On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus) (5 page)

“Your duties will be mainly piloting,” Lord Fitzgerald said.  “I may also require you to serve as escorts when I go planet-side, or accompany me on other...exclusions.  Those will be completely voluntary and I will pay you a bonus for them.  I trust that you find those conditions acceptable?”

Mariko found them too good to be true, but she couldn't think of any way that Lord Fitzgerald could want to trick them.  He would be perfectly within his rights to insist that they worked for free; after all, they
were
his slaves.  And yet he was offering them better wages than they could hope to find anywhere else.  Mariko would put up with a great deal for one thousand credits per month. 

“Perfectly acceptable,” she said, finally. 

Lord Fitzgerald grinned.  Perhaps he knew what she was thinking.  “I will draw up the contracts then,” he said.  “I suggest that you get some sleep.  I am expected at Tuff within the week and the death of my last pilot has already cost me several days.”

“We need to get checked out on the ship’s computers first,” Mariko said.  She wouldn't want to just take the helm without checking to make sure that she knew what she was doing first, at least unless they were under attack.  “What are you going to be doing on Tuff?”

Lord Fitzgerald’s grin grew wider.  “I'm going on safari,” he said.  “And you can come, too.”

Bruce Wayne
had a very odd bridge, but it took Mariko several moments to realise what was so odd about it.  The designer had clearly wanted to create a bridge that would convince the ship’s owner that they were just as important as a
real
starship commander – and he’d done it by giving the owner a command chair and a pair of consoles, even though the owner probably didn't know anything about flying the ship.  It was a waste of space, even though it
looked
remarkably elegant.  She resisted the temptation to sit down in the command chair and instead looked down at the helm console.  It was more advanced than the one on the
Happy Wanderer
, but it followed the same basic principles.  The designer wouldn't have wanted to risk creating a completely unique ship.

Tapping the controls, she brought up the standard menu and began to work her way through it, frowning as she did so. 
Bruce Wayne
seemed a very odd ship.  She was surprisingly overpowered for her size, with engines that matched the best the Imperial Navy could produce, all so heavily automated that one person could operate the entire ship from the bridge.  There was a stunning amount of redundancy built into the ship, allowing her to still slip into phase space even if one of the nacelles had been completely destroyed.  She carried no obvious weapons, but her shields were tough and she could probably outrun any pirate or kidnapper intent on bagging someone related to a Grand Senator.  Her hull was military-grade ablative compound, giving it a surprising amount of resistance even without her shields.  It looked almost as if the designer had set out to build an unarmed gunboat.

The first simulation appeared in front of her and she began to work her way through it, biting her lip as the simulation became more and more complicated.  Each simulation was intended to test the pilots to destruction, throwing more and more disasters at them as they overcame the last set of disasters.  Nothing like them had ever appeared in at least five thousand years of space travel, but that wasn't the point.  The point was to become intimately familiar with the starship and how it responded to different situations. 

And
Bruce Wayne
responded magnificently.  If the simulations were accurate, and she saw no reason why they wouldn't be accurate, the ship she was flying was one of the most agile starships in space.  Even a military-grade gunboat would have problems keeping up with her, at least until she began to take damage.  The tiny crew – Mariko and Mai were the only real crewmembers – couldn’t hope to complete repairs in time to save their ship. 
Bruce Wayne
was so small, compared to a superdreadnaught, that even a light hit could be very dangerous, perhaps disabling the ship.  And once she was disabled she would be nothing more than a sitting duck.

Eventually, she looked up at the chronometer and discovered to her surprise that two hours had passed.  It hadn't
felt
like two hours, but then it never did.  Pilots became so involved in the simulations that they never felt time passing around them.  Mariko stood up, stretched a little to work the kinks out of her muscles, and walked towards the stairwell.  One thing
Bruce Wayne
lacked was an internal transport system.  She was so small that it was hardly necessary.

The ship’s interior was a surprising combination of standard and extraordinary.  Deck one housed the bridge, the starship’s control systems, sickbay and a handful of other vital facilities, all automated.  Mariko hoped that the auto-doctor was better than the last one she’d seen, as thousands of years of development couldn't give electronic doctors the same insight as flesh-and-blood doctors.  One of them had kept insisting that she was pregnant despite a scan revealing no trace of a growing child within her womb.  Lord Fitzgerald might be taking a terrible risk by relying so completely upon automated systems.  Mariko had some medical knowledge, as it was a legal requirement for commanding a starship, but not enough to do more than delay the end for someone badly injured.

Deck two held Lord Fitzgerald’s cabin, a kitchen and dining hall and a handful of other cabins that were clearly intended for aristocratic guests.  Mariko had taken a look inside one of the cabins and rolled her eyes at its grandeur: too much gold and silver for her tastes.  Deck three held
their
cabins, various supply rooms and a small machine shop, although she couldn't imagine why Lord Fitzgerald would
want
a machine shop.  Maybe his former pilot had been a metalworker and wanted to carry on with his hobby once he'd entered Lord Fitzgerald’s service.  It seemed to be as good an explanation as any other.  Deck four held the engines, some storage holds and a sealed room they had been told never to enter without permission.  Given how much they were being paid, Mariko had decided to keep her curiosity firmly under control. 

The starship’s engines – a pair of modern fusion cores, producing more than enough power to run the entire ship at max – were housed towards the end of deck four.  Mariko watched inside and smiled as she saw Mai examining the computer systems and running automated diagnostics programs.  One thing she
didn't
like about
Bruce Wayne
was that her engines were sealed units, impossible for the crew to open and fix.  If they ran into an uncharted gravitational field in phase space they were likely to end up stranded in interstellar space, too far from an inhabited star system to signal for help.  The sublight drives wouldn't be enough to save them dying a very isolated death.

“These power cores are magnificent,” Mai said, as she entered the compartment.  She sounded happy...and more her old self.  “Do you know that we actually have four spares in the cargo holds?  We may not be able to fix these designs, but we could replace them if necessary.  Of course, we’d have to be sure that there was no damage to the connecting power channelling and distribution nodes...”

Mariko smiled as her sister chatted on.  She’d always been more of an engineer than a pilot, once admitting to Mariko that she would have preferred to serve on one of their father’s ships as an engineer, rather than commanding her own ship.  Their mother had been horrified when Mai had dismantled the family aircar to see how it went together – and then fixed it before her father could call a qualified engineer.  Privately, Mariko was much less impressed with the concept than Mai.  There was no guarantee that anything that hit the drive system would only knock out the power core.  Without a bigger crew, fixing all of the possible problems might be impossible.

“So,” Mai said, sitting back and grinning at her.  A patch of oil had marked her face and stained her suit, but she looked happy.  “What do you make of our new boss?”

“Very generous,” Mariko said.  She’d seen the contracts and read through them carefully before she’d signed them, but she hadn't been able to spot any hidden surprises.  Lord Fitzgerald simply didn't
need
to con them into anything.  A quick check through the ship’s computer database had revealed that he had an expense account big enough to buy most of the sector, assuming that he could find someone willing to sell.  “I think you like him far too much.”

Mai’s face changed slightly.  “Why shouldn't I like him?”

“Because he’s our boss,” Mariko said.  Her head was spinning.  Over the last two days, she’d gone from
knowing
that they were about to meet an awful fate to starting a new career as a wealthy aristocrat’s private pilots.  “And because he’s probably at least twice your age.”

“But does it matter?”  Mai asked.  “Mother always said that we should marry older men.”

Mariko bit down the response that came to mind.  Their mother was a strict traditionalist from a family that considered its daughters little more than pawns for expanding their influence and reputation.  They had taken a gamble by allowing one of their daughters to marry an up-and-coming tradesman, but it had paid off for them.  Until, of course, the time came when they found out their grandchildren had effectively become slaves.

“I don’t think he’d be interested in marriage,” Mariko said, finally.  “I think it’s time you started to work on the simulations on the bridge.”

“I suppose,” Mai said, reluctantly.  She needed to be checked out on the ship’s piloting systems before they left orbit.  Lord Fitzgerald had told them that he wanted to leave as soon as they felt comfortable piloting his ship to the point where she could slip into phase space.  “And what if he expresses an interest in me?”

Mariko tried to think of an answer and gave up.  There was nothing she could say.

***

“We’re ready to go, Milord,” Mariko said.  Lord Fitzgerald had been in his cabin during the hours the girls had spent learning how to fly his ship.  It was so simple that she couldn't understand why he hadn't bothered to learn himself.  What would happen to him if there was an accident and both of his pilots ended up dead?  “I request permission to take us out of orbit.”

“Granted,” Lord Fitzgerald said.  He didn't sound concerned.  “Do you want me on the bridge?”

The honest answer to that was
no
, but Mariko wasn’t sure if that was a good answer.  “If you want to watch, come onto the bridge,” she said.  “If not, there shouldn't be any problems down here.”

“I shall stay here,” Lord Fitzgerald said.  “Make sure you get some sleep once the ship is in phase space.  Tuff is not a very relaxing planet.”

Mariko nodded and returned to the bridge.  One advantage of being in orbit around Dorado was that it had almost no system in place to control the movements of orbiting systems.  A handful of low-orbit automated weapons platforms and a couple of cutters so old that they looked to be pre-Imperium weren't enough to protect the planet if someone nasty came calling, or stop
Bruce Wayne
from leaving orbit if she chose.  Mariko sent a burst transmission to the OTC anyway and closed the channel without giving them time to respond.

“Naughty,” Mai observed, from her console.  “Shouldn’t you wait for an acknowledgement?”

“No,” Mariko said, as
Bruce Wayne
came to life under her hands.  The starship was soon throbbing with more power than
Happy Wanderer
had ever enjoyed, although their old freighter had been a bulky brick with over four
times
the mass of
Bruce Wayne
.  She ran her hand down the list of commands that activated the drive completely, removing the interlocks that prevented the drive from coming to life accidentally.  “Let’s go, shall we?”

There was always something different about actually flying a starship, instead of working a simulation.  Mariko felt the ship shivering under her as she took direct control and started to navigate a path out of orbit and up towards the phase limit at the edge of the planet’s gravity field. 
Bruce Wayne
seemed to be friskier than any other ship she’d flown, almost as if she was pushing her pilot to go faster.  The hum of the drives grew louder as more power flooded into them, generating a drive field that pushed them forward.  Mariko found herself grinning as Dorado retreated behind them, leaving Carlos and his men to enjoy their lives of wealth and power on a godforsaken world.  Who knew?  Maybe the march they’d seen was merely the beginning of an uprising that would leave Dorado’s established power structure in ruins.