, but beside the away team, none of the crew had rested in the long hours of the night. They had all been up scouring the ship for the drones, Santino included. “Follow me in, stay by the door,” Admiral Gives instructed him.

  “Yes, sir,” the Marine answered, taking up position two steps behind and one step off the Admiral’s right shoulder, just as he’d been trained.

  Santino was good at hiding the extra moment it took him to recognize the Admiral outside of uniform. Or, maybe he was simply exhausted enough to respond automatically to any voice of authority. It was difficult to tell either way. With a hand on the wheel that would unseal the hatch, Admiral Gives paused, remembering what the ghost had told him about the drone attack. “Cadet, I am told you helped defend your less-combat-capable comrades during the drone attack.” More specifically, Santino and Ty had fended off a swarm of drones to protect Smith. “Excellent work.”

  Santino blinked, momentarily taken aback, but then beamed under the praise. “Thank you, sir, but I was just doing my job.”

  Santino was a good Marine, and a good crewman. Like the most of the ship’s crew, he’d come from less fortunate circumstances, but given an opportunity to work for a stable home and honest friendships, he had not wasted it. The Admiral had no qualms with Santino watching his back, as he spun open the hatch and stepped in, carrying the chemical storage bucket he’d requisitioned from supply.

  The carved wooden legs and blue upholstery of the furniture in state quarters beyond was undisturbed. The Hydra had once again taken to the sofa, burrowing into the cushions to conserve body heat. The climate-controlled temperature aboard ship – calibrated to humans – was slightly too cold to be comfortable to it. As Santino took position beside the door, Admiral Gives circled around to look down at the Hydra’s miserable form. It stared back at him with dark, slitted irises, looking much weaker than before. “Time to go,” the Admiral told it, setting the chemical storage bucket down in front of the couch. He briefly contemplated the odds of the Hydra willingly cooperating, but decided it was best to try, before they had to force it. “Expel your acid here,” he instructed, nudging the bucket with his foot.

  The Hydra’s long body convulsed once before it heaved its long body over to the bucket, half-choking as it unwillingly expelled its acid glands. Its claws dug into the oriental rug as it hovered there, blinking slowly, as if trying to comprehend its own actions. Eventually, it rose to face the Admiral with a hunched spine, uneasy and fearful, not shaking in discomfort but trembling. “Shipmaster,” it rasped, “you do not know the strength of your Queen. You do not know her true form.” A human could only be blind to the nature of what surrounded him. They did not possess the blindsight required to see such things. “She could swallow us all. Human, Hydra… we all act upon her whims.” Rowin’s long form seized for a moment, an uncontrolled tremor dropping the drone back to a lower, quadrupedal stance. “You speak for a false Queen as powerful as the Almighty. The Empire shall fear She-Who-Sings-Death once more.”

  “As they should,” the Admiral reminded. “If your kind seek to harvest humanity and its worlds, then the Banshee Queen will resist you.” That was her intent, for better or worse, and he, as much as he resented humanity, would not act against the ghost’s will. She, commanded by the purpose of her creation, would defend humanity, and he would help her, if only to ensure that her selflessness would not be her end. The ghost deserved better than to lose everything fighting for a species that had never even thanked her for her sacrifice.

  Staring at him, the Hydra blinked its vertically divided eyelids, only one closing at a time, evolved to never lose track of any prey or threat that stood before it. “The way She-Who-Sings-Death winds her blindsight through you is unusual,” Rowin hissed. “You are unlike any Shipmaster the Empire has seen.”

  Because I’m not a lizard, the Admiral thought. Humans, or at least the vast 99.99% of them, including him, had no sense of telepathy, no natural gift for it. The Hydra evolved with innate sensitivity and awareness of it, an extra sense for perception they called blindsight. Given that, the method a powerful telepath used to weave their telepathy through a human versus a Hydra would have to change. The biological function of their brains, let alone the orientation of their minds, was vastly different, but the Admiral did not appreciate the Hydra’s analysis. It made him feel exposed. He had spent years concealing the ghost from humanity’s limited awareness, and it concerned him that there was no concealing her presence from this alien. “It is time to go,” the sooner this drone was off the ship, the better.

  With difficulty, the Hydra pulled itself into a bipedal stature once more. “As you command.”

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  Rowin followed the Admiral step for step through the ship, followed in turn by Santino acting as the Marine guard. Nothing was revealed to the Hydra along their path, hatches kept closed and sealed, but the biological drone flicked its long tongues, tasting the air a few times as they moved.

  There was little concern of the Hydra obtaining knowledge of humanity’s defenses or ability here. Separated from Command, the Singularity no longer had access to the fleet’s security data and was, in the simplest terms, an older ship. The Hydrian Armada well knew her capabilities from the War, and had seen her internals before. After all, the treaty that ended the Hydrian War, a cease fire agreement between the Hydrian Queen’s ambassador and the Fleet Admiral, had been signed aboard this ship. That same treaty had established the Neutral Zone, and made intentionally crossing it an act of war, so perhaps it was fitting that the Singularity had been the ship to stumble upon evidence of a treaty violation. But, mirrored in that contemplation was the fact that the treaty signed here had also included the agreement that formally justified the creation of the Azura Quarantine Zone, and bound humanity to abide the Hydrian bylaws. Bylaws that, for all intents and purposes, were violated by the very existence of the Angel of Destruction.

  The universe had a strange way of doing things sometimes, involving the Singularity in this mess, and then returning both sides of the War to Azura.

  Peace would likely end where it had begun.

  When Admiral Gives and the Hydra reached the hangar deck, the away team was waiting beside a Warhawk, the larger variety of the Singularity’s support craft – a reconnaissance ship that could double as a transport shuttle. Havermeyer and the three Marines beside it were decked to the nines with combat and survival gear. Like the Admiral, they had overlaid armor upon their environmental suits, giving them the strange bionic appearance of slick, oily flesh below hard plate.

  With environmental suits’ air recycling packs having to be carried on their backs, additional equipment for the away team had been carefully selected, as almost anything else they brought with them would have to be carried on their front, and could not be allowed to inhibit their movement.

  As such, each Marine would carry a med-kit packed with antibacterial supplies and suit patches. The team’s engineer, Havermeyer, had a tool kit to carry in case they encountered remnants of the cataclysm or needed to make repairs to their transport craft. And, acting as translator, Admiral Gives would carry the communication equipment: the soundboard and phrase book, as well as a limited number of MRE’s. It was procedure to carry at least two days of food, but in reality, if they lingered on Azura long enough to need to eat, something had gone very wrong. The final, most important piece of equipment would be carried by Corporal Johnston. He was so large that his suit had been custom-built and the air pack only took up half his back. He would carry the team’s subspace transceiver on the other side of his back.

  Since the Singularity would be out-of-system for the duration of the mission, the only way to stay in contact with the ship was by subspace transceiver. Radio transmissions were light-limited and useless without the ship in orbit or elsewhere nearby. Subspace transceivers were not light-limited, and allowed instant communication. They were relatively common on ships and stations, but mobile ones powerful enough to break through atmospheric interference were large, and rare. Subspace transceivers were among the few pieces of equipment the Singularity did not have the means to manufacture. Isolated from Command’s supply lines, that made the transceiver priceless. But, given the stakes of this mission, bringing one along was worth the risk.

  Colonel Zarrey shouldered his way past the throng of engineering and armory technicians crawling around the Warhawk as they made final checks. The recon ship would be launching with a full combat loadout: missiles, decoys and ammunition for the heavy blaster under the ship’s nose, but Zarrey paid the commotion little attention. He barely even batted an eye at the Hydra, standing hunched beneath Johnston’s watchful gaze. “We’ve now accounted for 196 drones, Admiral, and we’ve got a few more spots to check for the last few.” Zarrey still hadn’t bothered to find a proper uniform jacket, some form of protest about how busy he’d been kept since he last visited his quarters. The scar on the side of his chin had taken on a pinker color, irritated by him scratching at it, a nervous tic.

  Admiral Gives would have traded his place on this mission for a sleepless night in a heartbeat, but he knew why Zarrey was here. The XO was looking for new orders, given that the drones had not all been located before the away team’s departure. “Adjust accordingly, Colonel. Once the drones have been accounted for, jump.” The ship would have to be moved to ensure a secure position, and no further details could be discussed in front of the Hydra. “Your discretion, XO. Ship’s yours until I return.”

  “The Old Bitch never listens to me,” Zarrey complained. As far as Zarrey cared, the ship was never ‘his,’ he was just supervising her care until the Admiral returned. “Make sure you get back as soon as you can. I really think she doesn’t like me.”

  “Maybe the Old Bitch would prefer not to be called a bitch?”

  “Maybe.” Zarrey shrugged. “Doesn’t change the facts.” The ship never behaved when he was in charge. “How are you going to know where to find us if we jump?” The original plan had been to find all those drones before dropping out of hyperspace, that way the Hydra could not use the drones to determine where the ship dropped out of FTL, thus concealing her position. Of course, since they’d dropped out of hyperspace without accounting for all the drones, this location might now be exposed. Until all the drones were in-hand, there was no way to know if Swordbreaker had shut them all down.

  “Leave a scout to wait for us,” the Admiral instructed. “We can follow them to your new position.” That would not be an enjoyable post to the pilot assigned it, but they were only planning to be on Azura’s surface a matter of hours if everything went according to plan.

  Checking his watch, the Admiral knew it was time to go. Azura’s atmospheric conditions were less than desirable, and they would need all the time they had left. He signaled the team, “Load up.”

  Scratching at his chin, Zarrey watched the Hydra climb up onto the wing and into the cabin of the Warhawk. It moved slowly, shaking, as if sick. Zarrey decided not to ask questions. The alien’s condition was not his problem. The damn lizard only had to live long enough to hand it off to its people. After that, it wasn’t their problem. “We’re a call away,” Zarrey reminded the Admiral.

  “Understood, Colonel.” That was reassuring in some ways, but if the Hydra double-crossed them, the end of this mission would probably be violent and short. “Take care of my ship.” Repairs and Marine training would continue in his absence. By the time negotiations were through, the ship would be ready, one way or another.

  The Marines loaded into the Warhawk next. Johnston fearlessly strapped in beside the Hydra. The pair of them took up four seats. Frenchie and Valentina squeezed into the remaining two. Havermeyer then climbed his way to the front of the craft, taking over the copilot’s seat. The tech-monk did not have the fleet’s official copilot training, but the education of the monk’s sect had been twice as thorough. The last remaining seat would be that of the pilot, awaiting the Admiral himself.

  Zarrey tightened his jaw, knowing that arguing against the mission was pointless. “I swear, if you permanently leave me in charge, I will sink this ship just to spite you.” Zarrey wanted nothing to do with a permanent command. He was fine babysitting, didn’t mind being second in command, but he had no interest in inheriting sole responsibility for this ship or any other.

  Good luck with that, the Admiral thought. “I understand, Colonel.” This mission was not a willing one. Generally, Admiral Gives preferred not to leave the ship, and he did not anticipate Azura being pleasant. But this was his duty, the responsibility of his position. It might be pointless, but in line with the Singularity’s mission, he had to pursue peace with the Hydra, even if it was temporary.

  There was nothing left to say, so Admiral Gives stepped up onto the Warhawk’s stubby black wing. The Warhawk’s wings were not particularly useful in space, simply gave the ship a larger cross-section in zero-G combat, which was not a benefit. But they gave space to mount the Warhawk’s missile allotment and provided control surfaces for atmospheric maneuvering. All the Singularity’s support craft were designed to fly with or without atmosphere. Even the battleship herself was rated for atmosphere, albeit she possessed the aerodynamics of a brick. Mostly, that atmospheric rating was due to the ship being built in a terrestrial shipyard, and not because the battleship had ever been meant to return to atmosphere after launch, but it still counted.

  Stepping into the cabin of the ship, the Admiral paused to secure the hatch behind him, sealing the team in. The Hydra wiggled away when he stepped near it, and the Admiral did briefly wonder what exactly the ghost had told it. Whatever she’d done, the Hydra was clearly unnerved. Knowing her capability, Admiral Gives didn’t blame it as he ducked down and climbed into the seat at the nose of the craft. With all the Angel of Destruction’s power and history, she’d become a natural predator to the Hydra – a being whose song, whose very perception, entailed their demise.

  The Admiral pulled his helmet on, checked the seal, and then jacked into one of the cockpit’s comm ports. “Pre-flight check?” he asked Havermeyer, seeing the monk working over the readouts and controls.

  “All green.” Havermeyer said, looking back for ready signals from the Marines. They signaled, steadily chattering on their own comm line.

  With that, Admiral Gives signaled through the window to the launch crew. They began their work, hitching up the Warhawk to a forklift. After a moment, there was a lurch, and the ship crept forward, dragged onto one of the elevators that would take them up and into the landing bay.

  There were faster ways to launch ships, meant for quick response and intercept, but the elevators were the safest. While they were on the clock, there was still enough time remaining to forgo a combat launch from the ship’s launch tubes, which flung ships out at high-G and gave them a velocity boost. No, this would be a slow launch, and then a jump into the great unknown.

  The elevator bumped as it began to lift them up, leaving the scuffed impact-resistant flooring of the hangar deck behind. Admiral Gives did not miss the attention of the crowds as they were hauled up through the ship’s internal structure. The forest of struts and cross-braces was much more agreeable to him. It was calmer, still and silent, yet a testament to the strength of the ship they called home. He mourned the last glimpse of it as the elevator thunked into its final position, flush with the landing bay.

  The bay was a massive cavern. The structure above them was ribbed with massive supports, but from here, they looked like mere stripes. The landing surface stretched out, long, wide and perfectly flat. The blackness of the void waited beyond, speckled with stars. Sometimes the void beckoned, beautiful and serene. Other times, it waited like the jaws of an eldritch beast, ready to swallow its travelers whole. Today was one of the latter. As the Admiral held his breath, the moment was perfectly silent. The ever-present sound of the Singularity’s main engines was gone, and to the Admiral, its absence was jarring. He released his breath and reached up to start the Warhawk’s own engines. They flared to life easily, but not with the same hum as the Singularity’s. The Warhawk was much higher in pitch.

  Reading a successful startup, the Singularity’s launch and landing clearance officer radioed in, “Ready for launch, Stonewall?”

  “10-4, Base,” the Admiral replied.

  “Releasing mag-locks now. Cleared to launch. Exit vector yours to choose.” There were no other ships in flight, and thus no chance of an accidental collision within the Singularity’s controlled airspace.

  “Roger.”

  The indicator for the external magnetic locking went dark as the Singularity released her hold on the little ship. The Warhawk had mag-locks of its own, so the recon ship would not take off unless they were disengaged. With carrier and shuttle possessing locks, there was an extra layer of redundancy, ensuring no ship launched without clearance or drifted off without the control of its pilot.

  Still, ready as he was, Admiral Gives hesitated to disengage the Warhawk’s mag-locks. The switch was there, waiting for him, but hesitation shadowed him, the only moment of hesitation he could allow himself for the rest of this mission.

  Zarrey, despite any complaints he leveled, would take excellent care of the ship and her crew. Admiral Gives worried more about himself. He hated leaving the ship. It rarely went well for him. The Singularity was his home, his place, and the rest of the worlds were far less kind. Every time he left, a nagging doubt always followed him.

  It was no less present now.

  The fate of humanity could be, likely would be, drastically altered by the outcome of this mission. It seemed stupid to place someone who cared little for humanity at its core, but that was the way of the worlds. The less involved someone wanted to be in their affairs, the more was piled onto their shoulders. At this place and this time, Admiral Gives was the wrong man for the job, and he knew that, but he was the only one here to do it.

  ‘These worlds could not ask for a better representative.’ Silently, the ghost made her presence known. ‘The Hydra prey upon weakness.’ And he was the strongest person she knew. He would not allow the Hydra to intimidate him.

  ‘I don’t care about the worlds.’ At the moment, he could hardly fathom what made this risk worth everything. It would be much simpler to simply execute Rowin, and send a warning to Command about an imminent retaliation by the Hydrian Armada. Why should he care about worlds that had never wanted him to be a part of them?

  ‘Do it for the crew and the family they would lose in this war.’ The Hydra cared not for prisoners. They did not care for civilian designations. All of humanity was prey to be consumed.

  He accepted that dedication, for his role as the commander required that he protect the ship’s crew to the best of his ability. And that meant shielding them from the grief and loneliness of losing their families. That was more important to him than the worlds’ self-imposed weight. The crew was his responsibility. The worlds were not. ‘I’ll come back home,’ he told the ghost, mostly assuring himself.

  ‘I know.’ She had to trust in that, because if she didn’t, Azura was the worst place she could ever send him.

  Admiral Gives disengaged the maglocks with a click, and the Warhawk slowly drifted off the landing surface. The ship held stationary for a moment, drifting with the same speed the Singularity held, but the Admiral took hold of the controls and slowly guided the Warhawk forward, gaining relative velocity.

  Soon enough, they left the cavernous landing bay behind. The Warhawk banked gently out past the flare of the Singularity’s bow. It was the largest part of the ship, angled and armored to deflect incoming fire like a large arrowhead. Longest along the thrust axis, the rest of the ship was shielded by the bow on approach. From the front, she looked like a chiseled diamond, a shard of the night itself. From alongside, she looked like an arrow with a disproportionately large tip. The cooling and thrust vectoring fins jutted out from the main engines like fletchings. Red stripes detailed the ship’s edges, defining the shape of her black hull against the darkness of the void.

  At the moment, the coloration and shape of the Singularity’s hull were not as clean as usual. Damage from the battle with Crimson Heart still lingered. Falling out of warp had worsened the armor damage and torn a few of the damaged hull sections open entirely once again. Complete repairs would be first priority once the drones were eliminated, but Zarrey would be managing that. The Admiral’s focus had to stay on the mission ahead of him.

  There was a click as the Marines joined the pilot’s audio channel. Etiquette dictated they wait until the transport launched, allowing the pilot to focus on communications and launch clearance. Now, in the void of space, the Marines were free to entertain themselves and the pilots with chatter.

  “This sure brings back memories, doesn’t it, Stonewall?”

  Admiral Gives did not need to glance in the mirror facing the passenger cabin to distinguish Frenchie’s mad smile. Don’t remind me, he thought, but said nothing.

  “Oh, it sure does,” Valentina said. “Unfortunately, I doubt this mission will be as fun.”

  Havermeyer glanced to the armored Marines in the back, amusement lit across their expressions, then to the stoic officer beside him. “Am I missing something?”

  “This is not the first time I have flown an away mission for Corporal Johnston’s unit,” the Admiral told him.

  Frenchie laughed wildly. “What he’s not saying is last time he was acting as an inquisitor to oust a traitor for Command. Told us he was a naddlethworfing Lieutenant.”

  “And you idiots were dumb enough to believe him until he called in a battleship to blow up a moon,” Corporal Johnston drawled, accent slow and relaxed.

  “I don’t think anyone expected the Fleet Admiral to be trapezing around a remote outpost in the interest of clearing a Marseddai’s name,” Valentina reasoned. That was certainly not anyone’s first suspicion. “We all knew something was off with him, just thought he was a Command spook.” Oh, how wrong they had been. “’Course blowing up that moon eliminated most pretenses.” Valentina did remember how mortified she had been when his actual identity had come to light.

  “Thing of beauty, that. Never seen a detonation quite so glorious,” Frenchie remarked. “It was love at first sight.” He had never seen a ship create such incredible explosions.

  Havermeyer had heard rumors of Montgomery Gaffigan’s proudest accomplishment, but he had assumed it was a tall tale told for bragging rights, an asteroid stretched into a moon for the betterment of the story. “You blew up a moon?” he asked the Admiral.

  “It was in the way.”

  Havermeyer could see that was the most the Admiral would say on the situation. “Does that not violate a slew of regulations?” Since the Frontier Rebellion, laws had guided the fleet’s terrestrial combat tactics, not allowing the direct targeting of planetary bodies for anything except precision attacks. And even those were heavily evaluated before and after the action.

  “Turns out Command is willing to look the other way on the regulations when it saves their ass from a separatist rat.” That figures, Valentina thought. Command didn’t care when their regulations cost Marine lives, only when it preserved their seat of power. Marines were expendable.

  Command had long been corrupt on many levels. Admiral Gives had been weary of it for years. It had disgusted him, but rarely more so than when Johnston had been accused of leaking sensitive information. Johnston had possessed no means, nor personal motive, just been accused on the basis of his heritage. He had been strung out as a scapegoat because Marsed, his home world, had fought on the Separatist side of the Frontier Rebellion – a war Johnston had not yet been alive to witness.

  Disheartened by their treatment elsewhere in the fleet, Johnston, Valentina, Frenchie and Ensign Owens had transferred to the Singularity after that mission. None had any intent to leave. Many of the Singularity’s other crew shared similar stories: kicked from other posts to land on the old ship as a last resort before discharge. Most came to realize that despite the Admiral’s garish reputation among the worlds, serving under his command was not the worst fate.

  “Navigation is confirmed,” Havermeyer announced. “Coordinates are locked for the Dolphiam System. Drive is charged.”

  “Everyone ready?” the Admiral looked back, checking the Marines for a ready signal. They gave a thumbs up. Havermeyer gave a nod, and the Hydra blinked one eye at a time, completely unaware of what was about to happen.