On The Imperium's Secret Service

Much better, can you fix the other ones too please? I like how your female protagonist is intelligent, but I'm wondering if anyone else thinks she's being calm as a result of augmentations rather than personality?

Chapter Nine



Mai was still asleep, Mariko realised with some relief. Explaining why she looked muddy, why they both looked muddy, would have been beyond her. The exhaustion hadn't hit her until they’d stumbled into the cabin, barely bothering to glance around to check if anyone was watching for their return. She left a set of muddy tracks on the floor as she headed towards the bedroom, before Fitz put a hand on her arm.



“You don’t want to shower in there,” he said, seriously. Mariko realised that he was right. Leaving the shower muddy would have tipped her sister off that something was wrong – although she would have to tell Mai sooner rather than later. She’d already gotten Mai into deep trouble once by accident and she didn't want to do it again. “Come and share mine. I have a maidbot to clear up the mess.”



A day ago, she would have taken that for an invitation to share more than just a shower, but now she realised that Fitz was far more complex than he appeared. She followed him into his suite and realised, not entirely to her surprise, that he had a far larger washroom than his retainers. The shower looked large enough to hold ten oversized men comfortably and there was a bathtub that could have held four people, provided they didn't mind being intimate. Fitz turned on the shower and warm water cascaded down from high overhead as Mariko struggled to take off her overalls. She was too tired to worry about modesty right now. Fitz didn't even seem to be interested in sneaking a peek.



“Just ditch them in the disposal bin,” Fitz advised, as she finally managed to pull off her sodden trousers. “There’s no point in trying to wash them here and if we hand them over to the laundry staff they’ll know what we were doing. We can get you another pair later.”



“Thank you,” Mariko said, thickly. She hadn’t even considered the possibility that their clothes might betray them. But then, it had only been three hours since she’d set out to follow Fitz. It felt like years. “What about your...outfit?”



“It can be washed in the shower and then returned to the ship,” Fitz said. He stepped past her, still dressed, and into the curtain of water. Mud ran off his outfit as he slowly undressed, spiralling down towards the plughole. Mariko wondered suddenly if the mud in the water would also betray them, before realising that the whole complex ran largely on automated systems. They wouldn't notice anything unexpected in the water as they purified it and returned it to the storage tanks. “Come on in. The water’s lovely.”



It felt almost too hot for Mariko, but she followed him in anyway, picking up a soapy brush and using it to scrub at her body. Fitz kept his back turned to her, leaving her feeling faintly ashamed for looking at him, but he was worth looking at. She hadn't seen him lift anything heavier than a martini glass, yet the muscles under his skin were as hard as steel and there were a handful of faint scars that suggested that he’d led a more active life than his public persona would admit. There were even faint traces suggesting that he had been augmented, perhaps as much as an Imperial Marine or a Bloody Blade. Direct augmentation was rare outside the military, even for the aristocracy. It hadn't been that long since the Cyborgs of Calculus had made their own bid for power, once they’d created a hive mind from thousands of unwilling human subjects. The old taboos still remained.



After everything they’d gone though, she suddenly found it easy to feel desire again, to want to take him in her arms and see where it would lead. He was attractive – and he was clearly far more than just a playboy. But she pushed the impulse aside, ruthlessly. She didn’t know what was going on with Fitz, or on Tuff itself. Who knew who had really raised the army in the jungle?



“You shouldn't have followed me,” Fitz said. He was holding a small device in his hand, one that she vaguely recognised as a counter-bugging system. “I told you that it was dangerous out there.”



“Yes, Milord,” Mariko said, repentantly. He was right, after all. But without her, would he have made it back alive? He probably would have done. His story about being in the Guards had to be literal truth, even if it was incomplete. He would probably have managed to avoid attracting attention altogether if he hadn’t had to worry about her. “What was that army doing there?”



“I wish I knew,” Fitz admitted. He looked at her for a long moment, the light playfulness gone from his eyes. The stranger looking at her was far more dangerous than anyone else she’d met in her entire life, even Carlos. “I picked up a rumour on Diaphone and followed it to Dorado, but my attempt to track it down cost my ally his life. Don’s life wasn't worth what few clues I managed to salvage. I couldn't even recover his body for a proper burial back home.”



“Your former pilot,” Mariko guessed. Fitz nodded. “That’s why you needed us, isn’t it? You needed to maintain a cover of aristocratic uselessness.”



Fitz chuckled. “Something like that,” he agreed, with another glance at his counter-bugging device. “If I’d actually been identified as Don’s partner, I would have had to haul ass out of there and sneaked back in through another starship, probably with a much better disguise. But instead I got to maintain my cover...”



“Unless they did penetrate it and just wanted to see what you would do,” Mariko said, slowly. She had read enough spy novels to know how the business worked. “They might have been looking for your contacts...”



“Nothing is ever certain in this business,” Fitz agreed, sardonically. “Yes, they might have identified me. But the alternative is pulling out and hoping that someone else will be able to figure out what’s going on here before it explodes in our face.”



He shook his head. “Two more minutes before the bugs in this compartment penetrate my cover,” he said. “Luckily, they’ll assume that we were sharing some pleasure instead of talking about anything else.” He turned and winked at her. “Don’t say anything else out loud until we’re back on the ship. You never know who might be listening.”



Mariko was shocked. “Lady Mary bugs her own guests?”



“It’s the simplest way to get inside information she can use,” Fitz said. “Just because she’s thousands of light years from Homeworld doesn't mean that she’s not interested. And everyone knows it, of course. Sorting out the truth from the deliberate falsehoods will take her weeks, if not months. Luckily, everyone knows that Lord Fitz is pretty much useless...”



He patted her shoulder, a curiously intimate gesture. “I’ll tell you everything once we’re back on the ship,” he promised. “Until then, keep your mouth shut, even when you think you are alone. Understand?”



“Yes, Milord,” Mariko said. She stepped out of the shower and started to dry herself with a towel. “I won’t say anything, even to Mai.”



***

“Wake up,” Mai said. It felt like seconds after Mariko’s head had hit the pillow and she’d closed her eyes. Her dreams had tormented her, constantly reminding her of how much could have gone wrong when she’d followed Fitz, or what could still go wrong in the future. They might be in worse danger than they’d been when Carlos had arranged for them to be enslaved and indentured to him. “Come on, lazy bones. Wake up!”



Mariko pulled herself out of bed, biting down the reaction that came to mind. Mai had had nine hours to sleep; Mariko had barely had four before it was time to wake up. Sunlight was streaming in through the window, bright enough to dispel everything that had happened last night as a dream...except that her overalls were missing and her body ached everywhere. She staggered into the shower, washed herself thoroughly, and then dressed in the safari outfits provided by Lady Mary’s people. A tight shirt, so tight that it displayed the outlines of her breasts for all to see; a pair of shorts and a single metal hat. None of the outfit suggested that it would provide much protection against wild animals, let alone humans with guns and bad intentions, but perhaps that was the point. Tuff’s dangerous reputation only added to the thrill the aristocracy felt at hunting in the planet-wide jungle.



She’d felt absurdly self-conscious in the tight shirt until she realised that it was actually one of the more modest outfits in the complex. The twins, who had been making eyes at Fitz as if they expected him to drop everything and jump into bed with them, wore outfits that only covered their nipples and the little patch of hair between their thighs. They made throngs seem modest...and they weren't even the most exposed! A handful of girls who were clearly servitors, rather than aristocrats, wore skirts made out of leaves and left their bare breasts visible for all to see. Mariko couldn't decide if they were dressed that way to add a primitiveness to the entire scene, or if someone had ordered them to lure as many of the older aristocrats into bed as possible. Who knew what some indiscreet pillow talk could tell Lady Mary?



“Come along,” Fitz said. He too was wearing a safari outfit, although she noticed that his managed to cover up the little hints of augmentation that would be visible to a skilled eye. “We’d better get some breakfast before it all goes down Lord Randolph. He just comes here for the food.”



Mariko smelled the food on the mansion lawn before she actually saw it. Great carcasses, some from animals she didn't recognise, were being roasted over vast fires powered by locally-gathered firewood. A hundred tables had been set out for the eaters, although most of the aristocrats seemed to prefer to walk around carrying their plates so they could talk to friends and cut enemies dead. One man, wearing black robes and a grey hat, was merely sitting at the end table, scowling around him with an expression of fixed doom and gloom. Mariko couldn't understand what he was doing there, or why he was scowling. Did he think that the revelry was going too far?



“He’s a denier,” Fitz said, as they queued for great steaming hunks of meat. “His family has been pushing for reform for the last seven hundred years. They might have made headway if they hadn't been so keen on granting aliens more rights than they generally get under the Imperium’s Constitution. Instead, they get cut out of every social occasion worth mentioning. If they weren't so rich and powerful, someone would probably have accused them of treason by now.”



Mariko looked over at the Denier and then back at Fitz. “So why is he here?”



“Maybe it’s a way to remind people that his family still has power,” Fitz said. “Or maybe he’s here to strike a private deal with Lady Mary. Anything is possible here.”



Mariko said nothing, but she thought hard. Whoever had built the army in the jungle clearly didn't care about the laws forbidding giving aliens weapons. And the Deniers clearly wanted to grant aliens more rights. Could there be a connection there? She looked out over the field of aristocracy and began to see patterns. Some aristocrats stayed close together, sharing meaningless chatter about nothing as they ate their food; others refused to even look at other groups, as if they were reluctant to even acknowledge their existence. Fitz seemed to be among the few who could move from group to group without incurring any enmity, although few of their conversations were important. Most of them seemed to want to chat about the upcoming hunt, as though they had already single-handedly slaughtered most of the planet’s animals already. Mariko looked over at the forbidding jungle and wondered how many of them would survive the day. Most of them, probably. The hunters would have guns, motion sensors and other advantages the animals couldn't duplicate, no matter how intelligent they were.



“I tell you, Fitz, there’s nothing that beats the lakes on Poseidon,” one young aristocrat said. He’d captured two of the serving girls and was playing with them while stuffing himself open meat and bread. The girls didn't look too keen on being the subject of his attentions, but at least they weren't being forced to serve drinks and appear pretty for the guests. “Moonlight on Poseidon; you’ll be sure to find a pair of legs opening for you, it’s so romantic. And then you are guaranteed a night of pleasure on one of their boats.”



He laughed as he quaffed something that smelled like a strong ale. “Or they have the craziest boat drivers in the universe,” he added, with another laugh. “You’ll be sure not to keep your lunch if you eat before boating...”



“The Master is correct,” a dour-faced man said, beside him. “Poseidon is known for its boating adventures.”



Fitz nodded, smiled politely, and left the young aristocrat to his breakfast, walking towards an older-looking woman who had clearly decided to forgo the body-shaping that gave Lady Mary and her fellows the bodies of younger women. “Four more attacks in as many months,” she said. “I’m telling you, Fitz; they just don’t take the Rebel seriously. Those damned Secessionists are cutting right into Archie’s profits.”



“They are a concern,” Fitz agreed, calmly. “I am sure that Archie is doing what he can to alert Admiral Von Rutherford about the dangers.”



“But he isn't taking it seriously,” the woman insisted. “Admiral Von Rutherford is convinced – convinced, I tell you – that the Rebel is just another charismatic figure intent on screwing the BEMs out of everything he can before disappearing into the underground. I think that he’s doing a damn good job of pretending to be a rebel if that’s all he is. And Archie doesn't really want to rock the boat. Just because Admiral Stupid is a relative of his on his mother’s side, he thinks that he shouldn't press too hard. What is going to make him wake up? The presence of subversives on Greenland itself?”



“Perhaps I should visit,” Fitz said, after a long moment. “Greenland is not too far off my course and I could make an assessment for myself. Admiral Von Rutherford might listen to me when he won’t listen to Archie.”



Mariko listened in private amusement, realising that Fitz had been angling for the invitation to Greenland all along. She didn't know much about the planet, if only because she hadn't considered it as a possible destination, but judging from the woman’s claims it was probably owned directly by the aristocracy or an aristocracy-dominated corporation.



“I’d be delighted to have you visit,” the lady said. “Archie will be happy to see you – he might not listen to me, although I am related to the Childe Roland by blood, but he will listen to you.”



“Certainly, Auntie Jo,” Fitz said. “I will be more than happy to assist you.”



The trumpets blew before he could visit anyone else. Lady Mary’s team of attendants were bringing out the neo-elephants, colossal creatures genetically altered by Tuff to be faster, smarter and more capable than their cousins on Homeworld or Eden, the garden planet near Homeworld. Each elephant carried a single box, which would hold a dozen aristocrats with guns and bad intentions towards the local wildlife. Mariko found herself wondering if the elephants would make such a racket that most wildlife would head in the opposite direction as fast as possible, before remembering that Tuff had programmed the wildlife he’d created and seeded to be extremely aggressive. The shortage of safety precautions only added to the thrill, as far as the aristocrats were concerned. Judging by the looks shared by some of the attendants, they were rather more worried about losing an aristocrat on their watch than the aristocrats were about getting killed. Even if the standard safety precautions had been legally omitted, they might still be blamed if the dead man was important or well-connected enough.



“I booked one of the smaller safari expeditions,” Fitz said, leading them over towards a pair of seven elephants. Mariko honestly couldn't see how they were intended to climb up to the box until one of the attendants pressed a ladder against the beast’s skin. The elephant eyed them with disturbingly human eyes as they scrambled up the ladder and into the box, which moved from side to side as the elephant stamped his feet. “I trust that neither of you get seasick?”



Mariko swallowed hard as the elephant lurched into life, heading down towards the gates that marked the pathway through the jungle. They would be heading away from the lava pools, she realised with some relief, away from anyone who might have seen them last night. The elephant trumpeted as the elephant handler – the mahout – touched it lightly with his whip, shocking him gently. She glanced back and saw the rest of the aristocracy following them, heading out into the jungle. Up close, the canopy looked even more forbidding than it had done in darkness, even if they were proceeding along a road, of sorts.



“Take your gun,” Fitz said, producing his own and checking it quickly. “Remember; you see something, shoot it first and worry if you were right later. Some of the creatures here are very dangerous.”



“And some pretend to be human,” the mahout added. “Anyone not wearing clothes is almost certainly fair game.”



Mariko and Mai exchanged glances. Would the twins be shot because they weren't wearing enough clothes? That would be embarrassing for Lady Mary and her cronies to explain.



Fitz shrugged. “Try not to shoot anyone important,” he said, lightly. “Their relatives will make such a fuss.”

Chapter Ten



Four days later, Mariko was getting thoroughly bored of hunting – and she could tell that Mai felt the same way. Most of the hunting trips they’d been on simply hadn't been very interesting, once she’d gotten over the thrill of shooting at half-seen shadows and seeing shapes thumping to the ground, only to be picked up by the handlers accompanying the shooters on their elephants. Some of the more dangerous safaris were closed to them; Fitz went on one of the tours and came back covered in animal blood. Mariko was actually starting to suspect that despite the hype, there were a few safety precautions that kept the less-capable shooters from coming face-to-face with dangerous animals. Or perhaps they were only allowed to go on the tours that were reasonably safe.



The aristocrats didn't seem to care. Young men exchanged lies about how many animals they’d bagged, including one who claimed to have taken a shot at a mahout and struck the poor man between his legs. His companions seemed to have found it hilariously funny. A couple of retainers were blamed openly for spoiling shots that should have certainly struck their target, or for taking shots that should have been left for their masters. Fitz, at least, didn't seem to care. He maintained a bored nonchalance that would have fooled her if she hadn't followed him into the jungle the first night. If he had gone out again and again, she didn't know. She’d just been too tired after hours of pointless hunting and shooting that she went to sleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow. Every day, she wondered if she would see him again, only to discover him emerging from his room with a grin that suggested that he was definitely looking forward to the next hunting expedition. It was a surprise, therefore, on the fifth day when he called her into his suite for a chat.



“I need you to help me with something,” he said, shortly. Mariko had been dressing for the ball in the evening and half-wondered if she’d wasted her time. “If you can do this for me, it will be the last thing I will ask you to do without filling you in completely.”



It would also be the first, Mariko noted. She hadn't really given him any choice when she’d followed him into the jungle. “I’d be happy to help,” she said, seriously. “What...are we safe to talk here?”



“Fine time to ask,” Fitz teased. “Yes, we’re safe; just try and look a little rumpled when you leave my room.” Mariko flushed, wondering how Mai would take it if she thought that she was sleeping with their employer. “But listen carefully.”



He leaned closer, as if he intended to whisper in her ear. “I’ve been monitoring the OTC system on this planet,” he said, “but I haven’t been able to hack into their system and pull a data download without setting off the alarms. I need ten minutes alone in their control room.”



Mariko nodded in understanding. “I see,” she said. OTC would have monitored starships passing through the system and landing on the planet at all times, even if some of the ships were unplanned and landing somewhere within the jungle rather than at the complex. “But how do I get you some time there alone?”



“They’re having a ball tonight,” Fitz said. “The important detail is that they will only have one person on duty – Tuff isn't Homeworld and there’s relatively little traffic coming in and out of the system, particularly at night. I need you to lure that person out of the room and distract him for at least ten minutes. After that, you should be able to let him go and return to the ball or the cabin if you want.”



Mariko frowned in puzzlement...and then suddenly understood. What would her mother say? “You want me to seduce him just to keep him out of your way?”



“Yes,” Fitz said. He had the grace to sound ashamed at what he was asking. “I wouldn't ask if there was any other way...”



“I believe you,” Mariko said, slowly. She did know a little about how OTC systems functioned. No one would want just anyone to be able to hack into the computers, or wreakers would be able to cause no small amount of chaos just by directing starships to crash into each other or slam into the planets below. The Imperium had strict laws on how the systems were supposed to work, even on isolated planets like Tuff. “And...if I do this, what will you do in exchange?”



“If you and your sister decide you don’t want to stay with me, I’ll let you both go on the next civilised world,” Fitz said. He certainly sounded sincere. “I can cancel your debts, even ensure that you have enough cash to get home or buy a new ship. But I need this done for me today. Tomorrow we have to leave the planet or eyebrows will be raised.”



“I see,” Mariko said. The thought of being a whore, even pretending to be a whore, was repulsive. And yet she’d been willing to be his whore to spare Mai the same fate. What did it say about her that she changed her principles on a daily basis? “I’ll do it for you.”



“Thank you,” Fitz said. He reached over and rumpled her dress. “See you at the ball, my dear.”



His acting was astonishingly good. Mariko wouldn't have believed that he wasn't anything more than an aristocratic playboy if she hadn't seen the transformation for herself. No wonder Fitz had been so certain that his disguise was perfect – and even though his comrade had died, no one had suspected him.



“Of course, Milord,” she said, with a curtsey. “See you at the ball.”



***

The sound of thumping music was still audible three floors above the ballroom, where live musicians played dance tunes that echoed all the way back to the years before the Imperium, at least according to Lady Mary. Some of the aristocrats had enjoyed dancing to tunes that were officially frowned upon everywhere else, as if it gave them a thrill they couldn't get through sex or hunting. Fitz had commented, rather snidely, that there were a few things forbidden to those of even the highest pedigree, which was partly why they wanted them. Drugs – including one made from processed alien flesh – and certain forms of enhancement augmentation were being passed freely around the ballroom. Mariko could only hope that Mai had the sense not to touch anything and just dance with the other retainers.



Fitz led her up a flight of stairs and down a long corridor, each doorway leading to a small bedroom where an aristocrat and his chosen partner could linger for the night, if they saw fit. A handful of doors were closed and locked, but a couple of occupied rooms were open, revealing group orgies that made Mariko blush. She’d never even considered the possibility of having more than one man at a time, let alone being part of a group that included both males and females. And there was the room with ten men and ten women, the women bent over while the men moved from woman to woman...



She looked over at Fitz, who seemed to have ignored the whole scene. “Is it always like this?”



“You tell people that the mere fact of their birth gives them licence to do as they please to those who weren't so lucky in choosing their parents and you get little monsters,” Fitz said. For once, he sounded angry rather than unconcerned. “I used to be one of them.”



Mariko looked up at him, just before he held up a hand to stop her and glanced into the next room. “That one,” he hissed. “One man in it; get him out of there.”



“Understood,” Mariko hissed. She felt herself frozen, unable to move. How could she seduce a complete stranger – and then prevent him from going all the way? “Ten minutes, you said.”



Fitz nodded and slipped into a nearby room, leaving her standing alone and twisting her fingers together. What would Mai say if she knew what her sister was about to do? What would her mother say? She’d disown Mariko on the spot; she still liked to delude herself that her daughters were virgins. And yet...the price was right, better than she had expected. Lord Fitz would probably keep his word. Under the two personas he projected to the world, there was a good, almost kind person. He could have easily taken advantage of her back on the Bruce Wayne.



She braced herself and stepped forward, walking into the OTC room. It was nowhere near as elaborate as she had been expecting, not like the worlds with regular space traffic at all hours. A single monitor tracked the ships in orbit; another kept a wary eye on flying aircars packed with hunters who thought that they would have better luck taking pot-shots from high overhead...and almost nothing tracking activity inside the complex itself. There had to be another station that monitored Lady Mary’s guests, she decided, one well-hidden from view. She wouldn't want them all to realise that she was monitoring them, would she?



The operator looked up from where he had been sitting, his feet propped up on the console in front of him, and looked over at her. Mariko had altered her dress slightly to show off more of her breasts, even pushing them forward in a manner calculated to attract attention. Despite herself, planning her presentation had almost been fun. Perhaps Fitz felt the same way when he moved between his fop and secret agent personas. The operator wasn't particularly attractive, Mariko realised, but he didn't look to be one of the sadists from down below either. She could do it!



“Hi,” she said, with a giggle she’d borrowed from the twins. It was almost easy to slip into the persona she’d designed, as if it was just another form of dress. “Are you bored up here on your own?”



The operator swallowed. “I’m afraid this place is closed to everyone, but staff,” he said, with some difficulty. It wasn't as if OTC on Tuff was particularly important, after all. “You shouldn't be here at all.”



“But I have been paid to give you a good time,” Mariko said, with a wink. His eyes dropped to her breasts and never moved from them as she came closer. He probably spent his time watching aristocratic women and the paid retainers showing off their stuff, without ever being able to touch them. Lady Mary wouldn't have bothered to consider that she should have ordered her retainers to please the rest of her staff as well. “You don’t need to stay here, you know.”



She took his hand and helped him to his feet, smiling down at him as though he was the most attractive man in the world. He staggered forward and somehow ended up with his hands pushing briefly against her breasts, before stumbling backwards as if they were made of red hot coals. Mariko fought down a giggle and took him in her arms, pushing her lips against his lips. He hesitated and then returned the kiss with surprising passion. Her guess about him having watched so many of his superiors enjoying themselves without being able to join in had to have been right. He didn't know what to do with his hands; they seemed to slide over her bottom, then jump away as if he didn't seem to realise that she was truly there for him. Oddly, the thought gave her strength as she led him out of the chamber and down the hallway to one of the open rooms. He was kissing her passionately even before she had locked the door, half-pushing her towards the bed. Like so many other young men, part of her mind noted, remembering her adventures as a younger girl, he wasn't really capable of controlling his passions.



“You don’t have to hurry,” she said, as she allowed him to pull off her dress. His fingers fumbled over the catches, before unlocking them and revealing her bare breasts to his gaze – and wandering hands. He didn't seem to be trying to hurt her, unlike the guards who had threatened to molest her in prison, something that made it easier for her to tolerate his touch. Clumsy he might be, unpleasant and evil he wasn’t. “We have all night.”



Ten minutes passed slowly as she introduced him to a few things no girl had ever done for him before. She had already determined that she wasn't going to have sex with him – she hadn't fallen that far, not yet – but she could play with him until his manhood twitched and spurted white liquid over her hand. Helping him to his feet, hiding her amusement at the shame on his face, she pulled him into the shower and washed him down, even as he tried to twist away from her. Did he think that he was the only man to have premature ejaculation, really? Men liked to claim that women had more problems with sex than they did, but Mariko suspected that it was the other way round.



“Don’t worry about it,” she whispered to him as they pulled on their clothes. His face was still glowing bright red, even though his breathing had calmed down. “We’ll see each other again.”



His eyes seemed to light up. “Really?”



“Of course,” Mariko said, feeling a flash of shame. It was a promise she would not be able to keep. What would he think when she didn't materialise at the next ball? She thought about the short-term memory loss the guard had experienced five days ago and wondered if they should do the same to him, but such a procedure had to be very risky. A simple memory scan would reveal what had happened, even if it couldn't retrieve the lost memories. “And you were very good.”



She glanced at her watch – twenty-seven minutes had gone by since she’d taken him away from his duties – and then led him out of the corridor, back to his station. There was no sign of Fitz or anyone else, but there was a single red light blinking up on the console. She felt a sudden shock, fearing that Fitz might have left some sign of his presence, before the operator tapped a control and the red light turned into a starship requesting permission to enter orbit.



“They had to wait,” he said, and started to giggle. Mariko joined him, even though she couldn't help, but feel that someone might have a few hard questions for him within an hour. “Nothing too important, just supplies from Sumter. Maybe the snobs down there will have to go without their caviar or baked spice cakes for another hour.”



Mariko frowned, inwardly. She’d been part of the interstellar trading community and she suspected that the bulk freighter taking up orbit was simply too large to be bringing supplies to a single planet. Unless, of course, they were bringing more than processed foodstuffs. Almost all planets, even the poorest in the Imperium, could produce enough food to keep their population well fed. It was rare for any world to be reliant on supplies from the outside universe. But not every world produced advanced weapons and protective armour for soldiers.



“I have to go back to the ball,” she said, sadly. She wondered if Fitz felt the same guilt when he manipulated Lady Mary or his Auntie Jo. Maybe she wasn't cut out to be a secret agent after all. “Have a good life, all right?”



She left, heading down the corridor before he could call out after her. The orgy was still going on with as much enthusiasm as ever, probably aided by nanotech supplements that delayed orgasm in men and increased orgasm in women. They too were carried from world to world by various freighters, sometimes being worth an Emperor’s ransom on worlds that had religious prohibitions against such devices. A man called out for her to join in and she hesitated, half-wondering if she was already too compromised to object to joining an orgy, before shaking her head and walking onwards. And then a shadow stepped out of another door.



“Milord,” she said, recognising Fitz. She would have preferred to be alone, but that wasn't going to happen. “I...”



Fitz winked at her, took her arm, and led her down the stairs back to the ball. It was hard, so hard, to keep a normal expression on her face, even though they were surrounded by men and women who considered her one step above an animal, if that. The care and attention that some aristocrats were prepared to lavish upon their small collections of dogs, cats and even horses never failed to surprise her. Someone could have fed an entire town on what they spent to feed their pets daily.



Everyone seemed to know...she knew she was imagining it, but their glances seemed to mock her even as she danced with Fitz. He was a good dancer, moving his feet in time with the music and smiling at her whenever she looked at him. How could he be so normal about it? He’d just carried out a data raid on Lady Mary’s OTC and he didn’t seem to even care...he just smiled at her and danced.



“We’ll go back to the ship tomorrow morning,” he whispered in her ear. He sounded as foppish as ever. “Have everything packed up for 1000.”



“Yes, Milord,” she said. She had to maintain her own act, after all. “And where are we going next?”



“I’ll let you know in the morning,” Fitz said. He’d promised to tell them other things as well, but...would he keep his promise? There was no way to know. “Get an early night. I have to speak with a few people before I go to bed.”



Mariko nodded, found Mai, and headed back to their cabin. If nothing else, perhaps they could leave him at the next civilised planet they visited. And then they could go home.

I managed to fix the first one, but the others simply refused to change. Is that a problem with the server or my net connection?

Chris

Might have to do with the post editing limits set by the board software. You'll have to PM a Mod for clarification, but it might be that too much time has passed for you to edit that post without permission. While Xenforo is a wonderful system, its new and therefore I don't know how it works.

This just elevated the story from great to awesome.

I think I've just fixed the others. Let me know if they work ok.

Chris

Everything looks great, its easy to read and doesn't look like a wall of text. Story is progressing nicely too. very Bond treatment of the sex and intrigue.

Chapter Eleven



It was surprising – or perhaps it wasn’t – just how much the Bruce Wayne felt like home. Mariko felt nothing, but relief the moment the shuttle docked and they were out of reach of a vengeful Lady Mary. If the operator had reported his little encounter with her to his mistress, might his mistress realise that Fitz had used the time to access her computers and download information she would surely prefer to remain hidden? And then what would she do? The safaris made an excellent cover for disposing of nosy intruders.



“Take us out of orbit and on a direct course for Greenland,” Fitz ordered, as soon as they had disembarked from the shuttle. He was holding a small case in his hands, but the remainder of their luggage had been left in the shuttle. They could empty it out during the voyage to Greenland and replace it with whatever they needed for that planet. “And then meet me in my cabin for a chat.”



Mariko nodded, fighting down a yawn. She hadn't really been able to sleep last night, even though she’d been exhausted. Seducing someone still felt wrong to her. Maybe she’d bought their freedom, maybe she’d won them a chance to restart their lives, but it still felt wrong. She could never discuss it with her parents, even their father. And their mother would be totally irrational about it. What if everything had gone horrendously wrong and she’d been caught?



She headed up to the bridge and checked the download from OTC. On impulse, she put it on the main screen and displayed the take from Bruce Wayne’s passive sensors against the official list. Two starships had been tracked entering low orbit that hadn't been included on the direct download from OTC, as if Lady Mary hadn't wanted to draw anyone’s attention to them. Starships in orbit generally relied upon OTC rather than their own systems, which made it a neat way of disguising ships without having to use a cloaking device. And if someone did ask questions, Lady Mary could dismiss it as a sensor glitch, perhaps caused by Tuff’s odd atmosphere.



“Mariko,” Mai said slowly, “are you all right?”



Her sister was more perceptive than she seemed, Mariko reminded herself furiously. “I think so, yes,” she said. God alone knew what Mai was thinking. They’d both been prepositioned by various aristocratic fops over the last week and it had taken a combination of diplomacy and determination to avoid being dragged into their beds. Mai might have even been wondering if Mariko had failed to evade one of the aristocrats and ended up servicing him one night. “But we do have to talk to Fitz once we get into phase space.”



She tapped the console, powering up the phase drive as she sent Bruce Wayne hurtling away from the planet. Mai left her to her own thoughts as she ran a series of diagnostic programs to check that the drive was working properly, before starting the countdown to entering phase space. Mariko keyed in the command sequence as they passed the phase limit, expecting that any moment would bring an outraged demand from the planet that they stopped and prepared to be boarded. Instead, two minutes after they crossed the phase limit, the stars blurred into a spinning whorl of light and then vanished in the inky absolute darkness of phase space.



“Phase drive online, all readings nominal,” Mai informed her. There was no reason why they shouldn't be nominal – the Imperial Navy had surveyed the Sumter Sector centuries ago and charted all of the gravitational masses large enough to interfere with phase drive – but Mariko was feeling paranoid. “What do you want to talk to Fitz about?”



“What I did for him on the planet,” Mariko said, softly. Right now, it seemed like a dream more than real life. “Come on. Let's go find him.”



Surprisingly, they found him in the machine shop, studying a set of devices she didn't recognise. “Phase space is really little more than a pocket dimension surrounding a ship,” he said, by way of explanation. “The really interesting part of that little datum is that if anything should happen to be transmitting while we’re in phase space, the signal will be reflected back to us, allowing it to be isolated, tracked down and then destroyed.”



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 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?”



“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,” he added. “I saw the explosion as his body was vaporised, leaving them no clues that would have led them to my ship – and me. It took two days to fake an accident that would explain 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 and 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 seemed to be looking 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,” he added. “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, the indentured part of the human population. 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 Mai and her could operate the entire ship by themselves.



Mai took a guess. “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 off 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 out at the alien powers along the Rim and consider the value of striking 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 of phase space. “I’ve told you all I can,” he said. “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.”

Interesting.

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 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 one. “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 very 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 admitted. “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 his body was visible to his inspection. She felt even more exposed than she had 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 on 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, it’s 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 them 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 time and time again 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 breath. She almost 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 slight relief. “The other thing you need to practice with are the stealth battlesuits. If you will come with me...?”



Bruce Wayne had a dozen hidden compartments, Mariko was starting to realise. She’d deduced the existence of a couple of them when she’d realised that Fitz was much more than he seemed, but others had been completely unnoticeable until Fitz had pointed them out. Even in hindsight, she couldn't see how she could have found them without dissembling the entire ship. The experts who had put the ship together had done a wonderful job. One compartment housed no less than seven light battlesuits, of a design she’d never seen before. Combat infantry had been wearing battlesuits for centuries and the designs had been improved over that long period, but these suits were odd. They might have been specially designed for Imperial Intelligence.



“These suits are designed for both stealthy operations and active combat,” Fitz said. She couldn't understand why he’d brought seven of them on his ship. Had he expected to lose some suits along the way? “In theory, you can enter a planetary atmosphere completely undetected and land safely on the planet’s surface. When active, they are a match for everything short of Marine Heavy Combat Armour, but don’t get cocky! One direct hit from a plasma cannon and you’ll lose most of the stealth coating that gives you your advantages. A second hit and you’ll probably lose active shielding. And then a third hit will kill you stone dead. You’re going to be running endless simulations until you’re fully checked out on these machines, just in case we need them. I hope we won’t, but if we do I need you to be ready.”



He looked over at Mai, who was staring at one of the combat suits as if it was her dream man. “You won't find it easy at first to handle them,” he added. “The Imperial Marines lose more people in battlesuit operations than they do in other missions. These days, enemy forces reprogram automated systems to cope with battlesuits as they plunge from the sky, taking advantage of enemy surprise to get into the midst. Try looking up the disease on Heavenly Gate one of these days. It’s what happens when someone thinks that a battlesuit makes them invincible.



“And while you’re taking a break, study Greenland carefully,” he concluded. “I shall expect you to know everything about the planet once we arrive. I’ll see to packing the shuttle – I just want you to be ready to use the equipment if we need it. Do you understand me?”



“Yes, sir,” Mariko said, quickly. She had a feeling that it wouldn't be easy. “Do you think we should wear them down on the surface?”



“I think we’ll be taking the camouflage suits down to the surface,” Fitz said. “I sincerely hope that we won’t need anything else. But I’ll discuss contingency plans with you once I know how much you’ve learned about using a combat suit.”



***

The next four days passed very slowly. Mariko found herself left with a new respect for the Imperial Marines after she failed, time and time again, the basic tests for operating an armoured combat suit. It was easy enough to use it violently, slamming armoured fists against holographic opponents and tearing them apart effortlessly, but the more delicate operations constantly failed, no matter how hard she tried. The training simulation insisted that she should be able to shake a person’s hand without crushing it like an eggshell, yet every time she shook hands with a holographic representation she crushed their hand or pulled their arm right out of its socket. Frustratingly, Mai seemed to be much better with her armoured combat suit, graduating quickly to training simulations that matched her against any number of opponents. Mariko hadn't realised how many weapons were crammed into the suits until she saw Mai deploying a dozen different weapons against as many opponents.



“Women generally do better than men without biofeedback augmentation,” Fitz said, that night over dinner. He seemed more than willing to play the harsh taskmaster, constantly reviewing their performance and commenting on how it could be improved. “There was an argument for the combat suits that claimed that they would allow women to take their place on the battlefield alongside men.”



Mai considered it. “Did it work?”



“Of course it worked,” Fitz said, dryly. “But the moment someone else invented a system that countered the suits, the women found themselves in deep trouble. Warfare is a constantly evolving state; every time the Imperium makes an advance, its enemies make an advance of their own. The Secessionists have been sharing data on resistance tactics right over the Imperium, making each new rebellion considerably harder to put down than the last.”



Mariko rubbed her aching arms. Despite her best efforts, she was still getting an uncomfortable level of feedback from the armoured suit, suggesting that she wasn't yet ready to take it onto the battlefield.



“Maybe we can surprise them,” she said. “They won’t expect to see armoured soldiers in a ship like this, will they?”



“The Grenadier Guards used to deploy from a mangy old freighter,” Fitz observed. He looked over at Mai for a long moment. “I’m afraid that you will be staying on the ship this time, just in case we need backup.”



Mai started. “I can't come down to the planet?”



“You wouldn’t like it,” Mariko reminded her. She’d been reading up on the planet and the kindest word she could think of for Greenland was hellish.



“And beside, Archie is known for his wandering hands,” Fitz added. “It will provide an excuse to keep you in orbit, out of sight and out of mind.”

Chapter Thirteen



From orbit, Greenland didn't look any different from countless other worlds that had been terraformed into something suitable for human life. It wasn't until Mariko brought the shuttle down into the atmosphere that she started to see signs that something wasn't quite natural about the planet. Great plantations of green crops were understandable, even recognisable, yet there were also vast ruins that marked the existence of a pre-technology intelligent race. Beside her, she heard Fitz grunt in dismay as the extent of the devastation became clear. The humans who had settled Greenland had largely crushed a flourishing alien civilisation to suit their needs.



Greenland had been perfect, except for an atmospheric balance that was ill-suited to human settlement. Instead of either engineering a race of colonists who could live naturally on the planet, or simply leaving it and its inhabitants alone, the settlers had embarked upon a terraforming effort that had turned the atmosphere into something humans could breathe. The aliens, seemingly more adaptable than humans, had somehow survived the transformation of their world, but that had only been the start of their suffering. Human settlers had transformed vast sections of their land into giant plantations and put the aliens to work for the benefit of their human masters. What remained of the alien civilisation had been shattered by contact with the Imperium. Some of them worshipped their human masters as gods, a concept that Mariko found faintly blasphemous. Others would do whatever it took to have the humans removed from their world. Just because they hadn't developed any serious technology before they’d been discovered didn't mean that they were stupid.



But, as the report had made clear, it was unlikely that the planet’s owners would ever leave Greenland to its own devices. By a sick twist of fate, the terraforming program had created a grape-like fruit that could be turned into wine, a wine that had rapidly become Greenland’s greatest export. Anyone who wanted to free the locals and send them back to the life they’d enjoyed before human contact would have to contend with the aristocrats who had grown rich on selling the wine. Water of Life, they called it. Absently, Mariko wondered what their customers would have thought if they’d known the truth of its origins.



“That's the beacon there,” Fitz said. Unlike most worlds, Greenland had no proper spaceport while OTC was handled by an independent company in orbit around the planet. Each of the giant plantations had their own landing pads, allowing them to invite their customers down for a drink and a chat before assigning them sections of each year’s crop. There was no futures market on Greenland; once the prices were set, it was a matter of first come, first served. “And that’s Archie’s residence just behind it.”



Mariko lifted an eyebrow in disbelief as the colossal white house came into view. It was situated neatly in the midst of an elegant garden, one showing both human and alien plants from a dozen different worlds. A handful of children, all human, played a game of catch through the foliage, watched by a pair of matrons who seemed to divide their attention between knitting and watching the children. There were no aliens in the innermost compound at all, not even someone from one of the more trusted alien races. The natives were all on the outside.



She saw them working on the crops as the shuttle floated overhead and came down towards the landing pad. They were roughly humanoid, but their skins were slimy, as if they were used to more water than was in the air. There was no data in the files on just what Greenland had looked like before the terraforming had begun, yet Mariko was convinced that the world had been cooler and wetter. It might take centuries before the locals evolved into something that found the new climate comfortable, unless the humans helped them out with genetic engineering. But that would have required an empathy that the settlers seemed to lack.



“They simply don’t care what happens to the aliens,” Fitz said, when Mariko pointed that out. “As far as they are concerned, the good times will keep rolling out and the aliens will remain happy and contented to be oppressed...and in the meantime, this world serves as a recruiting poster for the Secessionists. They can just point to Greenland and ask if anyone expects that their worlds will be shown any more forbearance if there’s money in it.”



The shuttle touched down and Mariko stood up, donning the utility belt that Fitz had produced for her. No one would question her carrying a firearm, thankfully, and even if they did Fitz had obligingly produced a pair of blank permits for them to carry. The other devices in the belt might come in handy if they managed to track down the recruiting station the Secessionists had installed on the planet, somehow. Right now, Mariko wouldn't have been surprised to discover that every non-human on the planet was a die-hard secessionist.



“Come on,” Fitz said. “Let's go and meet Archie.”



The planet’s atmosphere smelt wrong to her, almost as soon as she stepped out of the shuttle. It was cool, yet dry, with a faint smell of something dead slowly drying out in the sun. Perhaps the entire planet was dying slowly, she told herself as Fitz followed her out of the shuttle, closing the hatch behind them. The terraforming program hadn't been unleashed on a dead world, one that could be brought to life with some care and attention, but on a living world that might have started to fight back. Her eyes stung as the wind shifted course and blew right across them, making her eyes sting with little flakes of dust in the air. She found herself blinking rapidly to get rid of them.



Archie turned out to be a tall aristocrat, wearing a white suit and a large hat that kept the sun off his eyes. He carried a small whip curled up at his belt, along with a gun and a grim expression that just dared anyone to pick a fight with him. The vast hordes of natives outside the walls could have overwhelmed him and the rest of the plantation staff within minutes if they’d chosen to charge, but somehow they remained broken. They’d probably had a demonstration of what human weapons could do if they rebelled openly against their overlords. Mariko had learned, while learning how to use the armoured combat suit, that some planets kept a QRF of armoured soldiers on standby in orbit at all times. They could get to any rebellion and crush it before it got out of hand.



“It’s good to see you again, Uncle,” Fitz said. Mariko would never have known that he had sounded just as sickened as her by what Archie’s relatives had done on Greenland, if she hadn't heard him on the flight down to the planet’s surface. “Auntie Jo sends her regards.”



“Jo worries too much,” Archie said. he had a gruff voice, but one with an undertone of smug satisfaction that Mariko didn't like at all. “And who is this radiant beauty that you have brought to see me?”



“This is Mariko, my current retainer,” Fitz said. Archie took Mariko’s hand and shook it firmly, all the time allowing his eyes to run up and down her body. “I’m afraid that she’s currently assigned to me and me alone.”



“What a pity,” Archie said. Mariko managed to keep herself from flushing, although she wasn't sure how. Retainer didn't just mean assistant or servant to the aristocracy. It also included courtesan or whore. At least Fitz seemed to have ensured that Archie wouldn't be pawing at her tonight. “Anyway, if you will both come into the house, I’ll have some drinks served at once.”



He waved towards a woman on a house in the distance. “I’m afraid that Cecelia is currently on horseback and you probably won’t see her until dinner,” he added. “But once she is here, you will get an earful about her horses.”



Fitz didn't quite groan. “I look forward to it, Uncle,” he said. Mariko could tell that he was being untruthful. “But I’m afraid that your wife did have some concerns she wished me to discuss with you.”



“Ah, women are always worrying,” Archie said, as they walked inside. He elbowed Fitz gently. “You just can’t get a woman to relax unless you have enough money or power to convince her that you will take care of her. Why I married Jo I will never know.”



“You wanted to unite your assets with her share in this plantation,” Fitz said, rather dryly. “Does Lady Mary still have interests in this planet?”



“Lady Mary owns the plantation two hundred miles from here,” Archie said. Mariko glanced at Fitz, who winked at her when Archie wasn't looking. “She doesn't sell as much as we do, but what she does sell is very good. I keep offering to buy her plantation and operate it properly, yet she keeps refusing. Jo might have been able to talk her round, but Jo...seems to think we should double our security here.”



“Or possibly triple it,” Fritz murmured. So far, Mariko hadn't seen any signs of any security. “Do you not have a starship assigned from the sector fleet?”



“Ah, that would cost too much in bribe money for the ship and her commander,” Archie said, firmly. “Right now, the slimes know better than to pick a fight with us. Why, if it wasn't for us, they’d still be grubbing in the mud, trying to rub two sticks together to make fire. Instead, they have access to all the tools of our superb civilisation to improve their lives.”



“I think that that is what Jo’s worrying about,” Fitz said. The irony slid past Archie and vanished somewhere in the haze. “Right now, some active security might be a very good investment.”



“Relax,” Archie said. “A handful of tiny attacks are nothing! If they attack us, well...they know what they will get. And who cares if a convoy or two gets shot at by the rebels? It isn't as if they can actually do any damage in the long run. Relax.”



***

“Is it just me,” Mariko said, when they’d been shown to their rooms and checked them for bugs, “or is Archie completely insane?”



“He’s been absolute master of the universe for so long that he has problems recognising that that could change,” Fitz said. He’d pulled a small terminal out of his belt and started to tap away on it. “The slimes could charge up to his house and paint the walls with WE ARE GOING TO KILL YOU HUMAN BASTARDS and he wouldn't notice. He is right about one thing; the slimes might kill every human on the planet, but that won’t deter the Imperial Navy from retaliating. The slimes would die in their millions as fusion beams pour down from the skies high overhead.”



“But would they understand that?” Mariko asked. “If they were a pre-space race before they were discovered, would they even comprehend that starships and orbital weapons even exist?”



“There were a few thunderbolts from the skies back when the planet was being settled,” Fitz said, absently. “I assume they know what they face, even if they don’t really understand it. But they’re not stupid and if the Secessionists are involved, chances are that they understand exactly what will happen if they rise up in revolt.”



Mariko winced. A modern planet, with a combination of ground-based planetary defence centres and orbital weapons platforms, could reasonably hope to hold off the Imperial Navy for days, perhaps weeks. Taking a defended planet by storm was never an easy operation at the best of times. But Greenland possessed no defences at all, not even a handful of orbital weapons platforms. A single gunboat could take up position in orbit and systematically bombard the planet back to the Stone Age.



Fitz looked up from his console. “Lady Mary owns the Halfway Plantation, two hundred and thirty miles from here,” he said, changing the subject. “And, incidentally, the Halfway Plantation is the only place that hasn't reported any rebel activity at all. They're on the coastline so you’d expect to see thousands of deserters, or rebel attacks, but none have been reported. A small staff operates the place for Lady Mary and generally only supplies Tuff with Water of Life...”



He grinned at her. “Fancy another excursion tomorrow morning?”



Mariko blinked. “You think they’d just let us go?”



“I think that Archie wouldn't think that we would be in any real danger,” Fitz said. “We can take a hovercraft and set out on a course that will bring us right up to the border between the two plantations, and then...see what happens to us. I’ll ask Mai to launch a pair of stealth drones to overfly the plantation and take a careful look for any signs of trouble. This isn't Tuff – it will be a great deal harder to conceal something without leaving signs that can be picked up from orbit.”



He stopped as there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” he called, once he’d buried the terminal under the pillow. A maid stepped in and bowed. “Yes?”



“Lord Archie and Lady Cecelia would be pleased to see you in the drawing room,” the maid said, with a bow. She was pureblood human, oddly. On a world with so few humans, having one as a servant was a sign of wealth and power. “Afternoon tea will be served in ten minutes.”



“Come on,” Fitz said, standing up and holding out a hand. “Let’s go see what they have to say for themselves.”

***

Five minutes after meeting Lady Cecelia, Mariko became convinced that she was the most boring woman in the entire galaxy, even more boring than some of her mother’s older friends. The only thing that seemed to cross – or canter across – her mind were horses, of which she owned an entire stable that she’d been raising on Greenland. She had a private starship that allowed her to attend hundreds of different horse fairs right across the galaxy, only coming back to Greenland to inspect her livestock and keep a wary eye on her subordinates, who – she seemed convinced – spied on her genetic experimentations and stole horse DNA for her rivals. A woman old enough to be Mariko’s grandmother should not be so boring – her father’s mother had been exciting until the day she'd lain down and died – but Cecelia was just too tedious for words.



She wasn't even the strangest member of the dysfunctional family that ruled the plantation and upwards of a hundred thousand aliens who were slaves in all, but name. Two of the younger sons were well on their way to becoming spoiled brats, casting lustful looks at the maids as if they wanted to rip their clothes off right now and make love to them. One of the girls was a screaming child who seemed to expect everyone to pay attention to her right now – and the other one was silent and withdrawn, as if she had grown up too much in the shadow of her louder sister. Even the servants seemed almost part of the family, if very junior members of it. But then, they were humans on a world where there couldn't be more than a couple of thousand humans at most.



“I tell you, the population in sector four just keeps rising,” one of the older women was saying, with a vehemence that seemed quite unsuited to the topic at hand. “We should never have given the slimes modern medicine and insights; right now, every egg they lay pops out a healthy young slime. If something doesn't happen soon to the birth rate, we’re going to be drowning in slimes. I think we need to consider splaying them as they reach their maturity, before they can start popping out more eggs.,”



Mariko shuddered at the calculating disdain in the woman’s voice. She wasn’t being cruel; it would have been easier to accept if she was just being sadistic. But instead, she was merely calculating the advantages and disadvantages to the plantation if the birth rate continued to rise. Mariko knew enough, from the reports, to know what happened if a primitive population got hold of modern medicine. There was always a colossal population explosion, which evened out over the next hundred years or so. But on a planet as fragile as Greenland, an additional few thousand mouths to feed might be disastrous.



“But they wouldn't thank us for sterilising them,” a younger man pointed out. “It’s not as if they have much of a life working for us...”



“It’s for their own good,” the older woman insisted. “They don’t have the perspective we do to know that a population explosion would be bad for them...”



Fitz took Mariko’s arm and steered her away gently before they realised that she had been listening to them. “Come and look at this,” he muttered in her ear, as they approached the balcony. They could look out over the plantation as the sun slowly sank in the sky, turning the air fiery red as it sunk below the horizon. “Listen.”



For a moment, there was nothing...and then there was a long mournful howling from the slimes in the field. The howl rose in pitch until Mariko felt shivers running down her spine, understanding that the slimes were mourning a world gone forever. They might not know precisely what the human race had done to them, but they certainly knew that something had happened. The undercurrent of loss and helpless rage seemed to cross species barriers. How could anyone mistake the slimes for barbarians?



And how could anyone expect them to remain slaves forever?



Fitz nodded back toward the crowd inside the lighted room. None of them seemed to hear the howl, or to care. They just chatted about nothing as their time slowly ran out.



“We go out on our trip tomorrow,” Fitz muttered. “And pray to God that we’re in time.”

This should be 'her' since it's Mariko 's body.

edit: just to be clear that's from chapter 12

Grrr. Thanks - keep pointing them out when you see them <wink>

Chris

This is amazing, and keeps getting better.

Excellent stuff! Really enjoying this!

Love it, and you type so much of it. I'm really being drawn in to the world and that's something hard to do with a story. I hope there is much more of this to come.

I wasn't sure about this at first but it's really gotten much better starting with Chapter 8. Good job.

I'm not sure how much you want to stick to genre conventions but there's a really big question about Fitz's mission that's just begging to be asked: "Is the Imperium actually worth preserving?" I'm not sure how much of the dystopia you've created as intentional and how much wasn't, but the answer so far appears to be a solid "No." with the massive amounts of casual racism, entrenched gender roles, extreme corruption and aristocratic privilege, etc. Real reform is basically impossible: even Mariko, the most moral character from what I can tell, referred to the alien slaves as just "slimes," not knowing, caring, or even knowledgeable enough to know that maybe she should care to know what they call themselves. Depending on how much the central government knows and either allows or tries to address all the bad shit that goes on, a total collapse might just be a better option (in the long run) despite Fitz's fears.

For the aliens the collapse of the imperium may be good but for humans it will likely be terrible. I would expect the alien slaves to desire revenge against their former oppressors. This could easily take the form of genocide or enslavement of humanity.

Chapter Fourteen



“Do you know how to drive this thing?”



Mariko nodded. The hovercraft was almost brutally simple, little more complex than an aircar. Apart from making sure that the cushion of air remained firmly under the hovercraft’s lower body, there really wasn't much else to do, but steer. The technology had been familiar for thousands of years.



“Enjoy your drive,” one of the innumerable ladies called. The wink she sent towards them suggested that she expected that they intended to stop somewhere along the way and make love. Mariko would have flushed if she hadn't been too busy checking the hovercraft’s systems. “Don’t forget to get back here in time for dinner.”



Fitz nodded politely, waved his hat towards them and settled down into his seat. “Get us out of here,” he ordered, tightly. The hovercraft roared to life at Mariko’s command and headed down towards the gate, which opened automatically at their approach. She felt the vehicle shake right and left before she managed to master it properly and take it out of the gate, onto the wide road leading northwards. On each side, she saw endless lines of plants – and thousands of aliens tending them. The slimes looked uncomfortable as they moved, slowly and with infinite care, from one plant to the next. “I’ve called Mai and told her to monitor us from orbit.”



Mariko glanced upward, but of course there was no sign of Bruce Wayne. “What do you expect us to find?”



“I don’t know yet,” Fitz said. He sounded irritated; he’d had to spend the morning listening to Lady Cecelia babbling on about horses and how her latest cross-bred horse had won the Imperium’s Grand Planetary Race. In some ways, she was just as insane as Tuff when it came to splicing several different animals together into a new breed. “Ideally, we should find some clues in Lady Mary’s plantation while we try to order some of her Water of Life for the ship.”



Mariko smiled as the hovercraft picked up speed. They’d worked out an elaborate cover story for their visit, only to discover that Archie and the rest of his family hadn't even bothered to ask why they were going. The family had been so unconcerned that Mariko had wondered if they too were tied in with the rebels, because it seemed madness not to keep close track of the handful of humans on the planet. If some of the reports were to be believed, quite a few humans had vanished since day one.



She looked over at the slimes and shivered. They seemed to be obediently working on the plants, as ordered by their human masters, but there was something in the air that suggested that they were just biding their time. Their position was so hopeless that even a futile revolt, one that forced the Imperial Navy to scorch the planet, must have seemed a better deal than continuing to work for their human overlords. How long would it be before they marched on the plantations houses and burned them and their masters to the ground?



Mariko considered herself a loyal citizen; Edo had been part of the Imperium since its inception, five thousand years ago. What few records of the Warlord Era had survived suggested that it had been disastrous for the human race, with entire planetary populations wiped out on a whim, and the Imperium – as unpleasant as it was – was a very definite improvement. And yet...the planters on this world had effectively destroyed an entire alien civilisation just to grow a few grapes. How could she blame any of the aliens on the planet for joining the Secessionists? What did they have to lose, apart from their chains?



Edo enjoyed the same limited autonomy as most of the other developed worlds, but there were hundreds of thousands of worlds that were at the mercy of their core world masters. It hadn't been something she’d understood when she’d left Edo with her own freighter and Mai, yet now she was starting to see why the Secessionists kept trying to overthrow the established order. So many worlds would have become gardens by now if they hadn't had to keep repaying their founding loans to the core worlds, or allow themselves to be raped by older and richer worlds and corporations. It was a chilling thought, but might the Secessionists have a point? And what about the countless alien races ground under by humankind?



“I asked myself the same question,” Fitz admitted, when she chanced bringing the subject up. “Does the Imperium even deserve to survive?”



He looked over towards the endless rows of vines, thinning out as they reached the edge of Archie’s plantation, and scowled. “Maybe we should have treated the other races better from the start, maybe we should have constructed a political system that wasn't weighted so heavily in favour of the older worlds,” he added. “But that doesn’t change what we have to deal with right now. If we granted aliens human rights towards, the Imperium would fall apart within a decade, followed rapidly by genocide. The slimes aren't the only race that hates us. They’d all turn on the human race and only a handful of us would survive.



“The only real hope is gradual reform, but there are thousands of entrenched interests that will fight reform tooth and nail. Here, on this planet, you’ve seen the planters. They have their supporters back home; hell, there’s an entire industry built around Water of Life. None of them will agree to any reforms that might destroy the industry, or grant the slaves some rights that will make it harder to force them to work in the plantations.”



“They could move the vines to an orbital settlement, one configured to match the environment on Greenland,” Mariko pointed out. “Wouldn't that be a great deal simpler than keeping the planet midway through a terraforming cycle?”



“Of course it would be,” Fitz said. “And if you asked Archie, he would come up with hundreds of excuses about why it couldn't be done. Propose the plan back on Homeworld and there would be millions of lobbyists lining up to speak against your plan, while Archie’s family and everyone else who profits from Water of Life would be quietly moving to have the plan permanently shelved.”



He shrugged. “The hell of it is that Greenland isn't the worst place in the Imperium,” he added. “Start granting aliens rights and the entire edifice will start to shake – and then we will go all the way down to a new dark age, the twilight of the human race.”



Mariko looked at his grim face and understood, suddenly. Fitz cared, more than he was prepared to admit to anyone. The Imperium wasn't much, but it was all they had and he needed to work to prop it up, which meant condoning thousands of atrocities committed by humans against their fellow humans – and countless alien races. She recalled what he had said about the Imperium slowly dying and wondered what would happen when the links between Homeworld and humanity’s far-flung colony worlds snapped. How long would it be before the power vacuum was filled with warlords, or aliens intent on revenge on humanity?



They drove onwards, through the remains of an alien city, pausing long enough to study the alien buildings that were now overgrown with genetically-engineered plants. The terraforming team hadn't cared about the damage they were inflicting on the slimes; they’d created plants that absorbed the planet’s previous atmosphere and pumped out the oxygen-nitrogen mix favoured by humanity. Their creations had grown at astonishing speed and torn an alien city apart.



Mariko shuddered as she studied the odd buildings, subtly wrong to human eyes. The slimes had never had a chance. Most of them had probably never realised why their world was changing so rapidly, why their atmosphere was slowly becoming poisonous. It would have been worse for the children and the elders, she reflected, as she looked up at a giant alien temple, now coming apart at the seams. They would have died, leaving their helpless parents and children terrified for the future and mourning their loss. Orbital bombardment would have been kinder.



“They would have forced the population to move away from their cities,” Fitz said, as Mariko turned the engine back on and steered north, away from the fallen city. “Most of the survivors would have gone into work camps intended to make them slave for their new masters, in exchange for supplements that would help them to survive their new world. Others would have hidden in the countryside and perhaps thought of striking back. But how could they have grasped the concept of starships and aliens from another world?”



Mariko nodded, feeling bitter shame for the entire human race. A culture that had barely climbed out of the water – or the slime, for the slimes – would not have been able to comprehend the ideas behind modern technology. They wouldn't have understood starships, or directed energy weapons, or even the processes behind terraforming. Some of them would have worshipped the newcomers as gods; others would have been unable to cope with such a shift in their worldview and just died. The Janus Legend would have claimed another victim.



“Janus wasn't like they say,” Fitz said, but he refused to be drawn any further on the subject. “How long until we reach Lady Mary’s plantation?”



“About an hour,” Mariko said. The hovercraft didn't seem to have any problem on the alien-built roads, even though she couldn’t understand why anyone would have used brute labour to build a road when machines were cheap. But they would have had to have been shipped to Greenland while the alien population was already present. “Maybe a little less if we can pick up speed now.”



Fitz shrugged and returned to his inner thoughts. Mariko glanced at him, and then looked back at the road. A handful of slimes – they had to be children – appeared out of nowhere, glanced at them and then vanished back into the foliage. Auntie Jo had to be right, Mariko realised, although she wouldn't have willingly granted that woman anything. The slimes had returned to their cities and were hiding entire armies in the spaces between plantations. Who knew what they might be planning in the long term? A renunciation of the Janus Legend?



She knew the story, of course; every human learned it in basic education, even on the primal worlds where technology above a certain level was banned. Janus had been a planet surprisingly close to its primary star for life to develop, too close for any form of terraforming to turn it into a place humans could live. A number of scientists had set up research bases in orbit and sent teams down to study the unique vegetation that had flourished on the surface. One of those missions had discovered a real surprise; intelligent life on a world where carbon-based intelligent life should have been impossible. The scientists, having no designs on the world, started to talk to the aliens rather than bringing them under humanity’s sway.



They’d been open with the aliens, perhaps too open. The aliens hadn't known about the stars – their planet’s atmosphere was simply too thick for them to realise that their sun was only one of millions of stars – or about the existence of other life forms. They’d eventually realised that the galaxy belonged to humanity, that anything they might do for themselves had already been matched and surpassed by the human masters of the universe. And then the entire race had committed suicide. They’d seen no point in living in a universe dominated by the human race.



The Purity League had been quick to point out that the aliens had been ill-suited for life in a human universe; that in fact the universe was humanity’s and no other race should be permitted to survive. They, Mariko knew, wouldn't have hesitated if they’d been offered a chance to wipe out all non-human forms of life. Perhaps they saw it as a final solution to the problems facing the Imperium, the dependence on alien labour combined with alien reluctance to serve the Imperium without being granted rights. But others had been less inclined to accept that judgement. They’d argued that there should be no direct contact between humanity and a primitive race until the primitive race discovered spaceflight. Maybe then contact could be made on more even terms.



But if the Janus Legend she’d been taught wasn't the truth...?



“I never asked,” she said, to Fitz. “How did you get involved in this in the first place?”



“My father sent me to the Guards in the hopes they would make a man of me,” Fitz said, flatly. “I told you what happened to me then. Luckily, I attracted interest from some others interested in trying to save and reform the Imperium; one of them arranged for me to have the training and augmentation I would need to move around the Rim as a trouble-shooter. And then I had the ship constructed to my specifications and set out with Don in the hopes of saving the Imperium.”



Mariko heard the edge in his voice and shut up. He’d worked with someone with the same augments and training as himself, someone who had clearly been much more than a subordinate – and that person had been killed by the Secessionists. Now he had to carry on his mission with a pair of amateurs as his only support. Mariko had seen enough during their training sessions to be aware of how much they didn't know. And they certainly weren't augmented, unlike Fitz. They would be at a gross disadvantage in a fight.



The hovercraft continued to rumble along as they turned down a side road and headed up towards Lady Mary’s plantation. In the distance, Mariko could see clouds forming with astonishing speed, as if it were going to rain at any moment. Tuff had had frequent rainstorms, despite the best efforts of Lady Mary’s weather control technicians, but rainstorms weren't that common on Greenland. The terraforming program had screwed up the weather beyond easy repair. She heard the sound of thunder from the sky and shivered. The last thing she wanted was to be caught in the open by a rainstorm.



“Drive faster,” Fitz ordered, as a second peal of thunder echoed through the sky. “We should be able to take shelter in the plantation house if it does start to rain...”



The world seemed to explode around them. Mariko screamed as the hovercraft spun wildly to one side, gravity forces pushing her back into her chair. The rows of vines were coming at them at terrifying speed...and then they were crashing through the vines, the air cushion collapsing and leaving them heading right for the ground. There was a terrible crash as the hovercraft hit bottom, glass windows shattering with the force of the impact. Mariko suspected that she’d blacked out for a second. She appeared to have crashed without any clear memory of how they’d managed to fly off the world.



Fitz was pulling at her, tugging out of her seat. “Are you all right?”



Mariko managed to scramble out, with his help, and stand on unsteady legs outside the hovercraft. A plume of smoke was rising up from the side of the road, marking the point where something had exploded beside their vehicle. Mariko remembered what little she’d been taught about hovercraft and realised that the explosion had forced them sideways, right into the vines. Thousands of credits worth of vines had been destroyed as the hovercraft scythed through them before finally crashing to a halt.



“I think so,” she said, finally. She’d coped with near-disasters in space without losing her cool, so why was she shaking now? “What happened to us?”



“An IED,” Fitz said, grimly. The term meant nothing to Mariko. “An Improvised Explosive Device. Very common on worlds that don’t have a proper weapons industry of their own. A smart person can invent an IED from common materials available anywhere and place it somewhere for an unwary Marine or Civil Guardsman to stumble over. Given enough raw materials, you can make life very unpleasant for a heavily-armed combat unit even without technological equality.”



He shook his head as another burst of thunder rippled through the sky. “We’ll have to go to Lady Mary’s plantation house and hope we can call back to Archie from there,” he said. “If not...”



Mariko frowned. “We could call Mai, couldn't we?”



“I’d prefer not to reveal that we can do that unless the situation turns from serious and becomes desperate,” Fitz said. He didn’t sound as if he were joking. “And besides, if someone left an IED here to discourage visitors, they might have an HVM launcher hidden away as well.”



They walked back onto the road and started to head northwards, Fitz leading the way and watching for other IEDs. Mariko could understand why the devices were so feared, even by the most advanced military forces. A single IED in the right place could bring an advance snarling to a halt. She hadn't seen any sign they were about to trigger one until it had actually exploded; even a military force in battlesuits would have difficulty noticing one until it was too late. The experts who defused them had to be the bravest men in the Imperium.



The vines beside them rustled suddenly and a dozen slimes appeared out of nowhere, carrying what looked like primitive weapons in their hands. Mariko froze as the semi-amphibious aliens pressed in around them, fish-like hands pawing at their belts and removing weapons, tools and communicators. A moment later, two of them pulled her hands behind her back and used a metal tie to secure them behind her. Fitz, it seemed, was getting the same treatment.



“Come,” the lead alien hissed, as if he – or she – had a permanently sore throat. “You come now.”



Alien hands pushed at her and she started to walk after the aliens as they headed back into the vines. Fitz didn't seem to be too worried, at least. He grinned at her as they were pushed onwards, just before he pulled his foppish persona around him. He wouldn't worry about a thing.



High overhead, another roll of thunder announced the start of a rainstorm.

A lot of the dystophia is intentional - I wanted a world where there are GOOD reasons for revolution and good reasons for opposing reform, or at least ones that make sense.

Is the Imperium worth preserving? The alternitive seems to be worse (which is how Fitz justifies it to himself).

Chris

I have a question. How far in the future does this story take place?

Chapter Fifteen



The rain came down like a tempest out of nightmare. Sheets of water hit the vines overhead, splashing down on the humans below. Mariko felt the water running over her body and shivered, wishing that she could raise a hand to cover her stinging eyes. The rainwater tasted funny, as if something had been mixed with the rising droplets of water that had become the rain. Part of the terraforming program, perhaps, or something different? She stumbled inwards, slipping and sliding through the mud, watching the aliens resentfully as they seemed to have no problems with the water. Indeed, they seemed to enjoy it.



I should have researched the slimes more thoroughly, she told herself, angrily. Her father had always taught her to research carefully and she had always tried to ignore his advice. Lack of research had gotten her into trouble on Dorado and now Greenland. She didn't even know what the slimes called themselves, if any research had been done on their civilisation and culture prior to its effective destruction. The aliens burbled to one another in voices that seemed more alive in the rain, speaking a language she couldn't understand. Imperial Standard One didn't seem to have anything in common with their language. But then that wasn't surprising, she told herself. Their mouths were clearly very different from human mouths.



A hatch opened up in the ground and the slimes marched right in, down a darkened tunnel that seemed to be covered in slippery mud. Mariko slipped as she stepped inside and had to endure the indignity of a pair of aliens grabbing her shoulders and holding her upright until she managed to regain her footing. Water was drifting through the air, providing a moistness that reminded her of parts of Tuff, something that was probably good for the slimes. Once they reached the bottom of the tunnel, the walls were illuminated with dull red lights, each one casting an eerie glow over the complex. Hundreds of slimes seemed to infest the complex, all carrying weapons that looked crude, but effective. Mariko wondered how anyone could build such a complex without the human overlords noticing, before remembering how unconcerned Archie had been about the slimes. Anything they saw would probably be dismissed as unimportant.



The liquid in the air seemed to grow stronger as they were thrust into a small room, with the door firmly closed and locked behind them. Mariko struggled against the tie around her wrists, but it was metal and refused to budge, no matter how hard she struggled. Fitz seemed to have remained inhumanly calm, sitting down on a damp bed and rolling his eyes at her in the dim red light. It must have been what the slimes found comfortable, or something they remembered from the day before their world was reshaped to suit humanity. Mariko opened her mouth to demand that he do something, before realising that the cell would almost certainly be bugged. But what would happen now? Kidnapping someone like Lord Fitzgerald wasn't killing a handful of workers or even raiding a plantation in the middle of the night. There would be questions asked by his family, perhaps with the Imperial Navy ordered to investigate directly. And that would risk exposing the presence of the rebel cell to human forces.



She smiled, rather sourly. It was unlikely that the Imperial Navy would be as disinterested as the planters on Greenland. The rebels could hardly hope for someone less observant than Archie and his family, with the possible exception of Auntie Jo. But Jo was back on Tuff, she assumed, visiting Lady Mary. Or would she have come to grief in the jungles when Lady Mary realised what she wanted the Imperial Navy to do? One careful investigation might reveal Mary’s involvement with the Secessionists.



“Don't worry about a thing,” Fitz said, in his foppish voice. “I’m sure that this is just a misunderstanding and we will get it sorted out soon enough.”



Nearly an hour passed before the cell door opened and a pair of armed guards came inside. One of them grabbed Mariko and pulled her to her feet – the slimes were stronger than she’d realised, or perhaps these slimes had been raised in what they considered a natural environment – before pushing her towards the door. The other one helped Fitz to his feet and shoved him after Mariko, forcing them both down a long muddy corridor. Darkness seemed to fill half of the rooms, only vaguely broken by the eerie red light. It was easy to imagine that the darkness was filled with monsters, just waiting for a chance to reach out and snatch her from her captors. A human would never have found it a comfortable place, but the slimes seemed happy and content in the mud. The handful she saw as they were marched down the corridor seemed to stare at the humans, almost defiantly. It was difficult to read their expressions – their faces seemed curiously immobile compared to human faces – but they didn't seem to be happy with their human captors. It was easy to imagine how they might take the opportunity to extract a little revenge by killing both of them.



Just how large was the complex? Mariko kept looking around, certain that this was something Fitz would want to know, but it was impossible to tell. There were no recognisable markings on the walls, nothing that a human might use to navigate from place to place; the dull red light seemed to make it even harder to navigate. It was possible that they were being pushed through the complex in a pattern intended to suggest that the complex was larger than it actually was, even though it was actually quite small. But if they’d used primitive mining tools to build the complex, and installed shielded generators to power the complex, it was possible that it stretched for miles under the surface. Archie and his family wouldn't even have a clue until it was far too late.



She shivered again as they passed through a force field and into a larger chamber. If the Imperial Navy did arrive and scorch the planet back into submission, how many aliens would survive in the underground complexes? It would depend on what weapons were used, but Archie’s relatives would be rather unwilling to allow the Navy to unleash a planet-cracker, something that would utterly destroy their investment. A mild scorching, using energy weapons to wipe out the visible alien settlements, would spare the underground cities. And who knew what would happen after that?



Fitz stepped in front of her as her eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. Three figures were standing in front of them, their faces hidden in the shadows. One of them was clearly a slime, a second was human...and the third was from an alien race she didn't recognise. He was humanoid, but the shape of his body suggested a very different evolutionary path to the human race. His eyes seemed to glint red in the gloom.



“This is an outrage,” Fitz said. If Mariko hadn't know that it was an act, she would have believed it. “How dare you arrest us like common criminals. I demand that you take me to the nearest representative of the Imperium at once.”



The human tittered lightly. “The Imperium has no sway here,” he said. Every planet had a different accent, but Mariko couldn't place his. Not Edo, definitely, nor Homeworld. That only left a few hundred thousand human colony worlds as possible points of origin. “You are a prisoner of the Secessionist League.”



“I know nothing about politics,” Fitz protested. “I came to pick up Water of Life for my ship and then we had an accident...”



“Silence,” the alien said. He inched forward, revealing scaly skin and sharp teeth. “You suffered no accident. You are our prisoner. Your survival depends upon how useful you make yourself to us.”



Fitz seemed to stare at them, as if he couldn't quite believe what they were saying. “I could pay a ransom if you let me go,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone about what happened today...”



“The word of an aristocrat is not to be trusted,” the slime said. “We were promised assistance in surviving what your race did to our world. Instead, we have merely been enslaved by your fellow aristocrats. You will be held to account for their crimes.”



“We cannot keep him here,” the human said. “We’ll have him shipped off-planet tonight, and then moved to a secure storage point along the Rim. There, we can interrogate him at leisure and then ransom him back if his family is willing to pay.”



“You don’t have to inform my family,” Fitz said, hastily. “I have access to my own accounts on my ship...”



The trio ignored him, looking instead at Mariko. “And who precisely are you?”



“His retainer,” Mariko said, with icy dignity. She’d seen enough of the higher-ranking servants of the aristocracy to know that they always kept themselves aloof from their lords and masters. The junior ones were just desperate to please. “I am his pilot...”



“And his whore too, no doubt,” the human muttered. “We will allow you a chance to join us, if you wish. However, as we cannot trust you until we have scanned your mind properly for buried conditioning, we will have to keep you under lock and key until we can confirm that you haven’t been conditioned to servitude. I suggest you spend the time considering how best you can be useful to us.”



Mariko opened her mouth, and then stopped. What could she say? If Fitz had been like some of the others they’d encountered on Tuff, she would probably have been more than willing to abandon him and join the Secessionists. But he’d treated them decently after saving their lives...and she liked him, God damn it. And he was right; if the Secessionists managed to bring down the Imperium, there would be a colossal bloodbath. What would happen on Greenland when the slimes rose in revolt, turning on their masters and tormentors with blood in their eyes? And what would happen right across the sector? There were countless places where human and alien settlements intermingled. The slaughter would be truly horrific on both sides.



“Take them away,” the human ordered.



“A Snake,” Fitz said. He sounded a great dealer less foppish all of a sudden. “How can you deal with a Snake?”



The guards grabbed them and pulled them away before anyone could answer the question. Mariko stared at Fitz, suddenly understanding the presence of the mystery alien. She’d heard about the Snakes, but she’d never actually met one; they were very rare in the Imperium outside the Sumter Sector and its neighbouring states. No wonder she hadn't recognised the alien until Fitz had named him for her.



“In,” the guards grunted, as they shoved them back into their cell. “We will come for you.”



Mariko hesitated, and then asked a question that was bothering her. “Can you undo our hands?” She asked. “We will need to use the toilet sooner or later...”



“Go in the mud, like you make us go,” the alien burbled, and then slammed the door in a thoroughly human manner. Outside, she could hear him speaking to his comrades, followed by the sound of alien laughter. She turned to look over at Fitz and received a surprise; he was busy removing the tie around his wrists and pulling his hands free. A moment later, he stepped over to her, pressed his fingers against the tie around her wrists and she felt a rush of heat. The tie just seemed to disintegrate in his hands.



“Cutting implant,” Fitz muttered, pressing his lips against her ear. “Don’t say anything; just follow my lead.”



Mariko nodded, watching as Fitz stepped over to the door and pressed his ears against the wood for a long moment. An instant later, he pressed one of his fingers against the lock and there was a brief flare of blue light before the lock crumbled to dust. Mariko had used a molecular disintegrator before, but she’d never seen one small enough to fit into a finger, let alone remain undetectable to basic scans. But the slimes didn't look to have bothered to scan their bodies, or else they would have known about the implants. Perhaps their allies hadn't been entirely straight with them after all.



Fitz looked up at her, winked, and then pulled the door wide open. A pair of aliens on the other side gaped at him, just before Fitz launched himself at them with blinding speed. They never stood a chance as he slammed augmented fists into their skulls, leaving them both bleeding and dying on the muddy floor. Fitz dragged the first one inside, motioned for Mariko to search him for anything useful, and then pulled the second guard into the cell. Mariko took one of the rifles, examined it quickly to figure out how to fire it, and then slung it over her shoulder. The other rifle seemed to have been bent out of shape by a blow from Fitz. Just how strong was he if he could bend metal with his bare hands? She unhooked the clip and pocketed it, before he motioned for her to follow him down the muddy corridor.



“They’ll have the exit heavily guarded,” he muttered, as they passed a series of darkened doorways. There were no sign of any of the slimes, but Mariko knew that that wouldn't last. “These people are always suspicious of their own, with very good reason. A single betrayal could bring down the entire organisation.”



He held up a hand as they approached a corner and then peered around it carefully, before lunging around the corner and slamming into four guards. The slimes were taken completely by surprise and folded rapidly, allowing them to break into the guarded room. Mariko couldn't understand what she was seeing at first in the dim light, until Fitz found a flashlight and tossed it to her, allowing her to see properly. It was a pile of computer equipment, mostly of human manufacture, all highly illegal in alien hands. Some of the other equipment looked to have been designed by aliens, for aliens. The slimes had never invented computers for themselves, but there was no reason why a more advanced race couldn't design computers they could use easily. No doubt one of the Secessionists had been happy to produce weapons and other systems for them.



Fitz cursed out loud as a dull subsonic began to echo through the complex. Someone had discovered the missing guards and realised that their prisoners had escaped. He grabbed a set of computer datachips and stuffed them in his pocket, before leading the way out of the room and back down the corridor. The sound of feet splashing through the mud suddenly grew louder as a small army of slimes appeared at one end of the corridor, levelling their weapons at the human pair. Mariko lifted her rifle, pointed it down the corridor and opened fire on full automatic. The slimes seemed to howl in pain and rage – a disquietingly human sound – before they fell back, leaving a dozen bodies in the mud. Fitz pulled her into a side room as the next group of guards started to push forward, jumping from doorway to doorway. There was nothing wrong with their bravery, Mariko realised, even as she fired a shot at one of them in the hopes it would discourage his advance.



“Let’s hope they don’t have grenades,” Fitz said. “One or two grenades hurled up here and we’re dead. Hold the door for a moment.”



He slipped into the room for a long moment and then returned with a bottle of cleaning solvent. “They probably intended to use this in their IEDs,” he said, by way of explanation. “Safe at room temperature; explosive when subjected to very high temperature.”



He tossed it down the corridor, seconds before it exploded violently. A wash of fire scorched the advancing guards, leaving them gasping for breath as the flames receded. Mariko recoiled from the heat, realising that it would have been much worse for an alien race that was partly amphibious. Fitz grabbed her hand and rushed her down the corridor, carrying two more bottles in his hand. He seemed to have a certain idea of where they had to go to escape, something that wasn't too surprising. His augments would probably have recorded the entire trip since they’d been captured by the Secessionists.



“Hold this,” he snapped, passing her one of the bottles. Mariko couldn't see how he intended to detonate it, until she realised that one of his other augments was a laser built into his little finger. The bottle in his hands rapidly turned red with heat, just before he threw it ahead of them and yanked her into a side room. A second explosion left alien guards screaming and choking on the floor, their greenish skins scorched clear of the slime that was their lifeblood. It had to feel horrible for them, Mariko realised, worse than a human burn. “Run!”



She could hear the sounds of running guards in the distance as they fled up the hatch to the outside world. There was only darkness ahead of them, but Fitz seemed to navigate it as smoothly as he would have navigated in broad daylight. He slowed, pushed at something above their heads, and the first twitch of daylight seemed to pour through the gap. Mariko joined him in pushing it open and followed him into the vineyard. A moment later, he heated up the final bottle of solvent and tossed it down the shaft. An explosion billowed out far below.



“Halt,” a voice burbled.



Mariko cursed out loud as she realised that they had run right into an alien patrol returning from planting IEDs or making contact with other dissidents. They were trapped, unable to run...



...And then a missile screamed down from high overhead, slamming directly into the base.

Many thousands of years. (7000ish)

Chris

"Snakes, why did it have to be Snakes" /Indy