In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) (4 page)

“I’ll do it at once, sir.” He gave me a curious
look, clearly wondering if they were the three who’d killed Sorvino, but he had
enough sense not to ask.

“And I need to send a message.”

“We get a fortnightly data sync. The update ship
is due in four days. I could send your message out with our diplomatic
traffic.”

“Good. And not a word of my visit, even to your
superiors.”

“What if the Nisk protest to the Forum?”

“That’s no longer your problem.”

“Yes sir,” he said with a hint of relief. “Are you
ready to record your message?”

I nodded. “Switch off your eidetic implant.”

“It’s off,” Singh confirmed, then activated his holorecorder.

“Message begins. To Lena Voss, care of Earth Navy,
Paraxos System. I regret to inform you that Tiago Sorvino is dead.” He’d whispered
aleph-null into my ear. It was enough to prevent me sending a copy of the
encrypted data block to Lena, not without knowing what was in it. With two dead
drones on their hands, the Nisk would be reading our diplomatic traffic no
matter how cleverly encrypted it was. Their tech was so far ahead of ours, I
had to assume no secret was safe, except perhaps for what my bionetics hid
within my body’s own cell structure. My greatest fear was the Nisk would
realize Sorvino was anything but an innocent victim and decide to prevent me
leaving. It was a risk I couldn’t take, why I couldn’t tell Singh that Sorvino
was EIS. For all I knew, the Nisk were listening in right now, even through the
Embassy’s suppression field. Just giving my recognition code to Singh was a gamble,
one I couldn’t avoid, but perhaps not enough to trigger a Nisk response. “Wait
for me in Paraxos. Aleph-null to you and your family. Message ends.”

When the Nisk read that message, as I was sure
they would, they’d have a hard time figuring out what it really meant. Lena
would not. She’d know the mission was blown, that I had something too hot to
risk in diplomatic traffic and no matter what happened, she had to stay in the Paraxos
System where I could find her in a hurry.

With aleph-null in the message, the entire galaxy
could go to war and she wouldn’t budge.

* * * *

After finishing with Ambassador Singh, I
ventured back into the drizzle and headed for the spaceport. Almost
immediately, my listener detected footsteps behind me, confirming the stride pattern
matched the large humanoid who’d tailed me earlier. I’d assumed he’d been connected
with Trask’s hit squad, perhaps responsible for suppressing the Nisk sensors.

So why was he still here?

On the image of Nisport’s street grid floating in
my mind’s eye, a flashing sonic marker indicated he was closing fast, and me
with an empty gun and the Nisk already suspicious. He appeared several blocks
away, lumbering toward me like a freight loader in a hurry, making no effort to
hide his presence. I broke into a run, trying to put distance between us but soon
realized he was faster, not by much, but enough to catch me before I reached
the terminal.

I cut into a side street, sprinted one block then
turned and drew my P-50, taking aim as he came charging around the corner. He
took one look at my gun, not realizing it was empty, and leapt high into the
air. A soft blue glow appeared beneath his boots, carrying him across the
street to the roof of an octagonal structure, then a moment later, he launched
himself in another tech-assisted jump across the rooftops.

He might have looked like a large human, but his
speed and tech told me he was anything but. The humanoid was bigger and faster
than me and tech assisted in ways I wasn’t. Tangling with him with an empty gun
was likely to be a one way ticket to the wrong end of a beating. Not wanting to
be flanked, I started running toward the spaceport. Each time he landed on the
roof of a building a sonic marker flashed, warning he was racing to cut me off.

When he started to pull ahead, I slipped into a
side street, hiding under an awning extending around a long, U-shaped building.
The script on the grimy walls was faded Cor Carolian, a local Orion power. It
looked deserted, then a short rectangular device emerged from above the sealed
door, shimmering from a micro acceleration field enveloping it. It floated down,
scanning me with a laser thin green light.

“Not now,” I whispered, trying to swat it with the
butt of my gun. The alien scanner dodged and continued drifting toward the ground,
completing its scan as a heavy thud sounded from the roof.

The alien was directly above me!

My listener tracked him as he walked to the edge
of the building, searching the street for me. Most alien buildings in Nisport
were sensor hardened to block all the eavesdroppers. I hoped the Carolian structure
was no exception. I hardly dared breath as I realized he didn’t know I was
below him. My listener amplified the click of his metal boots as he prowled the
side of the building while the Carolian scanner approached the ground beside me.
I lifted one foot out of its beam, then as it scanned my other ankle, placed
the heel of my boot on top of it and silently pushed it into the ground, hiding
its green glow. Above, the humanoid waited for me to show myself, then he tech-jumped
across the street. I remained with my back pressed into the entrance alcove as
he searched the road, then thinking I’d eluded him, he leapt away toward the
spaceport.

The Carolian scanner pushed up against my boot,
trying to free itself. I lifted my heel, letting it shoot back up to its home
above the door. In my mind’s eye, the sonic marker winked out as the humanoid
moved out of range. I waited several minutes, but it didn’t reappear, then I
crept down a side street and circled around the spaceport so I could approach
from the opposite direction.

When the terminal came into view, I searched for
any sign of my pursuer. Finding none, I ran to the two Nisk security drones stationed
at the entrance. It was the first time since landing I was glad to stand beside
a giant beetle. To the southeast, the silhouette of the barrel chested humanoid
stood on a roof watching. I glanced at my two stoic guardians then gave him a
triumphal wave. He made no response, but turned and jumped out of sight.

Filled with a great desire to get off this bug
infested quagmire, I hurried through the terminal back to the
Silver Lining
wondering who the humanoid was and why was he tracking me?

Whoever he was, I suspected I hadn’t seen the last
of him.

* * * *

“Those thieving, six legged bandits!” Jase declared
angrily as I visited the flight deck on the way to my stateroom. My blonde copilot
sat on his acceleration couch seething as he watched a live feed from the cargo
hold. “They’re saying five containers were contaminated.”

“Accept their count.”

“No way, Skipper! I supervised that load. Those
containers were sealed tight. They must have damaged them.”

Ories were known for their stubborn combative
natures and I couldn’t alleviate his anger by telling him I’d sabotaged the containers
myself.

“Tell them to load whatever gel they owe us. I
want to get off this rock.”

Jase glanced in my direction, then furrowed his
brow in confusion as he saw the dark stains on my flight jacket. “Is that
blood?”

“Yeah,” I said sourly, feeling the back of my
head. The Nisk doctor had shaved it to the scalp, but the skin and bone showed
no sign of the injury thanks to Nisk regenerative tech. “Long story.”

Before he could start probing, I headed for my
stateroom. After shedding my jacket and mud covered boots, I flopped onto my
bunk, feigning sleep. Since Lena had brought me back into the EIS as a freelance
asset a year ago, I’d added countermeasures to my cabin to disrupt
eavesdropping. I could rely on it to jam human snoopers, but had to assume it
was ineffective against alien-tech, which was why I couldn’t use the ship’s datanet,
not with bug eyes on me.

I relaxed, regulated my breathing, then summoned Sorvino’s
data block and the required encryption key from my bionetic memory. When I put
the two together, the data block transformed from meaningless fractals into
legible characters. It was a surprisingly simple message: a set of astrographic
coordinates to a planet I’d never heard of, a latitude and longitude, and a
date. If there was more, Sorvino hadn’t had time to transfer it. At the end of
the data block was the same security classification he’d whispered in my ear, a
rating so high I’d never before encountered it in the field –
aleph-null!

Derived from mathematics, aleph-null was an
infinite cardinal number used by the EIS to describe the highest possible
threat. The data block gave no indication what the threat was, but Sorvino had
sacrificed his life for it, leaving me in no doubt it was the real deal. All Lena
had told me was that Sorvino had been in deep cover for two years. Whatever
he’d found was important enough for her to be waiting with Earth Navy in the Paraxos
System, squarely in the middle of Outer Draco. From there, they could hit any
target in the region. The problem was, Paraxos was three weeks away at maximum bubble.
The date in Sorvino’s message was just six days from now. If we launched
immediately, we could make Sorvino’s rendezvous, but Lena would have to wait.
Once she received my message, saw the aleph-null reference, that’s exactly what
she’d do – until Breega froze over.

I wanted to review Ambassador Singh’s report on
the three man hit squad, but I didn’t dare put it in my reader with the Nisk
watching. Instead, I rolled over and activated my bunk-side intercom. “Jase, is
that niskgel loaded yet?”

“They’re bringing it aboard now.”

“We’re leaving as soon as the last Nisk is off the
ship. We’ve got an errand to run.”

“A profitable errand I hope.”

“Definitely not.”

“Got anything to do with the blood on your
jacket?”

“Absolutely.”

He chuckled. “And you said this trip would be
boring! I’ll start preflight.”

If I made the reason for the trip a payback for an
unprovoked assault, Jase wouldn’t ask questions, he’d just want a part of it.
Ories were funny that way. They’d cross the Orion Arm to repay a personal
slight without a second thought. Not people you want as enemies. Izin would
simply assume I was satisfying a basic human need for revenge. Neither would
wonder what the real reason for our detour was – at least not for a while.

I was about to switch off the intercom, when a
thought struck me. “Have you been keeping an eye on ship movements out of here?”

“Always.” Watching who took off ahead of you was a
good way to spot potential ambushes as you boosted to orbit.

“Who launched while I was away?”

“One Ascellan, a Minkaran, two high tech numbers I
couldn’t identify and a human freighter.”

“When did the human ship launch?”

“Two hours ago.”

Time enough for Trask’s team to get back to the
spaceport after eliminating Sorvino. If they hid their weapons, they could have
walked past the dim witted drones in the terminal without suspicion. “You get
its registry?”

“Sure did. It was the Merak Star, but I didn’t get
that from her transponder. It was off the whole time. I read it off her hull.”

No transponder meant the Society office wouldn’t
have even known she was here. “What type was she?”

“Gaur class.” They were medium transports, four
times the size of the
Silver Lining
with good carrying capacity, but slow.

“Any other human ships in or out of here since we
arrived?”

“Only one, a small transport. She landed next to
the Merak Star while you were away. Same deal, no transponder. She was on the
ground twenty minutes, just long enough to pick up a passenger from the Merak
Star. I didn’t get the transport’s name. Her hull had been scrubbed clean.”

“Did the Merak Star drop any cargo?” I asked.

“I saw one drone carry off a half tonne container.
That’s it. And three people got on, just before she launched.”

It was enough sugar for the Nisk to grant landing
rights and permit a crew transfer, but not nearly enough to justify sending a
ship that size here. So the freighter had come to drop off a passenger where no
one would see, except the Nisk, who wouldn’t care. It was the same ship Trask’s
hit squad and Sorvino had come in on, but something had happened to blow Sorvino’s
cover, after he’d gone dirt side. If it had been before, Trask would never have
let him off the ship alive. And Jase had seen Trask’s team reboard her about
the time the Nisk were reconstructing my skull.

I accessed the astrographics database, spent time
looking at a dozen worlds I had no intention of visiting – just to keep any
nosy Nisk guessing – then I called up the planet at the data block’s
coordinates. It was a primeval world in a remote system. The only human
presence was a tiny corporate trading post I’d never heard of. From what
limited data there was, I could see no reason why such a planet would rate an
aleph-null security classification.

Yet, that was exactly what Tiago Sorvino had given
it.

* * * *

Two minutes after we bubbled and were
safely beyond the reach of Nisk spy-tech, I slid Ambassador Singh’s data chip
into the reader on my desk. Singh’s search of the DNA codes had produced dossiers
on all three who, no surprise, were ex-military.

And all were from Jase’s homeworld – Oresund,
mercenary capital of Mapped Space.

Virtually every Orie child, male or female, went
to military school. They could shoot before they were six, operate heavy
weapons by ten and were piloting combat vehicles and fighting suits by fifteen.
Most joined one of the four Earth militaries while some, the reckless types, turned
merc for the money and adventure. That’s where Jase had been headed before I
convinced him otherwise. And then there were the stark raving mad, hard core
types – the elite – who stayed on Oresund and joined the planet’s own
professional military, the Oresund Force. O-Force was widely regarded as the
best special forces unit ever produced in human history, the result of a stern
culture that valued martial virtues above all else. They worked closely with Earth’s
four major ground forces, particularly the Union Regular Army with whom they
had ancient historical links.