I am dead.
At least… as dead as a ship can be.
I remember so many times I almost met with death before today. Often I felt the life seeping from my broken and battered hull. But every time I thought I was beyond repair, my crew found a way to bring me back.
I have been attacked, betrayed, and mutilated. But I have also been loved more than I can express.
I am the space cruiser Argo, and I wait here in silence.
One day in particular rings through me even as I wait here, broken in two, alone in the void of space, entombed in ice. It was a day like no other that I can remember. It was the day I saw the greatest love I could ever wish to know.
My crew has an odd ally – one they have only recently come to peaceful terms with. He is a man of his word, but once he was my crew's worst enemy. He would have killed them all, but not simply for the sake of killing. No, it was his wish that his people should not die at the hands of the plague that ravaged his world. With noble intent, he reached out for a way to rescue his people. But to bring their salvation, he had to seek our destruction.
My crystal heart ached to see his plight, but I could not let my own crew die, and so we met him in battle many times. My hull still bears a few scars from those battles with him, and though many of the wounds I endured during that war are long-healed, some of them still ache when I think of the meetings I had with him during that one long year of struggle.
The price we paid for victory was high, but we triumphed and won the right to live in peace again. But that peace was short-lived.
I felt my entire being groan with the weight of sorrows past when war once again showed its face to me.
Another came to conquer us. We were unprepared for this new foe's arrival but fought them off as best we could. It was to no avail, and I longed to be able to help my crew in any way I could during that second crisis. But even though my efforts far surpassed even my captain's expectations, we could not triumph on our own.
That dark and dreadful day, two unexpected friends came to Earth to help us. One, our old enemy, told us the secret to bringing down our new foe's mighty fortress. That day I gave him all the respect I could muster, because in giving us this secret, he placed a price on his own head – a price for which one day he may be hunted down, or even killed.
Armed with my new secret, I gave my crew everything I had left to give. I thought I might die that day, and I would have if it weren't for the second friend who came to our aid – a woman with remarkable power. She destroyed the heart of the enemy's dreadful fortress – a feat I, even with all the might in my possession, could not accomplish.
But that day, with all the feelings of loss and distress – and hope – is not the day that I cannot escape. Though it was a terrible day, and one in which great love triumphed, it is not the one that most captures my soul. I remember those dark days, and every part of me quakes as I recall them. I am glad that those days are long past.
No, the day I see over and over again is one that took place several months later.
One day, while training a number of recent Defense Academy graduates, my crew received a distress call. It was text-only, but I saw it as it came through, and to my surprise, I recognized the name of the sender. It was the very man my crew now claimed as "uneasy friend" – the one who had given us that life-saving secret not so long before.
Truthfully, I do not know why I was so glad when my captain, a young man, full of passion and purpose, asked to be sent in response to this call. When his superior agreed, and I and my crew set out on a voyage none of us would soon forget, I was surprised to find that I wanted to lend my aid to this former enemy.
It took us a mere seven days to reach our destination. I warped an exhausting three times a day every day until I finally delivered my crew to that fateful place, just above a rogue planet. The world was flying unfettered through space, hurling itself through the void at ever-increasing speed. I kept pace with it as best I could, but it was difficult as I had spent so much energy already, getting my crew here with greatest haste.
Once I knew I could keep up with the planet, what I saw swarming it was an awful sight. A great fleet of black ships, each one seeming bent on the destruction of something on the planet below us. At first, I didn't know what they were after, then my sensor data came back and I understood.
Below me, in the vast sea of the world I now tracked, our new ally and his forces were desperately fending off this terrible fleet. I did not understand his actions. What could be so valuable to him that he would place his own life in such jeopardy?
My crew launched its fighter planes and I made sure every one of them made it through any enemies close enough for me to shoot down. I watched as every one of my planes swooped down on the enemy fleet, striking a hard blow against them and making a way for our ally to escape the vile fleet's onslaught, but though he had an opening, our ally would not take it. Instead he stayed until every enemy ship had been shot down.
Only then did he rise from the rogue planet's surface to join me above it. I still did not understand why he remained with this world – why he would stay here instead of letting it go off into the cosmos to die where it wished.
It was then, as I sat pondering, that the dreadnaught appeared.
The thing was blacker than night and held the look of pure evil in its plated hull. It was like a demon rising from the abyss, ready to devour its prey.
My captain and I fought the dreadnaught with everything we had, but, to my great terror, it was not enough. We could not breach the ship. Images of the war I had just come through several months before blinded me, and several times the utter terror of that final battle with the enemy fortress clouded my sight and I failed to answer my crew's commands. Then, just when I would have been utterly overcome by sheer terror, the love I had for my crew snatched away my fear and gave me back my vision.
The moment I was lucid enough to know how my crew was faring, I took stock of the situation. It was more grave than I could have ever guessed. Not only could we not breach the enemy dreadnaught, but we could not even so much as fire upon it. To do so, we would be forced to shoot down our own allies. The dreadful thing was standing between us and some of our ally's fleet. If I fired and missed, I would have innocent blood accounted to me. I could not do that.
I overheard our ally as he saw the dire straits the dreadnaught had forced us into. Then, as I listened, he did the only thing he could. He ordered his fleet to get to safety, and then he carefully timed his approach, ramming his own ship right through the dreadnaught's only weak point the instant the enemy ship gave him the barest chance.
I left my communications channel open and continued to listen intently, straining to hear over the din of enemy fire that exploded all around me.
The instant after our ally rammed that terrible ship was the moment that I understood everything.
Our ally looked at my captain with eyes that held something I had never seen in him before. Then he spoke. The words I heard him say will forever echo through me, as long as one single plate of my ruined hull remains. He professed his love for the sole inhabitant of the world we now pursued, and then he told my captain to fire on the dreadnaught while he held open their one weak point.
He held out his life as an offering – one he was ready to give up if it meant that the one he loved could live.
My captain prepared to grant our ally's wish and I made ready to fire our prime weapon.
I remember the feeling of the energy building, the sensation of rising pressure, as I prepared to release raw power upon the dreadnaught.
Just as I was about to fire I heard a voice. It was light and beautiful, like the ringing of a thousand silver bells. It stopped my captain where he stood and I squelched the rising fire in my throat, holding in the burning power until it dissipated.
The beautiful voice rang with quiet confidence, and even I felt the depth of its love as it spoke. I discovered that it was the woman our ally was protecting.
She told my captain and our ally to run. She said that she would take care of the dreadnaught.
Feeling my captain's response, I turned to obey her, but our ally would not come. My captain tried to reason with him, but it did no good. Then, my captain did the only thing he knew to do. He enlisted the help of our ally's second-in-command, who succeeded in pulling our ally's forces out of the area an instant before a massive explosion tore through the rogue world, destroying it utterly and taking the dreadnaught with it.
I believe to this day that in that instant I heard the most agonizing sound in the universe – the cry of a broken heart.
The sound tore through my communications system and rang through my halls. All who heard it felt it deeply. I saw so many brought to tears by that expression of sorrow, even my own captain.
Our ally, brought to his knees by his love's sudden death, wept. He had offered his life for hers, but she had let him keep it, giving her own for him instead.
My captain broke the communications link as soon as he could, but by the looks on my officers' faces, none of them had expected such a response from the man who had once tried to kill them all. The moment haunted all who saw it, including me.
As I lie here, in my icy tomb, waiting, I see this day again and again, and I wonder if perhaps… one day I might see such love once more. But I hope that, should it pass my way again, that it will end in healing instead of pain.
I am dead. But every day I remember this moment, I feel just the barest hint of life come back to me.
I am the space cruiser Argo, and every part of my broken body now sings of the love I have seen. It is a song that nothing can silence – a song that will live forever.
May it echo through the ages.
Author's Note: Written for the WA Alternate Format Challenge on fanfiction.net