— 3 —

Commissioner Sobel scowled at the insignia on his collar, still shiny from his recent transfer here. He was a dark-haired man, thirty pounds past good-looking: the kind whose face turned red very easily, and lately his face was turning red more than usual. He brushed off a few specks of dust and leaned back in the seat of his shuttle taking him from the Base to the Détente Asteroid. After six months, the useless embassy there was just beginning to feel familiar, though he doubted he would ever get used to Fixion.

As Commissioner, he was not foolish enough to believe the optimistic projections he sent back to Earth through the Information Bureau, but he had to make others believe them. Each report submitted for public dissemination had to show the human soldiers as faultless heroes and paint the Jaxxans as monstrous and alien. Fortunately, the Jaxxans looked hideous, and people had been programmed for centuries to fear bug-eyed monsters. How else could the Earth League maintain support for this abysmal war in this godforsaken place?

Humanity had a long history of shedding blood over worthless scraps of land, and this broken asteroid belt was one such place. Humans had visited there, established a tiny astronomical observatory, set up small outposts, planted their flags. So had the Jaxxans. When both governments dug in their heels, possessing Fixion and its entourage of habitable worldlets became a matter of honor.

Sobel was savvy enough to know that this war was not as senseless as it seemed. Rather, the Earth League—and no doubt the Jaxxans as well—used it as a practice field to test the mettle of the rival species and determine whether they wanted to prosecute a larger war across numerous star systems.

Three years ago, the aliens had showed their aggression (or maybe it had been a retaliation for something) by wiping out Cephei Outpost. So humans responded by blowing up any Jaxxan outpost they could find, and the two militaries began their nose-to-nose warfare on the main planetoid.

The people back home rallied, and recruiting offices had lines out the door. As the battles went on, the Deathguard cyborg killing machines were portrayed as warriors so tough that even death on the battlefield could not stop them from continuing the fight against the Jaxxans. Poignant, tragic, glorious.

Sobel’s two predecessors had put in their time, and now he was stuck administering the Earth League forces. He ran the show out here, organized the military, sent back the PR dispatches.

For appearances sake, he was also the designated spokesman, an ambassador for humanity, charged (on paper at least) with finding a peaceful solution to the conflict. His superiors had never indicated that they genuinely desired a resolution; nevertheless, he needed to maintain appearances—he was good at that.

One of the small drifting rocks with a tenuous but stable atmosphere was named the Détente Asteroid, complete with a human embassy building and an adjacent Jaxxan embassy. By mutual agreement, each side was required to have a representative available at the embassy a certain percentage of the time, but due to a loophole in the agreement—intentional, Sobel thought—the human ambassador and the Jaxxan ambassador were not required to be on the Détente Asteroid at the same time, which made substantive peace talks difficult.

After a two-hour flight, Commissioner Sobel’s shuttle landed on the Détente Asteroid. He was preoccupied enough with his thoughts that he forgot the oxygen mask until the last moment and fumbled it into place just as the hatch slid open.

He gathered his briefcase full of files, and followed a small honor guard across the landing zone to the embassy building; a vanguard entourage had already restored the power, heat, and air-generators. No one had occupied the building for weeks.

Not surprisingly, the corresponding Jaxxan embassy building was shut down: windows shuttered, doors locked, no one inside.

Sobel made quick work of settling in. Though it seemed a pointless obligation to be here, he did look forward to a few quiet and uninterrupted days. He had paperwork to review, forms to finish, consolation letters to write.

No matter what the Earth public saw in the glorious video footage sent by the Information Bureau—how human forces had pushed forward to gain a few more acres of the no-man’s land, how the Deathguards continued to attack the enemy like heroic vigilantes—Sobel knew the war was not going well.

Something had to change soon. An unqualified victory would bring a surge in support on Earth, but even a devastating defeat would inflame their passions, and he could take advantage of that as well. The worst case was that the battle for the Fixion Belt was a stalemate that would continue for a long, expensive time. Since he and his Jaxxan counterpart, Warlord Kiltik, had no particular reason to hold meetings, no resolution was in sight.

Seated at his temporary desk, Sobel opened his briefcase. Before delving into the files he needed to review, he glanced through the tinted window at the closed Jaxxan embassy. As soon as the Commissioner left, Kiltik would arrive to serve his own time as mandated by the interim treaties, and he would go through the same motions.