Gunfire rang out above them. Husher looked up to see a pair of Ixa shooting at them from above. They hadn’t scored a hit yet, but they soon would. Husher and his companions were totally exposed.
He was about to put Caine down when twin bolts of sizzling energy flew up the stairs, throwing the Ixa against the wall, their faces charred ruins. Glancing back, Husher saw Tort with his gun raised.
The Gok snorted. “Good thing, carrying gun as well as nuke.”
“I’d say,” Husher managed to gasp.
And they pressed on.
The brief break made it even harder to keep going, somehow, and Husher began grunting with every step. He berated himself, bringing every curse he knew to bear.
If he didn’t motivate himself, who would? Tort had saved his life, but somehow Husher doubted that giving inspirational speeches was among the Gok’s strengths. As for Aheera, she seemed lost in thought, and Ochrim and Wahlburg were also silent, other than panting.
The instant they reached the top of the stairwell, a deep rumble began below. The nuke.
They threw themselves through the door into the aboveground facility and slammed it behind them. It felt like the entire world was shaking.
Before they could go any farther, the ceiling ahead of them caved into the corridor, blocking their path.
Husher and Tort looked at each other. Then the ceiling above them began to give way, too, and Husher dumped Caine where the floor met the wall.
He threw himself on top of her, covering her unconscious frame with his body.
Out of the corner of his eyes, Husher saw Tort scoop up Aheera, placing her under his armpit and grabbing Wahlburg and Ochrim by their pressure suits. He dragged all three of them through the falling debris, toward where Husher lay on top of Caine.
Then the Ixan stronghold came down on top of them.
Chapter 80
Burnt Out
The only things that obstructed the utility of sensors were actual obstructions and the limits of attention.
Those two factors had conspired to produce the result that Ek’s sensors adjutant did not detect the entrance of eighty-nine allied warships into the system until after he observed the Baxa-Corydalis darkgate closing.
“Ma’am,” he had said once he did notice the new arrivals. “It appears reinforcements are on their way.”
Ek had paused her stream of orders to closer scrutinize the posture of a nearby enemy formation, and she glanced up at the adjutant as he spoke.
Then she turned to her communications adjutant. “Disseminate that news throughout the fleet. It should improve morale.”
With that, she had a look for herself at the force that was approaching. It would be hours until they reached the battle over Klaxon, but if Ek’s fleet could hold on until they arrived, perhaps they could make a difference. Perhaps. She felt like she was back in Larkspur, fighting Admiral Carrow and trying to hold on for more Wingers to arrive.
The approaching force did not consist only of warships. There were also just over two hundred Condors dispersed throughout it. That made Ek wonder what had happened to the Providence. The fact that the darkgate had closed, and that the supercarrier was nowhere to be seen, did not bode well for her fate.
Ek returned to her fleetwide delivery of order after order, though her headache had gotten worse, as well as her nausea. It took all of her concentration just to make barely competent moves.
Should I pass the command to someone else? Korbyn, maybe? Did it matter?
Her fleet was crumbling. Maybe it was time to accept that. There were fewer than two hundred allied ships left fighting. Baxa’s deadly show of efficiency had turned the engagement into one of attrition in its best moments and a slaughter in its worst.
They did not have long. Ek did not want to see that, but she did see it. She could not blind herself to it any longer. There was no way for them to hold on long enough for the reinforcements to arrive. It was over.
She shifted her weary gaze to her communications adjutant, not wanting to announce her intention to relinquish command over the fleetwide broadcast.
Better to have the adjutant tell Korbyn to step in, if he wanted, to see whether he could find a path to survival. Ek knew it was impossible, but just because her spirit had been broken by space sickness and Baxa did not mean giving up was her decision to make. Korbyn deserved the opportunity to try.
“Flockhead,” the sensors adjutant said before Ek could speak. “Look.” The adjutant’s talons were pointing at the bridge’s main viewscreen.
Ek turned toward the screen. For once, she was having difficulty interpreting what it showed. “What am I looking at?”
“The Ixa have stopped fighting. They’re just drifting along whatever vector they were following.”
The adjutant took the liberty of switching to a splitscreen, with one half showing two nearby Ixan warships—a destroyer and a cruiser. He had done so just in time to catch them colliding with each other in a spectacular yet brief explosion.
“Caine and Husher must have succeeded,” Ek said, unable to experience much emotion in connection with the revelation. She was completely burnt out, as well as severely ill. She needed medical attention.
I need to get off this ship.
But she forced herself to meet the eyes of each of her bridge crewmembers.
“We won,” she said.
Chapter 81
If You Can Call It Living
His eyes felt like lead weights, but he forced them open, and saw…
Nothing. White. A white void.
“Welcome back, human,” a familiar voice squawked from somewhere nearby.
An avian head entered his field of vision, then, side-on.
“Fesky,” he rasped.
“The same,” the Winger said with a clack of her beak.
“How are you here? You’re supposed to be in Corydalis.”
Fesky closed her eyes, and for a long time, she didn’t answer. “You’re right. I am.” She began to tremble slightly, and then opened her eyes to gaze down at Husher, looking wistful, unless he missed his guess. “You’re being treated for radiation poisoning. It’s lucky we have the Kaithe with us, because no one else possesses the technology they’re using to fix you.”
“Is Caine all right?”
“She’s in about the same condition as you, other than that neck wound. Surviving a bullet to the neck…that’s quite a combat story.”
“Yeah.”
“Tort is alive too, since you didn’t ask. Selfish human.”
“Give me a break, Fesky. Just this once.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Her head disappeared, and Husher managed to turn his head enough to see her sitting on a stool beside his bed. Behind her was more white. That had been the whiteness, from before—the whole room was white. “Tort saved you both, along with Aheera, Ochrim, and Wahlburg. He shielded you from the rubble with his body.”
“Is he injured?”
“Incredibly. But Gok are resilient. He’ll live.”
“We won, then?” Husher said. “Baxa’s dead?”
“It would seem you managed that, yes. All the Ixa he’d taken over fell into a coma the moment you did it. When he first assimilated them, Baxa didn’t leave them with any agency or identity. They became empty husks once he died, with their former selves…deleted. They’re all breathing, and their autonomic functions are still happening, but other than that they’re gone. A lot of them died from falls, and almost a thousand of them died when two Ixan ships crashed into each other. The rest are still alive. If you can call it living.”
“We’re taking care of them, though?”
“Yes. We’ve put every Ixan we can find on life support.”
Husher mustered a smile. “That makes us the good guys.”
“I guess. Not all of our problems are solved, Husher. The Baxa-Corydalis darkgate was destroyed, and with the Auslaut System gone, we have no safe way to return to whatever colonies our species have left. We’re g
oing to need to figure out a return route using the old wormholes, and that will probably mean losing more people.”
Husher coughed. God, he felt awful. His body felt packed full of spiky garbage. “Wait…the darkgate’s gone? Wow. What were our losses like, in Corydalis? Keyes couldn’t have managed to defeat the entire Ixan attack fleet.”
Fesky paused. “He did, actually.”
But something in the way her voice grew quiet drew Husher’s attention. “Where is he now, Fesky? Where’s Admiral Keyes?”
She held his gaze for a long time, her eyes shimmering. Long before she spoke, he knew the answer.
“He’s dead, Husher.”
Even though he’d anticipated it, the answer still stunned him. Admiral Keyes, the master tactician, gone? The man of honor and steel, gone? It didn’t seem possible. Keyes had been one of the most dependable constants in Husher’s life.
He didn’t speak. He couldn’t.
“The entire CIC crew sacrificed themselves,” Fesky said. “The rest of the crew evacuated the system, along with eighty-nine allied ships, and what was left of the Providence Air Group. But Keyes and the others stayed to open a wormhole and let it collapse in-system, without recapturing its energy.”
“Arsenyev…Werner…Khoo…all of them? The whole CIC?” Husher’s voice had become even hoarser.
“Piper, too. He boarded the Constellation to open the wormhole, after shutting down the darkgate.”
“Piper…”
And the Providence. All gone. All dead.
It was true what they said. Though Husher had come to love his new home, he never truly appreciated what he’d had until it was taken from him forever.
He felt his face screw up, and he wept quietly. Fesky handed him a cloth, but she could do nothing else, and the tears continued until shock and fatigue overtook him, sending him back into a fragmented sleep.
Chapter 82
Trials Are Never Over
The Kaithe had done everything they could for Ek. The white spots on her face had dwindled, the skin had smoothed some, and many of the pinholes had filled in.
But they were temporary measures. If Ek attempted another voyage in space, she would almost certainly die.
And so she would remain.
Fesky helped her to the shoreline, the Fin leaning heavily on her arm and wing. Three Kaithe trailed behind them, escorting a hovering contraption which Husher had termed a MedBed.
Once they reached the waterside, they helped Ek onto the MedBed, sedating her.
Sitting on a slight rise nearby, shivering with worry, Fesky watched the Kaithe perform the surgery that removed Ek’s breathing tubes from her gills and extracted the legs she’d had implanted years ago. The MedBed kept her circulatory system supplied with oxygen while the Kaithe worked.
Last, they cut away the suit Ek had designed herself, which had allowed her to become the first Fin to enter space.
She’ll be the last, as well.
Once they finished, they instructed the MedBed to approach the water’s edge and gently lower the Fin into it. Ek floated there for a long time, just underneath the surface, and a sharp fear struck Fesky. She quaked even harder until at last Ek’s eyes fluttered open.
They fell on Fesky. “Hello, friend.”
“Ek,” Fesky managed. “Hi.”
One of the Kaithe spoke. “The water is slightly more basic than Fins were accustomed to on Spire, and the salinity is higher. Though it may result in complications, the water’s actually reasonably close to the ocean your species evolved in. You should survive in it long-term.”
Why doesn’t that sound as optimistic as it’s supposed to? Fesky wondered. But she held her beak.
“I suppose this is goodbye, Fesky,” Ek said. She’d recovered some of her strength, and now she began slowly propelling herself away from the shore.
“No, it isn’t,” Fesky said, raising her voice. “I’m staying.”
Ek stopped, turning back. “I cannot make you leave, but I can ask you to. You are not meant to spend your days in this system, Fesky. You have greater works to perform yet. Your people are already leaving a battle group of Roostships to guard me, though I consider even that highly unnecessary. Know that I do not intend to visit the shore. Ever. I…wish to be alone. For a time, at least.”
“The battle group might not be enough to protect you,” Fesky said.
“What enemies remain to harm me?”
“The Gok who didn’t join us. And as far as we know, there may be Ixa still alive, who didn’t make it to Corydalis in time for the battle.”
“Our combined militaries wield more than enough power to deal with both threats. At any rate, I doubt they will attack a system just to kill one Fin.”
“This is the Ixa’s home system. They may want it back.”
“It is also the system where Baxa co-opted most of their species, effectively killing them. I expect that will fill this place with negative memories for them.”
Fesky stared at Ek for a long time. She really doesn’t want me here.
“Your people will need you, Fesky. All of the species will need you. I very much doubt our trials are over. Trials are never over, and ours may be just beginning.”
Fesky sighed. “You’re going to be so alone.”
“Perhaps not.”
“Huh?” She clacked her beak. “What do you mean?”
“Many things happened when I visited my people on Spire. I have begun to believe I might be…well, let us just say that I may have some company soon.” Ek turned, swimming out toward the open ocean a few meters before looking back once more. “Goodbye, Fesky.”
“Goodbye, Ek.”
Epilogue
No Matter the Cost
“We have endured tremendous suffering.”
Husher paused, looking out over the reconstituted Galactic Congress, which now comprised representatives from the Wingers, the Kaithe, and the Tumbra, as well as humans. They’d kept the name Commonwealth, except now they meant to truly embody that name.
Except for a small fraction, the Gok had refused to join the society the other species were attempting to build together. Even the Gok that had joined wanted no seat in Congress.
“No species has been spared from that suffering,” Husher continued. “Many of the Tumbra in charge of monitoring the darkgate network were murdered by the Ixa. Both humans and Wingers lost their respective homeworlds, along with several of their colonies. Many Kaithe died in the Battle of Klaxon. Most Gok are still under the sway of a virophage that has controlled them for decades. And for their folly and aggression, the Ixa have been reduced to just a few thousand individuals.”
It was difficult to make eye contact as he swept his gaze over the sea of faces belonging to hundreds of assembled representatives. A permanent location for meetings of Congress had not yet been decided, and for now, it convened inside a recently decommissioned military aircraft hangar, formerly used by Zakros’ planetary defense group.
Husher gripped a podium atop a raised dais and tried desperately to connect with his audience. To make them see what he’d seen.
“I’ve experienced what Baxa was capable of. Yes, we defeated him. Barely. But he spoke of his creators, a species he said had made many AIs like him, some of them more powerful. And they will get even stronger. He threatened me, threatened every species represented here, with the prospect that one day, a more advanced AI would lead armies to our galaxy to wipe us out.
“Therefore, I urge you: invest in finding a way to safely reach other galaxies. A way that does not rip our universe apart. We must find this species that unleashes their machines on the universe for the purpose of attacking its inhabitants, and we must defeat them before they exterminate us. That’s what I advocate, and I believe it’s what Admiral Keyes would have advocated, too. Admiral Keyes, without whose foresight none of us would be here right now. Think on that.”
Husher sighed, low enough that the mic didn’t pick it up. If he read his audience right, h
e already knew which way this was going.
“I’ve made my case, but I want to reaffirm my willingness to abide by whatever the peoples of the Commonwealth decide. That’s what we fought for in this war. We fought to restore democracy, so that humanity could set itself back on a sane course decided by actual people rather than interstellar corporations. I say humanity, because none of the other species were afflicted by the levels of rampant corporatism that we were. At any rate, my associates in our new interspecies military and I are committed to upholding any policy that is arrived at democratically.”
Stepping down, Husher moved to one side as Congresswoman Francesca Hernandez took the podium and began at once, in her characteristically brisk, confident manner: “Captain Husher’s concerns are valid, and I recognize them as such. I even agree with many of the points he raised. We should invest in a method for effecting safe intergalactic travel, and we should keep our new military strong—but for defensive purposes, not offensive ones. I have been in close contact with my constituents over this issue, and based on extensive polling data, I am confident that their feelings reflect those of the galaxy as a whole. Our peoples have had enough war. Far too much, in fact.”
Hernandez’s words brought warm murmurs from the assembly. “Seeking to engage in offensive war, even one argued to be preventative, is a surefire way to slip right back into the mode of constantly seeking to wage war. Of private military firms gaining disproportionate power, as happened with Darkstream, and of depriving the public of the funds they need to ensure their well-being, just to line private coffers.”
The congresswoman raised a fist into the air before her, gesturing with it—a trademark mannerism of hers. “We must declare the era of imperialism to finally be over, with harsh penalties put in place for anyone who attempts to conduct it. And while I have the utmost respect and trust for Captain Husher, we must consider the source of his testimony. That source is Baxa. Can we trust the AI who tried to exterminate all life in the galaxy? Should we believe that this bogeyman Baxa concocted is real, or should we consider the all-too-likely possibility that this was his last-ditch attempt to steer our species down a dark path? We cannot continue gearing the galactic economy toward war, and certainly not with an unknown species, who may not even exist.”
Reckoning: The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy Book 3 Page 24