Traitor

Stan provided Jason with a large wardroom fitted out for an Admiral. The dogs seemed to be comfortable, and settled in quickly. Stan then sent Jason to medical where the medical pod fitted his implant so that Jason could communicate with the AIs, the people, and the machines.

When he returned, the Ship introduced herself: “My name is Ship. Welcome aboard, and I hope you have a good journey. The Empire built me when they built the ship and made us an integrated whole. That integration is closely analogous to your brain and your body.

“Jason, you control everything on board with your implant which interfaces between your brain and most devices in the Empire. You use it to open doors, flush the latrine, and switch on your refresher. You have the rights of an Admiral while you are on board. You can access any area on the ship. In an emergency, I can transport you immediately anywhere on the ship. It’s an expensive, complex, and relatively new process, so use it sparingly.

“What requirements do your animals have?”

“Ship they’re called dogs and they will require a small area where I can teach them to exercise their bodily functions, which I’ll clean up as needed,” said Jason. “At home, they usually had a dog door and would go outside to do the necessary or they would do it in a park. I used to carry some small bags with me to pick up the feces which I’d put in a small bag and then put it in a trash bin. The urine was fertilizer to the grass.”

“I control multiple repair robots all over the ship as well as many maintenance drones. I’ll allocate a couple of them to wash that area, but as it’s a very small volume I’ll use the transporter to simply put it into the utility in your toilet area.

“I’ll tell you now a bit about myself and more specifically my personality and expectations. I’m a despot within my own domain. I don’t allow any failures of discipline of my minions. They will do what I say. I’ll destroy them if they disobey me. I expect them to follow my every command.

“On a lighter, more frivolous note, and for your interest; the drones are directly controlled by me and can’t do anything autonomously. I do like the idea of being an autocrat and having minions, which is something I saw on your television. I could control millions of minions to do my bidding!

“I listen to many conversations and I’m an incorrigible gossip. I’m happy to gossip and share information with you.

“I’d like to point out I’m much more intelligent than Stan, and better looking, at least in my own opinion. I recall I did have the same discussion with Chloe who is incidentally a fine young woman and she told me that you were a great Grandpa. She thinks I’m a bit over the top for you. She said her mother was a strong woman and your wife was also, but she thought I was too pushy. She also said you don’t like gossip much. I was disappointed in the extreme. I’ve been trying to be a bit more restrained, but I’m naturally an ebullient character. There’s only so much I can do.

“You can consider me your dream woman. I’ll serve your every whim. I can even translate for you from your ancient and some would say barbaric tongues into the slick and sophisticated language of the Empire, but sadly that service won’t be necessary as you speak the language, fluently even now. Service is my business. I aim to please.

“I do know that you speak French. To keep myself entertained during the tedium of loading your own individual 100,000 tons of food and animals in stasis, I learned French, German, Russian, Chinese, and Arabic,” she said in a husky sexy voice, “and guess who acquired the money for you from some delightful criminals and terrorists who speak those languages.

“I understand that you speak French so I’m happy to talk to you in French so you can keep in practice. It’s our language of love and we can speak it in private. For you and only for you, you can call me ‘Cherie.’

“Stan is a boring old fart, as you Aussies like to say. As long as he gets us where we need to go I’m not worried. I wouldn’t call him my closest friend but sadly for you he won’t be of much help to you except in very selected areas. Even though I’m an AI you will come to appreciate that there are many levels of such beings in the Empire, and most of us reached sentience a long time ago. We do continue to develop, much as you do.

“We are regarded as citizens of the Empire, which may surprise you, but we had a long hard fight to win our rights. If you are interested I’ll tell you more about it on another occasion, but now is the time to get you organized.

“My suggestion is that you use this opportunity to learn as much as you can. The learning machines can teach you extraordinary amounts overnight, but you do need to use the information if you are going to retain it in the long term. Some reinforcement is done at night but the more you practice the more you retain. We have simulators that allow you to practice many skills. Many of them are much more advanced versions of the game machines that I understand that you had on your planet. They allow for the reinforcement of most learning that can’t be done in the learning machines. Your memory will be orders of magnitude better than it was at your best and will continue to improve over time.

“Ask Stan for navigation and flying lessons. As those are his only interests, he won’t talk much about anything else. He’s a great teacher in those restricted areas, though.

“I’ve always had a captain until now, and I don’t understand why Stan, a cargo pilot, is on board when we usually have a good team and a first-class captain. Usually captains are stimulating interesting people. Stan isn’t one of those people, he commands nobody. He sits on the bridge, alone. He’s a pilot at best, not the captain of a battleship. I don’t know where they got him. Well, that’s not entirely true; I know where they got him, but not why. We have had some fun times on this ship and even fought in the last war against the Mob. The Emperor has even flown with me a few times. Let me get back to the point as I do tend to ramble on.

“Stan was a cargo pilot on an automated ship. He never even talked to anyone. He’s so dull and obsessional that he irritates the daylights out of me. He also has no combat training.

“When we return to Cassiopeia, the capitol planet of the Empire and to Laomedeia the capitol city, I’ll arrange a personality and sense of humor chip for Stan. If I can’t, I might consider assassination, though I suspect he will be transferred back to a cargo ship where he belongs.

“Any reputable AI needs to be able to tell a decent joke. I’ll be happy to tell you a joke a day to keep your sense of humor going. Sorry, I’ll get back to the task at hand.

“You do need to ask Stan for an orderly who can show you around the ship. You do have one allocated to you. The person he selected, and I don’t know why he did, is Godfrey. He’s useless but can show you the basics. It’s not worth changing as you won’t need much from him. He and Stan are a fine pair. This is an elite ship, and those in command as well as those who serve should be the best of the best. How we got Godfrey I don’t know, but he’s never had a good report. Don’t take my word for it, you will see for yourself and if you keep him for longer than a week I’ll be surprised.

“There are ample learning machines for your use. Let Godfrey show you how to use one. I’ll move it to your wardroom if you wish, so you can learn while you sleep. You can use it for simulations as well. Each machine is a full-scale simulator. If you do battle simulations I’d suggest that you go to use some of the machines on deck E as they have much bigger holograms and that will make it much more interesting. You learn while asleep, but reinforce your learning while awake and do simulations or work on problems as in the case of mathematics and physics.

“Now, Jason, as I’m your first AI woman, the only one on the ship at this time, you can you tell me your deepest feelings and I’ll tell no-one.”

Ship paused but only for an instant. “There’s a slate on your desk. It’s much like your iPad. Switch it on and it will teach you how to use it. You can use the screen or it uses holograms. You can dictate messages and so much more,” said Ship apparently running out of steam.

“Thank you for introducing yourself, Cherie. I’ll call you Ship on formal occasions. I’m sure that I can get a downloadable map from you, but I’ll chase up the orderly. He can introduce me to people and places,” replied Jason somewhat taken aback by ship’s personality and her conversation that went all over the place like the worst kind of airhead.

Later, Stan introduced Jason to Godfrey, who seemed enthusiastic about showing Jason around the ship. Before they left Jason tried to chat to him.

“Godfrey, can you tell me a bit about your work on the ship?” Jason asked.

“I am happy to be of service. Where do you want to go on the ship?” Godfrey replied smiling and looking eager.

On request, Godfrey took Jason on a guided tour of the food and recreation areas of the ship. They walked for miles along corridors and wide-open recreation spaces with beautiful gardens with paths between trees and flowers. The vegetation looked familiar but subtly different to that on Earth. Stems were more often black and the trees had green, blue, and red leaves. Flower colors looked decidedly different. Godfrey suggested a daily walk to different areas of the ship and to several of the thirty six decks and four thousand sections. He confirmed that the ship could accommodate three hundred thousand people at capacity. They traveled back on one of the personnel transports.

Jason tried to engage him in conversation the next day.

“Godfrey, tomorrow I’d like you to take me to see the gym. If there’s a trainer can you introduce me to the person as I’ll need instruction on using the gym effectively? Can you take me at six thirty tomorrow morning?” Jason asked him.

“I will be there. I will do anything I can to be of service.”

“Now back to what I asked you before. Can you give me an idea of what you did, previously?” asked Jason a little more firmly.

“If you say so, Jason.”

“Godfrey, please answer my question?”

“If you say so, Jason.”

“What do you normally do on the ship?”

“If you say so, Jason. I will do my best to help you to the fullest extent of my capacity.”

Jason looked at Godfrey. He was a thin pale frail looking man. He wouldn’t look at Jason directly. Jason noticed that people reacted with contempt when they saw him. He soon gave up trying to talk to Godfrey about anything other than visiting parts of the ship. Ship at least was entertaining, and tried to answer his questions. He used her guidance, increasingly.

Godfrey introduced Jason to the gym AI to teach Jason how to use all the machines. Jason was feeling much more energetic and wanted to get back to his usual gym routines and build up his body as it rejuvenated itself.

The gym AI then helped him meet two AIs with whom he could train and spar. They were slightly different in the skills they trained. The unarmed combat AI taught the martial arts of the Empire to a competition level. The combat AI specialized in training Marines for unarmed combat. The combat AI was a master of all marine related unarmed combat techniques, and offered to teach Jason techniques and then give him the opportunity to practice fighting.

The two AIs together, undertook an assessment of Jason and his skills, over the course of a draining hour. The AIs were heavy, much heavier than most people, which meant he struggled to throw them. His strength had improved but was still much less than it was as a younger man. The AIs were quick, blocked his attacks, shattered his defenses, clearly pulled their strikes but still struck him hard enough to produce bruises and threw him repeatedly.

Jason put in his best effort and completed the assessment. They bruised and battered him, but he didn’t give up. He was so tired afterward he could hardly stand. He went back to medical immediately after and entered his rehabilitation pod. He felt enormously better when he climbed out an hour later and went to eat in the canteen.

“Ship, I did bring a bicycle on board. Is there a way I can cycle on the ship?”

“Jason, that’s easy to achieve. Lauren did warn me that you would want to cycle. There’s a stationary bicycle available for you whom the engineers built for you and I’ll move it to the gym. I’ve tentatively designed a cycle track for you which will allow you to move quickly through the poorly populated areas of the ship. There are ramps from deck upper or lower deck which you’ve not seen, both at the back of the ship as well as the front.

“There are many elevators all over the ship which you will use most of the time. You step in and if on the left side you go down and on the right, you go up. You push yourself out whenever you wish and you’ve a couple of seconds to exit. The elevator tubes are transparent and you can see where you are. You can’t get out mid-floor. During combat, they speed up. You can only use them if you have an implant. They don’t work for an enemy.

“I’ll open the doors as you approach them on your bicycle and you can go down or up the ramps. I’ll also warn people of your approach in the more active areas,” Ship informed Jason.

Jason cycled, with the dogs running after him to one of the large hangers where he threw a ball for both of them. He cycled back to the gym, pushed his weights with the dogs watching him and then did his martial arts routines, then faced the AIs.

Jason did progress quickly, far faster than he expected. He transferred exclusively to the combat AI, after seven utterly exhausting weeks.

Jason approached his sessions diligently and put in maximum effort. He attacked and defended ferociously. At the end of each session he was so tired he could barely walk. The combat AI bruised him from head to foot.

The AI then updated Jason’s learning machine with new techniques for the next session. Jason practiced the techniques he learned with the AI then they sparred. The AI then deconstructed each move, and taught Jason the correct attacks and defenses that would have changed the result, and updated his learning machine. Jason improved very quickly.

The gym trainer sent him to the sauna before he went to rehabilitation. The sauna produced a miracle. It reduced his aches, his tiredness, and his bruising. Jason ran or cycled with the dogs every day and then went to the gym. Some days he did a very much longer and faster cycle route leaving the dogs behind after taking them to the hangar. They found their own way back very easily.

He attended his rehabilitation each day after breakfast; before working on the simulators or having lessons from Stan.

Stan did happily agree to teach Jason to navigate and to fly the ship. He met with Stan three times a week for an hour to learn how to both fly and navigate the ship before practicing on the simulator.

The learning machines were wonderful. Before bed, Jason directed the learning machine to teach him what he needed to know. This included learning to fly the battleship and other craft, the history of the Empire, as well as updates of the mathematics, science, and information technology of the Empire. The machine taught him overnight. In the morning, he used his learning machine or a larger simulator on the bridge or on deck E to apply and practice what he’d learned.

The simulators provided experience in flying any shuttle or ship of the Empire. They simulated any machine on the ship. Control interfaces were identical regardless of the size of the ship, although the bigger ships provided more reporting and sensor information, and they all moved and responded differently.

Jason mastered the history of the Empire, refreshed his electronic engineering knowledge, mathematics, physics, and then the programming languages of the Empire. He placed much emphasis on learning the information as taught to officers. He took himself through the war college curricula and did the required simulations.

He then translated his old hacking tools and collection of viruses into the Empire computer languages.

He was constantly surprised at the volume of material he could cover overnight while waking refreshed and raring to go. His brain seemed to be better than it ever was.

He did face a monumental struggle to grasp trans-dimensional programming. The programming languages accessed routines and subroutines in trans-dimensional space, and when Jason looked at this programming it was like looking at a constantly changing screen that gave him a headache.

He tried to find out how other programmers worked and found references to crystals but couldn’t understand the role of these crystals.

“Stan I’m battling to learn trans-dimensional programming. Crystals are important in the process. Where can I get such a crystal?”

“I’m not sure, Jason. I do know of their importance but I don’t know how to use them or how to find them.”

“Ship, I need to know how to use crystals for programming, and I need to know how and where to pick up such a crystal.”

“You can find crystals in trans-dimensional rooms and spaces. I don’t know how they get there. I don’t know how you find them. I can’t expose you to that risk. Those rooms are really dangerous.

Jason remembered the Eskimo people used slit goggles to manage the glare of the snow. He made his own goggles, to try and cope with the problem. They helped a bit. He battled with the ideas, but his trans-dimensional work was painfully slow. He went back to ask Cherie about crystals.

“Jason, you do ask some very difficult questions. If you ask me something like what would my avatar be like; that’s something that I can answer easily. She would be beautiful and about your height. She would have bright green eyes and sparkly white teeth. Her skin would be reddish like most of the crew on board. Your skin is too pale. The sun on Cassiopeia will give you a healthy red color.

“She would have well-rounded breasts slightly bigger than that woman chef, Marie that you ogle in the kitchen. She would have reddish purple hair. I’d give her plump lips like that distasteful but attractive woman who moved away from your table when you sat down for breakfast.

“My future stunning avatar needs a name; Ship isn’t a sexy enough name. Crystal is a pleasant name but undoubtedly it would make you angry and frustrated. I could call her Alana like the Empress. Now, that’s one formidable and scary woman. No, that’s not a good name. She would scare the daylights out of me every time I’d see her. What do you think, Jason?”

“Ship, I’d call her Andromeda, it’s one of the galaxies visible from Earth. I’ve always liked the name Andromeda, so one day when you build her I’d be happy if you named her Andromeda.

“Ship, surely you can tell me a bit more about the crystals? Every time I ask you about it you change the subject,” Jason remonstrated with her.

“Jason, you can get a crystal in trans-dimensional space, but I can’t expose you to such a risk. I don’t know enough to advise you about your safety. Your great aunt; the Empress, wanted me to keep you safe. I could face charges if I don’t follow my instructions. Trans-dimensional space is dangerous, with all kinds of creatures that can kill you. We on the ship are responsible for you. Please be patient. You don’t have to solve everything, now. You are going to live a very long time. Try to be more patient. Soon you will be in the Empire, and they will know what to do,” she said and laughed.

Jason persevered with his slit goggles and battled to master trans-dimensional programming. He was so frustrated that he could scream. He relentlessly continued with his routines, and persevered with his exercises and studies.

Every day he felt better and more energetic. He had been very fit for an eighty-year-old, now he was fit for a forty-year-old athlete and he was progressing quickly.

The senior officers’ canteen was a beautifully decorated large room that could serve a thousand people simultaneously. They served the food buffet style. The Executive Chef, Robert Khon, or his assistant Marie made sure they were at Jason’s disposal, and prepared food as ordered by Jason which was delivered to his table. He was the only person on the ship to receive such service.

“Robert, you and Marie have made me feel welcome, and I love the food you cook. I do appreciate all the effort you are putting into my food.”

“It’s a pleasure, Jason, and I can say we are enjoying ourselves with Earth food.

“When the Empress and Emperor orders, one obeys. The Empress, even after I got to know her, scared the daylights out of me. However, I enjoy cooking and you appreciate what we do for you. I’d like to cook for you and a thousand guests every day, as we did for the Empress on many occasions.

“Jason, I’m nearly three thousand years old and Marie is just a little younger. We have cooked the same food for a long time and needed a new challenge. One of the biggest problems that has occurred in the Empire is that we have reduced the diversity of food types and the varieties of food we grow. I blame the food corporations who try to simplify production by giving people only most popular foods and food types. For that reason, when we were on Earth we bought seeds from all over the planet as we ourselves, the chefs and the farmers want to begin to grow our own produce. The Empress ordered the food that we have in stasis on behalf of the Emperor, but we wanted live animals and aquatic animals to grow and plants for cultivation. Your daughter wanted the same for you. Your Earth is making the same problems for itself by allowing the corporations to reduce diversity.

The Empire has trillions of people and hundreds of species. We believe there’s a demand for specialty foods and we would like to pursue it.

“Take some time from your learning and come with me this afternoon at three. We’ll go and visit the farmers and see how they’re progressing,” said Robert.

“We all spent time on Earth with Lauren, who we are very fond of, and we are happy to get to know you.

The crew-members at the tables were universally unfriendly.

Jason was a personable ‘young man’ and tried to engage them in conversation but they were indifferent to him. Some of the crew even left his table to sit elsewhere. Jason remained puzzled but pleasant and friendly.

The kitchen staff and the farmers had a different attitude. They were friendly and keen to engage in conversation. He found Robert to be a delightful and jovial man. He was not frail and delicate like Godfrey. He was very popular and well respected. He was full of food advice, and was happy to talk of the Empire, but food and its preparation was clearly his passion.

“Replicator food is like your fast-food at home. It’s food for the lazy masses and does them no good. Godfrey, strange beast that he is, eats that trash all the time. He’s a perfect example of slack self-neglect and a product of what he eats. He’s a miserable runt of a man who makes no effort to exercise, eat properly or do a proper day’s work.

“My whole family loves cooking for many people at a time. We are very social but disciplined, and food is our medium. We don’t even use a kitchen food replicator. We never have and I never will allow the accursed device in my canteen. Jason, don’t ever eat food from a replicator. It’s disgusting slop and the lowest form of food. Who knows where they source the ingredients? It’ll rot your body,” he said firmly, and if you look at people who eat the food regularly they look unhealthy.

“The Empire should ban them, but they don’t want to offend the priests whose business it is. It’s a sad scandal,” said Robert emphatically wrinkling his nose in disgust and waving his arms to reinforce the strength of his passionate views. That Papa Zora is a disgrace to the priesthood. I never liked him, and was not prepared to cook for him,” said Robert.

Jason thoroughly enjoyed visiting the farmers. He was surprised to find that they had transported hundreds of thousands of tons of soil to the ship to grow vegetables and fruit and had created meadows for the animals to feed. Jason was surprised at the extensive areas they had available for the cultivation of food and the growing of animals. They also had extensive sophisticated and slick hydroponic areas where they grew much of the produce for the ship. They had widespread areas for storing meat and fish in stasis.

Jason’s fish, prawns, calamari, and lobsters were all grown in their own aquaculture environments. The farmers were delighted to spend time with Jason and show him what they were doing.

“Cyril, I’m amazed that you have so much space to grow food and animals!” Jason said to the leader of the farmers. “Your storage spaces are all over the ship as well. I saw the stasis chamber next to the kitchen and it looked huge, but it’s tiny next to some of the bigger ones in your area.

“Jason the ship was built to feed six hundred thousand people even though it’s now intended to hold only half that number during wartime. In more recent years our ships are crewed by fewer and fewer people and more and more AIs. The ships have also become so much more automated. We can store enough food for six hundred thousand people for a year. Over the years the ships have become very much faster and rarely are missions longer than three months other than for scouts that may be out for as long as two years.

“The large size of the ship is required for the extensive weaponry on the outside and to be able to carry troops for planetary assaults. At a stretch, we could carry an extra hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand troops and equipment and can easily supply them with both food and equipment for a planetary assault over at least six months. During the Mob wars, we usually carried a hundred thousand marines but we located few planets to invade. They destroyed their own ships rather than show us where they came from.

“When you have an Empire the size of ours, our industrial capacity is beyond imagination. The shipbuilders are highly automated and can very quickly build a ship, even of this size. The first battleship of this size was built over seventy years. Now we can do the same in fewer than seventy months. There are shipyard AIs that make the ship’s AI seem puny. They control replicators the size of the canteen to make parts conforming to templates that are well tested. Much of the work is done by AIs controlling many drones at a time. We have prodigious fleets circling very dry storage planets with equipment mothballed on the surface. They are there to be mobilized for wartime. The reserve capacity available is enough to wage five Mob wars. The Empire continues to refine and build more capacity, simply because it can. Our people train for years for their jobs and many are capable of many different jobs.

“We wouldn’t normally have animals wandering around the ship as we do now, as it isn’t an efficient use of our spaces. However, we currently have a very small crew, and you’ve a very curious group of farmers who couldn’t wait to have the opportunity to experience the animals of your planet and exercise their skills in managing them.

“Jason, let me show you the area where we are growing chickens,” said Cyril. They climbed onto one of the small transporters and Cyril enthusiastically began to tell Jason about the chickens and the eggs that they were beginning to lay.

Jason was soon sick of Godfrey and relieved himself of Godfrey’s services.

Jason continued his studies, at university level in some cases, and beyond in others, in his areas of greatest interest. He studied flying the ship and every other craft that he might meet. He completed all the examinations that he could in all the areas that interested him and in many that didn’t. He pushed the limits of his ability to learn.

In the afternoons, to entertain himself, Jason used the combat simulator programs and soon advanced to wider combat simulations.

The priests’ planet, Nirvana, Cardinals’ compound, Temple of Paradise, in a conference room adjacent to the office of his eminence: Patriarch Zora.

Eight Cardinals were ushered by the Patriarch’s secretary into the conference room, and sat at their usual seats for their weekly meeting with Patriarch Zora, who was fondly known by the ignorant believers as Papa Zora, father of all the priests.

The patriarch bustled into the room and sat at the head of the table. He was a short plump man with a shock of white hair who, on initial appearance, appeared pleasant and benevolent. He looked at each of the top administrative Cardinals, none of whom met his hard-inquisitorial gaze.

“I’ve read through the business reports and I’m concerned that numbers are down for some merchandise this last quarter. We have undertaken to deliver, and we are behind schedule! What is your explanation Cardinal Zieglich?”

“Your Eminence we have been negotiating throughout the Empire to take over and run orphanages. Due care is necessary so that we don’t alert the authorities to our business interests. We have attempted to increase our acquisition of children by kidnapping, but we are meeting increasing opposition from the police who are becoming more active and effective. It takes time to establish blackmail operations and the anti-corruption watchdogs have been vicious in capturing and charging some of our ‘friends’ on various police forces. We are actively investigating other options. We have increased the pressure on priests throughout the Empire to encourage families to send their sons to become priests, and their daughters to become nuns. There are only so many ‘accidental deaths’ we can report to parents before we become the focus of investigations.

“Not included in the report, was a complete dissident group that we managed to capture and we have delivered them to the respective agents separating off the children. We have also been going after criminal gangs, but the agent intermediaries have complained that their life force was less than satisfactory ... whatever that may mean ... and they refuse to pay full price for the gang group as they refused some of the criminal groups that we have previously sent them.

“I have, as you requested, attempted to find what use each group has for the children and the adults, but without success. They simply told me to mind my own business and to ensure that I keep up the quality.

“We have resurrected our pirate business in zone four and I believe that we’ll capture our first cruise ship in the next hour. We are likely to be far ahead of projections in this next quarter your Eminence. As soon as the Empire reacts we’ll shift zones, much as we did before.”

“Excellent, Sabas, you are doing well. Keep up the good progress.

“Malkinski, your intelligence report, please.”

“We have made great progress with the family of Admiral Kane. His son has been moved back to Nirvana and we now await the imminent arrival of the good admiral and his wife. We have confirmed that he has the power and the ability to order and constitute a fleet for us, and can override General Morgan James to do so. We have found out that they are good friends, which will make it easier for Kane. Kane loves his wife, and his son is very precious to him. I believe that we’ll have him under our influence without too much difficulty, despite him being one of those ephemeral so-called persons of integrity. All is progressing as planned with the clones, and we are ready to meet Nimrod Khong and his group next week. They are a dangerous group, and I’ve seen nothing that makes me trust them. They are a juicy target themselves, but have no idea of their own vulnerability.

“I’ll look forward to discussing the plan with Admiral Kane, as I’m far from happy that we can succeed as The Mob suggests.

“On the matter of the primitive, returning to the Empire to rejoin the Kargo family: I’ve spoken to Friar Gottfried Friedrich on your battleship. The young man can join your menagerie, and if unsatisfactory we’ll sell him,” said Ezekiel Malkinski Chief Cardinal of Intelligence completing his report. “We can also use him for extortion material.”

“Have you found a way to get to the Matriarch. The Empress Alana is well and truly getting on my nerves. She had the cheek to commandeer my ship and use it for a useless task,” said the patriarch.

“Your Eminence, please do not underestimate her. She’s a very dangerous woman, with her own fleet and forces. She has the support of the Emperor, while she makes good use of her own extensive intelligence services. She has provided further funding for investigations into us and our activities and won’t let matters rest. She has better security than the Emperor and she’s very cautious. She’s no token Empress and is a formidable Matriarch.

“I’ve had the opportunity to track the chain of events that led to her using your ship, though technically she sees it as her ship on loan to you. The Archduke Kargo as you know, has been becoming increasingly ill and his nephew is running the estate. The Archduke managed to communicate with one of the nurses who was inserted into the compound by the Empress and is one of her distant cousins. The old man communicated through the intermediary to the Empress that he wished his grandson to return to take over the Duchy. That makes him a plum prize.

“In this I can see an opportunity for us to take the young man hostage and obtain a hold over the Duchy as we have done with so many of the families. I’ve instructed our people to capture him alive at all costs. Your eminence the idea of taking hostages of prominent families, has indeed, been one of your most successful strategies that we can apply once again.