Hyperspace, Battleship Singularity

  The Marines’ ready room looked about two decades out of date. That was generous, considering the ship was far older than that. A few efforts had been made to modernize the ready room: a new rug with a contemporary pattern and fresh paint on the shelves. But at its core, it was room lined almost edge to edge in tiered rows of leather chairs, reminiscent of a lecture hall. The cushions were so old they were beginning to crack, and the chairs, brown now, had probably started as black. Smoking had never been officially allowed aboard ship, but the Marines were partial to a cigar after a difficult job, and the room smelled like it.

  Duty charts, a contingent roster and a few old posters lined the walls down to the front of the room where there was a screen and a drawing board. A few marks had been left on the board from the last briefing given here, but the leader of the Singularity’s Marine contingent, Lieutenant Colonel Pflum, hadn’t bothered with the drawing board or the screen today. Instead, he stood behind the speaking podium lined up in front of both. Ordinarily, he’d have brought the mission requirements and briefed his soldiers, but there weren’t any. Not for this. Not yet. The mission to Azura was being thrown together so quickly, they hadn’t held the briefing for the surface conditions yet.

  That left Pflum to select his team blindly. It would be a small group. Only one shuttle would be sent to Azura. Without modifications for a personnel drop, a Warhawk could only transport six people with survival gear, excluding the pilot and copilot. The Hydra would take up two of those seats, given that nothing humans built was ergonomic to its long, double-jointed limbs. That left room for only three or four Marines, depending on which engineer volunteered to accompany the team, and if they could serve as the copilot.

  Pflum was tempted to assign himself to the away mission, very tempted. But he knew better. It would be crippling to condense too much of the ship’s senior staff on that transport in case something went wrong. And, since the Singularity lacked a Major, Pflum was technically the ship’s third-in-command. If anything happened to Colonel Zarrey while the Admiral was gone, command would fall to him, no matter how infrequently he acted in the capacity of ship-command. Further, as the ship’s security officer, he was needed here to head the hunt for the drones. It was his duty to know where a potential threat may conceal itself aboard ship, and how to oust them.

  Setting a steaming mug of black coffee down on to the speaking podium before him, Pflum marveled at the ship’s situation. What a mess we’ve found ourselves in this time. Somehow, he’d known things wouldn’t stay quiet after splitting from Command. The Bloody Singularity was a magnet for trouble, and always had been. “Alright, you Sinners,” he addressed the crowd of faces assembled before him. “You know the drill. We’ve gone and gotten ourselves in trouble, and most likely, it’ll take some shooting to get out of it.” Pflum didn’t see any point in denying it. Marines liked things blunt. Even if the Hydra didn’t attack, traversing Azura’s surface would likely devolve into some kind of combat. “I need a unit.”

  The ship’s Marine contingent organized itself a couple of different ways, but at its core, it was built from units of three. Those three Marines trained together, went on duty together and inevitably fought together. Each individual unit had different strengths and weaknesses. All were excellent Marines, but some were best in zero-G, and some favored terrestrial environments. Other units had a specialty, like scouting, sniping or search and rescue. Pflum wished he had a clue which might survive Azura, but it was a crapshoot. They might need any one of those skills or another entirely. Azura was a quarantined world. No one had set foot upon it in years. Any information available was questionable and half a century out of date.

  Pflum had pulled the records on Azura, and the ship was truly lucky to have any records at all. Space was massive. Every ship started with a base of knowledge: the most populus worlds and common trading routes. They added more knowledge as they needed it, gained directly from a ship’s scans or pulled from the cortex, the information network that spanned humanity’s worlds. A world like Azura, past the Isolation Gap of worlds the Hydra had harvested to a point of uselessness in the War, and deep into what had become the Neutral Zone, would not be included in a ship’s base memory. And the Singularity, isolated from the cortex since the rise of the Eran AI, Manhattan, couldn’t pull additional information. They were spared by the fact that in typical fashion, when Azura had gone to hell, the Singularity had been right in the middle of it.

  Some things never change, Pflum thought, looking over the records. There was a bit of history on the world and its colony, but Pflum didn’t care about that. He cared about the conditions, jumping ahead to the sensor readings the ship had taken on her last visit. They were overly technical as far as Pflum cared, not the environmental summaries he was used to getting, but at the least they would be reliable. Since the Singularity had been there first-hand, they weren’t relying on information from the cortex that may have been doctored by Manhattan to screw them over. On a mission like this, that risk was the last thing they needed to worry about. Lieutenant Colonel Pflum only skimmed the atmospheric and surface composition details for Azura. He wouldn’t be writing any scientific papers on it, but what he saw was water – a whole hell of a lot of it. He looked back up to his Marines, “Raise hands if you have water experience.”

  About a third of the hands in the room shot up. Pflum looked them over. All Marines were trained in and around water – how to move in it, how to hide in it and when to be wary of it. Uncontained water could be a deadly foe in zero-G or confined spaces, and humanity often settled its planetary colonies around stable water sources. That said, there was a difference between training and experience – a big one, and Azura wouldn’t leave room for mistakes. He studied the faces before him, ruling out units with injured or inexperienced members. None of the Marines would complain if they were thrown on a temporary team with members from others units, but it would hinder their combat effectiveness to not know the habits and skills of their teammates. In all, that left him with four choices.

  Of those, he ruled one out quickly, the Triple Witches. A unit of triplet sisters, the Triple Witches were excellent Marines, but their skills were unorthodox, and poorly suited for an escort mission. The triplets were trained assassins, a notorious unit that had served high Command, and specifically General Clarke, before falling out of favor and landing with the Singularity’s misfit crew. Whatever ‘water experience’ the Triple Witches had probably had not been heavy-combat either. Disrespectful as it was to assume, it had probably involved three bikinis and a drowning victim. The Triple Witches had been trained to use their feminine wiles to get close to their targets, and that was the most any of them would say. Pflum knew their service to Command had been something deeply twisted, because they hadn’t been volunteers. They had vowed to never serve Command again, but were loyal to the ship, even if they were the wrong choice for this mission.

  Pflum studied the remaining three units, but knew their reaction to the mission brief would discern the right choice. “We are delivering the Hydra on board to a Hydrian ambassador. Marines, your job is to deliver the captive dead or alive, but more or less in one piece, while escorting a translator to the meet point and back, alive.” This was an escort mission, but not for the Hydra. The Marines’ priority would be the safety of allied personnel. If the Hydra had to be sacrificed to that ends, then so be it. As long as all evidence of the Empire’s incursion was turned over, they would not care if the Hydra became a corpse. The Empire was not as protective over its constituents as humanity was. Hydrian drones were pawns to serve the Mother Nest, nothing more. “By now, you all know the handoff will be on Azura. There will be a more detailed brief on surface conditions, but it’ll be wet and conditions will be hostile. The selected unit will be trained on Hydrian tactics by Corporal Kallahan before departure.” The veteran corporal himself wasn’t in the room. His leg injury from the attack on the bridge ruled him out for the mission, so he was guarding the Hydra while the other Marines gathered here. “And there’s one more thing,” Pflum told the Marines, “Admiral Gives will be on this mission. As translator and pilot.” He felt the room hush. It had been quiet before, but now he could have heard a rank pin drop to the floor. It was a rare day that the Admiral left the ship, let alone flew an away mission. “Hope none of you get motion-sick.”

  In the second row from the front, Cadet Frenchie’s mustachioed face split open into a wide grin. “Stonewall’s flying?”

  Stonewall. The Admiral’s callsign, earned from combat service in the Frontier Rebellion. Pflum found Frenchie’s interest suddenly concerning. For the most unhinged Marine in the contingent to be excited… Well, it certainly didn’t encourage any other potential volunteers. “That’s correct, mate,” Pflum answered cautiously.

  “Well, shit,” Frenchie said, real slow, “he’s even more fun than Butterfly.” A pilot notorious for hot-drops in hostile no-fly zones. “I’m in.”

  Pflum wasn’t that surprised to have a volunteer. The Singularity’s Marines were almost all combat veterans of some variety. The combat wasn’t the issue. Azura was. Marines liked things simple. Point and shoot. Azura wasn’t going to be that. It was going to be a nightmare of wreckage and ruin. Pflum tuned from Frenchie. The crazy demolitions expert didn’t call the shots for his unit. Corporal Everett Johnston did – one of the most loyal Marines on the ship, particularly to the Admiral. Pflum would have chosen his group from the water-experienced lineup anyway, had one of his unit’s members not volunteered. Johnston was probably the only Marine capable of manhandling the Hydra, if it became necessary.

  “We’ll go,” Johnston said in his low drawl. “Stonewall’s a helluva pilot. Won’t have an issue from him.”

  Pflum didn’t doubt that. “Just make sure he keeps his head down, eh? We need it.” This was not the time to be losing the ship’s best tactician. They had other officers trained for command, but like water training and water experience, being trained for command and being in command were two entirely different beasts. Holding the watch and maneuvering a battle were not the same.

  Johnston laughed, a deep rumble that seemed to echo in his barrel-chest. “Not our first time running a mission with ol’ Stonewall.”

  That’s right, Pflum remembered. Johnston’s unit had endured a rather bizarre trip before coming aboard the Singularity as crew. Even the reminder made the vein in Pflum’s temple throb. It was difficult as all hell to act as the security officer for a man whose raw intellect almost certainly doubled his own. The damn Prince made a habit of disappearing and reappearing in the most unhinged situations. Pflum couldn’t outthink the man when it came to placing sentries and guards, so when inclined, the Admiral slipped away from all of them with apparent ease. Johnston’s last mission with the Admiral had been one such occasion. “Thank you for reminding me not to believe him when he says he is going on shore leave.” At least with the ship renegade shore leave a distant thought, and it would be difficult to pull another stunt like that.

  “Well, you never really know with him.” Valentina shrugged from her spot beside Frenchie, “Maybe that was his idea of fun.”

  Pflum felt the vein on his forehead throb once more, not in anger, but in severe annoyance at the mere memory. Oh, sure, parking the ship at a random station for an unnecessary resupply and then vanishing off to the neighboring sector was ‘fun’. No, it sure as hell had not been. It had been a methodically plotted exercise that culminated in the destruction of a moon. Fucking maniacal behavior. But what could one expect from the Steel Prince on vacation?

  Pflum could only hope Azura didn’t get that out of hand. “It’s settled. Johnston, Valentina, Frenchie, you’re on the away team. Report to the briefing on Azura’s conditions in five hours. Rest until then. You’ll need it. The rest of you,” he addressed the remains of the ship’s Marine contingent, “full security sweep. Colonel Zarrey wants two hundred drones stacked outside his quarters in the next seven hours, and by the stars, we are going to deliver. Spread out and hunt them down. Do what we do best.”

  “Ooh-rah!” came the cries. The Marines stood and began moving out of the room, out to do a routine they had lately practiced all too often. There was an art to searching the ship for hostiles, be it tracking devices, drones or boarders.

  Judging his coffee had cooled enough, he picked the mug up from the podium and took a long sip. As the Marines filed out, the sound of boots clunking against the deck filled the room, but the noise of one pair stomping up to the podium was distinct.

  “I should be on that mission,” Sergeant Cortana said.

  Pflum lowered the mug from his lips, taking in the Sergeant’s fiery expression. “You were hurt in the raid,” he said. “Safer for you to recover here.”

  “I’m not hurt!” Cortana snapped. The doctor had poked and prodded her for hours. Beyond a slightly sore wrist, she felt fine. “I am the Marine Sergeant on this ship. My job is to lead the away missions.” That was the Sergeant’s very role within the contingent. They bridged the gap between pieces of the away team, be them Marine units, officers, or pilots. “Let me lead the mission.”

  “You know that I can’t do that, Sergeant,” Pflum said, trying to be understanding of her perspective. She was eager to prove herself, desperate for it, even. “But Azura isn’t the place for me to deploy new personnel.”

  “New personnel? I have more escort experience than every Marine on this ship.” She had been the head of the Secretary of Defense’s security detail. “You are endangering the mission by not sending me.” They refused to give her a chance, even just one, to prove that she could be useful here. Instead, she remained an outcast.

  “You aren’t medically cleared to go, Sergeant.” That was the easy excuse. The reality was less simple. Sergeant Cortana was not a welcome member of the ship’s crew. She had come aboard through Command’s meddling, not through the means the rest of the crew found their way here. So, no, they hadn’t trusted her right out. And after abandoning her comrades to chase hostile boarders down, and failing to protect the airlock, Pflum was even less willing to trust her. Azura wasn’t a place for untrustworthy team members.

  “All due respect, Lieutenant Colonel, this is bullshit.”

  She was frustrated, and rightfully so. Any Marine would be angry if she wasn’t allowed to do her job, but Pflum would not assign her to this mission even if he wanted to. Cortana was too desperate to prove herself and putting her on a team with Johnston would be a disservice. Johnston was agreeable, and as level-headed as Marines came, but Pflum and most of the ship’s contingent knew that he should have been the sergeant. Had Cortana not shown up, that promotion would have been his. Johnston commanded all the respect she wanted and didn’t have. That could only end ugly, but it wasn’t the only reason Pflum refused to send her. Cortana would have issues with more than one member of the away team. “You tried to kill the Admiral,” Pflum reminded. “Twice.” Three times, if her failure at the airlock could be counted. “It’s a mystery to me why he hasn’t tossed you in the brig, but I’d be an idiot to put you on a team meant to keep him alive.” As the translator, mission pilot, and not to mention the ship’s commanding officer, the Admiral’s welfare would be the Marines’ primary concern. Anyone who might jeopardize that objective would be banned from the mission. “No means no, Sergeant.”

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  Sergeant Cortana visibly clenched her jaw, but knew she could not deny that point. The Admiral might disregard her attempts to shoot him and the attempt she had made to stab him, but the crew did not take it as lightly. “Fine.” She would just have to prove herself by finding as many drones as she could. Something, anything would help her standing amongst the crew at this point.

  “Lieutenant, are you sure you know how to move in that thing?” the engineer in front of her asked, hauling the hatch open.

  “Fairly certain,” Lieutenant Elizabeth Foster said, trying and failing to detach her left mag-boot from the deck a second time. “I’m just a little rusty. Sorry, Cadet.” That ‘thing’ was her environmental suit in its entirety: boots, helmet, gloves. Foster was pleased that she hadn’t struggled to put it on, but her movements were less than graceful. She hadn’t been subjected to many spacewalks when she worked in the Gargantia’s central computer room.

  “Just call me Malweh. Hearing ‘Cadet’ on repeat gives me a rash,” the engineer answered, waiting beyond the next frame for Foster to catch up.

  Foster felt a smile tug at her lips. Malweh was rude, and more than a little blunt, but she treated everyone that way. It was little more than the most brutal honesty. It was abrasive at first, but quickly became amusing. Foster could tell that despite her attitude, Malweh was not malicious, just simply refused to put up with any variety of bullshit, from anyone. “Foster’s fine, then,” she told Malweh. “You’re my senior by experience here.” That answer seemed to please the engineer, as Foster felt a heavy hand clap on the back of her suit’s air pack.

  “I knew you were alright,” Malweh said appreciatively. “Can’t say the same for the other guy we picked up from the Gargantia.”

  “Hey!” came the complaint from the third member of their search team, Ensign Callie Smith. “Okara’s my friend!”

  “Seems a little shifty to me,” Malweh said, managing a shrug through the bulk of her gray environmental suit. “I mean what do we really know about him? That he’s a runaway from his homeland?”

  “So am I!” Callie argued. And for that matter, so was the better half of the ship’s crew, up to and including the leader of the ship’s Marine contingent himself, who was quite vocally on the run from his ex-wife.

  Malweh sealed the hatch behind them, and bounded ahead to open the next. She moved with unexpected speed for her short, rotund figure, well-practiced in zero-G spacewalks. “Where’s home for you, Foster?”

  Foster paused before answering, knowing full well what Malweh’s next question would be. Even the bluntest instruments struck a nerve every once in a while, and Malweh lacked the tact not to ask, though Foster had no intent of hiding anything from her new comrades. Unless she asked the Admiral to strike it from the ship’s records, the information was public knowledge, listed in her personnel file. “Meridia.”

  “Oof,” Malweh replied, predictably. “Were your family members original settlers?”

  “No,” Foster answered, knowing full-well what that implied. Initially an agricultural world known for mass-producing grain, Meridia had been on the interior side of the Frontier, nearer to the central worlds than the rest. As such, it had been one of the first uprisings quelled in the Frontier Rebellion. The original colonists saw their life’s work destroyed, and the value of their land plummeted, only to be bought up by developers from the central worlds. The most desirable parts of the planet had been subdivided into identical planned communities. After buying out the descendants of the original colonists, Meridia had been turned into a suburban heaven where citizens of the central worlds moved when they were wealthy enough to move, but not wealthy enough to afford nice housing on more desirable worlds. The culture on Meridia was sanitized, everything about it formulated to the function thought best for a calm, relaxed life with a family. Foster’s own family had moved into those idyllic suburbs. It hadn’t been a bad place to grow up, safe and pleasant, but great stars had it been boring.

  “You didn’t strike me as a suburban brat,” Malweh acknowledged. “You were born there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh,” Malweh continued, “no point in blaming you for it then.”

  The existence of Meridia’s suburban heaven was contentious, something Foster hadn’t learned until moving away. The surviving members of the original colony had been forcibly relocated. They had been heavily pressured into selling land that had rightfully belonged to them, and had belonged in their family for generations. The action was reminiscent of what had caused the Frontier Rebellion in the first place, worsened a hundred-fold by Meridia’s defeat within it. Foster had been judged for her home world. She’d been teased for leaving life on such a perfect world, and judged for enabling the central worlds’ planned paradise, as if she’d had any choice in being born there. It seemed Malweh didn’t have much interest in those accusations though.

  All she asked was, “Why’d you leave?”

  “It was boring.” Foster had excelled in school, but found none of the jobs on Meridia the slightest bit intriguing. There was little industry there. Development in the planned suburbia was heavily moderated. Most people worked remote for larger corporations like Knight Industries, or serviced the planned shopping districts, filling jobs pre-determined by the development’s planners.

  Malweh laughed, the sound loud, even when transmitted by the radio in Foster’s helmet. “No wonder you fit right in,” Malweh chuckled. “Fuck knows it’s never boring for long on this ship.”

  So far, Foster had found that more than true. She’d been here about a week and seen combat three times. “I do have a question though, if you don’t mind.” Malweh seemed the type to give an honest answer.

  “Sure thing,” Malweh said without breaking stride as she led them down the empty corridor.

  “There seem to be a lot of women on board.” She hadn’t noticed it at first, because there had been a high proportion of women on the Gargantia’s crew as well. But, the Gargantia had been well above the fleet average, and the Singularity was higher still. Between Callie, Malweh and Foster herself, this was an all-woman team, and Foster could not recall the last time she’d worked in a team with all women. The military drew far more male recruits than it did female, though there were no limitations on what roles each sex could fill. In the eyes of republic law, and thus, greater humanity, men and women were equal, but the practice of that equality was less than perfect.

  “That’s not a question, LT,” Malweh told her. “But you’d be right. Last I checked, we’re near 50-50 here. Highest ratio of men to women in the fleet, unless you want to count the yeomen or nurse training facilities.”

  “Why?” Was that intentional?

  “It’s mostly due to how we get new crew.” Malweh turned, trying to gauge if Foster was familiar with that process. Beyond the visor, she caught a glimpse of Foster’s blonde hair, but little else. Malweh elected to explain, in case Foster hadn’t figured it out by now. “We’re transfers. Willing and unwilling. Anyone that gets booted by a commanding officer usually gets one choice: dishonorable discharge or accept placement with whatever commander’s willing to take you. Most commanders won’t chance another’s leftovers. In fact, it seems most only get one offer. Serve with the Steel Prince or leave the fleet. Your call on what might be worse,” Malweh said callously. “So, we get a lot of screw-ups, even if most of ‘em straighten out here, but we also get willing transfers: people that requested a transfer from wherever they were for whatever reason.” It didn’t take much imagination to picture what that might entail. “Women are abused at a much higher rate than men. We make up most of the fleet’s willing transfer requests. So, we get a choice: stay with superiors who won’t keep their hands to themselves, or serve on the Steel Prince’s cursed ship.” For a lot of them, the choice was pretty clear. “You’ll have met the man by now.” Admiral Gives greeted every new crew member that came aboard. “He’s exactly what he appears: bit of an asshole who keeps himself at a distance. Most of us prefer that to handsy snot-bubbles.”

  Foster could see that perspective. Her brief moments of contact with the Admiral had not been anything less than respectful. Truly, none of the Singularity’s crew had been anything less than respectful toward her. “It’s nice,” Foster told her. “This is a good ship.”

  Malweh slammed the hatch closed behind them. “It’s not bad, considering.”

  Foster was left to assume they were getting closer to their destination. She was new enough that she was still learning the ship’s layout. It would take time before she felt as confident here as she had aboard the Gargantia. It certainly didn’t help that the Singularity, despite carrying a roughly equivalent crew complement, was substantially larger – outsizing the Gargantia by a factor of two, if not three. “I didn’t expect Admiral Gives to join the away mission,” Foster admitted, enjoying her discussion with Malweh. “He didn’t seem the type.” There was nothing wrong with a commander who preferred not to leave the ship. Commander Fairlocke had been that way too. He’d known his skill lay in ship combat, and not placed himself in anything but. Some called it cowardice, but Foster looked on it as wisdom. Everyone had strengths and weaknesses. To know where one’s strengths were was an asset. It reflected poorly for a ship commander to insert themselves into a personnel combat scenario where they had no relevant skills or experience.

  “Well, we needed someone fluent in Hydrian,” Malweh said. “Nobody knew he was fluent, but I’m not that surprised. He’s always fucking hiding something.”

  “Why do you resent him so much, Malweh?” Callie wondered, bringing up the rear of their group. She never seen the Admiral act so much as impolite to anyone, even Malweh, despite her constant attacks on his character.

  Malweh snorted, the noise grainy and strangely broken by her helmet mic. “Why do you look up to him like he’s a white knight, come to protect you?”

  “Because he’s never done anything but help me.” Callie had been told not to judge the Admiral by his words or his demeanor, but by his actions. And those actions had involved saving her, repeatedly.

  “I’m really questioning how much fleet history you paid attention to,” Malweh said. “Admiral Gives is the deadliest commander that has ever served. That’s not someone you should be looking up to, let alone trusting. The man kills for a living.”

  Foster elected not to involve herself in that discussion. She was too new to the ship to cast judgement upon its commander. As they passed through the last hatch into the space between the hulls, she asked a needless question simply to cut the tension, “Where should we start?”

  Malweh gave a sigh only halfway captured by the mic in her helmet. “Near the missile impacts.” She turned sharply and tossed her mag-anchor up onto the angled surface of the ship’s secondary hull. “We cleaned up where we could, but there’s a few places no one could squeeze in to look, hence us, or more specifically, you two.” Foster was relatively lean, and Callie was known to be the ship’s smallest engineer. She was constantly getting sent into places others couldn’t reach. The rest of the crew was on the hunt for the cutting drones, but Chief Ty had sent them out to ensure that all the Hydrian drones were accounted for. “At most, there should have been five Hydrian drones. We’ve got two, just need to find out what happened to the others.”

  At least, that was the theory. Kallahan’s knowledge of Hydrian tactics from the War indicated that the Hydra often loaded their missiles with shaped charges calibrated to breach armor, and protect a secondary payload. That payload, often a drone, would board the targeted ship and wreak havoc. Out of the fifty-two missiles thrown at her in the Cardioid Sector, only five had impacted the Singularity’s armor. Given what they knew now, each of those five missiles could have been carrying a drone passenger. Zarrey had given high-priority to locating the Hydrian drones. It was assumed that if the Hydrian AI kept one drone active to spy, it would be a Hydrian drone, not one of the cutting drones.

  “What are the odds they survived?” Foster asked, following Malweh up onto the alternate orientation of the ship’s smooth, interior hull.

  “I’m not a munitions expert,” Malweh reminded. “But, given the shaped charges, I’d guess some wreckage from each missile survived. That’s why you’re here: to determine whether or not what we find is functional and playing dead, or actually dead.”

  “Right,” the engineering chief had explained that when he’d thrown this team together. Foster wasn’t sure she was ready to make an analysis on Hydrian equipment, but as the only computer officer on board, she was the most qualified. Truthfully, Foster admired the crew’s willingness to trust her, she simply hoped it wouldn’t be wasted. As terrifying as her last two weeks had been going from the Gargantia’s wreck to a chaotic combat against the pirates and drones, Foster had never endured so much excitement, and seen so many new things. She reveled in the challenge presented to her, each level of it a thousand times more exciting than anything back home on Meridia. Perhaps that was a vain reason to join the fleet. She hadn’t joined for duty, service, or escape, but to meet unexpected challenges.

  As they trekked along the surface of the secondary hull, it stretched out like an artificial plain, massive, and yet not perfectly flat. It had slight angles to it, angles that from afar, molded the Singularity’s shape, but here only slanted off enough to make shadows. The distant surface of the hull disappeared into darkness, as if the piece before them was a grey plateau. Yet, the edges never drew closer as they moved. It was always the same angle of drop-off, the same distance to shadow. Had the interior hull been nothing but a smooth surface, it would have left the illusion of walking in place. Instead, they had the support struts that emerged from the surface of hull, each a monolithic spire. They varied in size, but even the smallest was over a foot across and impossible to miss as they passed beneath it.

  It was incredible how different the ship felt here. The interior corridors could feel cramped, busy and crowded, but that was an illusion of smallness. The areas that Foster and the majority of the crew frequented were a mere fraction of the ship’s mass. This world of trusses, beams and metal sheets was the ship’s true form. The crew quarters and shared spaces like the mess were just a habitat built upon that, like a fish tank in the wall of a building. This massive forest of dark metal struts felt more alien, as the void between the stars should.

  As they moved into the damaged area of the ship, Foster began to see more wounds on the metal around her. It was dented and gouged, parts of the beams’ flanges bent out of shape. It was a twisted version of the metal forest she had spent the last few minutes walking through, like a contorted reflection in a funhouse mirror. “Are you sure it’s safe to be here?” Foster asked. “We’re at warp,” and hyperspace exposure was deadly.

  “We checked on the hull,” Callie said. “It’s sealed. And besides, Singularity wouldn’t let anything happen to us. She looks out for us.”

  Foster had heard that talk before too. The Singularity had the lowest casualty rate in the fleet for engineers. The accidents that injured crew on other ships didn’t happen here, and the engineers were proud of it. Such confidence from Callie was calming. Rumor had it, the ship had a peculiar habit of choosing favorites, and Callie was one of them. But, then, her unending optimism quickly made her a favorite of most, Foster included.

  The remaining wreckage from the attack looked something like a cave formation. From another angle, perhaps it would have been a mountain range, but the wrinkled mass hung above them as they stood on the secondary hull. It had been formed by a detonation pushing the outer hull inward, folding and crushing the ship’s armor and metal skin around the structural bones that had held in place. It had all been smashed and half-welded together. Nothing left was loose debris. The mass would have to be cut away, and so, in the rush to hurry the ship to her destination, it had so far been left here, even as the primary hull was rebuilt beyond it.

  Malweh craned her neck up to look at the mess. There were areas where the explosive pressure had been less, where the folds of the wreckage were not so tight. There would be room for someone to crawl inward, if they were small. “Hope you’re ready, girl,” she told Callie, and changed orientation to walk along one of the surviving supports, toward one wad of compressed metal. “It’s going to be a long night.” Somewhere in there, the wreck of three more Hydrian missiles had been entangled, and drones potentially with them.