But what had happened to the real soldiers?
Mariko wondered how many of the prisoners had been hurt in the crossfire and how many of them deserved it. Most of the spoiled brats she’d seen on safari could do with some pain to remain them that their lifestyles were based upon the slavery of thousands of others. But some of them didn't like to hunt; she'd seen that herself, the first time she was here.
Had the innocent been caught up with the guilty?
“Free the prisoners, and then prepare to head to Lady Mary’s compound,” Fitz ordered two of the augments, who went to unlock the cages. “See if their vehicles are working...”
The assault shuttle flashed by overhead, spinning around to provide fire support if necessary.
“Good thinking,” Fitz complimented her. Mariko felt herself blush. “Call the shuttle in to land at the landing pad so I can load her up with volunteers.”
Some of the prisoners seemed to expect that they’d be taken home immediately. They demanded that their bodyguards see to their needs personally, whatever the other demands on their time. Mariko watched one of the bodyguards patiently try to explain that he was needed elsewhere, before stunning the aristocratic lady who had insisted, time and time again, that he take her home. The fact he might not be able to take her home never seemed to occur to her.
How can they be so freaking unaware of the universe around them? Mariko thought as she clambered into the assault shuttle. How can they be so blind to how savagely they are hated? The Secessionists had been remarkably disciplined, all things considered; their other enemies would be far less inclined to be merciful.
She took control of the shuttle and checked the live feed from Bruce Wayne. Unsurprisingly, the vast number of starships in orbit had left orbit only a few hours after they’d been captured and dumped in the jungle. Lady Mary’s people had made an attempt to get into the Bruce Wayne, but after the automated defences had fired warning shots, they’d backed off and left the modified ship alone. Mariko couldn't understand why they hadn't simply blown her out of space, before realising that they probably wanted to dissect her to discover what Imperial Intelligence built into its modified hulls.
“Move,” Fitz yelled at his small team of augments. Mai followed him, looking somewhat out of place compared to the tough men who were scrambling into the shuttle. “Mariko – you ready to take us to the compound?”
Mariko ran her hand down the controls, bringing the engines online. “As soon as you slam the hatch,” she yelled back. “Now?”
Fitz banged the hatch closed. “Now,” he ordered. “Get us out of here!”
The shuttle leapt into the air and raced for Lady Mary’s compound. Mariko silently blessed Fitz’s insistence that both she and Mai practice flying the assault shuttle until they were perfect, for the moment they headed towards the compound they picked up signs that there were automated defences hiding in the jungle.
Mai took control of the weapons and launched HVMs towards the hidden sensor systems, hoping to destroy them before they could open fire on the shuttle. Great explosions billowed up from under the jungle canopy as they swooped down on the compound, heading right for Lady Mary’s lawn.
Mariko yanked the shuttle to a halt and then dropped down, landing with a bump. Fitz and the other augments didn't seem to be particularly bothered by the hard landing. Those who had combat experience, she decided, would have been through worse.
“Go, go, go,” Fitz yelled.
The augments spilled out of the shuttle, weapons in hand. Smoke was still rising from the jungle, where Mariko’s missiles had taken out weapons pods and sensor platforms, but there was no sign of any resistance. The entire compound seemed to have been abandoned. Mariko looked towards the landing pads and saw nothing, not even the shuttle they’d used to land two days ago. It felt as if they’d been on the planet for a lifetime.
She monitored Fitz’s progress as best as she could from the shuttle, watching through the sensors as the augments moved from room to room in the massive mansion. The building appeared to be completely deserted. There was no sign of anyone, human or alien.
But they didn't have the manpower to search it properly. She saw them discover hidden compartments and passageways allowing Lady Mary to move servants and rebels around without being seen by her guests. Someone with access to the mansion’s internal sensors could have avoided them with relative ease.
“They’re all gone,” Fitz’s voice said, through the communicator. “The birds have flown the nest.”
“Understood,” Mariko said. “What do you want us to do?”
“For the moment, nothing,” Fitz said. “I think I need to establish some order here.”
“Want me to work on the computers?” Mai offered, eagerly. “I might be able to pull something out of them.”
“I don’t think so,” Fitz said. “The entire system has been melted down into slag. My guess is that they don’t intend to come back here after...after they carry out the rest of their plan.”
Mariko cursed. Whatever had been in those computers would be lost forever, she knew. It was difficult to erase something permanently, particularly on a computer designed and produced by the Imperium, but vaporising the memory cells would definitely do it. Lady Mary probably wouldn't have been foolish enough to keep all of the details of her plans on her planet, yet there might have been something they could use to guess where the Secessionists were going. And then it dawned on her that there was only one place they could go.
“Fitz,” she said, slowly, “I think they’ve gone to Sumter.”
There, the Secessionists could try to make their plan work, despite the disruption they’d suffered at Tuff, or they could withdraw back into the shadows, giving the Imperium time to take precautions against an Imperium-wide wormhole collapse. If they could take precautions...if they couldn’t find a counter, the Secessionists would just keep trying until they succeeded.
“I think so too,” Fitz admitted. He’d clearly had the same thought. The Secessionists could try to make their plan work, despite the disruption they’d suffered at Tuff, or they could withdraw back into the shadows, giving the Imperium time to take precautions against an Imperium-wide wormhole collapse. If they could take precautions...if they couldn’t find a counter, the Secessionists would just keep trying until they succeeded. “Either way, we have to go to Sumter ourselves.”
Mariko glanced at the screen as the Bruce Wayne forwarded an alert. “There are multiple engine signals heading away from the rebel base,” she said. “They’re coming this way.”
“Hopefully, that means that they got the rebel vehicles to work,” Fitz said. “But stay on alert anyway, just in case. There’s no proof that was the only rebel base on the planet.”
***
An hour later, Mariko was starting to wish that they’d killed more of the former hostages in the crossfire. She’d never heard so much complaining in her life, particularly not from people who should know that they were lucky to be alive and free. Aristocratic boys who seemed to think that the world revolved around them, girls who believed that everyone should drop to their knees and worship their beauty, older women who played political power games for fun...they were intolerable.
“I demand that you find us a flight off this world at once,” one of the older women was saying. Her face had been scrubbed clean of makeup by the Secessionists, something else she’d been bitching about at great volume. Mariko privately doubted that any amount of makeup would turn her face into something attractive, but her series of husbands had presumably disagreed. “I intend to make sure that the Grand Senate hears about it in person and...”
Fitz studied her, shook his head, and turned away again.
The woman gasped, shocked by his dismissal. Why didn’t she think that the Grand Senate had more important things to do than debate what had happened to an insignificant woman on an even more insignificant planet? Mariko watched with some amusement as the woman was frogmarched out of the room by a pair o
f augmented bodyguards and escorted to one of the small rooms Lady Mary had prepared as love nests. She could stay in there until starships arrived to lift the entire population off this rock and back to the Imperium.
“Now you know why I spend as little time in High Society as possible,” Fitz muttered, as soon as the woman was hauled out of the room. “I take it you found no working shuttles?”
“No,” Mariko confirmed. The handful of shuttles they’d located in hangers had had their guidance systems removed, a simple way to immobilise a shuttle without making it immediately obvious what they'd done. “I think Lady Mary doesn't intend to come back.”
“Or if she does, it will be after she succeeds in bringing down the wormholes,” Fitz agreed. “What did the hunting parties find?”
“They located enough food for” – she checked her datapad – “roughly six months, assuming they follow strict rationing procedures,” Mariko informed him. “There's going to be a great deal of argument from the aristocrats over the rationing, Fitz.”
“That’s their problem,” Fitz said. He snickered. “Besides, they won’t have access to the body shops here. They’ll have to actually work to keep their bodies unless they want them to go to fat.”
Mariko had to chuckle. “There are some decent huntsmen among the former hostages,” she added. “They may be able to shoot some animals we can eat and add to the rations that way.”
“I’d be careful about that,” Fitz said, thoughtfully. “Tuff worked a great many surprises into his masterpiece. I’d be surprised if some of the edible animals didn't turn out to be poisonous, if not cooked very carefully. We did get to eat some of the meat from animals we shot, but Lady Mary’s staff always saw to their preparation.”
He shrugged. “Maybe we can test it out on the complainers first,” he added. “See if they get sick. If not...better luck next time.”
Mariko giggled. “Speaking of complainers, over a hundred have demanded passage on the Bruce Wayne back to Sumter,” she informed him. “A number have offered cash bribes amounting to seventy thousand credits; others have threatened you and yours with all manner of political punishments if you refuse to give them passage.”
“And what would they do,” Fitz mused, “if the wormholes fell?”
He shook his head. “Tell them that the Bruce Wayne has a special mission and cannot be used to transport anyone anywhere,” he said. His face twisted into a grin. “Such a pity we didn't bring the Happy Wanderer. We could have stuffed everyone in the hold and forced them to endure it for a few weeks as we took the long way back home.”
Mariko shrugged. “There’s not much else to tell you,” she said. “When do you want to leave?”
“When do I want to leave?” Fitz asked. “Now. When are we going to leave? Shortly after I’ve had a chat with my second here, someone with enough augmentation and seniority to keep everyone else under control.”
“Understood,” Mariko said. “What will happen to these people if the wormholes fall?”
“It would be bad,” Fitz said. “Long-term, Tuff isn’t really a place for humans. You can't grow human foods on the planet easily and what we can eat often comes with a sting in the tail. And the devices that keep the most dangerous animals from going near the compound will eventually start to fail, because there will be no spare parts coming in. Everyone here might wind up dead in a year if the wormholes fell and no one came back to check on them.”
“Or maybe they will build their own society,” Mariko said.
“Maybe,” Fitz agreed. “I wonder how long it will be before it devolves into savagery?
Mariko walked over to the window and looked outside. Hundreds of aristocrats were lying on the lawn near the shuttle, either trying to recover from their ordeal or hoping that there would be a chance to get onboard the shuttle and fly away from Tuff. Very few of them were doing anything to actually help, even though there was plenty that needed to be done to get the compound ready for long-term survival. How long would it be until their bodyguards realised that they were the ones in control – and that their charges could no longer call upon vast reserves of money and power to squash imprudent employees? And then what would happen?
There was a click as the door opened. “You wanted to see me, sir?”
The bodyguard looked surprisingly friendly, with a very pleasant face. “Yes,” Fitz said. “Listen carefully.”
Mariko slipped away as Fitz started to explain what was going to happen in the very near future – unless they managed to stop it. She walked down to the shuttle and clambered in through the hatch, ignoring the pair of aristocrats who tried to push their way into the shuttle after her. Both of them had to jump back to avoid having their hands mashed in the hatch as it closed. Mai was sitting in the pilot’s console, running through a series of simulations using the data on wormholes Fitz had picked up on Sumter. It hadn't been a very complete data package, he’d noted at the time. The Imperium wanted to keep all details on wormholes classified as much as possible.
“I still don’t know what they intend to do,” Mai admitted, finally. “I think I understand the basic equations, but I don’t quite see how they link into reality.”
The hatch opened behind them to admit Fitz. “Take us to orbit,” he ordered, shortly. “We’ve done all we can here.”
Mariko tapped the loudspeaker and spoke into it, knowing that it would be deafening on the outside of the hull. “THIS SHUTTLE IS ABOUT TO TAKE OFF,” she said, as she brought the engines online and prepared to launch. “PLEASE MOVE AWAY FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY.”
Fitz chuckled as they watched the aristocrats pick themselves up and run. “I think that they have learned something from this,” he said. “The universe doesn't bend to their will, no matter how much they scream and protest about it.”
Mariko grinned and gunned the engines. The shuttle leapt into the bright sky and climbed towards orbit. There was little else in space to worry about, but she kept one eye on the sensor feed anyway. She wouldn't have put it past the Secessionists to mine local space, just to ensure that their hostages remained firmly stuck on the planet. Mines were illegal, but then so was revolution. She couldn't remember if destroying the wormholes was actually a crime – the Imperium wouldn’t have wanted to give people ideas – yet it hardly mattered. It would be terrorism and treason on an unheard-of scale.
“So,” Mai asked. “Now what?”
“Now?” Fitz said. “Now we stop Lady Mary, whatever the cost.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Take us out of orbit,” Fitz ordered, as soon as they were onboard the Bruce Wayne. “Set course for...”
He hesitated. Mariko understood; if the wormholes were already down, heading to the nearest wormhole would only add to the time it would take to reach Sumter through phase drive. But if the wormholes were still active, they’d cut weeks off their transit time by heading to the nearest wormhole station.
“Take us to Ming,” he ordered, finally. “A few extra days probably won’t make much difference if the wormholes are already gone.”
Mariko nodded and walked up to the command deck. The ship’s automated systems were already blinking up reports, noting that there had been three attempts to enter the ship’s personal space – Imperial Law stated that a sphere of space around a ship was reserved exclusively for that ship, and could not be entered without permission or a valid warrant – and it had eventually resorted to firing warning shots to deter further attempts to land on its hull. Mariko dismissed it impatiently and brought up the main drive, ignoring half of the checks to speed their departure from Tuff.
“I looked at the tracking data from the ships that left Tuff a day ago,” Fitz said. “They all headed in the general direction of Ming, too.”
Mariko looked up at him. “You think that their plan has already begun?”
“I think so,” Fitz said, “but it is extremely difficult to coordinate any sort of operation across interstellar distances. Just ask Admiral Custer-Bomb.”
> Mariko blinked. “Who?” She tapped the final command into the console and Bruce Wayne started sliding out of orbit, heading for the lower edge of the phase limit.
“He had a plan that looked great on paper,” Fitz explained. “It called for three prongs of attack directed against a small alien empire, using the overwhelming might of the Imperial Navy to defeat them – it looked unbeatable. But when the plan was actually launched, it was an absolute disaster; fleets were delayed, or unable to coordinate with the other fleets...the aliens managed to defeat two of the prongs before the third finally drove home and ended their threat.”
He shook his head. “Lady Mary is smart, so I don’t think that she will repeat that mistake. She should also know not to count on the wormholes; after all, she’s planning to destroy them. So my guess is that the Secessionists have concentrated their forces somewhere nearby, without being detected, and she’s gone to join them. At which point she will lead them against Sumter, presumably helped by a fifth column on the planet.”
On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus) Page 35