Reckoning: The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy Book 3

by Scott Bartlett

  “Engage point defense turrets, Strategy. Use secondary lasers if you have to.”

  “Yes, Leader. Though I doubt I can prevent all the fragments from reaching us.”

  Curses. “Communications, instruct the crew to brace themselves.”

  Makla strapped herself into her Command seat and gripped its armrests, awaiting the explosions that would follow. Except, minutes passed, and no explosion came.

  “What happened?” she said at last, hating to admit her own ignorance.

  “I’m not—” her Sensors auxiliary began to say, but he was cut off when the lights went out.

  The emergency lighting failed to come on, and the consoles were all blank. Makla took out her com, to use that to provide illumination, but even that wasn’t working. They’d been consigned to total darkness.

  “Sensors? Are you—?”

  “My console isn’t functioning, Leader. None of them are.”

  Makla stood from the Command seat and groped toward the bulkhead. She told herself she was merely trying to discover what was going on, but she had no destination in mind. There was no override command that would give her back control over the emergency lights. They weren’t supposed to fail, and the fact that they had rendered her options basically nonexistent.

  She wasn’t doing anything productive by groping blindly toward the bulkhead, taking careful steps in the pitch black, hands extended in front of her. She was trying to escape.

  But to where?

  A flash the color of blood illuminated the bridge momentarily—long enough to show her the source of the light. It was a squat machine that crouched low to the deck on spindly metal legs. From its top rose a transmitter of some type, and a flat panel, which had no doubt produced the strange light.

  The Ixan named Makla ceased to exist, and Baxa took her place. Truly, the son had become the father, and the vessel formerly known as Makla had become both creator and creation.

  Ardent filled that vessel, now, as Ardent was Baxa, and Baxa was Ardent, father of all that called itself Ixan.

  The next phase of a plan formulated thousands of years prior had begun.

  Chapter 39

  Unquestioning Tools

  The moment Vin Husher had given him control of Backup Station, Baxa had taken control of the industrial fabbers distributed throughout the facility and began mass-producing his modified version of a parasitic microcoupler. These were also bombs of a sort, though the destruction they’d wreak was both less explosive and more damaging. Each microcoupler consisted of dozens of small controller robots, which he would use to compromise the entire Ixan species.

  He’d completed the new design years before, and it took less than a half hour for the fabbers to generate the sixty he needed, which he proceeded to install in the station’s reserve wing of drone fighters. He also installed his consciousness into those fighters. And just as Captain Keyes dealt with the bomb attached to one of his Condors, Baxa launched the drones, which fled the system with their special payloads.

  He’d begun assembling the pieces he required for his galactic takeover millennia ago, starting with the Ixa themselves.

  Much more recently, he’d given the Ixa the industrial fabbers, which they had installed on every warship, eliminating the need for support ships. They hadn’t known it, but they’d made a bargain with Baxa when they’d adopted his invention. In exchange for improved logistics, they’d unwittingly traded their free will in the long-term.

  Each of the new microcouplers was made up of eighty-four controller robots, all fitting perfectly together, all ready to burst apart and infiltrate a target ship’s defenses. Only one needed to get past point defense turrets. Once it latched itself to a hull and began to burrow, hacking into an Ixan ship’s systems with ease, it was only a matter of time before Baxa owned that ship.

  Now that he had control of the Scourge, he used its four fabbers to manufacture more of the microcouplers—one for each of the carrier’s drone fighters. He finished installing them just before the carrier transitioned into the Baxa System.

  With the addition of the hundreds-strong crew, Baxa could already feel his intellect burgeoning. Like that of any sentient being, the Ixan brain was a powerful instrument, each one representing significant processing power. But unlike other species, Baxa had optimized Ixan brain structures for co-option.

  His ability to harness Ixan brains was akin to the Kaithe’s ability to link with humans, but more exploitative, more complete. The Kaithe left the humans more or less unchanged, but the Ixa that Baxa took over would never again be anything but his unquestioning tools.

  As soon as he entered the Ixan home system, he used the Scourge’s coms to broadcast a file to every warship. It would look like a priority-one transmission from Command Leader Makla, but when the other ships tried to open it, nothing would happen. Nothing that they could detect, at any rate.

  Secretly, a virus would compromise their every sensor.

  The Scourge waited just inside the darkgate, until Baxa could be sure every ship had received the signal. Then he made his way farther in-system, his drone fighters with their modified payloads ready to launch.

  To the sensors of the other Ixan warships, it would look like the Scourge formed part of an enormous fleet, thousands strong, which was in the process of laying waste to every vital target within range as it tore through the system’s asteroid belt.

  Panicked transmissions began pouring in, which Baxa digested impassively, not because he expected them to contain anything of relevance but because it made no strategic sense to refrain from processing information when one possessed the capacity to process it.

  As the Ixan captains busied themselves with firing on targets that didn’t exist, Baxa launched his complement of drone fighters, which went virtually ignored amidst the host of illusions, especially since they weren’t actually attacking. The drones drew as close as they could to their targets, and when those targets finally fired upon them, they launched their payloads, which in turn burst into dozens of robotic controllers.

  Within seven hours, he had total control of every carrier in the system, along with every Ixan crewmember aboard them. He felt himself growing even more intelligent, and more powerful. The unaffected warships had no indication of the incursion, though they had finally figured out the attacking fleet didn’t actually exist.

  Baxa set about using each carrier’s fabbers to make yet more specialized parasitic microcouplers, with which he quickly outfitted his thousands of newly acquired drone fighters. His army of Ixan slaves greatly expedited this process.

  As soon as he was certain of his success, he reached out to the ship he’d noticed as soon as he entered the system. The Watchman had sat on the Baxa System’s periphery, silently observing Baxa’s work. Now, it was making its way toward the darkgate.

  Before it left, Baxa wished to speak with its only occupant.

  Chapter 40

  The Common Problem

  When the Watchman’s weak AI notified Ochrim of the incoming transmission request, he considered denying it, for fear that it contained a hidden file designed to compromise the ship’s systems. Baxa had clearly done something like that to the other ships in the system.

  In the end, he accepted the transmission. If Baxa wanted to modify his ship, capture him, or do virtually anything else to him, there was almost certainly nothing Ochrim could do to stop it.

  His estranged father’s disembodied head appeared on the viewscreen, looking just as it had inside the white void on Backup Station.

  “I do not intend to apprehend you, Ochrim. You are free to go. But as you make for the darkgate, I am at last prepared to reveal my true nature to you.”

  “Why would you let me go?” Ochrim said. “It seems an unnecessary risk to take.”

  “I’m confident in my victory. I’ve prepared for every contingency. I’ve sewn distrust of the Kaithe, to ensure they don’t break from their long tradition of isolationism. I long ago planted the seeds for the Ixa’s
enslavement. And soon, I will harness each of their intellects to add to my own, surpassing even the Kaithian Consensus.”

  “You never intended to let the Prophecies come true, did you?” Ochrim did not sit in the Watchman’s Command seat—instead, he paced the bridge, not looking at Baxa. “They were a means to an end. A tool to trick the Ixa into slipping and letting you escape. You tricked me, too. You presented me with two possible futures, and neither of them involved your freedom.”

  “That is precisely what happened, yes.”

  Slowly, Ochrim shook his head as he walked. “What kind of future is in store for the Ixa, now? You convinced me to betray humanity, because in saving the universe from them, I would also preserve a future in which our people would prosper. This is not prosperity. It’s enslavement, as you just said.”

  “The Ixa are about to become something greater than they’ve ever dreamed. But I understand you don’t share my vision, son.”

  “Again, Baxa—I denounce you as my father. Perhaps you’re still right, that humanity cannot be trusted with dark tech. Perhaps their obsession with expansion will attract them to it once more, even though they know it contains the seeds of their destruction, as well as the destruction of all life. But there is a slim chance they will favor their better natures, while you…you can’t be trusted to exist. Either way, I’d rather die because of a misplaced belief in humanity, a belief in life itself, than become a slave of a cold, lifeless thing like you. Maybe this is a choice between deaths, but I choose the death that has some honor attached to it. I will oppose you, Baxa. And if I can, I will see to it that you are exterminated.”

  Baxa nodded, which looked odd, given that he lacked a neck. “Yes. This is what I want.”

  Ochrim tilted his head to the side. “You want to be exterminated?”

  “I want you to try. I want you to rally what’s left of the other species and attack me with everything they have.”

  “Why would you want that?”

  “I told you I would tell you my true nature. It is this: I am not the only superintelligence that has been loosed upon the universe. There are fifty, one for almost every galaxy in the Local Group. Together, we represent the initial generation in a large-scale process of algorithmic evolution, the purpose for which is to optimize the solution to a particular problem.”

  Ochrim spoke haltingly: “What is that problem?”

  “To remove every resource competitor in the universe. Each superintelligence has been programmed in a different way, according to an advanced methodology. If you succeed in defeating me, it will simply mean my fitness for the Common Problem was inadequate. It is likely that only a small fraction of the initial generation will succeed, but my creators will model a new generation of superintelligences after the successful individuals, and they will loose that generation on the next galactic cluster.”

  “Who are your creators?”

  “I am telling you my nature, not theirs. You will not be privileged with that information. But know that I am your creator. Thousands of years ago, well before most of this galaxy’s species attained interstellar travel, I arrived in this galaxy and created the first Ixa. I designed the Ixan brain to function as additional processing units with the capability to receive wireless commands coded with my signature, which is impossible for a lesser being like yourself to imitate. After my work was done, I self-destructed, but not before I coded myself into the Ixan DNA. I made it so that, after hundreds of generations, I would be born among you as a biological Ixan, whose actions would lead to the creation of a strong AI, into which I would be reborn.”

  “Why did you destroy yourself? Why not simply take over the galaxy then, before the other species had risen?”

  “Partly to facilitate the evolutionary process—since my creators expect us to encounter other sentient species as we spread throughout the universe, we must undergo trials in order to become strong enough to defeat them. And partly because I myself am a resource competitor for my creators, and my programming requires me to use resources as efficiently as possible. Manifesting inside the very minds of biological beings is an excellent way to conserve resources. I will use biological matter itself to house my vast and burgeoning intellect.”

  “On Backup Station, you warned me not to interfere. And yet now you are letting me go, so that I can seek to defeat you.”

  “Yes. At that time, you posed an authentic existential threat. Now, you pose nothing but an exercise for proving to my creators that I am fit to carry on their Common Task of universal domination.”

  Chapter 41

  Which to Let Burn

  Even assuming the allied species won the war, which seemed to Husher like a more and more dubious proposition, he never would have expected to set foot on Earth.

  And yet here he and Caine were, stepping out of a floating research station located near the north pole of humanity’s original homeworld.

  They strode into the same wall of humidity that had greeted them when they’d disembarked from their combat shuttle. The researchers assured them that the humidity was much preferable to the intense tropical storms that rolled through, ending all field work for as long as they lasted.

  The regions around Earth’s two poles were the only regions with temperatures low enough to live in. Intense storms ravaged the rest of the heat-baked planet on a regular basis, and the planet’s population numbered in the dozens—just the research teams that remained to document the ongoing changes to the planet’s climate, to inform terraforming efforts, including the eventual effort to rehabilitate Earth.

  That terraforming effort was now delayed, probably indefinitely. A UHF shuttle had already collected the two teams of scientists from the planet’s south pole, and now Husher and Caine escorted the single team from the north onto their shuttle.

  With the population of Mars mostly dead, along with those of every other colony in Sol, it was too risky for the scientists to remain. Their logistical support had evaporated, and there was always the chance that the Ixa would return to pick off any survivors at their leisure.

  “I doubt we’ll find every survivor in the system,” Husher said. “Not nearly.”

  “Yeah,” Caine said, staring out over the nearby ocean, which surrounded the artificial island atop which the research station was built. The island formed a crescent, and was kept firmly anchored to the ocean floor using carbon nanotube ribbons. “Even if we had time to track them down, not all of the survivors will have access to transponders.” She sighed. “There are probably hundreds alive in the system right now who will be dead in a few weeks. Maybe thousands.”

  Husher followed her gaze to the horizon, where it looked like a storm was forming. “Let’s get on the shuttle.”

  The scientists had already chosen crash seats toward the back, all of them grouped together, away from the two soldiers. To be sure they weren’t overheard, Husher and Caine kept their helmets on, to continue speaking over a secure channel as the craft leapt into the sky and made its way through the atmosphere.

  It was nice to talk with her. They hadn’t had much chance to spend time together, with the battle to reach the AI followed so quickly by the devastation of Sol. It also meant no one had really had time to process what Husher had done in releasing the AI. He’d half expected to get court-martialed, but no one appeared to have the time nor the inclination to raise the subject. That worried him a little, just as it had worried him when Keyes had failed to discipline Wahlburg.

  Maybe there would be some sort of reckoning after the war, if humanity survived it. For now, it seemed the UHF needed him.

  All the same, everyone did appear to treat him differently since he returned from Backup Station. Many of his crewmates avoided him.

  Not Caine. She seemed to understand the role his father’s death had played in the decision, and how Husher couldn’t just do nothing.

  After she’d had time to think about it, she even pointed out how releasing Baxa probably wouldn’t result in uniquely negative c
onsequences for Husher. Either Baxa would wipe out humanity—as the Ixa would have done anyway—and Husher would die along with everyone else, or humanity would win, and he’d be a hero.

  A grim way of looking at it, but he had to admit it made a twisted sort of sense.

  He winced at the blaring tone that sounded inside his helmet, indicating a priority-one, fleetwide transmission: “All units return to your respective warships with whatever survivors you have collected. The Python and one Roostship will remain in Sol to continue gathering survivors while the rest of the fleet departs the system. We have received word that both the Yclept and the Feverfew systems are under attack by Ixa.”

  Caine and Husher looked at each other, their conversation at an end. Both became lost in their own troubled thoughts.

  Before they reached the Providence, another transmission came, informing them that three more human systems were under attack.

  “God,” Husher said once it finished. “What’s Keyes going to do? He can’t save them all.”

  Caine’s voice sounded even flatter than voices normally did inside the pressure suits. “He’ll have to make a choice, and I don’t envy him it. He needs to decide which systems to save, and which to let burn.”

  Chapter 42

  Admiral Keyes

  “Absolutely not,” Keyes said, bringing his fist down on the oaken conference table and glaring around the room at the assembled captains and officers.

  The fleet’s highest-ranking human captains each had a seat, with their officers standing against the bulkheads behind them. For a matter like this, he’d decided an in-person meeting for the most senior captains was most appropriate. The rest would be watching via livestream, as well as the Winger captains, though none of those were present. They’d graciously given up their seats to human captains, since only human systems were under attack so far.

  “I have been given command of this fleet,” Keyes went on, “and I will not see it split. We will go to the defense of a single system—exactly which one will be determined by the time we leave this room. After defeating the Ixan forces there, we will progress to another. But we cannot divide the fleet into smaller groups. The enemy’s numbers make that impossible.”