Galactic Empires

by Gardner R. Dozois

  “Seven.”

  “Get the station camera records ready for access.”

  “Way ahead of you,” he grinned. “I’m pulling up passenger carriage camera files as well.”

  It took Christabel another eight minutes to find a boat mooring at the Larsie marina. A man in a yellow shirt stepped off. “Here we go,” she said with a trill of excitement as the camera observed him walk along the wooden quay used by Danney’s Boat Hire. She froze an image as he was just short of the camera, revealing the round face of a man in his late forties, with flesh starting to build up under his cheeks and around his chin. Dark skin, with stubble. Thinning gray-brown hair dangled out of his blue cap. His yellow shirt was open at the neck, revealing a dark necklace cord.

  “Nalcol, get over to the Larsie marina,” Paula said. “We’ve found the boat. Captain, call up the hire company office; tell them it’s impounded. It must not be cleaned.”

  “You got it,” Aidan said.

  “Nelson, transfer the station files to our RI. It’ll run visual recognition on that face. Christabel, get into the hire company’s records. Who paid for the boat?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  The Directorate RI took ninety seconds to review every camera record from the station, running each face through a recognition program to identify the man on the marina.

  “There he is,” Paula exclaimed contentedly as the largest screen in the situation van showed their suspect strolling down the main platform to a waiting train, still wearing his yellow shirt. The timeline was thirty-seven minutes after the attack. They watched the RI follow him through the cameras until he was sitting in a carriage on an express train heading for Earth. The train moved out of the station.

  “Let’s go,” Paula said.

  *

  The three of them took Nelson’s helicopter back to the station. There was a train already waiting to leave, packed full of passengers angry at the delay. Paula, Christabel, and Nelson hurried into the first-class cabin and it left immediately, trundling along the track to the big wormhole generator half a mile beyond the marshaling yard. Once it was through, it made an unscheduled stop at a small service platform in EdenBurg’s vast terminal. They transferred over to an express heading for Earth.

  Nalcol called as they reached the platform. “DNA match confirmed,” he told Paula. “The man on the boat was the one who took a leak at the launch site.”

  “Send the file back to Paris,” she told him. “Find his profile.”

  “He bought his train ticket with a onetime account,” Nelson told them. “Untraceable. But we’ve followed him through LA galactic. He caught a trans-Earth loop and got off at Sydney an hour ago. Caught a taxi.”

  “Leave that to us,” Paula said. “The Directorate can track him.”

  They sat back as the express accelerated out of EdenBurg. Five minutes later it was pulling into LA galactic.

  “Basker just called,” Christabel said. “We’ve got a positive identification; visual corresponding to DNA. Dimitros Fiech. Address in Sydney. Works for Colliac Fak, a software development company. He’s a sales rep, so he travels around a lot. Oh, get this, Colliac’s Leisure Division supplies software to the travel industry, including the resort at Fire Plain.”

  They left the express and started to run through the vast terminal to the platforms serving the trans-Earth loop. “Mine his background,” Paula told Christabel, then put a call in to the Directorate’s Sydney office. “I want a tactical team armored up and ready when we arrive. Have a helicopter pick us up at the station.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the duty officer replied. “The suspect’s taxi dropped him at the Wilkinson Tower off Penfold. We have two officers there now. As far as we know, he’s still inside.”

  “Good work. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “I’d like to observe, please,” Nelson said.

  “Yes,” Paula said. “But that’s all.”

  “I know.”

  *

  The loop train took them to Mexico City, followed by Rio, down to Buenos Aires, and then over the ocean to Sydney. A Directorate helicopter was sitting on the station security division pad, rotors spinning idly.

  Paula and Christabel started putting on their armor as it lifted into the dark sky cloaking the city. Nelson watched enviously.

  “If you do need back up-” he said.

  “Then the city police will be happy to provide it,” Paula said.

  He sighed and gave up.

  The ancient harbor bridge was illuminated in orange and blue holographic outlines as they flew in parallel to it. A wall of skyscrapers punctured the cityscape behind Circular Quay, their surface illuminations throwing cold monochrome light down onto the deserted nighttime streets below. They landed on the roof of the fifty-story Wilkinson Tower. Five of the Directorate’s tactical team were waiting for them.

  “Stay here,” Paula ordered Nelson as she hopped down onto the roof.

  Dimitros Fiech’s apartment was on the thirteenth floor, looking inland. The Directorate team was evacuating the residents above and below.

  “Fiech is a legend,” Christabel said as the elevator opened on the thirteenth floor. Three tactical team members were waiting for them, dressed in black armor and holding big ion pistols.

  “Basker validates an eighteen-month employment record with Colliac Fak. Fiech’s CV and general background are false. It’ll withstand a standard employment agency search, but our RI burned right through it. Records were inserted, referees are false. He’s a genuine undercover agent for someone, all right.”

  “Thanks,” Paula said. Her red virtual finger touched a communication icon, opening a secure link to the tactical team. “Be aware, we confirm target is hostile. He has access to weapons and does not hesitate to open fire. Civilians are not safe. Squad sergeant?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Can you immobilize him?”

  “We’ve got a nerve jangler drone, but we’ll have to blow the door open to get it in there. We don’t know if it’s reinforced.”

  “Has he rigged the approach?”

  “No sensors detected in the corridor.”

  “All right, let’s go. Be careful.” Paula called up feeds from the cameras on the suits of the entry team, seeing jerky images of the corridor as they hurried along. The wooden door to Fiech’s apartment was painted a dull green. They gathered around it and quickly rolled an explosive tape along the edges. One camera showed the drone being held ready, a small triangle of gray plastic.

  “Go!” the squad sergeant ordered.

  The explosive tape detonated, shattering the wooden door. The remnants crashed inward. Suit sensors went active, cutting through the smoke and dust, producing a sharp black-and-white image. The drone streaked in. Icons blinked green and amber, showing that the nerve jangler field was active. Theoretically, it would stun Fiech’s nervous system, giving the team time to get in and cover him before he could go for any weapons. Unless he was ready and protected.

  The icons turned blue and the entry team charged in. Fiech was sprawled on a couch in the living room, still wearing the yellow shirt Paula had seen through so many camera images. His head was flung back, hanging over the edge of the cushions as his limbs shook from the aftermath of the jangle. Drool leaked out of his gaping mouth.

  Paula was running down the corridor, turning the corner. The wreckage of the door was in front of her. Four more team members were charging through it into the apartment. She followed them in. Fiech was still spread out across the couch. One of the suited figures was pressing an ion pistol to his temple. The second was providing cover. The remainder spread out through the apartment, guns held ready, sensors on full power, scanning ahead.

  “Clear,” the squad sergeant called.

  Fiech was given a full deep scan. His body had a few inserts and a couple of OCtattoos, simple Unisphere interfaces, and a standard memorycell, none of them combat grade. They turned him over and secured his wrists. Two ion pistols rem
ained trained on him. He was white and shaking now, on the verge of vomiting.

  Paula removed her helmet, shaking out her hair. Fiech gave her a terrified stare.

  “It’s going to be rough on you,” Paula said. “Even if you cooperate, memory reading is never pleasant. But if you give us the names and structure of your movement, we can keep it to a minimum. We’ll just verify your information. Trust me, it’s worth it.”

  Fiech started sobbing, tears tricking down his cheeks. “What the fuck is happening?” he wailed. “What is going on?”

  Paula gave him a contemptuous look. She’d expected more professionalism. “Take him down to the office. Prep him for a memory read. I’ll run it myself.”

  A whimpering Fiech was dragged past her. Christabel came into the apartment, taking her helmet off to look round. “I’ll get forensics in, rip this place apart.”

  “Sure.” A formality, Paula knew. The apartment was part of his cover, it’d be clean.

  “Hell of a first day back, boss. What are you going to do tomorrow?”

  * * *

  WHAT I KNOW HAPPENED

  I was up early that morning, just like bloody always these days. Damn company is squeezing its staff to husks, always raising our performance targets. You can’t keep doing that year after year, people can only do so much.

  Anyway… the first wave of commuters was buzzing about on the streets when I left the tower lobby. Poor bastards. Just like me. Squeezed on all sides. You can see it in their null expressions. All that effort and angst etched into their faces, and it was only five past seven.

  I walked down O’Connal Street to the underground metro station. It’s steep ground just behind Sydney harbor, and the skyscrapers are so high you don’t see sunlight that time of the morning. Some of my fellow sufferers were gulping down Bean There coffee from plastic cups. I hate that. Food on the run gives me really bad indigestion.

  The metro station has a direct line to the CST station on the south side of the city. It took eleven minutes. Three longer than usual. Every bugger is conspiring to make my life worse.

  I missed the first train to Wessex. Typical. So I waited on the big platform, with its white wing roof. Me and two hundred others. Time was, I used to be excited just being in CST’s Sydney station. Think of it. Out there past the end of the platform there’s eighteen wormhole generators, each one with tracks leading to a different phase one world. One line goes to Wessex, the junction to phase two space, with another twelve worlds beyond that. They’re going to open five more in the next three years. All that opportunity, the potential out there, and what does my life amount to? Bugger all. Corporate drone, that’s me. Worlds aren’t new starts and fresh hope, all that crap in the brochures. I’ve been to all of them. They’re just more developments that I’ve got to flog Colliac Fak’s bloody software to. We’re covering every H-congruous planet in the galaxy with concrete; building little nests with a window we can look at the neighboring squalid skyscraper with. Yeah, we’re a really progressive species, us humans.

  So I got the next train to Wessex. Standard class coach, and I just managed to grab a seat next to a window. Beat some woman to it, who looked real pissed at me when I slipped in ahead of her. Gotta learn, lady. Survival of the fittest on this route. Every route, every day.

  The Wessex station made its Sydney cousin look small. Three big passenger terminals with gold and scarlet roofs curving high over twenty platforms apiece; you could probably fit my apartment skyscraper inside one of them. And a marshaling yard that sprawled over fifteen square miles, a giant zoo of cybernetic machines and warehouses.

  I had to switch terminals for the train out to Ormal-that’s a five-minute trip on a pedwalk-then I had to find the right platform. The insert that provides my virtual vision has interface problems now, so the guidance icons I was picking up from the station management array were blurred. Nearly misread the damn thing. Finished up on platform 11B waiting with a big crowd for the train. These people weren’t so stressed and desperate as the ones back in Sydney. More prosperous types, with suits a lot more expensive than mine. They had neat little leather designer arrays edged in gold or platinum tucked into the top pockets. You could see their fingers flicking about minutely as they shunted icons around their high-rez virtual vision. I even saw a few of those new OCtattoos, the ones that light up, tracing colorful lines across their skin. One woman had green and blue spirals on her cheeks.

  The carriage wasn’t so crowded, so I got a seat by a window again. I guess most of my fellow travelers were up in first class. Trip to Ormal was a simple eight minutes. We rolled out from the end of the platform and across the marshaling yard. I could see the row of wormhole generators up ahead like a metallic cliff, bloody huge great rectangular buildings side by side with a wormhole gateway at the end, like the mouth of an old-fashioned train tunnel. Only these had light shining out of them: alien suns spreading a multitude of subtle shades across the rusting jumble of the marshaling yard.

  Our train headed straight for a pink-tinged hole, and I felt the tingle of the pressure curtain across my skin as we passed through. Then we were rolling along a couple of miles of track surrounded by open countryside with strange bulbous gray and white trees before we reached the CST planetary station.

  Harwood’s Hill, the capital, was small, barely half a million people. But it was beautiful, one of those places that had banned combustion engines. It was spread across a big slope that rose up out of a freshwater sea, with green spaces outnumbering buildings five to one. If I could afford it, I’d probably move there. You knew this world was making an effort to get things right. But it cost to grab a chunk of a dormitory planet for the upper middle classes. For Christ’s sake, real estate here was more expensive than back on Earth.

  My train had arrived late evening. I took a taxi out to the airport, using the company card. Even the taxi cost more than the return train fare. I watched the yachts out on the lake, trying not to be all sour and envious. There must have been hundreds coming into port, their sails all lit up by the sinking sun. Didn’t anyone in this city work?

  The flight to Essendyne was another three hours. At the other end, the airport was little more than a flat patch of grass with a strip of enzyme-bonded concrete down the middle, like it was left over from an experimental road building project.

  Essendyne itself was a little town of stylish houses at the end of a valley. The surrounding mountains were impressive, too. In winter, they have over a meter of snow. It is perfect for skiers.

  I took another taxi out to the resort, a forty-minute ride. The place was only half-finished, with the main building a mass of scaffolding crawling with construction bots. Some of the cabins had roofs, but the insides weren’t fitted. I got that shitty sinking feeling as soon as we arrived. The office had told me the whole thing was in its final stage of completion, with the staff busy getting ready for guests. All that was left to do was a bit of landscaping. Complete crap.

  The taxi dropped me outside the site manager’s office. She wasn’t available, some crisis out there among the scaffolding with a malfunctioning bot. Her assistant had the grace to look embarrassed as he explained that the handover date had been put back three months. It was difficult to get the materials out to Essendyne from the nearest train station, a two hours’ drive away along a narrow road. No one from the resort company was even on site, let alone available to meet me.

  Fucking pricks! Nobody back in Sydney had even bothered to check. Bastard scum! So I’d wasted an entire day on a trip to a client that didn’t even exist yet. I wanted to bill the dicks back home for the commission I’d lost and the expenses I’d built up.

  The taxi took me back to the airport. And, of course, the plane back to Harwood’s Hill didn’t leave for another five hours. I hit the bar in the concourse—a grand way to describe a hut with a glass wall. After an hour, when the anger was really peaking, I called Sydney and told the dick of an office manager what I thought of him. I didn’t wait for him t
o say anything back. I cut the channel and got my e-butler to block all incoming calls. There was a seafood bistro next to the bar. I went in and tried some of the local food. Not bad. Waitress was kind of pretty, too. Then I went back to the bar.

  I remember one of the stewardesses helping me onto the plane. Great-looking chick with flaming red hair and a cute smile. I told her so, too. Then we took off and I was poorly. She helped clean it up. I slept the rest of the flight.

  Harwood’s Hill was a grind. Strange city, small hours of the morning, with a mother monster hangover. Took a taxi to the CST station. Managed to find a little store that was still open and bought some cleaner tabs. I don’t take them often-they’re worse than the hangover if you ask me-but they do only last an hour before your body stabilizes. I was back in Sydney by then. Cold, depressed, with bones that ached. Couldn’t eat, and felt really hungry thanks to the cleaners. And absolutely fuck all to show for my time.

  I went home. Bugger the expense, I took a taxi. I was kind of surprised my company card was still working by then. You know I thought that was my low point. Then the bloody next thing I know, the police are blowing up my door. I don’t know what they hit me with when they stormed in, but it was like my whole body was on fire. I just wanted to die. I mean, how could the universe do this to me?

  * * *

  WHAT THE COURT DECIDED

  It was the biggest case ever to be heard in a Nova Zealand court; in fact, it was the biggest anything to happen on Nova Zealand, period. Reporters from every Unisphere news show flooded into Ridgeview, with their companies block-booking entire hotels. Those unable to snag a room had to park their mobile homes on the ring road, where they were jostled by curious camels brought to the planet by Bedouins eager to re-create their ancient culture out in the freedom of the vast deserts. While in town, the narrow streets with their broad white canvas awnings rapidly became clogged by giant mobile studio trucks.

  Paula was given a room in the city Attorney’s office. It was cramped, with desks shoved against the wall and a noisy water tower, but better than trying to catch a train in each day.