On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus) (40 page)

Mariko brought the freighter out of phase space some distance from the phase limit surrounding the star.  The smaller stars tended to produce curious shifts in their phase limits, for reasons no one fully understood.  Running right into the phase limit would, at best, force them back into normal space; at worst, no one would ever see them again. 

Fitz scanned the system as they coasted towards the red sun, looking for anything interesting.  IAS-482352 had little of interest, apart from a handful of asteroids, a scattering of comets and a single abandoned research station.

“Take us towards the research station,” Red ordered.  She’d come back to the bridge, ignoring polite suggestions that her company might be better appreciated elsewhere.  “They’ll make contact with us there.”

“They?”  Mariko asked, as she changed course as instructed.  “Who are you...?”

An alarm chimed as a spatial distortion appeared above their ship.  Moments later, it revealed itself as a decloaking cruiser, seemingly of Imperium design.  Old it might be, but there was nothing old about the weapons array that was locked on the
Happy Wanderer
.  One single missile from her, and the freighter would be blown into flaming debris.

“You must excuse our paranoia,” Red said, smoothly.  “But we know that you’re working for the Imperium.  I suggest that you surrender and save yourself from a quick and unpleasant death.”

Mariko stared at her.  “Is this how you treat all of the people who work for you?”

“You were scanned as you entered the Paradise ring,” Red said.  “Imagine our surprise when we discovered that one of you was heavily augmented.  And you were offering such a tempting booty for anyone who needed it
all
.”

Her smile widened as the cruiser grew closer.  “Surrender,” she said.  “Surrender, or die.”

Fitz lashed out with
his augmented strength, knocking Red to the floor.

“Actually, you
can’t
have that ship open fire,” he said, sharply. 

Mariko tossed him a packet of duct tape, and he started to use it to tie Red up. 

“If you destroy us,” he told the captive Red, “you also kill the Professor.  And I imagine that your people won’t want to risk that.”

Mariko blinked.  “Are you sure?”

“If they wanted to deprive the Imperium of Professor Snider, they could just have killed him on Paradise and vaporised his body,” Fitz pointed out, dryly.  “Why would they need to have a show of bringing him onboard this ship?”  He shook his head as he finished tying Red up and left her lying on the floor.  “Come on, quickly!”

Mariko followed him down to one of the compartments of survival equipment.  “What are they going to do now?”

“At a guess, they’re going to wait for us to respond, which we won’t, and then start boarding us.” Fitz grinned at her, manically.  “It may take them some time to realise that we’re not responding, which gives
us
time to strike back.”

Mariko frowned. 
Happy Wanderer’s
only weapons were a pair of outdated phase cannons, scarcely a danger to anything larger than a shuttle.  Every freighter commander dreaded a pirate attack, if only because pirates were often savages.  Run from them and the pirates might extract revenge on one’s crew; surrender at once and, very often, the pirates might torture the crew anyway.  Thousands of wrecked ships had had the tell-tale signs of rape, murder, and looting before the hulks had been abandoned to drift through interstellar space.

“You intend to fight an entire cruiser on your own?” she asked, as he opened the compartment to reveal two of the battlesuits he’d transferred from the
Bruce Wayne
.  They would certainly have been found by an Imperium customs team searching the ship, but Paradise never bothered to search
any
ship.  “And what about the Professor?”

Fitz checked a console as he pulled out the first battlesuit.  “Put it on,” he ordered, “and then get to the main airlock.  I’ll deal with the professor.”

Mariko stumbled as she slipped into the battlesuit, her fingers trembling as she locked the various switches and felt the battlesuit come to life around her.  Mai would have done better, she knew without jealously, but Mai wasn't with them.  She was with the
Bruce Wayne
, watching from a distance and no doubt worrying over what to do.  Her ship wouldn't be any match for a cruiser in a direct fight.

The battlesuit’s combat systems came online as she clomped towards the main airlock, the only one large enough to accommodate a pair of battlesuit-wearing individuals.  There was no live feed from the
Happy Wanderer’s
sensors, something that worried her; the enemy cruiser could be launching assault shuttles right now, targeted on her hull.  Or she could be waiting to hear their reply. 

Remembering one of the tricks in the suit’s arsenal, she activated the communications scan and started looking for incoming communications.  The Secessionists were just repeating their surrender demand, with a handful of threats added this time.

She looked up to see Fitz dragging the Professor towards them, having forced him into a spacesuit with a disabled control matrix.  That was illegal under Imperial Law, but under the circumstances she doubted that anyone would care.  Fitz dumped the Professor in the airlock and ran back to get his own battlesuit, leaving Mariko to watch the elderly gentleman.  It was hard to tell, but the Professor appeared to have been drugged by Fitz or Red.  There was no way to know for sure.

“This is your final warning,” a voice boomed in her ear.  “You will surrender now, or we will take steps.”

Mariko switched the channel to her link with Fitz’s battlesuit.  “They’re running out of patience,” she said, hoping that he’d donned his suit by now.  “I can hear them issuing threats.”

“I’m on my way,” Fitz said.  He had always been able to don the battlesuit faster than she could, something he put down to long training.  “Get into the airlock and prepare the emergency vent cycle.”

“Understood,” Mariko said.  She hesitated.  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Of course not,” Fitz said, as he clomped into view.  As well as donning a battlesuit, he’d brought along a plasma cannon far too large to be used by an unarmoured human.  It was nearly the size of the cannons used by Imperial Marines as light artillery.  “I’m just making it up as I go along.  Keep one eye on the Professor at all times.  We
cannot
allow him to fall into their hands.”

There was a groan from the Professor. 

“What happened to him?”

“Red hit him with something I didn't have time to analyse,” Fitz told her, as he started to key the airlock control panel.  Mariko admired his fine control; if she’d tried to program the airlock using her armoured fingers, she would have broken the entire panel.  “Probably a mixture of sedative and hypnotic, something to keep him docile and cooperative.”

He snorted as he finished tapping in commands. 

“As soon as the airlock opens, get out onto the ship’s hull and prepare to repel boarders,” he added.  “They won’t be expecting us to challenge them in open space.  Activate your suit’s chameleon function, and they might not even be able to
see
us.”

The airlock hissed open, revealing the inky blackness of space.  Mariko realised that the Secessionist cruiser was approaching from the other side of her ship, unable to see them as they crawled out of the airlock and onto the hull.  Fitz pulled the Professor with him, tethering him to part of the hull before standing upright and clomping after Mariko on magnetic boots.  The suits had their own internal manoeuvring systems for operating in space, but using them might have been detected.  Wearing the suit made a person feel invincible, yet Fitz had reminded her, time and time again, that there was no such thing as an invincible weapon.  A single burst from a high-intensity plasma cannon would cut the suit in half and kill her instantly. 

Fitz touched her suit, making her jump. 

“There,” he pointed, using the induction contact system to avoid any betraying transmissions.  “They’re on their way.”

It was difficult to make out the cruiser against the stars without the passive sensors within the suit, but
something
disengaged itself from space and zoomed into view, heading right towards them.  Her suit identified it as an
Alicia
-class assault shuttle, one originally developed for the Imperial Marines before entering common usage and finally being replaced with another design.  She managed to shut the suit’s databanks off before it provided her with a full breakdown on the class, its history, its known weaknesses and everything else anyone might have wanted to know about the shuttles.  How Marines and the other elite units managed to use the battlesuits constantly was beyond her.

Fitz lifted his plasma cannon and took careful aim, sighting on the shuttle as it closed in.  Mariko braced herself, knowing that the moment he activated the plasma containment chamber, it would send out a betraying emission to the enemy ship.  Warnings flashed in front of her as Fitz clicked off the safety and pulled the trigger, sending a series of blinding white flashes towards the enemy shuttle. 

The shuttle was hit twice, spun out of control and then exploded in a huge fireball, taking all hands down with her. 

Mariko felt a brief moment of pity for them.  But she reminded herself that the Secessionists had set out to hijack her ship and then take them prisoner – and presumably kill them.  They didn't deserve sympathy.

“Target destroyed,” Fitz said, with heavy satisfaction. 

Above them, the cruiser started to move, advancing towards the
Happy Wanderer
.  It made no sense to Mariko; if they’d decided to cut their losses and vaporise her ship, they were already well within weapons range. 
Happy Wanderer
had almost no defences at all.

“Good shot,” she said, as the enemy cruiser came closer.  “Now what do we do?”

“Activate your linked combat modules and brace yourself,” Fitz said.  “This is going to be a stunt.”

Mariko wondered what he meant as he switched channels and started sending coded signals to Mai, who was presumably watching from a distance.  But what would happen if she had lost them?  Fitz’s contingency plans hadn't included a possible hijack; he hadn't even
considered
the possibility after confirming that Red and the Professor were unarmed.  Her sister might be left waiting helplessly for months before finally realising that they were gone, leaving her with no alternative but to go back to Sumter and contact Prather. 

“All right,” Fitz said.  “Here we go.”

Mariko felt her legs bend against her will as the linked combat datanet took control.  She kicked off the ship and found herself flashing through the void, right towards the enemy cruiser.  It grew rapidly from a dot of light into an intimidating teardrop-shape, covered with sensor arrays, weapons blisters and communications domes.  Someone had been trying to turn an old patrol ship into a long-range sensor ship.

The perspective changed once again as she found herself plummeting towards the ship’s hull at terrifying speed.  Then all of her weaponry came online.

She shot at the weapons blisters as they moved to track her.  A dozen were blown into flaming debris before they even started to shoot back.  She silently blessed Fitz’s insistence they practice shooting, then continued to fire ...

She hit the deck with a bump she felt even through the suit’s compensators, no longer fully in control of a suit which had developed a mind of its own.  The suit laid waste to the enemy hull, picking off weapons and sensors with remarkable ease.  They didn't even seem to be shooting back any longer; maybe they couldn't depress their own weapons far enough to shoot at targets on their hull? 

Fitz rampaged his way towards one of the airlocks and washed his plasma cannon down the hatch, making the super-strong compound used for starship hulls run like water.  It withstood his fire, but now they’d have to blow it open from the inside if they wanted to get out.