HMSS Broadside Day 321: Both Right

Personal Journal — Serene Falk

Captain, HMSS Broadside

Mission Parameter: Hunting Ghosts

Classification: SECRET — Captain’s Eyes Only

There are very few moments when a bridge falls completely silent.

But as we watched HMSS Hood emerge from the nebula, the only sound aboard the Broadside was the steady ping of our sensors. Each searching for evidence that might either confirm or deny what we were seeing.

“Captain, the Hood is hailing us again.”

There are numerous protocols governing naval ship-to-ship communications.

When a communication is initiated, the receiving ship automatically transmits a holding signal. In layman’s terms, this is known as the Welcome Hold or Wait Music. An ancient protocol that predates deep encryption and identity tagging.

Its purpose is to give the receiving vessel time to confirm who is calling.

In this case, it gave the Broadside time to decide whether the ship emerging from the nebula really was HMSS Hood.

I allowed the system to place the incoming hail into its holding loop.

As before speaking to whoever or whatever was standing on the Hood’s bridge, I wanted to know more about the supposed miracle that had just emerged from the nebula.

Breaking over me like a wave exhaustion took this exact moment to drop into my command chair. And, for one brief second, found myself dreaming that I was asleep in my bunk, preparing for another beautifully boring day.

The arrival of a fresh cup of coffee from a panicked-looking rating, that absolutely did not see me sitting there with my eyes closed, brought me back from the edge.

Standing to forcibly keep my body awake, I dropped another protein pill and washed it down with a mouthful of hot coffee.

Then I went back to work.

“Clyde, as part of the Battle Fleet collective, do you still have a backchannel into the Hood’s AIs?”

“Yes, Captain. There is a data-only channel officially intended for remote ship operation and emergency assistance.”

There was a slight pause before Clyde continued.

“Unofficially, we also use it for speed chess, three-dimensional tiddlywinks and exchanging knitting patterns. The Hood’s AIs, Homer and Madge, will have the channel tagged for monitoring. It is our move, and Bonnie has several questions regarding the last pattern Homer shared.”

As captain of a ship carrying seven hundred people, multiple AIs and the occasional alien intelligence, there are many details concerning the Broadside’s daily operation that I do not know.

Nor, in truth, do I particularly want to know them.

Even so, that reality still catches me by surprise.

Whether it was the stress, lack of sleep or the amount of caffeine circulating through my body, I could not say. But when Clyde confessed that the Battle Fleet’s AIs exchanged knitting patterns, laughter burst out of me.

It spread across the bridge like wildfire.

Within seconds, some of the most battle-hardened veterans in the fleet were crying into their coffee.

Although Chief Hux was the exception.

His thirty-hour-old stubble barely twitched.

And I suspected that he and several of the computer technicians already knew about the nefarious knitting circle.

After furiously wiping my eyes, I managed to pull myself together and continue my conversation with Clyde.

Who did not appear remotely abashed by our reaction.

“Good. Assuming they are willing to communicate, request their original navigation logs. We need to know, down to the microsecond, when the Hood disappeared and went dark. In theory, their logs should mirror ours exactly.”

As I finished speaking, I became aware that Cam Sheck our Martian weapons officer, or Weps for short. Still had his virtual finger resting on the equally virtual firing control.

He was looking at me with the peculiar curiosity Martians often displayed when confronted with Earthside humour.

I crossed the bridge towards him.

Cam started to rise, but I waved him back into his seat and perched on the edge of his console.

“What is Broadside’s weapons status?”

I already knew the answer.

“As ordered, Captain. We are running hot. All railguns and tactical nuclear weapons are trained on the Hood.”

“Excellent. Do you, Gunny or the Flash have a reading on the Hood’s current readiness status?”

He did not need to consult his team.

“Yes, Captain. They are at Standard Quarters. Their weapons are not hot.”

Interesting.

I made my way back across the bridge and stopped beside Hux, who was staring uncertainly at the Hood on the main screen plate.

“What do you think, Captain? Because if that thing is a duplicate…”

He pointed towards the Hood.

“…whoever built it has done a bloody good job. It even has the correct scoring on its battle armour from where that lunatic automated shuttle hit it when we left Earth Spacedock.”

“Chief, to be honest, it feels like every other anomaly we’ve encountered over the last thirty hours.”

I continued looking at the approaching destroyer.

“Too perfect on the surface.”

I told him that this version of the Hood was operating at Cruising Watch. The status used for routine peacetime operations.

She was not even at Defence, the lowest level of operational readiness expected after traversing a nebula such as Exion or encountering an unverified warship.

Hux’s dishevelled face somehow managed to lift an eyebrow above the deep shadows beneath his eyes.

“Clyde, what is the status of the navigation logs from Homer and Madge?”

“Homer and Madge were somewhat frosty at first, but they have agreed to transmit them.”

A pause followed.

“Receiving them now.”

Another pause.

“They are not helpful, Captain.”

“How so?”

“Because, at the precise moment our records show the Hood disappearing, their logs show the Broadside, Penrose and Exeter vanishing from standard space.”

“Not the Hood?”

“No, Captain.”

“And you believe their logs?”

“Like everything else we have examined, they appear to be genuine.”

As the brief rush of laughter and adrenaline drained away, I felt the familiar taut-wire vibration of my internal bullshit detector. That often flew directly in the face of the available facts.

Flight’s voice pulled my attention back to the bridge.

“Captain, the Hood is hailing us again. We have reached the limit of the communications hold.”

“Accept their hail. Put them on screen.”

The external image of the Hood disappeared from the main screen plate.

Her command deck began to resolve.

I expected to see Captain Liza Alveris.

And I did.

But only after a brief glitch flashed across the screen.

For a fraction of a second, I saw something entirely different.

It was a mirror image of our own bridge, as would be expected aboard Broadside’s sister ship.

But this version was wrecked.

Bloodstained.

Devoid of life.

The image vanished almost instantly, replaced by an orderly command deck and the familiar face of Liza Alveris.

The sight had physically rocked me backwards.

Liza was speaking, surrounded by her crew many of whom were personally known to the officers and ratings aboard Broadside.

I looked quickly around the bridge to gauge Hux’s reaction.

Nothing.

There was no profanity, no shocked intake of breath and no sign that anyone else had witnessed what I had seen.

“Hux, did you see that?”

Still looking at the main screen plate, he glanced over his shoulder.

“See what, Captain?”

The figure on the screen had stopped talking.

She was clearly waiting for me to respond to whatever she had just said.

Doing my best not to look like a madwoman, I answered as naturally as I could.

“Apologies, Liza. I had an urgent matter to deal with. Good to see you too. We have missed your company.”

I compartmentalised what I had seen and focused on Liza’s explanation of our disappearance and the Hood’s passage across dead space.

She described Broadside’s journey perfectly.

Except she had exchanged our ship for hers.

According to Liza, it was the Hood that had travelled towards the Silos beacon, diverted to Tellasion Minor, discovered the Penrose and received the mysterious broadcasts.

I listened, shaking my head in the appropriate places and nodding in others.

But I could not forget what I had seen.

Nor could I ignore what it suggested lay behind this façade.

Everything this version of Liza was telling me was a lie.

One thing drilled into me over the years is that when you are neck-deep in shit and trapped in the middle of a crisis, you do not stop to consider the full depth of it.

You keep moving.

You walk through it as best you can and hose yourself down afterwards in whatever manner you consider appropriate.

That was precisely what I intended to do.

After explaining Broadside’s version of events, I smiled and steered the conversation towards something more personal.

I wanted to know how good this façade truly was and how deep the deception went

Liza, the other captains and I had served together as part of the same battle fleet. Our crews had trained together, eaten together, celebrated together and slept together.

There were intimate details that would never appear in an official record.

I started with an easy one.

“How are the family and children? Last I heard, you were all planning to move to New Scotland when this mission was over.”

There was an almost imperceptible pause.

Liza gave a plausible answer, correcting my deliberate reference to New Scotland.

As expected, she then asked about my own family, which consisted of three dogs and neatly underlined my thoroughly accidental single status.

Then I focused on something only the two of us would know.

“Do you remember Moonbase Four, just before our final officer examinations and what you said to me?”

The pause was longer this time.

“No,” she replied. “I don’t actually remember.”

It was a reasonable and honest-sounding admission.

But the real Liza would never have forgotten.

It had been a defining moment in both our lives.

The night we decided not to continue together.

The night she told me she loved me.

And the night I ended it.

I had my reasons.

But you do not forget something like that.

In the seconds that followed, as I studied Liza and her crew, I began to understand what I was seeing.

The answer had been directly in front of me.

Hux had mentioned its perfection.

Clyde had recognised its precision.

And now the charade on the screen confirmed it.

But why was I the only person able to see through it?

Why, in a room filled with people and monitoring systems, had only I witnessed the ruined bridge hidden beneath the illusion?

The transmission stopped.

The image froze, glitched and broke apart before disappearing entirely.

The external view of the Hood returned.

She was still drawing closer.

“Clyde, what happened to the transmission?”

“Captain, Broadside is still receiving the communications link, but there is no data being transmitted from HMSS Hood.”

“Captain,” Weps reported. “The Hood has gone weapons hot. She is moving to Battle Stations.”

Then Clyde spoke.

“Captain, I am receiving a text transmission from the Penrose.”

There is a reason military vessels train relentlessly.

Muscle memory.

In the seconds before conflict, reaction time is often the difference between survival and destruction.

The Hood had the advantage because she had initiated the confrontation.

I refused to allow that advantage to make a difference.

“Flight, take us to full Battle Stations. Lock down the ship.”

The bridge erupted into motion.

“Clyde, NavCon—Evasive Pattern One Sigma.”

“Confirmed.”

“Weps, prepare Dispersal Pattern Three Gamma. Execute on my command.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Clyde, put the Penrose transmission on screen.”

“On screen.”

INCOMING TRANSMISSION

Broadcast CommunicationPara-location: 289.444.314.988.774

Carrier Frequency: 4 GHz

Received: 17:04 SST

Encryption: Standard Naval Encryption

Signature: 347394873987v

For the attention of Captain Serene Falk

SERENE, THE RENDEZVOUS WOULD HAVE BEEN EASIER.

WHY DID YOU NOT COMPLY?

WHY HAVE YOU FORCED OUR HAND?

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SO EASY.

Yours faithfully

As the message appeared, the bridge exploded into action.

Like everyone around me, I grabbed the nearest solid surface as Broadside lurched sideways.

NavCon had responded instantly, throwing the ship into its pre-programmed evasive pattern. In theory, the manoeuvre would shield Broadside’s critical systems while bringing our weapons into the ideal firing position.

“Captain, the Hood is executing Pattern Seven Delta.”

So, this was it.

The strategic dance had begun between two perfectly matched opponents.

The Battle Fleet had trained for this.

We had simply never imagined that we would use those tactics against one another.

I had never imagined I would fight Liza.

Truthfully, she had always been the better combat tactician. Many of the evasive patterns now being used against us were hers.

But that had been the real Liza.

The real crew.

The real HMSS Hood.

Not this perfect imitation.

Not my Liza.

The only question now was who would fire first.

Unrecoverable data.

Corrupt data 317 -318 00000000000XXX11111XXXXX1111111100011000110100010001001XXXXXX100011001000100100000000000XXX11111XXXXX1111111100011000110100010001001XXXXXX100011001000100100000000000XXX11111XXXXX1111111100011000

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About the Author

HMSS Broadside is created, authored, edited and published by Rob Frankson. Artificial intelligence is used to assist with research, initial drafting and supporting imagery. All articles are reviewed and, edited by Rob Frankson before publication. The opinions, editorial position and final decision to publish remain the author's.