Reckoning: The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy Book 3

by Scott Bartlett

  Keyes blew air out through his nostrils, a physical manifestation of his reluctance to heed his XO’s advice. Even though he recognized it as solid, part of him railed against acknowledging that. He was accustomed to identifying and following the correct path without outside input. This tasted sour.

  It reminded him of Husher’s claim that Keyes was letting himself become like the UHF captains that had steered humanity toward a cliff. Keyes wasn’t prepared to accept that assertion, but he did realize that if he rejected Arsenyev’s good advice, it would represent a step down the path of becoming like Carrow and his ilk.

  “You’re right, Lieutenant,” Keyes said with a nod. “Coms, broadcast a message to every Gok ship, notifying them of both the cure and our willingness to provide it. In the meantime, we will maintain our current engagement course. Werner, talk to me.”

  The sensor operator knew what Keyes wanted. “The Gok are reckless, but apparently they’re invested enough in their own survival not to bunch together. Their carrier’s launched all its Slags, and now it leads the pack. No doubt it intends to effect a collision if it can.”

  “It can’t.” Not this time. “What about the rest?”

  “Their formation centers around the destroyer, with the missile cruisers forming the points of an upside-down triangle and the corvettes equidistant between those. We’re ten minutes from laser range, Captain. The Gok frigate lags behind, as a sort of reserve force, I suppose.”

  “Sad sort of reserve force.” Keyes clacked trimmed nails once atop the right armrest of the Captain’s chair. “I want this engagement to play out with zero losses on our side. Any more than that would represent a disgusting waste of life. Is that understood?” He looked around the CIC until he got the chorus of “Yes, sir,” that he was looking for.

  “Good,” he said. “Barring a transmission from one of the Gok captains accepting our cure for the virophage, here are the orders I want executed. Coms, standby to relay them throughout the fleet appropriately.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “The Providence, along with our three UHF destroyers, will focus primary lasers on the Gok destroyer. Have the rest of our human-crewed ships use primaries to hit the enemy carrier, in rapid but controlled succession, until it’s neutralized. Once it is, they will switch to targeting the cruisers. Instruct the Roostships not to launch Talons. Instead, have them target the oncoming Slags with missiles as well as secondary lasers. Point defense turrets should mop up any Gok fighters that remain.”

  “What about the corvettes, Captain?” asked his new primary Tactical officer, Chief Khoo. He’d been Arsenyev’s deputy before she’d graduated to XO, and while he lacked her ingenuity, he was more than competent.

  “I’m getting to that. Coms, tell our destroyer captains that once we’ve neutralized the Gok destroyer, they are to target the enemy cruisers with kinetic impactors from their main railguns. Tell them to coordinate with the other UHF captains—I don’t want them wasting ammunition by firing it at a ship that’s about to go down to laserfire.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t wait to transmit these orders, Coms. Send them now. Our engagement window is closing.” Keyes sniffed. “Now. Khoo. I expect you to account for two of the three corvettes using the arsenal of the Providence alone. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether to use impactors or missiles, depending on their movement patterns. Coms, tell our cruisers to also target the corvettes with Banshees, and to coordinate with Khoo as they do so.”

  “Aye, sir,” the Coms officer said. After a couple of minutes, she spoke again: “The orders have all been relayed. All human and Winger captains have acknowledged receipt of them, and also that they understand the instructions.”

  “Very good.”

  “Laser range in one minute,” the sensor operator said.

  “Acknowledged, Werner. Put a tactical display on the main viewscreen.” Keyes had toyed with the idea of instructing his sensor operator to put up a magnified visual instead, and to try to anticipate which ship would explode first. But the resultant boost in morale would not outweigh the essential frivolity of the exercise, so he scrapped the idea.

  Watching the engagement unfold on the tactical display proved satisfying enough. The carrier went down first, disappearing from the display and exploding with plenty of distance between it and Keyes’s fleet, so that even its shrapnel posed no meaningful danger.

  The only surprise came when one of the Gok cruisers went down before their destroyer did. After that, the destroyer fell to concentrated laserfire, its superheated hull bursting apart in an explosion that was as brief as it was brilliant. The remaining Gok cruisers took turns with the corvettes to die.

  During the engagement, the laggard Gok frigate had leapt forward, attempting to conduct missile defense while firing impactors at Keyes’s left flank. Slight course adjustments rendered the frigate’s salvo impotent.

  After the charge, it came as something of a surprise when Werner reported a transmission request from the Gok frigate. “Put it on,” Keyes said.

  The frigate’s captain loomed large on the CIC’s main screen. “Accept virophage cure,” it said. “Please send.”

  “Are you serious?” Keyes said. “You just fired on my ships.”

  “Do not want to die. Do not want crew to die. Send cure.” It made a strangled sound, which Keyes interpreted as the Gok equivalent to throat-clearing. “Please.”

  “How can I trust you not to turn on us the moment our position’s even slightly compromised?”

  “Gok hitting next system, hard. Even as we talk. Help you deal with them.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Keyes drew in a deep breath, about to order Khoo to blast the frigate apart. But before he could, his XO spoke softly. “Captain. A word?”

  He squinted at her, and then back at the Gok. Then he gestured at Coms to cut the transmission, fully expecting Arsenyev was about to contradict him.

  At least she has the sense not to do so in front of the enemy. “What is it?” he snapped.

  “This may be the most constructive response we get from the Gok. Clearly, the virophage has warped their ability to reason. These Gok are at least showing some restraint. I think we should provide them with the cure and see how they behave after that. Besides, if the Gok in the next system see that one of theirs has already accepted our cure, it will likely make the case stronger for them to accept it.”

  Keyes met his XO’s eyes for a long moment, feeling his shoulders rise and fall with his deepening breaths. “You’re right,” he said at last. Right again.

  They’d settled on the mechanism for delivering the cure before leaving Mars. “Nav, whip up a course for a drone to the Gok’s ship, and tell Engineering to standby to launch it.” The drone would carry vials of the medicine in a cushioned storage compartment.

  He tried to mask the sigh that escaped his lips as best he could. “We need to get this done quickly. You heard the Gok. The Trillium System is under attack.”

  Chapter 14

  Launch Condors

  When they transitioned into the Trillium System, they found it overrun with Gok. Three human colonies and one Winger colony were under assault. Oricos’ planetary defense group had already fallen, and the Gok were bombarding the surface with nukes, as they had done to most of the Larkspur colonies. Worse: the in-system enemy warships outnumbered Keyes’s fleet almost three-to-one.

  But that didn’t change the task at hand. Nearby Acharnae was about to fall, and Keyes ordered his fleet there first.

  One of the Winger captains sent the Providence a transmission request, and Keyes told his Coms officer to put it on-screen.

  “Captain Keyes,” the Winger said. She was Wingleader Yra—Keyes had made a point of memorizing the names of the Winger captains Korbyn had sent with him. He’d already known the names of all the UHF captains.

  “Wingleader,” Keyes said. “What would you like?”

  “The other Roostship captains and I would like p
ermission to go to Peak, our colony in the system, to aid in its defense.”

  “Denied. I won’t have our forces split, especially in the face of such numbers. We must present a unified front.”

  “But, Captain—”

  “Korbyn assured me I would get unquestioning obedience from you and your fellow Winger captains. Are you about to break the Flockhead’s word for him?”

  Yra clacked her beak. “No, Captain Keyes.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. If it’s any consolation, the Gok are fairly predictable in their current state. They’re always spoiling for a bigger fight than the one they’re currently in, and I expect the entire Gok force to start making its way toward us soon.”

  Keyes nodded at his Coms officer to end the transmission. She did so, with a “Yes, sir,” and then she spoke again. “Captain, should I send the Gok attacking Acharnae a transmission offering them the virophage cure?

  “Negative.”

  Arsenyev’s head whipped toward him. “Captain, I would strongly advise—”

  “I’ve made my decision, Lieutenant,” he said, almost yelling to make himself heard over her. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, but I will, for your sake. In their current numbers, I don’t consider it likely the Gok will accept any olive branch we extend to them. As you yourself recently pointed out, self-preservation might be the only thing that motivates them to accept our cure. And so I intend to demonstrate to them the extent of the danger they’re in. Nav, calculate an engagement course using the top acceleration of our slowest vessel.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “We won’t be decelerating anytime soon. Nor will we be launching fighters yet. The battle group attacking Acharnae only consists of five ships, and I want all five of them neutralized by the time we reach their location. That done, we’ll shoot by to engage the rest of the Gok fleet, if it can be called that given their piss-poor coordination. Coms, relay these orders to the Tactical officers aboard the UHF ships and the strategic adjutants on the Roostships: time kinetic impactors so that they hit their targets one minute before we enter laser range.”

  By delaying the shot till then, the usual velocity of kinetic impactors would be added to the fleet’s speed at the time of firing. Pile Ocharium boosts on top of that, and the rounds would reach near-relativistic speeds, whittling possible Gok reaction time to almost nothing.

  And since they’re so focused on slaughtering thousands of civilians with every passing minute, they probably won’t find time for evasive maneuvers at all.

  He turned out to be mostly right. Only one Gok corvette bothered to shift its position in anticipation of ordnance from the oncoming fleet, and even then, because of the impactors’ spread, one round sheared the corvette’s dorsal engine clean off.

  Keyes ordered Khoo to finish off the corvette with a round of Banshees, and that was that.

  Their success caught the attention of the rest of the Gok in the Trillium System. Almost immediately, they broke away from the colonies they were attacking to head toward Keyes’s fleet. Three of the Gok battle groups even had the good sense to set courses that would unite them before engaging the human-Winger strike force.

  “All right, Coms. Now is the time to offer the cure. Send a transmission to every Gok warship.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Of the sixty-six Gok ships remaining, eight got in touch indicating an interest in the virophage cure. The interested captains were dispersed fairly evenly throughout the enemy’s forces.

  “You’ll have to earn it,” Keyes told them. “Be ready to turn on your fellows at my command.”

  A couple of the Gok captains balked at that, and one of them attempted to negotiate its way out of its end of the bargain. But Keyes remained firm. He had plenty of time to let the Gok stew; it would be hours before he engaged the nearest enemy ship.

  One of the Gok even threatened to tell his brethren about Keyes’s plan if he didn’t just give him the cure outright.

  “Go ahead,” Keyes said. “You’ll lose access to the cure, and you’ll die in the offing. As for telling your fellows about my plan, I see only benefit in that. It’ll make them all distrust each other, sewing even more discord and chaos than my current plan.”

  In the end, Keyes bent them to his will easily enough.

  The negotiations over, he returned to his study of the tactical display. His CIC crew were all hard at work, which pleased him. Even given his secret allies among the Gok, with three battle groups bunching together to confront his fleet, they had a real fight on their hands.

  “Launch Condors,” he said. “And tell the Roostships to launch Talons.”

  Chapter 15

  Spherical Death Trap

  During recent briefings, Fesky had mentioned a desire to make greater use of the Providence’s Electronic Warfare squadrons. She did so now, but Husher could see they were having limited effect.

  I guess it’s better than not using them at all. Although, the Gok Slags seemed to be sticking to their usual kamikaze tactics, which didn’t require much in the way of communication with each other.

  The EW fighters also had the ability to mess with enemy fighters’ targeting systems, but again, the Gok didn’t make very good use of the powerful arsenals at their disposal. Instead, they mostly pointed their fighters at enemy formations and accelerated, sometimes firing impactors and sometimes not.

  Luckily, the Air Groups’ repertoire included tactics much more effective against Gok. Especially after the long hours of training they’d clocked recently.

  “Haymakers,” Husher said over a squadron-wide channel, “adopt the anti-Slag formation I had you drill over Phobos.”

  The formation combined an extended trail formation with a fluid-four and two echelon formations. Husher had come up with it during the brief period he’d spent with Fesky on Spire, running simulation after simulation with Gok and Ixan ships programmed in as the enemy. Over Phobos, he’d gotten Fesky’s permission to have the entire Air Group run it over and over again until they’d started having dreams about it.

  Even as his Haymakers formed up, nearby Slags reacted exactly as Husher wanted. When the Gok saw sixteen Condors bunching together in tight formation, they saw a giant target to crash through, with the possibility of taking down multiple ships in the process. Several of them altered their courses to head for the Haymakers.

  He whipped up an evasion course and sent it to every Condor’s computer. It angled the squadron to the left, avoiding the first Slag that hurtled toward them. Picking up speed, the squadron angled their attitude upward fifteen degrees from the ecliptic plane, narrowly dodging the next Slag.

  Soon, they’d collected a host of pursuing Gok fighters, each clearly eager to ram their ships through the giant bullseye the Haymakers continued to present. Up ahead, seven more Slags had drawn together to form a loose fist. They sped toward Husher and his fellows, at a clip that would make evading them hard, especially given their proximity.

  “All right, Haymakers,” Husher said over the squadron-wide. “On my mark. One…”

  The Slags screamed forward, rapidly closing the distance.

  “Two…”

  As the Slags grew larger, he knew his pilots must be getting nervous, even though they’d drilled mock scenarios exactly like this one over and over. Facing down actual enemies intent on turning your Condor into a heap of mangled metal, or maybe just fragmented bits soaring through space…that was a little different.

  “Three…”

  Husher took pride in the way his Haymakers charged forward, refusing to waver even a hair.

  They’re becoming almost as good as my old Haymakers were.

  “Mark!”

  The squadron burst apart, forming a rough sphere which the Gok couldn’t help but ride their momentum straight through. As they’d drilled over and over again, the Haymakers focus-fired on the Slag closest to the center of that sphere. When it exploded in a brief flash of light, they switched to the next target about to pass throu
gh the center.

  One-by-one, they neutralized the opposing Gok in quick succession. Four Slags were close to escaping the spherical death trap, but the Haymakers had a contingency plan for that, too. They assigned five Sidewinders to each fleeing Gok, which, if they didn’t kill the enemy fighters outright, would at least keep them busy, preventing them from contributing to the engagement for a while.

  “Great job, Haymakers,” Husher said over the cheering that ensued. “But let’s not rest on our laurels. There are plenty more Slags where they came from. Form back up.”

  All over the nearby region of space, most of the Air Group’s other squadrons were also assembling into the formation Husher had invented.

  The real beauty of his formation was that it didn’t rely on the element of surprise. It exploited the kamikaze run that was the Gok fighters’ dominant tactic. Now, they’d either have to continue getting slaughtered or switch to engagement styles they were much less practiced at, but which the Condor pilots could run in their sleep.

  Either way, despite the enemy’s superior numbers, Husher liked the allied fleet’s chances of effecting a rout today.

  He wished he liked their chances of victory against the Ixa even a tenth as much. Unlike with the Gok, the allies had no updated information about Ixan capabilities or tactics.

  Husher had run just as many drills designed to fight Ixa as he had Gok, but he was relying on information about their engagement styles that was over twenty years old.

  Chapter 16

  Meat Grinder

  Keyes had to fight hard not to get distracted by the tactical display, which showed the Providence’s Air Group winning victory after victory against the bulky Gok fighters.

  They’ve come a long way since we first faced the Slags, over Spire. Both the supercarrier and her Condors had come close to utter destruction that day, but not today. Today, they dominated.

  He was surprised by the level of excitement and pride that welled up inside him in response to the highly coordinated battle effort led by Fesky and Husher. Since Hades, he’d barely felt anything except bitterness and hatred, which manifested in an acidic churning in his gut and a cold anger for his enemies.