On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus) (19 page)

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 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, 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.  But that doesn’t change what we have to deal with right now.  If we granted aliens the same rights as human beings, the Imperium would fall apart within a decade, followed rapidly by genocide.”

She looked at him in alarm.

“The Slimes aren't the only race that hates us,” he reminded her.  “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,” 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.  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 against 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 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 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, saw 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 crashed 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.