Mississippi Sector, Battleship Singularity
"Weapons are active, Colonel."
"Damn it all! I did not give that order." He hadn't given any of these orders. He hadn't ordered a jump, he hadn't chosen these coordinates, and certainly he hadn't ordered the weapons to be brought online. The sure magnitude of this malfunction was beyond Zarrey's wildest dreams. As he regained his bearings from arguably the worst FTL maneuver he'd ever endured, he expected to be in pain. Some part of him expected a skull-splitting headache, but he felt fine, strangely fine, actually.
Behind the urgent voices of the crew, Zarrey dimly recognized the low rumble of the main engines cycling back down into idle. "Helm, I did not order any maneuvers."
"Wasn't me, sir," the replacement helmsman answered. "It was a deceleration maneuver, conducted as we came out of subspace."
"Good thing, too." Galhino added, flicking through the sensor data. "We're surrounded."
"Surrounded?" Zarrey said, turning his attention to the radar displays hung in CIC. True enough, hazy circles hung around the ship. Not circles, he realized, studying the display that ran on the other plane. Spheres. "What is that?" The radar system hadn't painted them with ID, friendly or otherwise.
"Planets, sir," Galhino told him. "If we hadn't decelerated to zero relative velocity, we would've sailed straight into one of their gravity wells."
Planets? He turned to the viewscreen. By default, it showed the feed from one of the telescopes on the bow, and ahead there was little to be seen, only a dark visage that blotted out the stars. Dark planets.
"And Colonel," Galhino looked over to him, "We're not alone."
Not alone? "Get visual," he ordered. True enough, now that he wasn't consumed by the massive spheres, he could see that the radar had picked up another target, something far smaller. It also lacked an ID but had been marked as an artificial contact – something manmade.
In the front of the room, the image on the view screen swapped from one of the bow telescopes to a camera mounted on the ship's port flank. An ugly conglomerate mass of scavenged ships and structure, the gray form was shaped like a dumbbell. Zarrey couldn't spot any noticeable engines on its main shaft or on its disc-shaped endcaps. That's not a ship, he realized, tossing out his default assumption. It's a station. Then, he noticed the strange shadows along the main length, pipes that were bent and welded to form an identification. Disbelief left his lips before he could contain it. "That's impossible."
Galhino shook her head. "I don't know what to tell you, Colonel." She wouldn't believe it herself if she weren't staring at the facts. "By all appearances, that is Midwest Station. Sensors have identified a Warhawk and a Rhino docked on the endcap." Since both ships were docked and powered down, the radar had registered them as part of the station, not as ships onto themselves.
"But that doesn't make sense." How had they gotten here?
"I can confirm that our present coordinates are within the bounds of the Mississippi Sector," Walters called from the navigations console.
"So, subspace threw us out on the doorstep of Midwest Station." Given the discomfort of the maneuver, that was the only way he would describe it. The FTL drives had taken them to subspace, and subspace had spat them back out with enough force to make it seem almost violent. "Did we take any damage?"
Ensign Alba was pale, perhaps terrified, but he still reached up and began checking the ship's systems. "FTL Drive Three is not reporting, and likely nonoperational, but the rest of the ship's systems appear undamaged. However, that maneuver put severe strains on the structure, sir. We're not damaged, but the structural integrity is spent." The strain gauges throughout the ship's structure were all reporting red. "We've got to let her rest." The ship's structural strains would ease over time, allowing the structure to realign and regain its strength. "Another FTL maneuver could cause severe damage. We can't jump."
"But we're okay?"
"We're okay," Alba agreed. "I'd estimate twelve hours before it would be safe to jump, though."
So, we're stuck here, Zarrey realized. At least we made to the station. Here, they could lend aid to the away team. Still, another thought suddenly occurred to him. "Wait, when did we regain control of the ship's systems?"
"After the jump," Alba said. "Now, everything seems fine."
"Comms recovered before the jump, Colonel." Robinson answered. "I asked if you wanted to make a warning announcement." Strangely, though, he had not responded. He had been frozen in apparent shock of the situation.
"Helm control was nominal until just after the jump, sir, but I have system response again now."
Galhino glanced to the helmsman, but turned to Colonel Zarrey instead. "I never lost control of the sensors, sir."
Zarrey scratched at the scar on the side of his jaw. "None of that makes sense." A complete system malfunction should have been simultaneous, and if Command had issued an override, they should not have control again now.
"No, Colonel," Galhino told him, furrowing her dark brows, "That makes perfect sense. Don't you see the pattern?"
"No, Galhino," he snapped, "I don't fucking see a pattern."
"We only lost the systems that were needed to initiate an FTL jump," Robinson realized, speaking aloud. "Navigation to stop an override to backup coordinates, Engineering for the drives themselves, Comms. for the warning alarm, and the helm for that deceleration maneuver."
"Right," Galhino nodded, her curly hair bouncing with the movement. "The sensors aren't involved in any of that." Their usual operation had been all that was necessary. "We only lost control of the systems needed to make a safe FTL jump, and we only lost control of them for as long as they were necessary." After that, control had been immediately returned.
"...With the exception of weapons," Zarrey suddenly remembered that announcement. He turned to the officer manning that station, uneasy, "What are we targeting?"
"The station, sir," came the response. "The main battery has been raised and turned to target Midwest Station."
Zarrey tried not to feel the shiver that ran up his spine. At this range, the silhouette of the main guns would be more than menacing aboard the station. He swallowed, almost afraid to ask, "Are they loaded?"
The crewman looked down and checked, "Yes, sir. Standard rounds."
Hell fires in heaven. At this range, that would be fatal to the station and everyone aboard it. At two or three times this range, it would still be unquestionably lethal. Calm down, he told himself. The crew was looking at him strangely, perplexed by his reaction, so Zarrey clenched his fists and did his best to steel his expression. "Can you... uh, disengage the main battery?" Damn, that was a weird command. He could not remember the last time he had actively instructed people not to blow things up.
"Aye," the crewman said, dancing his hands across the controls. "Standing by to secure all armaments." He turned to the Colonel for confirmation.
"Colonel," Galhino interrupted, "don't we want to threaten the station?" Presently, short of storming the station directly, that was the only support they could provide. "We can force the Jayhawker to release our personnel." This positioning, alongside the station, gave the ship's main battery a near perfect firing solution.
She was right, and Zarrey knew that. This inexplicable sequence of events had effectively handed them control of the situation. Still, he studied the station's asymmetric shape, uncomfortable. "We want to threaten the Jayhawker," he confirmed, "but I want to be completely certain we are in control of the ship when we do. A weapons malfunction should not be taken lightly." If Gaffigan were here, he'd know that.
"Sir, the last weapons malfunction we had intercepted the nuke," Alba said. "That turret saved the entire ship."
Zarrey felt his jaw clench. That was true. And allegedly some wiring damage had caused the malfunction that avoided an impact from Sagittarion's orbital mass driver. That was harmless enough, even downright helpful, but malfunctions – if these truly were malfunctions – swung both ways, some helpful, some harmful, and luck determined which. "The last malfunction we had involving the main battery killed several hundred people, including little Miss Amelia's mother." He heard the bridge crew hush at his words. "The Admiral claimed it was his fault. He took responsibility for the entire incident, but it was not his fault." That day, Admiral Gives had been found on the bridge unconscious and nearly dead.
Zarrey let loose a long sigh, wishing that incident could stay forgotten. "These malfunctions are not always harmless," and that was a cold fact. There was a reason he couldn't let these little incidents go unchecked, no matter how the Admiral brushed them off.
This bridge crew was too young to remember it, but Zarrey could still hear the yelling and the confusion of that moment. He remembered every inquiry that had followed, as he had sat sweating under lights meant to be uncomfortably bright. "The Yokohoma sank when the Singularity's malfunction emptied a broadside into her flank." The cruiseliner had had been torn to shreds in an instant, and anyone unlucky enough to survive the impact had died from vacuum exposure in the seconds that followed.
"But," Zarrey continued with a shake of his head, "Admiral Gives knew if that was the truth that hit the press, this ship never would have survived." The Singularity would have been decommissioned and torn apart within weeks. So soon after the Frontier Rebellion's end, the central worlds had been uneasy with the Singularity's gruesome reputation. If they had thought, even for a second, that such power could turn against them, even in error, they would have stripped and melted down the ship until nothing remained.
The bridge crew sat in a moment of silence, each of them digesting that information – unthinkable evidence that the Admiral was perfectly willing to lie, no matter how honest he otherwise seemed.
"I knew it." Galhino proclaimed, so entirely unsurprised. "I told him his judgement was compromised." Zarrey's confession about the Yokohoma only proved it. "He allots this ship far too much trust," to a point where he and the eight hundred other lives aboard ship now stood to pay the price for his illogical attachment. "And, if you knew the truth," she said, glaring at Zarrey,
"why the hell didn't you come forward?"
"Do you think I wanted a new assignment?" he snapped, keeping one eye on the radar displays for any sign of trouble on the station. "I was scared, Galhino, and you would've been too." These worlds hadn't been tolerant of him. He had been kicked off his last post for being gay, then nearly been given a dishonorable discharge that would have kept him from ever working within the central worlds again. "I was terrified, because I didn't know what would happen to me if Command took the ship, and then I saw what the Admiral was trying to do, and I... I just kept my mouth shut."
"Let me get this straight," Galhino said, tense with frustration, "you let your commanding officer confess to the murder of several hundred civilians instead of just telling the truth, which was that there was a simple weapons misfire." A series of malfunctions eerily similar to the current. "Fucking hell, Colonel. You had no reason to expect Command would actually scrap the ship. That was a long time ago. The ship was practically new!"
"The Yokohoma only sank thirteen years ago, Galhino." Zarrey had been only a year into his tenure as the ship's executive officer. "The Singularity was thirty-seven," already older than most battleships lived to be. "The situation was fucked up, and I think the Admiral knew that, but he confessed anyway. He told Command that he had been negligent and conducted weapons test while escorting a civilian fleet, and that was the reason the Yokohoma sank."
"And Command bought that?" Galhino couldn't believe that. "They actually believed that their Fleet Admiral could be that stupid?" She did not like to admit it, but she knew just how smart the Admiral was.
"They had to," Zarrey told her, rubbing his temples between his fingers. "General Brent died the day the Yokohoma sank. The medical teams found him dead, here, on this bridge, but Command couldn't go public with the fact their top two officers tried to kill each other, so they let the Admiral confess, and swept the entire incident under the rug." Zarrey could remember General Clarke's scornful look, the utter disgust he had held for the entire situation.
"But that's not the point." No. "The reality of that entire situation is that a weapons misfire killed several hundred people and we all lied our way to covering it up." Zarrey had been part of it, and he had lived with that shame. "No explanation was ever given to the press, and the Secretary of Defense was furious." The Admiral's brother had never forgiven him, especially since he had been privy to the truth – a truth in which the Admiral had lied to cover for his ship and left his brother without justice for his wife's death.
Considering that history, Zarrey felt justified in being unsettled by these malfunctions, no matter how strangely helpful they could seem. "Today, I'm looking at a malfunction just as severe as the one that killed the Yokohoma," something that rightfully, should never have happened again.
"Then your orders, sir?" the crewman at the weapons console prompted. "Secure weapons?"
I don't know. That was the answer Zarrey wanted to give, but he could feel the expectant gazes of every crewman on the bridge. He was in charge, and they expected him to have confidence. This is why I hate being left in charge. Things were never this complicated while the Admiral was around. The damn ship never seemed to misbehave on his watch. But still, as the rest of the crew kept most of their attention on the away team's situation, he knew he had to give the weapons officer an answer.
In Zarrey's mind, the question here was not the nature of the past or the present. It was a question of whether or not he trusted that there would not be a misfire that blew away the station and everyone on it. There were a lot of variables in that consideration, but chief among them was the fact that Admiral Gives was currently on that station, and that changed things. You're not going to kill him, Zarrey thought to the old ship.
Zarrey had no explanation for it, same as he had no explanation for the maneuver that had brought them here or for the incident that sank the Yokohoma all those years ago, but when it came to Admiral Gives, the ship could get downright odd. "Leave the guns loaded," Zarrey told the weapons officer. These malfunctions were perfectly capable of reloading the main battery with or without orders.
For a moment, Zarrey looked at the helm, wondering if he should maneuver out of range instead of worrying about the weapons, but he knew, knew it wasn't going to happen. They weren't leaving without their crew, and the ship sure as hell wasn't leaving without the Admiral, so Zarrey placed his fist on the console in front of him, thinking again to the old machine. Sometimes I wonder if you understand what he did to keep you out of the scrapyards. But all the same, he knew that was nonsense.
Zarrey had once spoken to Havermeyer about the ship's abnormalities, thinking the spiritual beliefs of the tech-monks might offer some explanation. Havermeyer had let loose a lecture on how the Singularity's system architecture was not, by nature, intelligent, though it was, without question, aware. Zarrey hadn't understood that, so he'd told Havermeyer to dumb it down for him. The result had been simple: no matter what was going on with the ship, there was somewhere, a rational explanation for it. On a machine so large and complex, sometimes those explanations were hard to find, but there was a reason. Nothing concerning a machine was random or magic. It only meant they were failing to understand.
And, that meant now, faced with a slew of apparent malfunctions, they had to find an explanation. "Document everything," Zarrey ordered. "Get the time stamps, the control inputs, the apparent result. Document it all. We're going to get to the bottom of this. We have to be certain we are in total control of this ship." The risks were too high to allow potential malfunctions. Their lives depended on it, as did the welfare of every living creature within range of the ship's weapons. "We were damn lucky this time, people. The odds of dropping out of FTL when and where we did..." Well, Zarrey would rather not contemplate it. "We've had a lot of malfunctions, and somewhere there's an explanation. We are going to find it, even if it means stopping to do a comprehensive systems check."
Alba admired Colonel Zarrey's dedication, but that was pointless. "Colonel, what if these aren't malfunctions?"
Zarrey turned to where the boyish officer sat behind the engineering console. "What do you mean?"
"The probability, it doesn't add up," Alba said. "It would be statistically impossible for a random jump to put us here, not to mention sound the alarm and activate the weapons. That's not a random sequence of events. That's a sequence of events designed to hand us control of the situation with Midwest Station. These 'malfunctions' are far too purposeful to actually be malfunctions." He made air quotes around the word. "You asked me to look into this, and I haven't gotten far, just far enough to realize there's a pattern."
From the other side of the bridge, Robinson interrupted, "Sir, the away team is departing the station. Gaffigan confirms the mission was a success."
Without turning to her, Zarrey made a vague gesture that he heard. He kept his focus on Alba's young face, since the away team seemed to have things under control. "A pattern?"
"Yes, sir," Alba nodded. "It's obvious. The turret that intercepted the nuke, the maneuver above Sagittarion, and now this. These incidents, they're protecting the crew."
Alba's words brought a strange silence to the bridge. Zarrey scrunched his nose. He wanted to argue the point, considering the Yokohoma, but the truth was, no member of the crew had been harmed directly by that incident either. "Alba, there's no viable explanation for that." Pattern or not, it made no sense.
"Actually, sir, there's two." Alba swallowed, uncertain he liked either explanation. "The first is the Admiral." Zarrey had suspected him of keeping secrets for some time now. "His command codes are one of two things that could override manual control. We have no way to know when or if he implemented a command override. We also have no way of knowing what commands he may have given, or how they would come into effect." Unsurprisingly, the technical details on that were missing from the manuals and engineering diagrams the crew had available.
Zarrey rubbed his jaw, trying to follow along. "...You think he ordered the ship to protect us?" That seemed harmless enough, but, "I didn't think she was capable of that."
"Well, theoretically, since the systems aren't networked together, she's not. But again, we don't know how the command overrides work, or what specifically the Admiral did or did not do. He would be perfectly capable of modifying the ship's systems as he saw fit." And, as dangerous as illegally modifying the systems could be, Alba preferred that explanation. "But, as I said, there is a second possibility: the Black Box."
Zarrey couldn't help but stiffen. The Black Box was a confidential system. Only ship commanders and executive officers could confirm it existed, even if they didn't know where on the ship it was housed. However, the idea of it was not foreign to the rest of the crew. Rumors had circulated during the years the Boxes had been in use, and the neurofibers were not invisible. They were sometimes found mixed in with other wires.
Galhino stared at Alba, almost disbelieving he would mention the Black Box. It was taboo, especially on the Singularity. Considering what had happened to the Matador, even she didn't want to breach that topic. "It doesn't work, Alba. We all know that."
"No, we don't," the engineer said. "We actually have no idea if the Singularity's Box functions or not." There was evidence for both cases. Command had not flagged the Box during inspection, which indicated it was functional. But, the records of the Box had also never incriminated anyone, even when the records it should have submitted and the reports the crew wrote were not identical, which indicated that it was not functioning as Command had intended. "If we are to believe the rumors, then Command's Black Boxes were not only designed to collect and store secure records. They were also designed to seize control of a ship that fell into enemy hands. The Box could very well could be causing these apparent malfunctions. It's the only other thing that could override manual control."
"Command can't override anything," Zarrey reminded him. "Not after the Strike Zero override was implemented."
Alba watched Zarrey scratch at the old scar on his jaw, clearly uncomfortable where he stood next to the backlit radar console. "The Strike Zero override exempts a ship from Command's overrides, sir, but Flagships are not supposed to be able to accept that override."
Zarrey scratched harder at his scar, not appreciating that insinuation. "You think the Admiral lied?"
"I don't know," Alba said. "I'm not sure it matters. Either way, the Strike Zero override only affects ship systems. The Black Box may not count. On a newer ship, maybe, but the Singularity's old. She wasn't built with a Black Box. It was added later, but the Strike Zero command would have been coded when the ship was built, so likely, the Box wasn't included."
A new magnitude of horror dawned on Zarrey in that moment. All his fears about a malfunction suddenly felt distinctly unimportant. He stopped scratching and put both hands onto the table in front of him, leaning forward. "Are you telling me that we might be susceptible to the Black Box's retrieval protocols?" The intensity of the question surprised Alba and the young crewman shrunk down. "BLOODY. FUCKING. HELL! When did you figure that out?"
Alba managed to hide most of his frame behind the metal bulk console that sat between him and Zarrey. "Just now, sir." This last series of 'malfunctions' had solidified that theory.
"You think Command could be controlling it?" Controlling the ship? Had they been careless to accept the Strike Zero override as safety? No, if Alba could piece together the Black Box's exclusion, then surely the Admiral had already. He knew more about the ship than anyone.
Galhino looked between Alba and Zarrey. Zarrey looked pale enough to have clearly unlocked a new nightmare. "Am I missing something?" she wondered. "If Command can control the Black Box, then why would they use it to help protect us?"
"Not us," Zarrey realized. This wasn't about the crew. "They want the Admiral alive, and they would not be above using his own ship to keep him that way."
"Then why don't they just drop us out of FTL at one of their outposts?" If they had control, why bother delaying the inevitable?
"I don't know. I don't care." Zarrey was furious. He had always been uneasy about the Box, but now he was just plain angry with it. "It won't matter if I find the damn thing and rip it out of the ship first."