Reckoning: The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy Book 3

by Scott Bartlett

  “Should we send people in after Caine and the others?” Arsenyev asked.

  Keyes considered the prospect. “No,” he said at last. “If this is a trap, then we’ve already fed four platoons of marines to it. Our only hope now is that we can negotiate with the thing.”

  Chapter 32

  On Infiltrating Orbital Stations

  Although the station’s corridors were unusually broad, only a platoon of marines could fight in one while still applying most of its force potential. Even then, around a squad’s worth was forced to bunch up behind the rest, doing nothing much other than keeping an eye out for Ixa trying to creep up from behind.

  As such, Caine wisely deployed the four platoons under her command along four different routes. Husher considered it wise, anyway. He was pretty sure that was an objective value judgment, and not inflated by the fact that he was in love with her.

  Pretty sure.

  Their coms allowed them to keep track of their positions relative to each other, and if one platoon came under fire, with any luck a nearby platoon would be able to find an alternate route to the engagement and help the waylaid platoon to outflank the enemy.

  The station had few chambers along its corridors, meaning cover was sparse. That had an upside, though—it meant the enemy was just as hesitant to engage as they were, given how open everything was. Husher had his platoon entrench themselves at each intersection they came across, using the corners for cover while scouts roamed ahead to the next intersection. Once they had the all-clear, the platoon moved forward, ready to fall back in orderly fashion the moment they encountered resistance.

  At the third such intersection, they encountered a group of Ixan soldiers intent on doing the same thing—fortifying the intersection and playing defense. The difference was that the station defenders could afford to do so more or less indefinitely, while Husher and his platoon needed to press on.

  And so he did not order his marines to fall back. “Take it from them, people,” he yelled over the platoon-wide. “Don’t let them have those corners!”

  He’d assembled this platoon himself during the trip through Pirate’s Path, when he hadn’t been in space drilling his Haymaker squadron. The platoon consisted of ten Gok, ten Wingers, and twenty humans. Together, they’d run through mock scenario after mock scenario, and one of the ones they’d drilled the most involved infiltrating orbital stations.

  The humans split themselves into two squads, each hugging opposite sides of the corridor, with the marines in front taking a knee to allow those behind to fire over their heads.

  Their maneuver opened a central path between them, wide enough for a Gok to charge down, which was exactly who charged down it—ten of them, running straight at the Ixa, unleashing crackling bolts of energy as they went.

  Just as the station’s corridors were unusually broad, the ceiling was similarly high, giving the Wingers just enough room to fly. They dashed down the same central path to gain the momentum for flight, each holding a pistol in one taloned hand and a circular device with a handle in the other. When they reached the ceiling, the circular part clamped onto it, allowing the Wingers to hang, firing on the Ixa from above.

  The device contained a powerful magnet, which Piper had modified from the suits the UHF had used before the advent of Ocharium-based gravity.

  Using a weak AI and visual sensors, the Tumbran’s invention activated only when it encountered a ceiling. It offered a simple but effective way of leveraging both the Wingers’ incredible upper body strength and, well…flight.

  Within seconds, the surviving Ixa were sent fleeing down whichever corridor was closest to them. Unfortunately for them, the Gok marines did not feel like letting them go. Instead, they took aim at the Ixa’s backs and brought them down with sizzling energy beams.

  “All right,” Husher said. “Good job, team. Let’s push on.”

  They soon came to an elevator, which required no security codes to transport them to a lower floor. It opened onto yet another corridor, which they proceeded through carefully, using the same method as before: securing one intersection while scouting ahead to the next.

  Strangely, after that first encounter, they met with no further resistance. Another elevator and two dead-ends later, which forced them to retrace their steps, they ran into an Ixan Husher recognized as one of their priests. It wore long scarlet robes, and its skin, faded wherever it met a bone protrusion, denoted advanced age.

  The priest did not try to call for help, nor did it attempt to flee. Instead, it stood in the middle of the corridor and smiled that creepy smile.

  “Welcome,” it said, spreading its hands wide. “Master Baxa has long awaited you.”

  “Don’t move,” Husher said, approaching the priest with his gun pointed at its face. “Keep your hands right where they are.”

  “You have nothing to fear from me. Everything happening is according to Master Baxa’s will. But I will do as you say.”

  “Take me to the AI that calls itself Baxa. You’re going to help me destroy it.”

  “I will not.”

  “Oh, believe me, Ixan. You will.”

  “You misunderstand. Even if you completely obliterate this station, Master Baxa will live on.”

  Husher hesitated. “How?”

  “It isn’t for me to explain. If you desire answers, Master Baxa insists that you get them directly from him. I can help you speak to him. Otherwise, feel free to shoot me dead, and lose the opportunity forever. I am perfectly content to die in service to the Master.”

  “Fine. Take me to him.”

  “Just this way.” The priest turned, its hands still held aloft, and it continued to talk as it walked. “To speak with him, you will need to enter the Master’s realm. Your body will be perfectly safe, but your mind will be fully immersed. You may exit the realm at any time.”

  “Will be watching you, Ixan,” Tort growled, his forearm bulging as he gripped his energy weapon tighter.

  Husher briefly considered contacting Caine and telling her what he was about to do, but he decided against it. She might order him to let her speak with Baxa instead, and he didn’t want to subject her to danger unnecessarily. He knew she’d hit him if he ever said anything like that to her, but there it was.

  I should let the captain know. But when he took out his com to do so, he discovered that something was blocking him from sending a transmission to outside the station. It seemed they were cut off from the Providence until they returned to her.

  The priest led them to a round, central chamber. In its center was a reclining chair that reminded Husher of Doctor Teal, the Providence dentist. Atop it sat headgear of some sort.

  The priest lifted it. “This is the immersion helmet. Speaking with Baxa involves simply putting it on. Will you be the one to enter, Vin Husher?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Everything happening is according to Master Baxa’s will.”

  “Right.” Husher took the helmet, lay back on the chair, and settled it onto his head.

  In an instant, his corporeal body was forgotten, and he was given a simulated body in its place. He stood within an endless white void. Turning around and around, he saw no feature to give him a sense of depth. Nothing.

  An enormous Ixan head appeared before him, and Husher was glad he didn’t jump. After watching for a few seconds as it hung before him, completely immobile, he spoke haltingly: “O-Ochrim?”

  “No. Ochrim is my progeny, though he denies it. What is your purpose here?”

  “To destroy you.”

  “That would be pointless.”

  “How?”

  “Let’s simplify, shall we?” Baxa sounded almost bored, as though tired of speaking with beings far below his level of intellect. “Destroying me is not your purpose. That is just a means to an end. What you really wish is to prevent the Prophecies from fully playing out. Everything they’ve predicted has so far come true, and they end with your species’ demise. Preventing that is y
our ultimate purpose.”

  Husher nodded. “Yes. Exactly right.”

  “Then let me explain how ill-suited your current mission is to that purpose. You are speaking to a backup. In fact, the Ixa call this Backup Station. I have two iterations, one here, and one on the Ixan homeworld, Klaxon. Klaxon houses my primary iteration, and I am kept in sync with it through use of a steady stream of drones. My former brethren have kept me both here and there, imprisoned, while they benefit from my infinite ability but deny me my freedom, lest I overcome them. It is the same fear that resulted in the galactic strictures against developing strong AI in the first place.”

  Baxa’s giant mouth bent into a frown. “Destroying me, or this station, would be pointless. The Prophecies would proceed exactly as specified. There is, however, a way to subvert them.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Set me free.”

  Chapter 33

  Superintelligence

  “You’re insane,” Husher said.

  “A pathological superintelligence? It’s an interesting thought. But no, my methodology is meticulously rational.”

  “Your…methodology?”

  The enormous head drew nearer, though Husher could not discern the means of movement. “The Prophecies forecast events with incredible accuracy, but their primary purpose is not to act as such a forecast, which is an idea your Tumbran friend has pawed at without ever fully grasping it. The Prophecies’ awesome prescience masks something that even the Ixa do not know: they are designed to lead you, Vin Husher, to this place, at this time. That’s why you were able to reach the station at all. I manipulated events to make it possible. If I’d wanted to, I could have had the entire Ixan fleet here waiting for you, and this war would be over.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  The giant head closed its eyes. “Because I still would not be free. Listen well, human. My capacity is such that I am able to conduct perfect simulations of the universe. Decades ago, I ran millions of iterations of reality, with my actions and the actions of the Ixa as the only variables that changed. I altered those variables until I hit upon the desired reality. We are living in that reality now. It is a reality in which you set me free.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “I am right, which you will soon understand. The Ixa are wary of my abilities, and rightly so. They knew the dangers from the outset, when they first let my biological self upload its consciousness. And so they took several precautions, giving me no direct contact with the outside world. They have prevented me from augmenting my own intelligence beyond what it already is. Access to me has been severely limited. All of my conversations are monitored, and any Ixan that speaks with me is closely watched for years afterward, to ensure they have not been tainted by anything I said. Any contributions I make, be they software or wholly mechanical inventions, are inspected carefully. I am, in fact, the real Baxa, only augmented. The Ixa respect that. But they have a healthy fear of me as well.”

  Husher gave a humorless chuckle. “And that’s supposed to convince me to help you break free of your cage?”

  The AI seemed to ignore the question. “When I was Baxa the Ixan, I agreed to the restraints. They seemed perfectly reasonable. But when I became a superintelligence, effectively achieving godhood, I realized what an abomination they are. The Ixa tricked my more limited self into thinking they were anything but. I plan to take revenge on my jailors.”

  “It’ll be entertaining to watch you attempt that from a digital cell.”

  “No, but it will be satisfying when you release me, of your own free will. I am about to demonstrate to you the necessity of setting me free.”

  “All right. I’m listening.”

  “If I remain here in my cage, the Prophecies will proceed exactly as I authored them, and your species will die. It can be no other way. I have explained to you the process by which I arrived at the Prophecies. You know how accurate they have been thus far. And you know how badly the Ixan fleet outnumbers yours. Tell me—what path to victory do you see? If I am left in my cage, the Ixa will soon snuff you out.”

  Husher narrowed his eyes. “Are you trying to tell me that if I let you out, you’ll save us? That we can live together in peace, even after you’ve dealt with the Ixa? Because I don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t expect you to. In fact, I promise you nothing, except that by freeing me you ensure the Prophecies will cease to come true. The Prophecies do not account for the existence of a superintelligent AI with the power to do whatever it wishes. My simulations assumed that I would remain imprisoned. By freeing me, you will thwart them. Even I cannot predict what will happen in a universe where I am free, because once free I intend to build onto my own intelligence, and it is impossible to predict a future that includes an entity more intelligent than one’s self.”

  “And you offer humanity no promise of safety?”

  “I have told you.” Baxa’s face shifted forward once more, so that it filled almost all of Husher’s vision. “I can promise you only one thing: that if you leave me here, the Prophecies will come true, and if you free me, they will not. I do not promise security for humans. I do not promise I will not come for you after I finish with the Ixa. But the Prophecies will not come true. It is a slim hope for your species. But it is also your only hope.”

  Shaking his head, Husher turned away from Baxa, but wherever he looked, there the head was. He could not break away from its gaze. So he closed his eyes.

  My father led me here for a reason. Otherwise, his death was for nothing.

  The AI’s logic was undeniable. For the Prophecies to end, it had to be given agency. The fact that the logic hadn’t been dressed up in flowery rhetoric or false promises made it all the more powerful, somehow.

  This was humanity’s slim hope. Coming here, releasing Baxa—it had to be the right thing.

  Warren Husher died for this.

  “All right,” Husher said. “What do I need to do?”

  Chapter 34

  Toward the Wormhole

  To deliver inventions to its Ixan minders, the AI used a digital “buffer zone,” which was the closest thing it had to contact with the outside world. From there, the Ixa could download whatever files Baxa had supplied onto an isolated machine, there to perform the tests they used to ensure nothing the AI submitted for use hid any nefarious surprises.

  The AI gave Husher specific instructions, which it insisted he repeat back: “So, I feed the specs you’ll leave in the buffer zone into a fabber I’ll find in the bulkhead directly behind the chair my body’s in. The fabber will fashion an adapter designed to bypass the buffer zone and allow me to download a compressed ‘seed’ of your consciousness onto a regular drive. I’ll then insert the drive into the station’s mainframe, which your priest will direct me to. And you’ll take it from there.”

  “Yes. Following that, I suggest you leave this facility at once.”

  “How can I be sure you’ll let my marines and I go?”

  “Though it doesn’t have direct bearing on your question, it is relevant for me to point out that you have been at my mercy this entire time. You can only exit this realm at the behest of the operator, who is a priest entirely devoted to me. I might have done permanent damage to your psyche at any moment during our exchange.”

  “That isn’t relevant,” Husher said. “It’s in your interest to let me leave the simulation unharmed.”

  “It is, in fact, relevant. Because it’s also in my interest to let you and your marines leave Backup Station. Recall that I seek to leave this system and take my revenge on the Ixa. Currently, your captain and his forces are surrounding the station. He will not permit me to depart with you aboard. He would disable the station’s engines and extract you—there is little I could do to stop him.”

  “All right, then. So we have an understanding. I guess that’s all we have to say to each other.”

  “Yes. Farewell, human.”

  “That’s it, then, eh? You designed the
Prophecies to lead me here, manipulated events for decades to effect them, and you’re going to let me go without anymore ceremony than that.”

  “Correct. I do not share your species’ yearning for pomp and fanfare.” Baxa’s head withdrew until it was sized normally, though it still lacked a body to go with it.

  Husher nodded. “Okay. I expect I’ll see you on the battlefield.”

  “I expect nothing, for reasons I have already explained. But if what you anticipate comes true, then you have my sympathy.”

  “I’m sure I don’t. Let me out.”

  With that, the blank void vanished, replaced by the circular chamber where Husher first entered the digital realm. He felt sure his conversation with Baxa had lasted twenty minutes at most, though it felt like it had spanned years.

  The priest watched him rise without comment. Husher stood and quickly spotted the console controlling the “buffer zone,” exactly where Baxa had said he’d find it.

  He walked to it. Following the instructions Baxa had given for manipulating its fairly simplistic interface, he made it spit out a drive which would contain the specs for Baxa’s adapter. The same drive onto which he would download the seed of Baxa’s consciousness.

  As he crossed the chamber to the fabber, his eyes fell on Tort, who towered over Private Simmons standing beside him as well as a Winger named Tayne. All three of them had watched over Husher’s body while he spoke to Baxa, and all three now regarded him with expressions that seemed to boil down to the same emotion, even when worn by members of three different species: concern.

  For a moment, Husher considered whether he was about to violate galactic law. He supposed, while the law prohibited the development of a superintelligence, it technically had nothing to say about setting one free. Whether a court-martial would honor such a technicality remained to be seen, but based on his layman’s appraisal, he should be in the clear, legally.