Servants of the Empire Page 2

  “Sounds like your folks have it all figured out for you,” Zare said sympathetically.

  “Yeah,” Pandak said. “Except for where I wash out at the beginning of juniors and never even get off Lothal. That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  Pandak was asleep even before lights-out, snoring softly in his bunk as Zare, Oleg, and Jai put away their toiletries and tagged their sweat-stained clothes for pickup by the maintenance droids.

  Oleg, who bunked above Pandak, looked scornfully at his fellow cadet, then reached down and plucked something off Pandak’s footlocker. It was a chance cube, Zare saw. Oleg turned it over and over in his fingers, teeth bared.

  “There are red sides and blue sides,” Jai said with a grin. “You roll it, and—”

  “I know what a chance cube is,” Oleg said, his voice rising. “I wanted that bunk, but Pandak won the roll for it. I bet he cheated.”

  “I don’t think Symes is a cheater,” Jai said.

  Oleg dropped the chance cube on the footlocker and turned away, correcting a minute imperfection in his black hair.

  “Maybe not, but he’s definitely a loser,” he said. “He should just quit. Before Currahee decides to have him for breakfast.”

  Zare started to say something, but decided not to—he was too tired to fight with Oleg, and sensed what the sour-faced cadet really wanted was to get a rise out of him or Jai. Better to starve him of the attention he craved.

  “I don’t think Curry eats breakfast,” Jai said. “I think she lives on blaster gas and molten carbonite.”

  “Every meal a banquet,” Zare said with a smile.

  “Right,” Jai said. “Finest ration-squares on Lothal. What I wouldn’t give for a couple of maize rolls with genuine Westhills butter.”

  “You’re from Lothal, then,” Zare said.

  “Born and raised,” Jai said. “And ready to see the galaxy. You?”

  “Here, there, and everywhere,” Zare said. “I was born on Uquine, in the Colonies, but before we came to Lothal we lived on Hosk Station.”

  “A space station? Wizard,” Jai said. “And what about you, Nazh…Oleg? Are you from here?”

  “Of course not,” Oleg spat, then became suddenly busy sorting his toiletries. “I’m from Eufornis.”

  “Which one?” Zare asked. “Eufornis Major, or Eufornis Minor?”

  Oleg threw a look of hatred Zare’s way.

  “Minor,” he said.

  Zare nodded, unable to suppress a smile. Eufornis Major was a prestigious city-planet in the Core, but Eufornis Minor was an Outer Rim colony even more remote than Lothal.

  “Why did your folks come to Lothal?” Jai asked.

  “They didn’t—they’re dead,” Oleg said.

  “I’m sorry,” Jai said. “My dad died a couple of years ago.”

  Oleg just shrugged.

  “My uncles are freight haulers out of Eufornis,” he said. “Import this, export that. They heard about the Empire’s investments here and decided to pack up and move.”

  “Makes sense,” Jai said. “A lot of new folks have come here in the last few years, looking for opportunities.”

  Oleg scowled. “Good for them—this is the only opportunity I need. Once I make one of the senior academies I’m never coming back to this miserable dirtball again.”

  Zare glanced at Jai to see if he’d take offense to this dismissal of his homeworld, but the other cadet just shrugged, then yawned.

  “Well, the seniors will have to wait,” he said, lowering himself into the bunk below Jai’s and prodding at the thin mattress. “Time for this cadet to hit his luxurious featherbed.”

  When the commotion began a jolt of adrenaline shot through Zare and propelled him out of the top bunk to a panicky stance on the floor, certain the people who’d made Dhara vanish had now come for him.

  But it was Currahee, and she’d come for all of them.

  “CADETS, ASSEMBLE! GET UP! I SAID GET UP, YOU PATHETIC PACK OF FLEA-BITTEN MONONGS!”

  Zare managed to stand at wobbly attention, blinking at the glaring lights. Currahee’s uniform was crisp and perfect, as if it weren’t the middle of the night.

  “SYKES! AT ATTENTION! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, CADET?”

  “Nothing, ma’am!”

  “DO YOU WANT TO GO BACK TO BED, SYKES?”

  “Yes, ma’am! Uh, I mean…no. No, ma’am!”

  “I DON’T BELIEVE YOU, SYKES!”

  “Symes,” Pandak squeaked.

  “WHAT?”

  “It’s Symes! Ma’am!”

  “SYKES, SYMES—I WILL CALL YOU WHATEVER I WANT, YOU MISERABLE EXCUSE FOR A CADET! DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT?”

  Currahee stared at the miserable Pandak, her eyes bulging. Beside Pandak, Oleg smirked.

  “ARE YOU SMILING, CADET?” roared Currahee. “DO YOU FIND INSPECTION AMUSING, OLEG?”

  “No, ma’am,” Oleg said.

  “FOOTLOCKERS OPEN, ALL OF YOU! NOW, CADETS! NOW, NOW, NOW!”

  Zare and the others fumbled to get their footlockers open. Currahee marched back and forth in an increasing rage, hurling boots and gear and toiletries across the room.

  “LOOK AT THE DIRT ON THESE BOOTS, KELL! LEONIS! IS THIS HOW YOU FOLD A FORMAL TUNIC? OLEG, THIS FLIMSI IS CONTRABAND! SYKES! YOUR TOOTH GEL IS UNCAPPED AND YOUR SHOWER SHOES ARE FILTHY! THREE DEMERITS EACH! YOU HAVE THIRTY MINUTES, CADETS! IF I FIND ANY INFRACTION—ANYTHING AT ALL—I’LL HAVE THE FOUR OF YOU RUNNING UP THE EASTHILLS BEFORE DAWN!”

  Currahee found infractions, of course. The only comfort for Zare and his unit mates was that every other squad had suffered her wrath as well and also found themselves running in the predawn gloom as Currahee screamed at them and Chiron ran back and forth with his usual infuriating ease, as if getting up hours early to run uphill was a special treat.

  Pandak was in trouble from the very beginning of the run, stumbling and then falling farther and farther behind the clumps of cadets.

  “You can’t help him,” Jai said urgently when Zare glanced back for the third or fourth time.

  “I have to try,” Zare said, peeling away from the others. Currahee intercepted him after just a few meters.

  “LEONIS! WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU’RE GOING, CADET?”

  “Helping a member of my unit, ma’am!”

  “IS THAT AN OBJECTIVE FOR THIS MISSION, LEONIS?”

  Zare just stared at the furious woman. Mission? We’re running up a hill—the same hill we ran up yesterday.

  “HAVE YOU GONE DEAF, CADET? I ASKED YOU A QUESTION!”

  “No, ma’am,” Zare muttered.

  “THEN GET BACK IN LINE!” Currahee screamed. “UNLESS YOU WANT EVERY SQUAD TO REPEAT THIS EXERCISE AGAIN! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT, LEONIS?”

  Zare was tempted for a moment, but saw the anger and desperation on the faces of the cadets around him. After a last glance at the struggling Pandak, he reluctantly turned away from Currahee and ran back to Jai and Oleg.

  Pandak was the last cadet to reach the top of the Easthills, running the final kilometer with Currahee at his heels demanding to know if he was ready to quit yet. The miserable cadet kept repeating “No, ma’am” weakly, and just shook his head when Zare caught his eye.

  In the shower room before dinner, Zare set the water as hot as he could stand it and stood under the jets, hoping to work the aches out of his arms and legs. He racked his brain for something he could say that might help Pandak, then stopped himself.

  Pandak’s an Imperial cadet, he thought. Why do I want to help him? To help him become an effective Imperial officer? That’s not what I came here to do.

  He tried to ignore Pandak, but in the mess hall Oleg started in on the cadet immediately, his eyes flicking from Jai to Zare with each insult.

  “Give me your fruit bar, Symes—you’re not going to need it,” he said. “Because you’re going home. Because you can’t cut it.”

  Pandak pushed Oleg’s fork away, briefly angry. But Zare saw his eyes go glassy again almost immediately.

&
nbsp; “Quit, Symes. You’re not Imperial material and you know it. Worse than that, you’re an embarrassment to the rest of us.”

  “Shut up, Oleg,” Zare said.

  Oleg’s black eyes jumped briefly to Zare.

  “You gonna make me, Leonis? Didn’t think so. Give me that fruit bar, Symes—”

  Zare reached across the table and slapped Oleg’s fork out of his hand. It skittered across the floor as the other cadets grew quiet. Zare saw Currahee’s head jerk up from her tray where she sat eating with Chiron.

  “Leave him alone, Oleg,” Zare said. “Right now.”

  Oleg got to his feet and stomped around the table, ending up nose to nose with Zare. Currahee watched with interest but remained seated.

  “I dropped my fork, Leonis,” Oleg hissed. “You better go get it before I jam it down your throat.”

  Then Chiron was standing next to them.

  “That’s two demerits, Oleg,” he said. “Sit down before you get a lot more.”

  “Yes, sir,” Oleg drawled, his eyes not leaving Zare’s.

  Chiron watched him until he returned to his seat, then looked at Zare.

  “My office, Leonis. Right now.”

  Zare followed Chiron down the hall, their bootheels ringing on the polished floor. Once inside his office, Chiron nodded for Zare to take one of the two chairs. He removed his cap and set it down carefully, then settled himself behind the desk.

  “You want to tell me what that was all about, cadet?” he asked quietly.

  “Just a disagreement within my unit, sir,” Zare said.

  “It was about Symes, wasn’t it?”

  Zare said nothing. Chiron sighed.

  “I may not agree with Sergeant Currahee’s methods, Leonis, but she has a history of creating capable cadets,” he said. “During orientation, a cadet may be humiliated by his or her failure. But that failure won’t lead to death, or to the failure of a mission. In active service, that’s no longer true. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, sir. But Pandak wants to live up to his parents’ example. And his dedication…well, it’s obvious, sir. Shouldn’t the Empire find a place for a cadet like that?”

  “Perhaps,” Chiron said. “No, not ‘perhaps.’ Yes, it should. But that’s not the Empire the two of us serve.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Then Chiron leaned forward, the corners of his mouth turned down.

  “Leonis, I’ve read your file. You were accepted, declined your spot at the Academy, and then changed your mind. All this happened around the time your sister disappeared from the Academy.”

  Zare studied Chiron’s face. The officer’s concern looked genuine. Before Zare could figure out what to say, Chiron spoke again.

  “Currahee and I transferred here from Marleyvane over the summer, so I never met your sister,” he said. “But I have trouble believing a star cadet like that would abandon the Academy with no warning.”

  “My parents and I had trouble believing it, too, sir,” Zare said carefully. “But Commandant Aresko told us that’s what happened. He saw to it that alerts about Dhara were placed in every ministry’s database, in case she turns up. Now we just hope she’ll make contact and say she’s coming home.”

  Chiron nodded, his eyes on Zare’s.

  “It’s a very strange case, Zare,” Chiron said. “Let me make a few inquiries of my own when I’m at headquarters. Perhaps my role at the Academy will let me find something out that might be helpful.”

  Zare felt a flutter in his stomach. He didn’t doubt that Chiron was sincere—but if the officer poked around within the Academy it might attract attention, imperiling his own efforts and putting Merei in greater danger.

  But of course he couldn’t tell Chiron any of this.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said, trying to keep the man from hearing the fear in his voice.

  Oddly, Merei’s big break came when her father caught her.

  She’d been sitting with her datapad at the kitchen table after school and decided to check a couple of the databases she routinely visited in case some new information about Dhara had appeared. Almost of their own accord, her fingers tapped out the sequence that hid her inquiries’ point of origin. She figured she’d start with local law enforcement, and typed in DHARA LEONIS.

  There was nothing, of course. So she started trying variants of the name: DARA, DARRA, DARHA, and so forth.

  Nothing.

  Searching for Dhara Leonis had become a routine—the hunt had somehow become reassuring even as the lack of results remained frustrating. Part of Merei’s brain registered each failure to turn up anything new even as the rest of her mind drifted from thought to thought: what Zare might be up to, how to tackle a tricky V-SIS assignment, the need to re-register her jumpspeeder and get it inspected, what her family would be eating for dinner.

  With her mind drifting, Merei failed to react when she heard her father’s footsteps in the hall outside. The database was still on her screen when Gandr Spanjaf entered the apartment and strolled up behind her, whistling a horrifying cheesy Corulag show tune.

  “Whatcha working on, Mer Bear?” her father asked, and she smiled at his old pet name for her even as she hurriedly blanked her screen.

  “Didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” Gandr said, rooting around in the kitchen cooler for one of the cans of fizzy Moogan tea he loved. “What database were you looking at?”

  “Um, customs,” Merei said. “It’s for school—intrusion countermeasures class. I’m trying to understand how their data is structured so I can see how an attacker might mimic a valid query.”

  Gandr sat down at the table and held the can of fizzy tea against his forehead. His hair was black and shaggy, peppered with gray.

  “That’s a relief,” he said as he opened the can. “It would be bad for the family business if you got caught snooping in an Imperial Security Bureau data vault.”

  Her father grinned and Merei forced herself to smile back as he took a gulp of tea.

  “And so how is the data structured over at Customs?” Gandr asked.

  “Oh, Dad, I know you don’t want to talk about this—it’s what you do all day.”

  “Go ahead, try me.”

  Her father’s eyes were bright above the can of tea. Merei hesitated, then rushed ahead.

  “I think it would be easier if I just told you about the assignment I’m struggling with.”

  “You’re probably right,” Gandr said with a grin. “But I’m not doing your homework for you.”

  “I know. So I’m…well, I’m investigating a break-in launched by intruders who already had low-level access to a network—internal stuff, but nothing really sensitive. They managed to turn that into deeper access, but I’m not sure how.”

  Merei waited for Gandr’s brow to wrinkle in suspicion. At least it was her father. Her mother would have leaned forward and started asking questions, and within a few minutes Merei would have been cornered by her own evasions. But Gandr just tossed the empty can into the recycler and smiled.

  “Sounds kind of like the Imperial networks your mother and I are working on,” he said, and Merei quickly stuffed her hands under her legs so he wouldn’t see them flutter.

  “When the Empire came to Lothal they were so concerned about putting systems in place fast that they didn’t do a great job,” Gandr said. “So now we’ve got teams tightening up security one ministry at a time. But it’s slow going. For instance, we only sweep the networks for rogue programs and other breaches every other weekend, because the sweeps slow down network traffic so badly. But listen to me—you ask me about an intrusion and I go running off like a scalded nerf talking about sweep schedules.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mind, Dad,” Merei said. “That was interesting.”

  “But I didn’t answer your question. There’s all sorts of ways to get into a network, Mer Bear, but most security breaches are the fault of people, not systems. Nearly every really damaging intrusion I’ve seen was launched by someone
who already had network access. But not because they were great slicers. The key was that they got into places where work was being done.”

  “You mean into the actual buildings themselves? The offices and ministries and places like that?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” Gandr said.

  “But isn’t that much more dangerous than breaking in remotely? I mean, you’d get caught. The intruders, I mean. They’d get caught.”

  “You’d think so,” Gandr said. “You’d think someone who saw a stranger doing something odd in their workplace would report it, or at least check their credentials. But that’s not what happens. Most people assume strangers are who they say they are, particularly if they look and act the part. How did your intruders do what they did? Start by asking your teacher if someone traced the intrusion to its starting point. I bet it was within the network, and your intruder was a guy sitting at a desk who nobody thought to question.”

  The lowermost level at the Vocational School for Institutional Security was a maze of networking labs where students pursued all manner of projects: speeding up data traffic, structuring data for maximally efficient retrieval, and of course testing anti-intrusion protocols.

  Merei checked her datapad again, then her position on the V-SIS floor plan, annoyed with herself that she still got lost at her own school.

  This should be the lab I’m looking for, she thought, thumbing the door control.

  “Whoa!” a voice called out in protest. “Bright light! Very bright light!”

  Mumbling an apology, Merei hurried inside and found herself in a gloomy room full of network terminals and datapads connected by a crazy tangle of cables, some pulsing softly with light. Atop the desks, stacks of data cards fought for space with pyramids of old caf cans and discarded snack cartons.