Fesky gathered her fragmented thoughts with a significant effort of will. It was Winterton’s job to use the Vesta’s sensor suite to document the environment and report it to the commanding officer. That was what he had done, in as efficient and professional a manner as she could possibly have asked for. Now, it was her job to figure out what the hell to do with the information he’d given her.
“Coms, call Lieutenant Commander Kaboh to the CIC.” As much as Fesky disliked the Kaithian, he knew his station well, and Husher would want all of first watch on for a developing combat situation. “Tactical, prep four Gorgon missiles with telemetry parameters and order them loaded into forward launch tubes.” Four was a lot, but she didn’t want to take any chances with a destroyer of unknown capabilities. “Coms, let’s try a transmission—”
“Ma’am,” Winterton cut in, “the unidentified vessel just launched two dozen missiles.”
“Two dozen?” Fesky shrieked, causing the Helm officer to start. She strove to settle herself. For a moment, she’d been annoyed at Winterton’s interruption, until she’d realized that it rendered the order she was about to give entirely pointless.
“Coms, get me the officer in charge of Defense Platform 5,” Fesky snapped, mentally cursing herself for not having established contact with the platform already. It was at that moment it dawned on her that seventeen years of peace had softened her, and now there was a chance she’d pay for her mistake with her life, as well as the lives of everyone aboard.
No. One destroyer will not take down the Vesta. “Tactical, fire Gorgons.”
“Aye, Commander.”
“That’s not all. Set point defense systems to engage at maximum range, and reassign forward tertiary laser projectors to point-defense mode as well.”
“Should I order Banshees prepped to help take down some of the incoming missiles?”
Fesky considered the proposal for a moment. The latest generation of the Banshee missile was a faster, sleeker version of the ones used during the Second Galactic War, though it was still a fairly classical armament, all things considered. “No,” she said. “Prep four more Gorgons instead, and six Hydras. We’re going for the kill.”
“No response from Defense Platform 5, ma’am,” Ensign Fry said.
“That’s fine.” We’ll deal with this on our own.
“Ma’am,” Winterton said, and Fesky found herself glaring at him while resisting an urge to batter him with her wing.
He’s just doing his job. “Yes?” she said, managing to sound mostly collected.
“The enemy vessel just launched two more missile volleys in quick succession. Both were equal in number to the first.”
The impact of the sensor operator’s news made Fesky rock backward in the command seat by a degree or two, and she started to vibrate. Over the years, she’d gotten much better at controlling the Winger tendency to wear emotions on the wing, but her usual self-control had officially abandoned her.
“Helm, full reverse thrust. Now!”
Chapter 15
Progenitors
Two squads of Vesta marines ran forward, fanning out in front of Husher and dropping to one knee, firing round after round at the reptilian berserkers speeding across the hall toward them. The other two squads formed up behind, firing over their fellow marines’ heads and effectively creating a wall of speeding lead that crashed into the oncoming aliens, again and again.
It didn’t slow them. The first Ixan reached the kneeling marine rank, knocking one soldier to the floor while plunging a claw-tipped hand through the exposed armpit of another. The alien’s movements were swift and sure, like the reptiles the Ixa resembled.
Husher’s windpipe closed, and his mind’s eye was filled by a burning star that streaked across a night sky and lit up his family’s home like a summer bonfire.
He felt a hand close over his forearm, snapping him back to the present, and he glanced sideways to see Major Gamble, wide eyes overscored by a crooked, throbbing vein. “We’re getting you out, now,” the major screamed into Husher’s face. “Marines, fall back!”
Four marines were down already, bleeding out on the floor and utterly incapable of falling back. The others—those who’d heard Gamble’s order, anyway—attempted to obey, stutter-stepping backward while firing on the hulking aliens full bore, slapping fresh clips into their guns as needed.
“Get back to the elevator!” Gamble roared.
“Belay that,” Husher yelled, shaking the major off his arm.
“What? Why, sir?”
“Because it can only fit a single squad. The rest of you will be pinned against the elevator doors and slaughtered. We’re going out the front.”
“But we don’t know what way that is.”
“We’ll figure it out.” Husher drew his P600 service pistol and emptied it into an Ixan sprinting toward them along the side of the room. “We’re leaving, now. To me, marines!”
Thank God for embedded ear pieces. If it weren’t for those, it would have been impossible for the marines to hear his order over the tumult.
By the time they extracted themselves from the hall, they’d lost about a squad’s worth of marines—a quarter of the soldiers that had come inside with them. And he hadn’t seen a single Ixan go down.
What have the Ixa done to themselves? But the aliens were leaving him with no time to speculate, as they pounded into the hallway after their prey.
The marines in the rear turned to fire upon the beast in the lead, and at last, it dropped—only to one knee, but it dropped. Its fellows charged past, apparently unconcerned.
“Chief Haynes,” Husher said after switching to a two-way channel with their shuttle pilot.
“Captain?”
“I need you to have our ride waiting for us outside the front doors. We’re under attack. Tell the marines to deploy defensively around the shuttle.”
“Yes, sir,” Haynes answered, the shock clear in his voice.
In the seconds before their shuttle had touched down on the roof, Husher had used his Oculenses to access the sensors arrayed along the craft’s underside. Now, he tried to square the maze of hallways and doorways confronting him with his dim recollection of the Hall’s layout as seen from above. All the while, panic lapped at him like waves against the side of a capsizing boat.
“I think it’s this way,” he said, gesturing down a side hall and meeting Gamble’s eyes.
The major nodded. As always, the marine commander yielded to his captain’s judgment, even though his training and specialization made him better suited to this particular situation than Husher, in theory.
But despite starting out as a Condor pilot, Husher had seen his fair share of ground combat back in the messy days of the UHF, and Major Gamble knew that.
Captain Keyes had often wanted him deployed with the Providence marines, actually, and not just for his situational awareness, but also for his principles, which Husher had stuck to no matter the circumstances. Even when it had meant flying in the face of Command.
Have I strayed from that? A smaller voice began to answer the question, from deeper inside him, but he quashed it.
The brilliant glow of natural light caught his eye as they rushed through a corridor, and Husher skidded to a stop, glad that his fifty-four-year-old body could still turn on a dime.
“We’re here,” he said. They’d lost at least another squad as they tore through the corridors—insanely brave men and women who’d spent their lives without hesitation, just to stall the Ixan charge and buy their comrades a few seconds more.
Ixa. Alive, and on a Union world. It still made Husher feel like he was dreaming.
They poured out of Piper Hall’s glass doors, rushing down a short flight of steps and then across the snow-covered concrete. The marines wore combat boots whose nanoscale spikes served them well, here, though Husher wore parade boots, and so had to take more care.
The waiting marines around the shuttle fired overhead at the Ixa who crashed through the glass, not bothering to sque
eze through doors made for shorter beings.
Husher switched to the two-way channel again. “Haynes, you do fly a combat shuttle, do you not?”
“Sorry, Captain!” the chief said, and within seconds, the shuttle’s hull-mounted turrets were swiveling back and forth, firing on the charging foes.
They reached the shuttle. When Husher slammed a fresh clip into his P600’s handle and turned to engage the Ixa again, Gamble placed an arm across his stomach, pressing him gently toward the airlock.
“Captain, I really have to insist you get inside. The heroism’s appreciated, but my people won’t get safe till you are.”
Nodding, Husher stepped inside the airlock, and the major sent two squads’ worth of marines in to join him. The outer airlock slid closed.
Husher once again connected his Oculenses to the shuttle’s sensors in order to continue watching the engagement outside. The added fire of both the combat shuttle as well as the marines who hadn’t entered the Hall finally seemed to give the aliens pause, and they withdrew back up the stairs and into the building. Only then did they produce firearms of their own and begin to return fire.
As the last marines piled into the airlock, with Major Gamble among them, Husher saw one of the Ixa—Teth, unless he missed his guess—produce a rocket launcher and aim it at the shuttle.
Husher’s hand flew to his ear. “Haynes, takes us away, now. Now!”
Haynes did, and the shuttle’s landing gear parted from the snowy ground, tilting away from the rocket that screamed from its tube and veered upward, seeking its target.
Lightning-quick, Haynes engaged lateral thrusters so that the shuttle lurched in the opposite direction, toward the incoming missile, but at an upward angle that caused it to miss by inches. Husher knew it really was a matter of inches, because through the magic of Oculens, the rocket seemed to pass right before his nose, and he even tricked himself into thinking he felt a breeze as it screamed by.
The inner airlock door opened, and the marines who’d been in the airlock during takeoff scrambled to strap themselves into their crash seats before the steep climb into orbit. Once they were settled, a silence descended on the shuttle—deeply uncharacteristic of marines, who were known for their brash banter before, during, and after a fight.
We’re all peacetime soldiers, now. Walking contradictions, wholly unprepared for what’s coming for us.
An unsourced transmission request came in over his Oculenses, and he thought he knew who it would be. When he willed acceptance of the connection, and Teth appeared as though towering over him inside the shuttle, his suspicion proved out.
In order for Teth to appear like that, he had to be the beneficiary of either in-depth intel about Oculens technology or enough luck that whatever tech he had access to had developed in precisely the same way. Husher considered the former infinitely more likely.
“How are you alive?” Husher said. Several marines glanced his way, though none of them would have access to Teth’s words.
“Lieutenant Husher,” the Ixan said, his voice breathier than Husher remembered, and more sibilant. “Or rather, Captain, now, isn’t it? We’ve always enjoyed such exquisite conversations, you and I. Yet here, you open with a disappointingly banal question.” Teth’s forked tongue made a brief appearance, flicking past his teeth and lips before vanishing into the dark hole of his mouth. Now that he was getting a closer look, Husher saw that several of the bone protrusions characteristic of Ixan faces had escaped Teth’s flesh and now showed as white knobs and spikes in symmetrical patterns along the sides of his head. “How am I alive,” Teth said, repeating Husher’s words. “Hmm. Perhaps you imagined that your mentor’s sacrifice was meaningful—that his death put a final end to the force poised to extinguish humanity. Is that what you thought?”
“I thought he killed you.”
“He did not. I was far enough from the blast wrought by the collapsing wormhole to survive, as were tens of thousands of other Ixa.”
“Sounds like you had some good luck, then.”
Teth’s thin lips widened into a smirk. “Call it whatever you wish.”
“Baxa turned the Ixa into automatons. Mindless slaves. After we killed him, every Ixan we found had basically become a vegetable. We connected them to life support, but they all died within the year.”
“So it was with the crew of my destroyer, as well as those of the surrounding Ixan ships. I was only able to save those aboard my ship, and that with great difficulty.”
“How?”
Teth’s smirk became a wide smile, revealing a pair of elongated fangs that definitely hadn’t been there when last they’d met. “So many banal questions. Let me answer several of them at once: the Progenitors. They found me in time, allowed me to resuscitate my crew, and they gave me access to the superior weaponry currently battering your new supercarrier. They also augmented my brethren and I in the way you have seen.”
“Who are the Progenitors?”
“Who do you suppose they are, Captain Husher? Why don’t you use your vaunted Oculenses to look up the meaning of the word. Maybe that will give you a clue to work with, as an alternative to pestering me with your endless questions.”
“What’s your aim, here, Teth? What do you want?”
“My aim is tied up with that of my creators. To tell you the truth, Captain, I’ve gained a certain humility to go with my new power. I am merely the opening volley in the war for which you’ve been struggling weakly to ready your pitiful Union. There is a path to peace, however brief that peace ends up being. If you would like any quarter for your people at all, there is something I require of you. I would like both you and Jake Price to present yourselves on the Ixa’s homeworld, Klaxon.”
“I don’t know a Jake Price.”
“Then I suggest you seek him out and meet him. Quickly! This has only just begun.”
With that, Teth’s grotesque likeness vanished from the shuttle.
Chapter 16
Surface Tension
Before the shuttle touched down on Flight Deck Omicron, Husher dragged himself away from his muddled thoughts long enough to commend both the marines and Chief Haynes for getting them all home safely.
“We lost a lot of good soldiers down there,” Husher said, meeting each marine’s eye in turn. “There’s no sugarcoating that, nor would I want to. But I can promise you one thing. We’re going to take it to those bastards hard for what they did.”
A hearty cheer answered that, and Husher was glad to see his soldiers’ spirits were far from broken. “Major Gamble, I need you to take your people to Cybele, to maintain order and help anyone negatively affected by the Ixan attack. We’re not through this yet, but I want you to do everything you can to put those citizens at ease without lying to them about the reality of the situation.”
“Yes, sir,” Gamble said, all business. He was a jovial hand around the Poker table, or so Husher had heard. While taking everyone’s money, the reports went. But in the middle of an ongoing op, the major’s sense of humor withdrew to somewhere deep inside him. “Where are you headed, Captain, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“The CIC. I intend to start taking our losses out of Teth’s hide.”
Gamble nodded. “All right, then. I’ll have two marines escort—”
“Belay that.”
The major’s eyebrows rose. “Sir?”
“I’m not about to start suffering escorts on my own ship.”
After a brief hesitation, Gamble nodded again. “Yes, sir.”
Husher positioned himself at the front of the first group out of the airlock. The task he’d given the marines was important, but it wouldn’t count for much if the Vesta was bested by Teth’s destroyer. He trusted Fesky to do a good job, but he’d much rather sit in the command seat himself at a time like this.
The outer airlock opened, and he dashed across the flight deck, grateful he no longer needed to bother with pressure suits to do so. In the old days, flight decks had been open to space, b
ut with improved airlock technology it was quicker to have combat shuttles and Pythons undergo a brief pressurization and decontamination before entering the flight deck proper.
As he jogged toward the CIC, he found the crew corridors almost empty, which made sense. With an engagement in progress, everyone currently on duty would be intent on their respective tasks, and a change of watch wouldn’t happen until they were certain the action had ended.
A groaning, scraping noise from up ahead reached his ears, and he paused, his hand going automatically to his pistol. By now, he’d captained this vessel for thirteen years, and he knew her sounds by heart. A groaning, scraping noise wasn’t one of them.
He listened for a few seconds more, hearing nothing. Then, something flayed open the metal of the bulkhead five meters in front of him, emerging into the corridor and tracking Husher immediately with its head.
If it could be called a head. It certainly had no face to speak of, and the “head” was smooth and curved, extending forward as well as backward. The thing was made from some dark-gray metal, and its metallic arms and legs resembled shields that had been stretched along the vertical axis.
The intruder came no higher than Husher’s stomach, but it had also just torn through his ship like tissue paper. Deciding to take it seriously, Husher flicked open the clasp holding his P600 in place, whipped it out of the holster, and proceeded to empty its clip into the monster’s torso.
The thing scrambled to cross the distance separating them. Husher began walking backward, and when the gun clicked instead of fired, he loosed the empty clip and slammed in a new one.
By now, he was running backward to keep ahead of his assailant, which caused his sidearm’s muzzle to waver more than he would have liked. Sucking in a ragged gasp, he tightened up his aim and succeeded in planting the entire second clip inside the intruder as well.
The last bullet made the thing stagger at just a few feet’s remove, buying Husher enough time to load his final clip into the gun and finish the job.
He put the fourth bullet into the robot’s head, which rendered it inert. For good measure, he brought his boot up hard under what he supposed could be called the thing’s chin.
Ixan Legacy Box Set Page 8