Primary Targets (Earth at War Book 2) Read online

  “What do I need of your aid, monster?” Caan-Fan-To growled, the distaste evident in the translation making it clear he felt dirty simply speaking to her. “Your kind have slaughtered us by the thousands, stolen our ships, occupied worlds we have worked for decades to develop! What do we need from you?”

  I probably should have kept my mouth shut. As a matter of fact, if I looked back on every single fuck-up in my short existence, the vast majority could have been summarized with the phrase, “I probably should have kept my mouth shut.” But they hadn’t brought me along for my good looks. Well, not just for my good looks.

  “What you need from us,” I told the Helta leader, “is the thing you lack, the reason you’re getting your asses kicked by a bunch of savages who’ve had your technology for less than a generation. You don’t know how to fight. You have no instinct for it. Maybe you think that’s a good thing, that you don’t want to be like us or the Tevynians. But clinging to that ideal is going to get all of you killed, except the ones the Tevynians decide to keep as slaves. What you need is an ally that can fight like the Tevynians without being so foolish as to think they need to take what someone else has in order to have enough.”

  I expected Strawbridge to scold me, to tell me to shut up, to at least give me the stink-eye, but instead, she was smiling. She took up where I left off, speaking in Helta again.

  “Do you want to know the difference between us and your enemies, Prime Facilitator? It’s that we aren’t stupid. We don’t take the technology you give us and accept it like it’s the power of the gods. We think about what it means. This galaxy is incredibly vast and full of treasures, secrets, living worlds. Our own solar system has two gas giants, each with multiple moons, a huge asteroid belt, a cometary halo. Everything we need, we can get from there using the technology Joon-Pah has given us. Enough to last us a thousand years. And if we want to settle another habitable planet, there’s one a single jump from us, a three-day journey. A whole world, with no other people, ready for us to colonize.”

  She made a motion I didn’t recognize and the translator informed me in a simulated female voice that it was a Helta gesture of emphasis.

  “And we know this because we weren’t slashing at each other with swords when Joon-Pah found us. We weren’t riding chariots drawn by horses into battle. We met his starship in our own vessel, much cruder and more primitive, but still a step off our planet, thousands of years ahead of what the Tevynians had. We know we can have everything we need and. We don’t need to take it from anyone. All we need to do is protect it—protect it from the foolish savages you armed and set loose on the galaxy. Because of that, we need to protect you as well.”

  Wow.

  I had not expected such straightforwardness from Delia Strawbridge. The woman had steel in her spine, or at least the skill to fake it.

  Caan-Fan-To seemed to rock back on his heels, looking the way I might have if I’d just been lectured by a gorilla in the zoo. When he spoked again, the translator told me there was still doubt in his voice but not the same conviction as before.

  “You say this and I want to believe it. But the Tevynians told us convincing lies as well. How do I know I can trust you?”

  “You don’t have to trust their words, old friend,” Joon-Pah assured him. “I have recorded everything that has transpired since I contacted them. I transmitted this to you. Have you not watched? Have you not seen the way they saved us from the Tevynians who tracked us to their planet? Have you not seen how they defeated their forces at Fairhome and returned Wellspring to our control? Is Wellspring not the first of our occupied territories we have actually regained since this accursed war began?”

  “I have seen what they can do when they fight for themselves,” Caan-Fan-To confirmed. “They fought to protect their world, to gain our ships, to gain intelligence against the enemy. I have yet to see them fight for no other reason than to protect our people.”

  “You’ll have your chance in a couple weeks,” I told him, “if that Tevynian was telling the truth, and if you let us.”

  “Elders preserve us,” the Helta said, and it might have been a curse or a prayer. He gathered himself and threw his arms in the air, looking like nothing so much as a bear facing off against a rival, trying to make itself look bigger. “We have not stopped them anywhere else we have fought them, but they can’t be ready to take Helta Prime! The defenses here are too strong, surely!”

  “Are they?” Joon-Pah asked. “Tell me, where is most of the fleet deployed?”

  Caan-Fan-To growled, slamming a thick-skinned palm on the long table, shaking the strange fruit.

  “Most of our ships are out at Everreach,” he admitted, “at the border of our territory and the closest Tevynian conquests. So far, they have marched a straight line of hyperspatial highways between systems.”

  “Right after you establish a discernable pattern is a great time to break it,” I pointed out.

  “The Americans have new weapons,” Joon-Pah told him. “They have helped us to add them to the Truthseeker. They are not perfect, but their range is long and their effects devastating. They have shown us ways to use the things we have more effectively. If they intended us harm, would they have helped to improve the weapons of our ships as well as theirs? You need to allow them to help us in this fight.”

  “If they are that powerful,” the other Heltan said, “why do they need us to allow them to fight?”

  “We’ll fight either way,” I corrected him. “But together, with us leading your forces, coordinating our actions with you, we could be much more effective.”

  “You wish to command us,” Caan-Fan-To accused.

  “You were supposedly in the military once. Did they not teach you anything about combat?” I rolled my eyes. “Someone has to call the shots in a battle. You can’t just throw everyone into a fucking blender and hope they happen to wind up in the most advantageous place to strike the enemy.” I looked from one to the other, horror passing through me at a sudden thought. “Unless that’s what you guys actually do? Just throw ships and troops at each other like some sort of Heroic Age free-for-all and hope for the fucking best?”

  My translator buzzed for a moment and I thought it had given up the ghost, but it finally found the right words and Caan-Fan-To and Joon-Pah looked at each other. Something passed between them that I couldn’t discern and the translator didn’t pick up. But I thought I knew.

  “Holy shit, that is what you do!” I realized. “You do just throw ships and troops headlong at the enemy!” I threw my hands in the air. “Jesus, you’re lucky you’ve lasted this long!”

  “Please, Major Clanton,” Strawbridge said, putting a restraining hand on my arm. “You are, perhaps, correct, but I don’t think this is going to accomplish anything.” To the Helta, she said, “You can see why it’s imperative for us to direct all forces. Joon-Pah has some idea of what we can accomplish through the organization we’ve learned after thousands of unfortunate and wasteful years of wars. We don’t rejoice in this heritage, and we’ve tried to grow past the need for war. Be that as it may, reality of the situation is that you need us. You need our ugly past and the lessons it’s taught us, because you are facing a particularly ugly part of it. The Tevynians were taken from Earth and they don’t seem to have made much progress past the society from which they were brought.”

  Strawbridge spread her hands in a human gesture, then followed it with a Helta motion of entreaty.

  “Let us help you. If we have bad intentions, we only have one ship and it will not be enough to take control of your worlds.”

  Caan-Fan-To grunted, shaking his head, eyes downcast. He said nothing for a good ten seconds, but when he looked up at us, I thought the tension had gone out of his shoulders.

  “Very well. It may be the end of my career, but I doubt I would last long as Prime Facilitator once the Tevynians overwhelm our defenses here as they have everywhere else.”

  “Sir,” the Heltan he’d called his Tertiary finall
y spoke again, stepping up beside the older male and speaking in his ear urgently, “is this wise? You would come out in favor of this in the open Council?”

  “And what choice do you believe I have? Better that I allow a junior Facilitator to introduce them, as if I am too addlepated to know what goes on under my nose?”

  “You have my word,” Strawbridge told him, “that the only way they will take this world is if they kill us first.”

  I eyed her sidelong, dubious about the assurance. Yeah, we were going to do our damnedest to stop the Tevynians, but I doubt Mike Olivera would have agreed to any suicidal last stand. It removed any doubts I had that she’d been performing, putting on an act to get Caan-Fan-To to agree rather than displaying any actual moral courage.

  Fucking State Department. Never liked those two-faced assholes.

  But it seemed to work.

  “And you have my promise,” Caan-Fan-To replied, “that I will protect you as long as you are on our world, and do my best to convince the Council.” The Heltan let himself fall into one of the bean bag chairs as if the strength had gone out of him. Vandas-Gol took a step toward him, hand outstretched in case his boss needed help up, but Caan-Fan-To swatted it away. “Though the Elders alone know if that will be enough.”

  He shifted in the chair, staring up at Strawbridge and me. “My manners have taken leave of me along with my senses. Despite the circumstances, you are my guests. I will call for food and drink.” He gestured to his aide. “Vandas-Gol, have the staff bring the evening meal for us.”

  The Tertiary reached for a small device mounted to a strap on his shoulder, a silver cylinder about three inches long that I recognized as a communications link. He hesitated, his finger over it.

  “You can eat our foods, can you not?” the younger Heltan asked.

  “They can,” Joon-Pah confirmed. “Though they consider some of our dishes bland.”

  “I like that fruit salad thing,” I told him. “The one with the stuff that’s sort of like mayonnaise.”

  “That is a child’s dish,” Joon-Pah said, his tone dismissive.

  “Then I’ll have a steak,” I told him, baring my teeth. “Medium.”

  He made a face and I laughed. The Helta were vegetarians and Joon-Pah had been horrified the first time he’d eaten dinner with the crew and seen us consuming animal flesh. He knew the Tevynians ate meat but he’d assumed we were more culturally advanced than that.

  “Vandas-Gol,” the Prime Facilitator suggested, “could you bring us…”

  But the younger male was already murmuring into his communications link, holding it close to his ear to hear the response over our conversation, and when he looked up at us, his tone and his demeanor seemed near panic.

  “Prime Facilitator, the Deputy is on her way up from the ground path! The guards tried to stop her, but she gave them a direct order….”

  Caan-Fan-To’s ears went flat against his skull and he rumbled a long, pained groan. “This is unfortunate.”

  “Deputy?” I repeated. “Deputy what?”

  “The Deputy Facilitator,” he told me, looking around as if for an exit. “Gafto-Lo-Mok. She is what you might refer to in your government as the Minority Party Leader. In practice, she is the second in charge of our government after Caan-Fan-To.” He made a gesture of negation. “And she is no friend to him, nor to me, and I think—”

  The translator had no suggestion for the warbling shriek that cut him off, but it sounded like the alarm cry of a barn owl, the banshee cry of a lost soul. The Heltan it came from was female. I knew enough about their clothing styles and sexual dimorphism now to tell the difference, though their voices were about the same pitch.

  “Traitor! Are you insane, bringing these things among us?” Finally, the translator had actual words to work with and they were about what I expected.

  “Here we go again,” I muttered.

  “Deputy Facilitator,” Joon-Pah said, interposing himself between us and the female Heltan, “these are not Tevynians! You must understand….”

  “I do understand,” she shot back at him, almost spitting the words. “I know you, Captain Joon-Pah, have gone to the Source of Life in violation of all our laws and customs, and I know you’ve brought these creatures with you and given them access to our technology, repeating the grave mistake we made with the Tevynians. Have the tens of thousands of dead Helta and the hundreds of thousands more enslaved not taught you anything? These monsters cannot be trusted!”

  Shit. If she knew all that, it meant she had a source on the Truthseeker, and though that was Joon-Pah’s problem rather than mine, it was a bit troubling to know we had to question the loyalty of his people now.

  “This is not an appropriate place to debate public policy, Deputy Facilitator,” Caan-Fan-To said, with an equanimity that told me he was used to dealing with fierce criticism from the Deputy. “We will debate this in the Council in the morning and you may make your case at that time. Screaming at me in this place, in front of our guests, will accomplish nothing.”

  “Guests?” she repeated, disbelief strong in her voice. “They should be kept in a cell! And if you don’t put them in one, then I will!” She grabbed her communications link and I felt a surge of…well, not exactly panic because I refused to panic in the face of a cranky koala bear, but let’s just say concern. “Send them in.”

  “What are you doing, Gafto?” Caan-Fan-To demanded. “This is the Prime’s residence.” He sounded outraged and I got the sense what she was doing was akin to trying to bring the National Guard into the White House to arrest the President.

  “As I said,” the Deputy Facilitator said, displaying a behavior I estimated to be smug self-satisfaction, “I was aware of your treason and came prepared. Some of our Self-Defense Force is still loyal to the laws and traditions of the Alliance! If you aren’t willing to do the right thing, then they will.”

  I expected Strawbridge to say something, and just as clearly, she was waiting for the Prime Facilitator to do something and I decided fuck it, and did it myself.

  “Lady,” I interrupted, tired of her theatrics, “we’re here to help, but we’re not martyrs. If you think you can just send in your goons and lock us up, you’re going to find out exactly why Joon-Pah thought we could beat the Tevynians for him.” I touched a control on my comm unit and heard a beep in my earpiece as it connected.

  “I’m here, Andy,” Pops answered. “Problem?”

  “Maybe. Go ahead and bring the team here. I want a guard in case anyone tries something stupid.”

  “Major Clanton,” Strawbridge erupted, “I did not authorize you to bring our troops into this—”

  “And that’s the beauty of it, ma’am,” I told her. “You don’t have to. I’m in charge of security, and it’s my opinion we need some security up in here.”

  “You’ve allowed them to bring armed troops onto our homeworld?” Gafto-Lo-Mok demanded, slipping into the outraged politician schtick that I was depressed to learn was not solely the purview of the human race. “Our people will judge you for this crime! You will be stricken from the histories and your offspring will forsake your lineage!”

  The Tertiary, Vandas-Gol, had backed up against the table and I thought he’d be under it if there’d been enough room. The Prime Facilitator stood steadfast in the center of the room, one of those redwoods outside, standing against the storm. Joon-Pah, for all the failings of the Helta military, was still a soldier and had taken a position with his back to the wall.

  It was all a question of who got there first, and Murphy’s Law being what it was, it was them. There was a squad of them, more or less, and they slammed through the unlocked door and tromped into the room in a gaggle, whatever intimidation their flat-back body armor and bulky laser weapons might have given them robbed by their total lack of a tactical formation.

  “Don’t move!” one of them barked, leveling his rifle at me.

  “Both of you put up your hands!” another yelled, the voice higher-pitched bu
t the emitter of the laser just as big.

  “You should make up your minds,” I said, standing where I was. “Do you want us to put our hands up or do you not want us to move?”

  That seemed to cause some confusion and the two who’d spoken looked at each other through sealed helmets, whatever they were saying locked behind the darkened visors.

  “Put up your hands,” one of them repeated, after, I supposed, they’d come to some sort of consensus.

  “No,” I decided and took a step to the right, putting the loud-mouthed drama queen Deputy Facilitator in the line of his fire.

  The Helta soldier hesitated, apparently never having been in this position before, and that was just long enough.

  “Drop your guns!”

  I had the odd experience of hearing a human voice translated into Helta and then translated back again through the earbud of my comm unit, but through both iterations, I knew the voice was Pops’, coming over the external speakers of his helmet. The Svalinn could be pretty stealthy if you were careful about it and knew what you were doing, and the Delta team definitely did.

  They filed in through the open door at the back of the main room, the soles of their boots scraping across the wooden floor, their KE rifles leveled at the Helta soldiers. I tried to see the suits through their eyes and hoped it was as scary as it seemed from my end. The armored Delta operators spread out across the rear of the room, careful to keep Strawbridge and me out of their fields of fire.

  “I said,” Pops repeated, “drop your guns. I won’t say it again.”

  “A demonstration might be in order, Pops,” I suggested. I motioned at a carved wooden display case by the front door. I couldn’t tell what the significance of the figurines inside were, but they looked to be made of blown glass.