On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus) Read online

  If someone had bugged them, Mariko realised. “And is there anything?”

  “Not as far as I can tell,” Fitz said, with a smile. “Of course, the smarter people would have programmed their bugs to remain dormant while they’re in phase space, knowing that they wouldn't be able to get any signals out until we return to normal space. But then, they might not be in position to pick up the signals before we track down the transmitters anyway.”

  He shrugged and picked up a small metal wand. “Lady Mary might well have tried to sting us with bugs, just to see what we might say in private,” he added. He leaned over and waved the wand over Mariko’s body, and then Mai’s. “Nothing. Either she didn't try to bug us or we lost the bugs somewhere along the way back up into orbit.”

  Mai stared at him. “Why do you expect Lady Mary to bug you?”

  “She’s up to something,” Fitz said, as he shut down his sensors and headed for the door. “And she certainly wants leverage she can use to get permission to return to Homeworld. A single indiscreet conversation on Tuff might give her the tools to blackmail her family into permitting her to return from exile. Who knows what people might talk about several thousand light years from home?”

  Mariko looked at her sister. “I’m sorry we didn't tell you,” she said, “but...”

  “Talk about it in my cabin,” Fitz said, firmly. He led the way along the corridor and into his suite of rooms. Mariko and Mai took the sofa, leaving him to sit on a rickety old armchair that might have been worth about as much as the starship itself. “It’s a very long story.”

  Mai was glancing from Fitz to Mariko, her expression a mixture of puzzlement, concern and hurt that they hadn't confided in her earlier. Not that there had been much choice, Mariko told herself firmly. The bugs that Lady Mary had scattered everywhere might have picked up on it and then they would have been in real trouble.

  “I am not quite as useless as I seem,” Fitz said, after they’d settled down. “I work for...a small group that is doing whatever it can to stabilise the Imperium.” He looked over at Mariko, his eyes cold and serious. “You can tell your sister what we saw in the jungle.”

  Mariko hesitated, and then outlined everything from the moment she’d followed Fitz into the jungle to the point where they’d escaped the patrolling guards and made it back to the cabin. Mai stared at her, as if she didn't quite believe a word of it, until Fitz displayed images taken during their excursion. One of his augments must include improved eyesight, perhaps even a nanotech camera built into one of his eyes. No wonder he’d had little difficulty navigating through the jungle. Darkness probably meant little to him. The small army of humans and aliens training together, in defiance of all law, shocked Mai just as badly as it had shocked Mariko. Who knew what the ultimate plan for such an army might be?

  “It’s impossible to be sure, but I think that the camp wasn't large enough to take more than a battalion at a time,” Fitz said. “Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that that was the only camp. A planet is a big place, with plenty of room to hide training camps. There might be a dozen more scattered all over the planet.”

  Mariko frowned. “Then why did she build it so close to the safari complex?”

  “There are rare elements scattered through the ground near the lava pools,” Fitz said. “Basic sensor sweeps wouldn't pick up much of anything from orbit, or even overflights though the atmosphere itself. Even if someone did happen to pick up on something, there would be a suitable cover story in place to explain energy discharges that just happen to look like a plasma cannon. And besides, it’s possible that some of the visitors to her complex are actually connected to the plot. Having the camp a few hours walk from the complex might suit her purposes very well.”

  He shook his head.

  “But that doesn't answer the real questions,” he added. “Why is Lady Mary operating a training camp for a mixture of human and aliens? Who is she working for, if anyone? And how many soldiers have graduated from that camp and gone...elsewhere?”

  Mai looked at him. She still seemed stunned, but Mariko knew she was thinking hard. “How long does it take to train a soldier?”

  “Civil Guardsmen get eight weeks basic training – assuming that their superiors haven’t decided to pocket the training budget for themselves and simply declared their men competent soldiers,” Fitz said. “They’re supposed to get an additional four weeks learning a MOS, but that simply doesn't happen very often. Imperial Marines get a great deal more training before they are unleashed upon the Imperium’s enemies. Most of the other units fit in somewhere between the two.”

  “So...assuming the camp has been open for a year,” Mai said slowly, “it could have produced a minimum of six thousand soldiers?”

  “And if there are more camps, that figure is likely to rise rather steeply,” Fitz agreed. “It is possible that they have adopted a plan where the graduates move on to train newcomers at once, which means that the number of trained soldiers could be in the millions by now. They won’t have the same level of training as Imperial Marines, but quantity has a quality all of its own.”

  Mariko scowled. “But what does Lady Mary get out of it?”

  “I don’t know,” Fitz admitted. “Maybe she thinks that she was thrown off Homeworld unjustly and has pretty much joined the Secessionists herself. Or maybe she thinks she can raise her own private army and take the galaxy by storm. There’s no way to know, short of taking her prisoner and interrogating her – and that might prove impossible. The Secessionists have been using augments to make themselves interrogation-proof. There’s no reason to assume that Lady Mary couldn't have done the same for herself, even if it is technically illegal.”

  “Typical,” Mariko said.

  Fitz nodded, ruefully.

  “How did you find out about the camp, anyway?” she asked.

  “Don and I were following hints that were leading us towards a recruiting centre on Dorado,” Fitz said, after a moment. “Someone has been very busy. They’ve been looking for humans and aliens who are dissatisfied with their lot and sending the ones they feel can be trusted into an underground railroad leading here. We located the recruiting team on Dorado and launched a data raid that went spectacularly wrong. They had more guards in the building than we realised and...”

  He shook his head. “Don managed to cover me as I escaped, taking the data with me, but they killed him before he could get after me. I saw the explosion as his body was vaporised, leaving no clues that would have led them to my ship – and me. It took two days to fake an accident that explained Don’s disappearance to the local authorities, and then I had a bit of a problem. I’d gone to great lengths to appear a harmless aristocrat, so if I flew the ship out of the system on my own, someone might start to suspect the truth.”

  “And then you found us,” Mai said. She looked at him worshipfully again, much to Mariko’s irritation. Fitz wouldn’t have been a safe partner for her even before they’d discovered that he was far more than a harmless fop. “We owe you our lives.”

  “I’m very much afraid that you do,” Fitz agreed. “It is quite possible that Carlos and his family are linked into the Secessionists in some way.”

  Mariko considered it for a long moment. “You seem to be sure that the Secessionists are involved...?”

  Fitz snorted. “Who else benefits?” He stood up and started to pace, as if he could no longer remain still. “No planetary governor could hope to benefit from rebelling against the Imperium. It might take months or years, but the Imperial Navy would respond and the rebellion would be crushed. And his family would be forced to pay for price for nurturing a traitor. But the damned Secessionists would benefit from a sector-wide rebellion. If nothing else, it would be a great deal harder to stop before it spread into nearby sectors.”

  He shrugged. “And besides, the local governors have good reasons to oppose giving aliens the right to bear arms. But the Secessionists don’t have any problems with treating aliens as equals.”
/>   Mariko looked down at the carpeted deck. Once, she would have agreed with Fitz; aliens weren't human and shouldn't be treated as human. But she’d been a slave since then, all-too-aware that her master could do whatever he wanted with her. Fitz had treated them decently even before they’d been swept into his private intelligence-gathering operation, but he could have treated them badly instead. He could have treated them as his property and there would have been no recourse, no way to gain their freedom legally. They had been less than even the Indents. How could she not feel sympathy for others, even BEMs, who were treated as slaves?

  She took her life in her hands and asked a single question. “Shouldn’t we try to treat the aliens better?”

  Fitz shrugged. “Answer me a question,” he countered. “How much of the Imperium’s industrial base is dependent upon alien labour?”

  Mariko hesitated. Her father had commented once that it was a great deal easier to hire aliens than humans, although she’d been too young to understand why. She’d certainly never had the money – or the desire – to hire other crewmen for the Happy Wanderer, not when she and Mai could operate the entire ship by themselves.

  Mai guessed, “Fifty percent?”

  “Try eighty percent,” Fitz said. “Oh, there are some parts of the economy that are reserved for humans alone, but alien labour is the linchpin that keeps the Imperium ticking over. The alien workers don’t have many rights, certainly far less than human workers. They can be hired and fired on a whim, unlike humans. And there is a vast and powerful constituency that bases its power upon alien labour. Do you think that that constituency is going to allow anything to occur that would threaten its power?

  “Of course not,” he added, answering his own question. “Give aliens equal rights to humans and they might start demanding better treatment, all of which would cut into the profits for the next few decades. And besides, what will happen if aliens start voting themselves into the government – will they undermine the political consensus that keeps the Imperium together? Or what if they want to leave the Imperium altogether?”

  “And then there’s the minor detail that aliens outnumber humans one hundred to one, officially. Unofficially, it might be a far greater imbalance. What happens if the aliens decide they want to enslave humanity? They’d have the votes to make it happen, leaving us with no choice, but to accept enslavement – or start a civil war.”

  He shook his head. “Right now, the Imperium is held together by spit and baling wire,” he said, softly. “And yet it is all we have. If the Imperium falls, what happens to civilisation as we know it? It will go straight down into civil war on a scale unmatched since the Warlord Era.

  “The Secessionists believe that if they managed to separate themselves from the dead hand of Imperial control, they would be able to start a new age of economic development vast more efficient than the development dictated by Homeworld. They don’t seem to realise it, but if they manage to bite off a large chunk of the outer sectors the Imperium itself might collapse. Or the Grand Senate will do whatever it takes to reassert control over the sectors, sending the Imperial Navy in to bombard rebellious worlds back to the Stone Age. Billions of humans and aliens will die because the Secessionists refuse to work within the system.”

  He shook his head. “I used to think that I was entitled to my wealth and power because of my birth,” he said. “And then I met someone who gave me a wake-up call. And now I do what I can to cripple the Secessionists before they spark a civil war.”

  Mai held up a hand. “Could there be people on Homeworld who want a civil war?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Fitz admitted. “The Grand Senate has been scrabbling over the pieces of a shrinking pie for the last five hundred years. They may feel that outright war with the Secessionists is the key to gaining more wealth and power. And then there are the ones who look at the alien powers along the Rim and consider the value of striking at them first, before they can hit the Imperium. But even if the Imperium won a civil war, it would still be gravely weakened.”

  He walked over to the transparent bulkhead and stared out into the inky darkness.

  “I’ve told you all I can,” he said after a long pause. “I do need help, but I won’t drag you any further into this unless you want to be involved. Just let me know what you decide before we reach Greenland. I may need your help there.”

  “We’ll talk about it,” Mariko said, firmly. “Is it safe to talk on this ship?”

  “If it isn't, we’re dead,” Fitz said. He smiled, rather sardonically. “You should be able to talk about anything on my ship. Just be careful what you say when outside her bulkheads.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “You did what?”

  Mariko felt herself flush again as Mai stared at her. Confessing to following Fitz into the jungle had been easy, compared to admitting to her sister that she’d seduced a young man on Fitz’s command. She hadn't had sex with him, but somehow that seemed like a weak excuse when confronted with her sister’s shock. But maybe it was a good thing. Mai was just too admiring of Fitz and learning about what he’d asked Mariko to do might convince her that he wasn't her Prince Charming.

  “I seduced someone to win him time to carry out a data raid,” she said, flatly. After hearing about what had happened to Don, Fitz’s last partner, she realised just how badly it could have gone wrong. What if Lady Mary had had that part of the complex bugged? “I took him into a room and played with him until he came...”

  Mai shook her head. She'd always known that her elder sister was wild, but wild by the standards of Edo, not by the standards of the aristocratic brats on Tuff. One or two boyfriends, perhaps some experimentation with another girl...shocking on Edo, yet nothing compared to the pleasures enjoyed by the aristocracy. And yet deliberately setting out to seduce someone was shocking, particularly when the seduction was little more than an attempt to manipulate him and distract him from his duties.

  “You’d better not tell mother,” Mai said, finally. She hesitated. “You don’t think he’ll want me to do it too?”

  “I very much hope not,” Mariko growled. She was in two minds about Fitz’s offer to drop them off with enough money to get home or to buy a new freighter. On one hand, working with him was dangerous, even without the prospect of having to seduce another man at his command. And she didn't want to put Mai in any more danger. But on the other hand, they did owe Fitz their lives and...

  ...And what if he was right? Mariko had never paid enough attention to politics, but there was no logical reason to raise an army on Tuff unless it was intended to be deployed somewhere else. Taking Tuff itself – and thousands of aristocratic guests – would have been easy, if the objective was to take hostages for ransom, yet that wouldn't have needed a whole army. If the Secessionists intended to start an uprising in the entire sector, however, what would happen to the shipping lanes? None of the half-remembered reports from other revolts were encouraging. The Secessionists – or the other rebels – had taken freighters from their crews and pushed them into service transporting supplies from world to world. Many of the captured ships had been destroyed by the Imperial Navy when the revolts had finally been crushed.

  If it had just been her, she might have joined Fitz without a second thought. But with Mai...her sister was brilliant in her way, with an engineering genius that should have seen her heading to Homeworld to study there, but she was largely unaware of how the universe worked. She could blunder into trouble just by trusting the wrong person. And perhaps she’d been wrong to trust Mariko, her sister. Mariko had failed to understand the true nature of Dorado until it had been far too late. She could have easily gotten them both raped and killed if Fitz hadn't come along and saved their lives.

  “We will stay with him,” Mai said, when Mariko outlined her concerns. “Quite apart from the fact we owe him, do you really want to go back home with a different freighter we would have to explain to father?”

  Mariko shook her head, sourly. Their mo
ther might be more of a snob than Fitz’s foppish exterior, but their father was a hard-headed businessman. He would probe away at their story until he found out the truth, and then disown whatever was left of them for gross incompetence and indecency. The only hope for returning home in something like triumph was through working with Fitz, hoping that his family would be willing to give them long-term contacts that would ensure their financial security.

  “I’ll go tell him the good news,” she said, reluctantly. “You can stay here and keep studying the ship’s systems. See how many surprises the designers might have buried in a mundane hull.”

  “Nothing about this ship is mundane,” Mai countered, as she turned back to her console. “You just remember to find out everything about where we’re going next, all right?”

  Mariko was still flushing when she found Fitz on the bridge, studying the navigational console with a thoughtful expression. Of course he would know how to use it, Mariko told herself firmly. He could probably fly the ship better than both of them put together. A star chart was flickering up in front of him, displaying starship trade routes running through a sector too undeveloped to have many formal trade routes. It took her a moment to realise that he was studying the data he’d pulled from the OTC computers while she’d seduced the operator.