Emancipation

by Jason Paul McCartan

  No, not him, but the alien head he carried.

  The Shiveen towered above him, chanting and raising its arms, just as he’d seen it do on the drone footage. He could feel it watching him from the side with its impassive black eyes.

  Jack moved closer to the well edge and looked down. Light swam in the walls of the well, moving in complex patterns that ebbed and flowed in time to some invisible rhythm.

  He looked to the Shiveen, and it nodded. There was no mistaking that attempt at communication.

  Jack tossed the head towards the well and something grabbed it several feet above the well opening. It hung there, suspended in mid air and spinning on its axes with the momentum from the throw. It began descending into the well mouth, just as the Shiveen bodies had in the earlier ritual. The Shiveen continued chanting.

  Jack looked over the edge of the well mouth, following the alien head’s path down inside it. He saw that severed head itself was emitting sympathetic color patterns to those in the walls. That was crazy. The Shiveen was dead, yet it was still interacting. Jack wondered if he was the first ever to see this.

  It was just as well that his alek was still recording, as was the drone high up the ceiling that still hadn’t been noticed by the Shiveen

  There was so much about the Shiveen that the Sphere just didn’t know at all. How can you fight an enemy you know nothing about?

  Perhaps that was the point.

  Perhaps they shouldn’t be fighting.

  Jack felt a deep thrumming begin far below him, traveling through the floor and walls. The giant creature in the well room would wake again, reaching a giant arm out to collect the Shiveen offering. He peered down the well, but the well room was too far away and there was too much light for him to make out anything far below. The Shiveen continued chanting, performing many of the same movements it had before.

  Within a few moments the deep thrumming below lessened, as did the light in the well and the ritual room. The Shiveen quietened and lowered its arms.

  The room darkened and filled with silence. Jack could hear his heart beating hard in his chest. He felt that he had been witness to something transformational, something that might change the future relationship between two species about to go to war. For that, he had to survive and share what he had experienced with MilCom.

  He looked up at the alien creature beside him. It stood unmoving, its body motionless, almost as if it were considering its next move.

  Would this alien creature now crush him as it so easily could? Would it through him down the well? What was it thinking about? What were its plans?

  The Shiveen pointed a single arm towards the ramp leading out of the ritual room.

  “Go,” it said in perfectly understandable panhumanic standard.

  Jack walked towards the ramp, his back towards the alien. He waited for the burning that would accompany being shot in the back, but he never expected it to occur. The Shiveen had shown themselves to be complex creatures, born of ritual and reverence. They had a sense of honor, one that Jack didn’t quite understand, but that didn’t matter.

  The other Shiveen warriors appeared in the doorways of the ritual room as he left the room. None of them were wielding their rifles, but standing still, watching him as he passed.

  Are they standing at attention? Jack wondered. They had to know what had just happened. The noise and thrumming had passed through the entire ritual room and deeper than that.

  He walked up the ramp and onto the level where the ruins were. In the distance, he saw at least another dozen Shiveen in the abandoned camp. They turned as one toward him as he made his way towards them, but none of them raised their weapons. Instead, they moved out of the way, creating a path between him, allowing him to continue on his way. He looked over at the supplies and samples that would be left behind, considering grabbing some of them.

  Too risky.

  That the Shiveen were letting him live and leave was enough.

  He passed through the Shiveen standing in the camp, noting that their carapaces were glowing softly with undulating patterns. These were not the aggressive and fast-moving patterns that he’d seen in simulations and battles. Instead they were slow moving, and in pastels rather than neon. In all the recordings of Shiveen he’d looked at, he’d never seen that before.

  The Shiveen moved and startled, he went for his weapon, pulling it from behind his back.

  He hadn’t needed to. They weren’t attacking him. Instead the Shiveen had all raised their arms above their heads, creating an arched tunnel to pass through.

  If I wasn’t recording this, no-one would believe it.

  He let his rifle fall to his side and walked through the makeshift arch. As he did, he looked into the impassive faces of each of the alien creatures, trying to discern what they were thinking. Recently they would have shot him and killed him on sight. Now they were standing at attention and giving him what looked like respect.

  Because he threw the head of an alien he had killed down a hole in the ground?

  It would take smarter minds than him to work out what this was all about.

  Someone like Caroline.

  She wouldn’t believe this, but she would love hearing this. As would MilCom.

  After he passed the Shiveen, they scuttled away towards the ritual room, paying him no further attention.

  The drone.

  He tapped a few buttons on his alek and took control of the drone was still in the ritual room. He activated the return-to-home function, which would have it seek Bandura. The drone flew out of the ritual room, passing over the heads of the Shiveen who had just saluted Jack, and careened into the air, heading past and around the giant geometric pillars on the lower floor.

  Jack walked up the ramp that he and his team had descended with Caroline and Nowak, looking down at the ruins as he ascended. Soon he could not see the scientist’s camp, and he wondered how much longer it would remain there. Would the Shiveen remove it or just ignore it?

  He tapped the team voice chat button on his alek.

  “Bandura, Anderson. Come in.”

  There was a pause and then a static-filled reply.

  “Boss?” said Bandura. “You good?”

  “Still kicking,” he replied.

  “Well, shit,” said Anderson. “You truly do have the luck of the Irish, Boss.”

  “Guess I do, big guy. I’m on my way up. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  “The Shiveen?” asked Bandura.

  “Negative. They’re busy.”

  “You snuck around them?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Damn. Now this is a story I want to hear,” said Anderson.

  Given the importance of what he had learned, he wasn’t sure how much he could share with others. But he was determined to share as much as he could with his fireteam. He owed them that.

  “Status on the drone data and upload, and the Dauntless?”

  “Upload successful,” said Bandura. “Dauntless has a dropship en route to our location, priority status.

  “Seems the captain wants these eggheads back in one piece as soon as possible.

  “Another thing, Boss. The Shiveen have stopped firing on us.”

  “Are we shooting back?”

  “Negative. Dauntless is bringing everyone home. But there’s only one dropship, so it’s taking time. We got bumped to first class.”

  “Roger that. See you soon.”

  The Shiveen had ceased their attack? Why? What had caused them to stop? There was no way that that shared moment between him and the Shiveen could have this much effect. Perhaps it was just a coincidence. Perhaps something else had happened?

  Jack reached the top of the ramp. Far in the distance on the cave floor, he imagined he could see the camp and the Shiveen down there between the intact and broken spires.

  He entered the tunnel, approaching the antechamber they had first encountered on the way into the cave complex. The three large shapes were no longer opaque and
intact. Instead, the top half of them was open, creating a curved container.

  Standing around the room where three Shiveen, as large as any he’d seen. They looked subtly different, from those, though. There were subtle differences in their carapaces and their face areas, including their mouths. Jack had the idea that these Shiveen were older than most, perhaps even ancient. That they’d been inside those ovals for a very, very long time.

  They moved aside, allowing him to pass on one side of the room. As he left the adjoining tunnel, the one leading out, he saw them change positions, each of them standing next to one of the open masses.

  These were the frontline guards for the ruins.

  How long had they been inside those things?

  Years?

  Centuries?

  Millennia?

  He continued on, leaving the Shiveen behind.

  21 Homeward Bound

  The light from the Pallas sun was almost blinding to Jack as he stepped up the stairs that led from the tunnel. He covered his eyes momentarily and closed them, counting to ten to allow them to adjust. With his eyes still shielded, he looked to the sky, looking for evidence of Shiveen or Panhumanic forces. The sky was clear.

  He checked his alek to find the rover’s position to his current and began walking in that direction. Soon he crested the plateau and looked down to see both of them where they had been before, and three people outside of them. Two of those were Anderson and Bandura, who had taken up defensive positions between the rovers and were still scanning the area, weapons ready and on alert in case something changed. Just as he’d have told them to do.

  Stone had trained these guys well.

  Anderson spotted him atop of plateau and waved. A moment later Jack’s alek voice channel chirped.

  “Glad to see you, Boss Man,” said Bandura. “Got my bird back. Thanks.”

  “Well, what girl doesn’t want to keep the set complete?” said Jack, starting on the path down to the rovers. “What’s the ETA of the dropship?”

  “About another thirty. Time enough for some coffee.”

  “Did you bring any coffee?”

  “Details, details. Also, I’ve just seen you through enhanced drone scope and you look like crap.”

  “Shiveen guts. I’ll explain when I get down. Tell Caroline I’ve got more data for her, including some that will blow her mind.”

  Caroline’s mouth was agape as Jack explained to her and the others surround him what had happened during his escape.

  “Do you have the footage and data to back this up?” she asked.

  Jack pointed to his alek. “It’s all right here, and in one of our drones. I‘ll share it with you.”

  “Why would you do that? I would have thought MilCom would want this to be kept a secret.”

  “They probably do, at least until they know what to do about it. But this thing is bigger than any of us, and I believe they will need someone like you to help understand this. I’ll request that you stay involved in any future research.”

  Caroline shook her head. “Jack, I don’t think it works that way.”

  “What was it you said? Something about making sure this information got off planet and wasn’t buried?”

  “Something like that,” Caroline said, a smile creeping onto her face.

  Jack swiped two fingers over his alek, sending the compiled file of his encounter with the Shiveen to her. Caroline looked at her own alek’s display as it received the data.

  “Boss,” said Bandura. “Is that wise? Civilians, remember? They have this thing called a court martial. You may have heard of it.”

  “We’re all in this together, Bandura. And my gut tells me this isn’t even a drop in the ocean with regards the Shiveen. There’s something bigger going on, something the Shiveen are heavily involved in. It’ll take smart people to find it out, and to do that they’ll need as much information as possible.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” said Caroline. She smiled warmly at him.

  “I’m counting on it, Doc,” said Jack. “I’m not risking going to jail for nothing.”

  “In fact, we’ll all do what we can, won’t we?” she said. Each of the scientists — Nowak, Shirazi, and Jeffs — nodded. “After doing what you did for us, Jack, getting us out of there alive, we owe you.”

  In the distance, Jack saw the dropship approaching, a wavering dark speck against the bright sky. Jack’s fingers went to a pocket, the one containing Stone’s dog tags.

  “Dropship’s inbound. Let’s get everything packed up, including Corporal Stone. The man’s a damn hero and deserves to go home to rest.”

  Standing on the plateau, Grel watched the dropship ascend. Beside him stood two of the remaining pod mates, and one Watcher.

  A deep voice, thousands of years old, spoke in his head. It was the Watcher.

  Do you know what you have done?

  Yes.

  Will you face the consequences?

  Yes.

  We all will.

  The Watcher turned away to return to the Reliquary. Grel looked at sky again.

  He knew that he’d meet the panhuman again. He only hoped they would be on the same side.

  As the dropship returned to PSS Dauntless, Jack and the others in the APC they sat in sat in somber silence. Along with Bandura and Anderson and the scientists, there were two other fireteams — Beta and Gamma — both of which had taken casualties during extended skirmishes with the Shiveen. The sudden ceasefire had reduced the eventual number of casualties, which would have been high, as the Shiveen ground forces outnumbered the panhuman forces.

  New Macedon had suffered a great deal of damage, the atmosphere engine located there all but destroyed by continued Shiveen bombardments. The good news is that many of the civilians there had survived the initial Shiveen attacks, secreting themselves away in underground bunkers built. Most of the fireteam casualties had been from defending them and getting them to the dropships to get them back to the Dauntless.

  What happens now?

  The thought preyed on Jack as he looked around the APC. He saw Caroline and Nowak huddled over a holographic screen, poring over the additional data that he’d given her. The big man still looked sad, but he was energized and engaged, no longer in immediate shock. His girlfriend’s death was tragic, but there would be some good to come from it. Jeffs sat with Shirazi, arguing, albeit less than they had before. Anderson had his eyes closed and was snoring softly. Bandura was running diagnostics on her drones, double-checking them physically and with software programs.

  What they had just gone through was profound, especially for Jack.

  They’d found out information that would change everything about the way the Shiveen were viewed. The aliens had shown themselves to be complex philosophical creatures that been in this part of the galaxy before panhumanity had even left the Sol star system.

  How long had they been here?

  And was there anything that was even older than them that panhumanity had yet to encounter?

  Bandura sat next to him.

  “Hey, Boss. You good?”

  “I’m not sure, Bandura.”

  “Permission to speak freely?”

  “Given.”

  “When you joined us, the brass didn’t tell us much more than they were filtering in some additional bodies to expand the fireteams for a crucial emergency mission. We knew all of you were OCS graduates, but in our eyes you were shavetails without commissions that could put every single one of our lives in jeopardy. You can guess that Stone wasn’t happy with the decision, but like a good marine, he followed orders.”

  Jack remembered how gruff Stone had been with him when he was assigned to the fireteam. Had that really only been a few days ago? It felt like weeks or months had passed.

  “But, you know what? I think he’d be damn proud of what you did, getting those civvies and me and Anderson out of there. Not to mention making it out yourself. I could tell he was okay with passing the baton. He trusted you. He knew you
had what it takes.”

  Jack didn’t know what to say in response.

  “Thanks, Bandura. That means a lot.”

  “Mel,” she said, extending a hand. “Short for Melinda. Only my friends get to call me that, Boss.”

  Jack shook her hand.

  “I’ll ride with you any day, Boss. And so will Anderson. We already decided that between us. You’re stuck with us.”

  Jack exited the dropship, and walked down the ramp into the landing bay, Anderson and Bandura following behind him. Ground crew hustled backward and forwards, assisting marines to get civilians out of the way.

  Marching towards him was Sergeant Taggart, still wearing his permanent scowl. Behind him were Captain Laroux and the XO. Their uniforms were ruffled and stained and unkept. Laroux had his captain’s hat under his arm. Jack and the rest of Echo Team dropped their gear and saluted as they neared.

  “At ease, Privates,” said Taggart. “The Captain would like a word.”

  “Thank you, Mister Taggart,” said Laroux, sidestepping him. He extended a hand towards Jack.

  “Shake the man’s hand, Private Conway,” said Taggart. Jack did.

  “We received your data burst, and it’s been sent on to MilCom, where it will be evaluated,” said Laroux. “We also received the secondary data that you provided your tech specialist sent after you exited the cave complex on your own. I have a feeling you’ll be asked a lot of questions in the upcoming days and months.”

  Caroline and the scientists began making their way down the dropship ramp, looking around at the busy commotion as they did.

  “Sir, if I may,” said Jack. He signaled to Caroline with his hand, calling her over. “This is Doctor Caroline Tao. She’s in the recordings. I’d like to request that she be involved in any future research regarding the Shiveen.”