Reefin Sector, Battleship Singularity

  The Singularity’s semicircular command center was alive with activity. Officers sat managing their stations, speaking through headsets to the crew below decks. Yeomen in crisp suit-like uniforms hustled between the rows of consoles passing clipboards and data pads of information. They moved in a rhythm, knowing when to move and sidestep to avoid bumping into one another, the dance of a veteran crew.

  It was orderly, the march of ants on a known path, but there was a lack of purpose to it, as if the ant colony lacked a queen. The officers checked the readiness of the ship with resolute determination without knowing what that readiness was needed for. A marathon of FTL maneuvers? Wartime combat? A stealth rescue mission? The room was a hive without a commandant queen. It was nothing to hold against Coloney Zarrey, but he didn’t have the aura of authority, the air of absolute control that the Admiral maintained.

  And it was obvious he didn’t know what to do.

  The Colonel stood in the center of the room, hands planted on the sturdy, dark gray rim of the radar console, unmoving. He stared unblinkingly into the soft backlight of the console’s glowing top. There were no papers in front of him, nothing he could pretend to study.

  Where she stood behind the engineering console, Callie watched the lead yeoman of the bridge staff approach him cautiously.

  Owens set a fresh mug of coffee within Zarrey’s sight and spoke softly, “Do you intend to make an announcement, sir?” The news Butterfly had given meant they were now at war and the away team was very likely dead – the ship’s commander among them.

  Zarrey blinked Ensign Owens into focus beside him. “Probably should,” he surmised, trying to shake off the shell shock of the fact he had likely just inherited a ship that would be going to war in a matter of hours, with humanity’s future on the line.

  “…I think the crew would appreciate that, sir,” Owens said, with a comforting smile. She’d never trained for command, but she had trained for matters of state and diplomacy. She understood what challenge Zarrey now faced. Humanity was badly divided, their ship an independent information source unlikely to be trusted or believed, and the Hydra were going to war.

  “What do I do?” Zarrey said softly, not fully intending anyone to hear. But the question was too loud, too incessant to be contained in his thoughts any more. “What the fuck do I do?” Did they flee? Carry the warning to the worlds as the Admiral had commanded them to? But where could they go? Who would believe them? And if this was war, did they not have a responsibility to counterattack? To engage the very force that had drawn their blood? To learn what the Hydra were capable of before a full invasion launched into humanity’s space?

  For fuck’s sake, it had been fifty years. The Singularity had seen more combat against the Hydra in the last two days than all of humanity had in the last half-century. Humanity had no idea how to defend itself, what might be effective against Hydrian technology that had renewed and bettered itself in those decades.

  Zarrey had never been a history buff or a strategist, but he knew how badly the Hydrian War had started out for humanity. It had been ten years of slaughter, of throwing meat to the grinder to slow the harvest enough to build a ship, a single ship that had been capable of standing against the Hydrian Armada. But that hadn’t been enough to win, it had only been enough to fight to a draw, to promise that if the Hydra consumed humanity to extinction, humanity would make them pay.

  Humanity could not risk a start like that again. It would not take the Hydra ten years to reach humanity’s most populous and prosperous central worlds. Most of the worlds between had already been harvested in the prior war and never recovered. It would take the Hydra mere weeks to cover that territory again. Everything valuable had already been taken, and humanity’s navy was out on the other side of the worlds, pacifying the Frontier… Fighting amongst itself.

  “Colonel, sir, I am in no position to offer you advice,” Owens said, clutching her clipboard to her chest. “But we have to send a warning. To someone we think might believe us.” Command had proven itself hostile. Seven battleships had engaged them in the Brontosaur Nebula. One of their Indigo Agents had violently attacked the bridge, nearly killing Robinson and injuring Corporal Kallahan. “The Cassiopeia Coalition tried to contact us, and the Coalition is one of the most at-risk nations. Perhaps we should start with them. They may be able to forward the warning to others. And with greater authority.” After all, the Coalition sat on the edge of the Neutral Zone. If hostilities erupted, it made sense they would be the first to observe it. Humanity’s greater governing bodies would not question that.

  Zarrey reached out and wrapped a hand around the warmth of the coffee mug Owens had brought him. He’d already considered the Coalition. It was logical to reach out, to warn them. But what the hell was the procedure for that? Hey, we’re at war. Nice to meet you. Also, I know you requested the Admiral, but he’s probably dead, best-case. “What are the formalities for this?” How did they craft a proper response to the Coalition’s inquiry?

  “I’m not sure, but we can query the historical records. Matters of the state are our job,” Owens told him. “You draft up what you need to say, and we’ll make it presentable in the Coalition’s custom, near as we know them.” It would be a challenge, given the gravity of the message and the Coalition’s isolationist tendencies. “This is why we’re here, sir.” They were often overlooked, but within the fleet, the yeomen filled many roles, everything from filing records, to housekeeping. But they helped draft legal documents and treaties as well, trained in matters of tradition and proper formality. The Singularity, by virtue of how she acquired her second-hand crew, had some of the most experienced yeomen in the fleet.

  Zarrey nodded and scratched at that old scar on his chin. “Thank you, Owens.” He meant that. It took courage to offer advice to the one in charge, but by the stars, Zarrey had needed it. “Get a team. Whoever you like. You don’t need me for a draft. Tell the Coalition we’re going to war, and if we make it to that meeting with their flagship, we’re going to be a little late.”

  Owens nodded. “We’ll get it ready, sir.”

  It felt nice to pawn that task to someone else, someone who knew how to tackle it. That’s what you do, Zarrey reminded himself. Parse it out. He couldn’t handle this situation on his own, but he had a crew that knew what to do as long as he let them do it. “Nav,” he called to the jumpy Ensign in the back of the room, “we’ll need that route to the Coalition. Keep it warm. But get me coordinates for Azura. I’m not leaving without a chunk of lizard.”

  “Sensors, draw up a plan,” Zarrey commanded. “Figure out exactly what we need to do to query the Hydra’s capabilities. Bare minimum, what we need to shoot, endure, and observe to get a read on what their ships can do.”

  “Weapons,” Zarrey shrugged in Monty’s general direction, “you know what to do. Lock and load. Get her ready to go.”

  “Engineering, make her pretty as she can get. Cause I think we’re going to have a few holes punched in us while we run this little experiment.”

  The bridge surged with a renewed purpose. The current of the room shifted, and standing behind the engineering console as Alba focused in on directing the most needed repairs and preparations, Callie felt strange among them. She was welcome here, but not needed. She’d been invited to stay, and had always been curious about the workings on the ship’s bridge, but she could make an impact elsewhere.

  Before she could excuse herself and head back to the engineering spaces. Montgomery Gaffigan stood from his seat behind the weapons console and flagged down a reserve officer to replace himself. “I’m going to inspect the loaders,” he said to Zarrey. “Armory crews say they’re hearing weird noises.”

  “Go,” Zarrey acknowledged.

  Gaffigan strode up to Callie, “Can you come with me? Might need small hands.”

  “Oh,” she said, taken aback, “Yes.” She followed him off the bridge and into the hallway. The armory officer set out at a quick pace, and Callie, significantly shorter than he was, had to hurry to keep pace.

  Gaffigan had been the second member of the crew that Callie had met. He’d been welcoming and quick with a joke. That hadn’t changed in the year since, though she rarely worked directly with him. Her interactions with the ship’s weapons systems were fairly limited. The specialized armory crews did most of the inventory and preparation for the ordinance. The engineering, maintenance and repair crew only helped the weapons subsystems, like the traversing tracks of the gun mounts, doors on the missile tubes, and very rarely, the loaders themselves. “Monty,” she said, taking to the nickname the entire crew knew Gaffigan preferred, “I have to warn you that I’ve never really worked with the loaders.” She’d only worked with the main battery once, to remove debris from one of the traversal tracks. Callie spent most of her time with the ship’s main engines. The engine room was a favorite of hers. While dark and covered in the grime of leaked oil and coolant, it was warm, warm like the sun she’d never been able to enjoy on Sagittarion.

  “No problem,” Monty said. “You looked like you wanted something to do.” The young engineer had looked a little lost on the bridge, wanting to be useful, but not knowing how. “You’ll pick it up quick. Besides, the Lady likes you, and that never hurts.”

  Callie wasn’t entirely certain where that rumor had started. She understood the rumor of her being the Admiral’s favorite. He didn’t give any real indication of it, but was generally more tolerant of her than he was of others. However, she’d never received any special treatment from the ship herself. But, of course, the entire crew knew the old ship had her favorites. Zarrey wasn’t among them, but others like the Admiral and Ensign Alba were. But those were two of the most talented astroengineers she had ever met. Callie wouldn’t dare compare herself to them. “Thank you,” she told Gaffigan. “I’m happy to learn. But I’m not sure I’d consider myself a favorite.”

  “Eh,” Monty shrugged, “you’re genuinely nice to the Steel Prince of all people, that puts you in good graces.” People hostile or disrespectful to the Admiral rarely found their stay aboard ship pleasant. Sergeant Cortana’s haunting was a prime example. “You’re in good enough graces the new Sarge thinks you’re a witch.”

  “A witch?”

  “Because you sicced the ghost on her.” Monty laughed a bit, the sound carrying down the straight, hexagonal passageway. “Just when I think she’s run out of material, Cortana’s stories continue to get more creative.”

  “That’s not what happened.” Callie had not wanted the Sergeant to end up frightened. All Callie had wanted was to get away from Cortana’s demanding questions. Callie been afraid when the Marine had yanked on her hair, but the terrifying presence that had risen to haunt Cortana and deeply disturbed Havermeyer had not been scary to Callie. It had protected her, and no matter how else it had appeared, Callie understood that it had held no intent to harm her.

  She hadn’t understood it then, still didn’t understand it now, but that presence had felt gentle and warm, no matter how disturbing Havermeyer or Cortana described it. And because of that, she felt safer than she ever had. Despite the reality of being aboard a combat ship likely headed for war, Callie knew that this ship truly was her home. It was somewhere she could belong and have people she considered family. The ship had always been that to her, more so than the world she’d once known. This was the first place she’d had a warm bed to call her own, the first place to offer clean clothes, hearty meals and true friends. It was the first place she’d had ownership of anything, really.

  Monty led her down through the ship’s decks. The way the Singularity’s artificial gravity field aligned itself, the hangar deck was technically ‘up’ and the main battery gun loaders were ‘down’. That way, the loaders were gravity-assisted and shuttles could be lifted on and off the hangar deck easily. The ship’s command center and most of the crew spaces lay between the two, safely nestled in the ship’s innermost depths.

  That was all by design, of course. Battleships like the Singularity were all masterworks of engineering. Everything had purpose, had design intent. They were humanity’s crowning achievement and serviced only humanity’s greater good. At least, that was the theory. Only the centralized government that claimed to speak for and serve all of humanity’s worlds had battleships within its fleet. No individual nation could put forth all the resources and all the technology to build a battleship. The result was that, in some cases, a single battleship could demolish an entire nation’s armada. The capability of humanity’s nations varied. Not all had a standing navy, while others could have challenged the central government’s lesser ships. Naturally, battleships came with varying capabilities as well. The more populous designs were decent at everything, but excelled at nothing. Others were more specialized, the Flagship included.

  Flagships were built to combat the perceived threats of their eras. They, more than any other ship in the fleet, were designed for constant combat.

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  Montgomery Gaffigan stroked his red beard and opened up a hatch to one of the long, empty corridors that isolated the armory deck from the rest of the ship. “Are you familiar with the guiding principles of the Singularity’s design?”

  “Not especially.” Callie answered. “They mentioned her back in training, but it was treated like old history.” It had been treated as irrelevant. The entire ship had been considered practically a relic. “They focused more on the Olympia.” A modern ship to support modern needs.

  “Charming, wasn’t it?” Gaffigan had been through that same training years ago. The Olympia hadn’t existed yet, but the Flagship Ariea had, and it had been much the same story, mostly propaganda about how the Ariea was the most powerful ship sailing humanity’s stars. “The Lady’s story is a bit different. Mostly, it involves the guns.” He didn’t break stride as he sealed the hatch and continued onward. “This entire ship, the engines, the structure, the sensor arrays even the flight deck… It was all forged to enable the main battery guns. Her weapons system. The Singularity’s main battery guns are, to this day, the largest artillery armaments to have ever been mounted on a mobile platform.”

  “That’s trivia, Monty.”

  “But you don’t know why.” Gaffigan said, “And that’s what makes it interesting.” After what he’d gone through on the Matador, something he did his best not to think about, he’d contemplated if it was insane to take another ship-board assignment. The only way he’d really been able to explain it was that the Singularity just felt different. More hospitable. And also, that he would have been out of his mind to decline working with these weapons systems. Because they were magnificent. Perhaps they were not the most advanced, lacking the tricks and illusions of drones, and computer warfare, but they were legendary in their own right.

  Gaffigan skidded down a ladder onto the loading deck for Gun Six. Every loader for the main guns was kept separate, layers of vacuum between each compartment, then more armor and vacuum isolation between them and the armory deck, where the shell inventory was stored. The sulfur-stink of explosive powder that wafted back from the gun breeches still lingered in the room, even nearly a day after the guns had been fired. Monty breathed it in, pleased to be in his element.

  Callie stepped down the ladder behind him with a little more caution, the stiff soles of her work boots clanking on every rung and her nose turned up to the foreign smell. By the time her feet were on the floor, Gaffigan was over studying the equipment. His red hair and beard stood out amongst the yellow warning labels painted on the mechanisms that took up most of the room’s volume, marking unsafe touch points and pinch hazards.

  There was another armory specialist in the room, standing on the back wall near the hardline communications equipment, studying a clipboard of maintenance and inventory records. Callie didn’t recognize her, but with eight hundred crew aboard ship, she didn’t know everyone. The specialist waved back with a polite smile, routine between those that didn’t know each other. Everyone Callie had met wearing the Singularity’s colors had proven themselves to be friendly, at least toward their fellow crew.

  Gaffigan stepped between the three sets of machinery in the room, inspecting, but paused at the farthest. “Callie, over here!”

  She obediently followed him over. The room, despite being cramped with additional air filtration vents, fire suppression lines, sensors and other equipment, was quite large. Large enough that one of the Warhawk transport shuttles would have fit in it with room to spare. It was larger than some of the classrooms she’d studied in during training.

  Gaffigan stopped her just a few steps from the serpentine set of rails that descended from the ceiling, reached into the ship’s magazine storage, and couriered rounds to the breech of the gun that sat below their feet. “Hear it?” Monty asked.

  She paused and waited until she heard the scuffle of something moving lightly back and forth above her. She tilted her head upward, following the rails to where they disappeared into a congregation of safety cabling. “What is it?”

  “Probably a loose cable.” Gaffigan hopped up onto the scuffed rails, and climbed upward on the skeleton that enshrouded them. “The loaders can’t bring the round down if there’s contact with the safety cabling. They sense contact, they have to pause and retry. Cables are placed such that if anything gets crushed or misaligned, there’s contact, and voila, the loaders know there’s an obstruction between the magazine and the breech. Thus, it’s not safe to load the guns.” The crushing and shredding forces of major damage made the system react. “We don’t want rounds coming down if we can’t load them.” The closer rounds were stored to the hull, the greater the risk that collateral damage might set them off. Rounds going off behind the armor would be devastating to the ship’s internals. A hit on a ship’s magazine was almost always a guaranteed-kill, if any of the stored rounds caused secondary detonations. “Funny how it works,” the armory officer quipped, “the rounds we want to shoot at others are very often the most dangerous thing we’re carrying.”

  “Besides fuel,” Callie said.

  Gaffigan shrugged, reaching his arm up into the hole in the ceiling, his other hand wrapped around the structure of the rail he’d climbed. “Besides that, yeah.” Ship fuel was notoriously flammable. As they’d seen firsthand in the Kalahari Sector after the nuke, fuel fires were devastating. “But we gotta keep the old girl fed, otherwise we’re not going anywhere fast.” A ship without fuel was essentially no longer a ship, just a drifting rock with a lot of useless equipment.

  Monty shoved his arm up into the aperture above them, barely managing to graze his fingertips across the cable he’d found out of place. It was one of the smaller ones in the sensor webbing, close to the rubbery vacuum seal that guarded this room from the fire-safety air-gap beyond. He sighed. “Looks like you’ll have to do this one.”

  The armory officer climbed down off the rails, hopping the last two steps so he landed with enough force to rattle the deck plates. He swept his hand in the general direction of where he’d climbed. “Ready?”

  Callie grabbed hold of the arching safety structure that covered the loader rails like a ribcage and pulled herself up. It was a bigger step for her than it had been for Gaffigan, but she managed, then began to climb. She was halfway to the juncture between the rail and the ceiling before she thought to ask any questions. “Is this how we’re supposed to be doing this?”

  Looking smaller from above, Gaffigan shrugged. “Supposed to? Who knows?” The maintenance specs didn’t have particular instructions. “The design documents specify how things work, but the vast majority of it wasn’t supposed to fail… ever.” But then, no battleship had ever served as long as the Singularity had. “So,” Monty smiled, “we improvise.”

  “Is that safe?” she asked.

  “Vaguely.” Gaffigan paused, looking up at her, as concern rose to his reddish cheeks. “Do you feel unsafe?” Stars knew someone would have his hide if Callie got hurt on his watch.

  “Not particularly,” she answered, climbing another few steps upward.

  “Okay,” he answered, relieved. “If you do, come down, we’ll figure something else out.”

  “Aye,” Callie said. It didn’t take long to reach the top of the rail. Wide as it was, the loading room for Gun Six was only a couple feet taller than the ship’s uniform corridors. From her elevated perspective, she could see the three identical sets of loading rails and associated equipment: one below her, and the other two at regular intervals further out in the room. Three loaders for the three barrels of Gun 6. All the Singularity’s main battery guns had three barrels, and each loaded and fired separately. The three barrels shared a mount, and rotated together, but could actuate to seek separate targets at separate altitudes. Her first week aboard ship, Callie had done a spacewalk on the outer hull that introduced her to the main battery.

  Looking upward, the aperture in the ceiling was a rubbery black sphincter, the first of several seals that kept air on one side. It was bigger than she’d realized, more than big enough to crawl through, which was no surprise, given the cavernous size of the main battery’s barrels. Callie pushed her arm beyond the seal with only minimal effort. The other side was colder, but not hazardous. “What am I looking for?” she asked, starting to feel around.

  “Loose cable,” Gaffigan said. “Follow the left rail. It’s wedged between the seal and the safety bars. You’ll feel it.”

  Sure enough, as she traced the scuffed rail, beyond the seal, she felt a small, braided cable making contact. It was at a tight point between one of the skeletal joints of the protective cage and the rail itself. “Found it. What now?”

  “Pull it loose. Carefully, of course. We don’t want to have to replace it. You’ll find a hook nearby on the wall. Just replace it there.”

  Gingerly, Callie untangled the cable. The region it had pinned itself in was tight with welding joints, but her small hands could reach between. Then, blindly, she began to bump against the edges of the aperture, looking for a hook. Soon enough, her hand caught against it. “Found it.”

  “Right, so, you’re completing the circuit as long as you hold that cable. As soon as you let go, the loaders are going to start to move.”

  Callie tightened her grip on the cable. “What?”

  “You’re completing the circuit. Contact with anything conductive is what prevents the loaders from moving. You’re in contact, but as soon as you let go, the loader is going to register that the obstruction is clear. It’ll move to load the gun.”

  “Uh… Okay?” she said, feeling a tinge of anxiety.

  “It’ll be slow. No need to worry. Hell, you can ride the round down if you want. You’re small enough.”

  Her heart began thumping in her chest. “You’re telling me to ride a live round down?”

  “No. It’s not live… yet.” Gaffigan pointed to another piece of equipment waiting at the base of the serpentine rail. “It’s not live until that removes the safety plug.”

  “Right. Still, I think I’ll pass.” As she felt her heartbeat start to stabilize, she leaned her head against the cage protecting the rail. Your officers are a bit unhinged, she thought to the old ship. But they mean well. No doubt, Monty pictured riding the loaders to be some idea of fun. Please, be slow. She replaced the cable to the rail and released it. Sure enough, she heard the trolley hauling the round thunk back into alignment. She felt a burst of cold as the tip of the round began to pass through one of the seals beyond and she began to climb down.

  She hurried, but made sure she had safe footing, and soon enough was back on the ground beside Gaffigan as he stroked his red beard. “She does like you,” he said, watching the round make its way down the rail at a lethargic pace. “That’s way slower than usual.”

  “Is it broken?”

  “No, she just didn’t want to scare you. She was pretty nice to me the first time too,” Gaffigan recalled.

  “How often do you have to do this?”

  “Once a month or so,” he said. “Those sensor cables are supposed to come loose on impact. Harsh acceleration is supposed to break the hooks and stop the loaders.” It was a safety feature. “Occasionally they come loose during maneuvers as well. But better a false alarm every so often than not stop the loaders when we need it.” The risk of a false alarm was far lower than that of a mistaken clear reading.

  That made sense, Callie supposed. “Monty, earlier, when you were talking about design principles, what did you mean? The ship was built around the main battery, but why?”

  “The Hydra,” the armory officer said. “This entire ship was built around weapons that could kill the Hydra. When this ship was built, we were losing the War. Hydrian ships, they have energy shields.” He curved his hands into the imitation of a bubble. “That’s all based on magnetism. Humanity was never very good at it. Hydrian power systems are more efficient. They can afford the energy drain. But all that magnetism, it redirects the shells. Takes what should have been a direct hit, and,” he mimicked the action with his hands, “redirects it into a miss.” The magnetic shields weren’t magically impenetrable, but the force within the shields’ electromagnetic field were enough of a shove that they caused shells to miss and fried the internal navigation of whatever missiles the Hydra’s AI couldn’t hack. “Humanity was pretty desperate, but even we prey know enough about physics to know that the larger a mass the more force it takes to move. So, the larger the caliber, the harder it is to redirect.”

  Monty gestured to the round being carried down the rail, fore and aft clamped by the trolley. The shell, painted with the yellow markings of a standard round, was far larger than he and Callie combined. “Command tried to make larger guns. Tried to add them to existing ships, but the recoil tore them apart.” Engine thrust combined with firing recoil had made a deadly combination for existing structures. “So, they built a new one. A ship that could carry and fire those guns. Guns large enough that the shells couldn’t be redirected.” At least, not to any meaningful degree. “And this was the only ship in the War capable of reliably hitting Hydrian battleships through their shielding.”

  “And what if that shielding has improved?” Callie asked. Was that not what Zarrey intended to test?

  “Don’t know.” Gaffigan said. “It’s been fifty years since the fleet has seen a Hydrian ship. We have no way to know if they have improved their shielding enough to redirect shells as large as the Singularity’s. If they have… Well, the rest of humanity is as good as a three-course meal for a lizard.”

  Callie felt a bit of fear gnaw at her chest, not for herself, but for the rest of the worlds. “That bad?”

  “Yeah,” Monty said. “After the War, we didn’t need guns this big. The fleet was engaging smaller ships during the Frontier Rebellion, and has designed to that intent ever since. When you’re aiming at multiple small targets, you don’t need a large caliber. It’s overkill. Small guns with a faster reload are a priority. But, when you’re aiming at a heavily defended target: mass is master. Caliber is everything. It doesn’t matter how many times you intercept a target if you never actually do damage.”

  “Oh,” was all Callie could think to say.

  All this preparation. All this talk.

  It reminded the ghost so much of the way it had been back then. The best laid plans. The most well-intentioned preparations.

  So much the same. Nothing had truly changed in the last half-century.

  Humanity was outgunned. Those fresh-eyed and inexperienced did not realize how bad it was… What they were truly up against. Even this veteran crew, so practiced in fighting their kin, had never met a bred predator.

  The rest of the worlds remained oblivious, tied up in their own petty squabbles. Arguing about taxes, about property, about legality. Perhaps, if they had seen what she had, if they had peered into the inner workings of the Hydrian mind, they would have known better.

  But it was the same now as it had been fifty years before, when she had stood beside the strategy table in the war room, watching the leader of humanity’s fleet stare at the encroaching color of enemy territory. Red bled across the stellar chart, little blue markers between it and the circles that marked worlds of relevance – defensive lines.

  It truly was the march of ants. Those ships, those squadrons, those armies… they were insignificant workers whose lines would draw little more than pause from their greater predators.

  Back then, the man beside her had known it. Fleet Admiral Washington had been a veteran, one of the few survivors of the War’s early days.

  But the state of the War had not been what unnerved him, what drove the dark bags beneath his eyes. No, the ghost had read it as well as the reports from the ship’s sensors. She unnerved him, at once not emotional, not real enough to be human, yet too emotional to be a machine. An uncanny valley… Something that picked up on the hatred so required of it, yet showed no justification. For its kind were not being slaughtered, its kind were not being eaten, and its kind were not facing the threat of extinction.

  But Fleet Admiral Washington, the Singularity’s first commander, had never asked.

  He never asked where that hatred had come from.

  He had never bothered to correct her appearance, or teach her better ways to interact.

  Their interaction had been an exchange of information. The confirmation of a target. And nothing more.

  She had been the sword he wielded to save humanity. A function. Not an identity.

  There had been no cruelty in that.

  At least… Not to her.