Emancipation

by Jason Paul McCartan

“Not a problem,” she said, her fingers already moving across her alek and reprogramming the drones.

  “We have a map we started already, when we began exploring this area,” Caroline said. “Do you want that?”

  “That will help,” replied Jack. “But I still want to map it as we go. Bandura, make sure to set up some software agents to mark and track hostiles and dangers discovered.”

  “Worried about something other than Shiveen being down there, Boss?”

  “Private,” said Caroline. “There’s no other living thing down in the there apart from the other two members of my team, and from some lower-level lifeforms like bacteria and archaea we probably brought with us. This whole planet is more or less dead, with only single-celled life being found in abundance. It’s one reason it was chosen for terraforming.”

  One thing the Panhumanic Sphere prided itself on was protecting life, so much that it was in the Constitution. Terraforming was only allowed on planets shown to have minimal biological life. The giant atmosphere engines that drove the terraforming process first purged the world of any other life through a combination of targeted irradiation and other processes that Jack didn’t understand. What he knew is that within two years of an atmosphere engine starting up on a planet there was usually enough of a thin atmosphere to allow mining or frontier colonization.

  “That may be the case, Doc, and it may not be,” said Jack. “I’d rather be careful than dead, so we’re going by the book here.”

  “Ready, Boss,” said Bandura. Four drones hovered around her, swaying gently in the air. “The central program will build up the map and then keep it updated in our AHUDs and aleks.”

  “Good job, Bandura. Send them in.”

  With a flick of her fingers across her alek, Bandura activated the drones’ shared reconnaissance program, and they zipped by Anderson, heading through the opening into the mountainside. Almost immediately, they started sending data back to Bandura’s alek, which then shared it.

  “I’ve also got night vision and infrared on deck in case we need it. There’s some minimal interference from the weather here, but as the drones go in deeper, it should disappear.”

  “You won’t need those,” said Caroline.

  Jack watched the map develop as the drones did their work, grabbing data as they zipped down the tunnel.

  “Looks like a single tunnel?” he said to Caroline.

  “Yes. There are some main thoroughfares that meet up in a cave in the middle that all descend in a spiral. While these could form naturally, the chances of it are slim.”

  “How slim?”

  “Say one in a billion.”

  “So, if the opening is Shiveen, then this whole underground structure is Shiveen.”

  “I’d say so, Private. But I’m not willing to commit to that until I’ve done more research.”

  “Doc, you’re not getting that chance. As soon as we get the rest of your team, we’re bugging out of here, and we’re only take what we can carry.”

  Caroline didn’t like that. She put a hand on Jack's shoulder.

  “Private, I don't think you understand the potential importance of this research. It could change the way the war is being fought. It may tell us something important about the Shiveen.”

  “Doc, that potential importance doesn’t matter one bit if we don't make it back alive to the Dauntless and the rest of the Sphere.”

  Assuming the Dauntless makes it back to us.

  “Boss?” asked Bandura, inserting herself into the conversation. “We good to go?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Time to get moving, Doc. We’re done talking about this.”

  But Jack had a feeling they weren’t.

  10 Travel to the Ruins

  “This is amazing,” said Bandura, her voice echoing softly around her. She was examining the data that her drones had been sending back for the past fifteen minutes. “It’s like a huge underground cave that’s been, well, grown into place.”

  “Impressive, isn’t it?” said Caroline, looking back at Jack.

  Bandura was right. There was far too much complexity and deliberate design in the cave network, with tunnels circling and rounding between floors, opening into oval rooms before continuing on. As they got deeper and deeper the tunnels became wide and the rooms became wider. They were already almost a klick into the cave network and had descended at least a thousand feet.

  Bioluminescence shined from the walls, ceiling and floor in regular but undeterminable patterns of neon colors and from no specific light source, forming tunnels of low light that allowed easy traversal with no additional lighting. Jack knew that certain creatures, both those of Terran and other planetary origins, could give off light, but the atmosphere engine had destroyed almost all complex life on the planet when it was first activated.

  “Where’s the light coming from?” he asked Caroline.

  She smiled.

  “From the actual walls and floors themselves. See how there seems to be a transparent layer atop the actual light? Seen anything like that before?”

  Jack had. It reminded him of the chemical reservoirs on Shiveen weaponry.

  “And you say this cave is possibly a thousand years old?”

  “Or older. I’d need to do carbon dating at least or some other form of advanced testing to know for sure.”

  A Shiveen cave over a thousand years old on a planet that was mostly dead before panhumans turned up to colonize it. What significance did this planet — this cave — hold for the Shiveen? Perhaps they weren’t here just to attack panhumanity? Were they here to defend something? This cave? Something else?

  “Do you think there are other caves like this one on the planet?”

  “The odds of this cave existing drastically improve the odds of another one existing on the same planet.”

  “And what about other planets?”

  “That makes sense. We’ve discovered less than fifteen percent of the planets in our galaxy arm alone. There are billions of stars in the Milky Way, most with one or more planets. And the Shiveen had to come from somewhere.”

  Jack had always wondered where the Shiveen originated from. Was it close to panhuman space or far away? Were the Shiveen defending their home territory and pushing back from expansionist aliens, or were they naturally warlike? They had advanced weaponry and advanced technology, allowing them to travel through space, including linkspace. How the hell did they do that if they were biological? Panhumanic Sphere starships needed a special stardrive to access linkspace. Did the Shiveen have some way of doing that naturally? Jack wished he’d paid more attention during astrophysics classes.

  “How is all this still here, though? How did it survive the atmosphere engine?”

  “Check the radiation levels, Private.”

  Jack did. The ionizing radiation on the planet’s survive, even though it fluctuated wildly, wasn’t present within the cave system.

  “That can’t be right,” said Jack. “There’s a huge hole opening into the outside that’s been open for a long time. There should be some radiation down here.”

  “That confused us as well at first,” said Caroline. “I think they grew the cave in a way that repulses the radiation. We don’t know or understand what the Shiveen are capable of. Until we study them enough, or start up a dialogue with them and share information, we’re never going to.”

  “Yeah, like that will ever happen,” said Anderson from the front of the line.

  “It’s the only way this war between us will end in peace.”

  Every attempt to communicate with the Shiveen in the past five years since first contact had failed or been rebuffed. In OCS, Jack had seen original vidcasts of attempts at diplomacy with the Shiveen. They had all ended with the Shiveen departing without interacting, or shooting at panhuman forces before leaving.

  Well, monsters were monsters, after all.

  And monsters didn’t talk.

  “Boss, check out the latest drone data.”

 
; Bandura’s drones had found and mapped several large chambers, full of masses of biological material in the center of each of them. There were three masses in each room, all of them large and oval and extending a few feet from the ground. The tunnels leading down continued beyond the rooms.

  “What are those?” asked Jack.

  “You’ll see soon. We have to go through this before we get to the main cavern.

  It took another ten minutes to get to the room with the masses. The room resembled other smaller rooms they’d passed through, although it was much larger and had different patterns of lighting in the walls and ceiling. Jack had already noted that certain patterns continue repeating themselves within the tunnels in the ancillary rooms of the cave network. He had made notes of this via his alek, which had been recording their descent into the cave network from the start, as had Anderson’s and Bandura’s.

  In the center of the room lay the three masses that the drones had picked up. Each of them was a mix of dark green and black coloring, and unlike the walls or ceilings there was no light emitting from them. Each of the elongated masses had one end pointing towards an imagined center, while the other end pointed away from it.

  “Three. A triad,” said Jack.

  “The Shiveen like their prime numbers,” said Caroline.

  “That they do.”

  Jack had realized that about the Shiveen when he had been going over information one night at OCS when he had insomnia. Shiveen military structure and operations all held a basis in prime numbers. A single platoon had five squads made up of three fireteams of three units. An attack fleet had three, five, or seven combat ships, with starfighter wings being similar. The Shiveen never deviated from using prime numbers it seemed. Unless it came to communication. Multiple diplomatic teams had attempted to use prime number sequences to communicate with the Shiveen. Nothing except silence from the Shiveen. Perhaps the problem with communicating with the Shiveen was that they were just so alien that they didn’t think in the same way as panhumans.

  Anderson moved closer to one mass, reaching a hand out to touch it.

  “Don’t touch that,” said Jack.

  “They’re safe to touch, Private,” said Caroline. “They’re inert. We’ve even taken some material from them as samples.”

  “What are they?” asked Bandura, peering closer at one of them.

  “Nowak has a theory about that, don’t you?” said Caroline, putting her arm around the big man.

  Throughout the trek, Nowak had remained quiet, lost in his own thoughts. When he spoke, it slightly startled the marines.

  “Graves,” he whispered. “They’re all graves.”

  Every marine drew their weapons and pointed them at the three masses.

  “There are Shiveen inside that?” asked Bandura.

  “Long dead and gone, Miss Bandura,” said Caroline. “If Nowak’s theory has any merit to it. Which it may do.”

  The large man said nothing in return.

  “What do you mean?” asked Jack.

  “That will become clearer when we get to the base camp, Private.”

  “Then we’d better get to the base camp. Caroline placed a hand on Jack’s arm.

  “Private, we’re inside the cave system, so we should be able to speak to my other team members now. Shouldn’t we do that? Let them know that we’re on our way?”

  “Fair enough,” said Jack. “But only tell them you’re on your way to see them. Don’t tell them anything about us being with you. I don’t want them panicking. We know where they are and I need them to stay there.”

  Caroline didn’t agree with Jack regarding not telling the others that the marines were with them, but she accepted his reasons for it. She activated the team voice channel through her alek, putting it on speaker.

  “Shirazi, Jeffs, are you there?”

  There was no immediate answer. It had been several days since she’d last spoke to them. What if the Shiveen had already made it inside the cave system here and had found them at the ruins?

  “Caroline?” said a female voice. “I thought we had another day before the next check in.”

  Caroline looked at Jack, who mouthed ‘lie to them’ to her. That pissed her off. She’d never lied openly to her own team about anything before.

  “Everything okay, Shirazi?” asked Caroline.

  “Better than okay,” said a male voice. “That unique sample with the unknown metal in it? We found several more of them in a cluster several rooms below the main ruins. We gathered a few of them for you.”

  More had been found? That meant that Caroline could open up the one she had safely stowed in the rover. It also meant that they needed to bring at least one more sample back with them. Perhaps several more. When they left this planet, they may never return.

  “Jeffs, that’s fantastic!” she said, her excitement overcoming her anger at Jack. “Are they similar in composition throughout?”

  “As far as we can tell, yes,” said Shirazi. “We could only do simple tests seeing as we didn’t have access to Silas.”

  “That’s not all,” continued Jeffs. “There’s a huge room underneath the entire complex. It took a while to get into it, but it looks like it’s a ritual chamber!”

  “Are you sure?” asked Caroline. Jeff’s specialization was in anthropology, specifically cultural and religious aspects. He'd know a ritual chamber if he saw one.

  “It’s consistent with some similar types of Mayan chambers, at least in basic form. There’s also what looks like, a well in the center of the room. Perhaps used for sacrifice? It's about thirty feet wide.”

  A ritual chamber? That meant that the Shiveen practiced religion, or at least had some form of spirituality. Caroline needed as much information about this as possible. Shirazi and Jeffs would have made detailed recordings and notes, but she’d need Silas to do some advanced scanning for later analysis.

  Caroline looked up to see Jack motion with his fist, moving it in a circular motion, telling her to get on with things. This private was so damn annoying, just like every other person in the military she’d ever encountered or had the misfortune to work with. They just came in and took over and the importance of research be damned. When they got back to the Dauntless, Caroline knew that all of her samples and research would be confiscated. She’d have Silas make a shadow backup of her data and burst it through to her backup network as soon as they were in the range of the quantum net as a safety measure, along with the biocrystal.

  “I can’t wait to see that,” she said. “We’ll be there shortly.”

  There was a pause over the comm link.

  “What do you mean?” asked Jeffs. “Why are you coming here?”

  Jack nodded at Caroline. Damn military.

  “I’ve got some important information I need to share. I didn’t want to send it over mesh, but to give it to you in person. We’ve just started the descent.”

  “We?” said Shirazi. “Is Nowak there with you?”

  Jack nodded towards Nowak, who understand the question.

  “Hi, guys,” he said, his speech stilted and withdrawn. “Yes, we’re on our way to you. Everything’s fine. See you soon.”

  “Caroline…” said Jeffs.

  “Be there shortly. Speak to you soon.”

  She disconnected the call to the other members of her team.

  “Satisfied?” she asked Jack.

  “It’ll do, Doc. Anderson, take point.”

  11 The Ruins

  They reached the undercavern after another ten minutes. The tunnel opened into a wide ledge that followed the curve of the huge underground hollow, descending at a slight curve, winding around the wall edge. There were no guardrails, and a brief gust of heavy wind would be enough to knock anyone over the edge, so it was lucky the air was still here. The bioluminescent patterns were in the tunnels and the antechamber rooms were also in evidence here, clearly identifying the ceiling of the cavern, but disappearing into the blackness below the ledge.

  Band
ura whistled, which echoed throughout the cavern, as she sent her drones out to the edges of the hollow, mapping it.

  “It’s about three hundred meters wide,” she said. “There are multiple entry points, just like this one, all leading down with ramps. This thing is designed as hell. No way this is natural.”

  Jack saw a small smile on Caroline’s face.

  “Pull back the drones,” said Jack. “We’ll map the other ways in and out, but I want one drone ahead of us as we descend, and at least one more going down the center of this cave, straight down. Get it all.”

  “Roger that, Boss,” said Bandura, sending the desired commands to her drones.

  The ledge was wide enough for them to walk three people abreast, but Jack decided it would be safer walking single file on the descent, hugging the wall as they descended.

  “How much further, Doc?” he asked.

  “About another half hour,” she said. “The ledges will continue to widen as we go down and eventually they’ll all merge into a single floor.”

  “And this is where this Jeffs and Yasmin are?”

  “Yes,” replied Caroline. “They’re camped in the center of the ruins.”

  “Seems like a strange place to camp. I would have thought you wouldn’t want to damage the ruins.”

  “It wasn’t ideal, Private,” said Caroline. “It was the only open space we could turn into a camp without blocking off one of these ramps.”

  Caroline’s calling him 'Private’ rankled Jack. Apart from the fact it was just a temporary rank until his commission came through, there was something in the way she said it. She had history with MilCom and it wasn’t the good kind.

  “Look,” he said. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. Just Jack will do.”

  He extended a hand, which she took, warily at first but then firmly clasped it. She had unexpected strength in her grip.

  “Okay, Just Jack,” she smiled. “Caroline or Doc is good for me. Several of my grad students used to call me that. Better times, many years ago… Jack.”

  “I’m just trying to get everyone home safely, Caroline.”