Reckoning: The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy Book 3

by Scott Bartlett

  “I will accompany you, Captain Keyes. As for Kaithe ‘messing around inside my head,’ they will not be able to, since they cannot bond with Fins.”

  Keyes cocked his head to the side. “Really? Fins are impervious to the Kaithe’s psychic attacks?”

  For a long moment, Ek didn’t answer. “I think you misunderstand the nature of the Kaithe’s capabilities. Their ability to link with other Kaithe is not a weapon but a tool. And outside their own species, humans are the only others they can link with.”

  Shaking his head, Keyes, asked, “How can that be? How are we the only ones?”

  “Only you have brain structures compatible with theirs.”

  “Why didn’t you mention that the last time we visited the Kaithe?”

  “It is such common knowledge among the other species that I assumed you must have known.”

  “I see.” Keyes paused for a long moment. “Well, I’ll see you soon.”

  He made his way to the nearest hangar bay, ordering that a shuttle pilot be located and sent there to meet him. A pilot named Skids showed up, and after exchanging the briefest formalities, they left the Providence for Ek’s Command Roostship, to pick her up for the trip down to the planet.

  On the way through the void, Keyes mulled over what the Fin had told him. What did it mean that Kaithe were only able to link with humans?

  Maybe they developed the ability to specifically target us. Or maybe they did so to defend against humans. Did the Kaithe fear humanity?

  And had Command known about this? Perhaps it was why UHF protocol so strictly forbade linking with Kaithe.

  He doubted he’d arrived at the answer, but he did know the question made him feel incredibly uneasy.

  Chapter 26

  Consensus

  Unlike the last visit to the Kaithe’s homeworld, when the Providence marines had touched down in a field outside a city and made their way toward it, an air traffic controller or some equivalent got in contact with their descending shuttle to guide them toward a spaceport surrounded by buildings of middling size and a certain idyllic appeal.

  Other than scant half-cylinder coverings, the spaceport was open air, and a drone waited for them outside the shuttle’s airlock. It emitted a monotonous voice that said only the word “follow,” and so Keyes and Ek did, while Skids waited for them in the shuttle.

  It led them to a structure no bigger than a town hall would have been on a human colony. The ivory and sky-blue building had all round corners; no sharp edges. The roof seemed made from tightly interwoven straw, and indeed, the entire thing looked as though it would fall over from a heavy breath. Keyes felt sure that was an illusion. Given the multitude of surprises and secrets the Kaithe seemed to horde to themselves, he would not have been surprised to learn the thing could survive a nuclear blast.

  The drone slipped inside the only entrance, and Keyes followed it down a narrow hall that widened into a relatively unadorned reception chamber. A single, ornate light fixture kept the room uniformly lit, but other than that the decorations were sparse. Here, five Kaithe sat in modest seats against the far wall, their childlike faces raised toward Keyes and Ek.

  His lip almost curled with suspicion, but Keyes kept it together. If he wanted the Kaithe’s aid, he needed to be polite.

  I wonder whether they’re reading my mind right now.

  “Welcome, Captain Keyes and Flockhead Ek,” the rightmost Kaithian said, which seemed odd—humans would have positioned the most important individual in the center. Maybe these five were equal in importance.

  “It’s an honor,” Keyes said. Ek remained silent, which also seemed odd, considering they were guests, not to mention Ek’s apparent affection for the children.

  I suppose I should have expected some strangeness in a meeting where the aliens outnumber me.

  “You should know that we have extended you the courtesy of refraining from delving into your mind in order to uncover your intentions, Captain Keyes. We recognize the value of organic conversation, and we make a point of participating in it whenever possible.”

  “That’s…very kind,” Keyes said. “Will Aheera be joining us?”

  “No,” the Kaithian promptly replied. “Please proceed in describing your reasons for coming. I know that you are time-limited, and we are also bound by the strictures of time. Even though we have not satisfied our curiosity by means of examining your thoughts, we have ventured to guess what your business here might be. We are confident enough in our guesses that we have preemptively consulted the Consensus on a handful of matters we expect will become relevant during this meeting.”

  Keyes nodded. He wasn’t totally clear on what the Consensus was, but he had some guesses that he also felt pretty confident about. “We’ve learned that the Ixa are led by a strong AI, the development of which was a grave violation of galactic law. We have come to ask your aid in fighting this superintelligence.”

  The Kaithian stood, and Keyes stiffened. It did nothing else, however, and its tiny hands dangled at its sides. “Aheera and her band have been trying for some time to convince us to aid you in your war. They have been unsuccessful.”

  “That’s folly,” Keyes said, though he kept his tone level. “If you think the AI will spare you, either you’re stupid or you have some sort of deal with the Ixa. Either way, you’ll die. I highly doubt an Ixan AI will honor any deal, especially after it’s finished increasing its own intelligence and power beyond anything even you can fathom.”

  “We have no deal with Ixa.”

  “Then help us defeat them. If we strike now, using that superweapon you call a moon, we might have a chance. It certainly dealt with the Ixan fleet pursuing us pretty handily.”

  “The Preserver was not intended for use in offensive war.”

  “Different times call for different intentions. We face an existential threat, and that includes you, whether you acknowledge it or not. In fact, I would argue that a war to stop the Ixa amounts to a defensive war.”

  “Aheera’s band made the same argument. But you misunderstand me. When our ancestors converted Home’s moon into the Preserver, they programmed it to be used only in defense of Home. They spent almost a millennium on the code, poring over it across generations and shaping it until it was perfect. Any attempt to reprogram the Preserver, even by Kaithe, would result in its self-destruction. Such was our ancestors’ commitment to peace and isolationism, and such is ours. So you see, even if we wanted to send the Preserver against the Ixa—which we do not—we couldn’t.”

  Keyes stared at the Kaithian, trying to tamp down the rage beginning to cloud his vision at the periphery. “So this entire mission was a waste. Our people dying on the way here—tens of thousands of them—a complete waste.”

  “Yes,” the Kaithian said. And the terseness of the response uncapped Keyes’s ire.

  He stepped forward, jabbing a finger in the Kaithian’s face, which caused its fellows to rise to their feet as well. Keyes didn’t care. “The last time we came here, we learned that Ochrim gave you dark tech, too. You’re still using it, aren’t you? That’s how you knew we were coming, as well as the Ixa.”

  The Kaithian said nothing, baring its tiny pointed teeth instead.

  “I demand you stop using that technology,” Keyes barked. “At once. You must know what dark tech is doing to the universe, and if you aren’t using it to save the galaxy from the Ixa, then you must stop.”

  “We must do nothing except what the Consensus permits, Captain Keyes. Our stewardship of dark tech is well in hand. Much more so than humanity’s has been.”

  “You?” Keyes said, and his voice actually trembled, now. “You are responsible stewards of nothing.You’re piss-poor members of the galactic community. If I didn’t have my hands full with the Ixa, I’d bring you to justice myself. Refusing to stop using a technology that’s ripping the universe apart, refusing to join a coalition of species fighting to stop the Ixa—it’s disgusting. You disgust me.”

  The Kaithian in th
e center spoke for the first time. “You are asked to leave.”

  “Tell me why only humans are susceptible to your mind linking,” Keyes said.

  “The Consensus has elected not to provide humanity with that information,” the central Kaithian said. “And the Consensus now asks you to leave our Home and never return.”

  “Burn in hell,” Keyes spat.

  The five Kaithe took a single step forward. “Leave,” they said in unison, “or you will be made to leave.”

  Ek placed a hand on Keyes’s forearm. “Let us go, Captain.”

  “Fine.” And they left.

  Chapter 27

  Doomsaying

  Keyes made a point to regularly walk the corridors of the Providence during the tense return trip through Pirate’s Path, and he hoped the other fleet captains were doing something similar.

  He never strayed far from the CIC, but since leaving the Kaithe’s system, the only work to be done there involved administrating routine shipboard tasks.

  It helped the crew to see their captain. Striving not to let himself get distracted by thoughts of the coming conflict—there was time enough for that during the regular meetings in the supercarrier’s war room—he made a point to return salutes and offer reassuring, uplifting words wherever he could.

  No one’s saying it, but everyone expects the Ixan fleet to be waiting in the next system. To guard against ambush, Keyes had ordered a small battle group of corvettes to dart ahead of the fleet’s main body, scouting each new system and ducking back to relay their report before zipping ahead to the next.

  Keyes made those reports readily accessible to every member of the fleet, though he’d long ago discovered that people would rather revel in irrational fears than find solace in actual facts.

  Tensions between the former Bastion Sector insurgents and the other marines continued to mount in the strained environment, and on two occasions Keyes happened upon altercations that may have become brawls had he not appeared at precisely the right moment. It worried him, but he also got a curious sort of pleasure from exerting his will and ironing out the fight before it could truly begin. He wondered if that was a vestige from his time over Hades, or whether it was a mirror reflection of his burning hatred of the Ixa, paired with his new hatred of the Kaithe.

  Maybe it was all three combined.

  At last, they emerged into the shattered Larkspur System, and mere hours after that they transitioned into the less-wartorn Caprice System. The government there made good on its pledge to help refuel and resupply the allied fleet before it continued on their way.

  Once Keyes had delivered an in-person thank-you at a broadcasted assembly of Caprice planetary governors (which he considered necessary but also a time-waster), the allied fleet departed.

  The coordinates Warren Husher had provided to them lay far outside Lilac, which was closer to the Baxa System than it was to Sol. Along the way, they continued to encounter zero Ixan warships. That made Keyes fear that the AI had anticipated the planned attack and had consolidated the entirety of the Ixan fleet inside the secret system.

  If they’d done that, smashing the allied fleet would be a simple matter. The allies would never make it back to the Kaithe’s Preserver before being totally obliterated, and even if they could, Keyes was far from certain the Kaithe would help them a second time, especially after the way he’d spoken to them.

  Should the allied fleet fall, devouring the rest of the human and Winger systems would be a simple matter for the Ixan AI. The thought robbed Keyes’s sleep, leaving him staring at his cabin’s ceiling until his next watch started.

  Just as the fleet reached the outskirts of the Lilac System on its way to the hidden wormhole, Piper accosted Keyes as he was making his way toward the CIC.

  Thin fingers planted firmly on his cheeks, Piper said, “Captain, I do not rate the likelihood of our victory against a superintelligence very highly.”

  Keyes stopped walking. “Considering you’re the closest thing we have to a strong AI, your words have weight. But this isn’t exactly news, Piper.”

  “Have you considered what engagement style you’ll use to combat such a foe?”

  “I have some ideas. But for the most part, I intend to do what I’m accustomed to doing. I’ll assess the situation as quickly as I can, and then I’ll engage as best as I know how.”

  The Tumbran dipped its gray chin sack and waddled off down the corridor without another word.

  “Do you have any insights on how to handle Baxa?” Keyes called after him.

  “Not as yet,” the Tumbran said without turning back.

  Keyes shook his head, his irritation mounting, as it did when he interacted with basically anyone, these days.

  Don’t I put up with enough pressure, without being subjected to constant doomsaying? He understood the impulse, but unless the pessimists had something to contribute, he didn’t consider their babble constructive.

  Continuing toward the CIC, his feet felt heavier with every step. By the end of the shift that was about to start, he would almost certainly engage Baxa’s forces. Part of him wondered whether it might not be his final watch as captain of the Providence, or indeed as anything at all.

  “Captain Keyes,” Arsenyev said as soon as he entered. “Are we ordering the entire allied fleet through the wormhole?”

  Keyes was sure his XO knew the answer to that, but of course she needed to ask for his confirmation. Naturally occurring wormholes destroyed a small but significant number of the ships that passed through them, which was why every species had been so eager to switch to using darkgates when the opportunity arose.

  The allied fleet would almost certainly lose warships during the transition, maybe even the Providence—there was no use pretending that wasn’t a possibility. But they had no other choice.

  “Order them through,” he said, settling into the Captain’s chair. “I expect to face massive resistance on the other side.”

  His Coms officer relayed the order, and his Nav officer set about calculating multiple possible trajectories leading from the other side of the wormhole, based on the limited information they had about the Ixa’s secret system, which had been harvested from telescopic data. They’d tried getting a glimpse through the wormhole as they approached, but the dust cloud surrounding it made that impossible

  Not for the first time, Keyes wondered how Baxa had dealt with the wormhole whittling down his number of ships for however long he’d been using the system. Had he found a way to transition through naturally occurring wormholes safely? Or were his numbers so great he considered his ships expendable?

  “Transitioning, Captain,” Werner said, and Keyes’s gut churned treacherously.

  This felt like it could be the moment his career had been leading up to for decades, ever since the day he swore to see humanity through the perils he’d known were coming.

  But is this really about protecting humanity, anymore? Or is it about acting on the bottomless angst my time in Hades granted me? It was the first time he’d asked himself the question outright, and if he was being honest, it seemed a little late.

  “You were right, Captain,” Werner said. “The Ixan presence here is sizable.” The sensor operator narrowed his eyes. “They do not seem arrayed to intercept an invading force, however.”

  Keyes had his eyes on the tactical display, and he spotted the attack just before Werner announced it. A smattering of twenty-four red arrows collided with the green and blue rectangles that represented the allied fleet.

  “C-captain,” Werner said. “Those…those are Ixan fighters.”

  Chapter 28

  Scatter

  “Launch Condors, and instruct the Roostships to launch Talons. Engage point defense turrets and keep a close eye on those enemy fighters, Werner. I want to discern their capabilities as quickly as possible.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  With that order given, Keyes stared hard at his console’s tactical display. What he saw there made no sense. The
Ixan fleet was arranged into patrols dispersed around the system, as though they considered an attack from the system’s perimeter more likely than one through the wormhole.

  Further, while the number of Ixan warships he saw represented on the display was substantial, it was nowhere near the extent of their forces. And if they’re not here, then where the hell are they?

  As sensor data from all over the system came in, it showed the enemy recovering from their poor positioning quickly. A nearby patrol arrayed itself to engage the invading allied fleet as effectively as it could, and while significantly outnumbered, it made good use of the Ixa’s Hellsong missiles, which they used to blanket the area near the wormhole. Despite Nav’s best efforts, the Providence was set to catch a spray of impactors from two intersecting kinetic-kill clouds.

  “Shipwide, Coms,” Keyes ground out. “Put me on the shipwide.”

  “Yes, sir. You’re on.”

  Keyes leaned forward slightly in his chair. “In ten minutes, all crew should strap in or otherwise brace for impact on a level with what the Ixan captain Teth treated us to above the Darkstream research base.”

  That done, Keyes gestured for Coms to end the shipwide broadcast and turned to Khoo. “Tactical, make our point defense turrets work hard to deflect or neutralize as much of that impactor cloud as possible. Beyond that, engage secondary lasers in point defense mode to assist the regular turrets. No more than one minute before impact, I want you to discharge what’s left of our primary at the destroyer leading that Ixan battle group.”

  “Aye, Captain. I’m on it.”

  “Very good. Coms, send a fleetwide order for all warships to scatter the moment they emerge from the wormhole, keeping movement as random as possible. I want to limit the Ixa’s opportunities for multi-hits.” He was taking a page from Ek’s book, here. She’d impressed him with the evasive maneuvers she’d had her Talons execute down Pirate’s Path, and now he applied the same principle to his fleet’s warships. “Nav, send the trajectories you calculated over to Coms for distribution throughout the fleet, in case they’ll be of use.”