On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Do you think we should take him to the Bruce Wayne instead?” she asked after a long moment.

  “I’m not sure,” Fitz admitted. “But if we intercept him now, we lose our chance to track down the Secessionist base.” He shook his head. “I’m ordering Mai to follow us at a safe distance. Whatever is waiting for us on the far side, we will have at least one surprise up our sleeves.”

  Mariko watched as he passed on his orders while the Happy Wanderer climbed out of the gravity well. It struck her as risky, but as long as the Professor was onboard a ship they controlled, he couldn't be turned against the Imperium.

  Or could he? There was no way to know. Red might have tricks that wouldn't show up on a basic scan. Fitz had commented that some augments were deliberately designed to be largely undetectable...

  ...but perhaps she was just getting paranoid.

  “I have a course laid in for Theta Sigma,” she said, grimly. “Do you think that that will suffice?”

  Theta Sigma was a small colony ten light years from Paradise, an understandable destination for a pair of spacers desperate for money and not too picky about how they got it. Like most new colony worlds, Theta Sigma preferred to pay smugglers rather than Imperium-authorised shipping agents. The smugglers were cheaper.

  “It should do, for starters,” Fitz said. Ahead of them, the open stars seemed to beckon the freighter onwards. “And then we can see where our guests are taking us.”

  “Phase drive in three, two, one...” Mariko keyed the switch and space compressed around the freighter, tossing them into the dark dimension of phase space.

  There was nothing outside, apart from a very faint distortion that had to be Mai. The Bruce Wayne was a marvel of a ship, she had to admit. Following someone through phase space was not easy.

  “Phase space achieved,” she told him.

  “Then let’s go and have a word with our guests,” Fitz said. “It’s time to find out where they want us to go.”

  ***

  Red was sitting on her bunk when the hatch opened to admit Mariko, almost as if she were meditating while awaiting her time to act. She uncurled her legs the moment Mariko looked inside and stood up, wearing nothing more than a tight shipsuit she’d had in her bag.

  “Time to change course?” she asked, smoothly. “Of course; silly question. Take me to your bridge.”

  “And why should I take you to my bridge?” Mariko countered, stung.

  “Because you want to know where to go, don’t you?” Red lifted one delicate eyebrow. “Or do you feel that you can take us somewhere else and sell us into slavery?”

  “I’ve never had much patience with being mocked,” Mariko said, as she motioned for Red to follow her. “And besides, who would want to buy you as a slave?”

  “All sorts of things happen out along the Rim that no one notices,” Red said, wryly. “There’s even an alien world where having a human slave is a status symbol. We dominate the universe, but they know that they can still dominate individual humans. Really sad, isn't it?”

  She smiled as she stepped onto the bridge. “Ah, a modified bridge,” she said, with some interest. “Did you put this together on your own, or did you have a team of monkeys to assist?”

  “I did most of the work,” Fitz said, from his station. “Where do you want us to go?”

  Red grinned at him. “Are you in such a hurry to get rid of me, handsome?”

  “I want to know where to steer the ship,” Fitz said, patiently.

  Mariko felt a hot flash of jealousy, as he seemed to be interested in Red. The girl’s blatant sexuality was disconcerting, which might have been the point. A man might underestimate her…until it was too late.

  “There are nine possible destinations within thirty light years along this vector,” Fitz told her, “but we would have to alter course more radically if we departed along the wrong vector...”

  “Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist.” Red said, as she bent down to examine the console. “Merely alter course a few degrees and head directly towards IAS-482352.”

  Fitz shrugged. “And just what happens to be there?”

  “Very little, apart from an abandoned research station from back when the scientists were wondering just what was going on in the heart of a very strange red dwarf,” Red said with a smile. “But it makes a good place to meet our friends, wouldn't you say?”

  “A nice, isolated place,” Mariko agreed.

  “Oh, yes,” Red said. Her grin grew wider. “How long will it take to get there?”

  “Around seven hours,” Mariko said, as she carefully altered course. “Maybe a little longer – the last interstellar survey picked up traces of shadow graviton particles that might make maintaining an active phase drive field harder.”

  “No one quite knows what’s going on inside that sun,” Red said. She smiled at Fitz, who smiled back. “Would you like to spend the next two hours with me, instead of watching boring consoles on the bridge?”

  Fitz hesitated. “Ah...”

  “I'm afraid that we both have duties,” Mariko said, quickly. “I suggest that you return to your cabin and wait for the reversion into normal space. At that point, we can meet up with your friends and start transferring the cargo.”

  Red leered at her. “Frightened I’ll ruin him permanently for you?”

  “I pay him for actually working,” Mariko countered, icily. “He can seduce you once he’s off-duty. Which won’t be until we meet up with your friends.”

  “What a great shame,” Red mocked. “But you could join me in my cabin instead.”

  “No, thank you,” Mariko said, tightly. “Go to your cabin and wait there.”

  Red bowed and left through the hatch, pausing just long enough to wink at Fitz before leaving. Mariko stared after her, a helpless rage boiling through her. Red was already getting on her nerves...

  “It’s a power play,” Fitz said, when Mariko gave vent to her frustration. “Keeping you off-balance is a good way to maintain control of the situation, even if you are the Captain of this ship. And it allows her a chance to try to build influence with me...never accept anyone who is so blatantly trying to get you into bed. They always have an ulterior motive.”

  Mariko looked at him as she settled back down in her chair.

  “How many times have you had sex while on duty? How many women have you seduced to save the day?”

  Fitz laughed.

  “Those shows about interstellar men of mystery have a great deal to answer for,” he said. “I never had to seduce anyone in my career, unless you count a girl I met while developing a cover identity on Francisco. She was sweet, the caring mother of two young girls, and I liked her. But when it was time to move on, I said goodbye and left without looking back.”

  Mariko frowned. “You just left her there?”

  “She didn't know who I was,” Fitz said. “And I never made her any promises. Does that make it any better?”

  “I don’t know,” Mariko admitted. “It’s a dirty business, isn't it?”

  “Yes,” Fitz said, flatly. “When I was...recruited, I was told that I might find myself doing things that would bring a whole load of short-term pain – and that pain might not fall on the deserving bastards who started the shit rolling in the first place. All I could really do was hope that I would make a difference in the long-term, for everyone. But I cut myself off from my family, built a playboy persona around myself, and...and I could never really relax again.”

  Mariko reached out a hand and placed it on his. “Is it always that way?”

  “For those of us who operate alone, it is always that way,” Fitz said. His voice was surprisingly wooden. “I always envied people like Prather, even though I didn’t trust them – they had friends and allies in their departments. I had Don, but I never wanted to get close to him. We always knew that we might end up giving our lives to save the entire Imperium. And now Don’s dead, and I’m still alive.”

  Mariko hesitated, and then answered
a question that had been bugging her. “Were you and Don lovers?”

  Fitz chuckled, humourlessly.

  “Homosexuality is forbidden among the aristocracy,” he reminded her. “The Grand Senators are obsessed with having children, even though the rejuvenation treatments make it harder for us to have kids. Anyone who was openly homosexual could expect Extreme Disapproval, at the very least. Someone who chased alien women could be at least gunning for the right sex. But homosexuality...it’s funny how many freedoms there are for the young nobility, but they don’t include homosexuality.”

  “That doesn't answer the question,” Mariko pressed. “Were you and Don...?”

  “No,” Fitz said, flatly. “But we were pushed together on a mission and if you do that, you either end up very close friends, or you wind up killing each other. We got along, learned to read each other’s minds – having the same augmentation helped. And then we fucked up and Don died, while I escaped by the skin of my teeth. Don will be missed back home.”

  “You have us,” Mariko said. She tried to push sincerity into her words. “I will stay with you.”

  “You’ll need a great deal of training before you are truly fit for this job,” Fitz said. “What about your sister?”

  “You said you could get her a job more suited to her talents,” Mariko pointed out. “Can't you do that?”

  “If it’s what she wants,” Fitz said. “The Engineering Corps won’t want someone who doesn't want to be there. And I wouldn't send her anywhere if she didn’t want to go.”

  He stood up and paced the bridge.

  “You may have to cut yourself off from everyone you know and love,” he added. “Maybe it won’t matter in your case, but in mine...I can't afford to have people like the Twins thinking that I might be spying on them. The excesses of the young nobility are a major cause of unhappiness in the Imperium, and we do what we can to curb them. So I go around acting like a fop, all the time watching and waiting for the moment to act. Do you think that you could live that life forever? Because that’s what you’re talking about.”

  Mariko studied him for a long moment. “Who recruited you into this...conspiracy of light?”

  “Someone very senior – and no, I won’t tell you his name,” Fitz said. His grin widened unpleasantly. “One of the things you are going to have to learn, if you really want to keep this job, is when not to ask questions. This is one of the really bad times to ask questions.”

  He reached out and gave her a hug, before heading towards the hatch. “I'm going to check up on our guests, then take a brief nap. I suggest you take a nap, too; it won’t be long before we need all of our wits about us.”

  ***

  IAS-482352 had seemed unremarkable, until a team of astronomers had noted a peculiar quantum signal in the star’s core, suggesting that someone had actually modified the star somehow thousands of years ago. The Imperium, according to the records Mariko had pulled out of the Happy Wanderer’s database, had been very interested; altering a star’s inner structure was a feat beyond human technology and the Grand Senate wanted to know how to do it. But a research program that lasted forty years had turned up nothing, eventually convincing the Grand Senate to cancel the study and officially dismiss the claims of stellar modification as lies and misinterpretation of the data. If someone did possess a technology superior to humanity’s, the Grand Senate didn't want anyone actually believing in them. Who knew what would have happened to humanity’s sense of superiority if they’d known that such technology existed.

  Mariko brought the freighter out of phase space some distance from the phase limit surrounding the star. The smaller stars tended to produce curious shifts in their phase limits, for reasons no one fully understood. Running right into the phase limit would, at best, force them back into normal space; at worst, no one would ever see them again.

  Fitz scanned the system as they coasted towards the red sun, looking for anything interesting. IAS-482352 had little of interest, apart from a handful of asteroids, a scattering of comets and a single abandoned research station.

  “Take us towards the research station,” Red ordered. She’d come back to the bridge, ignoring polite suggestions that her company might be better appreciated elsewhere. “They’ll make contact with us there.”

  “They?” Mariko asked, as she changed course as instructed. “Who are you...?”

  An alarm chimed as a spatial distortion appeared above their ship. Moments later, it revealed itself as a decloaking cruiser, seemingly of Imperium design. Old it might be, but there was nothing old about the weapons array that was locked on the Happy Wanderer. One single missile from her, and the freighter would be blown into flaming debris.

  “You must excuse our paranoia,” Red said, smoothly. “But we know that you’re working for the Imperium. I suggest that you surrender and save yourself from a quick and unpleasant death.”

  Mariko stared at her. “Is this how you treat all of the people who work for you?”

  “You were scanned as you entered the Paradise ring,” Red said. “Imagine our surprise when we discovered that one of you was heavily augmented. And you were offering such a tempting booty for anyone who needed it all.”

  Her smile widened as the cruiser grew closer. “Surrender,” she said. “Surrender, or die.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Fitz lashed out with his augmented strength, knocking Red to the floor.

  “Actually, you can’t have that ship open fire,” he said, sharply.

  Mariko tossed him a packet of duct tape, and he started to use it to tie Red up.

  “If you destroy us,” he told the captive Red, “you also kill the Professor. And I imagine that your people won’t want to risk that.”

  Mariko blinked. “Are you sure?”

  “If they wanted to deprive the Imperium of Professor Snider, they could just have killed him on Paradise and vaporised his body,” Fitz pointed out, dryly. “Why would they need to have a show of bringing him onboard this ship?” He shook his head as he finished tying Red up and left her lying on the floor. “Come on, quickly!”

  Mariko followed him down to one of the compartments of survival equipment. “What are they going to do now?”

  “At a guess, they’re going to wait for us to respond, which we won’t, and then start boarding us.” Fitz grinned at her, manically. “It may take them some time to realise that we’re not responding, which gives us time to strike back.”

  Mariko frowned. Happy Wanderer’s only weapons were a pair of outdated phase cannons, scarcely a danger to anything larger than a shuttle. Every freighter commander dreaded a pirate attack, if only because pirates were often savages. Run from them and the pirates might extract revenge on one’s crew; surrender at once and, very often, the pirates might torture the crew anyway. Thousands of wrecked ships had had the tell-tale signs of rape, murder, and looting before the hulks had been abandoned to drift through interstellar space.

  “You intend to fight an entire cruiser on your own?” she asked, as he opened the compartment to reveal two of the battlesuits he’d transferred from the Bruce Wayne. They would certainly have been found by an Imperium customs team searching the ship, but Paradise never bothered to search any ship. “And what about the Professor?”

  Fitz checked a console as he pulled out the first battlesuit. “Put it on,” he ordered, “and then get to the main airlock. I’ll deal with the professor.”

  Mariko stumbled as she slipped into the battlesuit, her fingers trembling as she locked the various switches and felt the battlesuit come to life around her. Mai would have done better, she knew without jealously, but Mai wasn't with them. She was with the Bruce Wayne, watching from a distance and no doubt worrying over what to do. Her ship wouldn't be any match for a cruiser in a direct fight.

  The battlesuit’s combat systems came online as she clomped towards the main airlock, the only one large enough to accommodate a pair of battlesuit-wearing individuals. There was no live feed from the Happy W
anderer’s sensors, something that worried her; the enemy cruiser could be launching assault shuttles right now, targeted on her hull. Or she could be waiting to hear their reply.

  Remembering one of the tricks in the suit’s arsenal, she activated the communications scan and started looking for incoming communications. The Secessionists were just repeating their surrender demand, with a handful of threats added this time.

  She looked up to see Fitz dragging the Professor towards them, having forced him into a spacesuit with a disabled control matrix. That was illegal under Imperial Law, but under the circumstances she doubted that anyone would care. Fitz dumped the Professor in the airlock and ran back to get his own battlesuit, leaving Mariko to watch the elderly gentleman. It was hard to tell, but the Professor appeared to have been drugged by Fitz or Red. There was no way to know for sure.