“They won’t want to go,” Mariko said, quietly.
“To say the least,” Fitz said. “I’d bet half my father’s estate that almost all of the people in the files haven’t been approached, but how the hell do I prove it? The local station is going to shit itself when it discovers what Richardson has been doing under their very nose...and they will overreact to any other possible leak. I need to take this to someone with enough authority to hold the locals back from doing anything stupid.”
Mariko picked up a chicken stick and chewed on it thoughtfully.
“Is there anyone with that much authority?”
“Only people back on Homeworld,” Fitz said. “I’d have to convince them that it was important, and that won’t be easy. Overruling a station chief is never good for Imperial Intelligence’s morale.”
He shrugged, picking up a second set of chips.
“This merry lot involved fiddling with the manifests of various lost shuttles and a couple of starships. Around eighty personnel with Imperial Navy records were reported as being on the shuttles when they exploded, leaving few traces behind for an assessment team to recover. Those officers are now legally dead...”
Mariko saw where he was going. “So where are they now?”
“That’s the question,” Fitz said. “What’s more worrying is that their service records suggest long-term crewmen with experience, but without the connections to become mustangs and rise in the ranks. The Imperial Navy has a major problem with officers being promoted because of family connections or outright back-scratching. These crewmen would have known that their careers were going nowhere, while they had to take the orders of inbred morons with a perfect pedigree and little else.”
The anger in his voice surprised her.
“I thought that was how you joined the Guards?” she ventured.
“One of their long-serving sergeants was kind enough to put me in my place,” Fitz said. “Some of the orders I gave on a training field would have killed my men if I’d issued them in combat. But not everyone is bright enough to recognise that they might want to listen to people who have been in the military longer than the inbred morons have been alive.”
He shook his head. “At least eighty personnel, missing and presumed dead,” he told her. “Maybe more, if Richardson wasn't the only spy; eighty people who could be anywhere by now.”
“Eighty isn't that many,” Mariko protested.
“You can run a superdreadnaught with eighty men if those men know what they’re doing and don’t mind having no damage control section,” Fitz corrected her, darkly. “Maybe not a realistic prospect for a long engagement, but more than enough for a surprise attack. And guess what else Richardson has been fiddling with?”
Mariko saw it, clearly. “Starship numbers,” she said. “He’s helped them to steal an entire fleet.”
“Only seven ships, the largest a battlecruiser,” Fitz said, savagely. “They were supposed to be part of the Imperial Navy reserve, ships placed in mothballs because we didn't have the trained crewmen to operate them. Richardson appears to have manipulated the system very well; orders to renovate them came from one source, papers for their transfer came from another source and IFF codes that allowed them to use the wormhole network came from a third. I don’t think Richardson did all of this on his own. Someone very high up has been helping him to manipulate the paperwork.”
“Lady Mary,” Mariko said.
“She isn't a Navy officer,” Fitz said. “But she will have allies – clients – among the Imperial Navy officers in the sector. A few nights on Tuff and they’d probably be eating out of her hand.” He snorted. “But we can leave the rest of the analysis until later. What do you think this means?”
Mariko saw what the Secessionists were doing and swore out loud. Revolt was futile because the Imperial Navy would put it down, by orbital bombardment if necessary. But if the Secessionists had a fleet of their own...
“They’re building their own navy,” she said. “They could stand off the Imperial Navy, couldn't they?”
“Perhaps,” Fitz said. “But nineteen ships won’t stand up against a full battle squadron, not unless they intend to use hit and run raids against our shipping. That won’t keep them going for long once the Imperium is aware of the threat. They’d be forced to flee to the Rim, or get crushed.”
Mariko considered it.
“What if they call on the Snakes for more support?”
“It’s a possibility,” Fitz agreed. “The Snakes could certainly give a single battle squadron a very hard time, perhaps destroy it outright. But then the Imperium would send an entire fleet to settle the score and just drive on their empire. The Snakes would be brutally crushed, and that would be the end of that.”
He hesitated.
“I happen to know that there are planners in the Imperial Navy who believe that we should take out the Snakes now,” he added. “Put together a task force and just advance on their systems, forcing them to confront us or watch us turn their homeworlds to radioactive glass. Not a pleasant thought, but if we fight it out now, we may not have to worry about fighting them later.”
“As the Imperium continues to decline in strength,” Mariko said, grimly. The prospect of so many deaths, even alien deaths, was horrifying. “What did the Imperial Navy have to say about the planned attack?”
“They claimed that the planners were mad,” Fitz said. “And then, they insisted that they should all be removed from sensitive positions and exiled out to the Rim. The last thing they want is a foreign war that might call attention to how far the rot has spread into the Imperial Navy.”
“I’m sure they know already,” Mariko said.
“In the Core Worlds, people don’t realise that the Imperium is actually contracting,” he said, shaking his head in negation. “Why should they? Even the poorest of humans there has a life that the humans out here would envy, built upon an alien underclass. They have more than enough to eat or drink, they have their VR simulations, they have an attitude towards sex that would shock anyone from Edo...”
Mariko snorted, remembering how many times she’d been shocked since she’d joined Fitz’s team.
“So why should they worry about the future? But the lights are going out, one by one, and every time it grows a little harder to mend them. One of Homeworld’s major fusion plants failed last year – it took months of investigation before they realised that the contractors hadn’t been performing basic maintenance. The techs who should be able to repair it are not coming out of the schools. Instead, we get kids in adult bodies who feel that the Imperium owes them something – and they will riot if their demands are not met. And, every year, the burden on the alien underclass grows stronger. Something is going to blow.”
He stood up and walked around the room.
“The Secessionists are building a fleet,” he said after a minute, possibly listing the points in his mind. “Why? Presumably, they want to deter the Imperial Navy from moving against rebellious worlds. If so, they would have some room to negotiate with the Imperium, perhaps to request limited autonomy like the Core Worlds. But that won’t please the corporations who own those worlds and their indentured populations. The Grand Senate would probably be pushed into a costly naval operation anyway.”
“Perhaps they don’t know that,” Mariko said, softly.
“They would have to know it, unless they are complete idiots,” Fitz said. “We could defuse a hell of a lot of ticking time bombs if we agreed to give those worlds some independence, but the corporations keep blocking it before it ever gets in front of the Senate. So we'd end up with a major space battle, which the Imperial Navy wins...the corporations take a big hit, but the Secessionists get smashed. It hardly seems worthwhile.”
Mariko considered this, remembering what her father had grumbled about the big interstellar corporations.
“What if the corporations are having a financial crisis and cannot afford a delay in production?” she asked after a long pause
.
“They’d have a worse crisis if those worlds became independent by force,” Fitz pointed out. He considered, briefly. “The problem is that the records we need to check are sealed, even to Imperial Intelligence, without a court order. And getting one of them would be very difficult.”
Mariko blinked.
“Even for the dreaded Imperial Intelligence?”
“Makes you wonder what they have to hide,” Fitz said, sardonically. “I have a feeling that when we discover precisely what has been going on inside the Imperium’s economy, we will be looking at a major economic collapse. Countless fortunes will be wiped out overnight; families like mine might lose everything they have...the result would be absolute disaster. We might not even be able to pay the Imperial Navy and the Marines, let alone the Civil Guards. And what will happen then?”
“Perhaps that’s the point,” Mariko offered. “What happens to the Secessionists if this looming disaster suddenly breaks out into the open?”
“Seems goddamned risky,” Fitz countered. “They might be ruthless, but they’ve never shown a direct willingness to sacrifice entire planetary populations for their cause. And they are not idiots. What are we missing?” He paced around the room, repeating the question out loud. “What are we missing?”
“Perhaps we should ask Lady Mary,” Mariko said. “Couldn't we go back to Tuff and get some answers from her?”
“We might have to,” Fitz said, sourly. “But I’d prefer to avoid an environment where everyone will recognise me.” He shook his head as he sat back down on the bed.
“You and Mai get a wash and some sleep,” he ordered. “I’ll keep an eye on our friend as I read through the rest of his documents.”
***
The next two days passed slowly. Fitz continued to mumble aloud as he worked through the documents, occasionally pointing out something that had caught his attention, but drawing no closer to the Secessionist plan. Mariko slept, watched Richardson in his apartment when he returned home after work, and took Mai on a handful of sight-seeing trips that were really reconnaissance missions. Sumter’s dome was giant, large enough to hide a few spectacular buildings as well as the reinforced concrete apartment blocks; her suspicion that Fitz had ordered them out because he couldn't stand sharing the same set of rooms with them any longer didn't hide her admiration for them. Halfway through the tour, she realised that she could send a message back home...
...But what could she say?
“Tell them as little as possible,” Fitz advised that evening. He’d gone out as soon as they’d returned, warning them to keep an eye on Richardson and inform him at once if the traitor received a message. “The last thing they need is to know the truth.”
She was still mulling it over the following day, when the tap Fitz had inserted into the apartment’s communications network pinged. Richardson lived a lonely life, she’d come to realise; the only messages he received that were not work-related were from people intent on inviting him to sample new brothels. He didn't seem willing to go these days, probably because he knew that he was being watched. His search of the apartment had been incompetent, according to Fitz, and he’d broken off midway through, as if he’d been scared to find anything. Mariko didn't have much experience in reading faces, but he looked like a man who was on the verge of breaking.
“He’s got mail,” she called over, to Fitz. He’d brought them tunics that would be worn by class-three humans on Sumter, fashion nightmares in Mariko’s opinion, but too common to arouse much interest. Besides, she could hide a surprising number of tools below the shapeless outfit. “It’s the one calling him to a meet.”
“Good,” Fitz said. He picked up his coat and pulled it on over the tunic. “You can get to Point Alpha and wait there; I’ll go shadow Richardson and meet up with you at Point Alpha.”
“Assuming he goes there,” Mai pointed out. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come?”
“Not this time,” Fitz said, firmly. Someone as...unspoiled as Mai would attract a great deal of attention, even in a shapeless tunic. “I need you to keep working on the starship schedules; let me know if you see a pattern there.”
Mai didn't look happy – Richardson had created false records for Secessionists, but they didn't all go to the same place – but she accepted it.
“Grab your coat,” Fitz ordered. “And remember, keep the weapons out of sight unless you have no other choice. The last thing we need is official attention.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Point Alpha lay on the vague boundary between the poorest parts of the city and Undercity, where the aliens resided. It was an area bleak with despair, as thousands of humans had been crammed into a handful of buildings and makeshift slums, all of them knowing that there was no way out of the poverty trap. If Sumter had been habitable, they could have spread out over the countryside, but instead they were all confined to the domed city. Mariko saw a dozen prostitutes, both male and female, and a handful of pimps watching them to ensure that they didn't keep their ill-gotten gains. They all wore shapeless garments that made them look identical, just like her. The scene would just not have happened on Edo.
She looked up from under her hat as Richardson moved through the streets, walking in a manner that suggested depression. No one tried to mug him. Mariko couldn't decide if that was because they recognised that he didn't have anything worth taking, or if it was a form of protection extended by his contact.
Or perhaps it was something simpler than that. He’d been going to brothels whose owners would want him to keep going to brothels. They might have warned the local thugs that mugging him would have dire consequences.
Behind him, there was no sign of Fitz – but then, he’d warned her that she might not see him.
Turning slightly, she started to follow Richardson, keeping her distance as he walked down into Undercity. On Edo, there were relatively few aliens; here, it looked like there were more aliens crammed into Undercity than there were on her entire homeworld. A dozen different alien races were represented within the first few metres, from the elfin Pixies to the brutish Trolls, a race known for their limited intelligence and considerable talent for violence. The Imperial Navy might have been banned from recruiting aliens for front-line combat forces, but thousands of crime lords were much more equal opportunity. Most of the Trolls who left their homeworld did so as part of a mercenary operation of one kind or another.
The stink got stronger as she walked further into Undercity. A floating, dank mist seemed to reach out towards her, only to recoil before it pressed against her skin.
Undercity was hotter than the rest of the city, perhaps because it was close to the geothermal struts that powered Sumter City. A long trickle of warm water ran down the middle of the street, heading towards a pond that had been filled with alien life forms. Not all of the aliens in the Imperium were humanoid.
Richardson paid no attention to the aliens, which watched him with sullen expressions, or the handful of salesmen who attempted to convince him to buy handmade souvenirs from Undercity. Mariko ignored them as best as she could, too, although it was hard to turn down a Pixie when he looked at her with wide, innocent eyes. The child-like aliens were surprisingly popular on Homeworld, at least among younger humans. But they’d never managed to translate it into political power, and they never would.
Richardson stopped outside what looked like another diner, set inside a surprisingly clean set of buildings, and knocked once on the door. It took Mariko a moment to realise that money talked, even in Undercity. Those who ran the brothel would have enough money to ensure that they lived like kings, while the rest of the alien population suffered.
Mariko hesitated as the door opened and Richardson stepped inside. Before she could react, she sensed movement behind her and tensed, one hand dropping to the pistol she’d concealed inside her overalls. A hand caught hers and she looked up to see a stranger looking back at her. Only the eyes clearly identified him as Fitz.
“He
went inside,” she muttered, grimly aware that there might be eyes watching everywhere. There were aliens who enjoyed living in the sewers, assuming that Undercity had sewers. The stench suggested otherwise. “What do we do now?”
“I managed to get him to take a wire,” Fitz muttered back. He was listening to the chatter inside through an earpiece. “His contact is busy complimenting him on his last great success.”
Mariko scowled. Richardson’s last success had involved rewriting computer files so that various people who boarded shuttles and starships for interstellar trips had no longer officially taken those trips. The Imperium was a vast producer and consumer of data, with a bureaucracy that insisted on having all forms filled out in triplicate, but what could even the most sophisticated data analysis program do with garbage data? They would never be able to discover the missing naval personnel until it was too late.
On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus) Page 22