The Human Division Read Free

Roberts said, after a minute. “The Polk was hit the instant it skipped.”
    “Someone knew we were on our way,” Bair said.
    “This mission was confidential,” Roberts said.
    “Use your head, Brad,” Bair said, testily. “The mission was confidential on our end. It could have leaked. It could have leaked on the Utche side.”
    “You think the Utche set us up?” Roberts asked.
    “I don’t know,” Bair said. “They’re in the same situation as we are. They need this alliance as much as we do. It doesn’t make any sense for them to string the Colonial Union along just to pull a stupid stunt like this. Attacking the Polk doesn’t gain them anything. Destroying a CDF ship is a flat-out enemy action.”
    “The Polk might be able to fight it out,” Roberts said.
    “You heard Captain Basta as well as I did,” Bair said. “Too many missiles. And the Polk is already damaged.”
    “Let’s hope the rest of our people made it to their escape pods, then,” Roberts said.
    “I don’t think they were sent to the other escape pods,” Bair said.
    “But Evans said—”
    “Evans said what he needed to shut us up and get us off the Polk, ” Bair said.
    Roberts was quiet at this.
    Several minutes later, he said, “If the Polk sent a skip drone, it will need, what, a day to reach skip distance?”
    “Something like that,” Bair said.
    “A day for the news to arrive, a few hours to gear up, a few hours after that to find us,” Roberts said. “So two days in this tin can. Best-case scenario.”
    “Sure,” Bair said.
    “And then we’ll be debriefed,” Roberts said. “Not that we can tell them anything about who attacked us or why.”
    “When they look for us, they’ll also be looking for the Polk ’s black box,” Bair said. “That will have all the data from the ship right up until the moment it was destroyed. If they were able to identify the attacking ships at any point, it’ll be in there.”
    “If it survived the destruction of the Polk, ” Roberts said.
    “I heard Captain Basta tell her bridge crew to prep the box,” Bair said. “I’m guessing that means that they had time to do whatever they needed to to make sure it survived the ship.”
    “So you, me and a black box are all that survived the Polk, ” Roberts said.
    “I think so. Yes,” Bair said.
    “Jesus,” Roberts said. “Has anything like this ever happened to you before?”
    “I’ve had missions go badly before,” Bair said, and looked around the confines of the escape pod. “But, no. This is a first.”
    “Let’s hope the best-case scenario is what we get here,” Roberts said. “If it’s not, then in about a week things are going to get bad.”
    “After the fourth day we’ll take turns breathing,” Bair said.
    Roberts laughed weakly and then stopped himself. “Don’t want to do that,” he said. “Waste of oxygen.”
    Bair began to laugh herself and then was surprised as the air from her lungs rushed the other way, pulled out by the vacuum of space invading the escape pod as it tore apart. Bair had an instant to register the look on her assistant’s face before the shrapnel from the explosion that was shredding the escape pod tore into them as well, killing them. She had no final thoughts, other than registering the feel of the air sliding past her lips and the brief, painless pushing feeling the shrapnel made as it went through and then out of her. There was a final, distant sensation of cold, then heat, and then nothing at all.
    II.
    Sixty-two light-years away from the Polk, Lieutenant Harry Wilson stood stiffly near the edge of a seaside cliff on the planet Farnut, along with several other members of the Colonial Union diplomatic courier ship Clarke . It was a gorgeous, sunny day, warm without being so hot that the humans would sweat in their formal attire. The Colonial diplomats formed a line; parallel to that line was a line of Farnutian diplomats, their limbs resplendent in formal jewelry. Each human