The Collapsing Empire

by John Scalzi

  Nope, still a hypocrite, his brain said. Then they were out of the cargo area and into a tunnel, funneling them toward the muster area and a shuttle.

  A final check of papers and thumbprint and the shuttle detached from Imperial Station to the Yes, Sir. Again there were no windows—windows were a positive hazard in the blank vacuum of space—but this time Marce could access a camera feed from his tablet. He did so and saw the Yes, Sir hone into view, a long tube with two rotating rings, an ungainly but strangely beautiful object. His home for the next nine months.

  “What a fucking hole,” his seatmate said, looking at Marce’s tablet screen.

  “I think it’s beautiful,” Marce said.

  “Looks pretty from a distance. But I’ve friends who have crewed Lagos ships before. They all have problems. House of Lagos is cheap. They run their ships until they fall apart and only repair them when the alternative is exploding. They scare me.”

  “And yet you’re here, about to crew a Lagos ship.”

  “I was going to crew on the Tell Me Another One, but it’s been impounded. Captain let pirates take her cargo, I heard. Switched over. Last-minute add. Worth it. Things are going to hell on End.”

  “The rebels.”

  The man nodded. “That and the other thing. About the Flow streams.”

  “What?” Marce said. He set down the tablet and gave his full attention to his seatmate.

  “A friend of mine who crews on the Tell Me—the one who was getting me the gig on it—said they dropped out of the goddamn Flow stream halfway here and only barely made back in before they were stranded forever. He’s got another friend who told him this wasn’t the first time. Flow streams are getting spotty all over the goddamn place. It’s only a matter of time before the shit really drops. I sure as hell don’t want to be on End when it does. I’m from Kealakekua. I’m going home.”

  “This is the first I’ve heard about this,” Marce said.

  “You haven’t shipped in the last few years, then. Everyone who crews has heard the rumors.”

  “Just rumors.”

  “Sure, just rumors, but what the hell else are they going to be?” the man said, irritably. “It can take five years for a piece of news to go from one end of space to the other, and the story’s going to change in the telling. So you don’t listen to the story. You listen to the pattern. And right now, the pattern is, weird fucking shit going on with the Flow.”

  “The guilds know about this, then.”

  The man looked at Marce like he was an idiot. “They don’t want to know. A ship goes in the Flow and doesn’t come out and they say, oh, pirates got them before they could report in. Or there was some problem shaping the bubble inside the Flow and they just disappeared in it. There’s always an explanation that doesn’t mean the Flow is the problem. They don’t want to believe it. And if they don’t believe it, then who is going to tell the Interdependency? You? Me? Like they’re fucking going to believe us.”

  “They might.”

  “Well, you try it and let me know. What I’m going to do is go home. I got kids. I want to see them again.”

  There was a thump and the shuttle landed in the Yes, Sir’s bay.

  “You’re not worried that something might happen to this ship on the way out,” Marce said, while they waited for the air to be pumped back into the bay.

  “I figure this ship is safe. I didn’t want to hang around after that.”

  “Why not?”

  “My friend on the Tell Me’s heard that this stream—the one out of End—is getting shaky.”

  “How so?”

  “How do I know? It’s a rumor, man. They don’t come up with a science report. But my friend is anxious about it. He even considered jumping ship and coming with us. But the Tell Me’s whole crew is grounded for legal depositions and he didn’t know where to get reliable forged IDs. It’s hard to fool the biometrics.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  The man nodded. “So he’s stuck. And he’s worried he’s going to be stuck here forever.”

  “There are worse places to be stuck than End,” Marce said.

  The man snorted at this. “An open planet is no place for humans. Give me a decent ring habitat any day.”

  “Earth was an open planet.”

  “And we left it.” The door to the shuttle opened and the new crew began to file out.

  “What’s your friend’s name?” Marce asked the man. “The one on the Tell Me.”

  “Why? You going to send him a condolence note?”

  “I might.”

  The man shrugged. “Sjo Tinnuin. And I’m Yared Brenn, in case you’re at all curious.”

  “Kristian.”

  “No, I’m with the Interdependent Church. Mostly.” Brenn shuffled off before Marce could correct the confusion.

  An hour later Marce had what passed for an orientation and was assigned his quarters, a tiny, sealable bunk in a room with fifteen other crew members. Each crew member had their own bunk and locker, with a common lavatory and living space, the latter of which couldn’t possibly fit all sixteen of them at the same time. As the newest crew member, he got the worst bunk, the highest of four nearest the lavatory, at the same altitude where the lavatory fumes gathered.

  Marce slipped into his bunk area, which had barely enough room to sit up, and connected his tablet to the ship’s system. There was already a message waiting for him, informing him where to report to his new superior, and when, the latter being a half hour from then.

  Marce opened up an app that would allow him to text anonymously and securely and pinged Vrenna. This is your friend Kristian, he texted.

  I already said good-bye to you. Now you’re ruining the moment, Vrenna responded.

  Marce smiled at that. I need you to look up someone. A man named Sjo Tinnuin. He crews on the Tell Me Another One. I need you to do it before the Yes, Sir hits the Flow shoal.

  All right. Why?

  Because he’s heard a rumor about that thing that I’m interested in.

  I love it when you’re vague.

  Particularly the thing I’m about to deal with. Vague enough?

  Perfectly.

  Good. It would be helpful to know where he heard the rumor. It’s a very weirdly specific thing to have a rumor about.

  I’m on it. How is the ship?

  I’m in a bunk the size of a dresser drawer.

  Jealous. All I have is my massive bed back at the palace, in a room the size of a small village.

  I hate you.

  Hate you too, Kristian. Be safe. I’ll ping the ship with a message when I get news.

  Thanks— and here Marce almost typed “sis” but stopped and just added a period instead. Then he turned off his tablet, sealed up his bunk, and spent a few minutes in the uncomfortably close dark, having the first twinges of homesickness.

  Chapter

  11

  “You said you wanted to be informed if something unusual happened on our way out from End,” Captain Tomi Blinnikka said, to Kiva. They were two days out from End, and another day out from the Flow shoal that would have them heading toward Hub. Kiva and Blinnikka were in the captain’s private room, off the bridge of the Yes, Sir, along with Chief of Security Nubt Pinton. The room could comfortably fit two people tops, and Pinton was exceedingly large. Kiva felt like she could actually taste his sweat particles.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Blinnikka activated a tablet and showed it to Kiva. It featured a live feed of the Yes, Sir’s position in space, along with the logarithmically mapped position of other objects and ships within a light-minute of distance. “We’ve got a ship coming toward us.”

  “Toward us? Or toward the shoal?”

  “Us. We plotted its course and it’s going to intercept us in about fourteen hours. When we first saw it and saw its course, I made the assumption it was also running to the shoal and just wasn’t paying attention to our position. I boosted our velocity by half a percent, to get us clear of each
other. They didn’t respond immediately, but over the last couple of hours they’ve boosted their own velocity to match ours. We’re definitely the targets.”

  “So, pirates.”

  “Yes.”

  “Stupid pirates.” The best time to nab a ship was when it was exiting the Flow, not trying to get to it; inertia would send a target ship into the Flow shoal regardless. Pirate ships were usually relatively small, relatively fast, and almost always local—which is to say, with no equipment to shape a time-space bubble around their ships. If they entered the Flow, they’d die. A pirate attacking an outgoing ship would likely have only a very small window of time to attack successfully, board, unload cargo, and disengage.

  “Stupid or they have a plan we don’t understand.”

  “We can handle them, right?” The Yes, Sir came with a full complement of defensive weapons, and a small contingent of offensive weapons as well. The offensive weapons were technically illegal for a trade ship to have, but fuck that, when you’re in space, sometimes you have to shoot first and lie about it to a guild inquiry later.

  “The ship is too far away to get a good look at its true capabilities, but if the thrust signature is correct, it’s a Winston-class freighter. It’s probably modified all to hell but no matter what they’re still small, which limits their offensive capabilities. We can probably handle them. If their intention is to pirate the ship.”

  “What other intention would they have? They want to invite us to tea?”

  “We don’t know. Right now our posture is to watch and monitor.”

  “You can outrun them to the shoal. Power up now.”

  Blinnikka shook his head. “The second we boost velocity more than trivially we give away that we know we’re being tracked. They’ll boost as well, probably to intercept earlier. If we plan to outrun them, we do it as late as possible, and when they’re close enough for us to target with those missiles we’re not supposed to have. But again, that’s if they are attempting the usual piracy.”

  Kiva found herself getting irritated. “What the fuck would unusual piracy be in this case?”

  “We don’t know, and that’s the point. They’re coming at us from the wrong direction and they wouldn’t have enough time to fully unload even if they didn’t have to burn time fighting us. But they should also know that we don’t have anything worth stealing right now. Pirates have spies at stations, who give them information about ships and their cargo manifests. It’s how they decide who to target. But they wouldn’t even have to be crafty to know that the only cargo we took on at End was people, since we didn’t make a secret of that. And unless they really want haverfruit concentrate, we have nothing of value.”

  “They know we have nothing they want or can use and they’re coming at us anyway.”

  “Yes. This is what worries me.”

  Kiva nodded. “Fine. What’s the second thing?”

  “One of our passengers is acting strangely,” Nubt Pinton said.

  “All our passengers are rich assholes,” Kiva said. “Acting strangely is part of their so-called charm.”

  Pinton smiled slightly at that. “I will take the lady’s word for that,” he said. “However, in this case, the problem is not the passenger being eccentric, but the passenger methodically casing the ship.” Pinton picked up his own tablet and sent video to the one Kiva was holding. In the video, a man was walking through the ship corridors, looking around.

  “Oh my God, this man is walking, let’s kill him,” Kiva said.

  “It’s not that he’s walking, it’s where he’s walking. He’s not wandering the ship randomly or generally. He’s going into areas relating to engineering, propulsion, and life support management.”

  “So, only to those places?”

  “No,” Pinton said. “He goes other places as well. But these are the places he’s come back to. He doesn’t come in far and he never stays long. But he comes back.”

  “Why don’t you have the passengers on a fucking lockdown?” Kiva asked, setting down the tablet. “We don’t need these assholes wandering the ship anyway.”

  “That was our original plan, and in fact our passengers have already been given a list of areas they are absolutely not allowed to go into.”

  “Which this guy ignores.”

  “No, but he’s come close. But he’s not focused, say, on Engineering directly. He’s focused on places on the ship where it might be easy to disrupt engineering systems.”

  “Which brings me back to my first fucking question, Pinton.”

  Pinton waggled the tablet he held in his hand. “We didn’t lock them down entirely because one of our crew recognizes this man, and we wanted to see what he might be up to.”

  “Which rich asshole is he?”

  “That’s just it. The crew person says he’s not a rich asshole. He’s someone who works for a rich asshole.”

  “Which crew member said this?”

  “A new purser named Kristian Jensen. I understand you know him.”

  “And who does he say this dude worked for?”

  “Ghreni Nohamapetan.”

  “Get him in here now,” Kiva said.

  * * *

  “So, I used to work for the family of the Count of Claremont,” Jensen began.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Kiva said, exasperatedly. “Lord Marce, everyone in this room knows you’re you.”

  “I wasn’t sure,” Marce said.

  “Well, now you are, so get on with it.”

  Marce nodded. “I didn’t have a lot of contact with Lord Ghreni, but I’d see him sometimes at court functions at the duke’s, and other events and parties where the presence of a noble was considered a plus. Ghreni was one of those nobles who would travel with an entourage of friends and employees.” He pointed at Pinton’s tablet. “This was one of the employees. Former military, working for Ghreni as a bodyguard.”

  “You’re sure about that,” Blinnikka asked Marce.

  “I’m sure,” Marce said. “Vrenna pointed him out to me once. He and she were in the same unit for a while. Said he was a competent solider but a shit human being and that at one point she nearly fed him his testicles because he kept propositioning her in the barracks. Every time I saw him since I imagined his own balls in his mouth.”

  “That’s a lovely image,” Kiva said.

  “When I saw him in the passenger ring section, I checked in with security.” Marce nodded to Pinton.

  “I assume this asshole is traveling on fake documents,” Kiva said, to Pinton.

  “Yes,” Pinton confirmed. “For our records he’s Tysu Gouko. Bear in mind we gave him that particular fake identity, so we can’t really hold it against him. But he presented himself as a franchisee of the House of Sykes, when he came to us. Name of Frinn Klimta.”

  “Is there a real Frinn Klimta?”

  “Maybe? We didn’t check. We didn’t believe you cared, ma’am, as long as their money was real, and it was.”

  Kiva turned to Marce. “What’s this asshole’s real name?”

  “His personal name is Chat. His family name I think is Ubdal. Or Uttal. One of the two.”

  “Any idea why he’s here?”

  “I have no idea,” Marce said. “But if he came to you with an already fake identity, I think that’s enough for you to be suspicious.”

  “When did he book passage?” Kiva asked Pinton.

  “Just before we left. He was one of the last people we booked. Magnut charged him a late fee of a quarter million marks.”

  Kiva pointed at Marce. “So that would have been after you were kidnapped.”

  Marce nodded. “Yes.”

  “He one of the guys who grabbed you?”

  “No. I definitely would have remembered that.”

  “So he doesn’t know who you are right now.”

  “I don’t know. Probably not. He hasn’t responded to me yet.”

  “But he would recognize you out of this disguise.”

  “Yes.”


  Kiva reached over to Marce, grabbed his hair, and tugged. Marce yelped in pain and surprise. “Stop it! It doesn’t just come off. You have to dissolve the glue.”

  “Where is this asshole now?” Kiva asked Pinton.

  “He’s in the passenger ring section,” Pinton replied. “What do you want to do?”

  “I want to find out what he’s up to.”

  “The Yes, Sir is underway,” Blinnikka reminded Kiva. “Whatever you plan to do, I have to approve. I don’t want this asshole damaging the ship.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Kiva promised. She turned back to Marce. “So this asshole is a marine.”

  “Was a marine, yes. Is now a bodyguard.”

  “You think you could take him?”

  “What? No.”

  “Does this asshole know that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, good.”

  * * *

  They waited until Chat went on a walk and then positioned a couple of security crew at the end of a corridor they knew he was casing, giving every appearance of just having a conversation with each other. Chat saw them, decided to consult his tablet about something, and then headed back in the direction which he had come from, to find two other security crew there. He stopped and appeared to be calculating his odds when Marce stepped into the corridor, his Kristian Jansen disguise removed, and walked toward him.

  “Hello, Chat,” Marce said, and that was as far as he got before Chat materialized a blade out of fucking nowhere and rushed directly for him.

  And then was on the floor half a second later, twitching, three stun bolts in him.

  “Did you pee yourself?” Kiva asked Marce ten seconds later, when the all clear had been given. She and Pinton had been waiting a bit down the corridor and had been watching through the corridor camera, feed piped into a tablet.

  “Maybe a little,” Marce admitted, looking at the downed Chat, who was now being bundled up by security.

  “There’s no shame in pissing yourself like a goddamned fire hydrant when a trained killer is about to knife you in the throat.”

  “Can we change the subject?” Marce asked, plaintively.

  “Why don’t you take the rest of your shift off and shiver in your bunk,” Kiva suggested. “In your shoes that’s what I’d do.”