Earth Defiant (The Ember War Saga Book 4) Page 8

  “Sir, we have video feed on the Toth ship,” Utrecht said.

  “Show me.” Valdar pulled up a screen from the arm of his command chair and brought it to life with a tap. The Toth ship was long and thick, its pearl-white hull warping the sun’s reflection into a wavy line. Toth fighters, shaped like serrated daggers, flew around the cruiser in groups of three.

  Europa, a ball of ice riven with cracks and uneven plains from Jupiter’s punishing gravity, mirrored the Toth ship’s flawed beauty.

  “Same size as the one we saw on Anthalas,” Utrecht said.

  “And that one had teeth,” Valdar said.

  “Their laser weapons are tough, but their effective range is limited compared to our rail batteries,” said Ericsson, the ship’s executive officer. “The amount of particulates in and around the Jovian system should cut that range even further.”

  “Find us an anchorage over Europa at the outer edge of Mule range,” Valdar said. He craned his neck to look over his shoulder at Hale, seated beside the holo table behind Valdar. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant. We’ll be close enough to get you out if diplomacy falls through.”

  “This ship and everyone on it is more important than me and my two allowed bodyguards,” Hale said.

  “No one gets left behind,” Valdar said. “Not to the Xaros. Not to the Toth. Not on my watch.”

  “Sir,” said Ensign Erdahl as he spun around in his work pod, “the Toth are hailing us. Audio only.”

  “Patch them through,” Valdar said.

  “Thieves…” came over the speakers in a deep baritone, “thief ship from Anthalas. Bright-en-feld. Did you bring what you took from us?”

  Valdar touched his data screen and opened a private channel to Hale. “Time to earn your paycheck, Ken.”

  Hale got out of his seat and cleared his throat.

  “Anthalas is in unclaimed space. No Toth corporation or human organization of equivalent legitimacy announced ownership of anything within the…” Hale looked down at his forearm screen “effective gravity well of Anthalas or its satellite. What we took is by right of salvage. Which Toth insults us?” Hale asked.

  “Our names are not for meat.”

  “I demand standing as bealor. I killed your thralls with my hand and wiped their blood on the doors of my corporation. You will address me as an equal,” the Marine said.

  “Hale…you are the Hale,” the Toth said.

  Hale’s eyebrows perked up and his pulse quickened. The speech Lowenn prepared for him was actually working as intended.

  “Correct, now who addresses me so that my time isn’t being wasted with an underling,” Hale said.

  “I am Kren, of the Tellani Corporation and immortal of the Toth.”

  Only the elites, whose nervous systems had survived for hundreds or thousands of years inside the tanks, referred to themselves as “immortal.”

  “Kren, you have come to my domain and rendered insult,” Hale said. “You will await me for…one-tenth of Europa rotation at the summit site.”

  “My apologies to the baelor,” the Toth said.

  “One-fifth a rotation,” Hale said. He waved his hand in front of his neck in a cutting motion and Ensign Erdahl ended the transmission.

  “Is it wise to make him wait?” Valdar asked.

  “We’re supposed to buy time. I bought us another seventeen hours before the negotiations even start,” Hale said. “We’re lucky he apologized to me. It gave me a reason to make his punishment even worse.”

  “I don’t follow,” Valdar said.

  “A Toth apology is always disrespectful,” Hale said. “I’ll look weak if I don’t try to slap him around a little bit.”

  “I’m with you on this mission, Hale,” Valdar said, “but if you piss that thing off, it’ll be awhile before I can pull your feet out of the fire.”

  ****

  Kren’s tank bubbled with anger. Tendrils attached to his thick spinal column quivered as the tank twisted from side to side on its six-armed palanquin. The Toth warriors and menials manning the bridge’s workstations cowered, knowing full well that one of them would pay for their master’s disquiet.

  “You were foolish to antagonize them.” Olux appeared on a wall screen. “You’ve cost us progress.”

  “Would you have me ignore the baelor? Doctor Mentiq maintains our code of conduct. The price for breaking his laws is severe,” Kren said.

  “I do not criticize your adherence to tradition. I find your lack of foresight disappointing. The humans have Karigole pets and access to their Alliance. You should have anticipated their sole baelor would come to parlay and acted accordingly,” Olux said. “I still question why Chairman Ranik sent you on this expedition.”

  “The discovery of the humans and their weed bodies was mine. This position is my right!” Kren pointed his feeder arm at a menial. The creature scampered to Kren and lowered its head.

  Kren stabbed the feeder arm into the menial’s skull with a crunch. Mono-filament tendrils snaked through the menial’s brain as it convulsed, its claws skittering against the deck. Kren felt a fleeting moment of euphoria, then flung the dead menial against a bulkhead.

  “Regardless,” Olux said, “if you can obtain the human’s technology without further expense, Dr. Mentiq will be most impressed. If these negotiations fail, then Stix and the Leverage had best succeed…for your sake.”

  Olux’s screen switched off.

  Kren spun around on his palanquin and pointed a claw-tipped leg at an armored warrior guarding the turbolift doors. “Prepare my shuttle,” he said, snapping the claw toward the dead menial, “and replace the bridge crew with fresh menials. That one tasted stale.”

  ****

  The Mule trembled as it cut into the thin Europan atmosphere. Hale leaned against the acceleration seat and tapped the back of his head against the cushion. This wasn’t a combat drop, but the familiar press of maneuver gravities, the rumble of the ship’s engines and the whine of the gauss turrets through the gunner’s open IR channels were all the same.

  He felt the ice-water shock of adrenaline spread through his limbs and his heart pound in his ears as his autonomous nervous system prepped him for battle.

  “Just a discussion,” he muttered.

  “What was that, sir?” Standish asked from the dorsal gauss turret.

  “Nothing. Nothing. You have eyes on the landing zone?” Hale asked.

  “I’ve got eyes on a whole lot of ice and some more ice. Wait…nope, that’s just ice,” Standish said through the Mule’s IR network.

  “Sir,” Orozco said from the ventral turret, “you sure it’s a good idea for you to be doing this? Don’t the Toth remember you from Anthalas?”

  “It’s a curse and a blessing, Orozco.”

  “I’d really appreciate it if you’d not mention that I’m out here too,” the Spaniard said. “I offed a couple of those lizards when we escaped from their ship. Don’t want any of them to come looking for me because I killed their father and now I have to die. Anything like that.”

  “You really think that brain in a box is going to tell the L-T it wants a significant percentage of the human population…and the head of Orozco the Slayer?” Standish asked.

  “Hey, maybe they hold grudges. I do,” Orozco said.

  “The Toth—from what I understand—don’t really care about the menials or the warriors. Only the ones in the tanks have any kind of pull in their culture,” Hale said.

  “I’ve got visual on the facility,” came from the pilot. “Prep the armor for drop.”

  “Roger.” Hale released his harness and got to his feet. A pair of yellow handles connected to cargo runners flanking each suit of armor. Hale knelt next to the end of a folded block of armor and mag-locked his feet and knees against the deck.

  “Elias, Kallen, you ready?” Hale asked.

  “Always ready,” Elias said.

  The Mule’s crew chief mirrored Hale’s position at the head of Kallen’s armor and grabbed one of the yellow handl
es.

  “They’re linked,” the crew chief said. “Give my suit a five-count head start when we hit zero-zero.”

  Hale flashed a thumbs-up.

  The pilot opened his channel, and a green light appeared next to his name a full second before he said, “Stand by for zero-zero…mark.” Maneuver thrusters flared from the Mule’s forward hull and Hale swayed forward with momentum. The rear hatch lowered, revealing the icy expanse of Europa’s horizon.

  Hale felt a chill creep through his armor, even though he knew it was all a trick of his mind.

  The Mule went nose up, pointing its open cargo bay directly to the moon’s surface. A zero-zero maneuver meant the ship had found equilibrium with a ground target, zero relative speed up or down, nor side to side.

  The crew chief pulled the handle and it snapped from the cargo runners. Kallen’s armor slid loose and accelerated down the rails. She flew free of the Mule and unfolded her armor in midair as she floated toward Europa, pulled by gravity barely a seventh as strong as Earth’s.

  Hale snapped the handle and released Elias. The armor soldier followed Kallen down.

  “Good luck, sir,” Standish said. “Wish I could go with you.”

  “No you don’t,” Orozco said.

  “You mind? I’m trying to make him feel better.”

  “I’m loose.” Hale disengaged his magnetic locks and pushed against the deck. He floated through the open cargo bay and finally saw Europa in all its glory. Sunlight glared off the icy crust, the glacier-like surface broken up by dark striations of linae and deep-blue patches of compacted ice.

  A dome the color of fresh concrete, its perfect symmetry betraying its unnatural origins, stuck out from the surface. Hunks of ice crept along the edges. Hale saw several bright-orange robots working along the ice line, pushing back decades of Europa’s attempt to subsume the structure.

  “Landing zone is clear,” Elias said.

  “Any sign of the Toth?” Hale activated the anti-gravity linings in his boots, accelerating him toward the surface where he saw Elias and Kallen approaching the dome.

  “Saw some thruster scorching against the ice on the other side of the dome,” Kallen said. “Has to be them.”

  Hale swung his feet toward the surface and let his arms float above his head. He reached for his rifle and grasped nothing. He pawed at his back again, then remembered that he’d left the gauss rifle behind. Showing up armed for a battle wasn’t diplomatic by human or Toth standards.

  He made tiny corrections with his anti-grav linings and slowed his downward momentum. His feet struck the ground without a sound; Europa’s atmosphere was far too thin to carry noise. The Mule soared overhead, waggling its wings as it flew back to a rendezvous point where Eagle fighters waited to escort them all back to the Breitenfeld.

  Jupiter, half-hidden in shadow, hung large in the sky. Its roiling bands of clouds looked almost hostile to Hale.

  “I know it’s pretty,” Kallen said, “but the rad linings in our suits are good for only so long.” The radiation coming from Jupiter, combined with Europa’s lack of protective atmosphere or magnetic field, could kill an unshielded human being in less than a day. Hale’s armor could keep him safe for a time, but no one liked the idea of sitting around in the open.

  “Coming,” Hale bent his legs and leaped toward the two armor soldiers. Hale had plenty of practice moving across the lunar surface, and Europa’s gravity felt nearly the same. He bounded toward the dome, with much less efficiency and grace than Elias and Kallen.

  “I’m surprised this place survived for so long,” Kallen said. “Thought the Xaros would have picked it clean like everywhere else in the solar system.”

  “Ibarra closed down ops on Jupiter when the Chinese took Mars,” Elias said. “Made it too expensive to keep things going. Looks like he had the place covered in ice to hide it. Could be why the Xaros missed it.”

  “Or,” Hale huffed as he stretched out his stride, “Ibarra wanted to keep something else hidden from the Xaros.”

  “You think he’s got more squirrelled away somewhere?” Kallen asked.

  “Would it surprise you if he did?” Hale asked.

  “No. I trust that guy about as far as I can throw him…when I have my armor off,” she said. Kallen, a quadriplegic since childhood, could do little more than turn her head from side to side when out of her armor.

  “What is this place anyway?” Elias asked. He slid next to the edge of the dome and knocked it with his armored knuckles. A yellow arrow flashed to life, pointing to his left. Lines of light cut through the surface of the dome, forming a set of double doors.

  “It was supposed to be a quadrium mining facility,” Hale said. “Europa’s got more water than Earth beneath all this ice. Lots of quadrium shells to shoot at the Xaros. Don’t really need this place now that we’ve got—” He stopped before he could mention the omnium reactor they’d recovered from Anthalas. Speaking about that while the Toth were nearby struck him as foolhardy.

  The doors flush with the surface of the dome opened, sliding aside and revealing an airlock with plenty of room for both armor soldiers and Hale.

  Hale tried to bound inside first and nearly ran into Elias as the soldier stepped in front of him.

  “What’re you doing, crunchy?” Elias asked. “You’re the VIP. We’re the muscle. Let’s act like it.”

  Hale let Elias enter the airlock and stood between the two soldiers as the doors closed behind them. Hale felt like a child, flanked by suits of armor almost twice his height, as if he was about to see a doctor for a bunch of shots.

  The doors closed and red lights warbled around them. Jets of air blew into the chamber, re-pressurizing it to the point that Hale could hear the hiss out of the nozzles.

  “Remember,” Elias said, “you give us the signal and we’ll start shooting.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Hale said. “We’re a long way from the Breitenfeld.” His hand brushed across the gauss pistol and holster mag-locked to his chest. It wasn’t much in the way of a self-defense weapon, not against the big Toth warriors, but it was better than nothing.

  The lights switched to green. The inner doors opened slowly, and gentle white light flooded into the airlock. Elias raised his arm slightly. The click-clack of gauss rounds chambering into the double-barreled cannon attached to his forearm brought a sibilant growl from beyond the airlock.

  “This was not the retinue we agreed,” Kren said, his voice amplified by speakers.

  Elias stepped to the side and Hale strode into the chamber, a wide space of bare concrete and gleaming white walls. Square, plain columns ran from floor to ceiling every few dozen yards.

  In the center of the room, the Toth elite was flanked by two crystalline armored warriors, but holding rifles that looked like they were made of metal vines twisted into the shape of a weapon. A single rectangular table with a stool stood between the Toth and humans.

  “You agreed to two bodyguards, did you not?” Hale asked as he took a careful step over the threshold. Earth-normal gravity greeted him as he made his way to the table.

  “I didn’t anticipate you’d bring…those,” Kren said.

  “I’m not responsible for your assumptions,” Hale said. “Would you like to go back to your ship and fetch two of those little ones you have crawling all over the place? I can come back with Marines more my size, but it’ll take me some time to pick the right ones.”

  Kallen and Elias followed Hale, joints whirring as they stomped the ground.

  Hale had rehearsed this little ploy with the two armor soldiers several times. A little theater could go a long way in negotiations, and the soldiers could back up the bluster.

  “No. No need,” Kren said. “I bring you a gift. A sample of the wealth I have to offer.”

  A warrior hefted a black metal case onto the table and unfastened a pair of latches with flicks of its claws. The front of the case fell open and gold coins cascaded across the table. Hale picked one an
d examined it—a lion on one side, a seated man holding a long-necked bird on the other.

  “Is this all?” Hale asked. Insulting a gift, or even accepting one while on official duty, grated against his sensibilities and training, but the Toth had a certain set of expectations. They obviously weren’t familiar with how humans expected to carry out diplomacy, the first rule being not to show up at the doorstep with an invasion fleet.

  A warrior clicked a switch on the case and the coins flew back inside and into neat stacks. It shut the case and pushed it toward Hale.

  Hale waved his hand at Kallen and she scooped the case up.

  “May we begin?” Kren asked.

  Hale grasped his helmet and twisted it to the side. It came off with a puff of air and Hale breathed in chill, stale air. He put his helmet on the table, and sat down.

  ****

  Durand shifted in her cockpit. A quick glance at a mission clock showed she’d been motionless in space for an insufferably long fifteen minutes. The Mule that had dropped Hale on the surface had only just linked up with her and three other Eagles. They’d all wait in geosynchronous orbit over Europa until Hale signaled his extraction…or the Toth made a move.

  She squinted her eyes and scanned over Europa’s horizon, looking for the glint of silver from the Toth ships serving the same purpose as she and the human ships. Everything, thus far, about these negotiations had been equal. Same number of ambassadors, bodyguards, escort ships…everything except the number of ships in the human and Toth fleets.

  Few ships survived the assault on Ceres unscathed. Even with a few months of repairs, Durand didn’t know how they could beat the larger Toth fleet if it came to a war.

  Bad enough to fight the Xaros…now the Toth, she thought.

  A chill went up her spine as she remembered being held captive by the Toth elite and seeing it murder her pilots right in front of her.

  “Gall?” Manfred’s question snapped her out of the bad memory.