Reckoning: The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy Book 3

by Scott Bartlett

  As it turned out, that assumption was wrong.

  “Nav, I want you to bring our nose to starboard as fast as you possibly can, and Coms, order every other ship in the battle group to do the same. We won’t have time to point back at the oncoming enemy, so here’s what we’re going to do. Tactical, coordinate with your counterparts aboard the other ships to launch a four hundred-strong missile barrage at the group of Ixan ships attacking the system, and as our noses cross their paths, fire primary rail guns into their formations as well. Nav, do not slow our rotation—at the end of this, I want each ship to have performed a complete one-eighty.”

  “What about the seventy ships incoming?” Khoo asked.

  Keyes nodded. “I want every ship in the battle group to execute a primary-laser broadside, painting our targets before we hit them to make sure we have no unnecessary overlap throughout the group. It’s the last thing they’ll expect, since in every other engagement we’ve used our lasers to neutralize their Hellsongs. Khoo, I know that’s too many firing solutions for one person to calculate in such a short timespan, and so I’m assigning the XO to handle the laser barrage.”

  Arsenyev nodded, moving to join Khoo at the Tactical station.

  The Nav officer was hard at work, but he still found time to speak: “What will we do once we’ve completed our rotation, Captain?”

  “We’ll fire engines at full power, giving us the space we need to take out the Hellsong missiles the Ixa will no doubt send at us. With any luck, those seventy ships will also come after us, setting up a beautiful flank for the rest of the fleet once they arrive.”

  Each officer went to work, and Keyes took it upon himself to monitor the tactical display for unexpected developments. If you weren’t prepared to modify your plan on the fly, you didn’t deserve for it to succeed in the first place.

  As it happened, something unexpected did come up. The primary laser broadside went better than he could have hoped, with eleven Ixan ships exploding in brief flashes of light.

  But as his battle group pulled away from the fifty-nine remaining ships, and four hundred Banshees screamed toward the Ixan fleet near Zakros, an enemy battle group of seventeen carriers broke off from their main fleet. They launched squadron after squadron of drone fighter, until the zoomed-in tactical display showed a mess of red arrows, impossible to follow until Keyes reduced the size of the digital asset representing the drones.

  The drone fighter fleet crashed into the missile barrage, shooting many of them down, and taking out many more with kamikaze tactics.

  Of course. Without living beings piloting them, the drones were entirely expendable—certainly moreso than the warships the missiles had been aimed at. And when the drone fighters went down, their parasitic microcouplers proved swift and precise enough to catch up to other missiles, latch on to them, and explode.

  Blinking at the tactical display, Keyes mulled over the implications of what had just happened.

  How fast can they produce more of those drone fighters? Husher had told him the Ixa had what he called “fabbers,” which sounded like highly advanced 3D printers. But the level of automation and power it would take to produce drone fighters at a meaningful pace…it didn’t seem likely the Ixan warships could carry such facilities with them.

  Still, the question worried him. Because taking down an entire missile barrage had only worked due to the sheer number of drone fighters the Ixa had had, and if they could quickly replace them…that would prove to be a real problem.

  “Captain, we have a problem,” Werner said, echoing Keyes’s thoughts.

  “What is it?”

  “The carriers that just dealt with our salvo of missiles are now headed for our Air Group, along with their remaining drone fighters.”

  Chapter 47

  The Dynamo

  Fesky performed best under pressure, and pressure had never been greater. She danced through a sea of kinetic impactors, missiles, fighters, and parasitic microcouplers, rotating around and around, anticipating when targets would flash past her crosshairs and firing whenever they did—kinetic impactors for when her aim was true and Sidewinders for when it was a little off.

  Even if she’d had the hours it would have taken to feed her Condor’s computer all of the firing solutions her maneuvers would have required, she doubted the thing could have pulled off such a complex operation without messing up somehow, perhaps dramatically.

  And so she relied on her training and experience, but most of all, she relied on her instincts.

  She neutralized a drone fighter, and on her next revolution, she picked off the parasitic microcoupler it had launched at her just before exploding. Next, a missile, just before it hit her. Then two more microcouplers, one of them headed for a Talon.

  Fesky had ordered the rest of the Providence Air Group to stick to their formations and engage the swarms of drone fighters as best as their training had taught them. She’d never bothered teaching them the maneuver she executed now, which the captain sometimes called the Dynamo. And she rarely broke it out in battle. It set the wrong example to her pilots, who would inevitably want to attempt to replicate it, which would almost certainly result in friendly fire taking out friendly ships. Fesky had never met anyone with the talent and reflexes to properly execute the Dynamo.

  But she could, and if there was ever a time for it, that was now, with Condors and Talons dropping all around her like flies, their formations splintering.

  The battle group defending Zakros was also crumbling. It had just five ships left, one of them with its engines blasted clean away.

  Fesky was impressed by how much of Zakros’ planetary defense group remained, but they also needed help, and Keyes’s battle group was being pushed back by the Ixan ships that had come out to confront them, despite the captain’s initial success against them.

  “Spank,” she squawked over a two-way channel. “How close have you gotten that EW squadron?”

  “Still not close enough, Madcap,” he said. “These drones are providing my Haymakers with stiff resistance.”

  “No kidding,” she said, continuing her wild revolutions, taking down a microcoupler, a drone, and then the microcoupler it launched. “Keep pushing.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Fesky returned to focusing wholly on her spinning. Eventually, she was forced to stop the Dynamo, when a squadron of drone fighters cottoned on to the danger she posed and focused fire on her with kinetic impactors and missiles alike. After that, it was all she could do to stay alive.

  She refused to ask for help from the other pilots, since doing so would only endanger them. Instead, she used Ocharium boost to gain some distance and evade impactors, flipped around to take down a couple missiles, and then did yet another one-eighty to boost away again.

  The rest of the missiles were gaining on her, but she thought she could handle them. Barely.

  At last, Husher managed to get the EW squadron, minus three lost fighters, close enough to some drone fighters to have an effect. When the Haymakers took down a drone, the accompanying EW fighters focused their scrambling equipment on the area where it had been, with the intention of messing with the parasitic microcoupler’s targeting systems.

  It worked. The microcoupler zoomed off into space, exploding harmlessly a few hundred kilometers out.

  Well, that’s good.

  It wasn’t bad, anyway. Now, at least Fesky knew that if she had enough EW fighters distributed throughout the battle, and they used their signal-jamming capabilities at just the right moment, she could even the odds with the fighter drones. It wasn’t much, and it involved taking on quite a bit of vulnerability, but it was something.

  Fesky wanted each fighter installed with its own jamming equipment, but that would take far longer than they had. If the UHF hadn’t abandoned space fighters long ago, they probably would have evolved to that point by now.

  No such luck.

  The last ship of the UHF battle group guarding Feverfew exploded in a brief flash o
f light, and the Zakros defense group was down to three squadrons—a shocking collapse in its numbers. Two orbital defense platforms were down as well.

  Keyes was fighting back against the remaining Ixan ships from the group that had been sent against him, and soon the allied fleet would arrive to execute a pretty devastating flank, unless the Ixa came up with something fast.

  But even if the flank was executed flawlessly, the allies would lose ships pulling it off, and then they’d lose even more as they battled the Ixa attacking Zakros, who looked like they might get through to the civilian population after all.

  They would win this engagement, but the toll victory would take made Fesky wince. How long could they keep this up? How many systems could they save before their numbers depleted enough to make the next engagement a total defeat?

  She chose another target and fired.

  Chapter 48

  Free Rein to Slaughter

  “The Ixa are fleeing, Admiral,” Werner said. “They’re making for the Feverfew-Thistle darkgate.”

  Finally. “Make them pay dearly as they extract themselves from the engagement, Khoo. I want Banshees chasing each ship out of the system, enough that they’ll have a hell of a time preventing any from hitting them. Coms, pass the same order to the rest of the fleet.”

  “Yes, sir,” both officers chimed in unison.

  The flank had gone as well as could be expected, with just nine allied ships lost, but the seventeen Ixan ships that had survived it joined their fellows over Zakros, making one hundred and fifty-four warships to regroup and sink their teeth into the oncoming allied fleet.

  “You have the command, Arsenyev.”

  “Aye, Admiral.”

  Keyes’s feet were heavy as he retired to his office, where he would use his console to join a conference call consisting of every ship captain. He’d initiated the meeting himself, after deciding there was no time to meet in-person. No time to waste.

  Stopping the Ixa from laying waste to the planet’s civilian population had exacted a heavy cost. The Providence’s Air Group lost forty Condors, bringing it to a total of three hundred and forty-one remaining, and most Roostships lost a comparable amount.

  As for the main allied fleet, the Ixa succeeded in taking out one hundred and nineteen ships before extracting themselves from the engagement.

  He sat at his desk and drew a ragged breath before joining the call, unsure of exactly what he was going to say to the other captains once they connected.

  How can we go on like this?

  Hand shaking, he switched his console to holographic projection mode, which made each captain’s head and torso appear atop his desk in miniature as they logged on, one-by-one. Keyes’s entire body buzzed, much like it did when he’d had too much coffee, but it wasn’t caffeine that gripped him. It was anxiety bordering on abject terror.

  Get a grip, Leonard. You need to project confidence.

  He didn’t bother to turn on animations. It looked a bit odd, in his opinion, having tiny, animated versions of his colleagues speaking to him from his desktop. So he left them static.

  “Admiral Keyes,” Captain Cho said, his avatar lighting up atop the desk. His voice sounded strained. “Which system will we move to defend next?”

  Suddenly, Keyes knew exactly what he needed to say to the other captains, and it was his fear that helped him get there. They’d lost roughly a sixth of their strength in retaking Feverfew. Forcing the Ixa out of other systems would mean losing even more. Given that, only one rational course remained.

  “We won’t move to defend any system.”

  That brought a confused tumult as each captain tried to voice his or her displeasure at once. Keyes waited until they fell silent.

  “We lost well over a hundred ships today,” Keyes said, his voice quiet. “If the next system we attempt to retake from the Ixa is being attacked by a fleet of comparable size, we will likely lose an ever greater number. The Ixa are attempting to bleed us out, and they soon will if we continue on this course. Once our fleet is shattered, they will have free rein to slaughter all of the humans, all of the Wingers, all of the Gok, and all of the Tumbra.”

  “What option do we have?” It was Flockhead Korbyn, and for once he didn’t sound overconfident. He sounded scared.

  Keyes heaved a sigh, which he fought to keep from getting picked up by his mic. “We must gather together all the survivors we can reach,” he said. “Our species must flee.”

  Chapter 49

  Wholeheartedly

  “Your coming has given us pause, Friend Ochrim,” Porah said. “The Consensus does not usually take this long to arrive at a decision.”

  “It’s a big decision,” Ochrim said. “History-making. But maybe the Consensus should take this long with every matter it considers. It’s only been ten minutes since I posed the question, after all.”

  Porah gave the Kaithian equivalent of a shrug. “Our species memory is long, and we have navigated most issues before.”

  “But not this one?”

  “Not this particular situation, no.”

  As they waited, Ochrim reflected on the psychological phenomenon of self-herding, which had been documented in most sentient species. Intelligent beings were more likely to follow a course of action if they’d followed a similar course in a past situation that was analogous to the current one. In other words, individuals and groups tended to do what they’d done before.

  Which was fine, if you’d chosen wisely the first time a situation had come up. But if you’d chosen poorly, you were more likely to do so again, simply because that was how you’d acted before.

  With a species that had been around as long as the Kaithe had, Ochrim began to wonder whether self-herding wasn’t more pronounced, more ingrained. Especially since studies had also found that the more intelligent you were, the more susceptible you were to self-herding.

  “Remember that Baxa told me there are dozens of entities just like him, fighting dozens of wars just like this one,” Ochrim said. “He isn’t the only threat. Also consider how powerful the creators of the AIs must be. Powerful enough, surely, to defeat your Preserver, should they choose to come for you.”

  Porah nodded. “I am relaying your thoughts to the Consensus.” The other four Kaithe present gazed intently at Ochrim, no doubt relaying the image of his facial expressions to the Consensus, including his microexpressions.

  Fifteen minutes later, the Consensus arrived at a conclusion. “The reason this took so long is due to the proposal’s scope,” Porah said. “That is, based on the information you’ve provided us, if we are to have any hope of prevailing against Baxa, it will require the involvement of our entire species. And Consensus always seeks to achieve the consent of those our decision will affect. In this case—”

  “It affects every Kaithian,” Ochrim said. “Yes. Although I say again, you didn’t take very long to decide.”

  “Regardless,” Porah said. “We have elected to involve ourselves in the war, and that means truly involving ourselves. We will cast our initial reluctance aside, and we intend to join the other species in their struggle wholeheartedly.”

  “Then perhaps we have a chance.”

  Chapter 50

  As Much Pain as Possible

  As the allied fleet moved toward the agreed-upon muster point in the Bastion Sector, there was time for another in-person meeting between all the captains. To fit everyone in, this time Keyes decided to hold it in Hangar Deck B, and those present sat in a wide circle of collapsible chairs that went back four rows.

  He’d assigned Captain Cho to work on an escape plan, and Cho was going over his proposal now, using the strategic console the marines had relocated from the war room.

  A strategic console being used to communicate exactly how we’re going to run away. This doesn’t seem right.

  “It appears certain that the Ixa will control the darkgate network within a matter of weeks,” Cho said, while the console showed a display of the Larkspur System—th
e muster point. “The network was built atop the old network of naturally occurring wormholes, to give us safe passage to systems we’d already colonized. But in the ensuing two decades, we of course expanded the network, and in doing so we discovered new natural wormholes. Given their instability, we sent only probes through them, to investigate what was on the other side. If a probe survived and sent back data proving a system had enough resources to justify the significant expense of building a new darkgate connection, the Commonwealth slated it for colonization.”

  “We need an escape plan, not a history lesson,” Captain Vaghn said from where she stood on the periphery of the assembled captains with her arms crossed.

  “I’m getting to that,” Cho said, shooting her a glare. “There are several newly discovered systems, resource-rich and not, where we discovered connecting wormholes. The Commonwealth sent probes through those, too, and kept them going until they couldn’t go any farther. The longest chain of wormholes runs for seven systems, and it starts with the Alder System. If we take the fleet there and start following the chain, we can put some distance between us and the Ixa. Hopefully, if we search beyond the outskirts of each system, we’ll find new wormholes to put ourselves even farther out of the enemy’s reach. The Commonwealth’s mapping of these naturally occurring wormholes was a secret known only to high-ranking officials in the government and military. As such, the Ixa should have no knowledge of our trajectory through the stars.”

  “I see a couple of problems,” Keyes said, and everyone turned to face him. “First, passing through seven unstable wormholes will take a toll on any fleet that passes through, and civilians will likely die. Second, in order to reach Alder, we have to go through Yclept, which is one of the systems under attack. The Ixa will likely have finished with Yclept by the time our fleet reaches Larkspur, but their force will still be at large somewhere in the Bastion Sector.”