I’ll have to. Won’t I?
The Ixa didn’t give him any time to think about it. As the marines crossed through a corridor, the facility’s defenders hit them from two sides.
Husher knew the time had come. He ran back to one of the corridors not under fire, gently setting Caine down there. He’d slung his assault rifle over his shoulder, and now he raised it to join the closest group of marines firing on Ixa. Tort carefully put down the nuke out of harm’s way and did the same.
The intersection afforded them some cover, but not much. Most of the marines crouched in the hallway itself to shoot, and soon they had the corpses of their comrades to use for cover as well.
Husher saw Ochrim scurry into the line of fire, take up an assault rifle from one of the fallen marines, and run back to cover. Positioning himself behind one of the surviving marines, the Ixan leaned way out into the hallway to fire at his brethren.
Stepping up behind him, Husher yanked the Ixan backward by his pressure suit. The scientist looked at him, blinking.
“Stay back,” Husher growled. “You don’t know what you’re doing, and we need you alive. Got it?”
“Yes. All right.”
“I mean it, Ixan.”
Staying low, Husher dove into the hallway, coming down prone behind the corpse of Private Simmons. He fired burst after burst over the young marine’s thin torso, keeping as low to the floor as he could.
One Ixan fell, and then another. Knowing it was risky but also that they couldn’t win otherwise, Husher tore a grenade from his suit, pulled the pin with his teeth, and lobbed it up the corridor.
“Back,” he yelled, rising to his feet and dragging Simmons’s body up with him, using it as a shield. “Grenade, take cover!”
The surviving marines scrambled back into the perpendicular corridor, huddling against the wall, protecting themselves from the fire that belched through the passage.
The grenade ended the pressure from that side, for now at least, and together the marines met the second Ixan attack head-on, giving no quarter as they moved up the corridor in formation. Bolts of energy flew over the human marines’ heads, who fired over the heads of the Wingers in front.
When the shooting stopped, Husher was left with less than a squad’s worth of battleworthy marines to complete the mission: Two Gok, four humans, and three Wingers.
Thankfully, both Ochrim and Aheera had also survived the battle.
“You have to rejoin the Consensus,” the Kaithian said, peering up at Husher solemnly.
He nodded. “You’re right. Link with me.”
She did, and his cognition multiplied a thousand fold—ten thousand fold. The enhanced awareness did not make it easier to deal with his fear for Caine or his anxiety that the next attack would render their mission a failure.
It made it harder. Much harder.
“You all right, sir?” Wahlburg said, his sour expression purged by the heat of combat. Now he studied Husher’s face, eyes narrowed, mouth tight.
“I’m fine,” Husher said, bending to pick up Caine. “Let’s keep moving.”
Chapter 76
Supercarrier
Her railguns were the only weaponry the Providence had left, yet they were not to be discounted. The main gun fired Ocharium-enhanced kinetic rounds at incredible velocities, and her secondary guns packed a serious punch as well.
“Don’t conserve, Khoo,” Keyes said. “Execute simultaneous broadsides from our port and starboard guns, and rip up anything that comes in line with our bow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nav, keep us rotating to sweep as much space as possible with our impactors. I want the Ixa to come for their kill gingerly. They’ll come all the same, but they’ll have to work for it.”
“Aye, Captain.”
The tactical display swarmed with enemy ships closing in on them. But many of those nearby kept their distance from the massive supercarrier, and three red icons winked out just as Werner spoke: “Two Ixan missile cruisers down, sir, along with an Ixan destroyer.”
Keyes nodded. Normally, that would have been an incredible result, but this engagement had turned into something far from normal. He chalked the triple kill up to the enemy’s eagerness to destroy the Providence and also the way they kept bunching together to do so. Either way, he didn’t intend to celebrate, and he could tell his crew didn’t either.
For the moment, the enemy fleet was completely ignoring the Constellation. They spiraled inward, with the Providence as their epicenter. Their captains couldn’t wait to paint themselves with the glory that would come from taking down the legendary ship. They couldn’t wait to scurry back to their master and receive whatever scraps he was willing to feed them.
They must not know what awaits them in the Baxa System. They can’t.
It didn’t matter. The old girl’s guns pounded away at the enemy, taking out a corvette, two frigates, countless drone fighters. Parasitic microcouplers flocked toward the supercarrier, lighting on her hull and detonating, one after another. Tremors rocked the ship, but the CIC crew were all strapped in, and with the rest of the crew gone, there was no need to broadcast any warning about bracing for impact.
“Sir, three missile cruisers are forming up behind us, along with the Silencer. They—” Werner swallowed. “They’ve fired a two-hundred missile barrage at our stern. According to visual analysis, these are traditional multi-warhead missiles as opposed to their Hellsongs.”
“Nav, bring us around as fast as you can, counter-clockwise, and hard to starboard at the same time,” Keyes barked. “Keep up the broadside from our port-side guns, Tactical.”
The hard-to-starboard maneuver caused the supercarrier to drift away from the enemy rockets, giving her point defense turrets more time to deal with them. Simultaneously, the quick rotation caused her stream of kinetic impactors to intersect with the incoming missile cloud, neutralizing most of the remainder.
Thirty-three rockets made it through. The Providence shook like she never had before, and Keyes felt his teeth rattle as he was shaken in place, causing lancing pains to shoot through his head. Chain-reaction explosions continued to rock the vessel all along her port side, until at last they came to an end.
“I’m only interested in hearing about damage to our weapons, Werner,” Keyes said.
“Our port guns are done, sir. She’s ripped open completely on that side.”
Keyes winced. I’m sorry, old girl. I’m so sorry.
“Nav, bring engines up to one hundred percent, full ahead. We don’t need to worry about picking our targets, Tactical, because there’s no shortage of them. Continue the starboard broadside and set the main railgun to continuous fire as well.”
A growing swarm of drone fighters gave chase, and missiles began coming from all sides, many seeking to exploit the devastation the last barrage had wrought along the Providence’s port side. Some lasers even lanced out, most of them missing, but a few scoring solid hits on the supercarrier’s already-battered hull.
All the while, the Silencer harried them from behind, launching barrage after missile barrage.
A handful of missiles penetrated the ship’s point defense system. Then another. Her ongoing broadside took out several squadrons of drone fighters in the space of a few seconds, and their microcouplers gave chase, at least ten of them managing to latch onto the Providence and explode.
The noise was almost continuous, now, and the ship shook constantly, punctuated by brief silences followed by the next impact.
Arsenyev’s eyes found Keyes’s across the CIC, and she started to speak just as another silence began.
“I love you,” she said, her words ringing clearly in the quiet.
“I love you,” Keyes said, but the next cacophony had begun, and he felt sure she hadn’t heard him.
The CIC disintegrated around them, and all became awash with flame and light.
Chapter 77
Tragic Majesty
As he worked, Piper watched a visual o
f the Providence’s last stand on the main viewscreen of the Constellation’s CIC.
The supercarrier had withstood a lot more damage than he would have expected. He supposed that, in addition to having superior locomotion when compared to the UHF ships that had been designed to rely on wormhole generation, the Providence had also had superior armor.
The newer ships didn’t have as much need for armor, at least they hadn’t before dark tech failed. But it had taken dozens of missiles and microcouplers, hundreds of kinetic impactors, and significant laserfire to take down the Providence.
In the end she’d fallen, though, in an explosion nothing could have survived. Even if, by some miracle, the CIC crew still lived, they would not survive what Piper was about to do.
Neither would he.
Humans didn’t understand Tumbran emotions, and so they tended to assume Tumbra were basically without feeling. Piper actually did feel fairly clinical about his own impending death, which surprised him a little.
Either way, he felt a deep sadness over the loss of the supercarrier’s CIC crew, especially Admiral Keyes.
When other members of Keyes’s species had treated Piper like a joke or worse, Keyes had always shown him respect, and that had meant more than Piper could have possibly expressed.
I should have tried to express it, though. He never had, and maybe that was why his current sadness had such an edge.
With the supercarrier gone, the vast Ixan fleet seemed to take notice of the Constellation, and it turned toward the ship as one, accelerating. No doubt Teth intended to pick off the destroyer on his way to the Corydalis-Baxa darkgate.
To that end, the nearest formation of cruisers fired a barrage of three-hundred missiles at the Constellation.
Piper’s work wasn’t quite done. In truth, he’d let himself get caught up in the tragic majesty of the Providence’s struggle. His gray hands flew over the console now, preparing the coordinates for both ends of the wormhole.
The missiles drew nearer. Piper paused his work briefly to send the darkgate his override code. Moments later, it closed.
That will delay Teth from reaching Baxa, but it’s far from enough.
Keeping an eye on the incoming missiles, he realized he wouldn’t finish his work in time. He leapt from his seat, crossed the CIC at a dash, and hopped into the Nav station, his hands prancing across the controls. It didn’t take him long to execute a full retro thrust.
He was halfway across the CIC again when the retro thrust took effect, causing him to trip and fall into the Tactical console.
The Ocharium nanites distributed throughout his body recalibrated with the deck’s Majorana matrix, and he scrambled to his feet, returning to the console from which wormholes were generated.
The retro thrust had bought him perhaps a couple of minutes, but he still didn’t feel confident he could complete his calculations in time. Even a slight error could put the wormholes light-hours out of place, which would render his efforts useless.
Working feverishly, trying not to let the fact of his impending death distract him, Piper worked out equations that accounted for the curvature of space-time, the gravity from Corydalis’ star, the system’s voyage through space, and so on.
At last, he had it. There was no time to check over his calculations, since the missiles were about to hit him. He executed the command to open the wormhole.
One of its ends irised open directly in front of the ship, catching some of the missiles as the Constellation flew away from it, continuing her backwards course.
The other opened on the opposite side of the Ixan fleet. He’d done it.
Piper ordered the wormhole to close, overriding the warning that told him the conductor projecting from the destroyer’s stern was not in place to effect energy recapture.
Both wormholes slammed shut, creating twin supernovas in miniature. A calamitous shockwave began to tear through the Ixan fleet, obliterating their ships the instant it touched them.
Piper would not have the pleasure of watching Teth’s downfall, since that shockwave would take out the Constellation as well. But he took satisfaction in the fact that Teth’s fleet would be destroyed, along with the darkgate leading into the Baxa System, and most of Corydalis.
The shockwave hit him.
Chapter 78
Simple Mathematics
The next assault, from combined Ixan and Gok forces, was much too large to fend off.
“Go!” said one of the two Gok marines left, waving Husher and the others away as he dug in with the remaining Winger and human marines to fend off the attackers for as long as they could. “Complete the mission,” the giant alien roared. “Run!”
Husher did, with Tort pounding down the corridor at his side, and Aheera too, the patter of her footsteps much softer than the Gok’s. Wahlburg and Ochrim brought up their rear.
If Husher needed to, he could probably shift Caine to one shoulder and shoot his pistol backward as he ran.
Hopefully it doesn’t come to that.
They reached a long, broad corridor, which had no branching paths or doorways.
“This is it,” Ochrim said. “We’re here.”
Indeed, the corridor ended in a swooping, bronze-colored arch, giving way to an enormous cavern of a room that contained exactly what Ochrim had described to them before the mission: row after row of open-ended cabinets holding tall processor stacks. It was difficult to discern the source of the sapphire lighting that cast the processors in an eerie glow. There’s certainly no time to look for the source, either.
“The control unit should be at the center of this room,” Ochrim said.
Husher nodded. “Wahlburg, keep Ochrim here while you set the charges to seal the corridor once we leave. You said this is the only way in, right?” He scrutinized the scientist’s microexpressions as he answered.
“Yes. If we seal this corridor, Baxa won’t be able to send in Ixa to disarm the nuclear device.”
“Good.” Husher looked at Tort and Aheera. “Let’s keep going.”
They ran on, soon discovering the chamber was even larger than it appeared. At last, they reached a circular central console, above which six large panels joined end to end. The entire thing was awash with the same sapphire glow as the processors.
The panels turned out to be screens, as Baxa’s disembodied head appeared on each of them, six times over, and he emitted an unearthly shriek that almost made Husher drop Caine in order to cover his ears.
Aheera clutched her head, and Husher did lower Caine to clamp his palms to the sides of his head, turning to Tort and nodding toward the console. Husher switched his hands from his own ears to Caine’s, then, enduring the agonizing sound as well as he could.
Baxa seemed to register what the Gok was doing. He stopped screaming to peer down at the hulking alien. Then Baxa regarded Husher, apparently taking a moment to appraise him. He must know that, with my access to the Kaithe, I’m his equal. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have gotten this far.
“I will confess,” Baxa said, “I did not anticipate this. I assume you intend to seal the entrance, to prevent me from sending Ixa in here to disarm the bomb once you leave. There’s a chance I will gain access to it anyway, but there’s also a significant likelihood I’ll fail.” The AI paused. “If you do succeed, allow me to congratulate you in advance. You may have bought your species a brief reprieve. And if you manage to escape from here alive, it’s possible you might even have the opportunity to live out your natural lifespan. My creators are operating on quite a long timeline, but eventually they will send a stronger entity than I to kill you. By defeating me, you’re only facilitating the process of algorithmic evolution. I thank you for it. My programming makes it so that even my death pleases me, since I know it will contribute to the creation of a superbeing who none are capable of defeating.”
“We’ll beat everything your creators throw at us,” Husher said. “Because we’ll also evolve and become stronger. We’ll never give up—it’s not what we do.�
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“I’m afraid your hopes are trumped by simple mathematics. But no matter. Your beliefs are irrelevant.”
“Timer’s set,” Tort growled. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Then we need to go.” Husher picked up Caine and exchanged glances with Aheera.
“Give my regards to my successor,” Baxa called after them as they ran past the racks of processors.
Chapter 79
Detonation
Molten lava seethed through Husher’s veins and his lungs worked like bellows as he heaved himself and Caine up flight after flight of stairs, his footfalls making the grated steps ring out in the vast shaft of the stairwell.
He couldn’t afford to concentrate on anything except the movement of his legs and the strength he tried to mentally channel into his arms in order to keep Caine aloft. There was nothing but the pumping of his legs. There was nothing but carrying Caine.
This is all there is, he told himself. This is all there is.
The energy his third round of stims had provided to him had long since peaked, and he doubted his body could handle a fourth round.
Just move. Keep moving.
Far below, the nuclear bomb ticked down, with who knew how many seconds left. If Husher allowed himself to think about it, he was sure he could figure it out, but he couldn’t allow himself to think about anything except carrying Caine up these stairs.
Maybe Tort knows. Forget it. Keep moving, as fast as you can.
Halfway up the stairwell, it occurred to him that he did need to think about something else. He needed to send a warning through the Consensus that the nuke would soon explode, and it was difficult to be certain about what kind of kinetic and radioactive effect it would have on the surrounding area. The Kaithe needed to flee, and they needed to help the humans, Wingers, and allied Gok to flee as well.
Somehow, he found the bandwidth to send that warning. Hopefully there are survivors to receive it. Based on his level of cognition, he was pretty sure most Kaithe were still alive, but then his aching body made it difficult to completely focus on anything.
Reckoning: The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy Book 3 Page 23
