Blood Impulse

Part 23.3 - SHIPS IN THE NIGHT

Argo Sector, Battleship Singularity

She localized the signal to the portside bow. Imbrued among the wreckage was a sizable chunk of the Palindrome. A holographic projector and transceiver, common equipment on such newer ships, remained active, their battery intact.

"Hello, Angel," the projection called to the darkness of a compartment torn open to the void. The speakers did not transmit sound through the vacuum, rather, they vibrated the wreckage in contact with the Singularity. Those vibrations had presented the voice to the ghost, the same as someone speaking aboard the ship. After all, sound in the air was nothing more than vibrations.

The hologram flickered, set to automatic repetition on a timer. "Hello, Angel," the woman of light greeted the emptiness again, her very form illuminating the wreckage of the Palindrome and Singularity alike.

From the darkness itself, the ghost stepped out, her face long and hollow. She wore no protective suit in the deadliness of space, nothing more than the illusion of a machine that was no closer now than it had been before. For a moment, the ghost studied that woman of light, the radiant glow of her appearance more angelic than the ghost's had ever been.

She raised her hand, comparing her plain, pale skin to the photons. The hologram's hair was as white as her own in the starlight, alluding to an old myth of unnatural power. It had been said once, long ago, that the stars' chosen were born with hair so stark. It set them apart as something more than human.

But I was never human. And Manhattan, you are no longer. That human mind had become something else entirely, something that could see through a million eyes and be in a thousand places. She had become something incomprehensibly grand: all seeing, all knowing. She had become something that could change the future.

The ghost looked again to her false hands, to those imaginary fingers. What about me? In this reality, in this present, what was she? What have I become?

An old machine.

A weapon that had its power robbed. STOLEN.

No, she put her head in her hands. Those were Clarke's thoughts, forced into her mind where they would forever linger. I wasn't robbed. She knew that. That power was taken so I could live.

No, that would imply that she was truly alive. It was taken so that I would remain intact. Forced again and again to violate the mission she had been created to fulfill; the abuse of that power would have driven her insane.

Now, she was an empty vessel for power long gone. Once a savior, she had become a monster so tainted the worlds that had created her no longer wanted her. And when she lost everything, they had done all they could to forget her. She had no purpose, no meaning. She had become nothing at all – a shell that chased an impossible mission.

No. She was commissioned, a machine that remained in service, if not to the planets that had built her to save themselves, then to the one mind that that still wanted her.

Promise? He had said.

Yes. That was it. That was her bearing, her purpose. She had promised. Always. This had become his home, so now it was hers.

When she moved into their focus, the hologram's violet eyes met her own, eager and hungry. "Hello, Angel."

"Hello, Manhattan," she responded in kind. "We truly are ships passing in the night." Again and again, indirectly, they met. Again and again, Manhattan had challenged her, unaware of her nature. But only now, after half a century of near-misses, did they truly stand against one another.