Free In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) by Stephen Renneberg Page A

ships on screen. They were chevron shaped vessels, painted in
elaborate red and orange livery, each individually larger than the Rashidun
escorts.
    “Shivas?” Jase said surprised.
    They were the Rashidun’s main rivals, a Republic
syndicate who objected to the success of the floating black market. They would
have seen us the moment we saw them, but they made no move toward us. Instead,
the three Shiva gunships headed for geostationary orbit above the trading post.
As the distance between us widened, I relaxed, certain they were going to let
us escape unmolested.
    “So now what?” Jase asked.
    “We find out what’s in the bottle.” He’d caught a
glimpse of it when I’d returned, as mystified by it as I was.
    “How are we going do that?”
    “Ask the alien-tech experts?” I said, entering our
destination into the autonav.
    When Jase saw where we were headed, he gave me an
incredulous look. “They’ll never let us in!”
    I grinned knowingly. If a lowly human trader had
been doing the asking, he’d have been right, but an Earth Ambassador was a
different matter.
    Just before we bubbled, the three Shiva raiders
began bombarding the surface from orbit. Jasim Hajjar and his people would
already be safely in their shelter, riding out each earthquake sized blast far
below the surface. When they emerged in a few weeks, they’d find all that
remained of Kedira Town would be a field of steaming craters. In six months,
another Kedira would exist close to the remains of the first, ready for the
next Souk.
    It was the Rashidun way.

Chapter Three : Ansara
     
     
    Restricted System – Non-Communication
Class
    Pelani System, Outer Ursa Minor
    0.89 Earth Normal Gravity
    904 light years from Sol
    Tau Cetins
     
     
    The Silver Lining exited
superluminal flight at the edge of the Pelani System’s heliopause, the outer edge
of the system’s physical and legal boundaries. Our sensors extended into space as
bubble heat rapidly bled from the hull, then Pelani’s tiny yellow orb appeared
in the center of the flight deck’s wraparound screen. A single circular marker
indicated the location of the only planet in the system, while concentric rings
of indicators identified the locations of thousands of artificial objects
orbiting the star. It was a view few human eyes had ever seen, because only our
diplomatic ships ever approached restricted systems. Like most Forum members in
contact with mankind, the Tau Cetins refused to allow us open access to their
inhabited worlds while our probationary status remained.
    “There’s only one terrestrial planet orbiting a
hundred and forty million clicks out,” Jase said as he studied the sensor data.
“No moons, no asteroids, no gas giants, but lots of optical contacts, none of
them natural. And the only neutrinos are from the star.”
    No surprises there. The TCs had moved beyond
reactive energy sources long before Homo sapiens ’ distant ancestors had
begun roaming the plains of Africa.
    “Just your run of the mill Tau Cetin system,” I assured
him, knowing from my diplomatic training that all TC systems we’d visited looked
like this.
    The Pelani System was no mere colony. It had been
transformed long ago into a fully developed home for the Tau Cetin Civilization,
following a pattern they’d developed over millions of years. The TCs didn’t
terraform single planets, they reengineered entire systems to support their way
of life. In a real sense, they had home systems rather than home worlds.
    The solitary planet was called Ansara, a blue-green
orb devoid of natural satellites with an engineered biosphere ideal for avian life.
Once, other planets and moons had orbited Pelani, along with billions of pieces
of rock and ice circling far out into the frigid depths of interstellar space,
but no more. Now nothing larger than a grain of sand remained within a light
year of Ansara’s yellow sun. In their place, precisely positioned in concentric
orbital rings beyond the planet were