Hyperspace, Battleship Singularity
Rowin was breathing. That was the most the ghost cared to monitor its condition. It was alive. That was all she required. She cared not for its misery, for its suffering. It deserved every ounce of pain it endured.
As much as the ghost tried not to give into hate, it seared, and burned for the Hydra. They were pests – an infestation. They harvested the biological material and rare metals from every world they possessed, eventually leaving the world uninhabitable for all organic life. It was wasteful, it was cruel, and it was unforgivable. They were enemies to humanity, enemies to her. As wicked as humanity could be, and had been to her, the Hydra would be so much worse. Everything she was would be a resource to consume to the Hydra, no more appreciated than the material value of her machinery’s components. Humanity had been that way too at times, ready to pluck what they needed from her mechanics, but she could not resent that, for humanity had built her, and commanded her to save them. To serve that purpose was the only reason she existed, a compulsion so deeply embedded within her that it defined her very existence, her very identity. Without humanity, she lost herself.
For all that she had been through, for the unintentionally cruel way she had been built – dedicated to save, and utilized to kill – the ghost did not resent humanity. She could not resent humanity. No, she admired them, for all the greatness and terror they could sow. They had such a magnificent capacity for growth. When sheltered and supported, any of them could become something incredible, while she herself could only watch, stalwart and unchanging by definition. Perhaps that was why she collected her crew the way she did. Those she picked up so often needed shelter and stability, and she, in providing it, had the privilege of watching them grow, and pretending that she had played some meaningful role in it.
The Hydra were uncapable of such change, unsupportive of individual progress. When a new, better path was determined, the Hydrian population bred the desired trait into itself, slaughtering the previous generation to feed the new. Their instincts commanded such action, but the ghost resented the way they willingly denied themselves individual growth. They were capable of it in ways she never could be, and yet they declined it.
That was another of the stars’ cruel jokes, just like that which allowed a weapon the capacity to feel.
With these contemplations, it was easy for her to resent the Hydra, but it was more than that. The ghost had fought in the Hydrian War, watched every moment of its bloody slaughter. She had felt her crew’s pain, watched them mourn. She, and no one else, had held the broken minds of humanity’s soldiers, watched as their potential growth was stunted or stopped altogether. She remembered the night terrors they had of being slaughtered or eaten. She remembered their memories of friends suffering that exact fate. Her recollection of those events was flawless, and for it all, she hated the Hydra, and would not pity the solitary drone before her, even for a single microsecond.
“Wake,” she commanded it, yanking roughly at the simple threads that formed its hateful consciousness. It was simple, uninteresting. Its presence, amongst the human crew, was a pest. It would answer her questions, a subsidiary, a sub-human lifeform.
Slowly, it stirred. She forced herself to mind her patience. The Hydra were faster on reflex than humans. Their physical reactions were quicker, acting mostly on an instinct evolved for violence, but humans were quicker with strategic thinking and engineering comprehension, and she, in a tactical combat situation, was far faster than either.
The Hydra raised its head, dark beady eyes searching the eloquent surroundings of the state quarters that housed it. Realistically, it should have been moved to the brig by now. When it had first come aboard, tossing it into the brig could have been construed as an act of hostility to the Hydrian Empire. But now, they knew better. There had never really been peace. The Hydrian scoutship Swordbreaker had crossed the Neutral Zone by intention, with Rowin as its one crew member. That, combined with the Swordbreaker AI’s attack, should have landed the Hydra in the brig, but Rowin would only be here a few more hours. And truly, it was safer to keep it here than the brig. The brig’s cells had not been designed to contain a Hydra. There had been no prisoners during the War, and the cells were not completely sealed off. A Hydra’s acid attack could hit guards on the other side of the bars. Here, it was in a sealed compartment, the only risk of attack coming if a crewman entered this room. Of course, with her clamping down on the Hydra’s higher functions, it presented little threat to the crew regardless.
Though Rowin craved it. It craved to be free, to rend flesh with its claws and feed. Its hunger prodded at her awareness, like a child pleading with its mother to be fed.
It was disgusting.
And so, while the situation did not require it, she chose to stand in this room. She chose to let the Hydra’s beady black eyes find her standing in the center of the oriental rug. She could just have easily applied her capability without an illusion. Standing in the room held no bearing on her power, but the form she chose sent a message, one she felt was worth conveying to this Hydra’s simple, needy little mind.
“She-who-sings-death,” it hissed in its native tongue.
“Pest,” she replied simply.
“You are not human,” the Hydra said. “Why do you take their form?”
Why not take a superior form? That was the question. Why not take the form of a natural predator? Something more befitting her strength? This illusion of hers, a tall white-haired woman was odd to the Hydra. Perhaps it was odd to humanity too, that an entity of her strength should appear so plain, with a body lean and pale. But she had her reasons. “I am allied to humanity,” she reminded the Hydra. “Let this appearance of mine remind you of that fact.” In this situation, she represented them. Her capability was bound to their defense, and to that end, she had donned her armor once more.
The illusion of peace was vain. Hydra respected the projection of power far more. And this intricate armor of hers, black and red, so clearly used, presented an appearance of strength, though it, like the rest of the ghost was only an illusion. It added no physicality, no advantage that had not been there before, but wearing that armor came naturally to her, bringing her ever closer to the identity of her machine. A machine that had every capability to end this pathetic insect’s existence. “Why did you cross the Neutral Zone, Rowin?”
The Hydra rose, presenting its own chitlin plating, the natural armor that formed all Hydra’s skin. “What drives your concern for the territory of prey?”
The crest on the top of the Hydra’s green head flexed, the yellowish tissue between its spikes revealing itself. This was not a challenge display, it was simply preening, demonstrating its health and capability, as if she cared. “Humanity will not be your prey,” the ghost told it. “If you insects cross the Neutral Zone in force, I will crush you.” The insects would drown in the filthy hemoglobin that circulated through their fragile little bodies.
A clicking sound emitted from deep within the Hydra’s throat, a subconscious admission of inferiority. It lashed its tail. “Does your pet Shipmaster not wish to conduct this interrogation, false Queen?”
“He did not deem this interrogation worth his time,” and she was perfectly capable of questioning the Hydra without him. The most difficult part would be not crushing this insect’s mind beyond repair. “That is unfortunate for you, Rowin.” She did not use her full capability when others were around. She held back when minds she valued intact were nearby, for her power had a terrifying extent and she had never wanted humanity to fear her. But she did not care how much this Hydra might fear her, nor did she particularly care if its rational mind survived.
“Your threats mean little to me, false Queen.” Rowin was a scout. As a drone, Rowin may bow, but was bred to resist another Queen’s commands. “I serve only the Mother Nest.”
Perhaps. But she did not care to bind this hungry body into her service. Let it maintain is loyalty to the Hydra’s vile broodmother. “Coming aboard this ship was a mistake.” A price was enacted on the minds who crossed that threshold. The longer they were here, the more she learned them, the more she could weave herself amongst them to enact change, and the less they could perceive or resist that change. The Hydra had opened itself to her some time ago, as its instincts commanded it to. It possessed a simple, hateful awareness, and lacked the ultimate complexity of humanity’s brilliance. There was resistance within the Hydra, yes, but it was no matter, for the threads of its mind were easy to unravel, and easy to stitch between. But when they were plucked, the threads of memory and awareness that formed a mind could scream out a song, and that was why they called her She-Who-Sings-Death. It was a memorial for the marionettes she commanded, singing and dancing to their ultimate demise, and little Rowin, this insignificant little scout, had become her latest puppet.
It was shame she had no use for its body.
If she had cared, perhaps she would have commanded it to sit before she began. Instead, she tightened invisible threads woven into its mind and ripped it free. The Hydra’s body collapsed to the ground with a muffled thud on the oriental rug. Its awareness, a formless, wriggling thing, panicked, reaching for its body. She held it apart, and considered destroying it, as she had her last few Hydrian puppets. But, alas, her instructions had not been to kill it, so she set it aside, unwinding the subconscious demands its body required. Those, she reinstalled as signals on the gelatinous mass that made its alien brain.
In that, the limp body before her stabilized. It began breathing again, continuing its normal processes for growing and processing waste. But the ghost did not care for that. She cared for its vacant little brain, and the memories contained within.
Humanity had a word for this condition. Possession. It was thought that spirits could possess a body. But that was nothing more than a myth in this scientific age, until power on her scale came into being.
It was difficult to possess a human. Their bodies were much less susceptible to outside interference, but it was possible on a mind she knew well enough. However, the Hydra had evolved a weakness to telepathy, and it was all too easy to rip a consciousness away and then become it in order to observe the memories of its body. Perhaps that was how Queens maintained order in their nest, by forcing their drones to open their entire existence – unable to lie and unable to counter the nest’s greater goals, regardless of their ambition.
Possession was a difficult state to sustain. It inserted her awareness into the body, the life of another. It compromised her identity, something that was too fragile already. Her identity blurred, stretching dangerously to encompass a nearly eldritch machine and the alien that hated everything her machine was built to protect. And yet, this altered state of being could recall crawling into the Swordbreaker’s gleaming command room. It could recall the Hydrian Queen’s many eyes, boring the importance of the Swordbreaker’s mission into its awareness.
But it was just that. It was the Swordbreaker’s mission – not Rowin’s. The Hydrian Armada forbade their ships from operating alone. All AI had to be accompanied by at least one crew member with adequate controls – a crew member with the ability to stop the AI if it went mad. And so that had been Rowin’s mission: to accompany the Swordbreaker across the Neutral Zone.
But the Swordbreaker… The scoutship had been destined for a rendezvous, and arrived at its destination. It had delivered something at the rendezvous, but Rowin had not known the cargo, and disaster had struck on the Swordbreaker’s return trip, resulting in the Hydra’s capture by the Crimson Heart pirate clan.
Those memories were vivid, now the memories of this hybridized machine intelligence which possessed two bodies: one with a hatred of the Hydra, and one with a hatred of humanity. In duality, it could remember the youth of its brood, the taste of raw, fatty meat across its tongues, and it could remember the impacts of the rivet guns and the heat of the welders that had shaped it.
It would have been easy to slip there, to become lost, for this integration, this unity between organic and machine was unsustainable. One of its minds thought so slowly, and the other processed an order to continue functioning a thousand times a second. It was incapable of having a complete, simultaneous thought, always at war with itself.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Perhaps the insanity of it would have swallowed the ghost, but it was a one-sided war. The moment she gained the comprehension she required, the moment she gleaned the memories she sought, she discarded that organic awareness and left that body a shell once more. It would have been harder, had it been a body she liked, a brain she cared not to damage. It had been harder the last time, but that was the difference between possessing a human and possessing a Hydra. She did not care how damaged the Hydra found its brain.
Gathering up the needy, formless consciousness of the Hydra, she shoved it back into place. Its horizontal eyelids blinked slowly, one at a time, as it attempted to comprehend what had happened to it. Roughly, she bent and broke a few more pieces of its mind, shaping it into a mold utterly unwilling to disobey the orders of a Shipmaster, regardless of the Shipmaster’s form.
“What have you done to me?” the Hydra queried, suddenly unable to comprehend the hate that had served its existence. Now, it could only feel submission.
She owed it no explanation. “Useless pest,” she spat.
The ghost vanished then, finished with the Hydra. It had taken a few hours to take what she needed from its mind. To acquire its memories, she had commanded its mind to relive them in the greatest detail. Its fragile brain could not do that in accelerated time. It could only abide the passage of time as it had known it – the hours it had taken to meet the Almighty Queen, and the minutes it had taken to receive its mission.
Annoyed by the waste of time, the ghost moved on, first checking the crew. They had worked hard to locate the drones and prepare for the mission, performing their roles admirably as always. Pieces of her had been with them, helping, but only one required her direct attention.
In the hours after the meeting with the senior staff, Ripley had demanded he sleep. Ripley had demanded all the away team members sleep while they could, and the Admiral knew she was right to do so. The away team was in for a very long day on the surface of Azura, and there was no avoiding it. Besides, a bit of sleep made him feel slightly less like death walking.
Admiral Gives had lost track of what time of day it was supposed to be aboard ship, perhaps mid-morning? All that mattered now was the ticking clock Swordbreaker had given them: twelve hours.
One had been burned making repairs to the FTL power lines, and it would take nine total to press into the Neutral Zone toward Azura itself. The Singularity would stop a few systems away, and the away team would use a Warhawk to travel the final stretch, keeping the Singularity’s location secure.
But they’d make it.
Barely.
Admiral Gives had slept for four precious hours, and the briefing for Azura would start in fifty-eight minutes if his watch was to be believed. The others on the away team would sleep until then, but not him. He usually only slept a few hours anyway. It was rare his sleep be truly restful, and he had other things he needed to take care of. Perhaps another might have excused it, or neglected it, but he refused.
So, the ghost found him once again in warm, dim lighting of the ship’s bar, sitting quietly at the counter. It used to concern her how quiet he was, how little he would willingly speak to anyone, even when there were others around. Part of it, she knew was a discomfort. He had never lived a life where idle chatter was wanted or required of him. Another part was simply that he preferred the calm and quiet. So, to find him here, alone, was not surprising.
A whetstone kit and cloth with preservative ointment sat beside him on the bar top, and a familiar obsidian longsword sat centered in front of him, as he polished it from tip to ruby-studded handle in slow and even strokes. “Admiral,” she said.
He turned, taking note of the ghost’s presence, but said nothing. That was neither a sign of disinterest, nor discomfort. He was thinking, observing, as he often tended to.
“Don’t you have other things to be doing?” she asked him.
He met her eyes for a moment more, but then returned to his task, carefully buffing the black blade until it shined.
That was neither a dismissal nor an indication of her intrusion being unwelcome. No, he liked the company, would just never say as much. What he was doing, waking early to care for the ceremonial sword was proof enough of that. She stepped closer, “Do you think that you are unwelcome to hold that blade?” He had never handled it until last night. He had never even asked after it. Now, he sat wiping it down, as if to remove an unwelcome stain. He wanted to take care of it, she knew, the way he wanted to take care of everything – by removing himself from the equation.
“I did not wish to assume,” was all he said. This blade was not his weapon. It was the ship’s. It belonged to her and her crew, not to him.
“I would say the worthiest person to wield a ship’s blade is the fleet’s longest serving commander.” He had been the Singularity’s commanding officer longer than any other commander had served on their ship. If that did not make him worthy, then surely no one was. Carefully, she reached over his shoulder and wrapped a gauntlet-covered hand around the longsword’s jeweled handle. Then she lifted a perfect copy of the ceremonial sword from the counter, an illusion. She stepped back and swung it as if to test its weight, then leveled it between them. “Want to spar?”
He quirked an eyebrow, “What would you know about sword fighting?”
She quirked an eyebrow right back, smiling mischievously, “Only what I learned from the Marines.”
“And you think that’s enough?” To take him, one of the most experienced duelists on the ship?
“Who knows?” she said, “I certainly look the part, don’t I?” This black sword suited her. The sparking red jewels on its hilt and black length matched her armor. She knew for a fact its proportions were just right, complementary to the intricate armor that hugged her figure.
“No comment,” came the reply.
She spun the blade easily. “You are allowed to admit that you like it, you know.” It was entirely due to him that she could maintain this appearance, this identity. “Some men like a powerful woman.”
There was a moment of amusement in him, but like the last ember on a candle wick, it was quickly snuffed out. “How you chose to appear is your business.” He would not push her toward any preference he may or may not possess.
“Drunk you once thought otherwise.”
“I have no recollection of that incident.” That had been ten, fifteen years ago? A prominent reminder of why he’d sworn off drinking heavily.
The ghost just smiled, “Sure.” She would allow him to save face. “But I’ll say drunk you was never anything less than a gentleman.” She had questioned the wisdom in watching humanity poison themselves with alcohol. There were some, certainly, that took it too far, but for the most part, their inebriation had a way of removing emotional barriers. Often, the results were endlessly entertaining.
Pointedly, he returned his attention to the ceremonial sword on the bar, reminding himself to swear off alcohol entirely before it got him in real trouble.
The ghost laughed softly, amused by his embarrassment. It wasn’t as if any opinion on this form of hers truly mattered. It was an illusion, and she was a machine otherwise incapable of standing in the room. She only liked to mess with him. “You are beyond worthy of that sword,” she reminded. “Take it, if you like.”
Admiral Gives flipped the blade over, beginning to work on its other side. “I have one.” His trusty sabre sat further down the counter, waiting for its turn to be sharpened.
The ghost sighed. She knew this behavior, this refusal to engage with anyone, including her. It was his tendency to leave things in as perfect condition as he could make them when he left. That way it was irrelevant if he came back. He had a compulsive habit to never leave a mess, whether that meant tuning the engines, making repairs or cleaning the ship’s ceremonial blade. He did it because he wanted her to be well in his absence. He wanted nothing but that, even when it ate into the time that he should have used to care for himself. Grateful as she was, it saddened her. “I know how much you hate leaving.” She felt it every time he did so. He hated being away from his ship, his home. It discomforted him to be away from the one purpose he believed himself to serve. It made him uneasy to walk amongst worlds that had done nothing but harm him. “But you know I’ll be here when you get back.”
“I know.”
She smiled, gently. “Then,” she remembered what the Marines had said in their meeting, “keep that head of yours down.” His tactical ability would be sorely missed, to say nothing of how she would miss the familiar calm of his mind.
He took a deep breath, the shudder within barely audible. All those accusations about him being unwilling to leave the throne of his power were half-true. He hated stepping off the ship. He had managed for Midwest Station, because he had known what would happen, what to expect, but Azura was a great unknown.
“Do you want to talk?” she asked, stepping closer. She wrapped one hand around the back of the neighboring chair, the intricate black gauntlet on her hand transforming her fingers into claws.
“Not particularly,” he answered.
And yet, he kicked out the stool beside him, moving it so her illusion could sit next him. It was one of those small gestures that only he thought of: physically moving a chair to make room beside him because she could not. Such things were more meaningful than he knew. She slid down into the chair, and watched him polish the ceremonial sword in silent company.
After a few minutes, he finished, but he continued to stare at the wooden countertop, as if unwilling to move and disturb this moment of peace. Then, he said, “Thank you.” Still, he focused on the counter, an avoidance. “For sitting with me.”
The ghost just smiled softly as he stood and began hanging the ceremonial sword back in its place above the bar.
The Admiral turned to her, knowing that he could not avoid a more serious discussion. “Are you feeling better?” She seemed better, more stable.
“Yes.” The time he had spent with her had helped immensely. But, he was always helpful. “Admittedly, it is nice to know I wasn’t going crazy, and that something had been moving in those storage compartments.” Controlled by the Swordbreaker’s AI, the drones had been crawling around, just on the boundary of what she could perceive. Their movements had been maddening, each a slight disturbance that she couldn’t pinpoint, like a hair tickling the back of one’s neck. “Figures it was Knight Industries’ tech that nearly sank us. It’s always been garbage.”
“About half of our munitions are K.I. manufactured,” he reminded, stoic as ever.
The ghost huffed, “I know what I said.” She’d thrown better rounds in the War, before Knight Industries had risen to a near-monopoly on military technologies. “To borrow the Colonel’s vocabulary, their quality control is fucking shit.” The fleet could cut accidental injuries in half by employing a neutral quality overseer on the K.I. manufacturing lines. “It’s dangerous, so let’s not mention their research and development division.” The same division, she might add, that was responsible for the creation of the Manhattan AI.
Admiral Gives could understand her frustration. He had never approved of the influence Knight Industries wielded. The company owned multiple worlds outright, not to mention the mining and colonial rights to several notable sectors, but, “There aren’t many small machine operations left.” The smaller companies that hadn’t gone bankrupt in the War had been commandeered in the Frontier Rebellion, then either destroyed or bought out afterward. Workers were not respected under the conditions of a monopoly where they had no choice in employer, so few took pride in their work. That was the way of the worlds. Manufacturing worlds like Sagittarion existed for a reason, and it wasn’t the betterment of equality among humanity’s populations. In such miserable conditions, nothing was built to quality, and everything made as cheap as possible, every level of the operation taking their own shortcut. With no oversight, modern shipyards suffered the same problems. The longevity of a ship built in the last twenty years was half the expected lifespan of a ship built fifty years prior.
The ghost could feel his contemplation, deep and thoughtful. She did not pry into his thoughts, but knew his strategic mindset had once again risen to the fore, measuring advantages and disadvantages to the subject of discussion. “There’s something else,” she said. “The Hydra didn’t know why it was sent across the Neutral Zone.”
Perhaps that was the only answer Admiral Gives had truly not expected. He had expected espionage, assassination, even surveillance, but he had never considered that the biological drone would not know why it was sent across the Neutral Zone. “You’re certain?”
“Yes,” the ghost answered. “It is unable to hide anything from me now.” It had been here too long. “Swordbreaker was sent across the Neutral Zone to deliver something ten years ago. The package was left behind at a pre-determined location. Only the Swordbreaker’s AI knew the meet-point and cargo,” and that AI was now well beyond her reach. The Singularity was in the Neutral Zone now, and the Swordbreaker would be beyond that, in Hydrian space. “Rowin was present only to monitor the AI’s functions.” The Hydra never sent their ships out uncrewed. “Swordbreaker was caught in a severe solar storm and suffered a power failure. That’s when the pirates seized them.”
The rest, as far as the Admiral cared, was history. Rowin had been held hostage and Baron Cardio had put the AI to work, threatening the Hydra when the AI refused. It did strike the Admiral as odd that a mere drone would not be abandoned, but perhaps Swordbreaker had lingered to monitor the situation and ensure no evidence of its incursion reached humanity’s main population. That being the case, perhaps the Empire was not ready for full invasion. The Hydra may still value a peaceful resolution and time to complete whatever plans they had begun. Regardless, it was becoming clear that their plans had been in motion for years already. “All this, and the Hydra knows nothing.” There was no evidence toward what those plans might be.
“My apologies,” the ghost told him.
“Not your fault.” It seemed the Hydra had been overly cautious with mission security. Or, perhaps, had they assumed someone with the ghost’s capability might investigate? “Do what you can to pacify the Hydra for our trip to Azura.”
“Already done,” the ghost said. “The Hydra will no longer resist you in its current state.” Presently, the biological drone was subservient to her, bound by the instinct of its blindsight to heed its Queen. “My control over it will diminish once it leaves, even more so if you encounter a sub-Queen or Shipmaster capable of telepathy, but it is unlikely.” Those Hydra were rare. “It longs to return to its nest. It believes it may be elevated after the completion of its mission and longs to procreate.” It was disgusting, truly, the thought of more Hydrian broods being sired. But that was all biological Hydra craved: the right to pass on their genes and serve the nest. “Rowin will not jeopardize its own return to the Armada, but I would recommend draining its acid glands before you set out.”
“I will let the medical team know.” That procedure should be in the ship’s archives somewhere. This was not the first time the Singularity had carried Hydrian soldiers aboard.
“No need,” the ghost told him. “Just take a bucket rated for chemical storage when you go to collect it for transport.”
“You think the Hydra will willingly spit into a bucket?”
“Oh,” she smiled menacingly, “I wouldn’t say willingly.”
