No Price Too High (Warp Marine Corps Book 2)

by C. J. Carella

  The chaotic environment would provide some cover for their meeting, although not from any serious security agency. Luckily, the Vehelians were taking their neutrality seriously and the enemy would be operating at an even greater handicap than the Americans. Supposedly. Heather had quickly learned that the opposition was perfectly capable of pulling assorted surprises out of its notional hat.

  “I thought Scarabs were punctual to a fault,” Guillermo said after a few more minutes passed.

  “This one isn’t exactly an exemplar of the species,” Heather said, suppressing a sigh. Hamilton clearly needed to be entertained. Everyone dealt with nervousness differently. She handled it by quietly becoming hyper-aware of her surroundings; he apparently craved conversation.

  “And here she is,” she added, noticing the approaching figure before her chatty boss did. It belonged to the right species, but… “Or maybe not,” she corrected herself as Guillermo turned around. “I think this one’s a drone.”

  The Kreck (a.k.a. the Scarabs) were a Class Two species descended from insect analogs that had evolved in a low-gravity planet, enabling exoskeletal lifeforms to grow to sizes that would lead to instant death in anything close to Earth-normal conditions. This particular specimen looked like a typical young neuter adult of the species: forty-six inches in length, with six long, spindly legs, a set of head-mounted fine manipulators that had evolved from antennae, and a pair of thicker arms terminating in pincers protruding from its upper thorax. Plates of plain brown-and-black chitin covered its body; the head resembled an ant’s more than a beetle’s, complete with large, multifaceted eyes and a beak-like mouth.

  The ET was floating inside a bubble created by a gravity field projector that kept it from crushed by the local 1.1 G environment. Most sophonts dealt with such inconvenience through a combination of medical implants and temporary cybernetics; a G-field generator that small was worth a cool half million Galactic Currency Units and about ten times as much in US dollars, where the facilities to produce that kind of tech were still few and far between. The casual display of wealth was not lost on either of the Americans. Neither was the fact that this Scarab was not the one they were looking for.

  “A nova is a terrible thing to waste,” the alien sent out through its implants: it was the code phrase they’d been expecting. The virtual ID showing up in Heather’s personal display did not match that of their contact, however. This Scarab was at least fifty years too young, and its neuter-drone’s carapace was not decorated, a clear sign of low-to-middling status among Kreck society. A personal assistant at best, despite its expensive personal carriage.

  “Where’s Honest Septima?” Guillermo asked. His brusque tone was probably wasted on the alien, but not the two steps he took forward, right next to the edge of the gravity generator’s effect zone. Krecks liked their personal space; getting that close to it would make it nervous.

  “I am Heavy Decimus, servant to Proxy-of-Ten-Thousand Honest Septima of Star System 2-9348,” the Scarab replied. Kreck names consisted of an official nickname and the order in which they’d been hatched; the similarity to ancient Roman naming traditions had prompted translators to render the aliens’ numerical praenomen into their Latin equivalent. “I am here to take you to her.”

  “That wasn’t the plan,” the intelligence officer protested.

  “The Proxy conveys her deepest apologies, but she wishes to converse with you at some length. That cannot be done in a public venue.”

  A change in plans was almost always a bad thing. This meeting had been meant to be a simple burst transmission via their imps, serving both as a simple info dump and an introduction to Honest Septima’s new handlers. It appeared that their agent had ideas of her own. Heather bit back on her own reply – a not-too polite ‘Go to Hell’ – and waited for Guillermo’s response. He was team leader, and he already didn’t care for having a newbie come along simply because she’d seen some combat action. Heather even agreed with his general assessment: she thought that killing people and breaking things were overvalued everywhere in the US.

  The senior officer hesitated for a second. “Fine,” he finally said. “Let’s go.”

  Not what Heather had expected. Moving a meeting to an unknown and unexpected location wasn’t a good idea. She went along nonetheless. The chance for actionable intelligence probably outweighed the risk, at least enough that she wasn’t going to second-guess her superior.

  And worse come to worst, she had come prepared for trouble: a holdout beamer and a light force field were concealed under her hooded robes. She had recently learned she wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger on anybody who threatened her. Maybe the remfies who’d sent her on this mission had known what they were doing after all.

  They followed the floating Scarab through the crowded concourse, past clumps of ogling or chatting visitors. In their robes, they blended in just fine; their guide was the one that stood out, and not in a good way. The Kreck were one of the four Founding Races of the Galactic Imperium, and weren’t popular outside its borders. Most people they passed by didn’t react visibly; those who did exhibited various forms of hostile body language, from deliberately turning their backs on them to raised hackles from a group of Puppies and angry hoots from a passing Butterfly.

  Heavy Decimus ignored the gestures. Nobody tried to do anything beyond that; a Scarab wealthy enough to afford its own anti-grav system would no doubt be well-equipped to defend itself, and the authorities would come down hard on anybody offering violence to a citizen of the Imperium. They made it to one of the station lifts without incident.

  The double doors of the lift looked just like an oversized elevator, although the car inside was capable of lateral movement as well, being suspended in a magnetic field as it moved through a complex system of shafts and tunnels. Heather gave her superior a look, but he simply shrugged and followed the Scarab inside. Half a minute later, the lift’s doors reopened, revealing a nondescript corridor somewhere inside the station. Heather tried to ascertain their location and discovered she couldn’t: the area was shut off from all communications. That was good if the meeting was friendly, but if it turned out to be otherwise, they didn’t know where they were, couldn’t call for help, and would have to hack into the lift’s controls to go anywhere.

  “We did not agree to be cut off!” Guillermo said when he discovered the same thing a few moments later. It was more than little too late to complain. The moment they’d gotten into the lift they had agreed to put their lives in the hands of their agent. Idiot, Heather thought. And she’d followed his lead; what did that make her?

  “Security,” was all the Scarab said as it walked to the single door at the other end of the corridor. “Be careful upon entering; the chamber is set up to accommodate Kreck’s biological needs.”

  Heather appreciated the warning as they stepped into the opulent room; its local gravity was slightly less than half Earth’s standard. Her Navy training had prepared her for this kind of environment, so she avoided making a fool of herself. Guillermo Hamilton didn’t launch himself across the room or smack into the ceiling, either, so at least he wasn’t that sort of idiot. Her face mask automatically tightened over her face when her imp sensed that the local oxygen concentration was both too high and at unhealthy pressure levels for humans.

  The dwelling had been refurbished to fit the Scarabs’ sense of aesthetics: there were no separate rooms, just one large circular chamber, with partitions made by fence-like walls that only reached halfway towards the ceiling, creating a ring of stall-like sections. The largest one was elaborately decorated with organic-looking furnishings made of plastic or chitin. Their host was waiting for them there.

  Honest Septima lay on a reclining couch. A mature female past her breeding stage, she was half again as large as her servant; her carapace was painted a garish pattern of silver and gold and encrusted with jewels and decorative circuitry. She waved her pincer limbs in greeting.

  “Human-Americans Hamilton and McClin
tock, welcome to this humble dwelling. I must beg your pardon for the change in plans, but I needed to discuss some things at length, which a brief meeting in public would not allow.”

  “You breached protocol,” Guillermo said, pointedly not using the alien’s titles and honorifics. Heather knew the Kreck liked to play verbal dominance games and had to be reminded who was the boss early and often. All the Imperium’s founding races did: over three millennia of coexistence, the different species had come to adopt the same arrogant culture, a rarity in the galaxy, where there were usually a couple of distinct civilizations even within a given species. “This was supposed to be a brush-pass and a brief face-to-face meeting as a show of good faith. By leading us here, you have put us all at risk.”

  “My apologies once again. I believe you will find my reasons to provide sufficient excuses for my behavior.” The alien’s body language and ‘tone’ – as interpreted by Heather’s imp – were contrite enough. “First things first, of course. Decimus, you may leave now.”

  “As you wish, My Proxy.”

  “Here is the information I was to convey to you, and quite a bit more,” the Kreck female said after the servant had left. An imp-to-imp burst transmission sent Guillermo some fifteen petabytes of information, protected by heavy encryption. Heather watched the data dump through her imp; they’d been expecting a copy of the Imperium’s latest economic figures, which Honest Septima’s position in the Ministry of Wealth gave her access to. Whatever was in those files was a good thousand times bigger than the simple report they’d been expecting.

  “In addition to the Ministry of Wealth report, I have given you the minutes of the last six conferences between the Giga-Proxy Council and the Imperial Troika,” Honest Septima went on. “They include the meeting in which the decision to make war on humanity was made. At that conference, a detailed report of the Imperium’s capabilities was presented by the Troika. That is also included in the report.”

  Heather fought to stay impassive; Guillermo went pale but also managed to maintain a poker face. Their minor contact – so minor that her original recruiter had handed her off to two relatively junior agents without a second thought – had just handed them the keys to the Galactic Imperium.

  “That… that is very impressive,” Hamilton said. “The data will have to be analyzed and verified, but if it proves to be accurate… How did you come upon this information, may I ask?”

  “To answer your question, I must first ask one of my own, distinguished human spy. Do you know how I came to be forced into your service?”

  “Yes,” Guillermo said, not bothering to hide the contempt in his voice. Both he and Heather had been briefed on exactly what kind of person their agent was.

  Honest Septima was a pervert by the mores of both the Scarab species and the Imperium at large. Her secret vice was rather unpleasant: infant cannibalism, an atavistic behavior that had once been common among the Kreck thousands of years ago. Despite millennia of cultural and psychological conditioning against the practice, a small minority among the species still felt the urge to feast upon hatchlings, although they usually dealt with it through therapy or chemically-altered food substitutes. Honest Septima had used her power and influence to satisfy her hungers, paying a criminal gang to provide her with Kreck newborn. An American trader had somehow stumbled upon the secret – Heather didn’t know the details, but they apparently involved gambling, murder and assorted mayhem – and he in turn had sold the information to the CIA.

  Spies betrayed their countries and species for numerous reasons. Money was a common motivation, of course. There were also people acting out of spite, turning traitor because they’d been overlooked for promotions or otherwise slighted. Some even lashed out of twisted patriotism, after deciding their nation was headed in the wrong direction. And then there was blackmail. The Imperium’s penalty for child cannibalism was death, preceded by a lengthy ‘scourging’ process involving the stimulation of the convict’s pain receptors in assorted ways. The US had Septima over the proverbial barrel. Heather found the whole thing disgusting, but intelligence work forced you to deal with some of the worst people in the known universe, human or otherwise.

  “I know that if humanity is destroyed, I will not survive it by very long,” Honest Septima went on. “If you lose the war, I expect my… proclivities will come to light, either when the Imperium seizes all your data or when you decide to reveal any damaging information you have on its leadership, which regrettably includes me. Thus, I felt I had to provide you with some vital information, in the hopes that you may be able to forestall your downfall.”

  “I see,” Hamilton said.

  “To elaborate, even though I am but a minor Proxy, I discovered some time ago that one of the Giga-Proxies of the Imperium shares my regrettable vices. And much like your fellow spies snared me, I too came with an arrangement with said individual. He now provides me with information in return for my discretion.”

  Whatever works, I suppose, Heather thought. Their agent had in turn recruited an even bigger fish, apparently.

  “While the records of the conferences aren’t a closely guarded secret, neither are they disseminated widely. I trust you will find the information useful.”

  “I’m sure we will. And you will be suitable recompensed, of course.”

  Blackmail was the stick; discreetly-paid bribes provided a consolation carrot.

  “Do the records explain why the Imperium chose to go to war with the US?” Heather asked. The data would be read and interpreted by a team of analysts back on Earth, but getting a little personal info couldn’t hurt.

  The Kreck made a crossed-pincer negative gesture. “The official explanation is that the Lhan Arkh and Nasstah surrendered several star systems to the Imperium to secure the alliance. This has prompted some Proxies to protest we are being used as ‘mercenaries’ by those polities. Those protests, as you will see in the reports, were ignored. The official explanation is rumored to be a pretext, however. The territorial concessions were actually the Imperium’s demand to join the war. The real reason has not been divulged to the public.”

  “And do you know what it is?”

  “This is only gossip, and you won’t find it in the files I gave you. But it appears that a faction among the Dann, led by Princeps Boma, is responsible for the war. Their alleged reasons are… strange.”

  The Dann were a humanoid Class Two species, who, like the rest of the Imperium, had had very little direct contact with humanity.

  “Boma’s faction apparently believes you humans are some sort of demonic force. It’s a… religious conviction,” Septima said. Her antennae’s movement revealed her emotions: a mixture of wonder and contempt. The Imperium had abandoned such ‘superstitions’ long ago, replacing it with a mixture of rational thought and a tradition of obedience – bordering in worship – to the nation-state itself. To refer to any motivation as ‘religious’ was very close to calling it insane.

  “Boma is a scholar of sorts,” she continued. “When humans revealed their incredible ability to withstand warp space, he spent decades delving into the records of the ancients. It was, as you must know, a monumental task.”

  Both intelligence officers nodded. Thousands of civilizations had existed in the outer arms of the Milky Way Galaxy for at least a billion years. The average lifespan of a Starfarer polity was five thousand years, give or take an order of magnitude During that time, it would spread from a few dozens to a few thousand worlds before their inevitable end: Transcendence for those that advanced to the next level of existence, abandoned their colonies and left for parts unknown, or Oblivion for those who died out through decadence, genocide or other catastrophes. There usually weren’t more than thirty major Starfaring polities around at any given time: the current number was below twenty. The total number of known Starfarer nations was about ten thousand, spanning a billion years.

  Nobody had complete records of the history of the galaxy. The amount of information any Starfarer na
tion would generate over its millennia of existence was enormous: multiply that by ten thousand, and throw in changes in information storage systems, losses due to war, Transcendence or accident, along with the unfortunate habit of victors to rewrite history to suit their needs, and what you got was a massive mess of contradictory accounts, legends, massive translation errors, and deliberate misinformation. Parsing through it was pretty much impossible, and most people never bothered to even try. Just trying to grasp the current affairs of the galaxy was enough of an ordeal.

  “Humans are not exactly unique, you see,” Septima said. “There have been at least a dozen similarly endowed species, according to Boma’s research. The problem is, there aren’t any detailed records about them, for one simple reason: their appearance coincided with major upheavals in the galaxy. Upheavals that led to the destruction of almost every civilization that existed during those times. It goes beyond mere political disruption, of however. There are always species that do not play well with the rest. The Horde, for example, and to some degree our worthy allies, the Lhan Arkh. But the beings in those stories, those warp-demons, they are worse than those miscreants. They bring forth supernatural entities, supposedly. Monsters and such. Apparently it became customary that any species that showed such traits be quickly exterminated before it could become a threat.”