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

Mankind were the opposite of the Nisk. We spread
through Mapped Space like an expanding cloud while they scattered their seed
across the galaxy in a handful of super dense pebbles. They might have been the
insects, but we acted more like a swarm. Our population was scattered so thinly
across approximately two thousand four hundred light years of space that we
could have lost a hundred colonies without any impact on our civilization –
except for Earth itself. If anything happened to mankind’s ancient birth world,
all the rest would wither and many would die. It would be that way for
thousands of years to come. The Human Exodus might well be in full swing, but Earth
would remain preeminent and irreplaceable for a long time to come.

It was the speed with which humanity – the
youngest, least technologically advanced interstellar civilization in the
galaxy – was spreading that irritated some. We were driven by a restless,
energetic need to expand, to seek opportunity, protected by incomprehensibly
ancient galactic law. It was why we were everywhere we could reach, constrained
only by the extent of the astrographic charts the Tau Cetins had gifted us,
charts that revealed billions of navigational hazards whose gravitational
influences could destroy superluminal ships in a nanosecond. Beyond those
charts, navigation was so hazardous that the risks of interstellar travel far
outweighed the benefits. In half a century, that would change. As full members
of the Forum, we’d have access to so much more, allowing the human swarm to
flood out toward the limits of a new, redefined Mapped Space – not the entire
galaxy, but a larger fraction of it.

It was why I did what I did, why I was here now,
hurrying through Nisport’s grubby side streets. They were almost deserted,
except for a few alien travelers wrapped against the misty rain and the occasional
mud splattered surface vehicle that splashed sidewalks without regard for
pedestrians. A discordant jumble of grimy, alien buildings lined the streets: towers,
domes, squat windowless boxes and a variety of metallic structures reflecting alien
designs from across the Orion Arm and beyond, all affixed with sensors and
communications gear. The inhabitants of
Krailo-Nis’s
alien enclave
might not have been able to make themselves comfortable,
but they all spied on each other and the Nisk with equal enthusiasm.

When I was almost halfway there, my listener flashed
a yellow marker into my mind’s eye, warning of a persistent sound behind me. My
DNA sniffer hadn’t detected any biomarkers, but the highly sensitive bionetics
pervading my auditory senses had picked up footsteps on the road’s metal
grating. They mimicked my movements, speeding up and slowing down as I did. It
was unlikely anyone could have been waiting for me in Nisport, considering even
I hadn’t known I was coming here ten days ago, yet I didn’t believe in
coincidences.

I stopped at the next corner, looking around as if
lost. The listener’s contact marker stopped too, then my shadow vanished behind
a building and waited. I didn’t look back, not wanting to alert my tail he’d
been spotted, but continued on toward the rendezvous point.

Lena’s agent was scheduled to visit the Beneficial
Society’s office on the hour, to pick-up any personal messages they were
holding for him and review available work hire contracts on offer at the
Exchange. It gave us a reason to cross paths without drawing suspicion, to
unexpectedly meet as old friends. Now I had to decide whether to abort or risk exposing
her agent. A tail meant someone had penetrated the mission, but who? It could
only be someone from Lena’s side, but she was mega-psi. No one could lie to her
and live.

Or could they?

I turned down a side street, hoping to throw off
my tail, but the listener’s yellow marker appeared again showing he was still
with me, even though he couldn’t see me directly. He had to be tracking me with
tech, something no street corner thug would do. With the rendezvous only
minutes away and a teched-up tracker on my tail, I knew I’d risk exposing
Lena’s agent if I made contact. To protect his identity, I’d have to abandon
him – not something I wanted to do if I could possibly avoid it.

At the next corner, the human prefabs came into view,
a collection of white towers five stories high banded by dark strip windows.
They were cleaner and newer than any of the alien buildings, some of which had
stood in Nisport gathering grime for millennia. No attempt had been made to
hide the eavesdropping sensors atop the towers because such efforts were
pointless. Even so, while our tech was bottom rung, we listened in on everyone
else with as much vigor as the best of them. The embassy housed an EIS intercept
team, all techs, not threaded field agents like me, which was why Lena couldn’t
use them for data retrieval. No bionetics meant no handshake transfers, and
besides, embassy attachés were far more noticeable than shabby Society traders.

I was about to turn away when my listener
surprised me. It had been crunching numbers on the sonic data, analyzing the
ring of metallic boots on the road’s grating, measuring the time delay between
footfalls to determine stride length and height and calculating the intensity
of the sound to estimate body mass. It now flashed a message into my mind’s
eye.

WARNING: SONIC CONTACT BIOSIGNATURE UNCERTAIN.
HUMAN UPPER LIMITS MARGINAL.

Clarify
, I thought, stopping in my tracks.

HUMAN PROBABILITY 16%, NONHUMAN 84%.

If there’d been any chance I was going up against
a nonhuman, Lena would have warned me, unless she hadn’t known! I spun around,
looking back down the street, hoping to verify what my listener was telling me.
Two blocks away, a large man wearing a dark gray metallic body suit and a full
face helmet darted behind a building with impressive speed. Whatever he was, he
was fast for a big man, almost certainly genetically engineered if human. And
his suit looked too heavy to be a pressure suit, too light to be human-tech body
armor. Whatever it was, it was heavier than the synthweave I was wearing.

A hundred meters away, across a rectangular
square, the stylized star chart insignia of the Beneficial Society glowed above
a ground floor security door. I could have made it before my tail caught me,
but that would have led him straight to Lena’s agent. I wondered if I tried to
eliminate my shadow, how long it would be before the place was crawling with security
drones. They might be simpletons, but properly armed with bug-tech, Nisk drones
would make formidable warriors. Definitely not critters I wanted to mess with.

That’s when I decided the mission was a washout.
Even the backup opportunity in twenty four hours was now impossible. I was
simply too hot to risk a second attempt. There was nothing for it but to go
back to the
Lining
, get out of Nisport fast and give Lena the bad news. Her
agent was on his own, but at least he’d be alive.

I started east, intending to lead the large
humanoid away from the rendezvous point. Before I’d gone ten paces, I heard footsteps
running toward me from the direction of the human prefabs. A single heavy slug whistled
by, striking a building behind me. For a moment I thought someone was shooting
at me, then I saw a man dressed as a common spacer running from the Society’s
Exchange. Two men and a woman appeared further down the street from where they’d
been hiding, waiting for the spacer to appear. All three carried JAG-40’s, a
military grade light assault weapon that fired heavy caliber slugs. They were
special forces weapons, hard to control for the novice, deadly in the hands of
experts.

In spite of the respirators the humans wore, my sniffer
found enough flesh on their faces to get DNA reads on all of them. A red
targeting reticule appeared around the face of the man at the center of the
three pursuers, the only one listed on my threading’s catalogue of cosmic criminals.
He was Domar Trask, a stolid looking brute my height, with shoulders as wide as
a heavy lifter and a military style buzz-cut. He was wanted by the Union Regular
Army for capital crimes, but I didn’t have time to study his record as he came charging
up the street.

Trask lifted his JAG-40 to eye height and fired an
expertly aimed shot that took the fleeing man in the shoulder, knocking him forward.
The wounded man tucked and rolled fluidly back to his feet, continuing on with
one arm hanging uselessly by his side. That recovery told me everything I
needed to know. He was my EIS contact, engineered to survive, confirmed by my
sniffer which projected a green targeting reticule around the agent’s face. A
moment later, white indicators appeared around the faces of Trask’s two flankers,
indicating they were clean skins on nobody’s wanted list.

The fleeing agent’s eyes locked onto mine with instant
recognition. Neither of us had ever seen the other, but our sniffers knew our
DNA codes in a heartbeat. My name flashed into his mind as his flashed into
mine.

TIAGO SORVINO, OUTER-ZERO-SIXTY.

The Oh-Zero-Sixty Group was Lena’s team, my team,
responsible for a vast region from zero north to sixty degrees on the celestial
sphere, beyond five hundred light years from Earth. It was an immense region
where two deep cover agents rarely met, and never like this.

My contact feigned a stumble, telling his pursuers
he was weakening even though his face was flushed and alert. It was a look I
knew well. His bionetic implants were overriding his bodily functions, pumping
adrenalin through his system, giving him a surge of strength and speed that
allowed him to drive through the pain. The tell tale whine of a JAG-40 charging
filled the street, then the wounded agent rolled expertly to the side as the
woman fired. Her slug whistled past as my contact came to his feet and sprinted
again, lining up to pass close by me. Dodging and running like that, with a
slug in his shoulder, told me he was ultra-reflexed – the same genetic engineering
specialty I had.

I knew he was unarmed, otherwise he’d be shooting
back. My hand dropped to my P-50 as I calculated distances and angles. His
three pursuers were spread across the street in a skirmish line, firing like
experts, advancing together, demonstrating a mastery of close quarters combat
that told me they weren’t common criminals. With surprise on my side, I could
kill one, but the other two would switch to me fast. I’d have to shoot and roll
and shoot again and hope they weren’t as sharp as they looked.

The fleeing agent saw my hand go to my gun and
guessed my intentions. He gave me an imperceptible shake of the head, ordering
me not to shoot, demanding I not reveal myself. It went against my instincts,
but he was the agent on the ground. He knew the score. I knew nothing. I
followed his command and moved my hand away from my gun, slipping into the
guise of a confused bystander.

He nodded slightly, approving my move.

Two more tracer shots flashed past the agent’s
head. Each time he dodged, warned of the danger by his listener. He pretended
to stagger as he neared me while I feigned surprise, standing awkwardly in his path.
The agent tripped – on purpose – and stumbled into me, knocking me back as he raised
his hand, reaching for my ear and the bionetic listener within it. I moved my
head as if flinching, turning the side of my face toward him, then his hand
slammed against my ear. He hung on for a vital second as the bionetic filaments
in his palm linked with those beneath my skin. In that moment, he passed an
encrypted data block into my system, then immediately deleted it from his own.

“Don’t help me!” he whispered. “They’ll kill you!
Aleph-null!”

Aleph-null?

He pushed my head away roughly, knocking me aside
as he continued running. I feigned a clumsy stumble and fell backwards onto the
road as the agent drew his attackers away. In that moment, we both knew, my
life and what I carried was more valuable than his.

Another slug caught him in the thigh, spinning him
around. His ultra-reflexes took over again, allowing him to regain his balance
and continue in a limping gait, barely slowed. His bionetic pain suppressers overrode
muscles close to collapse, giving him time to lead the hit squad away.

I sat up slowly, holding my shoulder as if I’d
been injured in the fall, watching him stagger away, resisting the temptation
to turn and face the three killers running up behind me.

Domar Trask threw me a careless glance as he passed,
unaware he was now chasing the wrong target. The female, tall and muscular,
with close cropped blonde hair fired at the crippled agent without looking my
way, then she was past me too keeping formation with Trask. A moment later, the
stocky square-jawed grunt on the right, shorter than the other two, veered toward
me and slammed the butt of his gun into the back of my head. I crashed face
first onto the road’s metal grid as threading alerts flashed into my
unconscious mind, warning of critical bone damage.

Left for dead, I lay in the mud and rain, blood draining
from a crushed skull, while two blocks away an unarmed EIS agent was gunned
down for a secret he no longer carried, an encrypted message now locked deep
inside my threaded memory.

* * * *

A muted cacophony of buzzing drowned out
the ringing in my ears as consciousness slowly returned. I had a vague sense of
floating, immobilized. When I opened my eyes, I found myself face down in the
center of a cone of stark white light so bright I was forced to squint. I was suspended
two meters from a stone floor in a chamber of rough hewn rock walls with
openings to passageways filled with the chatter of billions of Nisk. Armed drones
stood in the shadows watching while another smaller bug close to me worked on my
shattered skull. My head was numb all the way to the base of my jaw and
threading alerts flashed warnings of alien-tech intrusions I couldn’t move a
finger to stop.