On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “It takes a great deal of punishment to ruin a datachip,” Mai pointed out with a frown. “They might have simply rigged them up to look ruined.”

  “It’s a possibility, but the equipment I have onboard is not good enough to pick out and scan a handful of microscopic good sectors from the damaged parts of the chip,” Fitz admitted. “Contacting the people on Sumter is a risk, yet it may be the only way to find out what’s on the chips.”

  “You don’t want to talk to your friends in Imperial Intelligence?” Mariko asked, dryly. “Won’t they know you?”

  “They shouldn't know me,” Fitz said, flatly. “If I was the Rebel, plotting an uprising in the Sumter Sector, the first thing I’d do is try to compromise the Imperial Intelligence assets in this sector. The whole idea of my role as a trouble-shooter is that I can visit places without alerting the local intelligence staffers. I do have the ID to approach them, but they might talk amongst themselves and word might get back to the Secessionists.”

  He grinned. “But we may have had a stroke of luck to make up for the disaster on Greenland,” he added. “One of the chips contained blackmail information.”

  Fitz stood up, picked up a remote control and keyed a switch. A picture appeared on the wall-mounted display, showing a human man making love to a green-skinned woman.

  Mai gasped out loud, while Mariko stared in disbelief. The second picture was of the same man, naked beside a spidery creature that seemed to be pawing at him.

  “There are five hundred of these pictures, all with the same human male,” Fitz said, professionally. If he was bothered by the content, he didn't show it. “I cut his face out and ran it through the computer records, comparing him to everyone working for the Imperium in the sector.” He chuckled, rather unpleasantly. “All that insistence on writing reports in triplicate may just have paid off. Meet Data-Entry Clerk Gavin Richardson, a low-level operative in Sumter’s bureaucracy and the star of three pornographic movies, all of which would be on the banned list if they were ever uploaded onto the Imperial Net.”

  Mariko stared at the last picture, profoundly shocked. Interspecies sex wasn't exactly banned in the Imperium – with trillions of humans, it was likely that millions would be tempted to cross the species line – but it was heavily frowned upon. Anyone exposed as an interracial fornicator was likely to feel the full weight of society’s disapproval, even if they hadn't committed any actual crime. It wasn’t as if interracial sex could produce children, although someone like Tuff could presumably create a human-alien hybrid if that wasn't specifically banned by Imperial Law.

  “I think that Richardson got into trouble in one of the multiracial brothels on Sumter,” Fitz said, quietly. “He would have been filmed in a variety of compromising positions and then offered a choice between working for the Secessionists or being exposed to his superiors. Even if his superior was a liberal-minded man, he would still have had to move Richardson somewhere harmless at the very least; someone who had been compromised so badly would be vulnerable to all kinds of pressure. It looks to me as if Richardson preferred to work for the Secessionists than admit to his nightly activities.”

  He shook his head. “It’s an old trick. You find someone a prostitute, film him from all angles and then threaten to expose him if he refuses to play ball. Sometimes it fails – I heard of a case where the victim laughed in their faces and thanked them for the holiday snaps – but mostly it works. Anyone going to an interracial brothel probably has needs that can’t be met by purely human girls.”

  Mariko grimaced at the thought. She knew how humans mated with other humans, but with aliens...? The very thought was repulsive. How could anyone even match up the sexual organs between a human and someone from a humanoid race, let alone someone from a race that was utterly inhuman? Weren’t there races where the female killed the male after mating? Would that be murder, part of her mind wondered, or merely a crime of passion? Or would it be buried by the authorities, who wouldn't want to admit that interspecies sex existed on such a scale?

  “All right,” Mai said. She seemed to have recovered quicker from looking at the pictures than Mariko. “So they have a lowly clerk who's been blackmailed into following orders. Just how much damage can he do?”

  “According to the records, which were complete as of six months ago, Richardson works in both the starship tracking department and the personnel department,” Fitz said. “That isn't uncommon on worlds out along the Rim, even the Sector Capital. They can’t trust any alien with that position and trained humans from the Core Worlds don’t really want to migrate out here. In that position, with the right access codes, he could cause a hell of a lot of damage. Perhaps there’s someone the Secessionists want to recruit in the local Imperial Navy squadron. They could get Richardson to copy his file so they could scan it for weaknesses they could use against him. And then they can arrange for the files to claim that that officer died in a shuttle accident, hiding the fact that he was recruited by the Secessionists. Any investigator looking for him would be misdirected, convinced that he was already dead.”

  Fitz paced the compartment, snapping out points one by one.

  “You could do anything if you subverted the right people in the right department,” he added. “All of a sudden, we don’t dare trust records that might have been fiddled with by Richardson. At the very least, we would have to check them all thoroughly – and that would do wonders for our morale, I'm sure!”

  Mariko understood. The regulations covering the ownership and operation of freighters demanded that owners fill out endless forms before they could be given a licence to operate in the Imperium. It would be even worse for military starships. A sudden demand for all the paperwork to be resubmitted would not go down well with starship commanders, who would prefer to spend their time commanding their ships rather than filling in the damned paperwork.

  Fitz was right. Morale would go right down the tubes.

  “So we know how they’ve been fiddling the records,” Mai said. “Do you think that Richardson might have been quietly removing the warnings about the growing crisis on Greenland?”

  “I wouldn't have thought that he had the access,” Fitz said, after a moment. “And then there’s the minor detail that Auntie Jo has been sounding the alarm for years. If she happened to get an interview with the Sector Admiral and demanded to know what had happened to her previous messages...well, blatant tampering would definitely expose Richardson to Imperial Intelligence. I think they’d prefer to leave him in place, quietly cooking the books and passing on any intelligence that walked across his desk.”

  He made a face.

  “But we have to deal with him directly,” he said, finally. “We cannot risk bringing the rest of Imperial Intelligence in on this.”

  “Because they might be compromised,” Mariko said. She rolled her eyes. “I thought Imperial Intelligence was supposed to be incorruptible, never resting in its pursuit of the Imperium’s enemies.”

  “That damned The Man From The Double-Eye entertainment series has a lot to answer for,” Fitz muttered. “Imperial Intelligence spends more time promoting itself to the public rather than actually developing sources in alien empires and positioning assets in threatened sectors.”

  “It can't be easy to get aliens willing to help the Imperium,” Mariko said, remembering what had happened to Greenland. Perhaps the reason Archie was so unconcerned was because he had Slimes whispering in his ear, telling him how grateful they were for the destruction of their world and the enslavement of their entire race. “How many assets do they have in the Snake Empire?”

  “I wouldn't know,” Fitz said. “They’re not supposed to tell me anything I don’t need to know.”

  Mariko knew him well enough by now to know what he wasn't saying. It was quite possible that there were no assets in the Snake Empire, or that what assets there were consisted of Snakes who were actually working for their own people, whispering soothing lies into Imperial Intelligence’s ears. Besides, the Sn
akes were several dozen light years from the Imperium’s borders. Someone with an eye on the budget might point out that they were less immediately threatening than the countless rebel groups within the Imperium itself.

  “I’m going to have to send a report from Sumter to my superiors,” he added. “If we’re lucky, we might convince them to send some support – and perhaps a team from the IG to turn Admiral Von Rutherford’s fiefdom upside down. Maybe that would force the Secessionists to pull in their horns long enough to give us a chance to build new defences.”

  “You don’t sound confident,” Mai noted.

  “I’m not,” Fitz admitted. “Homeworld has too many other problems to worry about the Rim right now. Too many people crying wolf for the Grand Senate’s peace of mind.”

  Mariko tapped the table. “So we find him and then...what?”

  “We want to turn him into a source for us, ideally,” Fitz said. “We need to know what he’s done for the Secessionists and what standing orders they’ve given him, if any. There will be at least one Secessionist agent on Sumter, probably unconnected with the public face of the Secessionist League, who will be collecting his reports and passing them on to higher authority. We have to find that person and use him to lead us onwards to his superiors. Chances are there will probably be a cut-out or two along the way. The Secessionists haven’t survived this long by being stupid.

  “Failing that, we kill him and make it look like an accident.”

  Mariko stared at him, seeing the ruthlessness hiding behind his pleasant face. The Imperium would try Richardson and probably execute him for espionage, but that was a far cry from killing him themselves. She opened her mouth to protest and then realised that there was no point. Fitz was right; they couldn't leave Richardson in place, not when he was betraying the entire Imperium to the Secessionists – and through them, the Snakes. And yet it felt badly wrong to murder someone in cold blood, no matter how justified.

  “I’ll go through the remaining chips and see if there’s anything useful they can tell us,” Fitz continued, seemingly unaware of her inner thoughts. “Convicting Richardson will be easy; convicting Lady Mary will be a great deal harder. She may have been exiled, but the rest of the aristocracy will close ranks behind her unless the evidence is damning. The last thing they want is to give the commoners a chance to see their betters dying – it might give them ideas.”

  He looked over at Mai. “Bring us out of Phase Space on the edge of the Karats System,” he ordered. “We have some work to do before we reach the wormhole and slip into Sumter. I think it's time that Lord Fitzgerald was put to one side.”

  Mariko blinked in surprise. “You don’t intend to announce yourself when you reach Sumter?”

  “The Admiral is something of a social climber,” Fitz said, with palpable annoyance. “If I go in openly as Lord Fitzgerald, he will demand that I stay at the official residence, attend various parties and generally brighten up his dining table. It will make it difficult to snatch Richardson without attracting attention from the official Imperial Intelligence operatives on Sumter.”

  He grinned. “And besides, the Bruce Wayne has been seen too much recently,” he added. “It’s time for a change. And this ship is truly remarkable when it comes to changing its identity.”

  Mariko frowned.

  “But she’s a very recognisable space yacht,” she pointed out.

  “Wait and see,” Fitz assured her. “Just wait and see.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Karats was a fairly normal system, illuminated by an average G2 star. From the reports that Mariko had read, the original survey team had found nothing of great interest, apart from a habitable world and a gas giant for mining. There was no native intelligent race, which meant that the development corporation hadn't had to commit any atrocities to make the world suitable for human life. At the last census, conducted five years ago, Karats was home to over twenty thousand humans, mainly farmers and asteroid miners from the Core Worlds. It was rated as a nice, quiet place to live.

  Edo had been founded in an attempt to preserve what the founders could of traditional Japanese culture, although Mariko suspected that the culture they practiced had mutated considerably over the thousands of years since humanity had spread across the stars. Karats was much less dogmatic about who they allowed to settle, but then a new world wouldn't be in a good position to object to almost anyone. The only settlement bar was on Indents and aliens. Karat was a human world, and would remain so.

  Shaking her head, she turned the spacesuit around and looked at the Bruce Wayne. This far from the system primary, she was only illuminated by her running lights, which revealed a very strange sight indeed. Some of the luxury flashes on her hull – stubby wings and ‘go-faster’ stripes – were receding into the metal, while the colour was changing into the black and red lines of Interstellar Couriers. In hindsight, Mariko hadn't been too surprised to discover that there was a link between Imperial Intelligence and Interstellar Couriers, which had a reputation as the fastest shipping line in the Imperium. Interstellar Couriers could send a ship anywhere and no one would look any further than the cover story. Fitz had produced paperwork for his ship which he swore blind was real, if not something he had intended to use openly. The IFF had already been reprogrammed to claim that the ship was actually the Wally West, a fast courier. Anyone who looked inside the ship would know that she wasn't a courier, but the paperwork should prevent anyone from growing too curious. Interstellar Couriers had a very close relationship with the Grand Senate, and no one wanted to provoke them too far. Entire worlds had been embargoed for meddling with Interstellar Couriers in the past.

  Her radio crackled in her ear. “How does it look?”

  “Remarkable,” Mariko admitted. She’d volunteered to go outside the ship to watch with the naked eye as the ship underwent its transformation. Programmable hull metal and paint – and nanotech worked into the hull – was good, but it had its limitations. “She looks perfect enough to fool me.”

  “Swing around the hull and check everywhere,” Fitz ordered.

  He seemed amused and Mariko knew why. She’d expressed her doubts too loudly.

  “And then come back inside. We have an operation to plan.”

  Mariko muttered an acknowledgement and keyed the console on her suit’s arm. Some people could never bear to walk in space – they were convinced that they were falling, even though they weren’t – but she loved it. The sense of freedom, of flying through the universe all on her own, was remarkable, only made stronger by the absolute silence of space. All around her, stars burned in the darkness, without the twinkling that groundhogs took for granted. No wonder that the Cyborgs of Calculus had attracted so many volunteers before they’d turned into a nightmare of flesh fused with metal. They could walk in space without even needing a spacesuit.

  There were a handful of new blisters she hadn't seen before, hidden in the ship’s hull until they were necessary. One of the other reasons why no one messed with Interstellar Couriers was that their ships were always armed to the teeth. Bruce Wayne had hidden her weapons under the programmable hull; Wally West proudly displayed them to the universe. A real warship could have destroyed her, of course, but she would have had to catch the courier boat first.

  “Everything seems to be fine,” she said, finally. “Do you want to check, too?”

  “I will later,” Fitz assured her. “Come on back inside. We have work to do.”

  Mariko obeyed, steering the suit towards the airlock and dropping neatly into it as the ship’s artificial gravity field reasserted itself. The first time she’d re-entered a ship, she’d landed in a rather undignified manner, coming right down on her ass. Now she was almost a professional at EVA, even though it was something she just hadn't been able to do enough for her satisfaction. The Happy Wanderer had kept them too busy as they moved from world to world.

  She sealed the airlock behind her, stepped into the middle chamber and began the task of removing the
spacesuit. At least she’d been able to wear her normal clothes under the suit’s protective coverings, unlike the suits they’d used for training back on Edo. The instructors had claimed that it was a taste of what early spaceflight had been like, but the cadets had universally agreed that it was just another form of torture for prospective pilots. Mai had taken to it like a duck to water, although she had later admitted that she didn't like EVA very much. Mariko had been happy to take all of the EVA burden upon herself.

  Leaving the suit behind, she walked through the ship’s corridors until she reached the dining room. Fitz was sitting at a table, working on a pair of ID cards. He grinned up at her as she entered, waving for her to take a seat on the sofa besides Mai. Mariko flushed, unaccountably convinced that they had been talking about her, and then blinked in surprise as Fitz tossed one of the ID cards to her. It landed in her lap and she picked it up thoughtfully, studying it carefully. The top legend ran IMPERIAL INTELLIGENCE and identified her as a senior intelligence officer, with a line of code numbers that could have meant anything. There was no name, only a picture that made her look as if she’d been dead for a year and dug up just long enough for the picture to be taken. It made her look cruel and heartless, she decided.