In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

again. “Check that against your
diplomatic ciphers. Save yourself some time and start at the highest level.” I
leaned back, relaxing into the padded chair. “I’ll wait.”
    He was gone less than ten minutes, returning with
one of the guards. “Release him.” When the guard gave the Ambassador a puzzled
look, Singh added impatiently, “And give him back his weapon.”
    The guard removed my restraints and returned my
P-50, then Singh nodded for him to leave. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, once the
door closed. “I wasn’t advised you were coming.”
    I sometimes took a perverse pleasure in pulling
rank on self important bureaucrats, but the Ambassador had only been doing his
duty as he understood it. “Nothing to apologize for. You weren’t advised
because of the sensitivity of my mission.”
    “Is there anything you require from me?”
    “Yes. Recover Tiago Sorvino’s body immediately.”
If we froze it and shipped it to Lena Voss, the regional EIS commander, her
people could tap Sorvino’s bionetic memory and reconstruct his movements.
    “I can’t,” Singh said uncomfortably. “The Nisk
have already processed it.”
    “Processed?”
    “When the Nisk die, they are rendered down into elementary
biomatter for dispersal on the surface.” He shrugged. “The Nisk are a
remarkable species, but they have no regard for the customs of other races.”
    So the only clue as to what Tiago Sorvino had been
doing was the encrypted data block locked in my bionetic memory. “Do you have
an identity register?”
    “Yes sir, updated monthly.”
    “How secure is this facility?”
    “The entire embassy is protected by quantum
suppression fields.”
    “No guarantee the Nisk can’t penetrate that.”
    “Scrambling quantum signatures is the best we can
do. If they can read through that…” he shrugged helplessly.
    He was right and I was in a hurry. “I have three
DNA scans I want checked. Your eyes only. Don’t use any of your staff. Once the
search is complete, give me the results and destroy all record of it. The name
of one of the subjects is Domar Trask. I have nothing on the other two.” If the
Nisk saw what he was reading, it would do them no good. Trask’s hit squad would
already be long gone.
    “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