Ixan Legacy Box Set

by Scott Bartlett

  “Activate every function that thing has,” Husher said. “Nothing’s more ‘destabilizing’ than twenty-thousand enemy warships at your doorstep.”

  “Yes. Okay. Captain Husher, do you—”

  “I’ll take command of the defense,” Husher cut in, unable to keep the frustration from his voice. Yet again, Teth was forcing his hand, and that made him very angry. He meant to make him pay. “Go,” he yelled. “Activate the Preserver!”

  “It’s already activating,” Chiba said.

  “Get me a visual, Winterton.”

  The sensor operator complied right away, and Husher saw that the president’s words were true. Massive clouds of dust were drifting up from the moon-sized superweapon as ravines appeared all along its length, which widened rapidly into canyons.

  As soon as the four, behemoth-like segments were far enough apart, they turned their concave insides outward, rotating them to face the enemy fleet approaching from the outer system.

  The system’s sun glinted off the silver innards of the nearest segment as it turned, and Husher realized he was holding his breath.

  Then, at last, the Preserver began to fire.

  Chapter 46

  Looking to End This

  Great storms of energy coalesced inside every circular impression that dotted each Preserver segment. Seconds later, broad energy beams flashed across the system toward the oncoming fleet.

  It would take several minutes for those beams to reach the constricting circle of Progenitor ships—more than enough time for them to maneuver out of the way. Husher’s heart sank as he saw the enemy doing exactly that on the tactical display. Gaps opened in their ranks where the beams would strike.

  But it appeared the Preserver knew what it was doing. Only a few of the energy storms had produced beams, and now wormholes opened above most of the others. The beams poured into those wormholes and then out of their exit points, which were situated directly behind the enemy ships.

  It took only one direct hit from the Preserver’s great energy lances to destroy even the largest Progenitor ships; the carriers. Energy surged into their pierced hulls, overwhelming them and exploding them in great flashes of light and flame.

  This happened hundreds of times, to hundreds of enemy ships, within seconds. Husher had seen the great superweapon in action only once before, from aboard the Providence, when they’d been fleeing a large Ixan fleet.

  Then, the Preserver had repelled the Ixa with ease. But Husher didn’t remember anything like this orchestrated display of might. Clearly, the superweapon possessed enough intelligence to have kept some of its capabilities in reserve, like the ability to open wormholes to extend its range, or the ability to coordinate those wormholes and fire through them with a rapidity that was difficult to track.

  By concealing those capacities till now, the Preserver took by surprise an enemy it hadn’t faced for twenty years. Clearly, the Kaithe’s ancient ancestors had engineered and programmed the moon-sized construct with the ability to play a very long game, which helped explain why the Kaithian homeworld had never been harmed.

  As Husher monitored the tactical display, a surge of hope began to push through him. Clearly, even the Kaithe themselves hadn’t known the exact nature of the gift their forebears had given them. Less than a minute ago, the Progenitors had outnumbered the allied fleet almost seven-to-one, and in that time the Preserver had destroyed over one thousand ships.

  There’s nowhere they can go to escape those wormholes. Unless they left the system entirely. Presumably, the superweapon had no ability to track the Progenitors across the universe, and certainly not through the multiverse.

  But the enemy ships remained, continuing to close in. Then, destroyers and carriers began to appear all around Home, within and around IGF formations, above and below Home’s orbital defense platforms.

  Dispersed as these enemy ships were around the IGF, Gok, and Quatro forces, it was too dangerous for the Preserver to risk firing on them, lest it hit friendly forces. As that realization seemed to take hold inside the rest of the Progenitor ships, more of them began to disappear from among their ranks, no doubt to reappear closer in. Still, the Preserver continued to savage the enemy ships that remained at a distance, neutralizing dozens at a time.

  “Coms, put me on a fleetwide channel—one that includes the Gok and the Quatro.”

  “Aye, sir. You’re on.”

  “Species of the fleets defending Home,” Husher said. “Gok, Quatro, Kaithe, Tumbra, Wingers, Fins, and humans. This is Captain Vin Husher, and I have been given the command by President Chiba. As you’re seeing, the Kaithian Preserver has given us some breathing room, but it would be stupid to assume it’s going to win this for us.” On the tactical display, more and more of the great circle of Progenitor ships were vanishing from the universe. “The Progenitors will continue to appear amidst our ranks, and they’ll try to rip us apart from the inside. This will be like no battle you’ve experienced, and a new kind of combat requires a new kind of thinking. One thing holds true, though: if our capital starships are beaten, then the fleet is beaten. Let’s arrange ourselves so that neither happens—so that our formations allow our capital starships to protect the fleet, and vice versa.

  “I want all our forces to cluster around the planet we’re defending, in a distribution I will describe now. As I’ve alluded to, we protect the planet by protecting our capital starships. We salvage the galaxy by staying alive to fight. I want one hundred warships, mostly destroyers and missile cruisers, to cluster around every capital starship that isn’t the Vesta. Each sphere of warships is to defend against attack from without, while the capital starships and their Air Groups defend against attacks from within.”

  Husher’s abdomen tightened as he glanced at the tactical display and saw that most of the encircling Progenitor ships had now either disappeared or been destroyed. In a matter of seconds, the battle for Home would begin in earnest.

  “Frigate and corvette captains, you are responsible for patrolling underneath Home’s orbital defense platforms and supporting the fighter defense groups that have made it here from other systems. I want any ship I haven’t mentioned to envelop the planet in a protective blockade, to support either the capital starships or the planetary defenders, as needed.”

  Husher cleared his throat, knowing that this would likely be the last thing he’d have time to say. “I’ve been informed that every capital starship lifeboat has now been converted to a warship capable of traversing the dimensions. To those captains, I say this: you are our Secret Service. Detach from your capital starship and flit through the dimensions, to return and strike wherever your damage can be maximized. Even with the Preserver’s aid, the odds are stacked heavy against us, and we must use every capability at our disposal. We must also fight with more intelligence and determination than we ever have before. Keep your heads, and give them hell. Husher out.”

  He nodded at the Coms officer to terminate the transmission, and then he turned to Winterton. “How many Progenitor ships have been destroyed by the Preserver, Ensign?”

  “Nearly eight thousand, Captain.”

  Incredible. If Husher had been taking losses like that, he would have backed off the attack. The fact that the Progenitors had remained was worrying. For one, it showed they held no regard for the lives of their crews. That pointed not only to their coldness, but also to the possibility that they’d kept even more ships in reserve.

  Either way, they’re clearly looking to end this today. The allied ships were still outnumbered four-to-one, and on average, the enemy vessels were much more advanced, much more powerful.

  But if the Preserver can manage to continue picking them off—

  “Sir, the Preserver is under attack,” Winterton said.

  “Can you give me a visual?”

  The Ensign nodded, putting a zoomed-in view of the engagement on the main display.

  A battle group of two hundred Progenitor carriers had appeared between the four superwe
apon segments, so that its weapons faced away from them. They’d already begun to pump thousands of Ravagers across the void toward the four megastructures.

  Wormholes opened above and below the carriers, and energy beams began to explode the attackers. But the superweapon was limited by the danger of hitting itself with its own energy beams, and it had to select its angles carefully. There was also no way it could meaningfully target the smaller, robotic ordnance that moved through space in a dark wave.

  Soon, Ravagers covered all four segments, tunneling into the barren, moon-like parts, with many of them racing around to attack the infrastructure supporting each energy weapon.

  The carrier force positioned between the four segments now numbered half its original number, but that didn’t seem to matter to them. Those that remained continued to belch Ravagers, and the Preserver’s fate seemed sealed.

  Without warning, the first segment burst apart in a titanic explosion of blue light, hurling great chunks of moon and metal in all directions. The second segment followed, then the third, and the fourth.

  The Preserver was no more.

  Chapter 47

  Limbs

  Wanda Carlisle was shaken awake from bizarre dreams filled with shadowy monsters that lurked in a jungle beneath trees made of human limbs.

  She gasped as she was ripped from her slumber, and she fought to steady her breathing as her gaze fell on the face of Lopez, her head of security. He clutched a military-issue assault rifle in the hand not shaking her awake.

  Normally, she hated having bodyguards, or anything else that marked her out from the general public. Despite her success, she considered herself a woman of the people. But since arriving on Home, she’d been forced to use what resources remained to her in order to hastily put together a security detail. Anti-rich sentiment was prevalent all over the Kaithian homeworld, and as the battle raged in space all around it, the temperature only seemed to be rising on the planet’s surface.

  “Ms. Carlisle,” Lopez said. “We may have to move.”

  At that moment, the sound of angry shouting all around her penetrated her awareness. “What is it, Lopez?” she asked, unable to keep the fear from her voice. “What’s going on?”

  “The sky lit up with this huge explosion around thirty minutes ago. Everyone’s pretty sure it was the Preserver.”

  “Oh, God, no,” Wanda moaned.

  “It’s really setting people off. They’re feeling helpless, I think, and they’re looking for someone to blame for all this. They’re…they want to hurt people like you, Ms. Carlisle. I think we should move.”

  “To where?” Wanda said. “The entire planet’s surface is a sea of tents and temporary structures, and every camp is filled with beings thinking the same way. There’s nowhere to go. Not on Home. And there’s no leaving the planet, either.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Wanda drew a couple of steadying breaths. “I have to talk to them. Let me talk to them.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “We’re out of options,” she said, pushing to her feet, glad that she’d slept in her robe.

  On her way out of the tent, she glanced at a mirror propped up against the side of a bureau. She looked a mess, but there was no time to run a comb through her hair, and certainly no time to put on makeup. The people outside were yelling for blood, and she only had so many guards, whereas the mobs outside were limitless.

  Lopez kept pace beside her, R-57 held at the ready.

  “I don’t want that used,” Wanda said. “Under any circumstances. The guns are just for show. Understood?”

  Lopez raised and lowered his eyebrows, but said nothing.

  Once outside, she managed to make it to the bed of an open-backed truck before the crowd spotted her and closed around it, arms snaking over the sides, faces contorted with anger.

  Seven of her guards had made it to the side of the truck before the mob closed in, and now they shoved beings back, keeping them from reaching Wanda.

  Holding up a hand, she waited for silence so she could speak, though she wasn’t sure she would ever get it. Instead, the crowd lobbed degrading curses at her. One man spat, and the glob of mucus and saliva barely missed her left foot. She suppressed a wince.

  At last, somewhat miraculously, the crowd settled down enough for her to be heard.

  “Oppressor!” a female Winger shouted into the relative silence.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Wanda shot back, surprised at how upset the comment had made her. “I’m far from an oppressor. I’ve always gone above and beyond to provide jobs, and to make sure the beings filling those jobs are fairly compensated—also, that they feel appreciated. I’ve done a lot of charity work. I care about the galaxy, and I’ve given back to it.”

  “You’re just trying to escape your guilt,” yelled a Kaithian who Lopez was holding back with a hand on its shoulder. “Get off of me!” it yelled at him.

  “Ease up, Lopez,” Wanda said. “Guilt for what?” she asked the alien.

  “For all the privileges you’ve benefited from. Your species openly oppressed the galaxy for decades, but now they’ve just gotten more subtle. If you weren’t human, you never would have risen as far as you did. The government left you half your wealth, but you don’t deserve any of it. You’ve kept nonhuman beings down. That’s why we weren’t prepared for this war!”

  “That’s quite a leap of logic,” Wanda said, shaking her head. “You have to stop this,” she added, looking around at the rest of the mob. “All of you. You want to know who’s tearing this galaxy apart? You are. You all are. I understand you’ve suffered. I understand life is unfair, and right now you’re afraid for your lives. I am too. But if you use your bitterness to attack beings who’ve had success, then what are you going to accomplish? Are you trying to abolish wealth altogether? Because that’s foolish. All beings need an incentive to contribute to society. Our system isn’t perfect, and it doesn’t have all the answers, but if you remove every reward for working hard, where will that leave us?”

  “Get down, Ms. Carlisle!”

  It was Phillips, the first guard she’d hired since arriving on Home. She turned to find him grappling with a human male clutching a pistol, whose barrel was inching toward Wanda’s head.

  Instead of dropping to the truck bed like she should have, Wanda froze, totally paralyzed by the mortality suddenly confronting her.

  The gun went off, and Wanda felt the air stir near her left temple. Phillips brought a fist against the man’s head, once, twice, and the handgun fell to the ground, lost below the press of bodies.

  The crowd roiled, surging against the truck until it rocked back and forth. The only reason it didn’t tip right away was that the pressure was coming from all sides at once.

  Wanda finally regained the ability to move, and she dropped to the truck bed, pulling the robe tight around her and curling into the fetal position. No more shots came—not yet. Her guards were following her orders not to use their guns, and the crowd hadn’t yet produced any more would-be killers.

  But she felt far from safe. Tears slid down her cheeks to pool on the corrugated metal beneath her, and she began to tremble.

  Chapter 48

  Enter the Brotherhood

  All was chaos.

  Progenitor destroyers and carriers began appearing around the planet in the thousands, wasting no time before lashing out at the nearest targets with particle beams or Ravagers. The last of the shuttles carrying civilians had left the Vesta minutes before, and now some of them were caught in the crossfire on their way toward the planet, forcing the pilots to engage in evasive maneuvers.

  Allied destroyers and missile cruisers struggled to get into the formations Husher had prescribed, and he watched the Eos take heavy damage from a particle beam before her battle group of destroyers could pressure her attacker enough to take some heat off.

  Most of the frigates and corvettes were out of position, and now they scrambled to rea
ch the region between Home’s defense platforms and the planet’s surface. There, destroyers were already felling allied starfighters by the hundreds.

  “Sir, we’re getting hit by seven particles beams from three different directions,” Winterton yelled.

  “Nav, transition us out!” Husher barked.

  Noni’s hands flew over the console, and the Vesta left the universe for another.

  “How soon can you get us back—preferably to a location on the edge of the battle, where we can start attacking the edge of the enemy fleet?”

  “I estimate seven minutes, Captain.”

  Husher nodded. “Excellent.” Reverse engineering the Progenitor quantum engine had helped Ochrim iron out a lot of inefficiencies inherent in his initial design—the design from which the Spire’s engine had been constructed. He’d managed to cut voyages through the multiverse from over an hour to a matter of minutes.

  “Coms, tell Ayam to prepare to scramble the Air Group the moment we return, but only Pythons that were originally aboard the Vesta. I want to keep the Arrowwood Pythons in reserve.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  He turned toward the XO’s chair. “Ek, to capitalize on the element of surprise, I’ll need your help to analyze the battlespace as quickly as possible.”

  “Yes, Captain Husher.”

  The seven minutes felt like two, and then they were back in the Kaithian home system, hard against the edge of the battle.

  Using a shared Oculens overlay, Ek indicated a battle group of twenty Progenitor ships; half carriers, half destroyers.

  “This formation will soon be hemmed in by allied forces, and they know it. Soon, they will target these ships,” Ek said, indicating a group of five Gok ships. “That is their best point of egress, and they will struggle hard to avoid becoming surrounded.”

  “So we deploy our Pythons to weave through the battle and engage them at the same moment they engage the Gok ships,” Husher said, nodding. “Tremaine, standby to fire Banshees and Gorgons if a decent firing solution opens to us.”