In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) Read online

  We walked on in silence, between trees that rose high above a sea of ferns carpeting the forest floor. In the canopy above, winged creatures flew among the branches, rustling leaves from sudden movements and occasionally screeching at each other, breaking the tranquility of the vast Ansaran wilderness.

  “Earth used to have forests like this,” I said thoughtfully.

  “I know,” Meta said. “Many trees on this world are from Earth.”

  “You have Earth trees here?” I asked surprised.

  “Of course. Earth was one of the galaxy’s richest biospheres before the human initiated mass extinction. Many civilizations took life forms from your homeworld for use in their own planetary engineering activities, or simply to feed their people.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “Earth flora and fauna are scattered across the galaxy. It is a mark of how rare your homeworld was, even on a galactic scale.” She pointed to a stand of massively tall trees to our left. “Those trees over there are from Earth. You call them Sequoiadendron chaneyi. They are related to your present day sequoia.”

  “Related? Did you genetically reengineer them?” The great trees looked similar to the few surviving sequoias I’d seen preserved on Earth.

  “They are from your Miocene epoch, five to twenty three million years ago. They are extinct on Earth now. Perhaps I should have said your sequoia are descended from them.”

  “You brought them back to life?”

  “No. Many civilizations study and catalogue the life forms of other worlds. The richer the world, the greater the interest. When we were engineering Ansara’s ecosystem, we selected species suited to this world which we also found to be aesthetically pleasing.”

  Suddenly it hit me. The TCs had terraformed Ansara during Earth’s Miocene era, when a now extinct species of sequoia had been alive on Earth. They hadn’t revived it, they’d transplanted it!

  “Over there,” she continued, “that smaller tree with the radiating leaves is a species you call Annularia. It is from your Carboniferous period, three hundred million years ago.”

  “Hey! Even I know the Tau Cetins aren’t that old.”

  “It was a gift from another species, one that had utilized it on their worlds.”

  Aliens taking plant samples from Earth a third of a billion years ago was almost impossible to conceive. “Anyone we know?”

  “It was a Precursor Civilization, one that arose long before the Tau Cetins.”

  “I’ll take that as a no.”

  “Such civilizations no longer involve themselves in the Galactic Forum. Their responsibility in that regard has passed to us and others like us.” She stopped walking, distracted for a moment, then added, “I can say no more.”

  “Is someone listening?”

  “All knowledge is shared freely on Ansara. It is an aspect of our interconnectedness.”

  “Is that why you don’t translate what I say to Jesorl, only what he says?”

  “He hears through my ears in his language.”

  “And you’re only allowed to translate, not tell me about Precursors.”

  “I exceeded the parameters of allowed discourse with your species.”

  “You made a mistake? I kind of like that you’re not perfect. It’s something we have in common.”

  “My awareness is still integrating.”

  “With what?”

  “My outer interacting awareness is simulated human, my inner consciousness is imprinted Tau Cetin. They are quite different. Getting them to work together takes time.”

  “Sounds schizophrenic.”

  “My human awareness was eager to share with you.”

  “So, you’re still learning to channel your inner Tau Cetin.” I was tempted to suggest she was an android with a multiple species disorder, but restrained myself.

  We reached a fork in the way. Meta chose the path taking us in a circle around Jesorl’s house.

  “What happens to you when I leave?” I asked.

  “My resource elements will be resynthesized.”

  “They’ll scrap you?”

  “Unless they decide it would be more efficient to retain me for future interactions with humans.”

  “How do you feel about them ending your existence?”

  “I’m not opposed to it. I have no inner drive to exist beyond my created purpose.”

  “So no will to survive? Nothing?” I asked, strangely revolted at the prospect of Meta being recycled.

  “A survival instinct is a necessary requirement for evolution, Ambassador, however, I’m not alive.”

  “You think, you reason, you make mistakes, why shouldn’t you survive?”

  “Do you feel the same way about your ship’s processing core?” She smiled, adding, “Maybe you would, if it looked human.”

  “Right, I’m anthropomorphizing you again. Force of habit.”

  “And thinking is not the key to life, Ambassador, having a soul is.”

  I stopped, stunned. “Are you telling me Tau Cetins have souls?”

  “Every species has a center from which they determine right from wrong. Such fundamental concepts are essential prerequisites for a rules based universe built upon responsibility and ethical principles acceptable to all sentient life. If there were no common agreement on ethics, there could be no galactic civilization. Without each life form having such a center, the universe would be chaotic. The strong would crush the weak. No species could coexist with any other. Not every species responds equally to the ethical impulse, but the vast majority do.”

  “It’d be a dog eat dog universe all right, not a place I’d want to live in.” Not when mankind was the weakest dog in town.

  “It would be a universe you would be unable to live in. Your planet would have been conquered long before your species had ever come into existence.”

  It was an astonishing thought. Not having been crushed before Homo sapiens had even evolved meant we’d been living in a rules based universe all along. It was a universe governed by an ancient galactic civilization created by species so old we’d never met them and probably never would. If it had been the other alternative, our distant ancestors would have been hunted down and killed before they’d ever climbed out of the trees. Sometimes, it paid to be lucky.

  Jase’s voice sounded urgently in my earpiece. “Skipper, can you hear me?”

  I activated my communicator. “Loud and clear.”

  “The TCs have taken Izin! I tried stopping them, but my weapons wouldn’t work.”

  I turned to Meta. “What’s going on?”

  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, rig
ht? 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!”