Jupiter's Halo: Unbroken by A P Heath

Author:A P Heath
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: military, sciencefiction, thriller, space

TWENTY-EIGHT

The celebratory reception to honour the Martian Governor’s Eights-Day was in full swing. The Ministry’s Celebratory Hall echoed with voices of dignitaries and political delegates from across the solar system.

The chandeliers sparkled from the high ceiling, a quintet of string played their merry melodies from a balcony overhanging the small stage at the head of the hall. Waiters dressed in crisp, high coloured whites moved delicately between the bodies filling the floor; offering a drink or canapé wherever they found glasses or hands to be empty.

His Excellency Arstin Simler, Martian Ambassador to Jupiter’s Halo was the honoured guest, a proxy for the Marshall Governor himself.

Tylin Harten watched him as he made polite conversation with a small group of dignitaries from the colony moons.

He was a strange man for their times, squat and round where the majority were tall and slim. His wide face seemed open and approachable, but Harten had found the man to have a terribly annoying habit of allowing that friendly smile to hide a stubborn core as hard as the rock of the red planet.

They’d spoken on numerous occasions; the majority of their conversations amicable and pleasant, but Harten had found that once he broached the subject of Mars supporting the needs of the God’s Belt, that smile became a wall.

The Martian Ambassador would continue to smile, would continue to talk in a calm and cordial fashion, but his words would circle back on themselves and nothing would be achieved.

Tylin Harten marvelled at the self-serving nature of men. Mars was all but independent; sustained by its own water, able to mine the layers of its surface for minerals and with the technology to grow and spin their own food. What they lacked was a proper governing body, an authority recognised by both those on the surface and in the tunnels beneath. For this they looked to the Ministry, but in return they wished to give nothing.

The Deorum were another matter; fierce in their devotion to their own ruling tier and empowered by their monopoly over the ice mining that provided so many with the water so imperative to their survival. But they dwelled on Earth’s moon and station complexes hanging in the void; a lifeless rock and a collection of metal boxes and spheres, devoid of atmosphere, even the basic nitrates that would allow anything natural to grow. Their population boomed and they relied so heavily on trade goods from the Ministry and Mars to sustain even their generally sparse quality of life.

He didn’t even want to think on the pirate clans. Rovers and reavers all, contributing nothing and taking what they needed at the tip of a blade, the barrel of a gun.

If only they could all see.

Mankind had left the Earth behind to create new worlds in the wider solar system. It had been an age of exploration and wonder, a new page in the chequered history of the species. But as ever, humanity had failed to leave its enmities behind. Religion, race, creed; all were thrown together in the melting pots of the colonies.

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