Price of Imperium

by Dave Robinson

  "I probably have less information than they do," he muttered as he waited for the data on planetary positions to come through.

  "What was that, sir?" Lenys Kharan asked.

  "I was just trying to get a feel for where they might be deployed, but I don't have the positions of the planets yet," he said. "If I were them I'd at the very least have a strong picket tucked in against the night side of the fifth planet, Jupiter." He flipped his planning display onto her screen as well so she could see what he was talking about. "If we're lucky we can get one of the other planets in between us and them-- or better yet be approaching Earth from the other side of the Sun."

  "Aye sir," she replied. "We should have that for you in just a few minutes."

  Tam got up and took another look on her larger screen. "Hmmmmmmm, taking a look at things, that may not be all we have to worry about." He pointed to Saturn. "I wouldn't be surprised if they don't have one here too. It's not as active as Jupiter, but you could probably mask a ship's emissions with that one too."

  "I think you're right, sir." She pointed to Earth. "What about in closer?"

  "I don't think it's likely there's anything in too close, Commander." He tapped the Moon with a measuring finger. "The best thing to do would be put a ship behind the far side of the satellite here, and then work through relays from the leading and trailing points. But all information says they're not really keeping the planet under surveillance, just keeping people away."

  "So are you thinking we should do that?"

  "No," he spoke softly. "We've got more to worry about from the Interdiction Force than anyone else, and I don't want to be running com whiskers. It would just be bad luck if we ran a relay and someone else happened to catch part of the signal."

  He took another sip of his burnt coffee. "I'm thinking we should go in close to the Moon on the Earthside and look from there. That would give us something to hide against and a good shot at monitoring the planet while we try to work out where the Prince is."

  An icon flashed on her screen and Tam focused on the system schematic while she dealt with it. The planets suddenly shifted, and he saw they were coming in from the same side as Jupiter, no chance of hiding behind another world.

  "Captain," Lenys tapped his shoulder. "I have Ober-dwan on the line; he has a request for you."

  Tam turned away from the screen, the lines on his forehead drawing together. "Yes, what is it?"

  "He wants to know if he can have some of the Earth data streams piped down to him. Something about observing their culture."

  "What sort of data streams is he asking for?"

  "Something called radio and television," she said. "I think it's their standard broadcast entertainment."

  "I don't see a problem with that," said Tam. "It may even give us a bit of help when it comes to planning the retrieval after we find him." He didn't let himself add, if we find him.

  Even with Jupiter on the same side of the Sun as they were, it was still looking a lot easier to get past the Interdiction Force than to find one specific human on the planet. It wouldn't be too much work for Communications to add an additional feed for Ober-dwan, part of their job was to try and find a way into any data nets on Earth, hoping to find records of the missing Prince. If they were lucky, the Prince would have found himself in a country which kept central biometric records they could tap, and find him that way.

  Tam did not expect to be that lucky. Even in the Imperium there were planets where he would be hard-pressed to find a biometric record of every inhabitant. Some collected data but kept it behind impressive firewalls, allowing access only for medical reasons. Others relied on decentralized databases, tracking different things in different locations.

  "The good news is that if the main forces are tucked in close to the gas giants their sensors will be degraded by the background." He grinned. "It helps that their main focus probably isn't a single destroyer coming in. We're a lot more stealthy than either the Enemy or a Tarith raiding force."

  "Aye sir," she smiled. "We do have that going for us."

  "What I want to do," he laid his finger on the display again. "Is keep the array out until we get about half-way in. That should give us enough time to localize anything that can be localized before pulling it down."

  "Aye sir, Vidall won't be happy but I can see the reasoning."

  "He can complain about groping all he likes, that thousand kilometer tail is just too long." Every piece of data the array picked up meant more photons blocked. "We can't afford to be picked up because we're stringing a huge tail along behind us."

  Kharan nodded. "Right, sir." Her eyes moved across the display. "That should give us a good chance to find anything that's out there anyway. They can't have that many ships here anyway, four or five squadrons at most. Anything more than that and there would be serious issues with keeping it quiet. Everyone knows about the force, but not that many of us actually serve on it."

  Tam looked around the bridge. "Exactly, I've got a dozen officers in this crew and none of them have ever served in the Interdiction Force."

  "On the other hand, Prince Jhon was on the Force," Lenys frowned. "Not that it did him a lot of good."

  "And that's the point I'm looking at," Tam lowered his voice. "Whoever made sure he was assigned to Lancer was also involved in forwarding Captain Tarlan's career. It makes a little more sense out of what happened at Rondor Station too. I think they've been planning things a long time, concentrating officers that they can count on, while dividing the rest of us throughout the Fleet."

  "So what you're saying is that even if we find the Prince, we still won't be able to count on the Force."

  "Some may be supporting the Sectors because the throne is empty, and they would probably back the Prince." He sighed heavily, "but others could be well aware of what's going on and have a vested interest in the Imperium's dissolution. We're going to have to be very careful on the way out."

  Tam returned to his chair, putting up a display where he could watch Talon creeping inwards across the solar system. If they had tried to display the ship on the same scale he would have needed a microscope. Only the tail would appear, and even it would be nothing more than a point. Somewhere on that screen were other points like his. Hollow points of metal, filled with air and people keeping an eye out for an Enemy that never came. People sworn to bar the benefits of modern civilization to an entire planet. Sworn to keep them hidden in case the Enemy returned.

  Talon's passives listened across the system, straining for evidence of the ships that sought it. The ship's systems tracked the data, the crew hoping the baseline forty-eight hours would give them would be long enough to let them pick something out of the background noise. The planet shone in the darkness before them. Small and rocky, lit only by reflected light, when they switched to radio frequencies it glowed brighter than the star, washing the entire system in its artificial glow.

  The crew stood their watches in near silence, eating cold food and warm drinks, power usage at a minimum. Off-watch they stayed in their bunks, reading and talking quietly. In one compartment an alien sat before a wall of monitors, four eyes tracking four screens, switching between them in a way that no human would ever be able to follow. Others sat and stood around him, heads down, working on one stream at a time, taking notes, always looking for something. Marines trained. They knew and cared little for the state of the ship. They were here for an extraction, wait for the intel, go down, pick someone up, and come back. They had done it before, they would do it again. Tam and his command crew planned. Planned as best they could with a near impossible task before them.

  It was almost a hundred hours after they returned to threespace that Talon slipped into position just above lunar nearside. Tam let out a breath, scanning the feeds from the various optical pickups. They were hovering just above the Moon in the shadow of the lunar night. "How long before we have to move?"

  Fahad looked up. "We can stay here about ten days before we cross the terminator." He touch
ed an icon, displaying part of the lunar surface for Tam. "We came in during the new moon phase, so most of the people who would be looking at the Moon aren't. If we're still here once this crosses into daylight, hiding here will be a lot harder, sir."

  Tam ran his thumb across the arm of the command chair. "If we're still here in ten days we may be running into coolant issues too." Realizing what his thumb was doing he sat upright in the chair and turned towards Lenys. "Right, time to start searching. See if we can interface with the planetary net, and what data we can pull out."

  "Aye sir," she touched a series of icons on her own console. "We should start getting readable data in a few hours. It may take a while to get all the translation protocols properly set up. Meanwhile I've got Fahad searching for the escape pod he came down in. That may help us narrow things down to the right continent."

  "They probably disabled the transponder." Tam tapped a series of icons. "But then again if they hadn't the Interdiction Force would have found it years ago. A cruiser's escape pod isn't much of a target without one."

  He displayed an outline of the continents with the pre-determined landing zones highlighted. The pods were designed to come down on land, near a coast in temperate to sub-tropical climates. That covered a lot of territory, even on a smaller planet than the one they were searching. "Is the net search set up to include possible sightings of the pod? We know approximately when it came down so maybe the locals found it."

  "That's been factored in, sir." Lenys spun her seat around to face Tam. "I can tell you right now that even with the DNA samples we have it will take a while to find him. And that's presupposing that he's in their data banks. We not only have to search using whatever bandwidth we can filch from out here, but we're also going to have to translate their records into ours."

  "Which is all the more reason to work quickly, Ms Kharan." Tam put a little smile in his voice. We made it this far, now we just have to find the Prince." At that, he left the bridge.

  A week later and three decks below, Ober-dwan was working on his own part of the search. He and Keela-dwan had kept only a few others with them. Most had elected to stay on the station, rather than aboard the cramped starship. The few who were here were mostly older Kendradi, researchers who had spent their long lives in passive searches, trying to decipher alien signals.

  The screens were the first part, they put all the visual transmissions Talon was able to intercept at his fingertips. It had taken a while to get used to the human screens, they weren't quite right for Kendradi visual apparatus, but after a few hours they had become easy enough to use.

  "Have we managed to separate out the fictions?" He turned towards Akra-than, one of the oldest of the survivors. "I don't think this Prince would have found a career making them."

  "I think we have," the old Kendradi's voice quivered a little with signs of age. "We have not only found depictions of the news, but also what appears to be live footage of criminal acts." He drew himself straighter, focusing all four eyes on Ober-dwan. "I think these kinds of transmission will be very useful, as they allow random images of ordinary citizens."

  "And it may be that as this Prince did not grow up in this society he may be one of these criminals they film." Keela-dwan turned from her own workstation. "There is a lot of this television," she stumbled a bit over the word, "but I think we will have a chance of finding him."

  "More so than the other search, I think." Akra-than shook his head. "This man is hiding in an alien culture, and they are not used to thinking like that."

  "So you say we can find him," Ober-dwan pointed to a screen where two humans were fighting in the glow of a spotlight. "How will we tell when we have found him. For all we know, he could be one of those two?"

  "That is one of those crime shows I was talking about," Akra-than touched some icons on the screen, working clumsily. "This took place some few days ago in a city they call 'Seattle' on the north-west coast of the secondary landmass."

  Ober-dwan looked at the footage again, the fighting movements of the dark-haired one looked familiar, but he could not think why. Still, he had more work to do, and there was no time to get to it like the present. A few moments later, it hit him. He had seen the movements when the Marines were training for unarmed combat. This man was using the same fighting style as they were.

  "Keela-dwan," he rose as he looked towards his wife. "I need a copy of that footage. I think that dark-haired one may actually be the Prince."

  "Yes husband," she handed him a 'pad. "It's on here. I thought you were joking when you said you thought that could be the Prince."

  "I was," Ober-dwan twitched his outer eyes. "I was until I realized that he was following the same rules of fighting as the Marines." Taking the 'pad he opened a channel to the Executive Officer.

  "Kharan," her voice came through the speaker. "What do you need this time, Ober-dwan? We can't spare you more power, we have barely enough coolant to last at the current levels."

  "I need to speak to you and the Captain immediately, I think I've found something."

  "It better be good, Ober-dwan."

  "I assure you, Lieutenant Commander, it is."

  "All right, meet us in the wardroom, Kharan out."

  No sooner had the click of her cutting the channel sounded in his ears than Ober-dwan was out the door. "Keep looking, we cannot be sure that this is the Prince."

  Chapter 10

  Tam was first into the wardroom, Lenys close behind. "So what do you think he means, Commander?" He asked as he found a seat to wait for the Kendradi to arrive.

  "I don't know, sir," she shrugged. "From the sound of things he might have found a clue."

  "That would be good news," he muttered reaching for a mug, before remembering the urn was cold. "it's been a week and still nothing." He glared at the offending urn. "If we could even tell what city, we could track him through his implant. But a planet's just too big and we don't have much time."

  Lenys nodded as she poured herself a glass of juice from the other dispenser. "At least staying out of direct sunlight is helping." She made a face and put the glass down, pushing it away. "Lieutenant Deggon says that's probably going to give us another three or four days."

  "Three or four days." Tam tapped his 'pad. "That's not much when we still haven't found a sign of him. We're going to have to move in the next three anyway, probably just arc around the farside, to stay out of direct obervation." He flipped the 'pad to holographic, and three numbers appeared floated between them. "One hundred-twenty hours. That's it. After that we're going to have to pull out and cool off. Coolant won't last any longer without the array deployed."

  "Captain, Commander Kharan." Ober-dwan came into the wardroom without knocking, a 'pad in his hand.

  "Yes Ober-dwan?" Tam said, snapping his 'pad display off and turning to face the alien. "I hope this isn't about the life-support systems again. We have spares, but there's not much we can do until we find the Prince."

  "No, Captain, air is fine." Ober-dwan put his 'pad on the table and flipped it to projection mode. "Just watch this."

  Tam just stared as the opening credits for 'You Have the Right...' appeared in the air, a subtitled translation beneath. "I have the right to toss you off my ship, Ober-dwan, we have more important things to do than watch Earth trashfeeds."

  "I know you do Captain-sir," Ober-dwan fiddled with the 'pad trying to get to the fast-forward. "You are here to find the Prince, Ober-dwan and Kendradi know that." He spoke faster as he worked on the device. "Kendradi think we found the Prince. On this show."

  "What?" Tam leaned forwards, "what do you mean you found him on this show."

  "This show taken from human police. Has pictures of people on streets not expecting cameras. We found one man, fights like Imperium Marine."

  "You're saying you found the Prince because you saw someone fighting like a Marine?"

  "Yes, Captain-sir," Ober-dwan twitched his outer eyes in and out quickly. "Human fighting the same way that the Marines d
o in Messroom."

  "That's what you got me down here for?" Tam raised his voice. "Because you saw someone fighting on a crime show?"

  "Captain," Commander Kharan tapped the table. "Captain, look at the screen. Just look at the screen."

  Tam turned just in time to catch a dark haired man finish the sixth form for the Marine unarmed combat drill. "What? That does look like..." His voice trailed off when the light caught the subject full in the face, throwing his features into full relief. The image went still and Tam could see the reason they were here.

  His Imperial Highness, the Prince Jhon, Heir Presumptive to the Altiarn Imperium looked out of the image at him. There was no doubt, they had found the prince. He let a long breath out then turned to Ober-dwan. "Do you know when this was taken? Where it was filmed?"

  "Yes, Captain." The Kendradi pulled up a map of the smaller land mass. "It was taken in a city called Seattle, just here on the North West coast of the secondary land mass. According to the datestamp on some of the other footage, this appears to have been filmed within the last week."

  Tam pulsed a command to his communicator. "Mr. Vidall, this is the Captain. I need a recon probe. We may have located the prince in a city called Seattle. I'm uploading the approximate co-ordinates now. With any luck we can get a fix on his implant."

  "Aye sir."

  "Also, inform Lieutenant Pirk that we'll be needing him and his Marines momentarily. Have them meet me in the boat bay."

  *

  The cold rain bit through his coat making the wool smell like wet dog; John had to get under cover tonight, the chill was settling into his bones. He had spent most of the day looking for somewhere else to stay tonight, but no luck. It wasn't until he ran into Gilly down by the market that he found out why. "Cops looking for ya," Gilly had whispered sideways when he took John aside to tell him they didn't want him near. The rest of the day had gone well, he found a soup kitchen that would feed him for free. The guy at the door let him in early, so he had managed a full meal for once. The big bowl of soup and four slices of bread that followed it had been a warm lump in his belly for most of the afternoon. There had even been coffee, enough for two cups.