The Human Division Read Online Free PDF

give us a tactical advantage.”
    “You’ve entertained the possibility the Utche blasted the Polk out of the sky,” Egan said.
    “Obviously,” Rigney said. “But they’ve been as transparent with us as we’ve been with them, and where they’re not transparent, we have spies. This is something we would have known about. And nothing they’re doing indicates that they think anything is out of the ordinary. Their diplomatic mission is on a ship called the Kaligm, and it’s a day out from skip distance.”
    Egan said nothing to this but instead fired up the display, turning to it. Phoenix Station floated in the display, the limb of the planet Phoenix below it. At a distance from Phoenix Station, CDF and trade ships floated; their names appeared in labels hovering aside them in the display. The image pulled out and both Phoenix Station and Phoenix shrank to a single dot, taking with them thousands of starships arriving at or departing from the Colonial Union’s capital. The image pulled farther out and displayed, as dots, dozens of ships, each working its way toward a sufficiently flat spot of space-time to make a skip. Egan began pulling information from a few, crew manifests spilling onto the display.
    “Okay, I give up,” Rigney said, after several minutes of this. “Tell me what you’re doing.”
    “Ambassador Bair isn’t on our A-list,” Egan said, still scanning crew manifests. “She’s on our A Plus–list. If she was pipped to negotiate, then this mission is an actual priority, not just a top secret diplomatic circle jerk.”
    “Okay,” Rigney said. “So?”
    “So, you don’t know Secretary Galeano like I do,” Egan said, naming the secretary of state. “If I walk into her office, tell her one of her best diplomats and her entire team is probably dead and their mission therefore a complete failure, without a backup plan already in place and ready to implement, things will be very grim indeed. I will be without a job, you will probably be without a job simply for being the messenger, and the secretary will go out of her way to make sure that the next posting for both of us will be someplace where our life expectancy will be measured with an egg timer.”
    “She sounds nice,” Rigney said.
    “She’s perfectly lovely,” Egan said. “Until you piss her off.” The display, which had been scrolling through ships and crew manifests, suddenly stopped on a single ship. “Here.”
    Rigney peered up at the image. “What is this?”
    “This is the B-team,” Egan said.
    “The Clarke ?” Rigney said. “I don’t know this ship.”
    “It handles various low-level diplomatic missions,” Egan said. “Its chief diplomat is a woman named Abumwe.” The image of a dark and severe-looking woman hovered on the screen. “Her most significant negotiation was with the Korba a few months back. She impressed them by having a CDF officer stationed on the ship fight with one of their soldiers, and lost in a diplomatically meaningful way.”
    “That’s interesting,” Rigney said.
    “Yes, but not entirely her doing,” Egan said, and popped up the images of two men, one of whom was green. “The fight was set up by a deputy, Hart Schmidt. Lieutenant Harry Wilson was the one who fought.”
    “So why these people?” Rigney asked. “What makes them the right people to take over this mission?”
    “Two reasons,” Egan said. “One, Abumwe was part of an embassy to the Utche three years ago. Nothing came of it at the time, but she has experience dealing with them. That means she can get brought up to speed quickly. Two”—she pulled out the view to show the Clarke in space—“the Clarke is eighteen hours away from skip distance. Abumwe and her people can still get to the Danavar system ahead of the Utche and participate in the negotiations, or at the very least allow us to set up a new round of talks. There’s no other diplomatic mission that can make it on time.”
    “We send in the B-team because