Starship Freedom

by Daniel Arenson

  Skel'rah looked at her son. He was large for a male, but he was still only half her size. Not many males were born into the hunter class. Most hatched as orbweavers, useful for building, cleaning, and maintaining the empire, but not for killing. A handful hatched as gazers, blessed with the holy sight. That was a prize greater even than hunters but incredibly rare.

  But young Hel'rah here—his egg had grown in a great host. They had captured the mighty, furry female on a distant icy world, and her womb had given forth many hunters. It was true what they said. Kalrosh hashel. Strong host, strong egg.

  On Earth, Skel'rah hoped to find some strong hosts. Her last clutch had contained a few hunters, though most of them were smaller, weaker males. On Earth she hoped for a strong brood of females, many of them huntresses, maybe even a gazer. No gazer had hatched in many years, not in all her conquests. If she could hatch a gazer on Earth, that was great eresh! Maybe even eresh enough to climb the web.

  Maybe even someday to rule the web's center.

  But she was getting ahead of herself.

  Focus on your task, she told herself. Focus on this hunt. Do not let your dreams of glory distract you.

  She returned to the human corpse. What was left at least. The spine. A few ribs. Not much flesh remained on the bones. She would consume the last few bites, and it would give her strength for the battle.

  She ripped off a rib, was about to crunch it, when she sensed something.

  She spun her head toward the porthole. The skulls on her back, scores of trophies, clattered.

  There it was.

  A flash of radiation.

  Just a streak of photons riding a radio wave crest.

  It should not be there.

  Human eyes would not see it. Orbweavers would not either. Even most hunters would be blind to such subtle electromagnetic disturbance. But Skel'rah was the daughter of a gazer, and maybe she had inherited some of the gift.

  She scuttled toward the porthole, claws clattering across the deck. Other rahs—hunters and orbweavers alike—scurried aside. Skel'rah swiveled four of her eyes, gazing out into space.

  There it was, flashing ahead.

  She snarled, spun her other four eyes toward her son.

  "Hel'rah!" she roared. "Did you allow the human space station to send a signal?"

  The young rah was sniffing at the human remains. His saliva splattered the spine. He raised one eye toward her, keeping the rest on the bones.

  "This one tried to send something." With a clawed leg, he rustled the human bones. "I cut him off before he could say much."

  Skel'rah leaped toward him, grabbed the impudent hunter, and shook him. Several skulls rolled off his back.

  "Even a few suspicious words could alert the humans. You fool." She bared her fangs at her spawn.

  Hel'rah pulled himself free. Head raised high, he collected the fallen skulls, reattached them to the spikes on his back. "Please, Mother, the hunger has gone to your head. These soft creatures pose no threat to the mighty rahs." He kicked some bones aside. "Besides, the message is only traveling at the speed of light. So slow!" He laughed. "Our fleet will reach Earth before the warning does."

  "You stinking pool of maggot juice! Do you forget that we await the female phalanxes?"

  Hel'rah snorted. "Please, Mother. We have warclaws full of hungry males. We'll do the job. Let us fly to Earth now, and—"

  "We will await the huntresses!" Skel'rah swung her leg. She shattered one of the skulls on Hel'rah's back. Horns, fangs, and a long white beak clattered against the deck.

  Hel'rah yowled. "That was the skull of an Eldurian bonebiter bird! I bested the beast in battle. Bonebiter skulls are rare."

  "You led an entire phalanx of hunters to slay one bird," Skel'rah said. "There is no eresh in that. And you've gained no eresh since. This is your chance, young hunter. Prove yourself in this war, and you'll climb the web. Shame yourself, and I will feed your innards to the slitherpups!"

  Hel'rah licked his lips, eying the dead human. "Can I finish your meal?"

  Skel'rah hissed and pounced toward him.

  She grabbed his abdomen with her eight legs. With her mighty jaws, she grabbed one of his legs—and bit it off.

  Hel'rah screamed. Black blood spurted, spraying the deck.

  Skel'rah spat the severed leg down. It clanged, still oozing blood.

  "That is punishment," she said. "You almost spoiled our element of surprise. Now I must go clean up your mess." She looked at the blood on the deck. "You can clean up this mess."

  Her son twitched on the floor, screaming in agony.

  Disgusted, Skel'rah spun away.

  She clattered across the deck. Her spawn had nearly ruined everything. She would have to mend the web he tore.

  This mission must succeed. Earth must fall. I must ascend the web!

  * * * * *

  From the outside, the Hunger looked nothing like a usual starship. She looked like a bundle of claws. Thousands and thousands of claws sprouted from her hull, forged of steel, longer than any starship in the human fleet. All those claws pointed in the same direction. To Earth.

  Thousands of smaller clawships flew farther back. Thousands more would soon join them, their hulls gravid with huntresses. The Hunger was a motherclaw, the largest class of starship in the rah fleet. She led the charge.

  They were almost there. They dipped into the heliosphere, leaving the interstellar medium behind. The solar wind bathed them, glowing over their hulls, dancing an aurora dance of war.

  The Hunger bloomed open. Her thousands of claws parted like petals in a steel flower, exposing a churning red maw.

  From inside this cavity, this portal to hell, emerged a single shuttle. A mere sphere of spiked iron. Not much larger than Skel'rah herself.

  She flew inside. She shot into the distance, chasing the signal from the Rubicon.

  With a long claw tipped with a golden thimble, she nudged a strand of gossamer.

  A dark portal appeared before her, and her shuttle leaped into the void.

  For an instant that lasted an eternity, for an era faster than the beat of a heart, she flew in the shadowrealm. A place where time had no meaning. Where distance knew no bounds. A place of dark lights and swirling, colorful black holes, a place where strange whales roamed among nebulae of unknown particles, singing their astral song. It was a realm below the great web of reality. A place upside down and inside out.

  That eternal instant ended, and her shuttle popped back into reality.

  She had traveled a great vastness. She now flew past the innermost planets of this system. The rest of her fleet was far behind. So was the Rubicon signal.

  To those watching from the motherclaw, Skel'rah seemed to have hopped forward in an instant. But to her, time seemed stretched, sagging like a web after too much wind. Her memories from only moments ago seemed dusty, barely more than dreams. She had never liked traveling the shadowrealm.

  And there it came. The Rubicon signal, riding an electromagnetic wave. A human voice, crying out.

  "Aliens are real, Beverly. Monsters are real. A fleet. An enemy fleet, heading to Earth. Tell the army! Tell them to get ready. I love you. I love—"

  Skel'rah held her claws out wide, pulling sticky strands. Inside her shuttle, pulleys spun, tugging controls. Steel spinnerets emerged from the exterior hull, spreading blackness, weaving a web. She spun strands of dark matter and captured the Rubicon's photons like a spiderweb catching beads of dew.

  She pulled the harvested photons into her shuttle, little beads of light trapped in her dark orbs. In the shadows of her shell, she consumed them. She devoured the energy like drops of honeydew. She ate the words of the human whose flesh still digested in her belly. With every photon she drank, she heard him.

  "Aliens are real."

  "I love you."

  "An enemy fleet."

  She slurped them all up. When Skel'rah flew back toward her shuttle, only darkness remained in space. His words were inside her. Nobod
y would ever hear.

  The time is near, she thought as she reentered the motherclaw. The fleet gathers. The strands unspool. The Great Weaving is about to begin. And when this web is complete, I will rule from its center!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Starship Freedom

  High Earth Orbit

  08:32 Christmas 2199

  The words echoed in King's mind.

  Call your son.

  He stood in his cabin, alone. Lieutenant Commander Jordan had returned to his own quarters, giving King privacy for the call.

  It's Christmas, Jim. Call your son.

  King wouldn't even have to lift a phone. Ten years ago, the Alliance had upgraded all soldiers with MindLink connections. The device was implanted inside King's skull, a piece of electronics the size of a stamp. He had been living with it for a decade, but it still gave King the creeps.

  Back in the war, we didn't need to be more than human, he thought. Today we're all goddamn cyborgs.

  It was a military requirement. A soldier had his uniform, his dog tags, and his MindLink. With these neural implants, they could talk telepathically, connect to the military intranet, and yes—even make phone calls. To talk to his son, King would just have to think about it.

  "I'll think about it used to be an excuse to get out of doing stuff," he muttered to himself, then chuckled.

  With a thought, he pulled up MindPlay, the implant's operating system. Luminous icons materialized before him, hovering in the cabin. They represented different applications. An image gallery. A calculator. A telemetry console. A connection to Wikipedia Galactica. And yes, the phone app.

  The icons weren't actually there. Nobody else would see them. They were all in King's mind. Augmented reality. Hallucinations created by his implant.

  Creepy.

  He hated the damn thing. The instant he landed back on Earth, before he even took off his boots, he was getting the implant removed. Goodbye getting the news downloaded into his brain every morning. Hello rustling newspapers over a steaming cup of coffee. He couldn't wait.

  With a thought, he opened the phone app. He hallucinated the application hovering in the cabin, translucent. He reached toward the icon of his son, prepared to call.

  He hesitated.

  The icon displayed a photo of his son.

  Bastian King was a big, muscular guy in his thirties, covered in tattoos. He sported a mohawk and chinstrap beard. Damn silly hairstyle, if you asked King. The kid looked like a goddamn punk.

  He hates my guts, King thought. If I call him, he'll hang up. And why shouldn't he? After what I did …

  Pain gripped him. King rubbed his neck.

  Ah, to hell with it.

  He shut off his MindPlay. The hallucinatory interface vanished.

  It was too early for this. Maybe he'd call at lunch. Once he got another drink or two in him. And he'd call with a real phone, goddammit. To hell with this hallucination crap.

  He left his cabin.

  He needed to walk off his nerves. It was his last day as commander of the starship Freedom. He needed to roam her halls one last time. To say goodbye.

  * * * * *

  He walked down the corridors of the starship Freedom.

  He normally spent his time in his cabin or on the bridge. He rarely walked like this through the prow's hallways. Some commanders prowled their ships, visiting department after department, speaking to soldiers, asking questions, connecting with their staff. Not King. He had never liked that aspect of the job. He respected his crew. He loved some of them. But he did not need to mingle among them—and certainly not micromanage them.

  But today he walked the ship. Today he wanted to roam his beloved Freedom. This starship had been his home for most of his life. This was the final tour.

  The corridors were utilitarian. The deck was diamond-plated steel, not carpeted like on some newer ships. Grates exposed views of crawlways and shafts. Exposed pipes and cables ran across the bulkheads, ladders led to service mezzanines, and motors hummed underfoot. The fluorescent lights were harsh and white, but with so much equipment everywhere, even they struggled to scatter the shadows. The place felt like a factory, and that's how King liked it. This was a warship—built for efficiency, not comfort.

  That it now hosted more tourists than soldiers was beside the point.

  Maybe his attitude was a little hypocritical. King's own cabin had a wooden floor, a crackling fireplace, and bookshelves across the bulkheads. But every man needed a retreat. The soldiers had their bars and lounges. He had his study.

  As King walked, crew members bustled back and forth on their duties. But they all stopped when they saw him, stood at attention, and saluted. Yes, this was a museum ship now, and civilian companies owned half the decks, running the casinos, spas, magic shows, and other nonsense that had infiltrated the Freedom. But King still wore the Alliance uniform, dammit, and so did his crew. He insisted that they act like proper soldiers.

  They turned my ship into a goddamn circus, he thought. But they won't turn me or my crew into dancing monkeys.

  As he roamed the Freedom, he grieved at what she had become. He walked by the prow armory. But it wasn't an armory anymore. It was a gift shop now. Instead of guns, the shelves held plush toys, model starships, and even action figures of him, James "Bulldog" King, hero of the war.

  It was only eight thirty in the morning, but many tourists already filled the starship. They stood in the gift shop, browsing the overpriced knickknacks. As King walked by, a child pointed.

  "Look, Mom, look! It's him! The action-figure man!"

  Other tourists looked at him. A few pointed. Some snapped photos. One old man limped forward, hand held out. He wore a baseball cap purchased from this very gift shop. The words FREEDOM FOREVER were embroidered on it. The price tag still hung from the corner.

  "Gee, sir, it sure is an honor to meet you," said the old man. "I'm a big World War III buff. Didn't fight myself, unfortunately. Got this gammy leg since I was a kid. But I read every book about your battles, and it was glorious! I—"

  "There's nothing glorious about war," King rasped, pausing in the hallway. "We did our duty. We fought for our country. And we still stand on guard."

  The old man looked around, confused. "Um, in a museum, sir?"

  King's upper lip twitched.

  The Freedom is more than a museum! he wanted to shout. She's still a warship, goddammit. To me she is.

  But he said nothing. The Freedom had been decommissioned thirty-three years ago. Just two years after winning the war. Since then, yes, that's all she had been. A tourist attraction. She had been a museum for longer than she'd been a warship.

  "The honor of my life was to fly in this ship to battle," King said to the tourists. "The tragedy of my life has been to see her shamed. Merry Christmas."

  He left them there at the gift shop. He heard their cameras snapping photos as he marched away.

  * * * * *

  "Sir! Sir! Commander King!"

  King paused and turned his head. Mimori, the ship's loyal android, was running down the corridor toward him.

  "What is it, Mimori?"

  He frowned. Mimori running? That was new. She seemed downright flustered, which was damn near impossible for a machine.

  The crew all knew that King hated using his MindLink. He refused to let them contact him through his brain implant. The younger spacers loved their MindLinks, and they often spoke telepathically. Not King. He detested the damn thing.

  Unless it's World War IV breaking out, he would tell his crew, you come to me in person, and you talk to me with your mouth. Like God intended.

  Mimori was running. That meant this was urgent. But at least it wasn't World War IV.

  The android reached him and paused. Unlike a human, she did not pant, did not sweat. She straightened and saluted.

  "Sir! I have news. High priority, highly classified." She glanced around at the tourists walking back and forth. "Should I deliver it via MindLink?"


  "No, dammit. Come here." He took her aside to a shadowy corner. "What is it?"

  Mimori looked completely human. She was so lifelike, down to the pores of her skin and the mannerisms in her voice, that she could pass any Turing test. That is, aside from not needing to catch her breath after a sprint.

  While most of the Freedom was built in America, a Japanese contractor had built the android. On the surface, Mimori looked like a typical Japanese girl. She was short, slender, and sported a black bob cut. Her smile was cherry blossoms blooming after a long, cold winter. Whenever he saw her, King felt a little calmer.

  She wore a field uniform: smart trousers, a blazer, and a cap, all sewn of navy-blue cotton and jangling with brass buckles and buttons. But Mimori was not a true soldier. She had no official rank, and she wore no insignia. She was a physical interface to the starship's central computer. In a sense, she was the starship Freedom.

  This android was just an avatar. The computer inside her skull was limited, a digital brain stem. The true mind was inside the starship's servers. When King spoke to Mimori, he wasn't just talking to an android. He was talking to the ship herself.

  To King, Mimori was a goddess of freedom. A personification of the starship he loved. She was the most important woman in his life.

  I'm going to miss you, my dear girl, he thought.

  That was another reason he liked keeping his MindLink off. He didn't want to share every thought. The last thing he needed was the crew laughing about how he loved an android.

  "Sir, one of my processors has been monitoring the Rubicon," Mimori said.

  King frowned. "The space station? The one on the border of the solar system?"

  Mimori nodded. "Yes, sir. It's a light-day away, so I only get delayed information. But I like to keep a camera on the Rubicon. The space station is so isolated out there. Its central computer has been going a bit mad, I fear. We computers don't like isolation any more than humans do. These past few years, I've been trying to keep the Rubicon company. I've been sending him messages, and he answers. There's a full day lag due to the distance, but what can you do? We've been playing a game of chess, actually. A move a day. That's especially slow for computers—we think much faster than you humans—but it keeps the Rubicon happy, so—"