On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus) (52 page)

Fitz swore out loud.  “They’re outnumbered,” he said, bitterly.  “What was he
thinking
when he sent away half of his command?”

Mariko flipped the ship around to evade the gunboats as they closed in for the kill.  “These guys are going to try to kill us unless we can talk them out of it,” she snapped.  “Which side are
they
on?”

“Unknown,” Mai said, sharply.  “They were merely guarding the station.”

“I’m trying to pull a tactical data dump from the Imperial Navy’s datanet,” Fitz said.  “I’ve shot the gunboats our ID...”

Bruce Wayne
shook as pulse cannon blasts slammed into her shields.  “I think they’re unfriendly,” Mariko said, gunning the drives.  “Can you get rid of those shits?”

Bruce Wayne
flipped around as Fitz took direct control of her weapons, firing back at the gunboats as they moved to follow his ship.  One of them took a direct hit and staggered out of formation, the other two closed in, firing repeated shots directly into the
Bruce Wayne’s
shields.  The ship was powerful, more powerful than anything else her size Mariko had ever seen, but she couldn't stand up to that bombardment forever. 

And then Fitz scored a direct hit that wiped out one of the remaining two gunboats. 

“Take us away from the junction, towards the system’s edge,” he ordered, designating a course.  His voice changed as something new popped up.  “The Imperial Navy’s datanet is badly scrambled.  I think the Secessionists probably had a willing collaborator somewhere on the planet, or in the orbital fortress.”

Mariko nodded as she threw the ship into another evasive pattern.  The gunboat maintained pursuit, firing furiously...and then simply backed off.  It puzzled her until she realised that the gunboats were intended to secure the wormhole junction, rather than chase down everything that might come through individual wormholes.  She took a glance at the tactical display and saw what Mai meant.  Two fleets were fighting it out near the planet, both composed of nothing heavier than battlecruisers – apart from a trio of outdated battleships from thousands of years ago.  The Secessionists had to have found them and renovated them, perhaps stealing them from a system defence force or a museum.  There had to be a reason why they’d been taken out of Imperial Navy service...

“They were always missile-heavy,” Fitz commented, when she asked him.  “Good enough in their day, but as primary armaments moved swiftly towards energy weapons, they were found to be too slow and underpowered to handle the demands from the new designs.  So eventually they were retired and offered to SDFs.  Most of them didn't keep the battleships for very long.”

Mai blinked.  “Why not?”

“They were also manpower intensive,” Fitz said, thoughtfully.  “They required crews of over ten thousand men if facing serious combat; there wasn't any of the automation we take for granted today.  The Secessionists have either stuck in a load of automated systems or they dug up enough trained crewmen to man the colossal ships.”  He shrugged.  “They wouldn't last longer than five minutes if they encountered modern warships.  One of them is clearly badly damaged despite facing lighter opposition.”

He scowled down at his console.  “It’s hard to make anything out of the electronic junk flashing through the system, but the Secessionists have clearly managed to take control of the wormhole junction control station,” he said.  “My guess is that the sooner they defeat the Sector Fleet, the sooner they can plug the wormholes leading out of the sector towards the Core Worlds.  It’s possible that...”

Mai looked over at him.  “Couldn't we get a link to the
Happy Wanderer
and download her sensor records?”

“Good thinking,” Fitz said.  Mariko noted that their course was taking them towards where the
Happy Wanderer
had been abandoned and smiled to herself.  Fitz had clearly had it in mind right from the start.  “Get in touch with her and see what she says?”

Mariko allowed
Bruce Wayne
to coast as they struggled to make sense of the broadcasts from the planet.  The Secessionists were trying to jam everything, but enough was making it through the hail of static to confirm that there had been a major uprising on Sumter and all was chaos.  There was no sign of the Governor; he’d either been killed at the start of the fighting or he’d isolated himself...or fled, the nasty part of her mind added.  She found herself wondering what had happened to Prather, assuming that he was still alive.  Had he been dirty?  Or was he still trying to hold out against the enemy?

“Got a link,” Mai said.  Mariko turned her attention to the download from the
Happy Wanderer
.  “I’m afraid it isn't good news.”

Mariko scowled as she watched the data scrolling up in front of her. 
Happy Wanderer
had monitored a number of emergency alerts from Sumter, including armed terrorists seizing buildings, space platforms and even raiding the orbital fortress itself.  A moment later, the Secessionist fleet had entered the system, dispatching a smaller force to take the junction while the main body of the fleet continued towards the planet.  There, it had engaged the defenders...and was currently winning.  No one seemed to have taken command of the Imperial Navy immediately and by the time someone had asserted himself, it had been too late to stop a dozen ships from being lost. 

“That’s definitely not good news,” Fitz said.  He tapped through the updates.  “And they managed to take the junction station intact, which means they can presumably proceed with their plan to bring down the entire network.  But where are the Snakes?”

Mariko nodded in understanding.  They knew that the Snakes were backing the Secessionists, so where were they?  Adding a Snake task force to the Secessionist fleet would have ensured a victory at Sumter, rather than a long drawn-out battle.  But if they failed...

“They wouldn't want to be caught in the act,” she said, and outlined her reasoning.  “The Snakes won’t show their hand until the wormhole network goes down, completely.  If the Imperial Navy does manage to get here in force...”

“The Snakes would be doomed,” Fitz said.  “Assuming, of course, that the Grand Senate bothers to look up from its infighting to notice that the Snakes deserve punishment.”

He shook his head.  “That’s a moot point right now,” he added.  “The problem is getting onto the junction station and stopping them.”

“They have one hell of a sensor network surrounding the station,” Mai said, from her console.  “We take this ship, even cloaked, within a hundred thousand kilometres of the station and they’d have us.  The wormholes emit so much spatial distortion that cloaking devices are almost completely useless.”

“So they are,” Fitz agreed.  His smile grew wider.  “We’ll have to take the battlesuits.”

He looked over at Mariko.  “Take us in an arc that will loop us around behind the wormholes, but stay out of sensor range,” he ordered.  “At that distance, the cloaking device should still cover us effectively.  We’ll leave the
Bruce Wayne
there and move in while using battlesuits.  They’ll never be able to pick us out against the wormhole distortion.”

Mariko looked at him, levelly.  “And what if you’re wrong?”

“We die,” Fitz said, simply.  He shook his head.  “There’s nothing else we can do.  This ship doesn't have enough firepower to make a difference in the battle – and it won’t be for anything if the wormhole network goes down.  We have to get onto that station and yes, that means accepting some risks.  I’m sorry, but...”

“Don’t be,” Mariko said.  She lowered her eyes.  “I understand.”

Mai provided a welcome distraction.  “And what, precisely, are we going to do when we’re on the station?”

“I told you,” Fitz said.  He smiled, brilliantly.  “Improvise.”

Mariko set the automatic pilot to follow the course Fitz had laid out, before going down to the battlesuit compartment and waiting while Fitz unlocked the machines. 

“I’d prefer heavier combat suits myself,” Fitz admitted, as the hatch slid open, “but I couldn't really hide them so effectively on this ship.  Besides, wearing them would be easier for their sensors to pick out when we get close to the station.  This way, we’re simply too small and stealthy to be detected.”

He motioned for Mai to take the first suit, and then unlocked the next one for Mariko.  “I downloaded a full set of station schematics while I was here last,” he added.  “You shouldn't have any difficulty finding your way through the station to the command and control centre.  Unfortunately, we cannot rely on Imperial Override Protocols working so effectively; the Secessionists have almost certainly wiped them from the network.”

Mai blinked, halfway through donning her suit.  “Imperial Override Protocols?  You mean the access codes buried in every Imperium-designed processor?” 

Fitz nodded. 

“Hah,” she said blackly.  “Most hackers can jam those up easily.”

“And don’t we just know it,” Fitz muttered, as Mai finished donning her suit and moved off to the airlock.  “Mariko...”

Mariko had hesitated instead of pulling on her suit.  “I know,” she said, quietly. 

She reached out and kissed him, and then stepped back and started to don the suit, blinking hard to wipe the tears from her eyes.  Fitz would have said that it was a weakness in combat and he would have been right.  The metal helm came down over her face and she allowed herself a moment of relief.  At least no one could see her now. 

“Are you ready?” she asked.

Fitz gave her a long, unreadable look and then started donning his own suit.  “One moment,” he said.  He turned to face her as he finished pulling the helm over his face.  “Shall we go?”

Mariko checked the feed from the ship’s computers.  “We’re in the right place,” she agreed, as he led the way down the corridor.  “I think it's time to go.”

She ran through a brief check of the suit’s systems; everything seemed to be working perfectly.  All weapons and manoeuvring systems were firmly online.  Data on the station scrolled in front of her eyes until she banished it with some irritation.  Multitasking was painful if she pushed herself too hard. 

The airlock yawned open as she stepped inside and joined her sister.  Fitz followed, firing commands into the ship’s control systems as he closed the hatch behind them.  A moment later, the outer airlock began to hiss open, revealing a vague shimmer covering the silent stars of space.  They seemed to be twinkling, an optical illusion caused by the cloaking device.  Oddly, she found it comforting as the ship generated a tractor field, picking them up and pushing them out into the uncaring vastness of space.  The slight pressure faded away as they passed through the cloaking device and away from the ship.  Ahead of them, her suit’s sensors were already noting the presence of rogue gravity fields and exotic matter, the building blocks of the wormhole network.  And they were going to fly right through them...

She began to hyperventilate as the sheer scale of space struck home.  Mariko had travelled thousands of light years from Edo to Dorado, to say nothing of running all over the sector with Fitz, but she’d never truly
grasped
the sheer size of space.  She was insignificant on such a scale, less than a bug; the entire human
race
was insignificant.   No matter who won the political power struggle for control of the Imperium – or if the Secessionists succeeded in bringing down the wormholes and shattering the Imperium into a thousand independent states fighting for supremacy – the stars would continue to burn in the bright sky, unheeding and uncaring of the human race.  A children’s book series she had once read had claimed that there were vast entities of fire living in suns, floating through space in massive fireballs.  The young Mariko had been awed by the thought of such strangeness waiting to be discovered; the older Mariko knew that humans were nothing on such a scale.  What would the Imperium have done, she wondered, if it had ever encountered such creatures?  The myth of human superiority would be shattered forever.

“Warning,” the suit’s sensors chirped.  Mariko almost jumped out of her skin.  “Entering area of extreme gravimetric turbulence...”

Space seemed to come alive with twisted light as Mariko drifted into the area affected by the wormholes.  It was difficult to make sense of what she was seeing; sometimes, she was convinced that she was going to fly right into a wormhole, while at other times it seemed that the entire wormhole network was coming apart already.  Her radio buzzed with random chatter, mostly utterly beyond her comprehension; it took her a moment to realise that as the wormholes rotated through space, they caught up signals and tossed them right across the galaxy, scrambling them along the way.  Spacers sometimes told tales of encountering natural wormholes, some leading far beyond the borders of the Imperium.  Mariko had never placed much credence in those stories – they were on a par with whispers about strange, bat-shaped ships, completely black, spotted in uninhabited systems – but now...now she wondered.  There were parts of space where the gravity field was naturally twisted; could it be possible that wormholes could exist without human technology bringing them into existence?