The Human Division #1: The B-Team Read Online Free Page B

standard alarm raiser. Particularly with missions like this one, which are supposed to be secret. I came to find you as soon as we confirmed two days of dead air.”
    “What did your recovery mission find?” Egan asked.
    “No recovery mission,” Rigney said, and caught Egan’s look. “We had a hard enough time negotiating a military frigate for the mission. If the Utche show up and see several military ships in the area, none of them with diplomats on them, everything blows up.”
    “Recon drones, then,” Egan said.
    “Of course,” Rigney said. “Everything’s preliminary because the drones have just arrived, but they’re not finding anything.”
    “You sent the drones to the correct system,” Egan said.
    “Come on, Liz,” Rigney said.
    “Doesn’t hurt to ask,” Egan said.
    “We sent the drones to the right system,” Rigney said. “We sent the Polk to the right system. The Danavar system is where the Utche wanted to meet.”
    Egan nodded. “A system with nothing but gas giants and airless moons. No one will think to look for you there. Perfect for secret negotiations.”
    “Apparently not so secret after all,” Rigney said.
    “You’re presuming the Polk met with a bad end,” Egan said.
    “Our frigates don’t have a history of randomly vaporizing,” Rigney said. “But whatever or whoever did this isn’t in the Danavar system now. There’s nothing there but planets and moons and a big yellow star.”
    “Have we told the Utche about this?” Egan asked.
    “We haven’t told anyone about it,” Rigney said. “Outside of command, you’re the first person to know. We haven’t even told your boss that her team is missing. We figured we’d let you do that yourself.”
    “Thanks,” Egan said, wryly. “But surely the Utche have noticed there is no one negotiating a treaty with them.”
    “The Polk arrived three days early,” Rigney said.
    “Why?” Egan said.
    “Ostensibly to give Bair’s team time to prep away from the distractions of Phoenix Station,” Rigney said.
    “And in reality?” Egan asked.
    “In reality to make sure we were militarily prepared for an immediate withdrawal if necessary,” Rigney said.
    “Seems drastic,” Egan said.
    “You’ll recall the Utche have handed our ass to us in three out of the last five military engagements we’ve had with them,” Rigney said. “Just because they came to us for this alliance doesn’t mean we trust them entirely.”
    “And you don’t think the Utche might have figured out the CU’s trust issues,” Egan said.
    “We’re pretty sure they have,” Rigney said. “In part because we let them know we were arriving early. Your boss signed off on the cover story, but we don’t assume the Utche are stupid. It was a sign to us of how much they want the alliance that they were willing to 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