Death to the Imperium (Imperium Cicernus)

by James McGovern

  Tekka made a move to open the door, but it burst open before his hand reached the handle, and a man jumped out, brandishing a laser weapon.

  “Nobody move!” he ordered, staring at the three intruders with wide eyes. The man looked like the stereotypical mad professor; he had thick glasses, messy white hair, and a tattered lab coat.

  Tekka sighed. “We are here for—”

  “SILENCE! You’re not taking me! Do you understand! You’re not going to arrest me!”

  Of course, Glitz thought, the uniforms… he thinks we’re Imperial guards!

  “We are not here to arrest you, Shaitana,” Tekka said impatiently, taking a step towards the man, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was pointing a gun at his chest. “Don’t you recognize me?”

  Shaitana blinked a few times. He seemed confused. “Is it… it can’t be… Hans Tekka?”

  “The same.”

  “The last time I saw you… well, you were just a boy. So… so you became a prison guard?”

  Tekka shook his head. “You never were too quick on the uptake, were you? Of course not.” He paused. “Lower your weapon and we can talk about it.”

  Shaitana hesitated, but he clearly decided that he trusted Tekka, and he put his weapon inside the side pocket of his lab coat. “So what’s going on?” he said.

  “We are in trouble,” Tekka said. “We escaped from the planet Malus after stealing an Imperial prison vessel. That is where we obtained these uniforms. The Imperial soldiers will be looking for us. We need to undergo the transmogrification procedure.”

  Shaitana shook his head. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t do that anymore. Too risky.”

  “But—” Glitz said.

  “No. I mean, the work I do here still isn’t strictly legal. But I draw the line at transmogrification.”

  “I will pay you a million credits.”

  The man was taken aback for a second. Even Glitz and Doland were surprised. A million credits was an insanely large sum—you could buy a home on the leisure planet Eden for that much.

  “Do you have that much money?” Doland said.

  Tekka nodded. “I was arrested after stealing five billion credits, remember. That does not mean that they reclaimed the money. I had already transferred the funds into a thousand anonymous accounts by that time.”

  Glitz could hardly believe it. Five billion credits…

  “I’ll do it,” Shaitana said, “but I want a billion credits.”

  Tekka frowned. “No,” he said icily.

  “You’ll die unless you have the procedure!” Shaitana said.

  “Be that as it may,” Tekka said, without losing his composure. “The price is a million credits. If that is not enough, I am sure I can find another scientist somewhere in the galaxy to carry out the procedure.”

  Shaitana frowned, but it was clearly checkmate. He could really do with the million credits.

  “Fine,” Shaitana said. “This way.”

  He led the three men into the second lab, and lifted a large contraption off one of the tables, creating room for them to lie down. They lied down on their backs, facing the gravity globes. Shaitana wrote down their names. Glitz felt a little nervous, but he knew the procedure was necessary. Besides, he knew that Doland was far more nervous. Tekka lied on the table calmly, showing no hint of emotion.

  “So you’re a professor?” Glitz said.

  “Oh, no,” Shaitana said, laughing. “I’m self-taught.”

  “Oh, right,” Glitz said, not at all encouraged by that information.

  Shaitana started by administering Thranitol, a general anaesthetic, to his three patients. Within seconds, they were all fully unconscious. Then Shaitana unbuttoned their shirts and checked their heartbeats and blood pressure. All normal. Satisfied, he then took a skin sample from each man. The transmogrification process was much easier to perform on Traals, the native life form of Mazaroth, because they had nucleated blood cells. This meant he could just use a blood sample as the starting point. But human red blood cells contained no nucleus, so skin cells had to be used, which were far harder to adjust.

  Keeping the skin samples carefully separated in different covered petri dishes, Shaitana took the first one—which contained Tekka’s cells—and placed it into the sequencer. The screen showed a DNA molecule, and Shaitana began his work. He knew he could alter over 98% of the molecule’s structure without causing any changes in the actual chemical makeup of the animal. The problem was, if he changed any of the code in that remaining 2%, the patients might end up with three arms, or hands instead of eyes. Shaitana painstakingly made superficial changes to the DNA samples of the three men, and then suspended the samples in a bio-neutral solution called Harrison’s fluid. He went on to add a nanoliquid to each solution. Finally, crossing his fingers for luck, Shaitana injected the completed solution into each of the men’s arms…

  Chapter Seven

  The men’s muscles began to twitch violently, and their faces became convulsed by terrible spasms. Shaitana knew they couldn’t feel any pain, but he had always hated that particular stage of the process. And it had been a very long time since he had last performed a transmogrification. He hoped that he had remembered every stage correctly…

  Finally, the convulsions stopped, and Shaitana peered at them. They looked normal enough… He took another skin sample from each man, and prepared to analyse each one using the synthesizer. The first sample was Doland’s… oh no. The DNA molecule was not registering as human. Shaitana felt a horrible sinking feeling. He knew he shouldn’t have carried out the procedure, even for a million credits. He must have carried out a stage of the process incorrectly. He placed Tekka’s skin sample into the sequencer, and was relieved when it showed up as normal. When he came to check Glitz’s DNA, his was registering as normal too. The genetic deviation was enough to help them avoid identification, but not enough to register as inhuman. But why had Doland’s procedure had such an effect? He didn’t look like anything was the matter with him. Perhaps the change was internal. Maybe Doland now had three stomachs instead of a heart. Or maybe he had eyes instead of lungs. He would only find out when he tried to wake him. With much trepidation, Shaitana injected the men with the chemical that would wake them up. Slowly, the three men sat up.

  “Is that it?” Doland said.

  Shaitana nodded slowly. “How… how do you feel?”

  “Fine,” Glitz said, shrugging.

  “We are all well,” Tekka said, climbing off the bed. “Thank you. I trust it is safe for us to leave straight away?”

  Shaitana paused. He knew he should tell the men what had happened. But there didn’t seem to be anything the matter with Doland. The man looked perfectly healthy; according to the medical scanner, his breathing and heart rate were absolutely normal. And he needed those credits…

  “Of course,” Shaitana said. “The process was 100% successful.”

  Tekka nodded, flexing his wrists. “Excellent. What is your credit number?”

  “Er… better put it in my secret account.” Shaitana gave Tekka his credit number.

  Tekka closed his eyes for a moment. “There. Check your credit account. I have just transferred the payment.”

  The white-haired man checked his account using his tablet. The money had been transferred successfully.

  “Thank you,” Shaitana said.

  Tekka nodded, and the three men walked back into the main lab. When Tekka stepped into the tunnel, a gravitational force dragged him up through the chute, dropping him outside the entrance to the house. Glitz and Doland followed after him, and then the three men were all back outside in the Elder Village.

  “Do you want to have a look around?” suggested Glitz. “Enjoy some old memories?”

  “There are no memories for me to enjoy here,” Tekka said. “Let’s go.”

  The three men hiked back across the expansive desert towards their ship. The anaesthetic chemical had now completely worn off, and they were feeling fully alert again. Glitz
didn’t understand exactly what Shaitana had done to them, but he certainly didn’t feel any different. Somehow, the word transmogrify seemed to conjure up images in his mind of strange or grotesque transformations.

  “I thought I’d feel different,” he said.

  Tekka held up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. “Of course not. Did you know that human beings share around 98% of their DNA with bonobos and chimps? And we share 50% of our DNA with a banana. The devil is in the detail. That tiny 2% of DNA is what really makes us what we are. The remaining code, while not absolutely redundant, does not define us.”

  “So we’re unidentifiable now, right?” Doland said. “You know, I’m not too keen on being executed. What if Shaitana just took the money and lied to us?”

  Tekka shook his head, tapping his skull. “No. I scanned. My neurochip is not sophisticated enough to run a full DNA examination, but my genetic code registers as different. We have been changed. Our DNA should now be sufficiently altered so that we cannot be identified.”

  “Should?” Doland said. “Should?”

  Tekka ignored him. Once they were back on the ship, Glitz began to relax a little. The grey flight deck was pleasantly cool after the heat of the planet Mazaroth. Tekka began to operate the controls.

  “Where are we heading?” Glitz said. “I mean, is it safe for us to return to civilisation?”

  “Yes, I believe so,” Tekka said. “Of course, you will both have to move to a different planet and adopt new identities, but I know a man that can help you out in that respect.”

  “And what about you?” Doland said.

  “I do not intend to return to civilisation,” Tekka said simply. He paused, staring at the computer terminal. Glitz glanced over at the screen; incomprehensible figures were scrolling across it. “We have a slight problem,” Tekka went on. “I have just been examining the inventory. It seems we are very low on food and water purification filters.”

  “There must be a supplies asteroid open somewhere,” Doland said.

  Tekka nodded. “Quite possibly, but there may be another solution. Take a look.”

  The man brought up an image on the main screen. They had left their orbit around Mazaroth, and were now moving away from the Upsilon System. A black object was drifting through space, beyond the reach of any large gravitational forces. There were no signals coming from the ship, no signs of life.

  “Is that… a ship?” Doland said.

  Tekka nodded. “I have tried to scan it. The engines are inactive, and there seems to be no power to most of the ship. I cannot make out any signs of life, but that may be because they are well-shielded. The hull has clearly not been breached.”

  “How long do you think it’s been here?” Glitz said, staring at the shape.

  “A few weeks, perhaps. Maybe more.” Tekka sighed. “I imagine that a fault on the ship led to the power loss. Without sufficient power, the occupants of that craft can have no way to break free from their inertia.”

  Doland tapped his finger on the main computer panel. “So what are you saying?”

  “I am suggesting that we help the other ship. We can dock with the ship—wearing oxygen suits, of course—and look for any survivors.”

  “And why would we do that?” Doland said.

  “Because they might have supplies to give us,” Glitz said. “You heard Tekka—we’re running low on food and water. And… well… if they are dead… they won’t be needing their provisions, will they?”

  “Precisely,” Tekka said. He glanced at Doland. “You can remain on the ship. It is too hazardous for all three of us to go.”

  Doland nodded. He looked quite relieved that he wasn’t expected to go along.

  “How are we going to dock?” Glitz asked. “If they are dead, they won’t be able to authorise us. And even if they aren’t, we might find it hard to make them trust us.”

  “I am hoping that their ship is programmed to allow any Imperial vessel to dock in the event of a crisis,” Tekka explained. “If so, we will have no issue. If not… well, my neurochip should be able to get us aboard.”

  “Right,” Glitz said. “Where are the oxygen suits?”

  They left the flight deck and entered the floor. The dimensions of the ship seemed almost identical to the one that had taken them to Malus, but the floor was not filled with vidscreens and other diversions. It was bare and empty. They discovered the spacesuits in a storage room down the corridor that led to the officers’ lounge, along with oxygen packs. Glitz and Tekka climbed into the suits and returned to the flight deck.

  “Ready?” Glitz said.

  Tekka picked up two laser weapons and handed one of them to Glitz. “These are ZK-99s, standard Imperial blasters. They are not particularly easy to aim, but they can easily deliver a lethal blow.”

  Glitz examined the weapon. “Know a lot about guns, do you?”

  Tekka simply nodded. He had been right about the boarding protocols; the ship granted automatic boarding permission, and Tekka carefully aligned the docking ports. Within minutes of docking, the two men had stepped aboard the other ship.

  “This is creepy,” Glitz said, looking around. The interior of the ship was utterly dark, and he couldn’t see anyone around. “Looks like it’s empty.”

  Tekka used his neurochip to scan the ship’s atmosphere. The oxygen level was quite low, but acceptable. Fortunately, the gravity was still normal, even thought there was no power to the ship; it must have had a flywheel mechanism that kept gravity for a while after a power loss. After a power failure, flywheels would only continue to operate for a few weeks. That meant the ship couldn’t have been powerless for very long…

  He turned off his oxygen, removed his helmet, and gestured for Glitz to do the same. Glitz removed the seal from his helmet, there was a small hiss, and he screwed it off. The air on the ship smelled musty, and the only light was coming from bioluminescent plants that were growing around the flight deck.

  “Let me see if I can restore the power,” Tekka said. He stepped over to the control panels, switched the computer to emergency power, and began to examine the readings. His frown deepened. “That can’t be right…”

  “What?” Glitz said.

  “All readings are normal. The engines are operational, the shields are intact… everything is in full working order.”

  Tekka pulled a lever on the side of the wall, and the lights flickered on; Glitz had to squint in the sudden brightness. Light flashed on several panels as all the equipment rebooted. Everything seemed clean and shiny—it seemed to be a new ship.

  “You see? Everything is working.”

  “But… where are the crew?”

  “There are no life signs aboard. This ship is totally empty. Perhaps the crew left in the escape pods.” He checked another reading. “Yes, it seems that all of the escape pods have been taken.”

  Glitz shuddered. What could have possibly caused the crew to evacuate? The ship was in perfect condition.

  “You sure there are no life signs on board?”

  “Positive.”

  Glitz didn’t feel comforted. Something must have frightened the crew. But what?

  “Let’s just grab the supplies and get the hell out of here,” Glitz said.

  Putting down their helmets on the flight deck, they opened the bulkhead door and stepped into the corridor. The entire ship was eerily quiet, with no noise apart from the whirr of the electronic lighting and life support. Tekka switched on the communication feature of his neurochip and spoke to Doland on the other ship, informing him that they had arrived safely and should be back shortly. Tekka then used one of the wall panels to access a schematic of the ship’s design. Using his finger, he traced out the quickest route to the main storage bay, and beckoned Glitz to follow him. They entered the main storage area, which was filled with countless crates of provisions. They opened a few of them and discovered assortments of dry foodstuffs, water, oxygen packs, particle weapons, hull repair kits, gravity boots… the variety of use
ful items was amazing.

  “We’ll have to make a few trips,” Glitz said, grinning.

  Tekka looked uneasy, but said nothing. They decided to take a crate of food and water filters first, and then return for the other provisions. Carrying a crate each, they returned to the other ship, and then went back again to pick up more items.

  “It’s amazing that they left all this stuff,” Glitz muttered, looking at the remaining cargo. “It must be worth at least fifty thousand credits.”

  “That’s what worries me,” Tekka said. “Think about it. What could possibly warrant the abandonment of such expensive supplies?”

  “There could be some sort of danger here,” Glitz admitted, looking around as he said it, as if expecting some monster to come lurching out of the air ducts on cue.

  “Perhaps.” Tekka nodded. “Or perhaps this is a trap. On some primitive planets in the Rim, the inhabitants have a problem with a small mammal called a mouse. To deal with the mice, devices called mousetraps are used. These contraptions usually consist of a spring-loaded metal bar, along with a piece of cheese as bait. As soon as the vermin tries to take the cheese, the trap is activated and the bar snaps over the animal, breaking its neck or spinal cord.”

  “Nice,” Glitz said.

  “But do you not see?” Tekka said. “What if this ship is the mousetrap, and these provisions the cheese?”

  Glitz glanced around at the abandoned supplies, as if seeing them in a new light.

  “OK,” Glitz said, starting to feel uneasy. “Let’s make this our last trip. But we’ll carry as much as we possibly can. Look—pick up one of those giant crates and we’ll…” He tailed off, staring at the walls of the ship.

  “You have gone pale,” Tekka said.

  Glitz did not reply.

  “Is something the matter?”

  There was something wrong, Glitz was sure of it. His years of working for the East Galaxy Company had taught him everything there was to know about smuggling. He had discovered just about every hiding place on his old freighter. Once, on a visit to Vortan, he had picked up nearly three hundred illegal blasters in addition to his official cargo of fortified wheat and marchgrain. On that occasion, he had not only hidden the weapons in his secret compartments beneath the floor, but also in the walls behind the maintenance panels. He knew everything there was to know about hiding things on a ship. That was why he noticed that one of the wall panels had been replaced. A huge sheet of metal wall had clearly been lifted from its place, as there were metal shavings on the floor, which must have been scraped off by the movement. The wall had obviously been replaced. But why had the wall been removed? What was hidden behind there? Suddenly, there was a clang. The sound had come from behind the metal sheet.