On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus) (46 page)

A moment later, she felt something touch the back of her neck...and the world plunged into darkness. 

Mariko felt sick.
  It was as if she'd swallowed something so vile that her genetic improvements couldn't cope with it.  There was a roaring in her ears that hurt, badly, yet seemed oddly familiar.  Her entire world seemed to shift around her, no matter how she tried to focus. 

And then she felt another prick in her forearm. The queasiness started to fade away.

“You may as well open your eyes,” a voice said.  “I know you’re waking up.”

Someone must be talking, she realised. Maybe she'd been talking for a while, but she’d been so scrambled that all she’d heard was a dull roar. 

Mariko opened her eyes.  Lady Mary stood in front of her, studying her face.  The aristocrat didn't look anything like as welcoming as the first time Mariko had seen her; in fact, she looked terrifyingly angry.  Mariko realised in horror that someone had stripped her naked before cuffing her hands behind her and shackling her legs.  Escape would be impossible, even if Lady Mary turned her back.  She looked around for Fitz and saw him seated in another chair, cuffed heavily.  A simple metal collar ran around his neck.

“I already know why you came,” Lady Mary said.  “You sang like a canary.”

“I didn’t,” Mariko said, trying to find the strength to defy her.  She’d been drugged, clearly, but she wouldn't have talked...would she?  “Why...?”

“Amazing stuff, truth drugs,” Lady Mary said.  “And your nanites were hardly up to the task of scrubbing the drug out of your bloodstream before it took effect.  Who would have thought it?  Useless old Fitzgerald, the bastard son of one of the most important men in the Grand Senate, serving as a spy.  And a very competent one, too.”

Her lips twisted into an unpleasant smile.  “He really had me taken in,” she said.  “I wonder how many other useless old farts are actually spies sent to keep an eye on me.”

Fitz coughed from his chair.  “What makes you think that you’re so important?”

He sounded weak, Mariko realised in horror.  What could weaken him?

“There’s a twenty million credit bounty on my head,” Lady Mary said, cuttingly.  “Not under my real name, of course.”

“You?”  Fitz said.  “You’re the Rebel?”

“And you’re a spy for the Imperium, one of the ones who try to keep a thoroughly rotten system running,” Lady Mary pointed out.  “I hardly think that you're in a position to complain about someone else adopting a disguise.”

Mariko gathered herself.  “Why?”

“Oh,” Lady Mary said.  “Is this the moment where I offer you a large cup of tea and tell you all my plans, while you work out a way to stop me?”

“No,” Fitz said, weakly.  “It’s the moment where you tell us why you decided to betray the system that gave you everything.”

Lady Mary shrugged. 

“And there I was, thinking that you knew everything,” she mocked.  “Isn't Imperial Intelligence supposed to know
everything
?  Dear me – so many ideals are falling down today, aren't they?”

Her gaze fixed on Fitz.  “I was fourteen, in control of my life, and I wanted a child,” she said.  “I seduced someone in the hopes that he would
give
me a child...well, it didn't work out and my family was
most
angry.  They called me a foolish little girl, and they were right.  I wasn't mature enough to understand that a child would have blighted my life until it grew up and became an adult.  But they felt that I hadn’t learned my lesson.  They exiled me out to a planet named Vulcan.”

Mariko shook her head.  There were a hundred million worlds in the Imperium, ranging from worlds where humans could live without terraforming to rocky uninhabitable worlds only colonised because they possessed raw materials that couldn't be found anywhere else, or because the colonists
really
wanted privacy.  She couldn't remember them all.

“Vulcan was a hellish place, even by the standards of the Imperium,” Lady Mary said.  “The population were all Indents, of course, worked to death by their owners – and they were rebellious as all hell.  Someone had given them enough genetic enhancement to allow them to survive Vulcan’s toxic atmosphere for several hours, pushing human enhancement to the limit.  Robots would have been better suited for mining there, but robots were expensive and Indents were cheap.  You can guess which way the managers jumped when they were forced to decide.

“The Indents were rebellious, of course, and ingenious.  Small colonies lived on the surface away from the mines and life support domes, raiding the installations with the help of insiders on the mining crews.  Each raid cost the managers money, so they hired mercenaries to put the rebels down.  But the mercenaries weren't prepared for Vulcan’s environment, so the fighting just stalemated.  I was told that I would be taking over as manager with orders to put the rebellion down.  Instead, I wound up joining it.”

“I’m surprised they let you go to Tuff,” Fitz commented.

“I banished most of the mercenaries from the world and made the rebels a number of concessions,” Lady Mary said.  “Most of them cost very little compared to the stupendous wealth pulled from Vulcan’s underground deposits.  Profits would have gone up, I thought, but the family council thought differently.  They thought I’d set a dangerous precedent that would eventually wind up costing them large parts of their income.  And so they banished me out to Tuff, not knowing that I had already made contact with the Secessionists.”

Fitz coughed, again.  “Do you
know
what sort of chaos you’ll unleash if you bring down the wormholes?”

Mariko glanced at him, worried. 

“Of course,” Lady Mary said.  “Have you
seen
the Imperium lately?  You and I,
Lord
Fitzgerald, sit on top of a system powered by slave labour, strangling the life out of the entire galaxy until there is almost nothing left.  How many wrecked worlds have been abandoned because they were no longer profitable, leaving the locals to die in polluted atmospheres?  How many...?”

“Then help us to change it, instead,” Fitz snapped.  “You don’t have to bring the entire edifice crumbling down.”

“You’re an idealist,” Lady Mary said.  “Do you really think that the Grand Senate would agree, voluntarily, to give up most of its power to let the Imperium breathe?  They won’t even consider granting the outer worlds autonomy, and those are
human
worlds.  Their power has to be broken, completely.  And as for the pain and suffering I will inflict, can you tell me that the fat and happy populations of the Core Worlds don’t deserve it?”

She paced around Fitz and looked down at Mariko, one hand stroking Mariko’s chin.  “But you have your doubts,” she said.  “You could join us.”

“No,” Mariko said, flatly. 

Lady Mary smiled, coldly.  “Are you sure?” she asked.  “Because otherwise, you will share his fate.”

She’d had time to think about what would happen if the Secessionists succeeded.  Billions of lives would be lost as the Imperium shattered, followed by billions more as warlords and alien invaders started fighting over what was left of human space.  And besides...she didn't want to abandon Fitz. 

“I’m sure,” Mariko said.  “Go fuck yourself.”

“I have given some thought about what to do with you,” Lady Mary said, shrugging.  “I could kill you both right now, but that would be too easy.  Tell me; what do you know about the Hex?”

Mariko felt her eyes widen with horror as she remembered what they’d been told about the Hex. 

“Precisely,” Lady Mary said.  She grinned, almost girlishly.  “The hunt...is on.”

Mariko felt a cold metal object being pressed against her neck...and then she blacked out, again.

***

Someone was shaking her.  “Wake up,” Fitz said, urgently.  “Can you hear me?”

Mariko groaned.  Whatever they had used to put her out, twice, was powerful.  “Yes,” she slurred, and was shocked at the sound of her own voice.  She coughed twice, and then opened her eyes as her stomach finally rebelled against Lady Mary’s mistreatment.  “Yes...”

She rolled over and threw up, violently.  Fitz caught her before she fell facedown in the midst of her own vomit. 

“That’s a natural result of truth drugs,” Fitz admitted, as he helped her to her feet and held her until she felt steady again.  “I’m sorry.  I seem to have blundered twice now.”

Mariko remembered what she’d done and shuddered.  “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling her body start to shake again.  “I didn't mean to tell her anything.”

“I know,” Fitz said.  “Don’t worry about it.”

“But...”

“You were drugged,” Fitz said.  “I gave you nanites that should have provided some protection, but I think they just kept upping the dose until it overwhelmed the nanites and took effect.  Everything you knew about me
, now they also know it.  Damn.”

This seemed a surprisingly mild response for what Mariko knew was total disaster. 

“What do we do now?”

“Look around,” Fitz advised, dryly.  “And then tell me what you think we should do.”

Mariko, for the first time, because aware of their surroundings.  They stood in the middle of a jungle, completely naked.  No, not completely; Fitz had a collar wrapped around his neck.  Their cuffs and shackles had been removed, leaving them free to move, but they'd been completely disarmed.  They could be thousands of kilometres from Lady Mary’s compound, completely isolated.  Who knew what would have happened to them in Tuff’s weird jungle?  There were so many deaths in the jungle that two more would hardly be noticed.

“Shit,” she said, finally.  “Where are we?”

“Unknown,” Fitz said.  “I think we’re not actually that far from the compound, but there’s no way to be sure until tonight – if we get a clear sky.”

Mariko stared at him.  “But don’t you have a compass in your augments?  And a GPS?”

Fitz tapped the collar.  “Suppressor,” he said.  “Most of my implants are currently useless, or scrambled.  Lady Mary wasn't going to let us out of her grasp without crippling us as much as possible.”  He shrugged.

Mariko's dismay at their plight doubled.  Even after the experience with the capture webbing, she still thought of augmented people as being invincible.  But now Fitz was helpless, reduced to the levels of a normal man.

“Not helpless,” Fitz said, when she said that out loud.  “Just...tired.  These implants are lighter than the first designs, but my body is still heavier than yours – or any other unaugmented human.”  He looked up at the sky.  “But I think we’d better get walking.  You do remember what a Hex looks like?”

Mariko shivered.  The beasts were disconcertingly human, at least on the surface.  Tuff had altered their minds, giving them a savage nature that made them utterly fearsome, combined with a feral intelligence that made them dangerous.  And they were in the middle of their range on the planet...

“It’s worse than that,” Fitz pointed out, as he pulled a leaf from one of the trees and broke it up in his hands, creating a smelly mess.  He rubbed it over his chest and then Mariko’s back, giving her enough for her to rub his back and her own chest.  “Each day, idiots with guns are going to set out, having been informed that their targets look like humans.  What happens when they see us?”

Mariko looked down at her naked body and blanched.  The Hex were naked, of course; Tuff hadn't bothered to program them to have any sense of modesty. 
They
would look like Hex, particularly to any Lord looking to improve his score.  He’d shoot them before he had a chance to realise that he was taking pot-shots at real humans.

“There have always been whispers that some of the darker hunting fraternities actually
do
hunt humans,” Fitz muttered, as they slipped through the jungle, heading north.  Or what Fitz swore was north.