Emancipation

by Jason Paul McCartan

  Captain Evian Laroux stood at the holographic combat table in the center of the command information center of the PSS Dauntless. Around him the crew busied themselves with getting the dreadnought ready for departure from Arianne Station. He didn’t have to say anything to them beyond his initial order; this bridge crew had been working together for weeks, with some of them coming from his previous command on the PSS Resurgent. One benefit of a sideways promotion was being able to take senior crew with you.

  Crew like his trusted right-hand Executive Officer Bona Nambo, with his ability to stay cool under fire, who was right now making his way around each station on the bridge and checking that everything was good. Nambo was a stickler for getting things right. Even more so than Laroux.

  Nambo had been with Laroux ever since he’d taken over command of the Resurgent. Like Laroux, Nambo had been field promoted during a Shiveen attack. Both men understood what it was like to lose a member of command and be under fire by a Shiveen battle group, terrified that the end was upon you. Nambo had been offered the XO position on another ship, but Laroux had approached him and asked him to join the Resurgent. He had readily agreed.

  Too many bad memories.

  Too many friends lost.

  Laroux knew how that went.

  He looked down at the physical photo of Sophia in his hand. Years of holding it were beginning to take its toll on the archaic memento.

  I should print a new copy, Laroux said to himself, just as he did at every launch. But getting rid of this copy would feel as though he was betraying his dead wife. He’d carried this with him ever since he had mustered out after his wedding. It had been with him during his first encounter with the Shiveen and countless others after. It had been with him when he received news that her ship had been fired upon. The ship that was taking her back to her parents so she could give birth at her family home. It was with him when he attended her funeral. A double funeral, for her and their unborn child, Thierry, named for his paternal grandfather.

  “Captain,” said Nambo, drawing Laroux from his thoughts.

  “XO,” replied Laroux, putting the photo away into a pocket.

  “Everything is well. The bosun says that decks are loaded and stowed. All crew have checked in, including the new group from officer school.”

  “Poor bastards,” said Laroux, shifting in his chair and tapping his alek with two fingers. The device’s holographic interface sprang to life and Laroux found the shipboard reports. As always, Nambo had been thorough. “Good work, Mister Nambo. Looks like we’re ready to leave the nest.”

  Nambo nodded and sat in his own seat next to Laroux’s. Laroux tapped his alek again, activating the microphone on it and activating ship-wide communications, the 1MC.

  “All hands, this is the Captain,” he said. “We’re just about to leave Arianne Station. Our orders are to assess the situation at Pallas IV, offer aid if we can, and push back Shiveen forces. We’ll arrive before any other support ships in our battle group thanks to our upgraded jumpdrive. Once we’re in orbit, marine platoons will drop at multiple sites using our dropships.

  “Well be on our own, but I know that this boat and this crew can handle that. May God’s grace be with all of us.”

  Laroux had never been religious, even though he was raised Original Catholic. He wasn’t sure there was a God, not after what happened to Sophie and the baby. But, he prayed all the same, just in case. He figured that if there were a God, he’d know what was in Laroux’s heart and react accordingly when Laroux finally was judged.

  “Mister Nambo, let’s get under way.”

  “Aye, Sir. Getting under way,” replied Nambo. “Comms, please inform Arianne Station we’re ready to shove off.”

  "Informing Arianne Station, XO," said the comms officer. "Arianne Station acknowledges and bids us good hunting."

  Nambo tapped his own alek and transmitted to the 1MC too. “All crews, we are leaving Arianne Station. Set Condition Four throughout the boat. The ship is underway.”

  In the bunk room where Jack and seven of his fellow graduates awaited, the ship condition status board on the wall issued a tone, changing the wall display to Condition Four. The nervous chatter and laughter in the room died down to a murmur.

  This was it.

  After months of training, they were all about to leave the safety and security of the Panhuman core systems, traveling to the boundaries of known space to go head-to-head with an alien force that nobody really understood.

  Around them, the pulsing from the repulsors slowed and shifted subtly, showing that the ship was ready to leave dock. Jack felt a subtle change in the vibration in the ships hull through his entire body. The repulsors were cycling.

  One graduate mentioned switching to watch the exterior cameras, but Jack was already ahead of him and had connected his alek to the bridge-activated public cameras. This was common naval practice, allowing those deep within starships to experience the view of leaving dock. Jack’s alek displayed a dozen camera viewpoints, each of them showing a slightly different view of the space dock around the Dauntless. He chose the one one at the fore of the ship to watch.

  The repulsors downshifted in frequency and Jack watched the cameras show the Dauntless move carefully and slowly away from its moorings, rotating on its aft axis to turn the nose towards the slowly opening doors on the exterior of Arianne Station that would allow the dreadnought to exit. The doors opened slowly, almost excruciatingly slowly, as the prow of the dreadnought swung towards the opening. The Dauntless’s length placed it on the upper end of ships that could fit into an interior space dock, unlike some line battleships that could only dock on the exterior of space stations. Even then, it was a tight fit. Whoever was piloting the dreadnought do so with a great deal of skill and a very light touch.

  The long antennas at the fore of the Dauntless missed the space station walls completely. The dreadnought continued turning, eventually positioning itself at the opening in the space station’s walls where the doors had been. Beyond the space station lay the dark of space, pinpoint lights of stars scattered across it.

  Jack swallowed and look towards Nathine and the rest of his bunkmates. They were all just as engrossed in the departure as he was, each of them viewing it via their own aleks.

  The repulsors shifted once more, all of them disengaging apart from those pointing aft, and the dreadnought began moving through the space station door opening. The dreadnought sped up gently, gaining momentum as it pushed itself out of Arianne Station. The fore cameras now showed Arianne below the horizon, its purple and blue and green gasses swirling around each other as the tempest storms the planet was known for raged on its surface. Arianne Station was strategically important because of its central location between linkspace nodes, making it an ideal location to place a military training facility. There was only one planet in the system, Arianne itself, meaning it was easy to patrol and defend.

  As the Dauntless exited the Arianne station, its external cameras showed many small cruisers splashed throughout the space around the station, along with an older battleship; training ships for those in the space wing of the Panhumanic space navy. Impossible to see with the naked eye were the dozens and dozens of starfighters bobbing and weaving around the training ships. Jack had originally wanted to join the space wing of MilCom, but his aptitude scores for piloting hadn’t been high enough. But for a couple of percentage points, Jack could have been in those fighters right now, flying between, above, and around the collection of ships he could see. He wondered if Terry, his childhood best friend, was out there right now. When they’d last spoke before Jack’s graduation, Terry had told him he was about to enter live training; he’d be piloting a live combat fighter in simulated combat situations, with enemy fighters and capital ships simulated on instrumentation and via the pilots’ aleks.

  The ship-wide communications system issued a tone from the speaker embedded in the wall, showing the main shipboard communication system, the 1MC, was now active. Months of
training to respect the 1MC and be quiet when it activated made all the graduates instantly quieten.

  “All crew,” said the resonant disembodied voice of Commander Bona. “We have cleared Arianne Station. In the next few minutes we will be at the primary position over Arianne to jump into linkspace. Prep for linkspace jump. All hands prep for linkspace jump.”

  Jack’s only experience of traveling via linkspace were the three jumps he had taken to come to Arianne Station: one from his home planet to the sun in the solar system, then to Ariane’s sun, and then on to Arianne itself. The longest jump had been the one between both stars, but even then he had only been in linkspace for an hour. The trip to the Pallas system would take a couple of days of transit time. During that entire time the Dauntless would be shunted into a parallel reality, traversing millions of light years every second. Without linkspace stardrives panhumanity would still be held back in the core Sol solar system. The drives had allowed panhumanity to reach out and grab the thousands of nearby solar systems they were now in control of.

  Control now under threat because of the appearance of the Shiveen. In almost two hundred years of space exploration and expansion, the Shiveen were the only other sentient life that panhumanity had encountered flying between the stars. There were rumors that the Panhumanic Sphere government was withholding the existence of other alien races, long extinct except for their artifacts and relics of their civilization left behind on planets recently colonized, but these were just rumors. Or conspiracies if you listened to certain people, or read particular sites on the PanNet.

  Around him, the other graduates, quiet during the initial undocking, became restless and started talking amongst themselves, all of them excited for their first jump in a military starship. Jack felt the same excitement, and some trepidation. They would be spending several days in linkspace, days during which if anything happened to the drive they would either be instantly disintegrated, thrown out into normal space, or potentially even becoming lost in linkspace forever. Admittedly, the chance of the last was infinitesimal, in the order of one in a trillion or greater, but it was still a possibility. Starships small and large had been lost sink linkspace travel had began. Jack hoped never to be on a ship that joined that list.

  Beside him, Nathine sat quietly. Her tail flicked rapidly around her, showing her increased nervousness.

  “Ready for this?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, “There is no choice. But I dislike entering linkspace.”

  “It’ll be fine,”

  “As long as we come out the other side, yes.”

  At least Jack wasn’t the only one worried about that.

  “All crew, all crew,” said the XO over the ship-wide system. “Prepare for linkspace jump in ten… nine… eight…”

  Jack followed countdown and closed his eyes. Entering linkspace always made him want to throw up. Luckily he didn’t have any food in his stomach to lose.

  Nathine grabbed his hands with her large hairy paw. Her own eyes were focused on the wall at the other side of the room. He said nothing.

  There was a moment where Jack felt his entire body stretch and thin, as did everything else in the room within his vision, his fellow marines included. He tasted iron in his mouth and he felt like he was being torn apart and put back together again at the same time.

  And then the linkspace jump was complete, and the Dauntless was in linkspace.

  A wave of acute nausea washed over him and he dry heaved a little. Even the supplied medication supposed to keep the nausea away didn’t work. Two of the marines in the room did throw up, managing to containt it in bags provided for that express purpose.

  “Supposedly,” Jack said as he got his dry heaves under control, “You get used to this.”

  “I do not think anyone can ever get used to this,” replied Nathine, struggling to stop her own heaving. Her hand still held Jack’s. He said nothing but kept his hand there. A few moments later she removed it on her own.

  “Luckily now we’re in linkspace, things will be a lot smoother,” Jack said, trying to reassure her.

  There was an audible low-pitched whine that began building in volume and clarity over a few seconds. Jack cringed.

  “Coming up on the sun’s jump node,” said one of the other non-puking marines. “At least this won’t be as bad as the entry jump.”

  The whine increased in pitch until Jack could no longer hear it, although he still felt it. Nathine put her hands over her ears, still able to hear the whine as it increased in frequency. Her eyes were closed tight and she clenched her teeth.

  A quick pulse washed through the ship from bow to stern. The feeling of thinning and stretching returned but it was over just as quickly as it began. Neither of the two marines who had thrown up threw up this time. Nathine had taken her hands from her ears. She growled briefly before shaking her head rapidly.

  “Are you okay?” asked Jack.

  “Yes, Jack Conway. I will be in a moment.”

  One of the other marines, tall and thin with red hair and freckles took the used sick bags, tied them off, and dropped them into the biohazard trashcan built into the wall of the bunk room.

  “I’m starving,” he announced. “Who’s ready for some chow?”

  In the mess hall, Jack sat at a table with Nathine, the redheaded marine, Charlie Stanton, and one of the marines who had thrown up, Muhammad Khouri. Stanton quickly showed that he had an opinion on everything, and thought that his opinion mattered. Khouri sat quietly, his face ashen.

  “I think they’re probably overstating the threat,” said Stanton, wolfing down his food as he talked. Stanton liked to talk. Jack had discovered that during OCS and had avoided him as much as possible. “I mean, it’s a colony planet, not some important military installation.”

  “Then why are they sending the Dauntless?” asked Jack.

  Stanton pointed his fork at the barely touched food in front of Khouri. “You gonna eat that?”

  Khouri shook his head slowly and Stanton transferred several scoops of meat and vegetables from Khouri’s plate to his own.

  “Probably just the quickest ship that can get there,” he said. “Upgraded drive and all that.”

  “Pallas is only a few hours jump from an advance tactical station,” said Nathine. She touched her alek, transferring some data to everyone at the table’s aleks. Jack accepted the data transfer and a star map and some schematics appeared in his view. The schematics detailed a space station, much smaller than Arianne Station, but decked out with a broad selection of weaponry, including mass drivers. Like most advance tactical stations, this one had a compliment of three patrol cruisers attached to it that could be used for defense or reconnaissance to nearby star systems. “I think the situation is much worse than you understand.”

  “If there’s been Shiveen activity that close, they’d keep the cruisers near the ATS,” said Khouri. The loss of an ATS is more problematic than the loss of a civilian colony out on the edge systems.”

  “The crabbies aren’t that brave,” replied Stanton. “Colonists are easy targets. Targets of opportunity.”

  “I don’t know,” said Jack. “The way that Admiral Kennedy left the stage just before we got our shipping orders makes me think this is a big deal. Something’s hinkey.”

  “Hinkey?” asked Nathine. “I do not know this word.”

  “Means something strange or unusual,” said Stanton. “A lot of colonies use words like that. Some backwater planets too.”

  Jack couldn’t help but feel that Stanton was taking a sly shot at him. In the hour that Jack had been sitting with him, Jack had wanted to slug him at least three times. Stanton was arrogant and full of bluster, and had the kind of attitude that was not marine-worthy. Khouri, on the other hand, seemed meek but that could simply be because he was still feeling ill from the linkspace jump. Jack still hadn’t recovered himself.

  “The point I’m trying to make,” said Jack. “Is that something is off about this whole thing. Ken
nedy’s quick exit, the Dauntless already being in space dock, us getting mobilized without our commissions in place.”

  Khouri poked at the food on his plate with his fork but didn’t attempt to eat any of it.

  “I think Kennedy arrived in the Dauntless,” he said. “That explains why it was docked.”

  “That does make sense,” said Nathine, who had devoured all of the meat on her plate but left the vegetables alone. “Perhaps the Admiral is aboard right now?”

  “Doubt it,” said Stanton. “Why would anyone with stars be going out on a trip like this? They’ve earned the right to stay out of harm’s way.”

  The more Stanton talked, the more Jack found himself disliking him. He reminded Jack of a number of kids that he’d grown up with that had wealth and access to a far better life than many others. Jack enlisted because he wanted to serve. Why was Stanton here? What had he done to get himself in military school and to the front lines? Jack made a mental note to do some research on him after dinner.

  Stanton pointed to the vegetables on Nathine’s plate witexh his fork. She pushed her plate towards him and he scooped the ignored vegetables on it onto his own plate. He pointed at Jack’s plate with the fork. Jack pulled his plate a little closer to himself. He was going to eat everything on the plate, even if the jump had left him a little squeamish. Khouri took a tentative bite of the food on his plate and swallowed it. Satisfied that he could keep it down, he continued eating.

  “So, the big question, really…” said Stanton, once again talking with his mouth full, “is how this changes things between us and the Shiveen. We’ve been going toe-to-toe for five years, dancing around all-out war. Does this push us over the edge?”

  “I think yes,” said Nathine. “They have never attacked non-military vessels or outposts before.”

  “That we know of,” said Khouri, after successfully chewing and eating some of his food.

  “MilCom only tells people what it thinks they need to hear,” said Stanton. “Or what it wants them to know.”