On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus) (34 page)

“Be glad you didn't,” Fitz said.  He settled down on the bed, rubbing his face with his hands.  “Colonel Prather would not have been happy to see you invading his headquarters, even with an ID card that marked you as a Priority-One agent.”

He shook his head again.  “Mariko, I owe you an apology,” he said, sounding tired.  “I led you into a very dangerous situation because I underestimated my opponent.  If you want to slap me, I will understand...”

“I’ll beat you with a stick later,” Mariko promised him, mischievously.  “It wasn't your fault.”

“In hindsight, I should have been more careful, perhaps tried to recruit help from the local station,” Fitz admitted.  “I just assumed that Prather was dirty and couldn't be trusted.”

“How do you know he can be trusted now?” Mariko asked, frowning.

“I don’t,” Fitz said.  He looked up at her.  “He lost his chance to gun us both down and swear blind that it was an accident, a case of mistaken identity – such things are common when two operations, working the same problem from two different angles, collide.  But he could still be dirty.  His outrage at our operation could easily have been shock that he came so close to being exposed.  I would prefer not to have to deal with him more than necessary.”

Mariko grinned.  “Is that why you carefully didn't tell him that we have Richardson’s files?”

“You noticed,” Fitz said, grinning back at her.  “I may have to consult with Baron Yu and my...other…supporters before handing them over to Prather – perhaps copying them first so we can continue to work on them ourselves.  Prather will throw a fit about how we’re concealing data and he would be right, dirty or clean.”

“I know where we’re going next,” Mai announced, firmly.  “Paradise!”

Both Fitz and Mariko looked at her in surprise.  Fitz recovered first.  “And what makes you say that?”

“Well, since you two left me alone, I just kept number-crunching,” Mai said, a trace of resentment in her voice.  “I worked my way through all the records that Richardson was ordered to erase, seeing I figured that those were the records that had something to hide.  It took me some time to see the pattern, but half of them went directly to Paradise from Sumter.”

“Not bad,” Fitz said.  “Where did the rest go?”

Mai smiled widely. 

“Apart from two exceptions,” she said, “they went to Pechanga, Marius’s World and Freeland.  All three of them are barely ten light years from Paradise.  My guess is that they changed liners there, probably without ever setting foot on their official destinations, and headed onwards to Paradise.  It wouldn't have meant more than a couple of days delay.”

“And it would have left a false trail for anyone following them,” Fitz said.  “Where did Richardson change the records to say they were going?”

“He didn't,” Mai said.  She held up one of the datapads she’d used to read the copied records.  “He just wiped them completely.”

“And so anyone trying to follow up on it would have decided that they’d bought passage on a freighter,” Fitz muttered.  “Something which is damn near impossible to track, which is why so much attention is paid to arriving freighters.”  He smiled at Mai.  “Not bad; not bad at all.”

Mai’s smile could have lit up the entire room. 

“We’ll leave tomorrow morning, but we won’t go directly to Paradise,” Fitz ordered.  “Once we get to the ship, we’ll set a course for Marius’s World.  Almost as corrupt as Paradise, and with a great deal less reason.  I think we’re going to need a new disguise before we go any further.”

He smiled, rather coldly.  “Get some sleep, but make sure you’re up early tomorrow morning,” he added.  “Knowing the customs here, we could spend hours being cleared for transit through the wormhole to Marius’s World.”

“Yes,
dad
,” Mariko said.

Fitz chuckled at the weak joke.  “And once we’re in orbit, remind me to take a proper look at your hand,” he said.  “I don’t trust half the doctors on the surface these days.  You never know who credited them and confirmed that they were actual doctors.”

“But they worked for Imperial Intelligence,” Mariko protested.

“You haven’t met all of the doctors who work for Imperial Intelligence,” Fitz said, darkly.  “When they get together, they’re more murderous than an entire Marine Division armed to the teeth.”

“We’re still having to wait,” Mai called
. “I think we’re at least number nineteen.”

“Typical,” Fitz commented.  “I wonder who bribed the dispatcher to let them move ahead in the list.”

The trip up from Sumter had been surprisingly quick, which puzzled them all.  Fitz’s best guess was that Colonel Prather had figured out their cover identities and quietly ordered the customs officials to expedite their departure. 

Mariko shivered slightly as he moved a tiny scanner over her hand. 

“They did a good job of repairing the damage,” he said.  “Some minor swelling, but a brief injection of nanites will help deal with that.”  He opened a secure cabinet and removed an injector and a tiny tube of nanites.  It was chilling to realise that there were
billions
of the tiny machines inside a tube smaller than her little finger.  “And how about your mental health?”

“You heard me screaming,” Mariko said.  It wasn't a question.  She’d had nightmares the previous night, and woke up with Mai trying to comfort her.  “Is that common in the intelligence world, too?”

“More common among analysts than operatives,” Fitz said. “They’re the ones who sit around dreaming up horror stories from tiny fragments of enemy operations, often demanding a bigger budget from the Grand Senate in the hopes of fixing even a tiny percentage of the gaping holes in our defences.  The bastards normally turn to coffee, drink and drugs in the hopes of stopping the nightmares.”

He finished programming the nanites and pushed the injector against Mariko’s hand.  There was a tiny sting, then nothing as the machines were shot into her bloodstream.  The nanites would carry out their work and then disintegrate, leaving no trace behind. 

He shrugged.  “A psychologist would probably say that you should be on the bench for a while, but I’ve never had any faith in a profession that can twist a perfectly ordinary dream into a mental condition requiring years upon years of expensive therapy.  How do
you
feel?”

“I want to see this through to the end,” Mariko said, standing upright.  “How about yourself?”

“I don’t think it ever ends,” Fitz admitted.  “Being in the Guards was simple compared to operating as a trouble-shooter out here, along the Rim.  At least then I didn't have to worry about a knife in the back.”

Mariko nodded.  “I meant to ask you.  Can an unaugmented person defeat someone who
has
been augmented?”

“Not unless the augmented person deliberately wants to lose,” Fitz said, after giving her a sharp look that suggested he was questioning her motives.  “Even the merest form of augmentation includes massive strength enhancement and neural computers to help the augmented man come to terms with his new status.  We used to have a whole string of incidents when newly-augmented personnel would shake hands with unaugmented personnel and accidentally crush their hands because they didn't fully understand their own strength.  Now, we push them through all kinds of tests and simulations first before letting them out into the real world.”

“Sounds like fun,” Mariko said, dryly.

“It was a nightmare,” Fitz said.  “They treat you as a child with superhuman strength, a mixture of fear and condescension.  Every test has to be completed. If you refuse to cooperate, you can be threatened with having your augments removed.”  He shook his head.  “More advanced augments get reinforced muscles and bones, quick-healing nanotech, implanted weapons...even some experimental systems that allow them to exist unprotected in space for a time.  The laws against creating new cyborgs are bent in our case, for all sorts of reasons.  Some of the
really
dangerous augments have battle-analysis software in their minds.  They run through a thousand possible versions of a fight before they throw the first punch.”

Mariko looked over at him and saw the pain on his face. 

“The whole process hurts,” he added.  “They don’t tell you that until it’s too late.”

“I’m sorry,” Mariko said, honestly.  “I didn't realise.”

“It isn't something commonly advertised,” Fitz said, dryly.  He shrugged.  “If your unaugmented fighter is allowed weapons, it gets a little easier.  Even the fastest augment can't outrun a laser beam, or see it coming before it hits.  Automated sentry computers can respond to augmented speed far quicker than a flesh and blood human brain.  Tricks like capture webbing can turn an augment’s strength into a weakness; I would have been in deep shit without you being there earlier.  And the right sort of suppression field could neutralise most of the implants without actually harming the augmented person.  Augments aren't superhuman – hell, do you know the percentage of the population that can actually take the full augmentation package?”

Mariko shook her head. 

“Less than a percent of a percent,” Fitz admitted, as he stood up.  “Which should give us a few million out of the Imperium’s trillions, but it doesn't seem to be that easy.  The precise number of augments is classified...yet I’d be surprised if there were more than five hundred thousand running around in the entire Imperium.  Nowhere near enough to solve all of our woes.”

“And some of them think they
can
solve all of our woes,” Mariko guessed.

“It’s happened,” Fitz agreed.  “The Cyborgs of Calculus should have shown us the danger in that line of thinking, but some augmented men aren't smart enough to realise that it’s a recipe for disaster.  As if we didn't have enough problems.”

He helped her to her feet and turned his back as she pulled her shipsuit back on. 

“I think your sister is getting impatient up there,” he added, as he headed for the hatch.  “We’d better go help her before she gets suspicious.”

Mariko rolled her eyes. 
Men
!

***

There seemed to be a small armada of ships making their way from Sumter to Marius’s World, something that puzzled Mariko until she realised that they probably didn't intend to stop at the notoriously corrupt planet.  Using the wormhole would get them across thirty light years in a split second, making it impossible for them to be intercepted by pirates or hijacked by various resistance movements.  The simplest way to hijack a passenger liner was still to get infiltrators on board in the disguise of passengers or staff, which was at least partly why the Imperium searched passengers carefully.  A team of hijackers could fly their captured prize to a desolate star system where it could be looted at leisure, before being dispatched into the sun or simply abandoned in an unstable orbit.

“They’ve given us clearance,” Mai said, as they entered the bridge.  “Finally!  What were they doing over there with themselves?”

“As private parts to the customs officers are we, they play with us for their sport,” Fitz intoned, dramatically.  Mariko shot him a sharp glance before realising that he was still technically their boss, even if he was also their friend.  “Someone probably just kept offering bribes to get earlier transit clearance, while those of us who decided to be honest had to wait.”

The wormhole appeared in front of them and – again – there was an uncanny sense of
falling
, before they popped out on the far end.  Here, there were almost no Imperial Customs Officers enforcing the Imperium’s laws, just a pair of gunboats that tried to keep traffic from ramming each other. 

Mariko took the helm and steered towards Marius’s World, unsure why they wouldn't try to take advantage of the wormhole in their sector.  But it wouldn't have been particularly politic, she told herself.  Marius the First might have been a ruthless bastard with his eye on the Imperial Throne, but his descendents knew better than to irritate the current Emperor – and the Grand Senators who controlled him.  They’d be squashed like bugs if they decided they wanted to try to make another bid for the Imperium.