On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus) (26 page)

“Two more ships to go,” Mai commented, which brought Mariko out of her thoughts.  “And then it’s us.”

The ring was now visible with the naked eye, glowing with eerie energy that seemed to build to a crescendo as the starships approached the singularity and vanished in a flash of light.  It wasn't the largest construction built by humanity in space – the Imperial Palace, in orbit around Homeworld, was much larger – but it was easily the most impressive.  She was suddenly aware that Fitz had joined them on the bridge, strapping himself into the command chair as the countdown ticked down the final few seconds.  He probably hadn't seen many wormholes either.

“Here we go,” Mai said.  “Three...two...one...zero.”

Mariko braced herself as a faint sensation ran through the ship.  For a moment, she was convinced that they were falling down an endless rabbit hole, before the stars blinked around them. 

Of course the star patterns are different,
she thought scornfully. 
We just travelled seventy light years in a single second.
 

Behind them, the wormhole junction flickered and another starship emerged.  The automated systems had already thrust them away from the gate, but she took control and put some additional distance between them and the following ship.  It was rare for starships to collide, outside deliberate ramming actions, yet it was alarmingly possible near a wormhole.  Too many starships trying to enter the same area of space.

“Impressive,” Fitz murmured.  “I never get tired of seeing the junction.”

“It’s very impressive,” Mai agreed.  “Do you think they’d give me a look at the generators if I asked nicely?”

“Only if you want to spend the rest of your life on a penal world,” Fitz said, dryly.  “They guard their secrets very carefully.”

Mariko shrugged.  The wormhole gate at Karats had been impressive, but the wormhole junction was something else.  It was an entire series of gates, rotating around a central core that seemed to flicker in and out of existence every four seconds.  Her mother had used balls of wool to knit when she’d been taking a break from bringing up two very untraditional children and the junction reminded her of them.  There were no less than twenty-four gates worked into the junction, nineteen of them leading to works within the Sumter Sector itself.  The remaining five reached further out, connecting with other sectors in a chain that eventually led back to Homeworld itself.  A starship with emergency priority could cross the entire Imperium in a chain of jumps within days. 

“I'm picking up a message from OTC,” Mai said, as one of her consoles started to beep.  “They’re demanding a full accounting of us before they can allow us to proceed any further.”

“Shoot them our IFF and priority codes,” Fitz said. 

A pair of gunboats swooped towards the
Bruce Wayne
, their weapons ready to open fire on a ship that refused to cooperate.  Behind them, there was a small flotilla of destroyers maintaining patrol around the junction. 

Oddly, Mariko felt reassured.  Sumter was the one system in the sector that the Imperium could not afford to lose, so it was good to know that the Imperial Navy was taking good care of it. 

“They should agree to let us enter orbit without searching the ship,” Fitz put in after a pause.

Mariko looked at him.  “And what if they insist on searching us?”

“We have to wave the cards under their noses,” Fitz said, “and
that
will attract attention.”

“They’re backing off,” Mai said.  “And they’ve dumped us one hell of a lot of forms they expect us to fill in before we can land on the planet.”

“Typical,” Fitz said.  He picked up a datapad and downloaded the forms to it.  “I’ll read through them, fill them out and then upload them for their attention.”

“If any of them pay any attention to them at all,” Mai muttered.  She had less patience with officialdom than Mariko.  “Do you think they’ll just throw them in the electronic shredder and forget about them?”

“Of course not,” Fitz said.  “They will have the papers scanned by an expert program, which will blink up an alert if there’s anything wrong with them.”  He smiled.  “
Now
do you see why someone in Richardson’s place is so dangerous?”

***

Sumter had only been settled for three hundred years, but it was already the most densely-populated planet in the sector, according to the welcome pack transmitted by the gunboats.  Five million humans – there were no figures on alien settlers – had moved to Sumter to enjoy the greatest economic opportunities since the first expansion into space, a claim that had Mariko shaking her head in disbelief.  As the Sector Capital, Sumter was assured of a great deal of development, but there was so much paperwork that it was hard to imagine that anything actually got done.  A semi-autonomous world like Karats would be more likely to enjoy unbridled economic growth, assuming it discarded most of the red tape that kept the Imperium from developing too quickly. 

The planet was orbited by a dozen orbital stations, a medium-sized shipyard and a single
, brooding orbital fortress.  A quick check revealed that the Sector Governor and the Sector Admiral, the man charged with defending the entire sector against secessionists, alien rebels and outside threats, made their homes on the fortress.  Perhaps they had good reason to fear that Sumter wasn't as safe as the welcome pack claimed.

Mariko worked her way through the paperwork with a sigh, even though she was mainly checking Fitz’s work.  The bureaucrats wanted to know everything about the
Wally West
, starting with her last five ports of call and her crew’s medical records.  There
was
a danger that a cross-species infection could spread from world to world on starships, but the threat was vastly overstated, providing nothing more than an excuse to harass shippers until they agreed to pay a bribe.  Fitz had filled in most of the sections by citing Interstellar Couriers’ specific shipping regulations, which asserted that all security precautions had been taken without actually providing any details.  It was something that would probably annoy the paper-pushers on the ground, but it wouldn't actually give them an excuse to deny them entry.  The last thing the Governor would want was someone with as many connections as Interstellar Couriers yanking on his chain, demanding that the bureaucrats be unceremoniously removed from office.

Even posing as Interstellar Couriers, they hadn't been given a low planetary orbit, but a high one well outside weapons range.  That wasn't too surprising, she had to admit; any naval commander worth his rank would hesitate to allow an unchecked ship anywhere near vulnerable installations in orbit around the planet. 

“Done,” she said, finally.  “You think they’ll let us land without further ado?”

“I think they’ll insist on checking us thoroughly,” Fitz said.  “It would probably be quicker to get a smuggler to slip us down to the surface, but there’s no need to be covert just yet.”

Mariko nodded and headed off to prepare the shuttle.  Fitz had warned her to be careful what she packed outside the concealed compartments, noting that the shuttle was almost certain to be searched by the locals before they were allowed to leave the spaceport.  Even Interstellar Couriers wouldn't be allowed
too
many liberties.  The guns and a handful of tools Fitz had insisted on bringing with him should be well hidden.  Their clothing included some of the sexy underwear that they’d picked up on Dorado, in the hopes that it would distract the searchers.  Mariko remembered watching customs officers pawing through her bags on her first port of call and suspected that they would do the same thing here.

Twenty minutes later, once the autopilot had been brought online and carefully checked, she took the helm of the standard shuttle and steered it down towards the planet.  Sumter’s OTC was paranoid, compared to Dorado or Greenland, as they sent her a single course and warned that any deviation would result in weapons being locked on her shuttle; if she then did not resume the stated course, they would immediately destroy the shuttle.  It seemed far too paranoid of a policy, although Fitz seemed to take it in stride.  A single shuttle that crashed in the wrong place could do a great deal of damage. 

Terrorists were very fond of that tactic.

Sumter City was a giant domed edifice, a reminder that even after three hundred years the planet hadn't been fully terraformed.  Mariko couldn't understand why the Imperium hadn't chosen a more habitable world – like Karats – before realising that all of those worlds would have had settlers who had fled the Imperium in the past in the hopes of escaping its grip.  The Sector Capital couldn't be allowed a resentful and bitter underclass, although as they flew over smaller domes surrounding the city dome she realised that one had developed anyway.  There would be thousands of aliens who had come in search of a new life, only to discover that they were – at best – second-class citizens of Sumter.  And there must be plenty of humans who felt the same way.

The spaceport came into view and she guided the shuttle towards the landing pad that had been specifically earmarked for them.  Mai rolled her eyes as the intercom suddenly barked out a series of orders and threats from OTC, ordering them to move to a different pad and land within two minutes.  Mariko ignored the threats and did her best to follow orders, although she couldn’t see any reason for the change.  Maybe they were just trying to annoy the Interstellar Couriers.  It was as good a theory as any other. 

The moment they touched down, the landing pad started to rotate before sliding down a long shaft.  Mariko looked up as a solid hatch closed high overhead, blocking their escape back to the ship.  They were trapped.

“They’ll move the shuttle into a private compartment,” Fitz said.  He didn't seem surprised.  “They don’t let people stay in their own shuttles overnight.  Officially, it’s for security reasons, but I suspect that they probably get kickbacks from the local hotel managers.  Even if your business can be concluded within a day, they still expect you to book lodging in the city overnight.”

“Money talks, common sense walks,” Mariko said.

“Exactly,” Fitz agreed.  The shuttle came to a halt facing what looked like a secured airlock, with an access tube that reached out towards them.  “We’ll have to leave most of our tools in the secure compartment for the moment.  Depending on the situation on the surface, we may have to come back and pay extra for access to our shuttle.”

“Bastards,” Mai commented.  “Do they
want
to convince people not to visit Sumter?”

“The juniors see the seniors profiting from corruption on a much greater scale and wonder why they should bother following the rules,” Fitz said.  “Shoot a few thousand corrupt officials and they would be replaced within the day.  Even E Branch has problems tracking everyone who might be corrupt.  Outside the Marines and a handful of other elite units, corruption is a major problem – and one that is rarely acknowledged, let alone challenged.”

He stood up as the access tube mated with the shuttle’s airlock.  “We’ll go to the hotel directly after this,” he added.  “You’ll want a shower after they finish pawing you.”

Mariko looked over at him as she picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder.  How bad could it be?

***

The answer turned out to be pretty bad. 

As soon as they stepped off the shuttle, they were separated by sex, leaving Fitz striding off down a separate corridor with a jaunty air.  Mariko and Mai looked at each other and then walked down the female corridor, into a room with four female officers with bored expressions.  Their bags were scanned, searched and then passed through a secure barrier, leaving the girls separated from their bags.  A moment later, they were urged into a scanner which seemed to leave their teeth vibrating in their mouths, before their prints were checked against the planet’s records of wanted criminals.  It was several minutes before the guards reluctantly conceded that they weren't on the list of people to be arrested on sight, or transferred to the next starship leaving the planet for another world. 

That would have been enough on any other world, but Sumter clearly operated under different rules. 

The guards bounced questions off them quickly, demanding to know where they’d been last and where they were going, leaving Mariko to fall back on the reminder that Interstellar Couriers had special
dispensation to keep their shipping destinations secret.  They didn't seem to like that reminder, but didn't press it too far, something that puzzled her until she realised that they knew just how much clout Interstellar Couriers had.  The guards could lose their posts, or be automatically reclassified as Indents, if they pushed hard enough for Interstellar Couriers to make an official complaint.