The Mylas’ entire Air Group had been taken out in one fell swoop. At least that wouldn’t happen to Commander Ayam’s fliers, since they were already deployed. That should grant Husher the needed versatility to respond to enemy maneuvers quickly, even if the Progenitors appeared just off his stern.
Husher watched the tactical display, hating the silence that continued to reign over his CIC as the Progenitor ships crept closer across the battlespace. The silence was no different than any other time he wasn’t in the middle of giving orders or coordinating with his officers—except, it was vastly different, wasn’t it? A capital starship had fallen. Even Husher, who’d given voice to the probability of this happening once the Ixa’s creators returned, was having difficulty processing the reality of it.
The capital starships formed the backbone of the Integrated Galactic Fleet, and it felt like that backbone had just been snapped in two.
“Sir,” Winterton said. “The alien fleet is in motion.”
Husher called up an expanded tactical display, one that showed the entire system. There, at Hellebore’s periphery, he watched dozens of alien ships breaking formation at a time, to become a great wave bending away from their previous heliocentric orbit—toward the Vesta and the ships around her.
Idly, he toggled to a visual display, zooming in on one of the ships as far as the sensor could go. At this vast remove, the image was blurry. All Husher could see was a tapered ovoid, thinner at the fore than at the aft, and royal purple in color.
“What should we do, sir?” Noni asked.
“Absolutely nothing. The Vesta may have the legs to make her way around the Progenitor ships to escape through the darkgate, but the other IGF ships don’t. And we’re far too deep inside the system for any of us to go to warp. We’re not going to leave the other IGF crews to die.” Besides, public morale is going to be bad enough after losing a capital starship.
“Should we prepare to engage the approaching fleet?”
“Negative. We don’t have a prayer against so many ships. We’re going to stick with our current line of action, and we’re not going to try to influence something we have no control over.”
He took a moment to wonder why the alien fleet had finally decided to get involved. Had the Union requested it, or were they doing so of their own volition? Either way, contacting them would be pointless. Requesting their help or begging would only degrade whatever leverage the Union had with the new species.
Then there was the possibility that the recent arrivals were actually allies of the Progenitors. Husher didn’t like to dwell on that one, since it would mean certain death if it proved out. But he had to admit it was possible.
At first, he was sure the Progenitors were going to reach them before the alien fleet did. But then he noticed how fast the purple vessels were traveling. It was difficult to tell whether their starships’ engines were more advanced that those fielded by the IGF, or whether they were just grossly overtaxing them. Whatever the case, the new ships were closing the distance rapidly.
When the eight nearest ships of the unidentified fleet drew just within the Vesta’s maximum missile range, they loosed a volley of missiles—twenty each, totaling one hundred and sixty. They screamed toward the Vesta and her companions.
“Sir,” Tremaine said, his head twitching toward Husher. “Should I—”
“Do nothing.” With her Air Group, the Vesta was likely capable of holding off such a barrage by herself. But the same principle applied: if the newcomers were targeting the IGF ships, they would be sandwiched between them and the Progenitors, and nothing they could do would stay death for long.
The next row of alien ships loosed a comparable volley, and so did the next.
The Progenitors continued to approach. The Vesta and the other IGF ships stayed where they were, doing nothing, Pythons milling around them.
At last, the first missiles sailed past, automated guidance systems keeping them well clear of Pythons and warships alike.
When the Progenitors registered that fact, they fired a volley of robots, many of which were obliterated the instant they encountered the guided missile barrage. Several missiles slipped past the bots, however, and the nearest carrier exploded.
Husher’s heart leapt. The six remaining Progenitor ships abruptly reversed course, struggling to deal with the onslaught. More missiles landed on the hull of one of the destroyers, Teth’s destroyer, taking out a turret battery here, blowing open a gaping hole there—
Then all six enemy ships vanished from the system. The remaining guided missiles looped around, rocketing back toward the ships that had fired them. A salvage function. He hadn’t seen that before, but it seemed like a great idea, so long as stringent precautions were taken to prevent armed missiles from exploding on their return.
The CIC remained silent as they all waited to see whether the Progenitors would reappear. But Husher didn’t think they would.
“Send our new friends a blanket transmission request,” Husher said. “I’d like to speak to whoever’s in charge. Include our warm thanks in the broadcasted request.”
“Sir, the suspected Darkstream ships have reached the darkgate, nonmilitary vessels included,” Winterton said. “The single ship resembling the ones that just helped us also appears to be leaving with them.”
“Well, they paid a heavy price for their escape,” Husher said. “Let them have what they bought.”
Chasing them down would take a while. Besides, other IGF ships would likely apprehend them before they got farther than Feverfew.
Chapter 8
Predator
The Predator, successor to the Apex, flickered through the dimensions along a predetermined route, ending up back in what Teth thought of as the Prime Reality.
Unlike the last time his destroyer had fled from the Vesta—when he’d ended up far from any destination of strategic importance—this time, he knew exactly where he was. The Predator now sat roughly equidistant between the Hellebore system and its neighbor, well outside the distance inside which it could be detected within a meaningful timespan, let alone harmed. On the sensor board, he watched as his five companion ships reentered the universe all around him, flickering in and sitting there, awaiting his next command.
Everything that had happened today, including the loss of two carriers and one destroyer, had been according to his design. He’d sewn the seeds of the Union’s destruction, and the main agent of that destruction would be none other than Vin Husher. Teth knew Husher like he knew himself. He knew the sort of person the battle in the Baxa System—which the Union now called the Concord System—had turned Husher into.
The man wasn’t capable of the kind of rapid change needed to avert the catastrophe waiting for him and for everyone he sought to protect. No, he would forge ahead, confident in the lessons he’d so recently learned, and those lessons would take him apart piece by piece.
Slowly, Teth rose to his feet, staring vacantly into space. Today had been a total success. So why did he feel so hollow?
“Immaculate One,” his strategy auxiliary said.
Teth turned toward the Ixan. “Yes, Breka?”
“Perhaps we should initiate repairs to the Predator’s damaged hull. There is much to do.”
Slowly, Teth nodded. “Do so.” Then he walked around his command seat, which resembled a hulking throne, and drew the massive broadsword strapped to the back, holding it before his face and studying its perfection. At one time, the sword—a gift from his father—had filled him with pride and purpose. Now? Nothing.
He paced around his warship’s bridge, the blade’s hilt dangling from his grasp. Each auxiliary he passed shrank away from the weapon. All except Breka.
Only Breka would have the courage to speak the words that needed to be spoken to his Command Leader. Teth’s strategy auxiliary was the perfect Ixan—of the purest bloodlines. Confident, competent. Dominant.
Breka didn’t remember how Teth had sacrificed him in order to inspire the rest of th
e crew. He’d decapitated Breka with the sword he now held, in full view of everyone aboard, despite the Ixan’s supreme worthiness. It had been a demonstration of the exacting sacrifices that victory demanded.
But Breka had no memory of it, just as the rest of the crew failed to remember how Teth had spent their lives in the battle over Klaxon.
That was because Breka was a clone. A replica. Just like the rest of the crew, and just like the sword Teth now held.
Breka looked like Breka. He smelled like Breka, and he said everything Breka would have. His unwavering gaze was just like Breka’s, along with his iron will. But sometime during his death and rebirth, Breka’s spirit had been wrenched from him, and what remained was just an empty shell. An automaton, which acted like Breka without knowing it was imitating anyone.
But it wasn’t truly Breka, and the sword Teth gripped was not the one his father had given him. The Breka clones aboard the other two destroyers, who remained totally unaware of each other’s existence, weren’t Breka either.
Teth had escaped the confrontation with Husher in the Baxa System, barely, but what if he hadn’t? The Progenitors would simply have cloned him, too, and given the clone the task of coordinating the war’s opening campaigns. Functionally, it wouldn’t have mattered—not to the Progenitors, certainly. But Teth could smell the clones’ falsehood. He had no idea how, but they reeked of it.
Unable to take it any longer, he marched off the bridge before the impulse to murder everyone on it overtook him.
Storming through the barren corridors, he brooded. He hadn’t bothered to replace the black, white, and scarlet banners he’d ordered hung around the Apex. He no longer saw the point. He’d spent Breka’s life under the conviction that he’d been building something—power. An empire in which everyone and everything bent to his will. But in encountering the clones’ fakery, he’d also met with the lie of his own beliefs.
His father was gone, and there was no hope of turning his brother to his side—Ochrim’s intentions had always been ultimately self-sacrificing, and now that he knew Baxa’s and Teth’s never had been, he was lost forever.
Even the Ixa were gone, replaced by a species of shams. Teth was left alone, all alone. But with his isolation came a blessing that gleamed darkly, in the form of bald truth:
Life was suffering.
Strip away the pretense and false promises, and that was all that remained. He should know; he’d inflicted plenty of the suffering himself. And now, suffering was all he knew, which was the eventual fate of every living being, until they died.
But only until they die. The universe was malevolent, a cruel jokester, but Teth had not been wrong to be an agent of suffering. No. He had stumbled on the fundamental morality of the universe, and by embracing it, he would join the ranks of the most moral actors who ever lived.
Life was suffering. The only true antidote was death. And so, Teth vowed to become the most efficient agent of death he could possibly be.
The just and unjust alike. The guilty and the detached. They would all die, and if they knew what Teth was truly doing for them, they would thank him. They would call him Saviour.
They still might, he reflected as he about-turned and made his way back to the CIC, to set the next phase of his plan into motion.
Chapter 9
Divided and Deployed
It took President Chiba less than a day to travel to Tartarus Station, and Husher was surprised by his speed, even though the politician had only been coming from the next system over, via darkgate. Husher was used to sluggishness from the Interstellar Union, and for the galactic president to travel anywhere involved a lot of moving parts, least of all his massive security detail.
The fact that Chiba had moved so quickly meant the Union was finally taking the Progenitors seriously. Good.
To speed things even more, the president had sent a message ahead by com drone indicating that he wanted the upcoming meeting with the alien newcomers to occur aboard Tartarus Station.
The same message requested Husher’s presence at the meeting. That was how he found himself walking with Fesky from one of the station’s three flight decks toward a central conference chamber, accompanied by their own security detail, which consisted solely of Major Peter Gamble.
Gamble had wanted to bring more marines along. The man had pushed for an entire platoon.
“We’re in Union space, Major,” Husher had said.
“Yeah, just like we were in Wintercress. And Saffron. Didn’t help us much there. Besides, who knows what these new aliens might pull?”
“The Quatro withdrew their fleet to the edge of the system again. They’ve only sent one shuttle to Tartarus.”
“Yeah, but I hear these guys are huge.”
In the end, Husher had taken Gamble’s concerns under advisement, but ultimately he’d decided they were unwarranted. If the president of the galaxy was willing to meet aboard a space station—a much more vulnerable venue than a planetside building, or even better, a fortified underground facility—then Husher was fine with just his marine commander as escort. They needed to convey a certain level of trust to the Quatro. He would have gone without any escort at all, but he knew Gamble would have turned himself inside-out over that. The man fretted.
There wasn’t much room aboard Tartarus, which was the case inside most space-based constructs. Not capital starships, of course, but that was one of the many reasons the capital starships represented such a leap past anything else in the galaxy. Achieving that leap had required staggering resources, along with some of the finest engineers to be found among the four Union species.
Space constraints meant that even the meeting chamber the president had chosen to meet with the Quatro was somewhat cramped. After leaving Gamble in the corridor, Husher and Fesky entered to find the quadrupedal aliens were every bit as large as rumor held. There were five of them, all in repose on the carpeted floor, and together they took up almost half the room. One of the two curved tables had been shoved back against the bulkhead to make space for the aliens, since Tartarus had no furniture designed for Quatro.
Husher and his XO were almost last to arrive, leaving only the president missing. Flanking them at the human table were Union functionaries Husher couldn’t put names to, but opposite them, on the other end of the table’s curve, sat a boy who was staring at Husher, next to a girl who was doing the same.
What are they doing here? He doubted either one of them was even twenty. I haven’t met very many diplomacy prodigies.
As he returned their scrutiny, he picked up on subtle cues that gave him a slightly clearer picture of their identity: defined jaw lines, short-cropped hair, unwavering gazes. They’re military.
But that didn’t give an answer to what were they doing here. They were too young to hold high rank.
It was a mystery, but he wasn’t about to ask. He returned their gazes with one eyebrow hiked up until they looked elsewhere, first the boy, then the girl.
The president entered, along with a single armed guard who took up position against the bulkhead behind him. I don’t think that guard is going to accomplish much if these beasts decide to attack. Chiba’s head-tail swayed as he took his seat in the table’s center, and he folded his small, blue-white hands before him as he studied the Quatro with the eternal calm of a Kaithian.
The central Quatro rose to its full height, pointed ears brushing the ceiling. Thick, scarlet lines radiated back from its snout through otherwise purple fur, and it regarded the president with enormous orange eyes. Its face looked menacing, but Husher wasn’t sure it was capable of adopting a configuration that didn’t look menacing, in the same way that the predatory cats who’d stalked prehistoric humans across the savanna had struggled with looking friendly.
President Chiba spoke first. “We thank you for your help in dealing with the invading battle group.”
The alien dipped its giant head in response. “This enemy, who you may know as ‘Progenitor,’ is why we have come,” it s
aid in a deep, resonant purr—or rather, the device hanging around its neck did. A translator. Remarkable. “They drove us from our home, and we were fortunate to escape with the numbers we did. As for our aid in fighting them, your people did not request it of us. We volunteered it. Nothing is owed for this. Our aims clearly align, and Quatro also benefit from the destruction of Progenitor ships.”
Husher raised his eyebrows, surprised to hear the Quatro giving up the leverage they’d gained in helping with the defense of Hellebore. Verbally, anyway—the leverage remained, no matter what they said. But still.
“That’s very gracious of you to say,” Chiba answered, which suggested to Husher that the president’s thoughts mirrored his own. “To avoid offense, I should seek some clarification—I’m given to understand that you are Eldest of the Assembly of Elders, and that you are male. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And the Assembly is a governing body of some kind?”
“That is correct. And what position do you hold among this…assortment of species?” The Quatro glanced along the curved table, though the gesture stretched the word to its limits—even a glance seemed momentous when performed by the great being. His gaze took in those seated, which included humans, Kaithe, Wingers, and Tumbra.
“I am President Chiba of the Interstellar Union.”
“Then it would seem our conversation has potential. I thank you for honoring our presence with yours, though I must acknowledge that we have been waiting in this system for some time, conducting seemingly circular negotiations with low-level dignitaries. And yet, once we expelled the Progenitors from your space, you rushed to meet us. Is military might the only thing you respect?”
“No,” Chiba said. “Quite the opposite, actually.”
That’s for damn sure, Husher mused.
Chiba continued: “What is your name, Eldest?”
The alien regarded the president in silence for a moment. “Name?” he said, as though turning the word over in his mouth to see how it tasted.
Pride of the Fleet (Ixan Legacy Book 2) Page 4