Molehunt by Paul Collins Read Free Book Online

in free space, since it was outside the planet’s atmospheric profile boundaries. After docking among hundreds of other small craft, Anneke wiped her ship’s memory of their recent adventures, and then walked through the boarding gate like any other tourist or transit passenger.
    What came next was an abuse of her VIP status as a Rimmer. On the station was a dimensional proximity gate. In terms of convenience it was the easiest way possible to travel across the vast chasms of light years. In terms of expense it was the most ruinous. The energy to transport her to Se’atma Minor was about the same as was needed to send a battle cruiser there through conventional warp-space, but this way the trip was instantaneous. An added bonus was that nobody pursuing her could afford to follow. One step, and she was back on Se’atma Minor, liberating the service of a large chunk of its travel budget, and she was safe. Immediately she began decrypting the wafer she had liberated from the Quesadans.
    Anneke was sure that it would contain the name of the mole that had penetrated RIM headquarters. If it did not, she would have some explaining to do, and several lifetimes of salary to pay back into the travel fund. RIM agents were expected, in theory, to demonstrate initiative and to pursue cases in an individualistic way. It said so in the RIM manifesto.
Is this not initiative?
she asked herself.
    In practice, RIM command frowned on such a thing. Initiative was messy and unpredictable. And expensive.
    This place is getting hidebound
, thought Anneke, as she ran a series of complex algorithms against the encryption matrix. After what she had just done she
should
have spent weeks filling in reports about why she had travelled on such an expensive facility, but then why save all that time on travel if only to waste it at the destination.
    She sighed. Uncle Viktus would not be amused.
    An hour later she was not amused either. On the chip was not quite zero, it was more like zippo. The repulsor field had clearly damaged the wafer. All she could extract from it were tantalising fragments, hints that something big was planned, that an illegal
Majoris Corporata
might be involved, and references to a ‘mole’.
    Tell me something I don’t already know
, she thought angrily.
    All that effort – all that danger – for nothing.
Well, the longest report begins with the first word
, she thought as she began her preliminary synopsis of costs, benefits and damage.
    When submitting a troublesome report to Operations, the trick was to click the SEND icon, then immediately click the LOGOFF icon and run for the door. That way she would be outside and un-contactable before the duty monitor read the first sentence.
    The streets of Prospero, the capital city of Se’atma, were jammed with workers enjoying the evening. The day had been a hot one. With sunset a cool breeze off the ocean had dropped the temperature and breathed new life into the congested streets.
    As Anneke strolled along the esplanade, avoiding crowds of apprentices and tourists, she noticed that a storm was brewing out over the ocean. Jagged lightning ripped from the sky, disappearing into the blurry grey horizon. She hoped the storm would strike soon. She loved storms. She loved their energy, their unpredictable violence. She also liked being reminded that there were forces out there, greater than humankind’s, and under nobody’s control.
    She knew she was being followed by the time she reached Obin’s, her favourite café. Obin’s had loads of atmosphere and jutted out over the water, making it lots of people’s favourite café.
    Instead of entering the establishment, she kept going, using her skills to identify the tracker. It turned out to be easier than expected. She led him to a ‘throat’, a point where all the paths narrowed to one, giving the tracker little option but to take that single, exposed road. When he did so,