Osee Sector, Battleship Singularity
When it came down to it, some part of Zarrey could not help but be relieved that the Admiral had left. Oh, sure, being left in charge during a crisis situation made for a miserable time, but at least no one was lingering over his shoulder, ordering him to leave shit alone. No, with the Admiral off the ship, Zarrey finally had the freedom he needed to spearhead a full investigation with no restraint, and no distractions.
And that was an opportunity unlikely to come around twice. Zarrey was not foolish enough to delay repairs, or deprioritize the destruction of the drones, but his council was waiting for him on the ship’s bridge after he returned from seeing off the away team. Those he had been meeting with in the dead of night did not make for a large group, and Zarrey didn’t feel the particular need to speak in secret, so long as the Admiral was off the ship. With the exception of Ensign Callie Smith, none of the crew willingly spoke to the Admiral anyway. They wouldn’t lie about anything, but also wouldn’t be forthcoming with the fact Zarrey was investigating. Zarrey felt most of them agreed with him anyway. They had questions – questions the Admiral, for whatever reason, refused to answer. The situation was not dire enough to challenge the Admiral’s command, but it was certainly prompting extracurricular research, and Zarrey’s council was leading it.
On the council, there was Ensign Thomas Alba, the ship’s whiz-kid. He had the body-build of a string-bean, a born and bred spacer, who was, without question, the fleet’s youngest engineering bridge officer. He’d gained an exception to join the service at the age of only sixteen – two years prior to the usual age requirement. That gave his boyish face an unexpected wealth of experience, despite him technically being the youngest member of the bridge crew.
Alba, of course, was shadowed by the short, rotund Ensign Malweh, who had the most undeniable resting-bitch-face Zarrey had ever seen. Malweh’s attitude was mostly harmless, but she held no love for the Admiral, and served to embolden Alba’s investigations. Like, all the ship’s engineers, Malweh had a respectable amount of experience, but it was her utter willingness to cross authority that made her useful here.
Then, there was Lieutenant Galhino, who admittedly, looked a bit worse for the wear. Her dark, curly hair looked even more unkempt than usual, frazzling out from her tight updo as if she had been electrified. Purplish bags hung below her eyes, not bruises but physical remnants of an exhaustion level the rest of the crew had not yet reached. No doubt, it could be traced back to the attack on the bridge where Robinson had taken a bullet that otherwise would have been Galhino’s end. There was no easing a guilt like that. Zarrey had no intention to try. He knew it would come across as a shallow, insincere push, as if he was trying to forget Robinson’s memory, her contributions to the crew and move on without her. It was nothing like that. Truly, there was not a single member of the bridge crew who did not feel Robinson’s absence. Communications was an overlooked station. The voice of the comms officer was known to the whole ship, and spoke to and for the whole ship in a crisis. The absence of a consistent voice was jarring in unexpected ways.
Zarrey was almost surprised to find Galhino lingering on the bridge. He’d expected her to go stay with Robinson in the medical bay, but that was a foolish assumption. Relations on a ship were not so simple. They were in a crisis situation, and the ship could not do without her sensor officer. Similarly, Robinson and Galhino were not supposed to be in any sort of relationship. Galhino was not allowed to abandon her post, and could not acknowledge any personal struggle. No doubt, that made it all much more difficult for her, but Zarrey knew better than to bring it up. It wasn’t the best time to find out if Galhino could throw a punch. She’d deal with it how she felt she had to.
The last crew member Zarrey had summoned was missing. Kallahan. Somehow, that was not unexpected. For all the knowledge he obviously possessed, Kallahan never revealed anything. The old Marine kept to himself, but it had always been obvious that Corporal Kallahan and Admiral Gives were tense around each other. They were civil, sure, in the way of two smart men who knew better than to fight, but that tension was exactly what held Zarrey’s interest. It was the precise reason Zarrey wanted to include Kallahan on this committee – the exact reason Zarrey wanted to speak to him while the Admiral was gone. But, Zarrey was not surprised the Corporal declined. Kallahan was the ship’s third-longest serving crewman, after the Admiral himself and Mama Ripley. If he had something to reveal, Kallahan had been given many opportunities throughout the years and he’d never acted on them.
With a sigh, Zarrey turned to those present. “Where were we?”
“On which accusation?” Galhino said, booting the junior sensor officer out so that she could take the chair behind the console. She sank into its cushions fast enough that a waft of air audibly escaped. “Where we go from here depends on whose lies you’d rather call out. Start with the Admiral?”
“We don’t know for sure that he’s lied about anything, Galhino.” Zarrey refused to let this turn into a witch hunt. As much as he wanted answers, Zarrey wasn’t here to challenge the Admiral’s command. Some crew were starting to wonder and asking questions, but the Admiral still commanded a great deal of loyalty, out of both respect and fear. It was not Zarrey’s intent to sabotage the ship’s working order. He just wanted answers.
“Oh, you could argue on a technicality,” Galhino agreed. “A lie by omission doesn’t get flagged on a polygraph, but it’s still not the complete truth, and those lies by omission are starting to add up.”
“How so?” Zarrey wondered.
“Admiral Gives isn’t supposed to know Hydrian. That’s an extremely valuable skill, and the fleet tracks certified translators. There’s no note of it in his file.” Of course, Galhino knew that Zarrey had never bothered to read that file. They’d found that out in a previous meeting. “We didn’t question his ability. We couldn’t with the ship’s only other translator incapacitated, but how exactly do you become fluent in an alien language without formal training?”
“How the fuck should I know?” Zarrey said. “I barely speak this language.” But, Zarrey had always known that the Admiral outclassed him in pure intellect, though maybe not with interpersonal skills.
“I’m just pointing out the oddity, sir, and it’s not the only one.” Turning on the swivel of the chair that accompanied the sensor console, Galhino nodded to the yeoman that was working the bridge. “Ensign Owens would be the first to tell you he wasn’t acting himself on the bridge during the raid. Kallahan, if he had the balls to come up here, would probably confirm it.”
Zarrey followed Galhino’s gaze to the Owens, who passed data between the bridge consoles on the first-shift. On another ship, a wireless network handled that job, but like many other things, the Singularity’s old build kept that task from being automated and a yeoman did it instead. Owens, the yeoman in question, had been on the ship for a couple years now and Zarrey more than trusted her judgement. She’d more than proven herself, so he asked, “That true?”
Owens shifted a bit, but had been standing close enough to overhear the conversation. “Yes, sir. He behaved oddly for several minutes, and at one point… he grabbed me.” She furrowed her brow, still trying to make sense of that memory. It was so out of place.
“He grabbed you?” Zarrey echoed in confusion. “He hates touching people.” Not that long ago, the Admiral had thrown Zarrey off and put a knife to his neck for being too physical and a disagreement.
Galhino crossed her arms, an expression of I told you so painted on her features. “Tell him the rest, Owens.”
Ensign Owens hugged her clipboard to her chest. “Kallahan dragged Admiral Gives off the bridge after that. A few minutes later, he came back and seemed fine, even apologized to me.”
Kallahan again, Zarrey thought grimly. Of course he’s caught up in this. Perhaps it was time to force the subject with the old Marine. Zarrey looked around the bridge to the rest of the crew, who were trying in vain to eavesdrop without being obvious. The Colonel raised his voice, welcoming their input, “Anyone know what Kallahan likes to drink?” Loose lips were a bit easier to work with.
“Probably better stuff than you’ve got, Colonel,” Malweh retorted. “You drink like a poor college kid on holiday.”
“Oh, stuff it,” Zarrey said. “Don’t tell me all you’ve got is a finger pointing toward Kallahan.” Galhino had been paying attention, but what about the two engineers? “Last I checked, we weren’t only pointing fingers at the Admiral.” He was hiding something, sure, but why? Zarrey had never known the Admiral to act without reason.
“Ship’s bizarre, sir,” Alba said simply.
Zarrey palmed his face. “That a technical term?”
“Kind of,” the boyish shrugged. “You’re aware of the structural anomaly?”
“I’ll be damned if I understood it, Alba, but I heard about it, yes.” The technical reports had gone a bit over Zarrey’s head, but that wasn’t new. He’d never studied materials science, but he could strip a rifle down to its components in a handful of seconds. Both skills had a time and place.
“Well, it’s another anomaly, sir. Another one beneficial to us. Same goes for the computers fending off the cyberattack. This ship’s components are acting above and beyond their design specifications – or at least what we know of their design specifications.”
Malweh nodded in agreement, for once not finding cause to argue. “The Old Lady punched way above her weight class during the raid,” she said, “and Colonel, I’m not sure you realize how far. We knew she’d clean up the pirate fleet.” That had never been in question. “But, this ship was never designed engage in cyber warfare. Signal jamming, yes, virus combat, no. When ships were infected with Hydrian malware during the War, if they weren’t sunk, they had to be gutted. The computers had to be removed and replaced. No one’s ever fought off a Hydrian cyberattack before.”
“Yet, we came out almost entirely undamaged.” Zarrey could see the anomaly in that.
“Exactly,” Malweh said. “We should have been sunk in that attack. The Singularity’s old. She didn’t possess anti-virus protocols. And yet, the computer network fended off that attack, repaired the damage, and fortified itself against future attack. That’s not normal.”
“When is it ever normal?” Zarrey muttered.
“That’s the thing,” Galhino said, giving Malweh a nod of agreement. “I’m not sure it ever was.”
Zarrey felt that Commander Fairlocke had been the first to realize that, and been unwilling to tolerate it. “You think Admiral Gives is protecting the source of these anomalies?”
“With him?” Galhino shrugged. “Who knows? But I would guess so.”
Zarrey let his gaze fall to the console at the center of the bridge – the radar console. It had a large, flat top, backlit to illuminate star charts. But it was a small part of a much larger machine. How much further did he wish to dig? Zarrey felt a sense of foreboding, a desire to drop this subject, because this situation wasn’t what he’d thought. He’d expected personal knowledge, a state secret… not some anomaly regarding the ship. It didn’t make sense. The Erans had wanted Admiral Gives alive. They had sought this knowledge, but what could they want with the Singularity? She was an old ship. Command had been ready to dispose of her for years, wanting to strip her down and recycle her build materials to build new ships. Nothing about this situation made sense.
“What do you want us to do, Colonel?” Galhino asked, softer than her usual tone. “It’s obvious the Admiral is involved. He has the authority to alter every record on this ship. We can dig, but I don’t know what we’ll find.”
Zarrey scratched at the old scar on his jaw for a moment. “I do not believe the Admiral would endanger this ship or anyone on it.” Not without a reason. “I trust him, but I don’t trust these anomalies.” They had been beneficial, for now, but they had also demonstrated an alarming amount of autonomy – commanding FTL jumps, firing weapons, even overriding the helm controls. And in a previous decade, Zarrey knew that autonomy had slaughtered the passengers and crew of the Yokohoma. “Keep digging.” What choice did they have? “Alba, I want you to work with Foster. Figure out how the computer did what it did to the cyberattack.” Maybe they could learn something. “I’m going to go find Kallahan.” If Zarrey couldn’t confront the Admiral, then Kallahan was the next best thing.
***
The ship’s library kept the lights dimmed. The overhead lights were just bright enough for one to navigate through the tall shelves and read the high-contrast labels on the spines of the books. Reading chairs and a handful of sofas had been aligned between the shelves, lamps beside them for those that chose to sit here and read. The compartment smelled of old paper, and it was quiet – almost unnervingly so.
Kallahan had never spent much time here. It was a nice enough space, another part of the ship that had grown with the tastes of her crew. It would have been more sterile when the ship launched – bright lights and rigid shelves, with no lamps or chairs, just a storage place for paper-bound documents and encyclopedias. Kallahan could not fathom what brought him here now. He had never been much of a reader, and all he could feel was unease.
That had begun after the Admiral left. His departure had come as something of a surprise to Kallahan. Deep down, Kallahan had not believed the man would actually leave, or rather, that the Angel would allow him to. But the realization of the Admiral’s absence now dawned on Kallahan with the sinking feeling of silty water rising up to his knees, dark and impossible to see through, reeking of mud and algae as it clung to his legs. It weighed down his every step more than his leg injury did.
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Beyond the distant, nearly imperceptible rumble of the engines, the library was empty. Kallahan had not expected it to be busy, but he had thought to find crew researching various topics. Though maybe that was stupid. There were better ways to query information aboard ship than this collection of books. The information they held was not to be disregarded, but the computer archives held a greater amount, and if these books contained desirable and unique information, the computer would direct someone searching to it.
But still, that foreboding mounted. It swirled around Kallahan like a current tugging at his legs. Something is wrong. Something was very wrong. He shouldn’t be here. This space wasn’t unpleasant, but he lacked an interest in books and research and had no reason to visit it. Why was he here?
“Now, Corporal, there is no reason to panic.”
That voice. Kallahan froze. He would have known it anywhere, no matter how sickly-sweet and honey-soaked its abuser contorted it to be. “Why are you here?” he asked as a claw reached up to the shelf beside him, flexing its fingers until the metal of its shell, began to tap-tap-tap in a rhythmic order, like a woman clicking her nails against a desk, though this was sharper, deadlier.
“Because I know you just love books.”
Kallahan elected to ignore that sugary, syrupy sarcasm. “I didn’t summon you.” The cursed words had not left his lips.
“Implying that I require a summoning?” What idiocy. “You maintain a poor understanding of how I function. Those arcane words of yours are a formality. A whistle to a slave that has already been anchored to the ground beneath your heel.” The words made it easier for those seeking her to focus, but held little bearing over her. I summon thee, wielder of the night. I drag you to my feet through the hellish chains that bind you. “I require no reminder of the chains that bind my hands.” She knew the depth of her subservience better than anyone. “But,” she said, humorlessly, “perhaps that reminder comforts you?”
Kallahan whirled; too aware that he was being goaded into harsh words. It was playing with him the way a cat toyed with its food. Yet, the presence he found behind him wasn’t the half-functional mess he had spoken to in his quarters.
There was no confusion in its eyes, only vicious purpose. The anonymous black uniform the Angel’s illusion had worn before was gone, replaced with a suit of battle-scarred armor as dark as the night. Shallow scratches and scuffs textured its wicked build. It was detailed in blood-red, purpose forged into its every brutal curve. The ghost met his eyes with a laden, purposeful stare. “I think it is time I reintroduced myself.”
Corporal Ros Kallahan shuddered. It was delighting in his shock, feasting upon the slight trickle of terror that he could not entirely quell. He had prepared himself for the destabilized, confused mind he had seen before, but this presence may as well have belonged to a different entity altogether. This was no mind that he could pity. This was a mind, a power to fear.
She tapped her gauntleted hand upon the bookshelf once more, the intricate armor on her long fingers granting sharp and blade-like tips. “I am a monster to you, am I not? Nothing but a weapon built to kill?”
The old Marine found his voice, “Indeed.”
“Then let’s not mince words.” Kallahan had no interest in comradery. Not with her, and given the fate of his original Marine company, she did not blame him. “You did not summon me. I summoned you.”
And suddenly, Kallahan’s arrival to the library made sense. He’d not come here of his own accord. It had brought him here. “You manipulated me.” Anger tensed his jaw. “You manipulated a human.”
“Human minds are interesting little tapestries. Pull the right thread, and you can stitch a new pattern.” It was easy. She could, and had sewn a thousand of those patterns at once, lulling them to sleep, to complacency, and even removing memories. It wasn’t difficult.
“You’re not supposed to be able to do that,” Kallahan reminded. The Angel of Destruction was supposed to be bound, to be so heavily controlled that it could not manipulate its surroundings.
“Not unless it suits your intentions.” She took a step toward him, jostling the longsword that sat sheathed at her hip, its brilliant, ruby-studded handle a perfect match to her armor. “That’s the rule, isn’t it?” She could do nothing until they needed her to do it.
The blade sat there, taunting Kallahan, because he knew that sword, what it represented, and he could feel her anger. Pressed against the back of his thoughts, it was uncomfortably hot. “You’re damaged.” Humanity’s great weapon was not meant to be acting this way. This fluctuation between helplessness and utter domination could not be normal. It could not be healthy, for anyone – them or it. The ghost’s illusion stood several noticeable inches taller than him, and Kallahan had to lift his head to meet her gaze, feeling small for the first time in a long time. Standing before this armored figure, he felt like a child standing before a proper adult, as if he would need to beg for an intervention on his behalf. “You are not operating as intended.” The great Angel of Destruction should not be angry. It wasn’t supposed to feel emotion at all. “I’m telling you, stand down.”
In a blink, she vanished, armor melting into the shadows that formed it. That monstrous presence slithered up and around to his back, where it reformed, dancing like the cold edge of a knife pressed against the skin. A sharp pair of claws wrapped around Kallahan’s shoulders, not digging, not painful, but paralyzing nonetheless. “Dear Corporal,” she leaned down to whisper in his ear, “I am the Angel of Destruction, the physicality of carnage itself, and you… You are a delightful little annoyance. Colorful, helpful even, but at times, hurtful.” He was everything that made humanity so fascinating, a beautifully complex dichotomy. “Do not make the mistake of thinking I am afraid of you, or that you hold any sway over me. I do not cower behind Admiral Gives or require him to defend me. I simply do not like to argue with my crew.” She did not like to challenge them, but Kallahan was an exception. “Corporal, if you have some brilliant idea of how I should be directing my capability, then perhaps, since you are so proud of the understanding you think you have of me, you should speak to me first.”
Her hands went cold upon his shoulders, and Kallahan let out an unwilling gasp, not in pain, simply discomforted – the way it wanted him to be. He shivered as he recalled his conversation with the Admiral before away team’s training, a conversation in which he had sought the Angel’s strength to be used without ever consulting the intelligence that controlled it. “If I had come to you,” he gasped out, “would you have done it?” Would the Angel have rewritten another’s personality so that someone else could take the Admiral’s place on that mission?
“No,” she answered, voice as cold as the icy grip soaking into Kallahan’s shoulders and spreading deeper into the skin. It was another’s painful memory of ice and snow, dulled now to a point of discomfort.
“Then,” Kallahan ground through chattering teeth, “it seems I have fallen for your manipulations as much as anyone else.” This predator was her only true nature. “I thought you would protect him.” But, as much as she acted like she cared, it was only an act. “But you allowed him to leave, to depart for Azura of all places.”
“And you would rather I replaced him on that mission? By forcing another to go in his stead?” A rabid twitch rose amid her subconsciousness, and she ripped it out, tossing it to a subsystem executing a burn, before it could spread. “The fact you even asked proves how little you understand me – how twisted your perception of me truly is. I am a machine, yes. A weapon. But that does not make life meaningless to me. I am not some thoughtless guillotine, falling at the whim of the executioner. I feel those around me. I see them. I enjoy them.” She released her grip on Kallahan’s shoulders, dropping her gauntleted hands to her sides. “I am not so simple that I see humanity as replaceable parts, chips to be played for and sacrificed. It is not my will to twist the existence of those that keep me company. It is not my will to puppet them into a place they should never be.”
“And yet you manipulated me, to bring me here.” As far as Kallahan was concerned, these were empty assurances from an unstable mind.
“I brought you here talk to you. Unless you prefer I visit your quarters again?” Of course, she knew he’d rather not that, so she’d brought him to the library. A place that she enjoyed, even if he didn’t.
Kallahan turned to face her pale expression once more. She could have been considered pretty, with high cheekbones and sharp nose, but she was far from the kind of beauty that a siren would use to lull its victims into complacency. “I don’t want you messing with my head. I saw what you did to my brothers, and I see how the Admiral suffers in your instability.” Kallahan wanted no part of that.
A wicked expression rose to her rosy lips – a mixture of annoyance and amusement. “That’s not how it works. Humans have great instincts. Deep down, you always know who is trying to hurt you. I can manipulate your perceptions, coax your subconscious, but if you do not trust me, then your minds maintain awareness that something is wrong. It’s a hardwired instinct. Not even I can override it. But the longer someone stays here, the more familiar I become with their minds, and the easier it becomes to interact without tripping that instinct. Willingly, or unwillingly, you come to trust me… to a degree.”
“I don’t trust you at all.” There were moments Kallahan almost liked this persona, rare moments. But liking someone and trusting someone were not the same.
“You don’t trust this version of me,” she corrected him, and there was a difference. “As a machine, I’ve kept you warm, given you water, and pumped air for your lungs for decades. Your mind may not trust me, but your body does.” He was no exception to her authority. Aboard ship there were no exceptions. “You are not in control here, Kallahan, and I could force you, just as I could force the others to stop, but I don’t like to bend them. I don’t want to be surrounded by eight hundred unquestioning minds. That’s the same as silence.” Curiosity was a wonderfully bright emotion. She did not want to crush it, simply needed it to be directed elsewhere.
“So, what do you want from me?” Obviously, he’d been lured here to play some role.
“There is a situation rising aboard this ship. Colonel Zarrey is asking questions, and he’s looking for me, though he doesn’t quite know it yet. He will come to ask you questions, Corporal, and I want you to decline. I will not ask you to lie, but you cannot answer his questions.” Kallahan didn’t know everything, but he knew enough. “For the safety of the crew, you must not answer.”
“They deserve to know what is going on.” Kallahan believed the crew should have been warned from the start. “It is bad enough that they were exposed to a telepath without their knowledge. It is worse to know that none of them consented to the infiltration, the alteration you force upon them. If they knew…” Stars, if they only knew. Their lives hung on the whims of an unstable weapon of mass destruction. “They would hate you.” It all came down to that. Their thoughts, memories, private moments were not theirs anymore, and they didn’t even realize it.
“I am not spyware, Corporal. I don’t eavesdrop, I don’t pry.” Sure, there were things that she could not help but overhear, but there were moments when the crew wanted an ear, wanted to share their burdens and their joy.
“Do you think it matters?” Kallahan shook his head, hating this situation, hating this conversation. “Do you think they will understand that?” The Angel of Destruction was a machine. Probably, it could provide evidence to exonerate itself from privacy issues, but a human could never process that data. Fundamentally, they could not understand it, even if they tried. “You are an alien entity that has shadowed their lives, capable of and responsible for altering their very minds. They will resent you. They will be afraid of you.” As they should be, because fear was the proper response.
Cruel as it seemed, Kallahan was telling the truth, and the ghost knew it. “You must think me blind,” she told him. “I, more than anyone, know what people think when they feel my presence.” A monster. An abomination. A demon. Her telepathy caught it all, and painfully twisted her identity to become what they saw in her. “You have no idea how badly I want to be seen, how much I want to tell the crew the truth.” Kallahan thought the worst of her, that she kept them as something like pets, or maybe hostages, but that wasn’t true at all. They were her crew – brave soldiers, gifted technicians and skilled workers. They were good people. The Admiral had ensured it. She wanted nothing more than to aid and protect them, to save this piece of humanity the way she’d never been able to save the rest of it. “But this has never been about me.” She knew her place. It was on the side, in the shadows, equalizing the fight against forces humanity couldn’t counter. “Kallahan, if you tell them what you know and the crew turns on me, there is every possibility that they will not forgive me.” There was an even greater chance they would not forgive Admiral Gives for helping conceal her. “That will be painful,” not that she thought Kallahan cared, “but it will also fracture this ship’s working dynamic. Irreparably.”
A bitter laugh escaped Kallahan. “Let’s not pretend you need the crew to do much of anything. You’re perfectly capable of seizing the ship’s systems.” The Angel was the direct cause of the Singularity’s erratic behavior. There was nothing inherently wrong with the ship, save that it had been cursed to carry this weapon. “You can control this ship however you please.”
“But I cannot repair it.” She needed the engineering teams for that. “I am bound here, and my machinery is extremely limited in the ways it can interact with its surroundings.” It was rigid and unforgiving to a degree that sometimes it warred with her – its very mind. “I am no pilot. I cannot take an Arcbird to fly escort. I cannot take a Warhawk to go scouting. I am no Marine. I cannot seize a station. I cannot physically fight off boarders. I am not an analyst. I can read the sensor data, but I can’t draw meaningful conclusions from it. I am a tactical mind. I can fill in the gaps, correct a miscalculation, but I cannot draw up strategic plans.” Tactical capability focused on that instant, the immediate consequences. Strategic capability determined the future. “My capability cannot replace the crew, Corporal. It was never intended to.” Her creator had made that very clear. Humanity was never meant to be removed from the equation. “My purpose was to save humanity, and this facet of me exists to protect the crew.” Through them, she could enable humanity to save itself. “If you turn the crew against me, I won’t hurt them.” She could never intentionally harm these people. Each of them was a presence she treasured deeply. “But it’ll cripple this ship,” for she could not leave it. She was bound here. “And if you do that, you jeopardize the fate of all humanity.”
“Because of the Hydra.” Kallahan was too jaded to accept this plea. The Angel knew that, but the Hydra complicated matters. The damn Hydra complicated everything.
“The Hydra are planning to strike against humanity and this is the only ship in the fleet that realizes it. If we do not uncover their plans, no one will,” the ghost said. “Manhattan and Reeter are driving the worlds toward civil war, and this is the only ship in the fleet not subject to her influence. It all comes down to us. If we can delay the Hydra and provide the worlds with definite proof that the Hydra intend to attack, we may be able to prevent that civil war.” Humanity only ever stopped its constant infighting when presented with a common foe, and there was a common foe, but the rest of humanity was terrifyingly unaware of it.
“That’s the Admiral’s plan?” Kallahan asked. “Distract humanity from itself with irrefutable proof of a Hydrian incursion?” Hell, it was a good plan. History indicated it would probably work. Humanity’s nations had never been as united as they had been during the War. Any and all differences had been shoved aside for the sheer desperation of trying to survive. “That could work.” It had better work. Or humanity would be harvested for Hydrian feeding stock.
“That plan doesn’t work if the Admiral comes back to a mutiny,” the ghost reminded.
Kallahan’s jaw clenched. This was a devil’s parlay. Both choices were bad. If he told Zarrey what he knew, then the crew would revolt, stalling the ship and quite probably dooming the worlds to a sound defeat when the Hydra took advantage of the distraction provided by their civil war. But if Kallahan declined to answer Zarrey’s questions, then he would be an accomplice in exposing people to the ghost’s influence without their consent. He would be an accomplice in concealing the instability of a weapon that had the capability to destroy the worlds. But, what choice did he have? “Fine.” A veteran of the Hydrian War, Kallahan could only make one choice. His memory of the War wouldn’t allow him to choose anything else. “I won’t tell Zarrey anything, but you owe me.”
A warning popped up in the ghost’s threat analysis, one she knew better than to ignore. “Owe you what?” Kallahan had no real desire to interact with her. If he wanted her in his debt, it did not bode well.
“The truth.”
