On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus) (43 page)

Or would she have hesitated until it was too late?

She stepped into the shower.  The water felt warm against her skin, even when it touched the bruises the battlesuit had left behind.  If she did stay with Fitz, and part of her
wanted
to stay with Fitz, she resolved to ask for augmentation of her own. 
Real
combat soldiers, marching across alien worlds in battlesuits, didn't wind up covered in bruises.  Some of them
lived
in their suits for days on end.

“We’re about to enter phase space,” Mai said, through the intercom.  “Mariko, I have orders to tell you to sleep.  We’ll wake you up when something interesting happens.”

Mariko nodded, stepped out of the shower and dried herself as the ship slid into phase space.  A moment later, she stumbled to her bunk and turned out the light.  She was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow.

“I don’t recall seeing this part of the ship before,” Mariko said.
  The cabin had lost its bunk, shower and compartments for guests to stow their luggage.  Instead, there was a single chair positioned in the exact centre of the room, where Red sat, tied firmly to the metal.  A set of tubes had been linked to her arm, providing food and drink to keep her reasonably healthy. 

“I reconfigured it,” Fitz explained.  “You’ll be amazed at how much of this ship is reconfigurable.”

“I’m not sure I would be amazed by anything right now,” Mariko said.  “What do you intend to do with her?”

Red stared at her, cold murder clearly visible in her eyes. But Red said nothing.

Fitz attached another device to Red’s forehead.  “Interrogate her,” he said, simply.  “Or at least I’m going to try.  Secessionists give their important agents implants that suicide if they detect that they are being interrogated.”  He looked at Red.  “Isn't that true?”

Red merely glared at him. 

“It’s a bit of a problem,” Fitz admitted.  “Try to drug her, and the implant will turn her brain into ashes.  Direct neural simulation?  Her brain turns to ashes.  Simple, old-fashioned torture?  That’s very bad news for her, too.”  He grinned.  “Not least because torture is nothing more than inflicting pain, which means that sometimes an implant can decide that an injured person is being tortured and kill her.  That was actually how we managed to uncover a Secessionist ring on Zebra IV.”

He straightened up and peered down at Red. 

“I know, you’ve probably been prepared to resist tricks that won’t set off your implant,” he said, addressing her.  “But I don’t think that you’re really prepared for something that is nothing more than a lie detector.  Are you?”

Red said nothing. 

“This is how it is going to go,” Fitz said.  “I am going to ask you some questions.  You are going to give me the answers.”

“Get fucked,” Red said, icily.

Fitz ignored her.  “If you cooperate long enough to allow me to solve the rest of the puzzle, you have my word as a Peer of the Imperium that you will be transferred to a penal colony where you will spend the rest of your life,” he said.  “If you don’t...you won’t be taken to an empty cell and blasted.  You’ll go into one of Imperial Intelligence’s little cells, where they will try to outsmart the person who created your implant.  They haven’t had any luck so far, but maybe you’ll be the lucky one who survives the procedure.”

“Try it,” Red said.

Mariko
ignored her.  “Why can’t you just remove the implant?” she asked Fitz.

“Because the implant is wired directly into her brain,” Fitz said.  “Removing it will trigger it, killing her.  Using nanites to break it down will probably trigger it as well, or send particles crashing through her brain.”  He shook his head.  “It’s been tried, several times.  Every time, the implanted person has ended up dead.  Very frustrating if you want to get information out of them.”

He looked back at Red.  “There’s no need for this, you know,” he added.  “You could just cooperate...”

Red said nothing, merely sneered. 

“Very well,” Fitz said.  “The Secessionists plot to bring down the wormholes, correct?”

“Of course,” Red said, mockingly.  “And then we’re going to turn Homeworld’s star into a supernova, turn the alien population into toads and then declare unlimited rice pudding and custard for everyone.”

Fitz studied a datapad wired into the chair.  “Interesting,” he said, cheerfully.  “And did Professor Snider produce the plan for bringing down the network?”

“No,” Red said.

“Ooh, a
lie
,” Fitz said. 

Red looked shocked.

He grinned at her.  “Oh, don’t be so surprised.  I’m not poking a probe into your brain, merely monitoring the patterns that suggest if you’re telling the truth – or trying to lie to me.  And even what you choose to lie about will give me valuable data.”

His smile widened.  “Tell me if this statement is true.  Professor Snider’s plan reached the Secessionist leadership.”

Red said nothing. 

“It’s true,” Fitz said. 

Mariko realised that Red might have been able to keep her mouth shut, but she couldn't control her brainwaves. 

But Fitz had gone on.  “Have you seen this plan?”

“Of course,” Red sneered.  “We’re going to blow up Homeworld’s star.  I told you.”

“Lies,” Fitz said, dispassionately.  “You haven’t seen the plan.  I assume that means you don’t know how they intend to do it?”  He nodded to himself, using the datapad to monitor her reactions.  “None too surprising; they wouldn't trust anyone in such an exposed position with knowledge of their main plan.  I always used to hate that need-to-know shit when I was going through basic training.  Half of them seemed to think that no one
ever
had a need to know.”

He winked at Red, who glared helplessly back at him. 

“Where do you come from, Red?”

“Prime Number,” Red said. 

Mariko had heard of Prime Number, a world where numbers determined everything. 

“I was born there and had to leave because I found it so stifling.”

“Another lie,” Fitz observed, “but a clever one.  I could read planetary names to you all day and not touch upon the one that gave birth to you.  Still...

“Chances are that it was a colony world,” he added.  “The colonists suffer worst under the Imperium, apart from the aliens, of course.  Which one gave birth to you...?”

He laughed.  “Oh, I’m
wrong
.  A core world, then?  Or perhaps one of the corporate...ah, a hit!”

Mariko shook her head as the absurd question and answer session continued, eventually revealing that Red had been born on Hades as the youngest daughter of a worker peon, a Class-Three citizen so heavily in debt that he was on the verge of being automatically downgraded to Class-Four, a status that would have automatically been passed down to his children and their descendents.

The system was rigged, of course.  Why would the corporate worlds pay cheap labour when they were legally enslaved? 

Red had left the planet as soon as she was old enough and never looked back.  And then she had been given her basic training on Tuff. 

Fitz went over that time and time again, trying to pull as much information as possible from the resisting girl.  She had been picked up by a Secessionist recruiter and transhipped to Tuff.  Later training had been from someone who had probably been in the Imperium’s service at one time or another, perhaps one of the officers whose disappearance Richardson had masked.  She’d become a practiced bodyguard and sent out on her first mission, followed by a string of others, but she never saw the ultimate result of her work.  And her first failure had come when she’d underestimated Fitz at the dull red star.

“Curious,” Fitz said, finally.   “My offer does stand, you know.  Cooperate openly, and I will ensure that they don't kill you while trying to crack your implants.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Red said, and followed up with several words that Mariko had never heard before.  “You fucking piece of...”

“That will do, thank you,” Fitz said.  “I’ll arrange for your transfer as soon as we reach Sumter.  You have that long to change your mind.”

He led the way out of the cabin, followed by a pensive Mariko.  Automated subroutines would monitor Red at all times, even though she should be unable to move enough to scratch an itch, let alone escape. 

“You’re very quiet,” he said, when the hatch had hissed closed and sealed itself.  “Are you all right?”

“I didn't like watching that,” Mariko admitted.

“I don’t like doing it,” Fitz said, softly.  “There are people who live for breaking suspects, but they’re the ones you really
don't
want in charge of an interrogation room.  The idea is to use everything from drugs to outright torture to extract information, not to indulge someone’s sadistic little habit.  I knew an intelligence agent who got dismissed after punching out an interrogator who enjoyed his work too much, the little bastard.”

He shrugged. 

“Not that it matters much in her case,” he added.  “Getting anything else out of her will be difficult, and I suspect that whatever else she knows won’t be very useful.  But we do have to try and beat that implant before we catch the person who knows everything.”

Mariko looked up at him.  “And you know who that person is?”

“There’s only one place left to go now,” Fitz said.  “Lady Mary is involved in this, right up to her stupid headdress.  We have to go back to Tuff and grab her.”

“But...”  Mariko stared down at the deck.  “Last time we went there, we might have triggered all kinds of alarms.”

“But they let us leave peacefully, so we didn't,” Fitz said.  “Besides, didn’t you promise your boyfriend a second date?”

Mariko felt herself flushing, again.  After everything they’d seen and done, it didn't seem like that much, but the memory still made her want to cringe.

“You’re a bastard,” she said, finally.

“Literally,” Fitz said, with some pride.  “Uncle Hercules couldn't get his wife pregnant, so he banged a serving maid and, nine months later, out popped I.”

Mariko gaped at him.  “
Hercules
?  As in
the
Grytpype-Thynne?”

“That’s the one,” Fitz said, cheerfully.

“But...”  Mariko swallowed and started again.  “Wouldn't that make you the Heir to one of the most powerful men in the Imperium?”

“Matter of opinion,” Fitz said.  He grinned at her as they reached the bridge.  “Uncle Hercules doesn't have another direct child, but there are several in the cadet lines that may have a better blood claim than I do.  He could declare me his Heir if he wanted, yet that would come with excessive scrabbling amongst the family.  Better to keep the vultures guessing who will be nominated when the time comes.  The real jackals might betray themselves in the meantime.”

“I'm surprised he lets you out of his sight,” Mariko said, faintly.  She’d known that Fitz was an aristocrat, but she’d never realised just how powerful he stood to be if he did inherit.  Why would anyone throw that away to go charging around the Rim trouble-shooting for the Imperium?  “Doesn’t he worry about you?”

“The only person he’s ever worried about is himself,” Fitz commented.  “The bastard is a hard man to love, but he
does
have the well-being of the Imperium at heart, which is more than can be said for many other Family Heads.  He knows what I do for the Imperium and blessed me when I left.  We really need more people like him.”