In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) (10 page)

Her face went blank for a moment as she tapped
into Ansara’s global network. “Izin Nilva Kren has been arrested.”

“What for?”

“An Intruder Force has attacked the Forum Fleet
blockading the Minacious Cluster. Izin Nilva Kren is therefore a member of an
aggressor species at war with the galaxy.”

* * * *

“He’s a citizen of the Democratic Union of
Earth!” I shouted undiplomatically at the silently impassive Jesorl at the
entrance to his house. “I’m an Earth Ambassador and Izin is part of my diplomatic
staff! You can’t touch him!”

Jesorl clicked his reply for Meta to translate,
“Considering the danger posed by his species, Izin Nilva Kren has been detained
as a spy.”

“He’s not a spy! He’s an engineer.”

“Izin Nilva Kren is a member of the most dangerous
species in this galaxy,” Meta said on Jesorl’s behalf, “a species that has already
invaded the galaxy once before and has attacked the Alliance Fleet several
times since. That makes him a threat.”

We knew the Intruders had invaded the galaxy
during Earth’s twenty first century – unbeknown to mankind at the time – but
the tight lipped TCs had omitted to mention any other attacks. “So this is not
the first time they’ve tried to break out?”

“They have made two other attempts in the last two
thousand five hundred years,” Meta replied. “Both were defeated.”

“And you’ll defeat them again, right? So why lock
up Izin?”

“The Forum’s blockade fleet has been forced to
withdraw from the Minacious Cluster with heavy casualties.”

“You lost?” I asked, stunned.

“We suffered a setback.”

“But you’re technologically superior to them!”

Meta gave Jesorl a human look seeking permission
to speak, then he emitted a single click, assenting to her request.

“Our general levels of development are not equal,”
she said, “however, the Intruder Civilization focuses upon developing military
technology in a way no other species does, not even the Matarons. For all our achievements,
we are essentially a peaceful society. The Intruders are not. For thousands of
years, they have been trying to surpass the leading Forum Powers in military
technology, through research and espionage. Knowing this, we have followed
their advances closely, retaining a marginal lead in military technology, however,
they are extremely resourceful and our lead is not decisive.”

“They caught you, didn’t they?”

“They have achieved approximate parity, however,
it wasn’t technology that gave them the decisive advantage.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The Alliance Fleet was betrayed. The locations of
our early warning systems, our spacetime suppression fields and our fleet
dispositions were all known to the Intruders prior to the battle. This allowed
them to sabotage our detection measures and launch a surprise attack. Someone
had to give them that information. It’s the only possible explanation.”

“How does anyone surprise ships like yours?” I
asked incredulously.

“Surprise is measured in billionths of a second,” Meta
explained. “The Intruder forces knew precisely where our ships were. They
appeared alongside them and fired blind. They could only have done that if they’d
been provided with precise targeting information before they arrived.”

“There’s no way Izin could have anything to do
with that!”

“Izin Nilva Kren is the only member of the
Intruder species currently on any Tau Cetin world. The timing is highly
suspicious.”

“That’s crazy. We don’t even have the technology
to find out what you’re having for lunch, let alone where your fleet is! And
even if we knew, we couldn’t tell anyone. Do you know how long it would take us
to get a message to the Intruder Fleet – wherever it is?”

“It would take your ship forty eight years to
reach the Minacious Cluster, if you had the astrographics data required to
navigate such a voyage.”

“Which we don’t, because you haven’t given it to
us!”

With the galaxy full of undetectable gravitational
hazards able to collapse superluminal bubbles with catastrophic consequences, our
ships were restricted to the limits of the astrographic charts provided by the
Tau Cetins. Those charts gave mankind access to a sphere of colonization and
expansion that stretched approximately twelve hundred light years from Sol. It
was why Mapped Space wasn’t simply a collection of star charts, but the
physical extent of Human Interstellar Civilization.

“You may lack the technology to communicate with
the Minacious Cluster, but the Intruders do not. If Izin Nilva Kren is working
for them, he has access to their technology.”

“But he’s not! And he doesn’t!”

“If he were, Ambassador, you would never know.”

I knew because I trusted him, but if I said that,
they’d consider me a naive fool.

“We’ve never had contact with an Intruder ship –
ever! I don’t even know what they look like. As for this Minacious Cluster, I’d
never heard of it before today and have no idea where it is.”

“The Minacious Cluster orbits high above the
galactic disk, approximately sixty five thousand light years from Earth.”

“Sixty five thousand light years!”

“It may seem a great distance to you, but Intruder
spies have penetrated this far into the galaxy before.”

“So they regularly beat your blockade?”

“We contain their battle fleet. We cannot stop
every ship from escaping, particularly small craft they have designed to evade
detection. Some slip through. Most are caught and destroyed.”

“But not all!” I said, beginning to realize the
Tau Cetins weren’t as infallible as they wanted us to believe.

Meta nodded. “Their spies are particularly
interested in the Tau Ceti system. With Earth only eleven point nine light
years away and home to an indigenous Intruder population, it is an ideal
location from which to spy on us. Contact could have been established with Izin
Nilva Kren, before he left Earth, by an Intruder spy hiding there. As a member
of your crew, he has a freedom of movement no Intruder has, making him an ideal
choice.”

“Only in your paranoid imaginations!”

Jesorl emitted a short rapid fire burst of clicks
which Meta translated, “The container you brought us suggests otherwise.”

I hesitated, sensing from Meta’s simulated
humanity that I was missing something important. “What do you mean?”

“It contains a material beyond anything your
civilization can currently synthesize, a material which relates to technologies
able to undermine our security.”

Her words were like a kick in the guts. I’d given
the Tau Cetins the smoking gun that made Izin look like an Intruder spy! It was
my fault he was under arrest. “It’s mine, not his. He has nothing to do with it.”

“The presence of such a substance in human hands
is a concern to us, Ambassador, because you have no use for it. Intruder spies
on the other hand do.”

I was beating my head against a Tau Cetin brick
wall. “So what now?”

“The Alliance Fleet is regrouping at the edge of
the galaxy, awaiting reinforcements. That is why Observer Siyarn is unavailable.
He has taken command of the Tau Cetin Fleet.”

Siyarn commanded one the most powerful warships in
this part of the galaxy, so it made sense he would lead their fleet. “And the Ansara
Squadron you mentioned before, what’s that?”

“It is this system’s contribution.”

Suddenly I knew why Jesorl was so intractable. Meta
had said two of his family members were away with the Ansara Squadron, but I
hadn’t realized at the time what that meant. “And Jesorl has family members
heading into the fight?”

“Yes Ambassador, one of his sons and his only
daughter.”

With Jesorl’s own family at risk, my hopes of freeing
Izin sank. “What are you going to do to Izin?”

“He will be interrogated. The results will
determine his fate.”

The way she said it gave me a feeling he was not
being subjected to mere questioning. Whatever it was, Izin would hate it. “I
want to see him – now!”

* * * *

When Jase saw the Tau Cetin android and I arrive
on the landing platform above Jesorl’s house, he hurried down from the
Silver
Lining
.

“They had him before I even knew they were aboard,”
Jase said, giving Meta less attention than he normally would have paid a
beautiful woman.

“It’s not your fault,” I said, it was mine. “This
is Meta. She’s an android, talks like a human, but is really a Tau Cetin at
heart.”

“Technically, I’m an artificial Tau Cetin consciousness
within a simulated human self aware shell sustained by a synthetic human female
bioform.”

“And I thought human women were complicated!” Jase
said, looking her up and down uncertainly before turning back to me. “They
wouldn’t tell me where they were taking him.”

“We’re going to see him now.” A TC craft streaked
down from on high and landed opposite the
Silver Lining
. “That must be
our ride.”

“I’m coming,” Jase declared.

“Someone’s got to stay with the ship,” I said.

“What for? She can’t fly and they can do anything
they want to her.”

He was right, the
Silver Lining
was
completely helpless. “OK.”

We followed Meta to the spindle-like craft. It was
typically Tau Cetin, all polished reflective metal with no sign of a propulsion
system. As we approached, an oval shaped opening dilated in its hull, then once
aboard, the walls became transparent giving us unobstructed views outside the
craft. Only the floor and the two rows of seats running lengthwise through the
craft were visible.

“Wall screens?” I asked as the hatch irised shut.

“No,” Meta replied. “Quantum refraction. The hull
is designed not to impede visible light passing through it.”

“Wouldn’t that make the ship vulnerable to
radiation?”

“Why would it?”

Having no idea what quantum refraction was, I let
it go. Outside, Ansara fell away in the blink of an eye. Within moments, the
planet shrank to a tiny dot as the craft hurtled toward the outer system, past
massive hexagonal prism orbitals organized into a vast array of modular configurations,
no two the same.

“Where’s the prison?” I asked

“We have no prisons. Izin Nilva Kren is in a
medical facility in the ninety eighth stratum.”

“So what do you do with the hard cases?” Jase
asked. “The Saturday night stimheads?”

She gave him a quizzical look. “So it’s true? Humans
periodically inject toxic chemicals into their systems for recreational
purposes?”

“Inject, snort, sniff and swallow,” Jase said
elaborately. “What do Tau Cetin androids do for laughs?”

“Study humans,” she said deadpan.

“Ouch.” Jase gave me a pained look. “There really
is a Tau Cetin under that face, isn’t there?”

I nodded. “And millions listening in.”

“Not that many,” Meta said. “They don’t find
primate behavior that interesting.” She looked us both over curiously. “Which
of you is the more prototypically human?”

“He is,” I replied.

Jase inhaled impressively, “I’m a prime example of
Oresund manhood, a lover and a fighter!”

“Really?” she said, silently dropping us a few
more rungs on the evolutionary ladder.

An immense, flat sided hexagon loomed out of the
darkness ahead. Several other prism orbitals drifted in the distance while the
star Pelani had shrunk to a tiny glowing orb and Ansara was no longer visible. Our
small craft entered the circular tunnel at the center of the prism, then passed
through a huge space door into an enormous cylindrical chamber that could have
docked dozens of ships. We glided to a stop close to the curved wall as a narrow
bridge extended toward us forming a sealed walkway between our craft and the
orbital.

“Is this entire station a hospital?” I asked as Meta
led us across the walkway.

“It is more a laboratory than what you would think
of as a hospital. It is equipped to remedy any Tau Cetin physical condition,
conduct biological research and synthesize replacement components as required.”

“Like cloning body parts?” Jase asked.

“No,” she replied as we entered a long, softly lit
corridor. “Cloning copies the patient’s own genetic material. We construct new
components from elementary biomatter and program the genetic coding directly.
It is a process that eliminates replicative failure.”

“Is that how they made you?” I asked.

“I am biomechanical. My outer dermal layer is human-like,
but more durable and long lasting than your skin. My interior structure is
flexion-carbon.”

“Flexion-carbon?”

“It’s a material we use extensively, extremely light
and many times stronger than your polysteel. It is the strongest artificial
substance in the universe. This orbital is constructed of it, as are our
ships.”

“Any chance of getting a sample?” I asked.

She smiled, amused at the prospect, then led us
through a sliding door into a darkened room where Izin floated naked, bathed in
soft beams of light. Three curved metal strips forming segments of a circle slowly
orbited his head emitting thin beams of yellow light that swept up and down
rhythmically over his long cranium. I started toward him, plowed straight into a
pressure field and was pushed back with a gentle, unyielding force.

“What are you doing to him?” I demanded.

“Copying the electrochemical structure of his brain,”
she replied. “I assure you, he feels nothing.”

“This is how you question a suspect?”

“The method is flawless. Once we have copied his
memory and mental processes, we will disable any deception or resistance
inherent in the original, creating a compliant duplicate which will answer
every question with absolute honesty. If Izin Nilva Kren is a spy, the
duplicate will confess.”