On The Imperium’s Secret Service (Imperium Cicernus) (53 page)

She almost panicked as a colossal starship loomed up in front of her, before realising that it was an optical illusion.  The wormholes played tricks on the eyes as well as everything else; she couldn't recall seeing
anything
as huge as that starship in real life.  But then, she was tiny on a cosmic scale.  Even a light cruiser would seem immensely huge.  Or perhaps it was alien...there were always whispers about aliens further beyond the Rim than anyone dared to travel.  Alone in her suit, drifting through space, Mariko suddenly began to believe.  Perhaps, if Fitz’s cover was too badly burnt to be redeemed, they could take a survey ship and go exploring.

The final wormhole seemed to spin into life in front of her, her suit shaking as it was bombarded by tiny gravity pulses from the singularity.  Mariko closed her eyes as the manoeuvring thrusters provided compensation, wondering what would happen if the gravity pulses happened to form up on her suit.  She might be crushed to a pulp before even realising that there was a problem.  There was a final nudge from the wormholes and then she was drifting towards the control station.  It didn't seem to be aware of her existence.

It was huge, bigger than she’d realised.  Six colossal mushroom shapes, bound together at the centre of the station, each one providing the power to manipulate the wormholes and bend the fabric of space-time enough to link with another singularity light years away.  Slowly, it grew bigger as she drifted towards it, large enough to generate its own gravitational pull.  Or perhaps that was just the side-effect of manipulating so many singularities so rapidly.  Mai would probably have known the answer, but Mariko couldn't ask her, not without risking detection. 

The suits passed unnoticed through the sensor grid and slowly tumbled towards the side of the station.  Mariko braced herself as the suit finally struck metal, firing a tiny burst of gas from the thrusters to slow her fall and impact.  Even so, the dull
clang
echoed in her ears and she was sure everyone inside the station had to have heard it.

Fitz landed beside her and pressed his hand against her suit’s receptor.  “Well, we made it,” he said. 

Mariko wasn't so sure.  They might have reached the hull, but getting inside might be trickier.  Officially, the station listed upwards of two thousand crewmen.  But what had the Secessionists done to them?  There was no way to know.

“Now all we have to do is improvise,” he told her. 

With that, he started to walk towards the closest airlock.  Mariko brought her weapons systems online, glanced at Mai and then followed Fitz into the airlock, once he had disconnected it from the overall hull monitoring system.  There was no longer any time to waste.

The interior of the station felt dead, even though it was clearly in full operating order.  Fitz led the way, weapons ready, expecting to encounter armed Secessionists ready to resist their intrusion.  Instead, there was nothing barring their way into the station.  Mariko followed him in and glanced around, just as the suit’s sensors flashed automated warnings in front of her eyes. 

The station’s atmosphere had been replaced by deadly poison gas.

“They killed everyone who didn't have protection,” Fitz said, grimly, as he started down the corridor.  “The gas is part of a security measure; even skin contact is enough to be lethal.  Most races would
die if exposed to even minor concentrations of the gas.”

Mai shuddered.  “How did they manage to get it onto the station?”

“I suspect they had an ally in the security department with the right codes to trigger the gas,” Fitz said. 

They turned a corner and saw their first body.  A young man lay on the ground, his face torn and twisted by agony.  Fitz knelt beside him and prodded him gently, but it was clear that he was a long way beyond help. 

“Another traitor in a very important position,” Fitz said, bitterly.  “Even if we get out of this with the wormholes intact, we’re going to have problems as we start hunting down the traitors.”

Mariko could imagine it.  Imperial Intelligence would insist on checking everyone, but there were literally
billions
of people working for the Imperium.  Their checks would cause resentment, which would weaken the bonds holding the Imperium together even if they managed to root out all the spies and traitors.  And it was easy to see why so many
would
turn against the Imperium.  Promotion was based on who you were and who you knew, not by merit or even simple competence.  There would be millions of resentful officers in the Imperium’s service.  Prather had been annoyed to have Fitz poking around in his territory; how much worse would it be to watch people getting promoted above you just because of their connections, when you
knew
you could do a far better job?

As they kept walking, they saw hundreds more bodies scattered through the corridors, all killed by the gas.  A handful seemed to have been moved to one side by someone who had survived, but there were no other signs of other survivors.  Fitz wondered out loud if the Secessionists hadn't moved them, yet there was no way to be sure. 

They reached the lift shaft and used armoured strength to tear it open.  All of the lifts would have been locked at the bottom as a security measure, but their suits could elevate them up the shaft towards the command centre.

“Come on,” Fitz said.  His suit drifted off the ground and floated up the shaft as the antigravity generators cut in.  Mariko followed him, allowing Mai to bring up the rear.  The interior of the shaft was pitch black, forcing them to use their sensors to navigate.  Mariko hoped that the enemy wasn't scanning for active sensors, or their presence would be detected.

Fitz halted at the top of the shaft and pointed towards another door
. Mariko placed her fingers on the solid metal and pulled at it.  Mai joined her and, slowly, the hatch slid open.

She cursed as she realised that three figures stood in front of the lift shaft, spinning around to face them.  Fitz opened fire on them at once, unleashing the full power of his suit; Mariko and Mai opened fire a second later.  Bolts of energy tore through the figures' suits, ripping them to shreds; they collapsed to the deck and vaporised a second later. 

Fitz studied their remains, puzzled.  “There is no logical reason why the Secessionists would rig their suits for self-destruction,” he announced, finally.  “So why did they do it?”

Mariko had to agree.  The suits were marvels of engineering.  They could have carried on the fight even if they had been penetrated by enemy fire.  Some of the simulations they’d carried out had shown suits continuing to fight even though their operator was dead. 

They stopped outside a heavy metal security door and paused.  Mariko had studied the engineering specs on the station and knew that nothing short of a starship-grade phase cannon would burn through the armoured sheath protecting the command centre from mutiny, internal uprisings and boarding parties.  There was no point in unleashing the suits against the armour when it wouldn't even scar the metal.  Fitz hesitated – she knew that he wasn't going to stop now, balked by a solid metal hatch – and then rapped on the door with his fist. 

A moment later, the hatch started to hiss open...and they came face-to-face with a pair of Snakes. 

Fitz was on them like lightning, tearing through them with armoured force.  “Don’t damage the consoles,” he yelled, as Mariko followed him through the widening gap.  “Try and take one alive!”

There were nine Snakes in the compartment, all reaching for weapons.  Mariko allowed the suit to take over as she lunged towards the remaining aliens.  She went through them like a knife through butter.  But she wasn't able to take any of the Snakes alive.  As soon as they died, their bodies burst into flame and they crumbled to dust. 

Mariko blinked in surprise, and then understood.  If the plot to collapse the wormholes failed, there would be no direct proof of their involvement, nothing that would galvanise the Empire against them. 

Fitz sealed the hatch, cursing all the while, and then motioned for Mai to take the main console.  Mariko sat next to her sister, trying to understand the system in front of her.  It was more complex than anything she’d seen in her career.  Each station controlled one of the wormholes, all of which seemed to be unstable – except one. 

The wormhole to Dachshund remained open.

“They’ve introduced some kind of feedback harmonic into the wormholes,” Mai said, finally.  She didn't sound confident, but then she wasn't a wormhole expert.  Professor Snider would probably have known precisely what to do and how to fix it.  “Something like a computer virus, but linked into the harmonics that hold the wormholes together.  I’m not sure how to dampen it.”

Fitz stared at her.  “Are you saying that we've failed?”

“I’m saying that we may collapse the wormholes ourselves while we try to fix them,” Mai said.  She sounded as if she were near tears; she hadn't trained for this, none of them had.  “And I don’t understand why they left one of the wormholes alone...”

Mariko peered down at the console controlling the Dachshund wormhole  “I think I do,” she said, after a moment.  There
was
a live FTL feed from the wormhole gate, after all.  “They’re bringing in another fleet.”

“Show me,” Fitz snapped. 

Mariko tapped a control and shot the live feed over to the console he was occupying.  Thankfully, most Imperium equipment was standardised, even if there were additions here she didn't understand. 

A hundred ships, mainly heavy cruiser-sized, appeared on the display.  “Those are Snake warships,” Fitz said.  “Shit!”

Mariko scowled.  The Snakes went for a more fearsome appearance than the blocky crudeness of Imperial Navy warships.  Each of their ships was painted in a bright snakeskin pattern, with bright eyes where the main weapons were positioned and teeth running along the underside of the hull.  If they’d been able to escape the same design constraints that dogged the Imperial Navy, their ships would probably have looked like classical snakes.

“But what are they doing?”  Mariko asked.  “Why didn't they come in with the Secessionists?”

Fitz pulled a live feed from the exterior sensors.  “The Secessionists are winning the battle,” he said.  The final remnants of the Imperial Navy were being forced back to the planet.  “Once the Imperial Navy ships are gone, the Snakes will presumably double-cross the Secessionists, destroy their ships and then bring down the wormholes for themselves.  They eliminate another possible threat and crush Sumter at the same time.  Brilliant.”

“Assuming that the wormholes go down,” Mariko pointed out.

“They might,” Mai said.  She was pulling sensor feeds from everywhere.  “I can see how the Dachshund wormhole is stabilised; instability must be a constant part of the system.  The gates use focused lasers to manipulate the exotic matter, resonating it together to create singularities.  So I can simply copy what they are doing to keep the other wormhole open to save the rest of the links, but I think that they may have managed to inflict enough damage to make it impossible to save the wormholes.”

Fitz swore.  “Do you mean to tell me that they’ve won?”

Mai looked up at him, her eyes hidden inside the suit’s armoured helm.  “Not exactly,” she said, flatly.  “I think we can
cut
one of the wormhole links ourselves, quickly enough to prevent the damage from spreading outside this sector.  We’d still lose the wormholes in this sector, but the rest of the Imperium would be safe.”

Mariko stared at her.  “Are you sure?”

“
No,
” Mai snapped at her.  “I
think
that the rogue harmonics they’ve introduced into the system are what will bring the entire wormhole network down, eventually.  They’re so subtle that the other stations won’t notice them at first until it’s too late.  If we cut off this part of the network, the rest is likely to be safe and...”

Mariko glanced back at her console as the alarm sounded.  The Snakes were preparing to make transit.  “They’re coming,” she said.  “And once they’re through, they’ll retake the station and start bringing down the rest of the network.  Shut the sector down
now
.”