Ixan Legacy Box Set Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Ixan Prophecies

  Free Books

  CAPITAL STARSHIP

  Chapter 1: Shattered Peace-1

  Chapter 2: Cybele

  Chapter 3: Military Applications

  Chapter 4: PTSD

  Chapter 5: Anything Anomalous

  Chapter 6: Owning the Floor

  Chapter 7: The Quince Engagement

  Chapter 8: Feeling Unsafe

  Chapter 9: Scapegoated for Wrongs

  Chapter 10: As Carbon Steel

  Chapter 11: Vanguard

  Chapter 12: Debris Cloud

  Chapter 13: As Though in a Warzone

  Chapter 14: Defense Platform 5

  Chapter 15: Progenitors

  Chapter 16: Surface Tension

  Chapter 17: Superheating

  Chapter 18: On the Local Galactic Cluster

  Chapter 19: It Rings True

  Chapter 20: Fairly Specific Intel

  Chapter 21: Head Fascist

  Chapter 22: Asleep to Awake

  Chapter 23: A Respect for Competence

  Chapter 24: Warp

  Chapter 25: Bash Back

  Chapter 26: The Secured Zone

  Chapter 27: Thumbs-Down

  Chapter 28: A Ship That Size

  Chapter 29: Blood on Hands

  Chapter 30: Morality of War

  Chapter 31: Invertebrate

  Chapter 32: Not Compulsory

  Chapter 33: Nonattendance Day

  Chapter 34: A Lucky Guess

  Chapter 35: Scythes Through Wheat

  Chapter 36: What Toxic Actually Looks Like

  Chapter 37: Both Killers

  Chapter 38: Belay That Order

  Chapter 39: The Taste of Sweat and Fear

  Chapter 40: Brittle Silence

  Chapter 41: Evil

  Chapter 42: Innumerable

  Chapter 43: Staring Back in Shock

  Chapter 44: Copper Taste

  Chapter 45: Supposed to Feel Like That

  Chapter 46: Every Crease

  Chapter 47: War Is Not Safe

  Chapter 48: Old School

  Chapter 49: Unbridled

  Chapter 50: What It Means to Tangle

  Chapter 51: Below the Ecliptic

  Chapter 52: Peacetime Soldiers

  Chapter 53: Ripped to Pieces

  Chapter 54: Teth's Gambits

  Chapter 55: No Pressure

  Chapter 56: Major Peter Gamble

  Chapter 57: Seems Irrational

  Chapter 58: If the Captain's Left Us to Die

  Chapter 59: Knots of Tension

  Chapter 60: Shoot to Kill

  Chapter 61: No Such Luck

  Chapter 62: Pieces

  Chapter 63: Not the Time

  Epilogue: Jake Price

  PRIDE OF THE FLEET

  Chapter 1: Kick Down the Door

  Chapter 2: Dishonorable Discharge

  Chapter 3: Distress Call

  Chapter 4: Munitions

  Chapter 5: Hellebore

  Chapter 6: The IGS Mylas

  Chapter 7: Snapped in Two

  Chapter 8: Predator

  Chapter 9: Divided and Deployed

  Chapter 10: Prison Planet

  Chapter 11: Getting Paid Again

  Chapter 12: Extremely Poor Taste

  Chapter 13: Technically Insubordinate

  Chapter 14: All It Took Was a War

  Chapter 15: Not a Psychologist

  Chapter 16: Blood Moon

  Chapter 17: Too Far

  Chapter 18: Fester and Grow

  Chapter 19: Mechs Complicate Things

  Chapter 20: Whirlwinds of Steel

  Chapter 21: Adaptations

  Chapter 22: The Sapient Brotherhood

  Chapter 23: Trust

  Chapter 24: Alarm Bells

  Chapter 25: At the Expense of Peace

  Chapter 26: Pressure Cooker

  Chapter 27: Nothing if Not Entertaining

  Chapter 28: A Calculated Risk

  Chapter 29: Optimize for Speed

  Chapter 30: Stellarpol

  Chapter 31: Crowd Control

  Chapter 32: Lucid

  Chapter 33: Lines of Attack

  Chapter 34: Flying Wedge

  Chapter 35: Quantum Engine

  Chapter 36: Every Parallel Fesky

  Chapter 37: Reporting for Duty

  Chapter 38: Face the Music

  Chapter 39: Spire

  Chapter 40: I'm Not Going to Ask

  Chapter 41: Best for the Galaxy

  Chapter 42: The Table of Power

  Chapter 43: One Way or Another

  Chapter 44: Political Prisoner

  Chapter 45: Under Heavy Fire

  Chapter 46: Enemy Subspace Squadron

  Chapter 47: Filled With Fire

  Chapter 48: Act as Turrets

  Chapter 49: Something Has to Give

  Chapter 50: Exploit Viciously

  Chapter 51: Staring at a Tactical Display

  Chapter 52: The Price We Pay

  Chapter 53: Just Getting Started

  Chapter 54: Across the Battlespace

  Chapter 55: That's New

  Chapter 56: Fading Light

  Chapter 57: Back Down to Size

  Chapter 58: Hail of Bullets

  Chapter 59: With a Whimper

  Chapter 60: Metal Giants

  Chapter 61: Tattered

  Chapter 62: Principled Stand

  Chapter 63: Sidearm

  Chapter 64: Sleeper Agent

  Epilogue: Identify Yourself

  DOGS OF WAR

  Prologue : Other Husher

  Chapter 1: Not a Request

  Chapter 2: The Cavern

  Chapter 3: Laying Waste

  Chapter 4: Spread Too Thin

  Chapter 5: Iris

  Chapter 6: Cast Low

  Chapter 7: Accelerate the Plan

  Chapter 8: The Target Universe

  Chapter 9: Not Meant for Mechs

  Chapter 10: A Grim Logic

  Chapter 11: Rogue MIMAS

  Chapter 12: Some Unknowable Monster

  Chapter 13: Bargaining Chips

  Chapter 14: At Least One Version of Me

  Chapter 15: Just One Lifetime

  Chapter 16: Something to Think About

  Chapter 17: Missile Damage

  Chapter 18: You Won't Be the Last

  Chapter 19: Long Shots

  Chapter 20: Lucid

  Chapter 21: Lavender

  Chapter 22: Willing to Share the Galaxy

  Chapter 23: Close-In Alpha Strike

  Chapter 24: You Killed Him

  Chapter 25: A Form of Robbery

  Chapter 26: You'll Pursue It Now

  Chapter 27: Breaking Point

  Chapter 28: Half-Baked

  Chapter 29: Making a Play

  Chapter 30: Fly Again Someday

  Chapter 31: Concerto

  Chapter 32: Playing the Martyr

  Chapter 33: Gunship Mode

  Chapter 34: The Power to Stop It

  Chapter 35: Unmatched

  Chapter 36: Shrapnel-Laced

  Chapter 37: Redouble

  Chapter 38: Viper-Like

  Chapter 39: Insanely Ambitious

  Chapter 40: Permanently Compromised

  Chapter 41: Blast Backward

  Chapter 42: To Home

  Chapter 43: Asking Price

  Chapter 44: Becoming Something Else

  Chapter 45: Nothing's More Destabilizing

  Chapter 46: Looking to End This

  Chapter 47: Limbs

  Chapter 48: Enter the Brotherhood

  Chapter 49: Snapped in Half

  Chapter 50: Target
-Rich Environments

  Chapter 51: Military History

  Chapter 52: Death Struggle

  Chapter 53: The Old Way

  Chapter 54: A Proper Talking-To

  Chapter 55: Orbital Fortress

  Chapter 56: Warpath

  Chapter 57: Merging

  Chapter 58: Ordnance in Play

  Chapter 59: Alpha Strike in Parting

  Chapter 60: Old Friend

  Chapter 61: The Moment I Return

  Epilogue 1: Nostalgia

  Epilogue 2: Right to Business

  Epilogue 3: The Things That Keep Us Sane

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by Scott

  Capital Fleet, The Ixan Legacy Collection

  By Scott Bartlett

  The Ixan Legacy Complete Series Box Set, Books 1-3

  A military science fiction series

  Ixan Prophecies

  Twenty years have passed since the Ixa almost wiped humanity from the face of the galaxy. Now, they have returned - with a prophecy of doom. Can Captain Husher stop them?

  Book 1: Supercarrier

  Book 2: Juggernaut

  Book 3: Reckoning

  Want free books?

  Scott is giving away Captain and Command (the Ixan Legacy prequel) for free, along with 2 other books set in the same universe. If you like free, you can get your books here:

  Click here for your free books

  Learn the truth about the Gok Wars.

  Captain and Command reveals what role Captain Husher played in the Gok Wars, along with the events that led to his PTSD.

  Click here to get it FREE, along with 2 other books

  Capital Starship

  © Scott Bartlett 2017

  Cover art by Tom Edwards (tomedwardsdesign.com)

  This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0

  This novel is a work of fiction. All of the characters, places, and events are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, businesses, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Shattered Peace

  The Gok carrier bore down on the IGS Vesta, and Captain Vin Husher cursed under his breath. The alien warship was clearly maneuvering for tactical advantage, but until it fired the first shot, there was nothing Husher could do.

  With bureaucrats scrutinizing his every move, commanding the largest warship in the Integrated Galactic Fleet counted for less than it should have. He certainly felt less effective as a captain. The voices calling for his removal from the Vesta’s command seat seemed to grow louder and more numerous with every passing day, and it took everything he had to continue presenting himself as not only fit for command, but the best man for the job.

  Of course, ideas about what “the job” actually was tended to vary dramatically. The way he saw it, his job was to prepare the galaxy for the onslaught he knew was coming. He knew that in his very core, which made it especially baffling when others described his “proper” job as doing his best to render war itself obsolete.

  That particular view of his job had gained widespread popularity over the last twenty years, and these days, his every action was held up to a microscope, along with its justification, which he was required to provide in the multitude of reports and statements that had come to characterize his life.

  He agreed with civilian oversight of the military. But he also thought that oversight should come from a well-informed, well-reasoned place. Sadly, it rarely did, anymore.

  The politicians of the Interstellar Union hadn’t seen what he’d seen. They hadn’t experienced the ruthlessness of the Ixa in battle, and they hadn’t heard the conviction of the Ixan AI named Baxa, when he’d told Husher that he was but one of many superintelligences designed for war. The AI had promised that the others would come soon to finish the job of exterminating all life in the Milky Way.

  In the meantime, there was this warship from the Gok, with whom the IU had enjoyed an uneasy peace for the last seventeen years. The Union did everything they could to maintain that peace, including mandating ROEs—Rules of Engagement—that left its own warships at a disadvantage against any Gok ship that might decide to attack.

  “They’re not acknowledging our transmission request, Captain.” The Coms officer almost whispered as she delivered the news. She was Ensign Amy Fry, and she sat two consoles over from Husher’s, just ahead and a foot lower. Like every other officer in the CIC, she faced the main display.

  “Keep trying,” Husher said, his voice tight with strain, even though he was trying his best to seem calm. Though unlikely, the possibility that the other vessel’s coms simply weren’t functioning would be enough to sink Husher’s career if he fired first. Never mind that the Gok was the only species with whom the Interstellar Union had gone to war against during the twenty years since its inception, or that the Gok still steadfastly refused to join the federation that included every other sentient species in the galaxy.

  “Sir…” muttered Commander Fesky, Husher’s XO, her twitching wings betraying her unease. Not that he needed the indication—he’d served with her since just before the Second Galactic War, and Husher could read his Winger friend like a favorite book.

  But that wouldn’t stop him from observing protocol. “Easy, Commander. I’m not about to go down in history as the captain who fired the first shot in the renewed Gok Wars.” Even so… He turned to his Nav officer. “Initiate reverse thrust, Kaboh, engaging engines at sixty-five percent. Let’s start inching back toward Zakros’ orbital defense platforms.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Lieutenant Commander Kaboh answered in the high-pitched tones of a Kaithian—one of the few that were aboard the Vesta. Most of Kaboh’s species preferred to remain close together, where the benefits of their psychic Consensus was multiplied. But under the direction of the Interstellar Union, the Fleet had assigned Kaboh to serve in Husher’s CIC, and Husher was pretty sure he knew why.

  “The Gok carrier has doubled its acceleration, Captain,” the sensor operator reported, from two consoles to Husher’s right. “Her main gun is aligned with our forward starboard engine.”

  Husher’s fingers tightened around the cold steel of his chair’s armrests. Peering at the CIC’s main display, he raised his right hand to a sturdy white switch positioned on the side of his console, flicking from a tactical representation of the two warships to the view from an exterior visual sensor. It showed mostly empty space at the moment; the Gok ship nothing more than a distant gleam.

  Flicking the ivory switch once again, Husher changed the display back to a tactical overview. That likely wouldn’t be what the other officers saw on the display. When his Coms officer looked at the main display, she likely saw a data readout on the warship’s communications array, or maybe reports from subordinates in her department as they worked together to hail the Gok ship. The sensor operator would likely be managing multiple streams of information provided by various sensor types—RADAR, LIDAR, visual, and so on.

  Of course, Chief Benno Tremaine, his Tactical officer, probably did have the tactical display up, alongside multiple targeting calculations. Husher had long ago drilled into the man’s head that he should always be ready with multiple firing solutions whenever a nearby ship had even the slimmest chance of becoming violent. It was far more efficient to modify an existing firing solution than to whip up one from scratch.

  Without Oculenses, it wouldn’t have been possible for each officer to see something different on the main display—the invention had certainly been a boon for CIC operations. The public had found plenty of other uses for Oculenses, of course, but Husher didn’t consider all of those to be quite as beneficial.

  As captain, he could tap into what any of his CIC’s officers were looking at while they were on duty. He did so now, switching to his sensor operator’s overlay. “Winterton, c
ollaborate with Nav to provide me with an estimate of when the carrier will enter an optimal range for—”

  “Captain, the carrier just launched two squadrons of third-generation Slags!”

  Husher’s head whipped toward his Tactical officer. Normally, his sensor operator would have delivered that information, but Winterton had been looking away from his readout, at Husher.

  “Have any of them started firing?” Husher asked. Slags were the Gok’s idea of space fighters, so-named for their close resemblance to melted hunks of metal. If they’d begun to attack, then so could Husher. Scrambling Slags at all seemed like a clearly hostile act to him, but he knew the politicians would say differently.

  “Negative.”

  With the Vesta’s present course locked in, Kaboh didn’t have much to do. His muscular head-tail shifted against his chair’s back as he turned toward Husher, looking totally relaxed. “Captain, I would remind you that the presiding ROEs prohibit—”

  “I’m familiar with the ROEs,” Husher snapped. “Helm, punch the engines up to eighty percent.”

  “The Slags will overtake us at this rate, Captain,” Winterton said.

  “They’ll overtake us no matter what we do,” Husher muttered. His ship’s top speed was—well, it was superluminal, thanks to the warp tech that had come online fleet-wide during the last five years. But her sheer mass meant that accelerating to any meaningful velocity took time, even if he were to have his Helm officer bring the engines up to full power.

  Slowly, he shook his head, his heart pounding an increasing cadence in his ears. The Vesta truly was a wonder—much bigger and far more powerful than anything ever fielded before her. But her capabilities were nearly wasted under the limitations the interspecies government had placed on military action. Husher had been expecting a situation like the one developing right now for a long time. It was just his luck that it was happening to him—and at a time when the battle group that normally accompanied his ship was already halfway to the darkgate into the next system.

  “Ready point defense systems, Tactical,” Husher growled, eyeing Kaboh as he finished. “Unless you’re going to tell me the ROEs forbid that, now?”

  “No more than they forbid readying firing solutions for ships that never end up attacking us, Captain,” the Kaithian said, his tone conspicuously neutral.

  Husher caught himself grinding his teeth at the implied dig, and he forced himself to stop. Modern military doctrine gave subordinates far more leeway when criticizing their superiors than was once considered proper. The thinking was that encouraging debate would reduce mistakes made by the CO and others in command positions.