On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Fitz stood up and checked the computer that came with the rented office, no doubt loaded with surveillance software to ensure that the office’s owners knew what was going on inside the machine. There were two more emails, both requesting afternoon appointments, without any ID header to note their source. Probably more dealers who crossed the line between the civilised universe and the dark and shadowy world occupied by the pirates.

  “Nothing until after lunch,” he said. “Should we go eat, my Captain?”

  Mariko flushed at the stress he put on the words. The shipsuit she still wore felt grimy against her skin, ever since the medical team had stabbed her with a needle to run a complete bio-check on her. It seemed remarkably barbaric, until she realised that it was a way to keep visitors from the Imperium reminded that this wasn't really an Imperium world.

  “Yes, we should,” she said, pulling herself to her feet. “Do you think we can get anything to eat here?”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” Fitz said. “The onboard database lists no less than fifty places to eat within five miles.”

  Outside the rented officers, the ring buzzed with life. Countless capsules ran through the tubes connecting one part of the ring to the rest, moving at a speed that would take them around the entire planet in less than an hour. Thousands of humans rubbed shoulders with aliens, who looked a great deal more uppity than they would on any other world. Each of the dining places offered food from right across the galaxy, even sushi from Edo. And the businesses seemed to be cleaner and more welcoming than the places she remembered on Sumter, even the ones that they’d visited officially.

  She led him into the sushi parlour. A taste of home would go down very well, even though they were light years from Edo.

  “It’s astonishing what you can do when you decide to throw out most of the rules,” Fitz commented. “And also what you can do if you don’t tax every start-up business into the gutter.”

  Mariko had to smile as she saw the Japanese writing on the menus, and the surprisingly familiar pictures of wide-eyed aliens who decorated the walls. Feline aliens were common in the Imperium, but she’d never actually met one of the race which had supplied the image for a piece of odd fashion. Perhaps they’d existed and died out so long ago that they’d been forgotten, or perhaps they’d just been invented out of whole cloth by pre-Imperium humans. There was no way to know for sure.

  “I assume you have some recommendations,” Fitz said.

  His fake bio claimed that he’d been born on Darwin, a world known for being almost as horrific as Paradise. Its principal export was people, people who would eat everything and mate at the drop of the hat because it was the only way to keep their population stable. There was no shortage of stories about people from Darwin, stories that they probably didn't find very funny themselves.

  He lowered his voice, significantly. “Or maybe the woman watching us over there has a suggestion of her own?”

  Mariko had to remind herself sharply to keep her eyes on Fitz, not to look around in a manner that would have betrayed an awareness of their shadow.

  The waitress arrived with a brilliant smile. Mariko ordered for both of them, choosing a sample platter for Fitz. He most likely wouldn't have had sushi before, but at least he would be able to eat several samples and decide what he liked before ordering again. For herself, she ordered fish from the Divine River, only seventy miles from their family home. It might be as close to home as she ever got.

  “One woman, with white hair and a very pale face,” Fitz muttered, when the waitress had departed, taking their orders back to the chef. “She’s been following us since we left the office, but I wasn't really sure until she followed us into here and took up a place where she can watch us.”

  Mariko frowned, feeling crosshairs taking aim at the back of her neck. “You think we ought to go somewhere else?”

  “Not yet,” Fitz muttered back. “I think we ought to wait and see what happens.”

  The waitress returned with two trays of sushi, leaving them to dig into the fish. It tasted surprisingly good, although nowhere near as good as the food her mother had produced for their birthdays, back when they’d both been children. But the presence of the unseen watcher spoiled the meal. There was no way to know what she had in mind. Was she a pirate, hoping for a chance to take their cargo by force? Or a rebel from the Secessionists? Or perhaps even someone from Imperial Intelligence?

  Mariko would have been astonished if there wasn't a covert presence on the planet, quietly monitoring everything and hoping for a chance to strike. What would happen when Paradise played host to someone so notorious that her friends in the Imperium couldn't overlook it?

  “She’s standing up,” Fitz said, very quietly. “And coming over here.”

  Mariko tensed as she heard soft footsteps, just before the woman came into view. She was breathtakingly beautiful, with a porcelain face, pale white hair and bright white eyes. For a moment, Mariko wasn't even sure if she was human, before recognising the signs of body-shaping. Taking on a rather inhuman form was unusual, but it would certainly ensure that whatever her original form had been would pass unnoticed, should she have to revert to it.

  “Greetings,” she said, in a soft seductive voice. Mariko found herself hating her on sight. “I understand that you have a cargo you wish to sell.”

  Mariko bit off the response that came to mind. “We do,” she said, shortly. “Are you interested in buying it all?”

  “You appear to have bought a lemon,” the woman observed.

  The hell of it was that the woman was right, technically. Anyone looking at their cargo manifest would see a pair of inexperienced shippers who had been taken for a ride by various dealers. Fitz had assured her that some of the smartest people in Imperial Intelligence worked hard to look like nincompoops, but being taken for an idiot felt personally insulting. It was worse than when they’d been on Tuff and she’d been taken as Fitz’s whore.

  “How long have you two been trading across the stars?” she asked.

  “Two weeks,” Mariko lied, tightly. “We do hope to sell all of our stuff.”

  The woman sat down next to Fitz, uninvited. “I’m sure you do,” she said, with a faint smile that suggested that that was a joke. “But I’m sure you have realised by now that you cannot hope to sell everything, not individually. And the stuff you can sell might not bring you enough to get to a different planet and buy more produce you can take elsewhere. Do you know what happens to debtors on Paradise?”

  Mariko did, having taken the precaution of looking it up after running afoul of Dorado’s corrupt law and order establishment. People who couldn't pay their debts were sent down to the planet to join the endless fight to turn it into a habitable world. It was a hard life, with no chance of parole; workers died early, only to be buried and replaced by another debtor.

  “We could still sell enough to remain here for a few more weeks,” Fitz said. He sounded insistent, if uncertain.

  Mariko kept her smile at his acting skills concealed.

  “What do you have to offer us?” he asked.

  “My...associates and I would like to buy your entire cargo,” the woman said.

  Mariko gaped at her.

  “We are also willing to offer you a shipping contract that should bring in some steady income, which is what you two desperately need.” The watcher smiled, not entirely pleasantly. “What do you think of that?”

  Mariko exchanged glances with Fitz.

  “It seems too good to be true,” she said, finally. Long-term shipping contacts were generally offered to crews with good reputations, or bonded with various shipping corporations. She’d never heard of one being offered to newcomers. “What’s the catch?”

  The pale lady smiled, more openly.

  “You would need to take the cargo onwards to another location, one where you would be met and your ship unloaded,” she said. “We would pay you, of course, for the travel expenses – and we would offer you the contract, as I said. You
’d only be taking a datachip or two under the terms of the contract, so you would be at liberty to take other cargos as well.”

  She shrugged. “But I’m afraid we need an answer quickly,” she added. “We’re not that keen to help you get out of the hole you dug for yourselves.”

  “I assume that you have a copy of the contract with you,” Mariko said.

  The pale lady pulled a datachip reader out of her robes – Mariko wasn't even sure where she’d hidden it – and dropped it on the table.

  Mariko picked it up and skimmed through the contract. It offered a reasonably fair sum for their entire cargo, as well as standard shipping rates for convoying it to an unstated destination. After that, they would be tapped to serve as data couriers, transporting datachips from world to world. The rate they would received for their services was low, but fair.

  “It looks good,” she admitted.

  Fitz took the reader and skimmed through it. “Very good,” he agreed. “Where do you want us to take the cargo?”

  “Two of my...associates…will be shipping with you,” the pale lady said. “They will give you the coordinates once you have entered phase space.”

  “And I am sure that those associates will be unarmed and as meek as kittens,” Mariko said, sharply. Even the newly-minted spacer she was claiming to be would know better than to allow strangers onto her ship. It was still the easiest way to hijack a ship. “All the money in the galaxy won’t make a difference if we lose the ship to you.”

  “You can search them, if you like,” the pale lady assured her. “They will be unarmed, completely defenceless. Should we worry about you taking them and flying off in the opposite direction?

  “I stick to my contracts,” Mariko said.

  “And so do we,” the pale lady countered. “We will pay you half of the money now, up front, and leave the rest in escrow on Paradise. Whatever else you may have heard about the system, it does not allow crooks to manipulate the system. The money will be lost to us whatever happens.”

  Mariko looked at Fitz, who nodded, very slightly.

  “We accept your terms,” she said. “When do you want us to leave?”

  “This evening, local time,” the pale lady said. “I suggest that you send your regrets to your other prospective buyers. It’s simply good manners.”

  She stood up and walked out of the diner, swinging her hips from side to side. Mariko looked over at Fitz, who tapped his lips. The pale lady had left a few bugs behind her, naturally. She was starting to think that half of the ring’s population spent their time spying on the other half. Nothing else could explain the vast number of bugs scattered everywhere.

  They finished their meal and walked back to the office. Naturally, someone had broken in while they were gone and scattered even more bugs around. Fitz carefully removed them, including a couple that had been scattered in places Mariko would never have thought of looking.

  “At least two separate groups of intruders,” he commented, when he had finished. “I wonder if they ran into each other while we were at lunch.”

  He seemed to find it amusing.

  Mariko was much less amused. “Fitz, that woman...”

  “Was modified to pump out pheromones,” Fitz said, very seriously. “I think we’re lucky that she thought you were in charge; the pheromones she used were configured more for unaugmented men than women. If your tastes ran towards other women, you might have found her very arousing. There was a whole planet of people who altered themselves so that resistance was literally unthinkable.”

  Mariko shuddered. “And seeing that we’re not their slaves today, what happened to them?”

  “They didn't understand what they were doing – genetic engineering isn't an exact science, even today,” Fitz said. “They planned to make everyone else extremely vulnerable to the smells they emitted on cue. Instead, they made their victims aware of the attempt of control without actually controlling them. And they were so confident that they released the modification as a genetic-altering retrovirus without actually testing it properly.”

  He grinned. “Four months later, the last of them was brutally killed by the people they considered serfs,” he added. “And good riddance to bad rubbish.”

  “Oh,” Mariko said. “Engineering a superhuman isn't that easy?”

  “No,” Fitz said. “But you’re right. Something about this deal stinks like limburger. We need to do some planning before we take on our guests this evening. At least we can check to be sure that we got paid.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “All of your papers seem to check out,” Fitz said, studying their two guests. They were both human, one an elderly gentleman who might be well over two hundred years old, the other a young woman who had a calm, but alert pair of eyes. “And thank you for paying us.”

  “We were told that you would wish to search us,” the young woman said. Her voice was sharp, almost as if she hailed from Homeworld itself. “Might I suggest that you hurry? We have a rendezvous to make.”

  “Of course,” Mariko agreed. She nodded at the young girl, feeling oddly nervous. “If you will accompany me to the medical bay, we will check to make sure that you didn't bring any unwanted surprises along with you.”

  Fitz had briefed her carefully on how to conduct the search, but passing a scanner over another woman and then searching her physically was something completely outside her experience. Mariko checked everything she found, yet there was nothing more dangerous than a packet of breath mints that came all the way from Homeworld. The girl admitted, with a shy smile, that she’d grown addicted to the brand, even though they were expensive along the Rim. Mariko almost found herself liking her as the girl did up her clothes and smiled at her.

  “You never told us your name,” she said, once the girl was decent again. “What should we call you?”

  “Most people just call me Red,” the girl said. She ran a hand through strikingly red hair that she swore was all natural. Mariko privately doubted it. “My family has long forgotten me, and I am doing my best to forget them.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Mariko said. She had started to wonder if she would be better off forgetting her own family, if she kept working for Fitz. Who knew what Imperial Intelligence’s enemies might do to her father’s company if they linked her to him? “How did you meet up with the old gent?”

  “I do a lot of bodyguard work,” Red admitted, with a wink. “It’s not hard, provided you keep a careful eye out for traps and make sure you know what you’re getting into before you take the money. He’s just my latest client.”

  Mariko nodded as she led Red back into the small corridor. “We’ve given you linked cabins, compartments A-12 and A-13,” she said. “I’m afraid we can't allow you on the bridge while we leave the planet and enter phase space.”

  “That’s quite understandable,” Red said. “But I’m equally afraid that I won’t give up the coordinates until we enter phase space.”

  “That’s fine with us,” Mariko assured her, as she found the cabins. The elderly gentleman was already seated in his, studying a datapad he’d brought with him. “We’ll call you once we’re underway.”

  She left them behind and walked onto the bridge, where Fitz was already running through the pre-flight checks.

  “We may be in trouble,” he grunted, as she closed the hatch behind her. “I did a DNA scan on that gentleman.”

  Mariko looked at him as she took the helm console and checked that the local OTC had given them a flight path. “And?” she asked, delicately. “Do you know him?”

  “Not personally, but he’s in a database reserved for very important people indeed,” Fitz said. “His name is Professor Oscar Snider – and he’s one of the Imperium’s foremost experts on wormholes.”

  Mariko stared at him.

  “They’re trying to build a wormhole network of their own?”

  “It’s possible,” Fitz said. “But it’s also possible that the Snakes want to get their claws on him. Th
ey don’t have a wormhole network, or the theory to build one...”

  “But the Professor could help them fill in the gaps,” Mariko said. She completed the checks and sent a PTL burst to the local OTC. The OTC didn't seem to have any objections to them leaving; they merely designated a course that would allow them a clear run up to the edge of the gravity well.