Emancipation
Book One Of The World Eaters Series
Jason Paul McCartan
Copyright © 2019 by Jason Paul McCartan.
All rights reserved.
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Any resemblance to characters living or dead is purely coincidental.
For Mum and Dad.
You started me on the road.
I owe you everything.
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Contents
Prologue
1. Graduation
2. Boarding The Dauntless
3. Meeting The Fireteam
4. Arrival At Pallas
5. Space Combat
6. Deployment to Pallas IV
7. Caroline
8. Moving Out
9. Meeting The Scientists
10. Travel to the Ruins
11. The Ruins
12. Reliquary
13. The Shiveen Arrive
14. The Well Room
15. The Ritual
16. The Dauntless Returns
17. A Distraction
18. The Chase
19. A New Plan
20. An Understanding
21. Homeward Bound
22. Jack's Commission
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Also by Jason Paul McCartan
Prologue
Miller pushed on the navigation stalk, driving the caterpillar-wheeled mining rover forward, heading towards the destination coordinates he was given back at Control base.
He drew another slurp from the integrated long straw of the protein-enhanced fluid bag that was part of the standard ration kit for miners. He’d tried every flavor of them now, and the orange was by far his favorite — did a real planet-grown orange taste this good? One day he hoped he’d have the money to pay for such a luxury and find out.
The odometer in the primary smartglass screen continued incrementing its range count as the map continually displayed the local terrain in isometric format.
Music streamed through Miller’s alek, filling the small cabin with a cacophony of noise. It was one of the cheaper budget versions that blue-collar workers like him could afford, and he’d bought it the last time he’d been in the city. The wrist-bound personal computing device had become Miller’s saving grace over the past few weeks; it’s ability to store and stream media across the galactic mesh network had helped keep him sane while he performed his solitary daily ritual of taking soil and rock samples from the lifeless rock called Pallas IV and driving them back to the temporary bubble outpost that he and the other crews worked from.
Within another few months, the planet would have a basic atmosphere thanks to the giant atmosphere engine at New Macedon. As long as it didn't blow up, like the one at Regala II decades ago. Mere months after that and Miller and everyone could walk on the surface of the planet without an environment suit, though he had no idea why he’d want to do that. Until they deployed the biome engines, the entire planet would still be a giant rock, with its primary inhabitants being trillions of single-celled animals and about a thousand panhumans.
Until then, people like Miller still had to find the most viable mining areas on the planet and mark them for future excavation, supported by advanced computer topography mapping by the company’s local VI representative. It was scary how accurate VIs were at finding good sites. Then again, they were just advanced computer programs.
Miller had met the VI once at a company event, just after he’d arrived on Pallas IV. It had been using a holographic interface so it could interact with all the guests at the event. Even though it was just a series of ones and zeroes made to look like a real person, it was still damned good looking. That’s how you could tell a VI was in the room, though; it didn’t have any scars or blemishes on its skin. Beautiful, but too beautiful. Uncanny valley stuff.
After an hour of trundling in the rover and a switch of music playlists, Miller arrived at the destination, or as close as he could get with the rover. He would have to go on foot the rest of the way to reach the final coordinates. Eventually the incline in his way would end up disappearing if this area proved viable for mining. He quickly checked the weather readings. There wasn’t due to be another ion storm in the region in the next day or so. Terraforming a planet often had side effects. In Pallas IV’s case, as the atmosphere changed, something had triggered radioactive storms that ebbed and flowed over the planet along its new weather system. Too much time in these storms was deadly, and more than one miner had lost their lives to them. Miller didn’t intend to join them.
He powered down the rover, but left the low power secondary lights on. That was a little wasteful and against company policy, but he’d be back in the rover within a few hours and they recharged as the rover moved. He took his alek off and placed it on the conduction charger on the vehicle’s dashboard. It’d fit under his suit, but he’d not be able to activate or use it, so best to leave it here.
Miller considered opening another protein drink before suiting up, but the company only supplied two per rover run, and he wanted to keep the other for the drive back. It’d help wash the taste of his own recycled urine from his mouth. Even though the purifier cleansed it, Miller always felt as though the water was never pure enough.
It took him twenty minutes to suit up in his mining suit, mostly because of the bulk of it and running through its system checks. A miner who put on his suit too fast was courting disaster, so even though the company bitched about miners wasting time getting them on and off, they also allowed enough time for them to do so safely. Well, these days they did, at least. He pulled the half fishbowl helmet on and locked it into place, conscious of the lack of circulating air. A quick press of a button on the chest controls and the air from the mix tanks began circulating, the metallic smell of the lines clearing after about thirty seconds. He picked up the bulky mobile arm computer and strapped it to his left forearm. It powered up, showing telemetry from the mining suit, a map of the local area, and the final target coordinates. He activated the forward facing headlamps and the camera that would record his brief expedition. The company liked to record everything. Data was money, as they often said.
Now fully suited up, Miller activated the rover rear door release, which activated with a popping hiss as the internal atmosphere of the rover vented into the weaker atmosphere of the planet. He pushed the door open, helped by its hydraulics and stepped down and out from the rover. Underneath him, the dark red dust that covered the planet’s surface clung to his boots as he did. The damn dust got everywhere. That’d change soon enough.
He closed the rover entry door, sealed it, then walked around to the front of the rover.
Miller tapped the chest controls again, activating the voice channel that would rou
te through the rover back to the outpost base. “Control, this is Miller. Do you copy?”
“Copy, Miller. This is Control.”
“I’ve exited the rover and am heading towards the final destination now. I’ll keep this channel open as I go. Over.”
Even though the company heavily used drones, they still had to send out a panhuman to do the actual site verification. The corporations were huge and powerful, but they still had to make concessions to the unions. Your union dues at work, though Miller as he started up the escarpment.
“Rough going here,” he said to whoever was listening back at the base. “Lots of loose rock. Looks newly unsettled.”
He paused and looked at the long slope leading up, identifying a series of zigzagging lines in the escarpment. Was that a path?
“Found a path up. Taking it.”
Miller shuffled sideways, bringing one leg towards the other before moving that, making sure he had plenty of traction before moving on. He reached the path which was wide enough for two people to walk up side by side.
“I’ll be damned.”
This was no naturally occurring path. Someone had made this, either by design or by years of walking the same ground over and over again. Panhumans had only been on the planet for over six months, so how could that be? Perhaps it was some long-dead indigenous creature that had done it, stomping its way to a feeding ground. The planet here had been fertile once, according to the mining reports, but that had been many tens of thousands of years ago.
Miller followed the path up the escarpment which followed an easy slope that didn’t make him breathless. He crested it.
About thirty meters ahead, there was a large opening in the ground, about three times his size. He moved towards it, carefully checking each footstep to make sure that the ground underneath didn’t give way. When he reached the hole, he peered down into it.
“Control, there’s an entrance here in the ground. Can you see this?”
There were steps inside the entrance, leading down.
What the hell?
The steps were large and wide and long, and the center of each was worn down as if from years of use. Miller counted at least fifty steps leading down deeper into the ground.
“Roger, Miller. We’re seeing it. Can you proceed?”
Miller considered making some excuse, but the steps intrigued him. Where did they lead, and what did they lead to?
“Roger that,” he replied. “Proceeding.”
The top few steps were covered by the planet’s persistent red dust, but there was little of it as the steps descended. The hole was exposed recently. That excited Miller, knowing that he’d be the first to go down into it in, well, how long? Who knew?
“Entrance looks recent.”
He took the steps down, one by one, light from his headlamp washing over the steps and walls as he did. Everything looked polished and somewhat glassy. The light from his headlamp reflected and refracted at the same time.
“Steps aren’t natural. Neither are the walls.”
What had made these steps? It had to be something with intelligence. And it couldn’t have been panhuman, as panhumanity had only been in this system for the past ten years. Goosebumps raised on his skin under his mining suit. Did he really want to continue going down?
You can do it, Miller. This is the first really exciting thing you’ve experienced in years.
Miller kept moving.
The steps continued onwards until they merged into a tunnel, just as tall and wide as the one for the steps.
“Control, got a tunnel here at the end of the steps.”
Miller continued on, making his way along the tunnel. Within a few minutes, he saw he was coming up on an exit into a room.
He reached the tunnel exit and peered in.
“Control,” said Miller, the light from his headlamp scattering along the tunnel exit and into the adjoining room. “Do you see what I’m seeing?”
1 Graduation
“As you can see in this footage, captured from surveillance satellites over Pallas IV, the Shiveen arrived in force. New Macedon, the Pallas atmosphere engine, and the other research colonies on the planet had absolutely no defense against the alien fleet. Within an hour, all known panhuman life on the planet was eliminated. MilCom has announced they are sending a response group immediately, which includes one of the newest Excalibur-class dreadnoughts. The Shiveen’s actions against panhuman civilians — humans, uplifts, synthetics, and virtual intelligences all — escalate the now five-year hostilities into open war. The Panhumanic Sphere will respond with all the fire and fury it can muster. The Shiveen have made a grave mistake with their actions.”
Jack touched a finger to the alek artificial intelligence device he wore on his wrist, deactivating the feed he had been watching almost non-stop since it had first played just after the shortened Officer Candidate School graduation ceremony. The interactive hologram that bobbed in his field of view atop the alek — alien warships raining their strange technobiologic warfare on Panhumanic assets — was forever seared into his memory.
He kept replaying the vidcast over and over and over, not understanding exactly why he did.
Perhaps to remind himself that the Shiveen had no redemption due them.
They were alien, and they were the enemy.
They broke the Terran Conventions by openly attacking civilians. It didn’t matter that they didn’t know them.
No, not just attacking.
Obliterating.
Obliterating them off the face of the planet they were trying to return life to.
The Shiveen weren’t just aliens.
They were monsters.
Monsters that needed hunted down and culled, starting with those that had attacked Pallas IV.
The previous evening’s graduation ceremony was a blur of half-remembered moments for Jack. He briefly remembered standing next to the other future officers he’d spent the better part of six months training with, but even that was hazy.
He remembered Admiral Kennedy standing on the podium addressing them, her uniform and hair immaculate, her composure stoic and solemn as she told them that everyone that graduated that day had just taken on a great mantle, protecting all life under Panhumanic Sphere dominion in times of peace, and in times of war.
An aide interrupting her.
Kennedy leaving.
The Admiral turning and addressing the graduating class.
Her last words to Jack and every other freshly minted officer had been an apology: “I apologize, but your graduation ceremony needs to be put on hold. You’re being called into service immediately. Do your duty and do it well. You are about to be tested.”
And with that, the graduation ceremony devolved into chaos as everyone’s aleks, deactivated and silenced throughout the ceremony, came to life with chirps and flashes of light. Jack’s own alek had awoken throwing up a message directly from MilCom: his official commission was being delayed temporarily and he was being assigned to the PSS Dauntless as a Private First Class. He was to make his way to Ariane Station’s main docking bay. Additional instructions would follow.
Jack barely remembered the journey to the docking bay waiting area. Like everyone else he scrambled to gather news on what happened at Pallas IV on his alek, sifting through multiple news feeds as his spider programs crawled yottabytes of information across billions of information sources on PanNet. One newfound benefit of graduating — apart from the upgrade military-grade alek with holographic and cybernetic functionality — was that he now had access to previously restricted channels offered and controlled by MilCom itself. Those channels held nothing more than what civilian sources supplied. MilCom surely had more information on the attack than it was sharing, but Jack didn’t rank high enough to get access to that.
Yet.
He looked around the departure area. At least two dozen of his fellow graduates dressed in Marine blues, their hats tucked under their arms, all talked excitedly amongst themselve
s. Some were sitting, some standing. Many of them laughed and joked with each other.
Had they even watched the same vidcasts he had? How could they be so jovial?
Jack knew most of them fairly well, considering that OCS mandated spending as much time as a group, partly as a bonding experience, but also to allow them to develop respect for each other both on and off the battlefield. They trained together in the combat simulators, each of them playing the part of marine, officer, and Shiveen, so they could understand how best to defeat the enemy. They ate together, they trained together, they had liberty together.
He had become close to Nathine Boston, an uplift felis. She was hard to miss in any room, even this one right now. The big hairy grey and white cat, reminiscent of a breed long ago known as Maine Coons, sat by herself on a bench, her two allowed duffels at her feet and her alek atop them, her tail wrapped around her waist as she licked one hand, using it to slick back the fur on the opposing forearm where she wore her alek.
Jack had watched her do this several times before.
She was nervous. Perhaps even scared a little.
To be anything else was wrong.
Jack himself was wobbling on that fine line between excitement and terror. This was everything he’d worked for over the past year. Six months of basic training, three months of OCS, then a final three months of intense simulation training here on Ariane Station to earn his commission.
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