“I hope that’s all very well understood,” he said. “Because like I said, there are certain things I’ll stand for, and certain things I won’t. And if I have to come after anyone for destabilizing our society again, I’m not going to do it with any mercy. Because anyone doing that is helping the Progenitors destroy us. And I don’t take kindly to that.” He raised his eyebrows. “Any questions?”
Lisa Sato stood from among her Oneiri teammates, and Husher turned toward her. “Yes, Sato?”
But she didn’t speak. Instead, she drew her sidearm and placed it against Price’s head.
Everything seemed to happen at once. Cries of alarm rose, and Husher reached for his own sidearm, knowing he was too late.
Near Sato and Price, Maeve leapt from her seat and tackled Sato. The gun fired, and Price fell.
Husher sprinted across the chamber and stomped on Sato’s gun hand, which caused her to drop the firearm. He picked it up, safetied it, and tucked it inside his belt.
As Ash Sweeney and Beth Arkanian restrained Sato, Husher knelt beside Price, hands probing the seaman’s head.
The bullet had left a furrow in the side of Jake’s skull, and through the blood it was difficult to tell how deep it went.
Husher wrenched his com from its holster to summon paramedics from the Cybele General Hospital.
Chapter 64
Sleeper Agent
“So Husher is back in the IU’s good books?” Bronson said, staring across the table at Eve Quinn. They were having lunch in Tartarus Station’s cafeteria, as they did regularly, so that they could touch base about progress on the Project.
“He was never in our good books,” Quinn said. “But he does remain annoyingly relevant to the war effort. The Progenitors pose an existential threat. There’s no getting around that. So certain elements inside the government—such as the agency I work for, for example—are thinking that maybe it’s best to wait till after the war to make our move. In the meantime, we can quietly prepare. Which is what you and I are doing, Bronson.”
“You really think there’s an ‘after the war,’ huh? You say it with such confidence.”
“I’m a confident gal. You know that.” Quinn’s lips spread into her usual smile, which made him feel like she was making fun of him even when she wasn’t speaking. “Husher will be dealt with in time. For now, we’ve decided we’ll be following the Darkstream model when it comes to implementation. Sell the military on the idea of using implants to more efficiently pilot craft of all sorts—just like the mech pilots do. What if a Python pilot could become the Python? What if a Nav officer could be the warship? And once everyone starts to appreciate the military applications, we’ll start selling the public on them. Lucid tech will be adopted kind of like Oculenses were, except in reverse: military first, then public.”
“I find this all deeply ironic,” Bronson said.
They compared notes a while longer, until Quinn had to go. Bronson watched her leave the cafeteria, then he got up too, leaving their trays for the cleaning staff to take care of.
Since arriving on Tartarus, he’d learned that the agency Quinn worked for was called the Galactic Intelligence Bureau, or GIB. As far as he could tell, they had an incredibly long reach, which made him impressed that they’d managed to conceal their existence from the public for so long. The Darkstream board could have learned a thing or two from them.
He entered his modest quarters fifteen minutes later, climbing onto his bed to lie on his back, without bothering to take off his boots. Before Imbros, he’d always been used to more comfort than this, though not too much more. He had spent most of his life on warships.
After Imbros, this felt like the lap of luxury. It was a lot better than sleeping in damp alleyways.
“Bronson,” a voice said, and he cried out.
Sitting up, he saw one of the Progenitors’ telepresence robots standing in the middle of the room. “Are you really here?”
“No.”
“Okay.” Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he fought to steady his breathing. “What is it? Why have you contacted me?”
“Our sleeper agent was activated, and she succeeded in creating a conflict within the IU by informing them about a Quatro fugitive being given refuge aboard the Vesta. But she failed to neutralize one of our primary targets, and she has now been apprehended.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“It has everything to do with you. It’s your turn, now, Bronson. Your time has come.”
Epilogue
Identify Yourself
As they drew closer to the Progenitors’ home dimension, the silence inside the Spire’s CIC grew uneasier.
Sitting at the Tactical Station felt odd to Fesky—wrong, almost. She’d quickly grown accustomed to the command seat’s centrality. From it, she could easily see every officer’s console. Here, she had to twist uncomfortably to look at Nav or Helm, and when she did, the empty command seat always caught her eye.
“We’re here,” Nav said.
Fesky turned to her sensor operator, hating that she still had to deal with him after his screwups back in Larkspur. If they’d been able to rejoin the Vesta before coming here, she could have replaced him, and found a new Tactical officer. Now they were inside enemy territory with a crew she was far from happy with.
“What do you see?” she asked Yvan, who was staring hard at his console.
“Nothing that makes sense,” he muttered.
“Yvan! Describe to me what you see!”
The sensor operator jerked in his seat. “Sorry, Captain. It’s just—well, we’re in a star system filled with Progenitor ships. Thousands and thousands of them, all in heliocentric orbit, just sitting there. There are shuttles going back and forth between them and various stations and colonies, but none of the ships have reacted to our presence yet. We’re at the edge of the system, near a large asteroid belt, and it’s possible they’ve yet to distinguish us from the asteroids.”
“That doesn’t sound so far off what we expected,” Fesky said. “What about this doesn’t make sense?”
“A couple of things, ma’am. For one, just past the asteroid belt, space seems to just…stop. There aren’t any other stars shining in the universe. There’s nothing. Just pitch-black nothing.”
Fesky sat in silence for a moment, puzzling over what Yvan had told her.
“I just picked up on an asteroid whose course is taking it toward the edge,” Yvan said. “Should I put it on visual?’
“Yes.”
The main display changed to a zoomed-in visual of the asteroid, and they all watched as it neared the strange border.
When the asteroid hit, it disintegrated, and ripples of electric-blue energy spread out from the point of impact.
“It’s like the forcefield Teth generated around Klaxon’s moon,” Fesky murmured. But is it meant to keep things in or something else out? “You said there were two things, Yvan.”
The sensor operator nodded. “Yes, ma’am. This system—the configuration of planets, the star’s profile—if I’m not mistaken, this is the Sol System.”
That left Fesky just as baffled, but she didn’t have time to think about it. On her console’s tactical display, one of the Progenitor ships had broken off from the immense fleet and was heading directly for them.
“Should we transition out, ma’am?” her Nav officer asked.
“Standby to do that, but don’t do it yet,” Fesky said. “They’ll enter real-time coms range before they can threaten us with Ravagers or their particle beam. Let’s see if they have anything to say.”
The Spire sat there for hours, next to what had to be the Kuiper Belt, if they were truly in this universe’s equivalent of the Sol System. Meanwhile, they continued to observe the system, collecting as much data as they could in the time they had. Anything the IGF can use.
Sure enough, as the Progenitor ship—a destroyer—drew near, Fesky’s Coms officer turned to her. “We’re getting a transmission
request, ma’am.”
Fesky nodded. “Put it on the display.”
When she saw the man who appeared on her CIC’s main display, it felt like a fist of ice had punched her in the stomach. He bore a scar that ran diagonally across his face, from his temple to his chin, and it had healed poorly, leaving his mouth misshapen. But otherwise, Fesky would have recognized that face anywhere.
“Unknown vessel, identify yourself at once or prepare to be attacked,” he said.
Fesky tried to speak, but couldn’t at first. Then, finally, she managed it: “Husher?”
He narrowed his eyes, though otherwise he didn’t react. For the first time, Fesky sensed the coldness that exuded from him—as though he was ready to kill her without a glimmer of remorse. For her, that was the most jarring thing of all.
“How do you know my name?” he said.
Dogs of War
© Scott Bartlett 2018
Cover art by Tom Edwards (tomedwardsdesign.com)
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
This novel is a work of fiction. All of the characters, places, and events are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, businesses, or events is entirely coincidental.
Prologue
Other Husher
21 Years Ago
“Riesling,” Captain Vin Husher said, “I want constant active scans of the area around the Firedrake as we approach the far side of the system.”
“Yes, sir,” the sensor operator said, still sounding a little shaken from the recent battle.
Wicks was in sick bay, expected to make a full recovery. Chief Hernandez had been bumped from second watch up to first. Lieutenant Myers would never be returning to the CIC again, and Ensign Volkov had taken her place.
The Firedrake was deep down Pirate’s Path. They’d been sent here by Admiral Carrow, to find out what had the Winger pirates so worked up. At last, after the most recent attack, he had his answer: stealth tech. They’d used it to latch onto his corvette’s hull undetected. Then they’d cut through her, coming out into a bunkroom full of sleeping marines.
Those marines had all died. Husher had paid the Wingers back in kind, though the ship’s pilot had escaped with the stealth ship.
They’re hiding something in this system. They had to be—else, why would they resort to such a desperate attack?
The Wingers had also struck just before the Firedrake had entered this system. Husher shuddered as he remembered how it had felt to use wormholes in battle for the first time. Enabled by dark tech, the wormholes could be engineered to allow only the Firedrake’s ordnance through. They’d fired on the pirate ships without fear of retaliation. They’d slaughtered them.
As they combed the section of the asteroid belt where they expected to find a pirate base, Husher compiled a full report on the recent incursion into his ship. When he was finished, he transmitted it to Admiral Carrow via the micronet—another dark tech-enabled innovation that allowed instantaneous communication.
It didn’t take long for a reply to come, in the form of a single line of text: “Contact me the moment you find something.”
And so, Husher and his crew kept searching. They found nothing on the first day, nor on the second. On the third, Husher began to doubt, even though all the evidence pointed toward something being concealed in this part of the system.
At last, they found it: a hollowed-out asteroid, with barely anything to indicate it was different from any other, except for the light that bounced off a partially concealed airlock. If they hadn’t approached the asteroid from just the right angle, they could easily have missed it.
Husher sent a shuttle of marines aboard to inspect the installation, and they found it empty, with all the relevant data taken or destroyed. But it was already clear what the structure was: a shipbuilding facility, large enough to produce two vessels at a time, of a size with the one that had latched onto Firedrake’s hull.
Who knows how many of these they might have hidden in random locations along Pirate’s Path. The Path was long, and largely uninhabited, other than the Kaithe. There were plenty of hiding places, where an installation like this might go unnoticed for years.
Husher got in touch with Admiral Carrow as soon as the marines returned with their findings. He patched the connection through to the CIC, so that the admiral’s gaunt face appeared on the main viewscreen.
“Destroy it,” Carrow said once he heard what they’d found.
Husher turned to Volkov and nodded. “Four Banshees should do it.”
With the admiral occupying the main screen, Husher opened a visual on his console, as well as a tactical display, which he used to track the missiles’ progress.
The asteroid blossomed with flame, flinging pieces of rock and metal in every direction.
“It’s done, Admiral,” Husher said.
“Very good. Unfortunately, you’re not done, Captain. You’ve uncovered quite an infestation, and I want it burned out. Entirely. I want you to continue—”
Husher noticed Riesling tense up at his console. “Sir,” the sensor operator said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but we just detected an engine burn consistent with a vessel the size of the one that attacked us.”
Husher frowned. “Do you think it could be the same one?”
“I doubt it. Its trajectory suggests it came from the facility we just destroyed.”
“It’s a stealth ship, then? How did we detect it?”
“It’s hard for me to say, without knowing how stealth tech functions. It’s possible they were waiting until an asteroid drifted into place so that they could conceal their engine burn, but they made a miscalculation. We only saw a glimmer, so they nearly had it right, but I can confirm without a doubt that it was indeed an engine firing.”
“Can you project their position based on the burn?”
“I can tell you their trajectory, and I can also estimate their position within a fairly tight range of possibilities. But one thing’s certain: they’re within firing range, and if we shoot along their exact trajectory, we’ll hit them. They would have to perform another engine burn to evade our ordnance, which would reveal their exact position to us.”
“I want that ship destroyed, Husher,” Carrow said.
Some of the CIC officers glanced at their captain, and others kept their gazes fixed on their consoles. Husher noticed Riesling’s head jerk a little, and Tucker’s shoulders rose and fell with deepening breaths.
As Husher stared down at the tactical display on his console—at the region of space he imagined the stealth ship would be—he remembered the rumors that Darkstream, the company built on dark tech, had Admiral Carrow in their pocket. Darkstream wanted war, people said, no matter the reason. No matter the cost. It was the company’s business model.
“Sir, if we can hit them with a missile, then we can definitely reach them with a transmission request,” Husher said at last.
“What’s your point?” Carrow asked, narrowing his eyes.
“Maybe we can secure their surrender.”
“Why in Sol would we want to do that?”
Husher lifted his gaze to meet the Admiral’s. “Because they haven’t fired on us. They should be given the chance to surrender peacefully. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do, under the ROIs?”
“You’re out in the middle of nowhere, Captain,” Carrow growled. “And that ship just came directly from a pirate base. We’re not going to have any trouble firing on that ship. Are we?”
But Husher pressed on: “If we apprehend them, we could reverse engineer their stealth tech. We could build stealth ships of our own. At the very least, we could find out exactly what we’re dealing with.”
But either there were factors at play that Carrow wasn’t sharing, or he just didn’t like having his orders questioned. Whatever the case, Husher could see the re
solve in his eyes, even before he opened his mouth to double down: “We are going to send a message to these pirate scumbags today, Captain, but it’s not going to be a transmission request. We’re going to show them that even stealth tech won’t save them from the might of the Human Commonwealth. We say what goes and what doesn’t in this galaxy. We are the moral high ground. Now, Captain, I hope I won’t have to say this again: take that ship out.”
“I’m sorry, Admiral. I can’t.”
“Excuse me?”
“I can’t continue shooting beings in the back from an unassailable position. I could fire on that ship, and if it performed an engine burn to evade, I could open a wormhole behind it and blast it from space. But this isn’t even warfare anymore. It’s butchery. I won’t fire on that ship—not without at least offering them the chance to surrender.”
Carrow’s eyes were wide, and his face achieved a darker shade of red than Husher had ever seen from him. “What if I told you that if you don’t follow my order, then I plan to personally ensure you’re stripped of command?”
Husher met the admiral’s stare for several long seconds. He could feel the gaze of his CIC crew on him.
The right choice shone before him, like a beacon. It’s your career or your principles. He didn’t have a family to support, so he didn’t have that pressure to preserve his military career by compromising his morals. But being a starship captain had always been his dream, and he was one of the youngest officers to serve as one since humans first took to the stars. Am I really going to throw that away?
The Commonwealth called the pirates terrorists. Maybe they were right. Maybe the Wingers didn’t deserve the chance to surrender, or a fair trial.
Ixan Legacy Box Set Page 49
