Human, p.5
Human, page 5
part #1 of Humanity Ascendant Series
“Yes,” Mishak interjected dryly, “a shame the colony ship was lost en route.”
“Go ahead and do it,” Sandrak jabbed a finger at his son’s chest, “but make sure your free Humans don’t make it home again.”
Sandrak started walking toward the elevator. Clearly, his visit was at an end. The door opened as he approached, revealing two Quailu security operatives. He walked in, ordering the top floor as he turned.
“Don’t embarrass our house,” he growled as the doors slid shut.
Mishak walked back toward the terrace door, relieved to lose contact with his father’s mind. To hells with the old man, he’d bring his Humans home. The economy of his world needed a shake-up if they were to keep up with the rest of the empire. He wanted his fief to have the kind of economy that only a free population could support.
The leverage he now had over Chiron would have been useless if they weren’t so dependent on the Meleke Corporation. Chiron’s economy was based on slaves and they could only get them from one place.
Yet again, luck seemed to have come to his aid. The idea of using freed Humans had only come to him on the spot, just as the unexpected proof from Chiron had saved his ass in the most literal sense.
And now he had a way to reward Eth and his team for their efforts.
He waved the page over as he reached the door. “Bring us a tray of the aged fat, the stuff with the blue mold.” He had a celebration to begin and he knew the newly freed Humans on his terrace were going to get royally drunk.
He strode out to the fire-pit, reaching down to accept the last remnant of the bison fat he’d passed around earlier, nodding his thanks to Noa. He looked around the fire.
“Who here is interested in joining our house forces,” he asked them. “Who will volunteer to come and fight with me, to help defend our house against its enemies?”
To his immense gratification, after a moment of surprise, every one of them stood. He could feel their pride at receiving the offer, alien though it was, and he could feel loyalty. He raised the strip.
“A toast to you,” he said. “To you, Ethkenu and to you Noakenu…” He continued in that vein, naming each of the Humans, relying on the neural interface for most of the names. He reveled in the feelings of confusion, astonishment and barely acknowledged hope as his use of the lower-class suffix sunk in.
“You’ve volunteered to fight with our house forces,” he explained. “We can’t have slaves serving in our regular military, so we have no choice but to make you all into mushkenu.” He grinned. “I said I’d find a way to reward you, didn’t I?” He popped the last of the fermented fat into his mouth.
The silence drew out; amazement and elation washing over Mishak. Finally, Noa chuckled and slapped Eth on the back. “Mushkenu! Didn’t expect that when you woke up this morning, did you?
Eth shook his head, still in shock.
Hendy cuffed at his cheek and stared into the fire.
A steward arrived and passed out the premium, blue-mold fermented fat, a product that was never offered to slaves. They each held up a piece, joining their governor in his toast, eyes sliding to their compatriots.
Could it be real?
Induction
E th stepped out of the ground vehicle and looked at the entrance to the 405th Transport Wing’s main terminal. He’d walked through those doors hundreds of times but today was different. He took a sip of his coffee.
One of his world’s greatest gifts to the empire, coffee was cheap enough here that even the slave population could get their hands on it, though he was a slave no longer.
He looked behind to Noa. “Everybody here, Noakenu?”
His second in command grinned at hearing his free name. The novelty was still new. “Thirty-two heads. All accounted for and ready to go!”
He moved away to stand where they could all hear him. He hadn’t planned to say anything but it had suddenly struck him as the right thing to do. He realized things might get difficult and he wanted them ready for that but, more importantly, he wanted them to realize that he wasn’t just leading them blindly into a tense situation.
Much of that came from observing Abdu’s leadership, but the rest was programmed right into his genome. He wished his mentor was here to see this day.
He also wished Ab was here to run the show.
He still didn’t want to be responsible for the whole team but it wasn’t as if he had a choice. He’d been designed for this, so he might as well do it to the best of his abilities.
“This… is a day our people will never forget,” he began. There were smiles at that and a few shared glances, quiet comments…
“But you need to keep in mind that making history is never easy,” he said, bringing them back into focus. “There are going to be those who don’t approve of free Humans. He nodded up to the sky. “The Quailu and other mushkenu species up there in our defense fleet have known us only as wardu and some will resent serving alongside former slaves.
“Keep your spirits up, and don’t let them provoke you. Don’t let them prove we’re unready for this.” He grinned. “But let’s not stand around, overthinking it.” He turned and led the way inside. They approached the security checkpoint, the same one they’d used every time they left on an operation. Just in front of the wide arch used by free citizens, a guard stepped in front of Eth, like he always did, and waved his hand-scanner at him.
Same old deal, as far as the guard knew. Confirm their identity and then divert them into the body scanning cubicles to search them for smuggled items.
Eth dropped his pistol onto a conveyer belt and it slid into a scanner. “Morning Erndu.” Though he knew the guard well enough, he couldn’t leave off the suffix, not in an area under constant surveillance.
The guard shook his handheld and then scanned him again.
“Something’s wrong with your property tag,” the guard told him. “Just wait here for a second.” He tried to scan Oliv, then Noa – no luck there either. Frowning, he worked his way through the entire unit.
“What the hell is…” Erndu trailed off as he finally noticed they’d traded their gray uniforms for the dark blue of the house-military. Eth himself wore the insignia of a warrant officer.
“What the hells are you playing at?” he hissed. “Disabling your prop-chips, masquerading as house-military?” He looked around at the small group of curious Humans who worked in the terminal. One of them had noticed the hiccup in the normal scanning procedure and wandered over, his reaction drawing the attention of several others. A crowd would quickly start to form.
The guard pulled out his weapon. “Did you really think I’d just let you pass?” he demanded helplessly. “I have no choice but to arrest you for servile insurrection!”
Eth felt a moment of cold shock. He’d expected resistance from the mushkenu but he’d failed to anticipate the same from his own species. Not for the first time, he questioned his fitness to lead his small unit.
He forced his doubts aside. Fit or not, he was what they had for the moment and he wasn’t going to let them down on their first day in the house-military. “Easy Erndu.” He waved to the growing crowd, mostly Humans with the occasional alien. “You’re causing a disturbance.”
The guard, predictably, turned his head to look and Ethkenu stepped in, grasping his weapon and turning it downward and toward the guard’s middle. The pistol came away from his fingers cleanly.
A murmur of surprise and alarm came from the crowd and they surged back but Ethkenu reversed the weapon, handing it back, grip-first, to its owner. “We’ve got our chips, Erndu, but you’re using the wrong scanner.” He nodded toward the arch.
The guard was flabbergasted. He took the weapon back but let his arm drop to his side. Haradu, the guard supervisor, came hurrying out from an office behind the scanning cubicles, his face an unreadable riot. He came to a halt near Erndu and stared at Eth’s team.
He shook his head, ever so slightly, incredulous. Finally he shrugged to himself before gesturing toward the arch. “Through there,” he said, sounding as though he’d been told something while in his office but still didn’t quite believe it. He moved over to get a better look at the readout over the arch as Eth approached.
Eth walked up to the arch, took a deep breath and stepped through.
And nothing happened.
It hadn’t chimed. He’d half expected to set off an alarm but nothing was happening. Then he realized that his next breath was only his second since passing through. Had so little time passed? It seemed like an eternity and…
The gate gave a friendly chime and the crowd gasped as one.
He looked up at the top of the arch.
Ethkenu – Warrant Officer, provisional grade.
There was a pause and then a buzz of chatter erupted. One of their own had made that incredible, impossible leap to mushkenu status. Something that hadn’t happened in thousands of years.
Freddadu, the elderly guard that checked the weapons, walked over to Eth to return his sidearm. He beamed up at Eth, his cheeks glistening with moisture. “I’ve seen some amazing things, over the years, but I don’t think I’ll ever top this,” he said, voice trembling.
Eth put a friendly hand on the man’s shoulder, not trusting his own voice at the moment. He took his weapon and moved over to the flight-line door to wait for the rest of his team.
Cheers were breaking out as the rest of the unit passed through the arch, each recognized as mushkenu citizens of the empire. Some of them gave Old Freddy a hug as he brought them their weapons.
“That felt better than I expected,” Noa admitted as he came to stand with Eth. “Almost teared up when Fred gave me my weapon. Poor old fella’s ready to burst!”
“And you’re not?” Eth asked, a catch in his voice.
“What, me?” the older man looked away. “There’s just some dust in my eye. That’s all.”
“Really? You’re standing here, right in the middle of history, and you’re nothing but a stone?”
“Can’t last,” Noa said gloomily. “You think the Meleke Company are gonna let you undo your sterilization? All of our genomes are expensive, but yours cost more than a couple dozen of those ordnance-men over there.” He nodded toward the red-vested Humans cheering the unit through the arch, one by one.
“You start giving out free samples for recreational purposes,” he shrugged, “the price they can charge our governor will plummet. A minute-and-a-half of fun for you represents hundreds of thousands in lost ducats.”
Eth tuned out the room. Noa was right, though not about the minute-and-a-half. As mushkenu, it was their right to take back their reproductive abilities. The idea was terrifying. They’d all seen mushkenu children but no Human child had existed in nearly twenty centuries. Wardu were all brought out of the maturation chambers as physical adults with language and basic skills already implanted.
How do you even keep such a helpless creature alive? Eth couldn’t even keep a potted plant alive, let alone a complex and highly demanding infant.
And Noa was right about the Meleke. He represented a serious threat to their balance sheets. They weren’t going to be pleased with Mishak.
“All here,” Noa said quietly.
Eth squared his shoulders. “Let’s get moving.” He looked back at the crowd and instantly wished he hadn’t. He knew he couldn’t just turn away from them. They were expecting some kind of gesture, now that he was looking their way. He gave them a quick wave, feeling like an idiot, and they broke into applause.
His ears felt hot as the blast doors snapped open in front of him.
The ground crew, already informed by the flight crew as to whom they were carrying up to the fleet, were clustered together, staring silently at the approaching team.
Eth stifled a curse. The prolonged scrutiny had made him conscious of how he walked, a personality trait he believed was due to some genetic engineer’s sense of humor. He was reasonably certain he didn’t walk strangely, but being stared at always made him feel awkward. It either made him strut like a peacock or trip over his own feet, sometimes both.
His arms were starting to come out of synch with his legs and he put his right hand on the grip of his sidearm. He knew he probably looked like a bandit but at least it stabilized his stride.
He let go of the weapon as they walked up the rear ramp and filed into the long rows of seats. The hum of worm-gears announced the closing of the ramp and he leaned back, closing his eyes and putting his feet up against the stack of footlockers they’d sent aboard earlier.
It was tough enough stepping into Ab’s shoes, though that was what he’d been made for, but having to lead his team into a new social status and hold their own among the house-forces was beyond his design parameters.
They all remained quiet as the shuttle lifted off. The usual banter was suppressed by the knowledge of their destination. They’d done this ride hundreds of times but it had always ended up at some fast freighter. Now they’d be entering the fleet’s exclusion-zone.
They accelerated to the standard velocity. The weather, relatively mild at lower velocities, hammered at the fuselage until suddenly easing off to nothingness, the light blue outside quickly turning to black. The scents of metal, oil and sweat grew thin in the colder air as the shuttle bled off excess heat.
They all leaned again as the shuttle accelerated toward the fleet. Eth looked around, wondering if they were as nervous as he was. Noa leaned over to say something to Oliv and she laughed before giving him a lengthy reply. They seemed calm enough, but everyone had their own way of coping.
The shuttle slowed and a flash out the window announced the arrival of their escort. A fighter, loaded with missiles, would follow the civilian shuttle in. If they misbehaved in the slightest, they’d become a problem for a salvage crew.
“Look at that!” Noa called out, gazing through the portal behind his head.
Eth released his restraint bar and moved over to get a look.
A ship, one of the obsolete old frigates, was melting before their eyes. The new specs had come in already and the nanites making up the old warship were migrating to where a newer design was being grown. Only the core, with the specialized composites and superconductive lines, would remain from one ship to the next.
“I’ve programmed mods for shuttles,” Noa said, “but an entire warship? Can you just imagine watching a frigate or even a heavy cruiser growing right before your eyes from a design you came up with?”
The blackness turned into light again, cutting off their view as they passed through the nav-shield on the Dibbarra and into her forward bay.
Already out of his seat, Eth moved toward the ramp as they settled onto the deck. The loadmaster, one of the mushkenu Quailu who called Kish home, hit the controls to open up. He was a decent fellow who’d opened the ramp for this particular group of Humans many times. He offered them what passed for a Quailu grin.
Before the ramp got halfway down, a Quailu, wearing the insignia of a petty officer; 3rd class, jumped up onto the ramp. “What do we have here?” he jeered as he strutted up the ramp. “Slave-soldiers? Well, don’t get comfortable. We don’t want your kind on this ship.”
Eth moved to stand between him and his people but the Quailu kept coming, putting out a hand to shove him away.
The Quailu, even those of the lower class, were never to be harmed by any other species. Even the lowliest of them was still the same race as the emperor himself. Abdu had died to prevent the death of some lower-class Quailu. It was a matter of fact rather than a fear of punishment. No formal laws even existed on the matter.
You just didn’t harm a member of the ruling species.
But this one was intent on mistreating Eth’s people. Even worse, a petty officer was about to assault a warrant officer – a violation of the Uniform Code of Conduct that now resided in his expensive brain. If he let this happen, his authority would be in tatters before he even stepped off the shuttle. It occurred to him that it might have been this Quailu’s intended goal.
It made him angry.
There were subtle variations but most species were hurt in the same ways. He grasped the offending hand before it made contact and bent it in towards the elbow. The gasp of pain came with gratifying quickness and he increased the pressure, leaving his opponent with no choice but to drop to his knees or face increased agony.
‘Release me at once, you filthy savage! I’ll… Ahh…” He stopped in mid-threat as Eth increased the pressure on his wrist joint.
He twisted the hand, forcing the Quailu to move to the right, and looked down at the symbols on his sleeve. “Handler, 1st class, perhaps you’d care to explain why you assaulted a superior in front of witnesses?”
The petty officer glared at the watching Humans, clearly not considering them to be credible witnesses. He noticed the loadmaster but, whatever mood he was sensing, he saw no allies there either. “Let me go!” he raged. “Giving a warrant to a Human! It’s ridiculous – you’ll be turning to drink within a single lunar!”
Eth pressed a little harder. “If you persist,” he explained, “I’ll have no choice but to pursue charges. I might pull some flak for it but you’ll definitely have regrets. Your superiors won’t appreciate your lack of tact, brought up on charges by someone who was a slave only hours before…”
He leaned down, close to the Quailu’s left ear. “You should know that I’m somewhat of an enthusiast when it comes to preventative violence. If you cross my path again, you’d better remember that or I might not be this pleasant.” He pushed a little harder on the hand to punctuate his warning, bringing out a breathless gasp.
He stood, letting go of the hand. “You’re a cargo handler?”
The Quailu came to his feet, holding his wrist and refusing to meet Eth’s gaze or answer his question.
Eth leaned in, deliberately letting himself feel the urge to commit further violence. “I asked you a question, petty officer.”
