Peace Talks (Adventures of the Starship Satori Book 12) Read online

  Peace Talks

  Adventures of the Starship Satori Book 12

  Kevin McLaughlin

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Author’s Notes

  Other Books by Kevin McLaughlin

  Afterword

  About the Author

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  One

  Owen observed his new friend and mentor. Their relationship was still fresh, and he had a lot to learn about Garul before he would feel comfortable with this fresh course his life was taking. If anyone had told him a year ago that he'd be essentially squired to one of these lizard aliens, he'd have laughed in their face. No, he'd probably have punched them in the face, he admitted. His anger toward the aliens had been that intense, that overwhelming.

  Funny how quickly things could change.

  But combat could do that to someone. All his life Owen hated the Naga for what they’d done to his parents, but fighting alongside them against the Bugs changed everything. At first, he was willing to side with his old enemy only because they were a better option than the alternative. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that happy horse-shit. But over the course of the battle Owen came to respect Garul’s sense of honor and raw courage.

  They’d won the day together, but only at incredible cost. All told, just two dozen Naga had survived the attack on their ship by the Bugs, out of ten times that number who'd originally set out for Earth. It was a devastating blow to Garul; Owen could see that much in his eyes. It was funny how the Naga facial expressions were not that different from those humans wore. Sure, body language wasn't precisely the same between the two species. Humans lacked tails, for one thing. A Naga swishing his tail back and forth might be irritated, excited, or just curious. They reminded Owen of cats, able to tell so much about how they felt through slight movements of their tail.

  The Naga ship was finally in orbit around Earth, as safe a harbor as anywhere for the moment. Human crews were hard at work on repairs. The battle to retake the vessel from the Kkiktchikut had taken a significant toll on the vessel. They'd all but wrecked the engine room, for starters. Owen couldn't help but smile at the memory. He'd been in the thick of it all, fighting in his Armor to kill the Bugs and save the Naga. The race that had killed his parents.

  That errant thought brought up a brief flare of intense fury again. It was damned hard to let go of that rage, now that he had nowhere safe to direct it. How could he hate the Naga now that he'd fought by their side? In so many ways, they were just like humans. Complete with all the human failings Owen was all-too familiar with.

  “What bothers you?” Garul asked. He'd spotted the tension, just like he always did.

  “Bad memories.”

  The Naga captain nodded. “I have those, too. All warriors who survive long enough acquire them. But you do not allow them to master you, which is good. That is the sign of a true fighter.”

  Owen sighed. Once he had allowed that anger to take control. He'd hurt people without meaning to. It would take him a long time to get past that. But maybe working with Garul would give him a chance to try. That didn't mean it was going to be easy. There was a long road ahead. He changed the subject. “We're entering the atmosphere soon.”

  “Yes. I've been looking forward to seeing your homeworld again for a long time,” Garul said.

  The shuttle rumbled around them as it hit the upper reaches of air, beginning a controlled descent toward the surface far below. Owen wondered just what other folks would make of the new arrivals. Garul and his Naga weren't here trying to conquer or destroy the Earth this time. They'd arrived to firm up an alliance with humanity against an existential threat for both species. But that didn't mean everyone on Earth would be glad to see them. Quite the contrary, if his own experiences were any measure. Owen hadn't just been angry at the Naga; he'd hated them with a burning passion for the deaths they'd caused. A lot of families lost people in the Naga attack on Earth. They demolished entire cities with bombardment from orbit. Millions of people perished.

  Now they were friends, and Owen could at last see this as a good thing. The Bugs were a far more serious danger to humanity than the Naga could ever be. He'd fought alongside the lizard-like aliens against their former overlords, and there was no doubt which side he wanted to be on. The Kkiktchikut were deadly antagonists. Their tech was superior to anything humans or Naga had. Worse, there seemed to be little or no way of communicating with the Bugs. Owen didn't think humanity even knew why the Bugs were attacking human ships. Garul said they were a frightened, even paranoid race. As far as Owen was concerned they looked too scary to be afraid of anything.

  The shuttle rocked again as it hit a patch of bad turbulence. They were headed home. Well, his new home, anyway. They would host Garul at the Armor training grounds. The Naga were especially curious about that human innovation after seeing it in action. Garul wanted to see if the mechanized robot shells were something he could adapt for his people. It would also keep the Naga out of the public eye, at least for the time being. The last thing they wanted was some hotheaded human showing up and causing an interstellar incident.

  Owen shook his head. So damned much had changed. He fingered the token pinned to his uniform. It rested where his rank would have been, had he still been with the human military. Garul took him on as an apprentice, making him part of the Naga force. That left him unsure whether he was still a member of Colonel Foster's Armor unit or not. It wasn't an unprecedented state of affairs. The US armed forces had embedded personnel in other nations' militaries before. Something told Owen that his case was different, though.

  Garul acted like the bond he'd offered meant much more than just working with him. When Owen accepted the old warrior’s offer, he hadn’t entirely understood what he was taking on. In a lot of ways, things weren’t that much more clear a day later. This was apparently some aspect of Naga culture which was so deeply engrained that the aliens all simply understood it without having to ask.

  The whole thing left Owen feeling more than a little lost and confused. Everything in his life had changed over the course of about forty-eight hours. That left him wondering where he fit in, now. Not to mention who he was and what he might become.

  As if he could sense where Owen's thoughts were going, Garul turned and rested a clawed hand on Owen's shoulder. “Don't worry, young one. No matter where your future leads you, you have my support.”

  “Mind reading?” Owen asked. The Naga sometimes used Cyanauts, small slug like sentient beings with telepathic powers, to translate for them. But Garul didn'
t need one for English. He'd taken the time to learn the human language so he could better cooperate with Earth.

  Garul shook his head and clicked his tongue, a Naga laugh. “No. Just the look on your face. You stare down at your homeworld and wonder if it is still home to you. It is. It will be. Even after you've walked a score of other worlds, something deep inside you will call you back here.”

  “You ever have that same feeling?”

  “Yes. I miss my home,” Garul said. “I fear for her as well. The enemy could arrive at any time and destroy everything.”

  It wasn't hyperbole. The Kkiktchikut had a massive super-dreadnought with a main gun capable of destroying entire planets. It was a technology that neither the humans nor the Naga understood or could replicate. The amount of energy required for that had to be incredible. How did they manage it? Worse, if they came calling, how could they be stopped?

  “But I choose to believe we will find a way to survive. Because hope is what keeps a warrior's heart burning bright.” Garul removed his hand, grabbing the rail beside his seat as the shuttle rocked again. “That, and inertial stabilizers. We need to teach your people how to make better ones. This trip down should not be so bumpy. Now, if it was a combat drop?”

  The Naga showed his sharp teeth. “That would be another matter.”

  “We'll be doing that soon enough, I think,” Owen replied. They might be in the midst of a brief pause in the fighting, but he knew better than to believe it would last long.

  “So we will, young warrior. So we will.”

  Two

  General Hereford ran his fingers through what remained of his steadily thinning hair. Funny, he used to have a lot more up there. The last year or so had been especially rough and the toll it was taking on his body was becoming more noticeable.

  Some of his peers in various services opted to call it quits and take retirement. War was different now. The threats were no longer limited to some backwater nation making trouble, where landing a bunch of troops could rapidly put the house in order. These days generals had to deal with crap like alien invasions and weapons capable of blowing up entire planets. He wasn’t shocked that it was just too big for some people to handle and didn’t fault them for it. That road wasn’t for Hereford, though.

  Retire? Now? Never. There was too much to do. Trusting the future of humanity to someone else simply wasn't in his nature. “Hell, handing over control of the coffee maker is tough enough,” Hereford muttered.

  He allowed himself a small grin at the self-deprecating joke. True, he'd always been something of a control nut. One would think his rank would have cured him of the problem long ago, but there it was. In some ways, a person's nature just didn't change. Human beings stayed pretty much who they were. Oh, they could change a few things about how they acted, sure. But the core, the essence of who they were as a person? In Hereford's experience that rarely shifted much.

  That had worked in his favor when it came to young McInness. Hereford had seen something in the boy, despite all the pain he wore day to day. The core was still good. He took it upon himself to chisel away at the hard shell trauma had placed around the young man, digging down to who he really was beneath. It had worked beyond his wildest expectations. Owen McInness hadn't just found it in himself to work with the Naga despite what they'd done to his parents. He'd befriended them and been accepted by them as one of their own. Hereford shook his head, wondering at it. The boy gave him hope for humanity's future. Because if he could rise above himself to show his best nature, then maybe they all could.

  The elevator stopped at the top level of Base One. That was what Colonel Foster had named the central command building of McClellan Space Force Base, home to her blossoming Armor brigade. Base One towered over the rest of the complex. It gave Hereford a good vantage point to see the source of his latest headache. From the roof, one could see most of the facility, even as far as the main gate. He stepped from the elevator and strode purposefully toward one side of the roof, joining a small security detail who also kept watch.

  “Sir! We weren't expecting you!”

  Hereford waved a salute to the sergeant in charge. “At ease, men. What's the situation?”

  “No change, sir. We've got personnel standing by in case of any trouble, but so far they're just holding position. The numbers keep trickling in, though. More every hour.”

  Hereford peered over the edge of the building toward the base's main gate. The sergeant was right. The numbers were definitely climbing. Had to be at least a thousand protestors outside McClellan now, and it had only been half that at daybreak. So far the protest remained peaceful, if you could say that of a thousand people screaming at the gate guards. They hadn't tried to approach the gate, nor had any violence been done. That was something, at least. The squad of heavily armed security troops minding the base entrance had probably helped in that regard, but Hereford worried anyway. It wouldn't take much to escalate the mess out there into a riot. The last thing he wanted was his troops firing on civilians. But he couldn't allow them onto the base, regardless the cost.

  How they'd even heard about the Naga delegation remained a mystery Hereford was determined to unravel. The entire operation was need-to-know. It should have been under a tight wrap. Instead he had a growing crowd out there, complete with several news crews. This was the top news bite being broadcast by every network in the country. Those broadcasts in turn drew in a larger group of civilians by the hour. Sooner or later the mob out there could hit critical mass, at which point things might get nasty.

  He understood their point of view. Hell, a short while ago he'd have agreed with them! The Naga had almost struck Earth with a pair of rocks big enough to wipe out all life on the surface. If even one of the kinetic strikes had impacted, it would have been the end of humanity. Only a daring counterattack had saved his world.

  But it hadn't saved everyone. The Naga had done enormous damage during their attack. Millions died in the carnage. Countless people lost family members or friends. They were angry, ready to lash out, and who could blame any of them?

  But the world had changed since then. They'd come across an even greater threat than the Naga, one which appeared determined to wipe out both species. Humanity came to the Naga's aid; together they'd won an important victory against the Kkiktchikut. The Bugs hadn't attacked since, but Hereford was certain that it was only a matter of time. They'd be back. Humanity and Naga alike needed to be ready for that day. This delegation was the first time Naga had ever visited Earth in peace. The talks had to go on as planned.

  A bright light in the sky drew his attention away from the protest. Sunlight glinted off metal and red plumes of energy blasted from the shuttle as it descended toward the base. They were right on time. He nodded to the sergeant in charge of overwatch. “Keep a close eye on that mess over there. I need to be informed the moment anything changes.

  “Yes, sir!” the young man replied.

  Hereford made his way back to the elevator. It wouldn't do to keep his guests waiting. He shook his head and rolled his eyes. It was a damned strange world he was living in, but it was a hell of a lot more interesting than retirement. They could pry this command from his cold, dead fingers. While he was breathing, he'd keep on fighting to keep his species in one piece. Hereford wasn't above using every asset available to make that happen.

  Even former enemies.

  If the crude truce they had with the Naga could be turned into a true alliance it would improve the odds of both species making it through this fight for survival. Nothing was more important than that.

  Three

  Garul took a step down the shuttle ramp into the open air. Bright sunlight streamed down. The shade was wrong. His own star was yellow too, but something about the light didn't feel correct. The smells were all off from what he was used to, as well. His homeworld was hot, humid, and full of wildlife. This place was still hot, but dry. And Earth was dominated by mammals, of all things! There were mammals on his homeworld, small
creatures that lived in tunnels and mostly came out at night to forage. These humans, he reminded himself, were a very different breed.

  The scent of sun-baked tarmac reached his nostrils as he sniffed, then inhaled more deeply. New worlds always brought him joy. Exploring was part of who he was. Nothing made him happier than venturing where no Naga had traveled before. But this visit was not merely for exploration and pleasure. This trip was about survival, as his brush with death aboard his ship had demonstrated. The Kkiktchikut had not simply vanished back into hiding, as some Naga prayed for. They'd ambushed his battle cruiser while it was in hyperspace. If it hadn't been for the assistance of human warriors, everyone aboard his ship would have died under their claws.

  Even with the arrival of help, the casualties had been a catastrophe. He clenched sharp teeth together at the thought. He would avenge their deaths, if it was the last thing he did.

  A dozen humans waited at the bottom of the ramp. Garul paused for just a moment to assess them, but it was clearly a welcoming party. He strode forward to meet them. Most seemed like regular troops, weapons close at hand. They were carefully not pointing their armaments at the Naga, for which Garul was grateful. The last time he’d been on Earth, it was as a prisoner. Now he’d returned as a diplomat. With luck this trip would be more productive than the last.