Free Erebus by Ralph Kern Page A

gave a bitter response.
    “Layton, everyone knows you’d be there if you could,” Giselle said quietly. “But you’re doing something positive. You’re helping to find the reason we’re burying Dev. We all know if his enhancements had been online, Kumba would never have got the drop on him.”
    “On us, Giselle. Kumba got the drop on us,” I corrected her, pinching the bridge of my nose.
    “Did I make a mistake sending you, Layton? Are you ready for this?”
    “Yes, of course I’m ready. Dev would be the first one up here if it was the other way around.”
    “Okay.” The dubious tone in Giselle’s voice was still there, but it seemed like she was working through it.
    “So,” I forced a smile onto my face, and changed the subject. “What do those office imps you have slaving away in The Hague dungeon have lined up for me?”
    Giselle seemed to accept me at my word and pushed on. “I’ve got a big to-do list that you need to sign off on. I’ve boiled it down for you and am sending it across now.”
    A HUDmail icon appeared in my vision, and I opened it.
    “Any of those bastards actually confessed yet to being at the Karen Cole Hospital?” I asked as I scanned through the headers on the file.
    “Yeah, a few of them have. Most have just refused to answer any questions when they’ve been interviewed, though. Becky is fairly happy we have enough evidence to sink them, whether they squeal or not.”
    “Good.” I dropped the file into a folder to work on later. “I’ll get this back to you in a few hours.”
    “Yeah…good luck with that,” Giselle replied with a tone that said the work might be a little more extensive than she was making out. “By the way, it took some digging, but I’ve got you dossiers on all the folks you’ve asked for. They’ve been pretty straight with you. Cheng is MSS. He’s done some time in the People’s Army, too. Don’t get into a fight with him whatever you do. Chances are he has every combat enhancement going. Vance and Agapov are career intelligence; you probably don’t want to brawl with them either. Sihota is IASF. Smart cookie. Done some test piloting and has a list of degrees as long as my arm. Drayton is Red Star on their corporate security division.”
    “Thanks, Giselle. Just out of curiosity, does Cheng have a kid?”
    Giselle consulted her notes. “Not that we have on file. Why?”
    “Just an honesty check.” I gave a wry smile. “He failed.”
    “These spooky types and their damn smoke and mirrors.” Giselle’s voice had a note of distaste.
    “Yeah,” I replied before giving a shrug and sitting back against the headboard of my cabin bunk. “What about the other thing?”
    “I’m sending it as we speak.”

Chapter 9
Io
    With over four hundred active volcanoes constantly spewing out iron sulphide, the whole surface of Io was covered with deep drifts of yellow, orange, and black dust. The diseased color permeated the whole moon—it looked positively ill.
    Gunter Henning was trudging through the deep dust, careful to poke with his stick ahead of him to find the firmest ground. More than one engineer had plunged into an exceptionally deep drift. Fortunately, everyone had been found safe and well, but it would be a long wait for rescue, not to mention more than a little embarrassing.
    Pausing for a moment in his thick radiation/armored space suit, he looked up. Far away he could see Mount Woodgate, a massive volcano that was nearly one and a half times the height of Everest back on Earth. It was having a quiet day, just the lightest of ethereal plumes shooting upward out of it, giving the dark sky a yellow hue. Arching his head back, he could see the vast ball of Jupiter looming in the sky, the giant spot facing him. The whole thing looked like a red and white striped eye staring at him. When he’d first arrived on Io, he had found it completely overbearing. Now, the bloated gas giant was merely disconcerting.
    “Gunter, do you see the junction