Reason made her course of action clear: make the UHF pay as dear a price as possible for their victory, reducing their ability to continue doing damage to the galaxy. They would still possess considerable power to do that after killing her, but if she could lessen it even one iota, she would.
Vaghn still approached, and so did every Winger in the system, with more entering through the system’s darkgates in a continual stream. Ek had sent them messages instructing them to turn around, but they came anyway. That saddened Ek. She had wanted a future filled with meaning for the Wingers. Now, they would merely break themselves against the might of the UHF instead of the Gok.
On the tactical display, something anomalous caught her eye. She looked at the sensors adjutant. “Are our sensors working properly?”
The Winger returned her gaze with a bemused one of her own. “As best as I can tell, Flockhead.”
“Run diagnostics on them.”
She waited while the adjutant bent over her console, rapidly tapping the touch controls and dragging elements around. In the meantime, more anomalies cropped up on the tactical display. There has to be something malfunctioning.
But when the Winger had the results of the diagnostics scan, they showed that everything was in perfect working order.
“That cannot be,” Ek said. “According to the tactical display, the UHF ships are attacking each other.”
“It’s what I’m seeing too, Honored One,” the sensors adjutant said.
“Flockhead, we’re getting a transmission request,” the communications adjutant said. “From the Renown. A UHF destroyer.”
“Accept.”
A lanky, raven-haired woman appeared on the main view screen. “Ek, isn’t it?” she said.
“It is.”
“All right, then. We don’t have much time for chitchat, so let me get straight to what I have to convey. The Hurst administration has lost all legitimacy. She gave herself dictatorial powers and then ordered the slaughter of civilians. Most police and security personnel refused to carry out the order, and the public are in total revolt. Many of our captains agree with the public that the government is now illegitimate and therefore should no longer direct UHF strategy. We submitted our concerns to Carrow, urging him to withdraw from this engagement, but he would not hear of it. And so we’re revolting, too.”
Ek could not remember the last time she experienced surprise, but even though this was one of the outcomes she had considered possible, she now felt it all the same. “I see.”
“Most of the captains here support us. It’s best if we end this as quickly as possible, so that there’s something left of the UHF once we’re finished. To accomplish that, we need your help. If you’ll accept a data transfer, I can send you the list of ships on our side, in the file format Roostships use. It’ll paint your new allies green.”
“Yes. I will accept it.”
“Thank you, Ek. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an admiral to fight. Luck to us both.”
“Good luck.”
With her tactical display lit up with green, Ek saw new opportunities where before there had been only death. She also had a new group’s tactics to anticipate—her allies, over whom she could exercise no control.
And so she turned her attention to perceiving their intentions, as well as to how she could direct her own forces in order to amplify her allies’ efforts against Carrow’s.
“Here,” she said over the fleetwide, highlighting a grouping of green icons. “These ships are about to be overwhelmed. The three Roostships nearest them will order their Talons to intercept as many missiles targeting those allies as possible, while directing a steady barrage of kinetic impactors at the ships firing them.” Ek highlighted another friendly group. “This battle group intends a strike that, if successful, will split the enemy’s forces down the middle, eventually allowing us to smash the half closest to us before neutralizing the other.” Another highlight. “These five Roostships will assist, ensuring the strike is successful. And here—”
“Flockhead Ek, the Excalibur is moving to confront us.”
Ek looked at the icon that represented her own ship, and at the large red icon approaching it. “So it is,” she said, and with a glance at the tactical display, she saw that there were no nearby Roostships able to help. If she called any to her aid, she would only risk their destruction as well as her own. Even many of her own ship’s Talons were deployed elsewhere, some assisting other Roostship Air Groups, others backing up allied UHF warships.
Quickly reviewing her options, Ek saw that for her and the Wingers serving on her ship, the situation had not been altered by most of the UHF captains changing sides. Carrow still was not likely to accept her surrender, or any other peaceful resolution. As well, the firepower at Ek’s disposal paled before that of the Excalibur’s. There was still no way she could win.
And so I must open my heart to defeat. “Send Admiral Carrow a transmission request.”
“It’s done, Flockhead.”
The admiral stared at her with eyebrows raised when he appeared on-screen. “I hope you know the only reason I accepted your request was to rub it in your fishy face before I kill you.”
“I will die,” Ek said, her dorsal fin rigid with tension. “But I will choose the manner of my death.”
“What are you—”
“Navigation adjutant, bring the Roostship full ahead, straight toward the oncoming destroyer, maximum acceleration. Strategic adjutant, fire our entire payload of missiles at the admiral’s engines, in quick succession, and use as many kinetic impactors as we have time to before the collision.”
“Collision?” Carrow said, his face whitening. “Have you lost your mind?”
The gap between the speeding ships narrowed. “On the contrary, I have decided to make my death count. If I am to die, then taking you with me seems like a valuable service to the galaxy. I invite you to attempt to destroy my Roostship before we reach you, but I do not think you have time to do so. Even if you manage it, it is probable that our missiles will damage your engines while our kinetic rounds perforate your hull. The others will catch you as you attempt to limp out of the system, and then they will mete out whatever justice they see fit. Your day is just as done as mine is, Admiral. Goodbye.”
“Missiles ready, Flockhead,” the strategic adjutant said.
Ek opened her mouth to give the go ahead when Admiral Carrow interjected: “Wait. Wait!”
“Yes, Admiral?”
“I surrender, damn you. Alter your course and belay your order to fire all your missiles.”
“Very well. I will adjust my attitude upward, and I suggest that you adjust yours downward.”
They did so, and the Roostship passed over the destroyer, so close that many of the Winger officers winced as they monitored the visual displays on their consoles.
“Navigation adjutant, set a course to rejoin our allies while conserving as much of our speed as possible,” Ek said. “I do not trust the admiral to keep his word, now that it no longer serves his immediate self-interest.”
With the battle won by all appearances, she finally allowed herself to relax, and the moment she let her guard down the space sickness attacked. Darkness edged in from her peripheral vision, creeping inexorably toward the center, and she felt her body slump against the chair’s straps.
“Honored One?” Wingleader Ty said, and it was the last thing Ek heard.
Chapter 81
Service Pistol
Warren felt unusually positive as he scraped away his stubble with a razor. Washing his face afterward, he studied himself, pleased. He’d aged a lot since the First Galactic War, but that didn’t matter. As long as he stayed cleanly shaven and sharply dressed, he looked the part of a UHF officer.
His goal was to get back to a place of certainty about his own mind, so that he could contribute to the war against the Ixa. And that started with looking the part. Maybe, if he made enough progress, they would even give him his own command.
> But his positivity had other sources, too. Sonya Hurst had resigned as president of the Commonwealth after the biggest popular uprising in human history, and her trial had already begun. Members of other species were being permitted back into human colonies, with many of those who’d been displaced returning to their homes there.
New elections were also underway, with each candidate already having delivered their stump speeches. The most successful candidates were those promising never to take corporate money and to reform the electoral system the moment they got into office, removing corporations’ ability to control the government.
Sandy Bernard had decided not to run, but after an enormous public outcry heard all across the Commonwealth, she’d changed her mind, and was now the leading candidate by a wide margin.
Best of all, as far as Warren could see, was the widespread support for finally doing the right thing. For finding a way off of dark tech, and for working with the Wingers instead of slaughtering them. Together, along with the Tumbra and even the Bastion Sector’s former insurgents, they would find a way to defeat the Gok and the Ixa. We have to.
Admiral Carrow would be tried by a court-martial, but Bob Bronson was nowhere to be found. He’d probably joined Tennyson Steele and many other Darkstream employees in fleeing the Commonwealth.
Rumor said that Darkstream had long held a trump card in its back pocket; a contingency plan, in case their doings within the halls of power ever turned sour.
According to the rumors, the company had concealed an enormous colony ship somewhere deep down Pirate’s Path. Whatever the case, most of the company’s personnel had vanished, and many people worried that they would continue to use dark tech, further destabilizing the fabric of the universe.
Warren thought it likely they wouldn’t, since there was no longer as much money to be made from it. Darkstream had lost control of the galactic government they’d once corrupted and sucked dry of funds. They’d lost the public that had unwittingly fueled their profits.
He gave a sigh born of contentment and optimism. Today would begin with venturing out into the Martian winter, to visit a neurologist. Later, he would visit Ek in the infirmary where she was being examined and ministered to by the best available doctors, but first he needed to start the process of figuring out what the Ixa had done to his brain.
As he reached for his glove, his hand faltered, and then it dropped to his side. Today, he would…
Today…
His mind emptied of thought and memory, becoming a total blank, filled only with sensory input. The handle of the bedside table’s drawer felt cool against his fingers, but when he took out the service pistol he’d been given during his time aboard the Contest, it felt positively cold.
Mechanically, he checked the chamber to ensure the gun was fully loaded, then he turned off the safety. He yanked out his carefully ironed shirt and tucked the pistol inside his belt, hanging the shirt down over it, concealing it.
In the hallway, he encountered Fesky, who clacked her beak. “Hello…” she said, trailing off, apparently uncertain how to address him now. She turned as he passed by her wordlessly, watching him. “All right, then.”
A left turn, then another. Without knocking, he pushed open the door to a conference room. Gathered around the table were Vin, Keyes, Simpson, Piper, Bernard, and a few planetary officials.
“Hello, Warren,” Keyes said.
Warren didn’t answer. Instead, he walked around the table, as though planning to take the empty seat beside Sandy Bernard. He didn’t, though. Instead, he stopped behind Bernard, lifted his shirt, removed the gun, and planted the barrel against the gray hair covering the back of her skull.
As everyone else at the table surged to their feet, Warren unloaded the pistol into Bernard’s head, which fell forward, hitting the conference table with a thud. Scarlet spattered the mahogany.
Memory came rushing back instantly, and he began to process the horror of what he had just done. Without thinking, he nestled the barrel under his chin.
But Vin had reached him by then, and he knocked the gun aside, causing the bullet to implant in the ceiling.
Then his son was wrenching the gun from him, tossing it onto the floor, and walking him several feet to slam him face-first against the wall. The others reached them, and they treated Warren just as roughly, helping Vin to wrestle him to the floor while Keyes shouted into his com for someone to bring restraints.
Warren wept silently into the patterned carpet.
Chapter 82
Dark Tech
Aheera walked with the others in her band across the lush fields of Home, enjoying the way the towering grass tickled her legs and arms and head-tail. The sun’s rays found their way through the grassy sea, warming her just enough. On beautiful days—and most days on Home were beautiful, even the scheduled rain days—the temperature lingered at exactly the right level for a Kaithian. When the day started to cool at last, it served as a signal that the time had arrived to retire for the night.
That time had not yet come. Now was the time to walk through the grass with her band and attempt to chart a course for the Kaithe. Perhaps for the universe.
“The humans have done well,” Culkin said. “They’ve progressed faster than we ever did, and with fewer atrocities. Ironic, isn’t it? Perhaps we were correct to grant Leonard Keyes help when he came to us with traitors in his midst.”
“That is not the prevailing sentiment.” Aheera brushed the grass lovingly with her tail. “And we made no provisions to safeguard dissenters from the consequences of our actions.”
Culkin opened his mouth wider than was necessary to speak, which signified an objection. “Because time did not permit.”
“True, but that doesn’t change our situation. We acted swiftly, without seeking Consensus. And now we have a smaller mandate to act.”
“Forget mandates.” Now Culkin had stopped walking, and he gripped a grass stalk, as though poised to rip it from the ground in anger.
Aheera felt her mouth twist in distaste as she spoke. “Forget mandates, Culkin? Forget the norms that have kept our society stable for millennia?”
“None of that matters,” said Pulpa, light-blue hands planted on her hips. “Whether we can achieve Consensus, whether we have a mandate, or even care—it doesn’t matter. The Ixa have succeeded in turning the humans against the Kaithe. We no longer have their trust, if we ever did.”
Culkin released the grass stalk, but none of his anger. Aheera felt the heat of it ripple through her mind. “We owe the humans—”
“We owe them nothing,” Aheera said, taking a step closer to her bandmate. “The humans are young. They’ve barely achieved sentience, and now you speak of dedicating ourselves to their aims?”
“They’re struggling against the Ixa, Aheera. The Ixa!”
“And what do we risk becoming, if we take up the practice of offensive war once again? What did we become the last time our species waged offensive war? No better than the Ixa.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. This would not be an offensive war. The Ixa are burgeoning, and if we stand by while they defeat the humans, we will have no recourse to adequately defend ourselves. Attacking the Ixa is our only defense.”
“The Consensus does not see it that way. They aren’t convinced by arguments for defense that contain the word ‘attack.’”
“Look,” Pulpa said, pointing at the display they’d set to hover ahead of their band, which expanded the view from a micro-wormhole.
They all fell silent, then. Warren Husher was standing with a gun against Sandy Bernard’s head. He shot her repeatedly, and she slumped forward.
Aheera’s circulatory system proclaimed her fear, causing the skin all over her body to pulse slightly. She turned to Culkin. “What do you say now about their progress as a species?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“I say it has been jeopardized, and also that the slim chance they had of defeating the Ixa just grew much slimmer. We must act
, Aheera. We must.”
She knew Culkin was right, and that she needed to overcome her dislike for him so that she could acknowledge that fact.
But the relations between the members of their band was a distraction. There were far more important matters. Aheera approached the display, caressing the side, which switched off the micro-wormhole, enabled by dark tech.
“We shouldn’t leave that on.”
Epilogue
The Advance
Captain Scavo preferred silence in the CIC of the Parker. During their routine patrols of the Coreopsis System’s outskirts, the crew generally had no real need for talk, and Scavo came down hard on any chitchat that arose. While his officers were on duty, he permitted them only the words necessary to run the ship. What words they spilled during downtime was their own business.
The silence allowed him to pick over the carcasses of his decades-old memories in peace, and it ensured that when the time for talk did come, the sudden noise would punctuate the gravity of the situation.
Scavo was from Abydos, one of the Coreopsis System’s three major colonies, and though he never visited his home planet anymore, he rarely left the system itself. Even on the few occasions his body had departed Coreopsis, he hadn’t truly left.
No, he was always in this system, and he was always fighting the battle during which the UHF had lost it to the Ixa, over twenty years ago. After their victory, the reptiles had exterminated anyone who spoke up against them, and Scavo’s elderly parents had been among those.
Everyone here was on edge since the supernova had seen to the Auslaut System, which meant Scavo now had company. He remained just as edgy as he always was.
The destruction of Auslaut had isolated Coreopsis from the rest of humanity. On the heels of that had come the widespread realization, seeping through the micronet like a poison, that the Ixan Prophecies held real water.
For the inhabitants of Coreopsis, the only remaining path back to the rest of humanity led through the Ixan home system, and no one had quite gotten around to checking out how safe it was.
Juggernaut: The Ixan Prophecies Trilogy Book 2 Page 26