Juggernaut: The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy Book 2

by Scott Bartlett

  Within fourteen hours, every UHF warship in the Larkspur system would receive it. Of course, many captains had been assigned to attack Winger colonies in other Bastion Sector systems. But word would spread. It has to.

  His head still pounded from his brief descent into depression and drink, but he valued the aching. It reminded him never to let that happen again.

  The crew needed him. The Providence needed him. And humanity needed them all. Husher had helped Keyes remember that.

  “Werner, what’s the posture of the Gok fleet?”

  “I don’t know that I’d call it a posture, Captain. They’re spreading across the Larkspur system in a wave. We’ll likely make it out of here before that wave hits us, though.”

  Keyes nodded, thinking of Ek, Warren Husher, Flockhead Bytan. Had any of them made it off Spire alive? There was no time to search for them, but he devoted a moment to silent prayer in their names. Come back to us.

  He turned to his Tactical officer. “Ensign Arsenyev, what do you have for them if they do reach us?”

  If he hadn’t known better, he would have said Arsenyev’s mouth curled upward slightly at the sound of her new rank. “I’ve set my console to continually compile the locations of nearby Gok ships, sir. If one draws too close, they’ll receive a healthy helping of Banshees.”

  “Very good.”

  After waking from his drunken stupor, Keyes’s first order of business had been to conduct a brief promotion ceremony for Arsenyev on Hangar Deck G, in acknowledgment of her exemplary performance, most recently during the engagements with the Gok missile cruiser and the UHF ships. Senator Bernard had presented Arsenyev with her new insignia. Laudano had attended as well, though he’d seemed less pleased with Arsenyev’s accomplishment.

  “Captain Keyes,” the Tumbran in charge of the Larkspur-Caprice darkgate said once they reached it. “I’m afraid you’ll find official procedure even more difficult to navigate than during our last encounter. I have been forbidden to grant the Providence access to this darkgate.”

  “Not to worry,” Keyes said. “I don’t plan to engage with official procedure.”

  “I’m not sure I understand you, Captain. At any rate, I’m closing the darkgate.”

  “If you don’t let me through, I’ll blast your ship apart, and we’ll see whether Tumbra can breathe in space. Do you understand that?”

  “Threats do not alter, protocol, Captain—”

  “Arsenyev, let’s start with a round of kinetic impactors. Hold off on Ocharium boosts, for now. Fire when ready.” Keyes turned back to the Tumbran. “Sorry, you were saying?”

  “Captain Keyes, this is rash. Fleet response will be severe.”

  “Honestly, I doubt it can get much more severe.”

  “Rounds away,” Arsenyev said.

  “Let’s have a zoomed-in view of the Tumbran’s monitor ship on a splitscreen, Werner. Keep our friend on the other half.”

  But the Tumbran had ended the transmission, and the visual of its ship expanded to full-screen. Arsenyev’s warning shot hit home, scoring the monitor ship’s hull. The Tumbran engaged its engine, then, attempting to flee.

  “Hit its engine with the secondary laser till it’s melted to slag,” Keyes said.

  Arsenyev did so, and Keyes ordered Werner to send another transmission request. The Tumbran reappeared, looking like a scalded cat, its chin sack vibrating vigorously.

  “Do you think I’m serious yet?” Keyes said.

  “I’m opening the gate. I doubt you’ll get very far.”

  “Thanks for your analysis. Oh, by the way: the Caesar is under Winger command, and it’s currently watching us closely. If you try to close the darkgate while we’re transitioning, it will come and blow you to pieces.”

  That was a bluff. He’d made no such arrangement, and he doubted the Wingers would send anyone away from the defense of their colonies. But he fully expected the bluff to work. Tumbra weren’t known for their tactical analysis.

  Indeed it did work. The Providence transitioned into the Caprice System in one piece.

  They found it devoid of warships, which scared Keyes almost as much as a waiting UHF fleet would have.

  If the Ixa struck now, this system would be completely undefended.

  Chapter 23

  Fabrication

  The Wingers had honored the Fins’ request to bar Ek from leaving the planet on any of their vessels. Luckily, amidst the chaos of the Gok attack, she and Warren Husher had been able to access the Ixan shuttle he had first arrived in.

  Now, they were hundreds of millions of miles away, fleeing before the wave of Gok warships and fighters that radiated outward from what had been the Winger homeworld.

  Ek found that their situation did not bother her. She had requested that Warren devote a small, tertiary viewscreen to showing the stars, and he had done it. So she stared at them.

  I am the last living Fin.

  She had been an outsider to her species, her existence considered contrary to the status quo. Now she was the status quo, with her breather, her bodysuit designed to keep her alive outside the ocean, all of it. From this day forward, whatever she chose to do was what Fins normally did.

  The thought terrified her.

  Or at least, it terrified part of her. Another part observed her body’s physiological responses to the fresh genocide, gauging the likelihood that her state of shock would lead to irrational behavior.

  This is what it means to be a Fin. This is what it means to be a Fin.

  Her rigid dorsal fin. Her body’s increased demand for moisture, causing her suit to step up production.

  This is what it means to be a Fin.

  “Oh my.”

  Warren turned. “What?”

  “Just…” She shook her head, mimicking human body language, as she did with members of whatever species she happened to be interacting with. “It is a lot to process.”

  “Are Fins usually given to such epic understatements?”

  “I was just thinking about that, actually. The fact that now, whatever I do is what Fins usually do.”

  “It’s true.”

  “My people studied grief extensively and produced many writings on the subject. It was widely noted that one of the few things all sentient species share is that discussing one’s grief is a viable coping mechanism.”

  “A viable coping mechanism indeed.”

  “Before this, as I traveled the stars, I convinced myself that I do not miss my species, and also that I do not miss my family. Now that I can never return to them again…”

  Ek began to shake soundlessly. Warren put his hand on her arm. “Are you all right?”

  “This is crying,” Ek said, her voice hitching. “Fins do not have tear glands, so this is how we cry.”

  Running a hand through his dark-gray hair, Warren furrowed his brow. “I’m sorry, Ek.”

  She nodded. “I am sorry, too. And…baffled. Baffled that, before, I harbored such an irrational thought without even being aware of it.”

  “Fins aren’t used to considering themselves to be as irrational as the rest of us.”

  “No, but…” But once, Fesky highlighted that for me. And she was right to do so. Ek did not finish the thought out loud, and Warren did not ask her to. “I will never forget about my capacity to be irrational,” she said instead.

  “Why did you come to get me? Back on Spire?”

  “Because I believe you are the one referred to as ‘phoenix’ by the Ixan Prophecies. ‘Your people need you, phoenix, even as they fall to the scythe.’ If the Prophecies are as accurate as they appear, it seems likely humanity will have great need of this phoenix.”

  “And you think the phoenix is me.”

  “Yes.”

  Warren hesitated. “I—I think I’m starting to recover some memories from my captivity.”

  She glanced at him. “Your captivity by the Wingers?”

  “No,” he said, chuckling. “The Ixa.”

  “Oh! Of course.�
�

  “I’m beginning to get the idea that I bargained with them for my release. But I don’t remember what my end of the bargain was.”

  That made Ek study him more closely. Could Warren Husher be trusted? His people called him traitor. She did not detect any behavioral indicators of an ulterior motive, but that could be due to a blindness brought about by her current state of distress. Even if she was right about his role as the prophesied phoenix, the fact that the information came from the Ixa unsettled her.

  “Uh oh,” Warren said.

  “What is it?”

  He pointed at the tactical display. Several dots were approaching them from the direction of Thessaly.

  “What are they?”

  “Falcons.”

  “Ah.” Falcons were space fighters retired by the UHF after the First Galactic War. They had found their way into many different hands, after that. But whose hands are these in?

  Blue light bathed the shuttle’s cockpit. “We’re getting a transmission request,” Warren said.

  When he accepted it, a large human male appeared on the shuttle’s main viewscreen. Stubble darkened his wide jaw. “Surprised to find a human piloting an Ixan shuttle.”

  “Surprised to find a radical able to string together a coherent sentence, let alone distinguish between shuttles.”

  Ek looked at Warren in shock. He was smiling from ear to ear.

  “You’re coming with us,” the man said, his face flushed. “Set a course for Thessaly, unless you’d prefer getting shot down.”

  “Okay.” Warren terminated the transmission. “Not much we can do about that,” he said, hands flying over the shuttle’s controls. “At least I got a decent jab in.”

  “How did you know he was considered by your government to be a radical? The unrest in the Bastion Sector did not begin until years after your capture.”

  He glanced at her. “Oh, the Wingers filled me in on a bit of the history I missed.”

  For the first time, Ek detected that Warren was lying to her. But what she found truly troubling was her certainty that he did not realize his statement had been a fabrication.

  That seemed impossible, but no less true for that.

  Chapter 24

  Setback

  As they traveled through Commonwealth space, Keyes tried to spend as much time in the CIC as possible without compromising his performance through lack of rest. The UHF would know that the Providence was behind what had become enemy lines, and if the Fleet came for them, the seconds it took Keyes to run from his quarters to the CIC could be the ones they needed to escape.

  But when Doctor Brusse sent him an urgent message via his com, telling him that Private Ryerson was trying to kill the Gok, he leapt out of the Captain’s chair and dashed for the exit.

  “Coms, contact Sergeant Caine and tell her to order her two marines nearest sick bay to get over there,” he shouted over his shoulder. “Laudano, you have the CIC.”

  By the time he arrived, Brusse had already restrained Ryerson, with the help of a marine who’d been wounded during the strike on the Winger orbital defense platform.

  “That thing doesn’t belong on our ship, Captain,” the guilty party spat. “It’s not just that it’s against UHF regs. I know you’ve abandoned those, but have you also abandoned concern for your crew?”

  Keyes stared down Ryerson until the private broke eye contact. Caine’s pair of marines arrived, then, and Keyes ordered them to take Ryerson into Doctor Brusse’s office until he reviewed footage of the incident and decided what to do. In the meantime, Keyes helped the wounded marine back to his bed.

  “Hopefully that effort didn’t set back your recovery, Private. How do you feel?”

  “I’m fine, sir. Needed the exercise after lying around so long, anyway.”

  Keyes chuckled. “That’s the sort of grit I like to see from my marines. You’ll be commended for your swift action today.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  With the private settled away, Keyes rejoined the ship’s doctor at the Gok’s pallet. Somehow, she’d managed to get two thin mattresses underneath the hulking alien. Must have sedated him.

  The Gok—Tort, wasn’t that his name?—had a clean slice across his forest-green throat, which had produced a lot less blood than Keyes would have expected. Its arm bore another cut, which had bled more.

  “I’ve already sent the footage to your com, Captain,” Brusse said.

  Keyes removed it from his pocket and watched from overhead as Ryerson rushed into view and attacked Tort with a scalpel. After the two incisions, the private who had probably saved the Gok’s life rushed in and tackled Ryerson.

  “Gok don’t have major arteries in their necks,” Brusse said. “That’s what saved Tort.”

  Tort didn’t behave nearly as violently as during Keyes’s last encounter with him. His eyes looked glassy, and he didn’t appear to have much to contribute to the conversation. “You’ve managed to calm him down.”

  Brusse nodded. “I finally found a sedative that works on him. What will you do with Ryerson?”

  “I’m confining him to quarters. We’ll lock his hatch from the outside and give him a direct line to you, in case something goes south with his recovery. If it wasn’t for that, I’d give him brig time. I can assign a marine to accompany you whenever you check on Ryerson, if it would make you more comfortable.”

  “That won’t be necessary. But thank you, Captain.”

  He nodded. “How are efforts to cure the virophage going?”

  Brusse’s mouth quirked downward, then. “Not great.”

  Chapter 25

  Lash Out Across the Galaxy

  The Providence transitioned into the Quince System without any hiccups. Since the Larkspur-Caprice darkgate, none of the Tumbra had given them any trouble.

  Keyes didn’t know whether that was because, after two decades of using darkgates, he was known to most Tumbra, or simply because they’d heard what he’d done to the one in charge of Larkspur-Caprice and had decided impeding him wasn’t worth the trouble.

  Maybe they simply haven’t received orders to stop me.

  Whatever the reason, his luck seemed to be holding when it came to outpacing any pursuing UHF ships. Keyes had the advantage of long experience navigating the darkgate system. He knew the best routes, as well as best practices for entering each system prepared for anything. In the meantime, other UHF captains had grown accustomed to travel by wormholes they could open to anywhere they wanted.

  Keyes’s method ate up more fuel, which was one of the reasons he’d had to fight so hard to prevent the Providence from getting decommissioned. But he’d managed it, and now he found himself well-versed in what had suddenly become the dominant mode of travel. Unlike every other UHF captain.

  His sensor operator’s voice cut into his thoughts. “Sir, you said our Tumbran operates the Quince-Fennel darkgate, didn’t you?”

  “Correct,” Keyes said.

  “His monitor ship appears to be under attack by Winger pirates.”

  Keyes’s insides felt suddenly cold as his gaze snapped to his console’s tactical display. The thought that they’d come all this way, at such risk, just to watch Piper die…it didn’t sit well with him. “How long till we reach Quince-Fennel?”

  “A little over four hours, at our current velocity.”

  “Nav, start work on a course to cut down on that flight time and then send it over to Helm. I want engines at full power.”

  What are those Wingers doing so far outside Pirate’s Path? Was it only the instability brought by the war that had emboldened them? Or had Spire’s destruction instilled in them a reckless abandon?

  “Sir,” Arsenyev said, “should I work with Nav on a course to download into a Banshee or three?”

  “No. Nothing we launch will reach them in time to have a meaningful effect on the situation’s outcome.” Keyes drummed his fingers on his chair’s armrest once. “There’s not much of value to pirate aboard monitor ships. They�
��re made that way intentionally. So Piper must have refused to let the Wingers through the darkgate. That’s the only reason for them to bother him.”

  “We could send Piper a transmission telling him to let them through.”

  Keyes shook his head. “I doubt our input will change his decision. Piper already knew refusing the Wingers could mean his life. He’s decided to take a stand, for better or worse. I do like the idea of sending a transmission, though. Coms, contact Blackwing and tell him to come to the CIC, double-time.”

  Ten minutes later, the former pirate captain stood at attention in front of Keyes. Blackwing saluted. Despite his deference, his movements had an air of cockiness. Still puffed-up by his daring escape from the plummeting stealth ship. Hopefully that confidence would help him accomplish what Keyes wanted him to.

  “The Wingers respect you,” Keyes said. “All of the Wingers, but the pirates especially.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Blackwing said.

  So modest. “I need you to talk some sense into these pirates. Tell them you know they’re hurting, after the loss of Spire, but they’re being selfish. They may have perceived their piracy as helpful to their species at some point, but no such argument can be made anymore. They’re not helping anything by attacking a defenseless Tumbran.”

  “Okay, Captain. I’ll try.”

  “We don’t have time for multiple takes, so get it right.” Keyes glanced at his Coms officer. “I want a closeup of Blackwing’s face during the entire video message. Make sure none of us humans make it into the shot.”

  “Yes, sir. Recording.”

  Keyes nodded at Blackwing, who faced the viewscreen, above which the camera’s circular black eye gleamed.