The Halls of Montezuma

by Christopher G. Nuttall

  She glanced at herself in the mirror and let out a faint sigh. Lieutenant Hannah Gresham looked pretty, in a butch sort of way. The ill-fitting uniform looked faintly absurd. Rachel would almost have preferred a uniform intended to show off her curves, such as they were. In her experience, people preferred to stare at breasts rather than faces. It irritated her to use such a simple trick, but if it worked ...

  The timer bleeped. She headed for the hatch, hoping and praying the lockers they’d stolen would remain undisturbed. They’d fiddled with the records to make sure they were assigned to transient workers, and should therefore be left alone, but there was no way to be entirely certain. Onge was a planet of sneaks, spies and government snoops. She kept her face under tight control as she passed through a series of airlocks, her implants pinging the datanodes as she went along. The shuttles were already arriving, their complements of personnel being directed towards the assembly point. There’d be so many new faces mingled together that no one should notice one more.

  She smiled as she joined the throng of junior officers and crewmen. Some of them were clearly young, probably born on Onge and recruited directly into the Onge Navy. Others, older and more experienced, were clearly ex-Imperial Navy. Rachel studied them from behind her bland expression, wondering if there were ways to disrupt the smooth functioning of the enemy military. In her experience, inter-service rivalry was a pain in the ass even when everyone had the same boss. Now, after Earthfall, who knew where the chips would fall? It was quite possible the locals would resent the newcomers and vice versa.

  They followed a handful of senior officers into a giant auditorium, where tired-looking uniformed bureaucrats held out assignments. Rachel braced herself, knowing that she was approaching the moment of truth. If she’d made a mistake, if the beancounters hadn’t added Lieutenant Hannah Gresham to their list, she might have to try to fight her way out. She didn’t dare let them take a good look at her. The implants were designed to be difficult to detect, but difficult was not the same as impossible ...

  “Lieutenant Hannah Gresham,” the officer said. He held out a datachip. “Report to Section-31G. Immediately.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rachel said.

  She allowed herself a moment of relief. The hacking had worked. The man hadn’t noticed anything wrong. She felt a thrill of excitement as she turned and headed up the shaft towards the command core. Someone had taken a look at her credentials and assigned her right where she wanted to be! She’d done everything in her power to ensure she’d be assigned to the right place, but there’d been no guarantees. The handful of officers she passed paid no attention to her. She was too junior to be worthy of their interest.

  The soldiers on guard outside the command core checked her ID twice before allowing her to proceed to her duty station. Rachel found it irritating, although she was careful not to show it. Alert guards meant trouble, even if there was nothing wrong with the legend she’d crafted around the dead lieutenant. They might intervene if she started a gunfight in the middle of the command core ... if, of course, she had a gun. She’d had to leave her weapons behind, in the locker. The only people allowed weapons on the anchor station were senior officers and security guards. She’d have to take one of their guns if she wanted to use it.

  A middle-aged man blocked her way. “You’re late,” he growled. “What happened?”

  Rachel pasted a cringing expression on her face. “I had to find my way up here,” she stammered, trying to look like a mouse hiding from a hawk. “I ... I’ve never been on a station like this before.”

  She tried not to roll her eyes at his expression. The deception irked her - she could kill him with a single blow - but it served a useful purpose. He would never speak so rudely to Phelps, who looked big enough to snap the asshole in two effortlessly, yet he would never see him as harmless either. It was enough to make her want to snort. Very few people were completely harmless, even the ones who were so weak they couldn’t lift a hand to defend themselves. She’d had to deal with the consequences of too many weak men who’d been pushed too far, or so they insisted, to have any sympathy for them.

  “We’ll discuss it later,” the man said. He spoke to her as if she were a young and particularly stupid child. “I’m Commander Archer, your section CO. You are checked out basic tactical duties, are you not?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rachel said. She judged she could let a little irritation slip into her voice. The tactical systems were standardised, as far as she could tell. The corprats hadn’t been interested in devising something new, not when half their recruits came from the Imperial Navy. There would be no surprises, not here. She might have problems on a pirate ship, where a dozen different systems would be spliced together, but not here. “I have certifications in ...”

  “I don’t care,” Commander Archer said. He jabbed a finger at a console underneath a chair on a dais. “That’s your station. Familiarise yourself with the system before you go on duty. You’ll be under my supervision until I say otherwise. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rachel said. The thought of his supervision made her skin want to crawl. She had no trouble recognising the petty resentments of a man who’d been promoted past the limits of his competence, a man who knew he’d never be anything worth mentioning and intended to take it out on as many people as he could before he was finally discharged. “I understand.”

  He pushed her towards her seat, then stamped off to make someone else’s life miserable. Rachel sat, activating the console while carefully glancing around the command core. It was larger than she’d realised, an interlocking network of consoles, stations and chairs intended to remind everyone at the bottom that that was precisely where they were. She thought she saw an officer she vaguely recognised at the top, from her younger days. An Imperial Navy officer who’d taken the corprat shilling ...

  Dumb bastard, she thought. She turned her attention to the console and started to work. She’d been ordered to familiarise herself with the system and that was precisely what she intended to do. Her supervisor could hardly make a fuss if he caught her following orders. There would be time to cause trouble later. Anyone who places their faith in corprats is heading for a nasty fall.

  Chapter Eleven

  Our carpenter, therefore, has successfully turned a ten-credit trunk into a hundred-credit pile of planks (plus whatever the firewood is worth). But, again, this is potential wealth. It needs to be turned into actual wealth.

  - Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

  “Thank you for coming,” Director Thaddeus Onge said. “I understand it wasn’t easy for you.”

  I didn’t think I had a choice, Julia said, as she shook his hand. You certainly didn’t try to offer me one.

  She winced, inwardly. The summons hadn’t allowed any room for creative interpretation. She was to be escorted down the elevator to the megacity, then flown to the Director’s estate. It would have pleased her more if she’d known what to expect when she finally reached the end of the line. The last two days had not been pleasant. The interrogators had drawn information out of her she hadn’t known she knew, then told her to wait. She hadn’t needed them to tell her that her fate was being decided at the very highest levels.

  “Please, take a seat,” Director Onge said, indicating an armchair. “Tea? Coffee? Or something stronger?”

  “Tea, please,” Julia said. All the best people drank tea. And it was probably her last chance to drink an expensive brew. “Thank you for inviting me.”

  She sat, looking around the office with interest. It was large, although size alone didn’t matter when the corporation ruled an entire cluster of star systems. The decor, on the other hand, showcased both wealth and taste. The combination of paintings, artworks and other refinements suggested a mind in perfect tune with itself. She thought some of the artworks were surprisingly cheap, and hardly exclusive, but they blended neatly with the overall scheme. Perhaps there was a message there, for those with eyes to see.
Or perhaps she was simply reading too much into the scene. Director Onge didn’t need to play petty power games.

  A secretary, wearing a low-cut dress, appeared with a tray of tea and biscuits. She put them on the small table, then withdrew as silently as she’d come. She looked like a menial servant, but Julia was fairly sure she was a great deal smarter - and more influential - than she looked. The director didn’t need to spice up his office with arm candy either. There were entire divisions dedicated to providing escorts - sexual partners - to meet all tastes. The director could order whatever he liked from them, if he wished.

  “You’ve been through a hard time,” Director Onge said. “I’m sorry we had to be so ... rigorous upon your return.”

  Julia nodded, curtly. Director Onge sounded sincere, although she knew it was probably manipulation. He looked so much like a calm parental figure, right down to the greying hair, that she knew he used cosmetic surgery and bodyshaping. He could have turned himself into a Greek God if he wished, something that would have suggested a lack of basic confidence in himself. Julia reminded herself not to underestimate the director. He was, to all intents and purposes, the unquestioned ruler of his world. The board wouldn’t unite against him unless he really screwed up.

  “I quite understand,” she said, as graciously as she could. There was no point in making a fuss and it might win her some points. “You had to be sure I was still me.”

  “Quite.” Director Onge took a sip of his tea. “How do you think we should proceed?”

  Julia blinked, surprised. She was very low in the corporate hierarchy ... she’d been very low even before her career had fallen straight into the crapper. The idea of the director himself asking her opinion was completely alien to her. Her opinions were supposed to pass through at least five levels of corporate bureaucracy before they managed to get anywhere near the director. She knew from grim experience her superiors would take full credit, at least for the ideas their superiors liked. The corporate world was still very much a dog-eat-dog universe.

  She forced herself to think. She’d expected, at best, to be told to go back to her family’s mansion, get married and forget about working her way to the top. Instead ... was she being tested? Given an opportunity to redeem herself? Or ... she smiled, suddenly, as it dawned on her she didn’t have much to lose. Her life was no longer her own. She couldn’t hope to steer her course any longer. There was a kind of freedom in that, she supposed. She didn’t have to worry about the worst because the worst had already happened.

  “I think we need to prepare for the worst,” she said. “The marines already took one planet from us. It’s just a matter of time until they come for the others.”

  “And they’ll be coming out of the darkness,” Director Onge observed. He quirked one eyebrow. “Unless you know where they’re based?”

  Julia shook her head. Admiral Agate - she felt a pang at the thought - had explained the problem of locating the enemy base in great and tedious detail. The base was very small, a cosmic grain of sand set against a beach so large as to defy imagination. He’d reasoned that it couldn’t be that far from Earth, if only because the marines would need to keep in touch with their political masters, but that still left hundreds of possible locations. Hell, the base might be so carefully concealed that a survey ship might pass through the system, detect nothing and assume the system was deserted.

  “And that’s the problem,” Director Onge said. “Can we share a galaxy with them?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Julia said. “I don’t know what sort of universe they have in mind.”

  She considered it for a moment. The marines were ... the marines. They’d been the empire’s shock troops. They killed people and broke things. They weren’t charged with rebuilding planets devastated by war, nor any of the other functions that were generally left to NGOs, government bureaucracies and corporations. She’d never figured the marines might set out to create a state of their own. What did they have in mind? Military dictatorship? She knew enough history to know that would be a very bad idea.

  “That’s something we need to know,” Director Onge said. “We also need to know what else they’ve been doing.”

  He took another sip of his tea. “The marines were ordered to abandon Earth, shortly before Earthfall. The orders came from the Grand Senate itself, but ... I wonder if the marines planned it that way. They certainly didn’t try to argue when they pulled units off the surface and headed into deep space.”

  “And so they survived Earthfall,” Julia said. “They knew it was coming.”

  Director Onge snorted. “Anyone with eyes knew it was coming.”

  He shook his head. “They returned you and the other POWs. Keeping you captive would hardly have posed a problem. There’s plenty of unsettled territory on Hameau they could have turned into a makeshift POW camp. Dropping you on an island would be sufficient, I think. They could have given you enough food to feed yourselves and then put you out of their minds. But instead they sent you back. Why?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Julia said. “They did hint they’d be open to talks.”

  “Indeed,” Director Onge said. “Sending you back is a message in itself. They don’t care about what you and your fellows can tell us. Worse, they know where we are. They can find us. They can reach us.”

  Julia felt her blood run cold. “What did the other POWs tell you?”

  “Nothing of great use,” Director Onge said, sardonically. “I think they might have kept back any POWs who might have told us anything of tactical importance. They certainly wiped the freighter’s datacores and damaged the datanet before they sent her back, although” - he frowned - “there was something screwy about the sensors. The hardware itself was in good shape, but the software controlling them had been badly corrupted.”

  “Odd,” Julia agreed. She didn’t know what it meant and didn’t really care. “Perhaps they didn’t want to take the time to do it properly.”

  “Perhaps,” Director Onge said. He finished his tea and put the cup back on the saucer. “Do you think we can come to terms with them?”

  “No, sir.” Julia threw caution to the winds. She’d either rise again or ... stay in the corporate doghouse. “They attacked one of our worlds, without the slightest hint of provocation. They came out of the dark and opened fire. Whatever they have in mind - military dictatorship or the rise of the old regime - bodes ill for us.”

  “You may be right.” Director Onge stood, indicating the meeting was over. “You’ll be staying here for the moment, as one of my advisors. Daisy will show you to your suite. You may record messages for your family, if you wish, but they might not be delivered for a while. There is still a complete news blackout.”

  Julia frowned. “Are there no rumours?”

  “There are always rumours,” Director Onge said, as his secretary stepped into the room. “But most people don’t have the slightest idea what’s happened.”

  “Yes, sir,” Julia said. She had her doubts. People would notice that Hammerblow and the rest of the squadron had left, never to return. The rumours would grow as they spread from place to place, as more and more people noticed the army units hadn’t returned either. She winced, inwardly, as she considered the problem. Too many units had been sent to their doom. “When are you going to tell them?”

  “We’ll see,” Director Onge said. “I’ll speak to you later.”

  Julia curtseyed, then followed Daisy out of the room.

  ***

  Rachel prided herself, at times, on showing as little reaction as possible to overbearing commanding officers, particularly ones who didn’t know what she was or simply didn’t care. She’d met her fair share of uniformed idiots when they’d been working with the army, men and women who’d been promoted because of family connections or because someone was trying to fill a quota ... but Commander Archer was pretty much the worst. She honestly had no idea how he’d been promoted. His file didn’t so much as hint at corporate connections.
/>   She sighed, inwardly, as the shift came to an end. Commander Archer had a foul temper, wandering hands and a complete lack of common sense. It was clear the entire department hated him, men and women alike. There was no unity, no sense of shared purpose ... Rachel couldn’t help wondering if the corprat commanders were bothering to keep an eye on their subordinates. Commander Archer’s behaviour was just asking for someone to stick a knife in his back, perhaps not metaphorically. It only took one resentful person in the wrong place - or, rather, the right place - to do one hell of a lot of damage. And someone with enough cunning could do it and make sure Commander Archer took the blame.

  Her relief arrived. She passed the console to him, assured him that nothing had happened that required immediate attention, then stood and filed through the hatch. Commander Archer was busy harassing another girl and paid no attention to her. Rachel silently promised him a painful death when she had a chance, even though cold logic told her his stupidity worked in her favour. The only thing that united his department was shared hatred of the pointy-haired boss. The crew might not sound the alarm if she did something that looked like it would embarrass him.

  I can’t count on it, she reminded herself, as she made her way to the cabin. There were so many officers and crew coming and going that she had to share a compartment with ten other people. The grumbling amused her, if only because she’d slept in worse places. It only takes one person to set off the alarms.

  She put the thought out of her mind, then concentrated on accessing the local security monitors. Convincing them to pay no attention to her was easy. Convincing them that she was still in the sleeping compartment, even when she was somewhere else, was a great deal harder. She hoped Commander Archer didn’t intend to come and seek her out ... the bastard probably peeked on his subordinates through the security monitors, as well as everything else. No wonder the division was a seething mass of resentment. The corprats were too stupid to let people vent. She honestly didn’t understand it. Did they really think people were nothing more than tools, tools that could be easily replaced?