On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus) (16 page)

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.”

“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 mother 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.

“We would like to stay with you,” she said, shortly.  Fitz smiled, in delight or relief; she couldn't tell which.  “What do you intend to do on Greenland?”

Fitz grinned at her. 

“Ideally, pick up a line that should lead me to another recruiting centre,” he said.  “It’s difficult to be sure, of course, but Greenland is definitely a good place for anti-Imperium rebels to be recruiting.  Auntie Jo may not have even scraped the surface when she started worrying about the prospects of real trouble on her world.”

Mariko sat down beside him and studied the star chart.  “Was it worth...what I did to get the information?”

“I’m not sure,” Fitz admitted.  “There was a routine programmed into the system which would automatically handle certain incoming freighters, without letting the operators know that the freighters were even there.  That’s dangerous as all hell on a system like Homeworld, with hundreds of thousands of ships visiting every day, but reasonably safe on a planet like Tuff.  The freighters were even stacked up on the other side of the planet from the complex – not a perfect way to hide anything, yet more than good enough.  Very few visitors would see any reason to question OTC’s account of what was going on in orbit.”

He shook his head.  “Assuming the worst, seventeen bulk freighters visited the system within the last three months that could have been bringing in new recruits from somewhere else,” he added.  “That suggests an army numbering in the millions, one that is likely to be a serious headache for even the Imperial Marines.  But if that’s the case, why haven’t we heard anything by now?”

Mariko considered.  “The longer they have the army without using it, the greater the chance of someone stumbling across their existence?”

“Even so,” Fitz agreed.  “Of course, they could be hiding their army in interstellar space, or on one of the primitive worlds without even a token presence from the Imperium, but it’s still risky.  That suggests that there’s a timetable here we can’t see yet.  Why
would
they risk a delay when every day they wait increases the chances of discovery?”

“I don’t know,” Mariko admitted.  All of the possible explanations seemed to fail when exposed to logic and reason.  “Perhaps Lady Mary intends to take the war directly to Homeworld...?”

“She’d have to be insane.” Fitz grunted.  “Even in these days, Homeworld and the Core Sector are the most heavily defended worlds in the galaxy.  The strongest units of the Imperial Navy are based in orbit around Homeworld and there is a massive Imperial Marine presence backing them up.  There’s no way they’d get through that kind of firepower and survive.  Besides, it would take years to get there without the wormhole network and ships heading to Homeworld are always searched first.”

He shook his head.  “I hate this moment,” he told her.  “The sense of seeing part of the puzzle, but not all of it – not even enough to be sure that you’re not just looking at the tip of the iceberg.”

Mariko placed a hand on his shoulder, feeling the muscles under his skin.  “Can you tell where the freighters came from?”

“I can tell you where they
officially
came from, according to the manifests hidden within the OTC system – Jericho,” Fitz said.  “But they could have altered course at any point once they left the system.  They could be going anywhere, and no one would know for sure.”

He shook his head.  “I’ll see what we turn up on Greenland,” he said.  “Until then, it’s time to get you checked out on some of the equipment on this ship.”  He grinned, in a boyish manner that made him looked younger than Mai.  “Some of the toys I have here are really
cool
.”

***

“I feel naked,” Mariko said, twenty minutes later.  “Why do I feel naked?”

“Because the suit is clinging to your body,” Fitz said.  Mariko looked down at herself and flushed again.  Her nipples were clearly outlined against the black material that made up the suit.  Every curve of her body was visible to his inspection.  She felt even more exposed than when they’d both been naked and showering together.  “It’s actually only a bare few millimetres thick, but it provides a surprising amount of protection from energy weapons fire and active sensor sweeps.”

He looked over at Mai, who was struggling with her own suit.  “Relax and let it adapt to you,” he said, firmly.  “It won’t fit properly unless you give it a chance to adapt.”

Mai was flushing even brighter than Mariko, ashamed of what she was wearing.  Fitz, on the other hand, seemed to be completely professional, barely glancing at them long enough to be sure that they were donning the suits properly.  Mariko did her best to relax and tried moving inside the suit; it moved almost as smoothly as if she were genuinely naked.  The garment seemed to be adjusting to her surroundings, its colour changing to match the images displayed by the holochamber.  She would be almost impossible to spot once she donned the hood and slipped into the darkness, or even against a patterned background.  If they’d been wearing th
is on their trip into the jungle, they would never have been spotted by the guard.

“They have a chameleon effect, but it isn't perfect,” Fitz said.  “You can spend the next two days practicing until you understand just how they work – and when they don’t work very well.  A standard sensor network won’t notice you unless you get very unlucky, but an advanced sensor network will probably deduce your existence through subtle clues and start vectoring security guards towards you.  Leaving a trail of footprints behind you would be very careless, for example.”

He chuckled as he passed Mariko the hood.  Pulling it on was difficult, for there were no eyeholes or even anywhere for her to breathe.  She started to panic before she realised that she could breathe right through the material, almost as if there wasn't anything covering her mouth at all.  Pressing a finger against the suit, she could feel
something
blocking her path to her mouth, something that felt too strong to allow oxygen to pass through the material.  Her vision cleared suddenly and she found herself looking at Mai, who was little more than a dark shadow.  And then the chameleon effect cut in and her sister became almost invisible. 

“The suit automatically filters the atmosphere for you, allowing you to breathe even if the enemy fills the area with nerve gas,” Fitz said, “but it won’t supply you with oxygen if there isn't any in the air.  You will need to take oxygen packs with you if you suspect that you will be going into vacuum.  It’s also tough enough to withstand a standard knife, but a monofilament blade will cut right through it as if it were made of paper.  Someone who tries to cut the suit slowly, instead of through naked force, will also manage to stick a knife into your body.  There are training simulations in this holochamber and I expect you to work your way through them.”

He shrugged.  “Take off your hoods,” he ordered. 

Mariko obeyed, not without a sensation of relief. 

“The other thing you need to practice with are the stealth battlesuits,” he told them. “If you will come with me...?”