Free The Xenocide Mission by Ben Jeapes Page A

Fleet.
    ‘Go and fetch anything that you know belongs to the two captives and bring it here. Stormer, have the captives and the dead bodies brought to this place at once.’
    She turned away from the question in Oomoing’s eyes.
    Joel looked at the suits, then at the XCs, then back at the suits again. The nearest XC pointed at him, then at the suits, then back the way they had come. The two XCs continued to stand there, waiting.
    Joel kicked over to the human-shaped suit, grabbed it in transit and ended up on the other side of the chamber. Then, though he saw one of the XCs flinch when he did it, he activated the control panel on the left sleeve. The suit ran a quick diagnostic and announced that it was intact, the breathing equipment had the same air reserve as when he was captured, the thruster unit was ready for use . . . in fact, it was fully functional, with one exception. The radio had been disabled, as Joel could see with his own eyes. The unit had been dismantled.
    ‘Wow,’ he said.
    Boon Round glanced in his direction. ‘It’s a trap. They intend to lure us into a sense of false security and gun us down without mercy.’
    Joel felt his exasperation rising. ‘And that’s why they don’t just walk in here with guns at the ready and do it more simply?’
    ‘They’re sadistic animals. They like to play with our minds.’
    ‘Fine,’ said Joel. ‘Hold me steady while I put this on and go out to my death.’
    Boon Round airswam over to him and helped him suit up. As they connected the air hoses to the helmet, the Rustie said, ‘Perhaps I will join you. We can die together.’
    And so the two of them made their way under armed guard through the passages of SkySpy to a makeshift airlock. They passed through into the airless zone.
    ‘Not that I have to explain anything to you, Learned Sister,’ said Barabadar, in response to the question Oomoing had carefully not been asking. Fleet was off fetching the extraterrestrials’ belongings and Oomoing’s camera. ‘But, as you surmise, I didn’t expect to encounter outlanders here. Now, supposing your sons had planted an observation post in another solar system, and the natives there fell on it as we did here, without challenge, and a few of your sons got away to tell you about it. What would you do?’
    Oomoing felt a sudden thrill as battle hormones started to flood into her bloodstream.
    ‘Investigate,’ she said.
    ‘Exactly.’ Barabadar’s eyes still caressed the lifeboat and Oomoing suddenly sensed just how difficult this was for her. She
wanted
it, so badly. But . . . ‘I’m assuming the survivors have somehow left our solar system – I’ve got remote probes crawling all over Firegod’s orbit and there’s no sign of them. I don’t know how long it would have taken them to get back home, but it seems a reasonable supposition that at some point we’re going to get a visit from a well-armed, technologically superior outlander warship with vengeance on its mind. I would of course welcome a one-to-one battle, but a battle like this would by no means be certain.’
    Marshal of Space Barabadar, thinking of defeat? Oomoing felt strangely disoriented. But, logically speaking, Barabadar was right, and just because she was a military leader didn’t mean she couldn’t use logic.
    ‘Even worse,’ Barabadar said as if reading her mind, ‘we might bring them down upon Homeworld. And so, we’ll remain here. If they come, they come; if we can communicate with them and convince them it was a mistake, then so much the better. If they want to fight then –’ she looked Oomoing in the eye; Oomoing guessed she was still smarting from Oomoing’s entirely accurate evaluation of her unprovoked, unannounced attack – ‘
then
I’ll challenge them to the Ritual of Contested Land. Either way, we’re going to stay here for the time being. But in the meantime, I hope to avoid even that much chance of a conflict we can’t possibly win by returning their sons to