He fed the fabber the adapter specs.
“Husher, what’s your status?” It was Caine’s voice, emitted by his com for everyone to hear.
He unclipped it from his suit and held it to his mouth, watching as the fabber worked with lightning speed. “I’ve dealt with the AI. We can roll out.”
The fabber finished its work, and Husher plucked the tiny piece it had manufactured from its ivory, semicircular shelf. He crossed the room to the buffer zone’s console once more.
“Dealt with it? You mean it’s destroyed?”
Husher took a deep breath, stared down at the adapter for a moment, and then used it to connect the drive to the buffer zone console, holding his com between his shoulder and cheek. Baxa’s compressed consciousness would already be downloading—its first exposure to the outside world.
“Husher?”
“There is no destroying it, Sera. This is just a backup. Its main brain or whatever is on Klaxon.”
“Okay…how are you dealing with it, then?”
“I’m setting it free.”
“I don’t get it. Free from where?”
“The Ixa have kept it imprisoned. I’m setting it free.”
“I see. Think you maybe should have consulted the captain before doing that?”
Husher shot a glance over his shoulder, at the three marines watching his every move. Simmons’ eyebrows were slightly raised, but otherwise none of them questioned his actions.
“Our coms are being blocked from contacting the Providence somehow,” he said. “But I’ve decided this is the right move. If we leave Baxa trapped, the Prophecies will come true, but if we let him go, he’ll augment his own intelligence and nothing can be predicted. It’s the only—”
“Back up for a second.” Caine’s voice was soft, and she sounded worried. “You’re telling me your solution is to let the AI become even more powerful?”
The buffer zone console beeped, indicating the transfer was complete. Husher disconnected the drive and held it in his palm, studying it. When she puts it like that, it does sound kind of insane. But…
He sighed. “Look, if we release Baxa, he’s going to take revenge on the Ixa. He’s angry at them for imprisoning them. And maybe we can take them both unawares while they’re fighting. Maybe we can turn the situation into a victory, into survival for humanity. It’s the only way, Sera. The Prophecies are only continuing to come true, and they’ll keep doing that unless something changes.”
“Maybe he claims he’ll take revenge, but can we believe a thing he says?”
“Sera…my father died to lead us here. That has to mean something. If we leave Baxa in his cage, nothing changes. Nothing changes.” Husher’s voice was trailing off, and he muttered the next words. “Something has to change.”
He turned to the priest, whose long, scaly hands were clasped before him, over its robes.
“Bring me to the mainframe,” Husher said, ending the transmission with Caine.
Motioning for the others to come, he trailed the Ixan out of the round chamber. A short corridor brought them to a perfectly square room with a black tower in the center. “It is there,” the priest said.
Several marines had followed, and they all had their guns trained on the priest, most of them wearing perplexed expressions.
Husher walked to the mainframe and plugged in the drive.
“That is all that is necessary,” the priest hissed. “Now, I suggest you follow Master Baxa’s advice and flee.” A sudden note of contempt had entered the priest’s voice, as though it addressed vermin and wasn’t completely sure why it was bothering.
“Let’s go,” Husher said to the marines, heading for the chamber’s exit.
A sharp crack filled the air, and he spun around in time to see the priest get tossed backward against the bulkhead by an energy bolt from Tort’s gun.
“Do you think that’ll accomplish anything?” Husher snapped. “Other than to piss off the AI?”
Tort didn’t answer—he just returned Husher’s stare with eyes overshadowed by his protruding, emerald forehead ridge.
“Come on,” Husher barked, and he led the marines out of the station. On the way, he raised his com once more to tell the other three platoons that it was time to get out.
Inside the shuttle, as the pilot lifted off and took them into the void, Husher’s com crackled, emitting a burst of static, followed by Captain Keyes’s voice.
“—now. Husher, come in. If you can hear me—”
“Here, Captain.”
“Husher. Thank God. Is Sergeant Caine okay? What are your losses?”
“Minimal, sir. And Sera is fine.” He met Caine’s eyes across the shuttle. They were wide with bewilderment, presumably over what Husher had done.
“What happened in there?” Keyes said.
“I released the AI, sir.”
“What? Released it?”
“It was imprisoned. The Ixa kept it imprisoned. And I released it.”
“Your mission was to destroy it.” The captain’s voice had gained a hard edge.
“It’s just a backup. Baxa’s main iteration is on Klaxon. I had to release it, sir. If I didn’t, the Prophecies would continue, but by letting it leave the system—”
“I’m not letting it leave the system.”
“Sir, you don’t understand, you—”
“I don’t care what you think you’ve accomplished here, Husher,” the captain spat. “Your actions are well beyond the pale. And there’s no way I’m letting that thing leave this system. Keyes out.”
Slowly, Husher lowered his com to his lap and looked over at the shuttle’s viewscreen, which showed a visual of Backup Station. As he watched, the station engaged its engines and began to creep toward a gap in the allied fleet.
Toward the wormhole.
Chapter 35
Brass Knuckles
“Sir, the station’s moving to leave,” the sensor operator said.
“No, it’s not, Werner,” Keyes ground out. “Work together with Khoo to analyze the station’s artillery. Quickly.”
The Tactical officer ran over to the sensor operator’s console, and in less than a minute, they had a report for him: “It’s minimal, sir,” Khoo said.
“Very good. Return to your station and queue up a barrage of sixty missiles. We’re not taking any chances.”
“Yes, Captain.” Khoo returned to the Tactical station and bent to his work.
“Sir,” Coms said, sounding hesitant. “We’re getting an incoming transmission. It’s…coming from the station.”
Keyes drew in a deep breath, the vilest curse he knew waiting on his tongue. For some reason, the prospect of speaking with the AI made him very apprehensive indeed. “Put it on.”
A disembodied head appeared on the CIC’s main viewscreen, which brought sharp intakes of breath from some of the officers.
Keyes narrowed his eyes. The effect was unsettling, to be sure. As for the face itself, it looked like a young Ochrim.
“Captain Keyes,” Baxa said through his grin, which was more understated than that of the other Ixa, but no less creepy for that. “I know what you’re planning, and I think you should reconsider.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’m sure you noticed the bombs launching from my drone fighters to take down your Condors. They are my own invention—I call them parasitic microcouplers. Unfortunately, not every microcoupler that attached itself to your fighters has exploded yet. There is one currently sitting on your Flight Deck B, your ship’s only remaining primary flight deck. I am able to detonate it at will, and since it successfully infiltrated your armored hull, the resultant damage would be drastic indeed. It will blow that flight deck apart, severely reducing your supercarrier’s ability to launch its Air Group in a timely manner.”
Keyes’s stomach roiled, and he noticed that he’d balled his hands into fists. This was the worst he’d let his temper get since Hades. The AI was getting to him. I’m letting a machine get to me
. “I don’t respond well to threats.”
“Then consider this a negotiation. If you let me pass by your fleet unharmed, I will agree not to detonate the microcoupler. But if a single shot is fired at my station, well…”
Baxa’s smile widened. “Why don’t you be a good boy and accept the strategic target now available to you, Captain? The shipbuilding facility across the system is a vital Ixan asset. They used it to build up their fleet to its current numbers, and its loss would represent a serious blow to their war effort. It is my gift to you. Accept it, and be content with your lot.”
Baxa vanished from the viewscreen. At some point during their conversation, Keyes’s face had begun to burn, and his muscles quivered.
A protracted silence ensued, and Keyes flashed back to the last time he felt this vulnerable, on Hades, with Tennyson Steele working his face over with brass knuckles.
So vivid…it’s like I didn’t even kill the man. It’s like he’s here with me, still alive, still torturing me.
At last, Keyes tore his eyes away from the screen, to his Coms officer, who was one of many officers looking to him with widened eyes and a blanched face. “Send a bomb disposal unit to Flight Deck B.” Keyes stood, his footing unsteadier than he’d been expecting. Swaying forward, he reached back to catch himself on one of his chair’s arms. “I intend to accompany them.”
“No,” Arsenyev said, and when Keyes’s eyes fell on her, he could tell she instantly regretted the word.
Nevertheless, he narrowed his eyes. “Excuse me?” he said softly.
“I…you’re too valuable for us to lose, Captain.”
“The Providence is too valuable to lose. I intend to make sure we don’t. Make for the shipbuilding facility.”
Chapter 36
Heavy Attack
Keyes jogged through the corridors of the Providence, which was something he never did. The station of “captain” was not to be taken lightly, though he’d served under a couple whose style came closer to a lark than the gravity the rank deserved. Captains did not scurry through their ships like mice.
Unfortunately, today Keyes did scurry, his heart hammering away in his chest. Though he had no children, he often suspected his relationship with his ship came close to that of a father with his child. During battle, he could usually suppress panic over the knowledge that the Providence was in danger, but the idea of danger having made its way inside her, threatening to rip her apart at any moment…
It didn’t bear thinking about. He ran faster.
After four minutes of fumbling with a pressure suit in a pilot locker room, Keyes passed through an airlock onto Flight Deck B. The supercarrier’s only bomb disposal unit, a four-person team, was already hard at work. Keyes ran over to them and stopped with his hands on his knees, but he wouldn’t let his ragged breathing prevent him from speaking over a wide channel.
“Sitrep,” he choked out.
A diminutive woman named Emeka was the team’s lead, and currently she straddled the Condor, several meters above the deck, inspecting the bomb that had attached itself to the fighter. “Sir, as near as I can tell, if we mess around with this thing at all it’s going to explode. The design is immaculate. I can’t see a way past its defenses that will not trigger a detonation.”
Keyes straightened, gazing up at Chief Emeka. “What if we moved the Condor itself? Would that trigger it?”
Emeka shrugged. “I mean, it flew in here all right…”
“Point taken,” Keyes said, nodding. He used the suit’s radio to raise Fesky on a two-way channel. “Fesky, I need you to tell the Condor pilot closest to Flight Deck B to haul ass here as quick as possible. Tell me you copy and then go find that pilot.”
“Copy, Captain. Fesky out.”
While they waited for a pilot to arrive, he opened a two-way channel with his XO. “Arsenyev, have we received any more transmissions from that thing?”
“No, Captain. The fleet has continued to surround the station, maintaining formation around it as it drifts toward the wormhole. And it looks like everyone got the message about not firing until they have your express say-so.”
“Good. Still no activity from the shipbuilding facility?”
“Negative, Captain. We appear to have dealt with all the defending warships during the engagement. Other than static defenses, I—oh my God.”
“What? What is it, Arsenyev?”
“The station. It…dozens of craft just exploded out from it. They look similar to the drone fighters from earlier. They’re flying through the gaps in the allied formation and are headed for the wormhole. Should I send the order to fire on them, sir?”
Keyes heaved a frustrated sigh. “Negative. We still haven’t dealt with the bomb.” He cursed under his breath. “If I were to guess, I’d say each of those drones contains a copy of the AI’s consciousness. It only needs one of them to escape. Baxa’s ploy worked. Its bomb bought it the time it needed.”
Fesky’s pilot was dashing across the flight deck. “I have to go, Arsenyev,” Keyes said. “If we haven’t done something about this bomb by the time the last drone leaves the system, I fear our problems will get a lot worse.”
He ordered Emeka to get the Condor’s cockpit open, and by the time the pilot reached them, Keyes has already radioed him orders to steer the fighter onto a launch catapult. That done, the pilot climbed out, and they activated the catapult remotely, sending the bird out of the ship and into space, toward the system’s sun.
“Everyone off the flight deck,” Keyes barked over a wide channel. “Now.”
They all double-timed it toward an airlock, and as the doors closed, Keyes looked through the viewing window in time to see the Condor explode, fire blossoming briefly before getting swallowed by the vacuum of space.
The tension leaked out of his body in an instant, and he had to catch himself to stop his shoulders from sagging in relief. Within the quiet of the pressure suit, he began to chuckle, and the laughter had a manic sound, even to his ears.
We’ll make it through another day, old girl. One more day, at least.
The incident made him realize how out of touch he’d felt with his ship, lately. That would have to change. If a captain was not completely at peace with his ship, he did not deserve to take her into battle. That was how Keyes saw it.
“Captain,” a voice said inside his helmet. It was Arsenyev, and she sounded…odd. There was a strangled quality to her voice that couldn’t be explained by radio-frequency interference. “Are you there?”
“I’m here, Arsenyev. What is it?”
“The government of Mars just got in touch with the Vanquisher via the micronet, and her captain relayed the message to us.”
“What message?”
“It’s Sol, sir. The system is under heavy attack from the Ixa.”
Chapter 37
Wreckage
After the mad rush to reach Sol, once the allied fleet finally arrived, it drifted through the system at a snail’s pace. The attack was over, and the enemy had departed.
But not before devastating the system.
Keyes had been able to watch the battle from several angles, via a constant stream of footage forwarded by the Vanquisher, which had used the micronet to access video from space trawlers, orbital stations, and UHF warships themselves.
Led by Admiral Jacobs, the hundreds of warships had waged a valiant fight, taking almost twice their number with them of Ixan ships. But in the end, the entire fleet had been annihilated.
Then the Ixa had gone to work on the system’s civilian populations.
Mars, Enceladus, Titan, Venus, Ganymede, Ceres—all the places humanity had colonized inside its home system. All scoured of their populations.
As soon as they’d entered the system and confirmed for themselves that Sol was truly ravaged, Keyes had risen from the Captain’s chair and crossed the CIC to stand before the main viewscreen. He’d come crisply to attention, saluting humanity’s ruined home, and he’d held that position for a l
ong time.
Now he stood with his hands clasped behind his back and surveyed the wreckage.
Planetary civilizations, orbital platforms, resource extraction facilities, shipyards, space stations, everything. Gone.
Admiral Jacobs. One of the only admirals Keyes had ever truly respected, now dead, after waging a defense that would likely be sung about for millennia to come.
Micronet correspondence leading up to the slaughter told them that before the attack, the Commonwealth had deployed a few more battle groups to the Bastion Sector, to back up those fighting Gok there. Other than that, along with the handful of ships each human system had been assigned, the Providence and the human warships accompanying her were all that remained of the UHF.
We truly are the UHF, now. In name as well as fact.
Chapter 38
The Next Phase
Command Leader Makla, captain of the Scourge, eyed her Sensors auxiliary, her mind elsewhere. “What?” she said. “Say that again.”
The auxiliary knew better than to express annoyance at having to repeat himself, but Makla sensed that he was annoyed all the same.
A judicious application of discipline may be called for, there.
“I’ve detected what appears to be an Ixan drone fighter,” the auxiliary said, “but it isn’t registered to any carrier. And it isn’t responding to override commands.”
“You’re certain it isn’t one of ours?”
“Yes, Leader. I’m certain.”
“Shoot it down,” she said, with a glance at her Strategy auxiliary. “It must have malfunctioned, and I won’t risk the enemy picking it up and gaining intel.”
Her orders were carried out, but less than a minute after a pair of missiles neutralized the drone, the Sensors auxiliary spoke again, his voice strained. “Leader, I’m getting strange readings from lidar. The drone’s parasitic microcoupler has split into dozens of fragments, all of which are headed toward us.”
Reckoning: The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy Book 3 Page 12
