Read Online Final Protocol by J. C. Daniels - Free Book Online Page B

here in this small copse of trees, away from the dark-speeder, and find death. In the hot Hsainien suns, if I didn’t take water, I’d be dead within two days. I could even shorten it. I had poisoned darts, several vials of poison in my supplies. Kill myself and leave him to wonder if the job was finished.
    Except he’d get the news from the bioseal within hours. That wouldn’t be so bad. He could rage and fume about that. Then try to send somebody else or give up.
    The question was—did I want death or did I want freedom more?
    It really wasn’t a question at all.
    The planet of Hsain looked to be nothing but one giant sand dune, one endless wave of sand after the other. That sand gritted in my eyes, covered my skin, my hair. According to the coordinates I’d fed into the device I wore about my wrist, I was moving at a good clip toward the capital.
    If I hadn’t trusted the device, I’d have thought it was busted. It felt like I was in the middle of nowhere. Or perhaps in the middle of hell. But I did trust the unit I wore. I’d designed it myself and had a tron genius fit it out. It looked like a bracer, the kind you might see in historical holos about the old planet, a long sleeve of synthetic, lightweight metal that went from my wrist to halfway up my arm, but it was much more than just a supportive or decorative piece of equipment. It held a mini tron system: could send a transmission, map out a route, call up information—just about everything the dataport on my speeder could do. Plus a few more tricks.
    Right now, it was just another layer for sweat to pool under, but as long as it got me to Jiral, I didn’t care.
    “How much longer?”
    The reply made me scowl. I’d be there by the semitwilight that served as night here. With four suns that never went below the horizon at the same time, this place didn’t go into full dark.
    But I didn’t want to plod along through the sand for another two hours.
    I wanted shelter from the merciless suns. I wanted cool water against my skin. I wanted something icy to swallow and I wanted darkness .
    If I survived this job, I was never going to go to a planet with more than two suns again. Ideally, only one . Then I could have true night. Maybe a green planet, like Old Earth. I’d never seen it. It still wasn’t habitable, but like most of the Earth descendants, I’d heard stories. Blue waters, green lands, mountains. It sounded like heaven.
    And I was stuck here in a sandy hell, dreaming about it when I needed to focus on my job.
    “Pull up the building schematics. I need to start finding the best routes in and out.”
    There was a pause, followed by: “Standard routes?”
    “Yeah.” For me, standard routes meant the ones where I was less likely to be discovered. “If possible, try to get a probability on where the Embassy boys will be staying.”
    “Should I look for Embassy female delegates as well?” These things are so literal.
    I snorted. “There won’t be any.”
    It was a punch in the face, but the Embassy wouldn’t take a chance on that. The current president was I’Riga Kle, a female from the Fmil system on the outer edges of the galaxy, and she didn’t bullshit, didn’t kowtow and didn’t play games with anybody. But this wasn’t a game.
    It was life and death.
    The proper protocol for dealing with planets or systems that were less than welcoming to particular populations had been established a long time ago. In more blunt terms, the Embassy had to deal with racist, sexist, xenophobic cretins who preferred to believe they were the superior—and only— true race that had a right to exist in the galaxy. Often the Embassy had to deal with them, and it was a needle in the eye to do so, but the Embassy was charged with keeping the people of the galaxy safe.
    When necessary, certain peoples were advised to avoid said planet, said system. It wasn’t one-sided, either. There are a few planets in Fmil where Earth descendants are pretty much