Imperfect Sword

by Jack Campbell

  She popped the side door, slid out of the cockpit, felt the chute deploy in the moments before reaching the ground, then rolled into a landing.

  A powder sprinkled onto the chute caused it to shrivel into fragments. The snakes would find those fragments, of course, but the only evidence they would have as to who had used the chute would be the footprints from Sub-CEO Tarranavi’s boots, which were on Morgan’s feet.

  Morgan disposed of the boots at her first stop, changing into other boots. Over the next twenty kilometers, she changed footwear several more times, using a dozen different methods to throw off any possible tracking or pursuit through open country, then the city. By the time she reached the military barracks where she was stuck, waiting for someone to accept her into a unit, she had thoroughly muddled her trail.

  The sub-CEO running the barracks had made no secret of her own eagerness to see Morgan shunted off to some cannon-fodder unit where the combat life expectation of an Executive Fifth Class would be measured in minutes. But Morgan had managed to throw up a series of obstacles that had so far prevented her assignment to that kind of unit. Increasingly, Morgan realized her delaying tactics were only postponing the inevitable. No other kind of unit wanted her. No one else wanted her for any other purpose. No one had ever wanted her. So such a suicidal assignment would probably be her fate despite the medical assessment that had cleared her for duty. Morgan smiled at the sub-CEO’s office as she passed it, thinking that she had already survived one suicide mission and wondering if she could eliminate any more snakes or equally poisonous executives and CEOs before being shipped out.

  Not that she would die even then, despite every attempt to kill her. Morgan somehow knew that she was destined for something big, some greatness, even though everyone was against her. She hadn’t died on that suicide mission into enigma space. She knew that the person who had come back wasn’t the Roh Morgan who had been sent on the mission. She had changed, become much more than before. She felt that. And the proof of her belief was that no one had ever come back from enigma-occupied space. Except her. That meant there must be a reason, a big reason, why she hadn’t died. She was learning more every day, gaining the knowledge of her victims before sending them to the fates they deserved, preparing herself for whatever came next.

  Her comm pad buzzed urgently. Morgan checked it, read the message, then had to pause to read it again.

  Someone had agreed to take her as a junior executive in their combat unit. Someone had believed in her, despite her youth and her brief, checkered past. CEO Artur Drakon. “This officer deserves a chance,” Drakon had written.

  Morgan didn’t know who Drakon was. But as she looked at the message, a totally unexpected event, she knew he must be the one person in this dark, vicious universe who was on Morgan’s side, who might not only deserve her loyalty but be the one worthy of helping her fulfill her own still-dimly-seen destiny.

  Sometime now . . .

  Colonel Roh Morgan, part of the crowd of rumpled and weary travelers leaving the tramp freighter which had brought them to Ulindi Star System, approached the security checkpoint at the docking facility orbiting Ulindi’s primary world.

  The checkpoint was an impressive one, with at least twenty snakes scrutinizing every person going through the checkpoint and ten ground forces soldiers in full battle armor backing them up. Clearly visible automated sensors and weaponry tracked the movements of those approaching the checkpoint, and it was a given that more sensors and weaponry were concealed in the walls and ceiling. Not just a security checkpoint, it was a strongpoint, well defended enough to hold off a serious attack.

  A young man next to Morgan in the crowd muttered to himself as he stared aghast at the menacing snakes. “I wish I had one of those gadgets that make you invisible.”

  Idiot, she thought. Idiot to say that out loud, where snake sensors would pick it up, pinpoint the source, and ensure that the young worker received extra attention during the security screening. And idiot to think any piece of equipment could make you invisible in this kind of setting, where the snakes were searching with all of their equipment and skill for enemy agents and threats.

  Searching for someone pretty much like Roh Morgan, when you got right down to it.

  Morgan walked with the crowd toward the checkpoint.

  MORGAN had no equipment with her to help evade detection or attention by the snakes running the checkpoint and everything else in this star system. No one would be able to spot stealth equipment on her which no innocent civilian traveler should be carrying. Knowing how the snakes operated, what they looked for and what they didn’t think of, made it a lot easier to know what not to do. Thanks to experience and study of the enemy’s methods and tactics, Morgan also knew what she should do.

  She wore slightly baggy, shapeless worker clothes in neutral colors, the clothes neither old nor new, neither fashionable nor unfashionable. Morgan had tinted her hair into a shade so bland that it was hard to find a descriptive word for it, and had cut it into a style matching that of countless other workers. Her skin had been similarly tinted, neither light nor dark nor shiny nor flat, but just there. Contacts shaded her eyes to an unremarkable color. She walked with a loose, slightly slouching posture, shoulders rounded a bit, matching the speed of the others around her. On her face, Morgan kept an expression of vague concentration, as if even routine actions required a little extra mental effort. She did not look scared or nervous or confident or any other emotion that might attract any attention. It wasn’t easy to project a blank presence without its becoming apparent that you were being blank, but it could be done, like a magic trick in which the observers did not even realize their attention had been distracted.

  The gazes of her fellow travelers and those of the snakes at the security checkpoint slid over Morgan, finding nothing to hold their attention or attract interest or rest in their memory. Even when Morgan handed her forged documents to the snake at the screening station, his attention barely rested on her for a moment before looking beyond in search of something worth seeing. “Purpose of travel to Ulindi?” the snake asked her in a bored monotone, his gaze wandering over the other passengers.

  “Looking for work,” Morgan said, her voice pitched so it could be easily heard but not any louder, her accent as generic to this region of space as possible.

  “Register with neighborhood safety officials when you get accommodations.” The snake droned the standard phrase, tossing the documents back at Morgan.

  Feeling slightly miffed that her excellent forging job on the documents had been wasted on a snake too dumb to really examine them, Morgan merged with the flow of workers heading for the general seating cabin of the shuttle. Once inside, she wormed her way against a bulkhead, not apparently watching anyone as she slumped in a bare metal seat. Syndicate shuttles didn’t waste money on worker comforts. Morgan did her best to continue looking unremarkable, knowing that the snakes would have sensors monitoring this cabin just as they did nearly every public place.

  Without any first-class passengers aboard in the special, luxurious cabin reserved for them, the shuttle didn’t bother with gentle maneuvering. The entry into atmosphere was even more uncomfortable than a combat drop. When the shuttle had finally grounded and dropped its ramp, Morgan once again merged with the crowd. There was another security checkpoint before the terminal, naturally, and another snake who smiled unpleasantly at an attractive worker in the throng as he waved Morgan through without a glance. She passed down a long hallway, pretending she wasn’t aware of the many sensors scanning her and her bag as she walked.

  Once outside of the terminal, Morgan adjusted her gait to a purposeful but not hurried walk. She looked like someone who had somewhere to go, a worker on assignment or heading to her job. Not enthusiastically. Not reluctantly. Just going. None of the police or other security personnel she passed gave her a second look.

  Morgan had once thought about the irony that it took a tremendous amount of effort and concentration to look like
someone who was completely uninteresting, but when actually doing that, she could not afford the distraction of extraneous thoughts. Any focus not directed at personal monotony was aimed outward at those around her. Morgan remained aware of every cop and every possible snake near her. She didn’t give the slightest sign of that awareness, but every time one of those people twitched, Morgan knew it.

  She didn’t worry about looking much at the buildings, though. Syndicate cities, following central planning guidelines and approved architecture, tended to a drab sameness except for the occasional grandiose civic folly commissioned by a CEO who wanted a personal monument. After a while, even the undisciplined and erratic architecture of Alliance cities started to look the same. To Morgan, after her years of combat, all that mattered was that some buildings and some cities were broken and burning as you fought through them, and some weren’t. This city wasn’t broken or burning (yet), which made traveling through it a bit easier.

  Morgan chose a hotel suitable for a worker with just enough funds to afford a private room. Inside, she found and “accidentally” blocked a hidden surveillance unit, then underwent a swift transformation using supplies and one of the two spare outfits in her bag. Within a short time, she had changed into nice clothes that emphasized her figure, washed out the drab hair tint and washed in a subtle glow effect for her hair, recombed it to look slightly exotic, scrubbed her face free of the first tinting and replaced it with a shade darker than her natural one, and popped the contacts in favor of another set that gave her green eyes. A small prosthesis at the bridge of her nose and two more on her cheekbones, blending invisibly into her real features, would totally throw off facial-recognition software trying to identify her. Every time she varied the undetectable facial camouflage, she would appear to be a totally different person to the artificial-intelligence routines trying to get facial matches.

  Leaving nothing in the room, Morgan walked again, this time a little more briskly, her shoulders back, one hip popped out whenever she paused at a crossing signal, a slight smile on her lips, pretending not to notice the occasional looks that lingered on her new appearance. It didn’t take her long to spot the sort of bar that snakes frequented. Snakes didn’t have official hangouts, but they tended to lay claim to certain places for as long as it amused them, driving away other patrons who didn’t want to risk being noticed by security personnel with a few drinks under their belts. Such places were easy to spot because of the way citizens familiar with the area avoided even looking at them as they walked past.

  Morgan strolled inside, gazing around with feigned uncertainty, looking every inch like someone unfamiliar with the neighborhood who was just searching for a place to get a drink. In a minute, she was at the bar, where the tender served her with a warning glance around the room that Morgan ignored.

  Two minutes after that, a male snake slid onto the seat next to hers, the ISS agent smiling in welcome. “New in town?”

  Morgan nodded, smiling back. “I just came in from Gosport,” she said, naming another, smaller, city on the planet. “New assignment.”

  “You must be lonely, then.”

  Morgan smiled wider. “Yes. I am.”

  Ten minutes afterward, they were entering a hastily rented room at a much better hotel than Morgan had visited earlier. She pointed around with a worried expression as the door closed. “I . . . don’t want anybody knowing about this.”

  The snake laughed and brought out a palm-sized device. “Me, neither. There. It’s on. All surveillance sensors in this room are blocked. Nothing can see or hear what we—”

  Morgan caught his body before it hit the floor and lowered it gently the rest of the way. She shook her hand, wincing at a mild twinge. “I must be getting old,” she told the dead snake as she knelt beside his body. “Death strokes aren’t as easy as they used to be.”

  She checked him over carefully for other security gear or protective devices before pulling out his data pad. Her own data pad, outwardly an old, barely functional model, concealed an inner heart of the latest hacking and cracking software as well as the fastest hardware available.

  Linking the two, Morgan swiftly broke into the ISS planetary central file system using the dead snake’s pad as a Trojan horse. She went to internal files first, locating and downloading files on every citizen tagged as a likely security risk. Four times her data pad blurped as it ate and discarded security programs from the snake systems that were trying to infect Morgan’s gear. Three other times the data pad bleeped to report it had blocked covert downloads of pigeon programs that would have secretly reported back her exact position to the snakes at every opportunity.

  She checked the time. Six minutes elapsed since the snake had died. It would be another twenty minutes before ISS security systems would begin wondering why his remote monitors weren’t updating his physical location and status.

  Morgan switched to another section of the database and began downloading the ISS records on Supreme CEO Haris’s armed forces. Since the ISS regarded the military as just another form of potential internal security threat, they always kept detailed files on local forces. Information on every weapon, man, woman, ship, and shuttle available to Haris poured into Morgan’s data pad. She tapped in another command, sending back her own malware to infect the ISS systems. Most of the malware would probably be spotted and eliminated, but anything that survived would be very useful in the future.

  A different alert sounded from her data pad. Morgan eyed the warning that system security sharks were closing in on her tap, checked the status of the armed forces information download and malware uploads, waited another ten seconds for those to complete, then broke the connection.

  She knelt again, pulled out the hand weapon the snake agent had concealed under his coat, hacked the settings to cause it to catastrophically overheat, then laid it carefully on top of the snake’s data pad, where it now rested on the floor next to the body. After rolling the dead snake on top of both, she picked up her bag, hid away her data pad, then strode out of the room with a satisfied smile on her face, ensuring the door was firmly closed behind her. The security cams in the hotel would notice nothing unexpected as she left. By the time fire alarms sounded, Morgan would be blocks away. The overheating weapon would reduce the snake’s data pad to slag and do enough damage to the snake’s body to make it unclear what had killed him, while that body blocked evidence of heat and smoke long enough for the destruction to be far along before any alarms tripped.

  It took another change of appearance using the last set of clothes and cosmetics in the bag and another relocation before Morgan was able to check over some of the files she had pilfered. Drakon wanted her to get in touch with and organize any possible sources of resistance to Haris on this planet. If such people existed, the snakes were probably already watching them. All she had to do was evaluate the snake files to see which ones under suspicion were probably actually disloyal to Haris.

  She frowned as she scanned the data. Over a week ago, the snakes had started hauling in a lot of the people whose files she had downloaded. The usual suspects were being rounded up, along with many others. Something must have triggered that, but there was no hint of what that something might be in any of the files.

  Morgan checked the time, annoyed by what she saw. She had been on the ground for three hours, and aside from successfully infiltrating the planet, breaking into the ISS files, downloading everything she needed, uploading various malware that might escape the notice of the ISS, and killing one snake, she had hardly accomplished anything yet.

  Still, as the old underground joke went, what did you call one dead snake?

  A good start.

  —

  GWEN Iceni stood in her office, facing the grand virtual window that dominated one wall. Once, the window had shown a cityscape, as if looking out upon a large metropolis from a vantage point in a high building, the image changing in real time as each day wore on. A real window in that wall would have shown only rock, or perhaps arm
or, since her entire office was buried and well fortified against attack.

  She had never really worried about whether the city in the false window was real, and if so where it was really located, or whether it was just some computer-generated fantasy. It still represented her reality in a way, that what lay outside her office was not terribly important. It was just one more planet, one more place to work in before she moved on to somewhere else. Perhaps even to wherever that city was.

  But, soon after the revolt against the Syndicate, Iceni had changed the view to show a beach here on Midway. A beach she knew really existed, one in the same latitude and not too far north of here, so the sunrises and sunsets and weather were the same as on the surface of the planet outside her office. She had kept the view there, and now stood watching the small waves roll in over the white beach, no two moving exactly the same or reaching the exact same height up the beach before falling back into the mass of the sea.

  Like human lives, perhaps, reaching out of the universe’s mass of . . . something . . . to reach for . . . something . . . before their brief span was done, no two the same, most of them causing only the smallest changes, though every once in a while great waves driven by the storm would change the beach in a way that endured for some time. And then they were gone.

  Hell, aren’t I the moody one today? Iceni thought. Maybe I feel another storm coming.

  A voice spoke out of the air around her. “Madam President, Captain Bradamont has arrived.”

  “Send her in.” As Bradamont entered, Iceni kept her eyes on the waves, then finally turned and faced the Alliance officer. “Good afternoon, Captain.”