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

  Tapping the controls, she brought up the standard menu and began to work her way through it, frowning as she did so. Bruce Wayne seemed a very odd ship. She was surprisingly overpowered for her size, with engines that matched the best the Imperial Navy could produce, all so heavily automated that one person could operate the entire ship from the bridge. There was a stunning amount of redundancy built into the ship, allowing her to still slip into phase space even if one of the nacelles had been completely destroyed. She carried no obvious weapons, but her shields were tough and she could probably outrun any pirate or kidnapper intent on bagging someone related to a Grand Senator. Her hull was military-grade ablative compound, giving it a surprising amount of resistance even without her shields. It looked almost as if the designer had set out to build an unarmed gunboat.

  The first simulation appeared in front of her and she began to work her way through it, biting her lip as the simulation became more and more complicated. Each simulation was intended to test the pilots to destruction, throwing more and more disasters at them as they overcame the last set of disasters. Nothing like them had ever appeared in at least five thousand years of space travel, but that wasn't the point. The point was to become intimately familiar with the starship and how it responded to different situations.

  And Bruce Wayne responded magnificently. If the simulations were accurate, and she saw no reason why they wouldn't be accurate, the ship she was flying was one of the most agile starships in space. Even a military-grade gunboat would have problems keeping up with her, at least until she began to take damage. The tiny crew – Mariko and Mai were the only real crewmembers – couldn’t hope to complete repairs in time to save their ship. Bruce Wayne was so small, compared to a superdreadnaught, that even a light hit could be very dangerous, perhaps disabling the ship. And once she was disabled she would be nothing more than a sitting duck.

  Eventually, she looked up at the chronometer and discovered to her surprise that two hours had passed. It hadn't felt like two hours, but then it never did. Pilots became so involved in the simulations that they never felt time passing around them. Mariko stood up, stretched a little to work the kinks out of her muscles, and walked towards the stairwell. One thing Bruce Wayne lacked was an internal transport system. She was so small that it was hardly necessary.

  The ship’s interior was a surprising combination of standard and extraordinary. Deck one housed the bridge, the starship’s control systems, sickbay and a handful of other vital facilities, all automated. Mariko hoped that the auto-doctor was better than the last one she’d seen, as thousands of years of development couldn't give electronic doctors the same insight as flesh-and-blood doctors. One of them had kept insisting that she was pregnant despite a scan revealing no trace of a growing child within her womb. Lord Fitzgerald might be taking a terrible risk by relying so completely upon automated systems. Mariko had some medical knowledge, as it was a legal requirement for commanding a starship, but not enough to do more than delay the end for someone badly injured.

  Deck two held Lord Fitzgerald’s cabin, a kitchen and dining hall and a handful of other cabins that were clearly intended for aristocratic guests. Mariko had taken a look inside one of the cabins and rolled her eyes at its grandeur: too much gold and silver for her tastes. Deck three held their cabins, various supply rooms and a small machine shop, although she couldn't imagine why Lord Fitzgerald would want a machine shop. Maybe his former pilot had been a metalworker and wanted to carry on with his hobby once he'd entered Lord Fitzgerald’s service. It seemed to be as good an explanation as any other. Deck four held the engines, some storage holds and a sealed room they had been told never to enter without permission. Given how much they were being paid, Mariko had decided to keep her curiosity firmly under control.

  The starship’s engines – a pair of modern fusion cores, producing more than enough power to run the entire ship at max – were housed towards the end of deck four. Mariko watched inside and smiled as she saw Mai examining the computer systems and running automated diagnostics programs. One thing she didn't like about Bruce Wayne was that her engines were sealed units, impossible for the crew to open and fix. If they ran into an uncharted gravitational field in phase space they were likely to end up stranded in interstellar space, too far from an inhabited star system to signal for help. The sublight drives wouldn't be enough to save them dying a very isolated death.

  “These power cores are magnificent,” Mai said, as she entered the compartment. She sounded happy...and more her old self. “Do you know that we actually have four spares in the cargo holds? We may not be able to fix these designs, but we could replace them if necessary. Of course, we’d have to be sure that there was no damage to the connecting power channelling and distribution nodes...”

  Mariko smiled as her sister chatted on. She’d always been more of an engineer than a pilot, once admitting to Mariko that she would have preferred to serve on one of their father’s ships as an engineer, rather than commanding her own ship. Their mother had been horrified when Mai had dismantled the family aircar to see how it went together – and then fixed it before her father could call a qualified engineer. Privately, Mariko was much less impressed with the concept than Mai. There was no guarantee that anything that hit the drive system would only knock out the power core. Without a bigger crew, fixing all of the possible problems might be impossible.

  “So,” Mai said, sitting back and grinning at her. A patch of oil had marked her face and stained her suit, but she looked happy. “What do you make of our new boss?”

  “Very generous,” Mariko said. She’d seen the contracts and read through them carefully before she’d signed them, but she hadn't been able to spot any hidden surprises. Lord Fitzgerald simply didn't need to con them into anything. A quick check through the ship’s computer database had revealed that he had an expense account big enough to buy most of the sector, assuming that he could find someone willing to sell. “I think you like him far too much.”

  Mai’s face changed slightly. “Why shouldn't I like him?”

  “Because he’s our boss,” Mariko said. Her head was spinning. Over the last two days, she’d gone from knowing that they were about to meet an awful fate to starting a new career as a wealthy aristocrat’s private pilots. “And because he’s probably at least twice your age.”

  “But does it matter?” Mai asked. “Mother always said that we should marry older men.”

  Mariko bit down the response that came to mind. Their mother was a strict traditionalist from a family that considered its daughters little more than pawns for expanding their influence and reputation. They had taken a gamble by allowing one of their daughters to marry an up-and-coming tradesman, but it had paid off for them. Until, of course, the time came when they found out their grandchildren had effectively become slaves.

  “I don’t think he’d be interested in marriage,” Mariko said, finally. “I think it’s time you started to work on the simulations on the bridge.”

  “I suppose,” Mai said, reluctantly. She needed to be checked out on the ship’s piloting systems before they left orbit. Lord Fitzgerald had told them that he wanted to leave as soon as they felt comfortable piloting his ship to the point where she could slip into phase space. “And what if he expresses an interest in me?”

  Mariko tried to think of an answer and gave up. There was nothing she could say.

  ***

  “We’re ready to go, Milord,” Mariko said. Lord Fitzgerald had been in his cabin during the hours the girls had spent learning how to fly his ship. It was so simple that she couldn't understand why he hadn't bothered to learn himself. What would happen to him if there was an accident and both of his pilots ended up dead? “I request permission to take us out of orbit.”

  “Granted,” Lord Fitzgerald said. He didn't sound concerned. “Do you want me on the bridge?”

  The honest answer to that was no, but Mariko wasn’t sure if that was a good answer. “If you want to watch, come onto t
he bridge,” she said. “If not, there shouldn't be any problems down here.”

  “I shall stay here,” Lord Fitzgerald said. “Make sure you get some sleep once the ship is in phase space. Tuff is not a very relaxing planet.”

  Mariko nodded and returned to the bridge. One advantage of being in orbit around Dorado was that it had almost no system in place to control the movements of orbiting systems. A handful of low-orbit automated weapons platforms and a couple of cutters so old that they looked to be pre-Imperium weren't enough to protect the planet if someone nasty came calling, or stop Bruce Wayne from leaving orbit if she chose. Mariko sent a burst transmission to the OTC anyway and closed the channel without giving them time to respond.

  “Naughty,” Mai observed, from her console. “Shouldn’t you wait for an acknowledgement?”

  “No,” Mariko said, as Bruce Wayne came to life under her hands. The starship was soon throbbing with more power than Happy Wanderer had ever enjoyed, although their old freighter had been a bulky brick with over four times the mass of Bruce Wayne. She ran her hand down the list of commands that activated the drive completely, removing the interlocks that prevented the drive from coming to life accidentally. “Let’s go, shall we?”

  There was always something different about actually flying a starship, instead of working a simulation. Mariko felt the ship shivering under her as she took direct control and started to navigate a path out of orbit and up towards the phase limit at the edge of the planet’s gravity field. Bruce Wayne seemed to be friskier than any other ship she’d flown, almost as if she was pushing her pilot to go faster. The hum of the drives grew louder as more power flooded into them, generating a drive field that pushed them forward. Mariko found herself grinning as Dorado retreated behind them, leaving Carlos and his men to enjoy their lives of wealth and power on a godforsaken world. Who knew? Maybe the march they’d seen was merely the beginning of an uprising that would leave Dorado’s established power structure in ruins.

  “The drives are handling well,” Mai said, thoughtfully. “Power curves are nominal; little feedback... Hell, if I didn't know better, I’d say that there was almost no feedback. Whoever designed these systems knew what they were doing.”

  Mariko nodded. Drive field generators always produced feedback, feedback which wore away at the generators and eventually forced them to be replaced. Most of her basic maintenance classes had been focused on preventive measures that saved the cost of replacing the generator. But Bruce Wayne seemed to be advanced enough to minimise the effects of feedback. She’d heard rumours about such generators, but the costs mentioned had been so high as to make them prohibitively expensive for almost everyone. Lord Fitzgerald, clearly, could afford almost anything. Just how rich was his family?

  She shook her head a moment later. A Grand Family’s wealth was almost impossible to describe in simple terms. They’d have vast fortunes, but they’d also have corporate stocks and shares, massive patronage networks and thousands upon thousands of people who owed them a favour or two. Turning back to the helm console, she activated the gravitational reader and studied the hazy line that marked the edge of the planet’s gravitational field. They would cross it in less than five minutes.

  “Check the phase drive,” she ordered. They’d both already tested it twice, but they hadn't been running the sublight drives at the time. “Is it still ready to go?”

  “Yes,” Mai said, flatly. She was never happy when her sister questioned her competence. “The phase drive looks ready for instant activation and transit into phase space.”

  “Good,” Mariko said, deciding not to make an issue of it. The hazy line came closer and closer...and then they slipped across it. “Prepare for activation in ten, nine, eight...”

  A deeper hum ran through the ship as the phase drive came online and powered up. “Ready,” Mai said. “...Two, one...now!”

  The stars in front of them seemed to twist into a whirling spiral of light and then winked out altogether, leaving nothing but the omnipresent darkness of phase space. Bruce Wayne had effectively created a pocket dimension around herself that would allow her to travel faster than light. A timer started counting down to the moment when the pocket dimension would collapse, returning her to normal space in another star system. Four days, seven hours and twenty-one minutes. Unless, of course, a pirate managed to track her course and set up an artificial gravity well in her path...

  “See,” Mai said. “I told you that the phase drive was working.”

  The intercom beeped before Mariko could come up with a response. “Well done, both of you,” Lord Fitzgerald said. Mariko was tempted to point out that it was easy to fly a ship as advanced as Bruce Wayne, but kept it to herself. “Please would both of you join me for dinner now?”

  “Of course,” Mariko said. It wasn't as if they had a choice. “We’ll just check the drives and everything and then come join you.”

  ***

  Happy Wanderer hadn't had a real kitchen; they’d had to make do with pre-packaged meals they’d purchased at military surplus stores. Bruce Wayne did have a real kitchen, but it was evident that Lord Fitzgerald didn't know how to use it either. Mariko couldn't understand why he hadn't brought along more staff members, even as she decided to simply heat up a packet of foodstuffs that Lord Fitzgerald had picked up from somewhere. They were pilots, not cooks. She knew better than to claim that she could cook when the best she could do was boil water and make coffee.

  “Food isn't so important on this ship,” Lord Fitzgerald explained. For all of his chatter, he seemed oddly diffident when it came to talking about himself. But if he was ashamed of his own uselessness, why didn't he take lessons in piloting his ship, or cooking for himself? “I used to serve in the Grenadier Guards. Their cooking was appalling.”

  Mariko blinked in surprise. It seemed unlikely that Lord Fitzgerald had served in any military unit, certainly not one of the elite. And even if he had, surely he would have taken his own staff with him when he’d transferred...no, she didn't think that she believed him. He was just trying to impress them.

  But Mai seemed fooled. “Why didn’t you get them to cook better food?”

  “It turned out that a consortium of senior officers were conspiring to use the food allowances they’d been set by their superiors to enrich themselves instead of feeding their men,” Lord Fitzgerald said. “They bought the cheapest food they could find for the soldiers and pocketed the difference. The Guards were on the brink of mutiny when they got their latest unqualified commanding officer whose parents had purchased his commission. Me. It took me several weeks to work out what was happening and then I made a stink about it. But the conspirators had some highly-placed allies who were draining the military of its funding and a couple of them managed to frame me as being involved with the thieves.”

  He shrugged. “So I got given a choice between resigning my commission and taking a long vacation or being the star attraction at a drumhead court martial. I thought about it for a few minutes, managed to secure the dismissal of the worst offenders and then resigned and went off on Bruce Wayne. And then eventually I ended up at Dorado.”

  Mariko took a bite of what tasted roughly like chicken and considered. Could the story be true? But surely anyone who had had any military experience would know more than Lord Fitzgerald?

  The conversation went on and on into the night. Mai listened to everything Lord Fitzgerald said and seemed to believe him, while telling him everything about their family. Mariko could believe that their mother would be overjoyed at the thought of linking their family to a Grand Senator’s, even though it was unlikely ever to happen. Lord Fitzgerald merely smiled and listened indulgently as Mai chatted on, before eventually rising to his feet and dismissing them. They all needed sleep before starting the promised training sessions on the holographic creator.

  “Good night,” he said, as he left the kitchen. “Don’t forget to turn off the lights after you go to bed.”

  Mai was still chuckling at
the weak joke twenty minutes later.

  Chapter Five

  Galactic Standard Time was an illusion, one fostered by an Imperium that liked to believe that everything of importance marched to Homeworld’s drum. Most starships operated according to the local time of their destination, allowing their crew and passengers to become accustomed to the environment without suffering starship lag. Lord Fitzgerald had altered the ship’s clocks to follow Tuff’s local time, but it still felt like local night to Mariko. It was local night on the planet they’d left behind.

  She lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. Their lives had changed overnight, from prisoners and slaves to...employees of a wandering aristocrat. Part of her was unable to grasp how quickly everything had changed, even though she knew that they had good reason to be grateful. They were free, or as free as they would ever be, actually taking wages for their services. It wasn't quite the life of an independent trader she’d hoped for when they’d departed Edo, but at least they weren’t servicing Carlos. And they could eventually buy themselves free and purchase another starship.