Ixan Legacy Box Set

by Scott Bartlett

  Fuming, Husher made his way around the desk, dropped into his chair, and yanked the datapad toward him.

  Not even my best friend understands the position I’m in.

  Furiously, he began to type.

  Chapter 32

  Not Compulsory

  “There’s no question that the Positive Response Program represents a change,” Husher wrote in what would amount to the official announcement of the program to his crew. “A significant change. The Vesta has one of the most passionate and loyal crews out there, and I understand many of you are reluctant to leave her, especially in a time of war.

  “I do understand that reluctance, more than you probably know. But I want to offer some words of reassurance. No one is going to ‘lose their job’ with the Integrated Galactic Fleet because of this program. Everyone displaced will be found other positions, and it’s possible, even likely, that your new position will also be in a combat role, especially since the need for such roles will almost certainly increase in the near future. Under the Positive Response Program, no one will be ‘let go.’ The IGF doesn’t fire people. Sometimes it discharges them, but it doesn’t fire them, and no one will be discharged under Positive Response.

  “One further note. I’ve been asked to inform you that tomorrow will be an official Nonattendance Day for humans, sanctioned by Cybele City Council. This event is being characterized as a show of solidarity, by humans, with nonhuman beings. I’m told that the intention is to send nonhuman beings a message that they are just as welcome in public spaces as humans are. Participation in Human Nonattendance Day is not compulsory, and I’m not requiring or even requesting that crewmembers participate. I will say, however, that if I receive reports of any violence between crewmembers and civilians as a result of not participating, I will take swift disciplinary action against the crewmembers involved.”

  Once he finished typing, Husher didn’t have the heart to read over what he’d written, because if he did, he likely wouldn’t be able to make himself go through with it. He decided to just post it straight to the Board, though his finger hovered over the command key for several long moments before finally descending.

  That done, he attempted to focus on reports from Engineering on the state of the aft hull. There were no facilities in Saffron where the supercarrier could be repaired, and so they’d been forced to patch her up as best they could on their own—which mostly amounted to sealing off the affected sections and hoping for the best.

  Try as he might, Husher couldn’t muster the concentration necessary to make sense of the detailed reports. He would read four lines, realize he hadn’t absorbed a thing from them, and then read them again. It took five tries to derive any meaning from the passage he was on, and twice as long for the next one.

  His com beeped with a Priority message, and he picked it up, relieved for an excuse to divert his attention somewhere else, even if only for a few seconds.

  His relief was short-lived.

  The message was from his Coms officer, who was passing along word from the Viburnum System.

  The munitions facility there had been attacked by a vessel whose profile matched Teth’s. That vessel had succeeded in destroying the facility.

  Husher lowered his head into his hands and held it there for a long time.

  Chapter 33

  Nonattendance Day

  “So, boys, what should we do with our last day on the Vesta?” Corporal Toby Yung asked his bunkmates before slamming his fist into a metal post hard enough to lay it open, spattering blood across a bottom bunk’s sheets.

  “Damn it, Toby!” Private Zimmerman said, jumping up from the next bunk over to check whether any blood had gotten on it. Satisfied, he turned his glare on Toby. “This isn’t going to be our last day, you idiot.”

  “Might as well be. Who knows which of us are going to get ‘shuffled’ off. I say we enjoy it.”

  “What do you have in mind?” asked another private, named Mews. “Other than wrapping up that hand before it bleeds on me and I have to kick your ass.”

  Toby whipped off his shirt and used it to staunch the bleeding. “I say we go get lit up a bit at the Providence Lounge and see where the morning takes us.”

  “Put on another shirt, first, would you?” Zimmerman said. “I don’t want to have to rescue any more female officers from trying to get in the pants of a marine in their direct chain of command.”

  “All right.” After he bandaged his hand and put on the promised shirt, they rolled out to the Providence and ordered a round of whiskey shots. Then they ordered two more.

  By the time they headed out for Cybele, they all had a decent buzz going, or at least Toby did.

  Just before he entered his access code to open the hatch into the illusory desert, he turned to his buddies, feeling a dumb, alcohol-enhanced smile creeping across his face. “Ah, damn it, guys. I just remembered that today’s the Nonattendance Day for human beings. Now, we’re not gonna cause trouble by going for a walk through the city, are we? We really should all go back to the bunkroom.”

  “Well, wait a second,” Mews said in his steady baritone, which sounded perfectly sober even after three shots of whiskey. “If we go back to our bunks, how do we know everyone else is respecting Human Nonattendance Day? We’re three upstanding, civically responsible marines. It’s practically our duty to go out there and patrol the streets to make sure no humans show their ugly faces.”

  “Mews is right,” Zimmerman said. “I’m sorry, Toby, but I won’t let you stand in the way of enforcing Nonattendance Day. I insist that we go into Cybele right this instance.”

  “Aw, all right, you guys. Guess you’re just both more forward-looking than me. Let’s go out there and show them just how absent humans can be!” Toby punched his code into the panel, and the hatch slid open. Unsurprisingly, there were dozens of activists right outside, lounging around in the sand. At first, that struck him as amusing—all part of the joke. We’ll go out and screw with them a bit. Have some fun with them.

  Then, something caught his eye that definitely wasn’t funny.

  Almost half of the people sitting out there were humans.

  Cursing loudly, Toby marched out of the crew section and into the fake desert. “What the hell is this all about?”

  Dozens of heads turned toward him, and he leered right back at them. “What are all these humans doing here? We were told we couldn’t come out here, but what about all these people?” Toby pointed his finger, waving it around to indicate all the humans.

  A woman with bright red hair marched up to him, who couldn’t have been more than twenty. She had the audacity to place two slim hands on his chest and try to push him back toward the hatch. He didn’t budge, of course, but the nerve!

  “You’re not supposed to be here!” she yelled. Something about her reminded him of the captain—maybe it was how much gall she had.

  “What are you doing here, then?” he yelled back.

  “I’m an ally. It’s fine for allies to be here, obviously. I’m not someone who’s going to make them feel marginalized or like they should forget about where they come from or who they are. An ally is someone who stands by oppressed groups and who’s willing to step back and step down if it means giving oppressed individuals the space they need.”

  Her last words rang in his ears: giving oppressed individuals the space they need. It reminded him of the hollow reasons he was being fed to explain the possibility he might get shuffled out of a posting he’d held for years. “I don’t know what you just said, exactly,” Toby said, jamming his finger toward the humans rising to their feet behind her. “But I do know that this is some bullshit.” Behind him, Zimmerman and Mews made some sounds that indicated they agreed.

  A man stepped up beside the lady, his face a storm cloud all for Toby. “Could I ask you to stop being so aggressive toward her please?”

  “What? I’m just talking.” Toby sized the guy up. He looked like he probably worked out, but Toby wasn’t too worried.
“This is nowhere near as aggressive as I get, man, trust me.”

  “You know what I think your captain’s actually afraid of, marine?” the lady said, attempting to push him again. “I think he’s afraid that if he actually steps aside and makes way for equality between the species, then he’ll lose the ability to brainwash goons like you into hating other species and seeing them as the enemy.”

  “Lady, don’t worry,” Toby said. “All I see behind you is Wingers and Kaithe. I’m not paid to kill them.”

  The gym rat stepped forward, taking a turn at shoving Toby, and this time he actually fell back a step. “I told you to stop being so aggressive.”

  Toby reacted to that with a mixture of instinct, training, and whiskey. The guy got four knuckles to the face, and that was enough to put him on his back in the sand and keep him there.

  “Holy shit, Toby,” Zimmerman said, at the same time Toby was glaring around at the group of protesters and screaming, “Anyone else?”

  A long moment of shock stretched between the fifty or sixty protesters and the trio of marines. At last, the tension broke, and relief washed over Toby as most of the protesters charged toward him and his buddies. He hated waiting for a fight.

  A couple of human men came at him at the same time. He booted one in the stomach, making him stagger backward, winded. The other guy tried to land a punch, but Toby sidestepped easily and nailed him in the jaw, making him cry out all high-pitched before backing off. That gave Toby room to elbow the wheezing guy in the back of the neck, which sent him sprawling to the sand.

  Glancing behind him, he saw that Mews and Zimmerman were mixing it up similarly, and that made him glad. They were in this together.

  A Winger approached, cawing, wings spread to their full, enormous span. That spoke to something animalistic deep inside Toby, and he chose fight over flight, charging into the alien’s embrace, bowling it over, and finding its scrawny but muscular feathered neck. He gripped that as hard as he could, trying to choke the Winger out like they choked out new guys back in the bunkroom.

  Something white and blue snaked around Toby’s neck. Oh, shit. That’s a Kaithian.

  The head-tail constricted, and Toby’s last thought was to marvel at how suddenly the tables had turned.

  Chapter 34

  A Lucky Guess

  Doctor Bancroft was late for their Prolonged Exposure session, and Husher had a pretty good idea why. He sat in the waiting room and used his Oculenses to review an inventory of the ship’s munition stores until, twenty-five minutes later, Bancroft appeared.

  “Your corporal is lucky that Kaithian didn’t snap his foolish neck,” she said. “When the Kaithe fight, they usually play for keeps.”

  “I know it,” Husher said, remembering his time on the Kaithian homeworld. He’d fought the aliens inside a simulation, then, though he’d since learned that the simulation had accurately represented their ferocity, which was completely at odds with their size and appearance.

  “What are you going to do with the three marines that went out there?”

  “Exactly what I said I’d do. They were all involved in a violent altercation, and so they’ll all do time in the brig.”

  “I would have expected dishonorable discharges for the three of them.”

  Husher tilted his head to the side. “Seriously? Marines get into brawls all the time without being dishonorably discharged. I don’t mean to diminish the severity here, but no one was seriously injured, and from the sounds of it, there were extenuating circumstances.”

  “Excuse me?” Bancroft said, and her sharpness surprised Husher—it ran counter to her usual caring demeanor. “Extenuating circumstances, Captain? Your marines went out looking for trouble. They willingly violated Nonattendance Day.”

  “Which wasn’t compulsory. And when they went out, they found other humans lounging out there on the sand.”

  Bancroft shook her head. “Well, you’re the captain. The decision is yours, I suppose.”

  “I suppose it is.” He nodded toward her office. “Are you ready to begin?”

  Without another word, she walked to the door and opened it, gesturing for him to enter. He did, and she shut the door behind him.

  “What atrocity will I bear witness to today?” he asked, trying to lighten the mood a little.

  Bancroft pursed her lips. “Before I load the program into your Oculenses, there’s a matter I need to raise with you.”

  “Oh? What is it?”

  “The complaints from crewmembers who feel unsafe are increasing.”

  Shutting his eyes, Husher drew in a deep breath. “Let me guess. They’re all from graduates of Cybele U, or some other capital starship university.”

  Now it was the doctor’s turn to cock her head to one side. “Have you been abusing your special access as captain to view confidential crew medical files?”

  “Is that a serious question, Doctor Bancroft?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, I haven’t. I was actually joking, but it seems I took a lucky guess.”

  At that, Bancroft reddened slightly. “I feel it’s my responsibility as this starship’s Chief Medical Officer to say this. If you don’t take further action to address the fears of your crewmembers, I’ll be forced to bring my concerns to Cybele City Council.”

  Husher looked at the floor of Bancroft’s office, and he held his gaze there for several long moments. At last, he said, “Thank you for your input, Doctor. I’ll certainly give your concerns the careful consideration they are due.” With that, he got up.

  “What about today’s exposure session?” Bancroft asked, eyebrows raised.

  “I’ve decided I don’t have the stomach for it,” Husher said as he left the office.

  Chapter 35

  Scythes Through Wheat

  After receiving news that the Viburnum munitions facility had been destroyed, Husher gained some new nightmares. In addition to dreams of the night his daughter died, he now started having equally dark dreams featuring giant Ixa who stalked through the galaxy, felling all other beings with impunity. It didn’t matter who or what came against them—they tore through opposition like scythes through wheat.

  With the munitions facility destroyed, logistics had become much trickier in the part of the galaxy that bordered on the Concord System, formerly the Baxa System. Resupply would now take days, and eventually weeks, if demand from warships operating in the region were to increase.

  Judging by initial recon missions into the Concord System, demand probably would increase. The intel gathered there confirmed Husher’s worst fears: the system had become a rallying point for Gok warships, and a starship similar to the one they’d faced near Edessa had also been scouted there. Teth was clearly preparing to launch an all-out war against the Milky Way, and he’d already struck a devastating blow.

  Husher wasn’t expecting the orders that came next from the admiralty, but they also didn’t surprise him.

  “Captain Husher,” said the message from Admiral Iver, which had come in by com drone thirty minutes ago. Husher reviewed it alone in his office. “After deliberations, the admiralty has decided that in light of the munitions facility’s destruction in the Viburnum System, and in light of the large amassing of hostile warships in the Concord System, it would now behoove the Interstellar Union to make a sincere diplomatic effort to bring peace to the region.”

  Husher chuckled bitterly at the suggestion that the threat posed by Teth was limited to just this region of space, and then he continued reading:

  “The ultimate goal is a long-lasting armistice, however, even a shorter-term nonaggression pact is viewed as a desirable outcome, and worth pursuing. As such, the diplomats accompanying your battle group will be given significant latitude in the negotiations. You’ll find a separate data package attached to this message—it includes a list of everything we are willing to offer, depending on the length and quality of peace we are offered in return. These include resource rights to mineral-rich systems. I’m well
aware of what your reservations will likely be in this matter, Captain, but the point I would raise to you is this: given the power and numbers already fielded by our enemies, it’s clearly a worthy aim to avoid further bloodshed. And if our enemies were to renege on a peace deal at any point in the future, we will have had time to bolster our forces and will be better-positioned and -provisioned to answer such a violation with an attack aimed at retaking the systems we’ve relinquished.

  “A final note: it was remarked during our deliberations that you have the Ixan, Ochrim, aboard your vessel. If he’s amenable, it might be worthwhile to include him in the negotiations with Teth. If anyone can placate the Ixan commander, it will be his own brother.”

  After passing on the data package to the diplomats Shobi and Bryson without comment, Husher indulged himself by taking a moment to lean back and squeeze his eyes shut.

  Seeking a ceasefire with the Ixa had been exactly what the UHF had tried during the most desperate hour of the First Galactic War. In fact, the mission Husher had been given felt particularly cyclical, since it had been his father, Warren Husher, who was sent on that first diplomatic mission.

  Warren’s mission had gone about as well as Husher expected this one to go. The Ixa had taken him prisoner, making it look like he’d betrayed his own species and painting him as a traitor for the next twenty years. Shortly after Warren’s return to his species, they executed him for the crime of high treason. And soon after that, it became known that without Warren Husher’s actions, humanity would have been doomed.

  As far as Husher could see, the main difference between then and now was that Warren’s mission had come after a long-fought struggle against the Ixa—after humanity had smashed itself against the implacable alien war machine, and all had seemed lost.

  The IU, on the other hand, was giving up with barely a fight.