by Richard Fox
“It is a mistake, a fatal mistake, to trust the Toth,” Steuben said.
“You think I don’t know that? You were right beside me on that Toth ship. I’ve seen what the Toth really are.” Hale fixed armor to his thighs, hammering the plates with his fist to get the fit tight enough. “This whole situation is shit. It’s been shit since the day I landed in Phoenix’s hollowed-out shell and fought my first Xaros.”
Hale backed into the locker, and his back plate snapped onto his frame.
“What am I supposed to do, Steuben? I know you’re a couple hundred years old, but I’m a twenty-four-year-old lieutenant put in front of a god damn brain in a jar…and told to negotiate the fate of the whole planet. All because I managed not to get eaten by them when they had the chance. Thanks, Atlantic Union Marine Corps, but this wasn’t covered in the Basic School at Quantico.”
“What is the right thing to do?” Steuben asked.
“We beat the piss out of these lizards,” Hale said. “Hurt them so bad the one ship we let limp home tells every other Toth that humanity is not to be fucked with. That’s what I want to do, Steuben, but wiser heads than mine say violence isn’t the answer here.”
Hale jammed his hands into his gauntlets and took his helmet from a hook.
Steuben stood up and touched his knuckles to Hale’s temple.
“You have a warrior’s heart,” Steuben said. “If there had been more Karigole like you…things might have been different.”
****
Hale bounded over Europa’s icy crust beside Elias and Kallen.
“We’re going to wear a rut through this ice,” Kallen said. “How many more times do I have to look at that nasty fish tank before this is all over?” she asked.
“This might be the last trip,” Hale said.
“You don’t sound confident,” Elias said. “Anything else you want to share with us?”
“Stay intimidating,” Hale said. He planted both feet and bounded higher, giving his anti-grav linings a burst to lengthen his arc. He came down at the dome’s airlock. When the inner doors opened, the Toth was already waiting for him at the table.
****
Despite the cold, dry air, Hale was sweating. The Toth held a data slate in one of its six clawed legs and was silent for many minutes as it read over the proposed treaty sent from Earth. The Toth’s newfound silence unnerved Hale more than the repulsive mass inside the tank.
The Toth set the data slate on the tabletop with a snap.
“I believe we’ve found common ground,” the Toth said, and Hale’s heart sank in his chest. “Surrender of every procedural growth tank, all stored seed stock and the computer servers for memory generation. Also, deliver every identified procedural human being to my ship once it takes orbit over Phoenix.”
The clawed leg rose next to the tank and beckoned a warrior over. The warrior lumbered over and laid an ornate golden tube on the table. The tube unfolded into a large piece of paper. English script and dense Toth cuneiform materialized. The words shifted around, expanding and collapsing as the text rewrote itself.
“The initial agreement,” Kren said. The golden sheet fluttered toward Hale.
Hale read it carefully, finding no discrepancies between it and what Valdar had given him.
“Sign it,” Kren said. The fluid in his tank shifted from red to deep blue. “Sign.” A tiny panel flipped open on Kren’s leg and a tapered cylinder spat onto the table. Hale picked up the golden object, a tiny dark tip at one end.
Hale swallowed hard and reread the subsection on the immediate surrender of all known procedural human beings. Signing this meant that Yarrow, his Marine, would be handed over to Kren. Hale looked up from the document and to the mechanical housing just beneath Kren’s tank, where he stored the feeder arm.
He imagined that bloody spike opening up over Yarrow’s head…
A sea of anger rose in his chest. Hale set the pen down.
“This inspection clause,” Hale said. “I don’t see the size or any other details of the inspectors specified. Nor do I see a list of locations.”
Nerve tendrils twisted against themselves.
“We must be sure you aren’t hiding any of the meat from us,” Kren said. “We will go where we please and with whatever forces we deem necessary to ensure compliance.”
The corner of Hale’s lips tugged into a sneer. He imagined thousands of Toth warriors on the streets of Phoenix, rounding up every human being they could find and sending them to “inspection,” a loophole so big the Toth could fly a starship through it.
“Would you adjust the text to reflect that?” Hale asked with a smile.
A low growl came from the tank’s speakers. The inspection clause rewrote itself, making it perfectly clear that the Toth would have the run of every inch of the solar system.
A slight vibration went through Hale’s gauntlet. He glanced down at the data screen, which showed a failed delivery message.
“Got something from the ship,” Elias said through the IR and into Hale’s earpiece.
“Me too, looks like a glitch,” Kallen said.
“You have your amendment,” the Toth said. “Now sign.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Hale said. “But this text isn’t what I’m authorized to agree to.” Hale rolled the pen back to Kren. “I’ll need to have the whole thing reapproved, in its entirety, by Earth.” He looked at his forearm screen and frowned. “It’s the middle of the night cycle in Phoenix. We’ll have to adjourn for at least another twelve hours.”
A mechanical claw clamped down on the table edge and gouged out a hunk of metal.
“I’m frustrated too,” Hale stood up, “just a bit more of a delay.” And maybe enough time for me to convince Earth what you’re really after, he thought.
A brief tremor rumbled through the dome.
“Ice quake?” Kallen asked. “Not unusual for Europa.”
“Felt like artillery,” Elias said.
Hale reached for his helmet.
A hiss rose from the warrior bodyguards. Kren scuttled away from the table.
“Iron Hearts,” Hale said, “I think the negotiations are over.”
A panel flipped open beneath Kren’s tank. The feeder arm shot out like a striking cobra toward Hale’s face.
Hale threw himself back as monofilament wires from the bloody spike brushed over his face. He hit the ground and rolled to his back, drawing his pistol.
The feeder arm bashed against the solid table, unable to reach him. Hale fired two rounds at Kren, but the magnetically accelerated rounds ricocheted off the tank, leaving spider-webbed cracks against the glass. The Toth retreated, its tendrils flailing madly against the inside of the tank.
The feeder arm swung to the side and sent Hale’s helmet flying across the room. Hale knew he wouldn’t get very far outside the airlock without it.
“Elias?” Hale turned around and saw the two armor soldiers wrestling with Toth warriors in crystalline armor. He looked back at Kren; the overlord and his two bodyguards were stuffed into the airlock at the opposite side of the dome. Where had more warriors come from?
Hale saw his helmet half-hidden by a column. He rolled to his feet and ran toward it.
The air wavered between him and his helmet. Hale skidded to a halt and raised his pistol as a ghost materialized from thin air. Hale fired his pistol and the gauss bullet crumpled against the apparition. A Toth warrior snapped into life, covered from snout to tail tip in crystal armor. It was eight feet tall and held a halberd in its double-thumbed hands.
Hale gave his pistol a worried glance and started shooting.
The Toth roared at Hale and charged, unfazed by Hale’s shots.
On the third pull of the trigger, the warrior blew apart with a crack of thunder. Hale’s ears lit up with a screeching whine. He looked back at Elias and saw a single smoking barrel on his forearm cannons, a dead warrior at his feet.
“If you weren’t so delicate, we’d be out of here by now, crunchy,”
Elias said, the words barely making it over the mosquito buzz in Hale’s ears. Elias motioned to Hale’s helmet with his cannons and Hale stepped around the steaming remains of the Toth that had charged him.
“You think there are more?” Kallen asked as Hale popped his helmet over his head.
“Backs to the wall. Just in case,” Elias said.
“Anything from the Breitenfeld?” Hale shouted, running toward the airlock.
“Don’t have to yell, jarhead, and no,” Kallen said.
“What?” Hale asked.
“You blew his eardrums out with the concussion from your cannons,” Kallen said. She waved her own cannons across the empty dome as the airlock opened and the three moved inside.
“His peashooter wasn’t cutting it,” Elias said. “What was I supposed to do?”
The outer airlock doors opened and Elias rushed out first. He swung his torso around on his waist actuators and his cannons flashed in the near vacuum, sending gauss rounds the size of Hale’s fist over his head.
Hale saw a pair of Toth warriors tumbling through the sky above his head. Yellow blood froze into snow as their ruined bodies went end over end. The gauss cannons packed enough of a punch to send the warriors on a ballistic trajectory like a kicked football back on Earth.
Hale opened the emergency radio frequency. “Breitenfeld, this is Hale. We’ve got a code red on the surface. Need immediate extraction.” Hale forced his jaw open and tried to pop his ears. The ringing seemed like it had gotten stronger since he put his helmet on. “Breitenfeld? Do you read me?”
Even if they answered him, Hale wasn’t sure he could hear it.
“Can either of you…what’re you looking at?” Hale asked the armor soldiers. Both of them stared over Europa’s stunted horizon.
A starship rose beyond the pale-blue plain of ice, a pointed mass of jagged corral flat and wide like a broadsword, ugly nodules of engine banks for a hilt. The hull shifted through hues of red and brown, like it was covered in old blood. It was the largest spaceship Hale had ever seen, dwarfing the Breitenfeld and almost as large as Titan Station.
“I think we’re in trouble,” Kallen said.
A silver shuttle blasted from the surface, escorted by four Toth dagger fighters. Kren, retreating toward the Toth battleship.
“Where’s our shuttle?” Hale asked.
Points of light grew on the battleship, then blossomed into blasts of energy. Ragged bolts of white energy streaked toward Hale and the soldiers and tore overhead, leaving ionized trails of plasma in Europa’s scant atmosphere.
“Definitely in trouble,” Kallen said.
“There!” Hale pointed off to the side of the dome where sunlight glinted from a pair of ships speeding toward them.
“Not ours,” Elias said. “Draw them in, bouncing Betty when they’re close enough. Your turn to babysit.”
“Least he doesn’t complain nonstop like MacDougall,” Kallen said as she scooped Hale up with an arm and bounded across the ice. Hale squirmed uselessly before recognizing the wisdom of trying to hold on to Kallen for dear life.
Energy blasts smashed into the ice yards away, shooting geysers of steam and shards of dirty ice into the sky. A streak of energy blazed over Elias’ shoulder. Chunks of ice exploded from the impact of the near miss, and a lump the size of Hale’s hand crashed into his right knee.
Even with his armor, the blow turned the joint into a white-hot epicenter of pain. He grunted in agony and tried to reach his knee, Kallen held him fast. The display on his visor showed the armor plates and graphene-mail layer damaged, but his suit wasn’t compromised.
“Sorry,” Kallen said. “Damn crunchies always trying to get hurt around me.”
“Get ready.” Elias’ helm swiveled around to see the pair of Toth fighters on their heels. The helm snapped back around.
“Boost!”
The two soldiers fired their jet packs and soared into the sky. Hale’s vision grayed out as the sudden acceleration sent his blood rushing out of his head.
Elias and Kallen spun around and aimed their gauss cannons ahead of the approaching Toth fighters. Both soldiers fired on full auto, muzzle flashes so close together it almost looked like they’d fired lasers instead of a hail of gauss shells.
The armor sent out a curtain of fire for the Toth to fly through. A Toth fighter took a shell to the fuselage, spinning it out of control. It plowed into Europa’s ice, hull fragments blending into the surface. The second banked out of its attack run, accelerating away from Kallen’s gauss rounds that missed their target by mere feet.
The Toth fighter’s engines flared as it sped away. It looped over and came back for the humans falling back to Europa. The Toth jinked from side to side.
“I’m low on ammo,” Elias said.
“I’ve got three seconds on full cyclic left,” Kallen said.
“I’ll draw him off,” Elias said. “You get the crunchy back to the—never mind.”
A pair of Eagle fighters came over the horizon. The lead Eagle destroyed the Toth fighter with a single burst of fire.
“Hale, this is Gall. We’ve got a Mule right behind us to get you home,” Durand said. “Why are you three—bordel de merde…that ship is big.”
“Gall, this is Iron Heart One,” Elias said, “ready for pick up.”
****
Valdar and Utrecht leaned over the tactical plot where solid blue icons showed Hale’s transport and escort ships hovering over Europa’s surface. Red triangles marked the known Toth positions and an alien cruiser mirrored the Breitenfeld opposite the mining dome.
“The cruiser dumped garbage again,” Utrecht said. “They stick to a decent schedule, voiding about every eleven hours or so. There were bodies…again.” The gunnery officer tapped the plot and a picture of unsuited menials floating in space next to the Toth ship popped up next to the large red icon.
“Only ever the little ones?” Valdar asked.
“That’s right. The high-res pics we got of the bodies show…bite marks,” Utrecht said, his face blanched. “I don’t know how Garret thinks we can have some sort of relationship with these things. No respect for their dead, cannibalism, then there’s what the leaders eat.”
“We aren’t negotiating a cultural exchange,” Valdar said. “Hale should have an agreement worked out soon, and the Toth will be long gone.” Along with the proccies, he thought.
“Captain,” said Lieutenant Erdahl, the ship’s communication’s officer, as she twisted around in his seat, “we’ve got a priority transmission from Earth.”
“I’ll read it in my ready room,” Valdar said.
“It’s coded vermillion, sir,” Erdahl said. A hush fell over the bridge. Vermillion cyphers used the most complex encryption the Atlantic Union had and were only ever used when high command thought all-out war was imminent.
Valdar went to Erdahl’s chair and pulled a glove off. One of the screens had a deep red border with a warning that a message was for Valdar’s eyes only. The captain pressed his palm against a small plate and lines of text filled the screen.
Valdar frowned.
“You know what a lepton pulse is?” he asked Erdahl.
“No, but the fact that we’ve only got five minutes to get ready for it doesn’t make me feel very confident,” Erdahl said. “If only vermillion cyphers could hold more than two hundred characters.”
“Send a warning to Hale and his escort. Tell them…be alert, but don’t spook the Toth,” Valdar said, walking to his command chair slowly and deliberately. Any sign of unease or panic would provoke an exponentially worse reaction from his bridge crew.
He sat in his command chair and flipped open a clear panel. He pressed the READY ALERT button and amber light flooded the bridge. Crewmen on the bridge and across the ship donned void helmets.
Valdar waited until the last person on the bridge had her helmet on, then he took his armored helmet from beneath his chair and snapped it over his head. The void suit beneath his overalls pressurized
with a slight click in his ears.
“Gunnery,” Valdar said. “I want you to ready a main-gun firing solution for the Toth cruiser, but do not slew the guns or prime the rails, understand?”
“Aye-aye, Captain, but it’ll slow us down if we do have to fight,” Utrecht said.
“We charge the guns and point them at the Toth and we will have a fight,” Valdar said. “Let’s not ruin all Hale’s hard work through an abundance of caution.” Valdar pressed a key on the side of his arm rest. “Engineering, what will a lepton pulse do to the jump engines?”
“Can’t say for sure, sir. I’m an engineer not a theoretical physicist. The only instruction Lafayette gave me for the jump drive when he left was ‘Don’t touch it.’ Want me to stoke the fires?” Levin asked.
“Prep for a jump back to Earth,” Valdar said. He didn’t miss having the long-winded Karigole around until this moment.
“Lepton pulse wave in T minus thirty seconds,” Erdahl said.
“I wonder what it’ll do,” Geller said over the bridge’s open IR comms, “send the ship to dimension X or turn us all into purple tentacle monsters?”
“Hot mike…ensign,” Valdar said through grit teeth. The young officer did his best to sink into his chair and away from the rest of the bridge’s gaze.
But he does have a point, Valdar thought. Those engines surprised us on more than one occasion.
“Three…two…one,” Erdahl said.
Valdar gripped his armrests tightly…and the lepton pulse came and went without any obvious effects.
“Shall we stand down, Captain?” the XO asked.
“No, wait and see if the Toth react,” Valdar said. A tinge of anxiety crept into Valdar’s mind. Did Garret and Ibarra know he’d sabotaged the negotiations? Every report he’d sent back to Earth showed that Hale was following their instructions to stall; there was nothing to suspect. Erdahl controlled the only IR transmitter that could reach Earth and no one else on his ship knew the real truth…except Hale, but Hale trusted him.