Galactic Empires (4 page)

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Can you immobilize him?”

“We’ve got a nerve jangler drone, but we’ll have to blow the door open to get it in there. We don’t know if it’s reinforced.”

“Has he rigged the approach?”

“No sensors detected in the corridor.”

“All right, let’s go. Be careful.” Paula called up feeds from the cameras on the suits of the entry team, seeing jerky images of the corridor as they hurried along. The wooden door to Fiech’s apartment was painted a dull green. They gathered around it and quickly rolled an explosive tape along the edges. One camera showed the drone being held ready, a small triangle of gray plastic.

“Go!” the squad sergeant ordered.

The explosive tape detonated, shattering the wooden door. The remnants crashed inward. Suit sensors went active, cutting through the smoke and dust, producing a sharp black-and-white image. The drone streaked in. Icons blinked green and amber, showing that the nerve jangler field was active. Theoretically, it would stun Fiech’s nervous system, giving the team time to get in and cover him before he could go for any weapons. Unless he was ready and protected.

The icons turned blue and the entry team charged in. Fiech was sprawled on a couch in the living room, still wearing the yellow shirt Paula had seen through so many camera images. His head was flung back, hanging over the edge of the cushions as his limbs shook from the aftermath of the jangle. Drool leaked out of his gaping mouth.

Paula was running down the corridor, turning the corner. The wreckage of the door was in front of her. Four more team members were charging through it into the apartment. She followed them in. Fiech was still spread out across the couch. One of the suited figures was pressing an ion pistol to his temple. The second was providing cover. The remainder spread out through the apartment, guns held ready, sensors on full power, scanning ahead.

“Clear,” the squad sergeant called.

Fiech was given a full deep scan. His body had a few inserts and a couple of OCtattoos, simple Unisphere interfaces, and a standard memorycell, none of them combat grade. They turned him over and secured his wrists. Two ion pistols remained trained on him. He was white and shaking now, on the verge of vomiting.

Paula removed her helmet, shaking out her hair. Fiech gave her a terrified stare.

“It’s going to be rough on you,” Paula said. “Even if you cooperate, memory reading is never pleasant. But if you give us the names and structure of your movement, we can keep it to a minimum. We’ll just verify your information. Trust me, it’s worth it.”

Fiech started sobbing, tears tricking down his cheeks. “What the fuck is happening?” he wailed. “What is going on?”

Paula gave him a contemptuous look. She’d expected more professionalism. “Take him down to the office. Prep him for a memory read. I’ll run it myself.”

A whimpering Fiech was dragged past her. Christabel came into the apartment, taking her helmet off to look round. “I’ll get forensics in, rip this place apart.”

“Sure.” A formality, Paula knew. The apartment was part of his cover, it’d be clean.

“Hell of a first day back, boss. What are you going to do tomorrow?”

WHAT I KNOW HAPPENED

I was up early that morning, just like bloody always these days. Damn company is squeezing its staff to husks, always raising our performance targets. You can’t keep doing that year after year, people can only do so much.

Anyway… the first wave of commuters was buzzing about on the streets when I left the tower lobby. Poor bastards. Just like me. Squeezed on all sides. You can see it in their null expressions. All that effort and angst etched into their faces, and it was only five past seven.

I walked down O’Connal Street to the underground metro station. It’s steep ground just behind Sydney harbor, and the skyscrapers are so high you don’t see sunlight that time of the morning. Some of my fellow sufferers were gulping down Bean There coffee from plastic cups. I hate that. Food on the run gives me really bad indigestion.

The metro station has a direct line to the CST station on the south side of the city. It took eleven minutes. Three longer than usual. Every bugger is conspiring to make my life worse.

I missed the first train to Wessex. Typical. So I waited on the big platform, with its white wing roof. Me and two hundred others. Time was, I used to be excited just being in CST’s Sydney station. Think of it. Out there past the end of the platform there’s eighteen wormhole generators, each one with tracks leading to a different phase one world. One line goes to Wessex, the junction to phase two space, with another twelve worlds beyond that. They’re going to open five more in the next three years. All that opportunity, the potential out there, and what does my life amount to? Bugger all. Corporate drone, that’s me. Worlds aren’t new starts and fresh hope, all that crap in the brochures. I’ve been to all of them. They’re just more developments that I’ve got to flog Colliac Fak’s bloody software to. We’re covering every H-congruous planet in the galaxy with concrete; building little nests with a window we can look at the neighboring squalid skyscraper with. Yeah, we’re a really progressive species, us humans.

So I got the next train to Wessex. Standard class coach, and I just managed to grab a seat next to a window. Beat some woman to it, who looked real pissed at me when I slipped in ahead of her.
Gotta learn, lady. Survival of the fittest on this route. Every route, every day.

The Wessex station made its Sydney cousin look small. Three big passenger terminals with gold and scarlet roofs curving high over twenty platforms apiece; you could probably fit my apartment skyscraper inside one of them. And a marshaling yard that sprawled over fifteen square miles, a giant zoo of cybernetic machines and warehouses.

I had to switch terminals for the train out to Ormal-that’s a five-minute trip on a pedwalk-then I had to find the right platform. The insert that provides my virtual vision has interface problems now, so the guidance icons I was picking up from the station management array were blurred. Nearly misread the damn thing. Finished up on platform 11B waiting with a big crowd for the train. These people weren’t so stressed and desperate as the ones back in Sydney. More prosperous types, with suits a lot more expensive than mine. They had neat little leather designer arrays edged in gold or platinum tucked into the top pockets. You could see their fingers flicking about minutely as they shunted icons around their high-rez virtual vision. I even saw a few of those new OCtattoos, the ones that light up, tracing colorful lines across their skin. One woman had green and blue spirals on her cheeks.

The carriage wasn’t so crowded, so I got a seat by a window again. I guess most of my fellow travelers were up in first class. Trip to Ormal was a simple eight minutes. We rolled out from the end of the platform and across the marshaling yard. I could see the row of wormhole generators up ahead like a metallic cliff, bloody huge great rectangular buildings side by side with a wormhole gateway at the end, like the mouth of an old-fashioned train tunnel. Only these had light shining out of them: alien suns spreading a multitude of subtle shades across the rusting jumble of the marshaling yard.

Our train headed straight for a pink-tinged hole, and I felt the tingle of the pressure curtain across my skin as we passed through. Then we were rolling along a couple of miles of track surrounded by open countryside with strange bulbous gray and white trees before we reached the CST planetary station.

Harwood’s Hill, the capital, was small, barely half a million people. But it was beautiful, one of those places that had banned combustion engines. It was spread across a big slope that rose up out of a freshwater sea, with green spaces outnumbering buildings five to one. If I could afford it, I’d probably move there. You knew this world was making an effort to get things
right.
But it cost to grab a chunk of a dormitory planet for the upper middle classes. For Christ’s sake, real estate here was more expensive than back on Earth.

My train had arrived late evening. I took a taxi out to the airport, using the company card. Even the taxi cost more than the return train fare. I watched the yachts out on the lake, trying not to be all sour and envious. There must have been hundreds coming into port, their sails all lit up by the sinking sun. Didn’t anyone in this city work?

The flight to Essendyne was another three hours. At the other end, the airport was little more than a flat patch of grass with a strip of enzyme-bonded concrete down the middle, like it was left over from an experimental road building project.

Essendyne itself was a little town of stylish houses at the end of a valley. The surrounding mountains were impressive, too. In winter, they have over a meter of snow. It is perfect for skiers.

I took another taxi out to the resort, a forty-minute ride. The place was only half-finished, with the main building a mass of scaffolding crawling with construction bots. Some of the cabins had roofs, but the insides weren’t fitted. I got that shitty sinking feeling as soon as we arrived. The office had told me the whole thing was in its final stage of completion, with the staff busy getting ready for guests. All that was left to do was a bit of landscaping. Complete crap.

The taxi dropped me outside the site manager’s office. She wasn’t available, some crisis out there among the scaffolding with a malfunctioning bot. Her assistant had the grace to look embarrassed as he explained that the handover date had been put back three months. It was difficult to get the materials out to Essendyne from the nearest train station, a two hours’ drive away along a narrow road. No one from the resort company was even on site, let alone available to meet me.

Fucking pricks! Nobody back in Sydney had even bothered to check. Bastard scum! So I’d wasted an entire day on a trip to a client that didn’t even exist yet. I wanted to bill the dicks back home for the commission I’d lost and the expenses I’d built up.

The taxi took me back to the airport. And, of course, the plane back to Harwood’s Hill didn’t leave for another five hours. I hit the bar in the concourse—a grand way to describe a hut with a glass wall. After an hour, when the anger was really peaking, I called Sydney and told the dick of an office manager what I thought of him. I didn’t wait for him to say anything back. I cut the channel and got my e-butler to block all incoming calls. There was a seafood bistro next to the bar. I went in and tried some of the local food. Not bad. Waitress was kind of pretty, too. Then I went back to the bar.

I remember one of the stewardesses helping me onto the plane. Great-looking chick with flaming red hair and a cute smile. I told her so, too. Then we took off and I was poorly. She helped clean it up. I slept the rest of the flight.

Harwood’s Hill was a grind. Strange city, small hours of the morning, with a mother monster hangover. Took a taxi to the CST station. Managed to find a little store that was still open and bought some cleaner tabs. I don’t take them often-they’re worse than the hangover if you ask me-but they do only last an hour before your body stabilizes. I was back in Sydney by then. Cold, depressed, with bones that ached. Couldn’t eat, and felt really hungry thanks to the cleaners. And absolutely fuck all to show for my time.

I went home. Bugger the expense, I took a taxi. I was kind of surprised my company card was still working by then. You know I thought that was my low point. Then the bloody next thing I know, the police are blowing up my door. I don’t know what they hit me with when they stormed in, but it was like my whole body was on fire. I just wanted to die. I mean, how could the universe
do
this to me?

WHAT THE COURT DECIDED

It was the biggest case ever to be heard in a Nova Zealand court; in fact, it was the biggest anything to happen on Nova Zealand, period. Reporters from every Unisphere news show flooded into Ridgeview, with their companies block-booking entire hotels. Those unable to snag a room had to park their mobile homes on the ring road, where they were jostled by curious camels brought to the planet by Bedouins eager to re-create their ancient culture out in the freedom of the vast deserts. While in town, the narrow streets with their broad white canvas awnings rapidly became clogged by giant mobile studio trucks.

Paula was given a room in the city Attorney’s office. It was cramped, with desks shoved against the wall and a noisy water tower, but better than trying to catch a train in each day.

When the case was opened in front of Judge Jeroen, Paula was surprised when the defense lawyer, Ms. Toi, entered a plea of not guilty.

“Is she going for some kind of technicality?” Paula whispered to Stephan Dorge, the Directorate’s prosecutor.

“I don’t see how,” he whispered back. “They didn’t ask for a deal.”

“What about the memory deposition?”

“Nah, we can prove it’s an implant.”

When Paula looked at Ms. Toi, she thought the lawyer seemed uncomfortable.

Prosecution opened with the forensic evidence from the launch site. There was the DNA match between Dimitros Fiech and the urine sample. Skin analysis taken at the Directorate’s Sydney office immediately after the arrest revealed traces of the missile’s chemical rocket booster exhaust on his arms and face; there were also plume traces on his yellow shirt. The jury was shown camera pictures from the Larsie marina and Ridgeview’s CST station. Additional corroboration was skin-cell DNA taken from the boat.

“The evidence that places Dimitros Fiech at the launch site is incontrovertible,” Stephan Dorge concluded. “He fired the missile that killed a hundred and thirty-eight people. And for what? To push his perverted ideological platform.”

In the docks, Dimitros Fiech shook his head in disbelief.

Defense called Paula Myo. “I’d like to concentrate on the deposition of Dimitros Fiech’s memory on the day concerned,” Ms. Toi said. “You ran the memory read yourself, did you not?”

“I did,” Paula said. “They contained no recollection of the missile launch. We believe false memories of his day on Ormal were inserted at the same time his true memory of the attack was erased.”