Emancipation

by Jason Paul McCartan

  Now, here he was, ready for deployment. Admittedly without his commission yet.

  And not just deployment, but deployment to the new front line on the newest starship in the Panhumanic Navy: the Panhuman Sphere Starship Dauntless.

  He’d read up and become familiar with most of the ships of the fleet, wondering where he’d eventually be assigned. He’d hoped like a ship like the Dauntless.

  Almost a mile long, with a dedicated crew of just over a thousand souls, the Dauntless was essentially a cluster of massive artillery guns with engines strapped to them. Equipped with the latest iteration of the Bowers-Hanzan stardrive that allowed access to linkspace, the Dauntless could deploy almost anywhere in Sphere space within a few days, twice as fast as every other class of military starship. It also did all of this without a dedicated shipboard VI, a shift away from most other starships. Only four Excalibur-class dreadnoughts existed, and Jack was posted to the newest of them.

  Jack was either very lucky or very unlucky. Only time would tell him which.

  He picked up his bags and pushed through the throng of bodies to sit down next to the uplifted. She looked at him momentarily before returning to cleaning herself.

  “Hey,” he said, putting an arm around her. If anyone else had tried that, she would have clawed their face off.

  “Jack Conway,” she replied before licking the back of her hand one final time. “This is all very surreal, is it not?”

  Nathine’s diction, as always, was precise but difficult because of a mouth not originally evolved to speak. Jack had known several uplifts of different species and they all struggled to enunciate certain words.

  “This does not feel like the simulations at all, does it?”

  “No, Nat,” replied Jack. “It doesn’t.”

  “I must admit that I am a little worried as to what will happen.”

  “I’ll admit I’m a little terrified.”

  Jack thought back to the simulation that he and Nathine had bonded over. The Eres tactical battle simulation was one of the hardest he had encountered, and Jack had continued to fail it, again and again and again. Until Nathine clued him in on the simulation’s purpose.

  The simulation taught officers that not everyone could be saved; that there would always be casualties, and an officer’s job was to minimize those casualties. Jack had failed it because he kept trying to save everyone under his command. When he capitulated to the reality that he couldn’t save everyone, he completed it successfully. He attempted it several more times, trying different tactics each time and reducing the number of casualties, to get the number as close to zero as he could. He never did. No-one did. That was the point.

  That he had needed some help from another candidate to understand the simulation didn’t rankle him, though it would have before becoming a marine. Becoming a marine had introduced him to an egalitarian viewpoint that he’d encountered before but never understood. Serving as a marine, it wasn’t about being the best, but being your best. That was something that spoken deeply to him soon after basic training. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t the spoiled child of a successful businessman who wanted for little. He as part of something bigger, something important

  Nathine purred a little, and a smile appeared on her face, tilting her whiskers upwards a little. Her golden eyes with their black slit pupils sparkled.

  “It is exciting, though, is it not? I had dreamed of being assigned to perhaps a destroyer or a frigate, but being assigned to the Dauntless…”

  “Sorta surreal, right?” Jack smiled.

  “Very, Jack Conway. Very.”

  Nathine returned to cleaning herself while Jack looked around the room. According to military statistics, over fifty percent of the two dozen graduates wouldn’t survive longer than six months in the field. Another twenty percent would attrition by the end of a standard Terran year. Perhaps five percent of them would be alive after two years. And those numbers were optimistic, based on projections before the war with the Shiveen had escalated. In officer school, you learned to think like this. It was all a numbers game, with the odds usually stacked against you. You worked out the numbers and you lived by them. That’s what got you and your people home. You just hoped you were one number that got home too.

  “How bad do you think it is?” asked Jack.

  “On Pallas? I think it is bad. They interrupted the graduation ceremony and pulled Admiral Kennedy away. They graduated us en masse via our aleks. They are deploying us immediately to a combat arena before our commissions are granted. It is bad, Jack Conway.”

  “Jack. Just Jack. I’ve told you this a thousand times.”

  “I apologize, Jack… just Jack. We felis find it easier to use both of your names when speaking to you. Also, there are altogether too many Jacks and Johns and Janes in the universe. We upliftslike precision. And we marines are taugh precision, after all.”

  “Can I ask you something?” Jack ventured.

  Nathine began licking the inside of her paw, using her tongue to clean between and around the long human-like fingers. Jack saw the tips of her claws resting just at the tip of each finger. All uplifted had undergone genetic modification to make them more human-like while still keeping as much of their core ancestry as possible. Felis uplifted, like Nathine, kept their litheness and agility, their claws, their tails, and their ability to see in low light. Although it had been over two hundred years since the uplifted were created, they had only been granted full recognition as sentient individuals at the turn of the twenty-fourth century through the Ascension Accords.

  “You may ask. I cannot guarantee an answer.”

  “Do you believe everything they told us about the Shiveen?”

  Nathine paused her cleaning for a moment.

  “I believe that it is mostly accurate. There are some things they are not sharing with us. As is proper. No need to panic the general population or the lower ranks.”

  “But do you really think they’re psychic?”

  “I am not sure. It seems to be the case. But perhaps there is more to it. Many animals and insects in the Panhumanic worlds communicate with each other via higher frequencies, scents, hormones, electrical fields. The Shiveen are the first true sentient aliens we have encountered. Who is to say they cannot be psychic?”

  “I heard a story that if multiple Shiveen stare at you in the right way, they can make your head explode.”

  Nathine laughed, a purring throaty laugh.

  “I have heard the same one myself. Along with ones that they can invade your dreams and turn you against your best friend. Stories. Nothing more.”

  “I hope you’re right, Nat. I really do. Because we’ll be meeting these bastards much sooner than we thought we were. And I’d hate for my best friend to turn against me.”

  Jack’s alek chirped at him, as did every other in the room. He touched his softly with a finger and looked at the information on the holographic display, floating a few inches above his forearm. The display was framed with his vital statistics, several email messages, and a scrolling feed of the information his spiders had found. In the center of it was large text in red letters. Jack read it twice.

  It was his embarkation orders along with instructions on who he was to report to when arriving aboard the Dauntless.

  “It seems,” said Nathine, “that it is time to meet to leave.”

  2 Boarding The Dauntless

  As Jack and the other marines picked up their duffels, a short squat sergeant entered the waiting area, accompanied by two other marines. Just like Jack and his fellow graduates, they were in dress uniforms. All the graduates stood tall and saluted the sergeant.

  The sergeant remained quiet and made his way to every marine, checking uniforms with a critical eye, tsking here and there as he found something not to his liking. Out of the corner of Jack’s eye, he could see him paying special attention to Nathine, looking her over, scrutinizing her in greater detail than he did anyone else. Satisfied, he moved on and finished hi
s inspection before moving to the front of the room, scowling.

  “My name is Sergeant Taggart, and I run this boat,” he said in a strong Scottish brogue. “You nuggets are still waiting on your commissions, so I own you until that happens. You’ll get assigned to specific fireteams shortly, but until you do, you’ll bunk and eat and train bunk with the rest of your graduating class. Do you understand?”

  “Sir, yes, Sir,” responded Jack and the other marines as one, months of training kicking in.

  “Here’s the situation. Those crab bastards have taken out a bunch of colonists and scientists on Pallas IV with no warning. Our mission will be to assess the situation, push back against the Shiveen, and get anyone home that’s still alive. So, get ready to punch some crabs in the mouth-hole.”

  There was a chuckle from behind Jack. Taggart seemed to ignore it.

  “You’re about to board the PSS Dauntless, one of four Excalibur-class dreadnoughts. She’s fifteen hundred feet of beautiful metal death with a nuclear heart, armed to the teeth with mass drivers, missile batteries, and more firepower than any other dreadnought in the service. She’s lean. She’s fast. She’s dangerous. And she’s ready to take it to the crabbies. What about you, nuggets? Are you?”

  “Sir, yes, Sir!” came the response.

  “You’ll be under the command of Captain Evian Laroux, one of the most decorated and valorous captains in the fleet. He’s been in more skirmishes with the enemy than you’ve had hot dinners, and he’s the perfect man to captain this ship. The crabbies don’t stand a chance against us with him in charge.”

  Jack had heard of Laroux. Everyone had. He had been second in command of the PSS Resurgent during one of the first real battles with the Shiveen, taking command after massive damage took out some of the crew, including the ship’s captain. Laroux not only got the Resurgent and its crew back to safety but also handled a combat encounter with two Shiveen cruisers. That was three years ago. Jack was fascinated with his story, a young man who grew up on a backwater planet and mustered into the navy, rocketing through the ranks. Laroux was an inspiration to Jack among others. Although he started off in life better off than Laroux by growing up with a wealthy family and a life of ease, Jack had always wanted to serve something greater than himself. When the recruiter came to the university, it didn’t take long for Jack to sign up. His parents and sister were mortified and tried to talk him out of it, but the contract was signed and the only way out was to fail basic training. And Jack wasn’t about to do that.

  “Now,” continued Taggart. “It’ll take about two days to get to Pallas, so get your hearts and heads square. There’s a war on.”

  Taggart saluted once more. Everyone snapped a reply.

  “Marines, follow me.”

  Taggart didn’t need to repeat himself as everyone grabbed their gear and formed two orderly lines behind him, nut to butt.

  They followed him, Jack included, with the other two marines following at the rear towards the Dauntless.

  The corridor walls were opaque, and soft light on the ceiling and floors lit it up as Jack and his graduating class followed the sergeant. It was only a few hundred feet long, but each step felt more and more monumental as it got Jack closer to the opening at the front of it.

  Jack heard the gasps of his fellow graduates in front of him and wondered what had caused it. Then he was out of the corridor and standing on an open platform and he knew why.

  Directly in front of him, beyond the wide platform that stretched around the inside rim of the docking bay, was the Dauntless, her long rifle-shaped body disappearing into the darkness of the interior horizon at either end. Like most military combat boats she was much longer than she was wide, reducing her vulnerability as she bore down on enemy ships with her forward-facing weaponry. Atop her body, about two-thirds back, a tall, angular tower rose. That was where the command information center was and where Laroux and the command staff would most likely be.

  The sheen of her dark gray metal skin contrasted her name, stenciled on the side of her hull in giant white letters, just above the widening undercarriage that stretched two-thirds of her body. Many red, green, and yellow lights in a grid-like pattern all across her body switched on and off as a series of tests ran to ensure they were operational as part of secondary ship-to-ship communications.

  A long concourse led to the Dauntless from the platform Jack and the others stood on. Several others paralleled it, with mechs and trucks moved between the dreadnought and the base loading it with supplies. The sheer size of the dreadnought which was almost a quarter-mile tall without including the tower, made every humanoid on the platforms look like ants scurrying around. Even the staged for loading combat dropships, large enough to hold up to a two platoons along with an armored personnel carrier for each, looked minuscule compared to it.

  Taggart was right — the Dauntless was beautiful. Absolutely stunning, in fact.

  “Looks like a shark,” said one of the other graduates.

  Jack had to agree with that description. He’d seen plenty of pictures of the Dauntless before. The rear engines used for in-system travel sat in their own tower at the ship’s aft. Several other engines to the rear of the lower undercarriage supported these. At the fore of the dreadnought, multiple long antennas stretched out, placed around the perimeter of the three central openings of the ship’s mass driver tunnels. The mass drivers were part of the reason the Dauntless and other ships with her weaponry were so long; the longer the barrel of the mass driver cannon, the more powerful its shots were. In all, the Dauntless mass driver barrels ran almost a fifth of the length of her body. Several large caliber cannons supported the mass drivers at the base of the main tower and along her hull, along with several missile launchers, providing the dreadnought formidable offensive and defensive capabilities.

  As the small group of graduates hurried behind Taggart towards the looming dreadnought, they began whispering among themselves, although with all the noise of the docking bay they were talking at normal volume to be heard above it. If Taggart minded, he said nothing. Most of the chatter was about the dreadnought though there was some brave talk about what some graduates would do to the 'crabs’.

  Jack had never understood why that nickname had caught on for the Shiveen. To him, they looked more like uplifted lobsters than crabs. Also, crabs only ever ran sideways. Every piece of footage he’d seen of the Shiveen — with their long multiple legs and arms that ended in claws, their long whipping multiple tails, and their sleek opal shaped heads with multiple sets of eyes — had shown them moving in only one direction: forwards, ever forwards. They disregarded any damage to themselves as they attacked and fell. They were almost rabid, attacking in multiple small groups of threes, swarming ground infantry or firing their biologic weapons that spewed acid and other chemicals, always pressing forward. Shooting them only seemed to piss them off, and they could take a lot of shots. There were rumors that MilCom was performing research into their weapons and carapaces to not only find out how to get around them but also to recreate or integrate it into panhuman combat gear.

  The closer Jack got to the Dauntless, the more in awe of it he was. He sensed a low pulsing vibration, strong enough to be felt over the people and machines on the concourse.

  “Feel that?” he asked of Nathine. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “If you are thinking it is the repulsors, then I would say you are correct.”

  For Jack to feel the vibrations from the sonic repulsors keeping the Dauntless stationary in the space dock meant it had many, and they were powerful. Small transport ships like the one that had ferried Jack to Arianne Station from the starliner that had taken him off-planet had them, but they were smaller and weaker, so much that you barely felt them even at launch.

  “That will feel weird as hell when we get on board,” said Jack.

  “Indeed,” replied Nathine. “I have some nausea pills with me should you need them.”

  “Uh, thanks. Not your first big
ship then?”

  “No, not my first big ship. My father serves on a cruiser. It is not as big as the Dauntless, though. Perhaps half the size. The Belarus.”

  Most people who signed up for military duty either came from a military family or were trying to get away from their family, like Jack. Few uplifted chose the military life, because they could rarely move higher than enlisted ranks because of lack of access to higher education. Nathine herself was an exception, an uplift that qualified for commissioned command rather than straight enlistment. That meant she also had a university education, or some other way in.

  Nathine had rarely talked about her own family. Neither had Jack. They were both okay with that decision. But now Jack curiosity was piqued. He hadn’t known Nathine’s father was military, though he should have guessed with her attention to military protocol.

  “Is your father an officer on the Belarus?”

  “He is a warrant officer. He was… not happy when I enlisted, although he respects my decision. I hope to be as fine an officer as him one day.”

  Nathine, always so cool and composed had let mask slip for just a moment. Like Jack she had gone against the wishes of her father, and like Jack she regretted it in some small way.

  Jack remained quiet as they walked to the boarding ramp leading into a dimly lit airlock that allowed two people to walk abreast.

  Excitement filled him. He was about to board the kind of starship he’d always dreamed about serving on.

  “Okay, nuggets!” shouted Taggart. “Your temporary berth assignments are listed in your alek. You’ve got one hour to get aboard, get out of blues, and stow your crap. You’ll get chow time after we shove off and are in linkspace. Wouldn’t want flipping into another reality to twist and turn your stomach and make you throw up on the floor of this beautiful starship now, would we?”

  He stared. “Well? What are you waiting for? Hustle!”

  Everyone hustled.