Out of necessity, the activities of intelligence organizations during the war are shrouded in obscurity. Over the years, a few details have leaked out. Some of what follows can be verified through independent sources, but the rest is speculation.

First, there was a Third Officer, Anita Deborah Davidova, in the Families Navy. Records indicate that she served on Home and Weon in a variety of administrative posts. Shortly after the war ended, she retired from the Navy and is currently working as a police officer for the Inter-Families Courts. Second, during the war, Imperial Intelligence and Internal Security had a major falling-out. Did this cause the Empire to lose the war? That is debatable. It certainly didn’t help matters.

Detective Davidova has refused all comment on this subject, citing her current case load and other concerns. All questions directed to the Navy have been returned with no comment.

Lexeon, The Empire

Third Officer Anita Davidova of Families Intelligence rose to her feet in the hushed hall. She held the stockholders’ report in one hand as she accepted the microphone with her other.

“My Lord Chairman,” she said. “My Lord, my patron has directed me to ask for a projection of future sales for the coming year, and my patron has also requested a historical summary with supporting data so that I may prepare year-and-decade-to-date analyses for her. May your staff oblige my patron by providing this information to me?”

“Madame ... er ... Madame? What ... who is your patron?” The Chairman was confused. The woman speaking, by her dress and manners, was clearly a servant. An upper servant, mind you, but still a servant. And yet she was there among them. She even acted as if she belonged there. While it wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary for some stockholders to send a trusted servant to represent them, it was highly unusual.

He couldn’t recall seeing her before, either. She was so ordinary looking. That was unusual. Most high-ranking stockholders would let only their most attractive servants appear in a place like this. It was a form of display; they were rich enough that they could command such beauty. To do otherwise meant this servant’s patron was either very powerful, or, more likely, someone who had recently jumped up to their rank.

Anita gestured for the aide who had handed her the microphone. “My Lord, discretion prevents me from naming my patron aloud, even in this venue. However, I will forward this information to you.” She handed the aide a small card. The aide politely declined to look at it, but carried it directly to the podium.

The Chairman read the card, and his bushy eyebrows crept up ever so slightly on his otherwise bald head. He straightened his tall, spare frame and bowed slightly. “I fully understand your need for discretion, Madame,” he said, and he did. It would not do for the personage named on that card to be seen openly associating herself with mere commerce. In the exalted company that person kept, appearances were everything.

The Chairman returned the card to his aide, who took it back to Anita. “I will direct that this information be provided to you at the conclusion of our meeting tonight.”

“My patron thanks your Lordship for this consideration. I have been directed that if the information is forthcoming, I am to vote my patron’s proxy in favor of the proposals that were listed in this morning’s agenda, and to vote for the slate of candidates put forth last night.”

The Chairman nodded his thanks. Most stockholders who asked for a favor for their votes asked for a great deal more. He added the considerable number of proxies just promised to the total in his head. That put him well over the number he needed to continue as Chairman. Such an important result from such a trivial piece of work, he thought. He smiled benignly at the servant and looked about the hall for other petitions.

Anita handed the microphone back to the aide and sat down without showing the relief she felt. So simple. So easy. Want to know how many female bond servants had been shipped to Boabdil? Gain entrance to the Stockholder’s Meeting of the Idenux Consortium and simply ask for their contract performance information. Of course, before that, you had to find someone who already held stock in those companies and persuade them to let you represent them at the Stockholder’s Meeting.

She wanted to laugh. She and her Patron happened to have an alignment of interests. Anita smiled, knowing her mother would be sitting in this room herself, shareholder’s report in hand, if she had thought of this. If it would return her sib-sister Evelyn to Sept and Home, Anita Davidova would brazen out a face-to-face meeting with the Emperor himself.

The shareholders’ meeting continued with a meaningless discussion of obscure amendments to the Corporate By-Laws and closed with the almost anticlimactic vote. The officers of the corporation were reinstated for another year, and the amendments to the by-laws sailed through without a hitch.

Anita patiently sat through it all, quietly savoring her victory. She briefly attended the Reception for the Representatives. The actual Stockholders’ Reception did not interest her. She had what she wanted. At the proper time and with the proper protocol, she said her good-byes and left. The material she had requested was waiting at the guest residence when she returned.

That evening, she reviewed all the material and prepared an analysis and forwarded it to her patron just in case anyone investigated her bona fides. It was wise to do whatever you promised in this business, except when that would be unwise. Then she settled down to read. The room grew silent, and chill, and her mouth slowly drew out in a thin line.

She had wanted to know how many female bond servants had been shipped to Boabdil. Now she knew. She also knew how many had been placed elsewhere in the Empire. That too was in the report. She had received another piece of information without even asking. It had been part of the standard format. How many of the contracts had been terminated by death? All she had to do was ask for it, in the right place, at the right time, and in the name of the right patron. So simple, so damned simple, but then, of course, she had to read the reports. She couldn’t just wrap them up and ship them to Home. She had to look at that first page, and then the next, and the next. Row after row of numbers, with never a name, never a hint that these were people, mothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, and sibs. She had to look.

Long after dark engulfed the city, she finally stirred. Silently, she stacked and wrapped the reports and tucked them into her luggage. She called for one of the servants to take the heavy suitcases away. They would be sent to the ship on which she was scheduled to leave tomorrow. She kept only a shoulder bag of essential things. The servant came, stacked her gear on a floater, accepted a gratuity, and left without a word.

As always, Anita had to force herself not to look too closely at the woman who took her things. Blond and fair, like Family South Seas. Then the servant and her luggage were gone. Anita changed into plain, common clothing. No jewelry, no flashy hair, nothing that was remarkable in any way. She sat in the room, finally, looking at her hand on the desk. She felt nothing. Her hand did not tremble; there was none of the feeling she thought she would have when she finally achieved what she wanted.

Was it because the numbers were too big? Were these reports too impersonal? Were they just numbers and not people? Had this job and these people finally gotten to her? She pictured Evelyn as she had last seen her, laughing at some silly story just hours before leaving for her job at a biotech research station. She could see the silly little dimple, the lock of unruly hair that always hung across her sib’s forehead, the way her eyes would go from focused to soft and dreamy when they just silly-talked. Maureen would tease Evelyn then, poking her dimple, getting her to laugh.

Anita looked at her hand again. She thought of Evelyn, missing these seven years. She looked up at the view from her room, the soaring towers of the Imperial Palace, so beautiful, so elegant, a fairy tale dream built on a foundation of broken bodies, crushed dreams, and destroyed lives.

Evelyn.

Anita left the residence by an unlit lower exit and took a groundcar to one of the lower-class districts in Capitol City. This was a rough neighborhood, rough enough that the City Watch patrolled in pairs, and Internal Security only visited when they absolutely had to. She slipped along alleyways, keeping to the shadows, looking for something, she didn’t know what. She found it finally in a dark cul-de-sac where a heavy-set man smelling of wine and sweat was beating a young woman.

Anita smiled coldly, loosing the raging monster she had kept in check these many months. All her years of combat and intelligence training were discarded. All the carefully instilled field craft that kept her in the background, kept her safely in the shadows, was deliberately flung aside. The roaring in her ears had nothing to do with thinking or planning or any other sensible behavior. Rage propelled her forward. A white fire expanded inside her until she thought she must explode. She tapped the man on the shoulder, distracting him from the girl, shifting his balance, confusing him.

“Whatcha want, bitch?” He belched, loudly, wine heavy on his breath. “Git, or I be givin’ the same t’ye.”

Third Officer Anita Davidova, holder of two birthrights for valor in combat, smiled and spread her open hands to each side, showing him she was unarmed. “I have something for you,” she whispered.

“Oh? Whatcha got, huh?” His eyes widened blearily as he looked at her, looked at her as a thing, not a person.

“Just this,” she said softly. The heel of her right hand was a blur that came out of the night to shatter his jaw. Her hand left smashed his nose. She hit him again, and again, feeling the blows all the way to her toes, feeling his bones break and his blood slick on her hands.

Two years of intensive training, and two more of strenuous field experience had crafted her into a weapon. The bland numbers documenting what the Imperials had done to her kin would not stop flashing through her mind as she drove into him, as she unleashed her hate against the one Imperial she could touch that night.

The man raised his arms in defense, only to feel them casually battered aside, broken. He opened his mouth to shout for help, to scream in agony, only to feel a hand he never saw, a hand that struck like a brick, a hand that crushed his mouth and smashed his teeth, filling his throat with his own hot blood. Years of street bullying, years when he was the biggest and meanest man on his turf, left him totally unprepared for this savage, overwhelming assault. Anita drove into him, battering him to his knees, hammering him against the wall, hurting him until he collapsed, broken, bleeding, and whimpering in the dirt. Finally, mercifully, consciousness fled, and his body moved only when she kicked him.

Eventually, she realized he had escaped her. Anita stood panting for a while, then drew a long, shuddering breath. She drew another, steadier one as the fury ebbed and calmness returned. She straightened, taking a quick inventory. Her hands felt as if she had plunged both fists into a fire. Her arms were like lead, her shoulders sore and aching. Teeth clenched, she stretched and flexed the fingers of each hand to make sure there was nothing broken. Her clothes were a mess. She stripped off the shirt, which was hopeless, and used it to clean her bruised and scraped knuckles. Her undershirt and pants were stained but acceptable, given the hour and the neighborhood. She nudged the man with her toe. There was a faint burble as he breathed through the bloody mess of his mouth. Perhaps he would live. Did she want him dead? She thought about that for a moment and then shook her head. She would leave it to chance.

The woman he had been abusing lay huddled in the corner of the alley, silent and shivering. Anita looked at her, feeling nothing, knowing she ought to eliminate this threat, knowing she could not. It was her own stupidity that had put this woman at risk. She took one step toward the woman, who desperately tried to press herself into the wall, eyes wide in terror.

“I won’t hurt you,” Anita whispered. “Neither will he, not for a long time.” The woman’s only response was a frightened moan. She was bruised, and there was blood on her face from a split lip, but she seemed to have no broken limbs. There was no way to tell if she had internal injuries. Anita thought of the emergency cash she carried in her belt. That stash was for emergencies. But she just couldn’t walk away from this woman.

Loosening the buckle seemed to terrify the woman even more. Anita stepped away as she reached into the belt. Deft fingers quickly stripped three gold Imperials out of their hidden pockets and dropped them on the grimy pavement within easy reach of the woman.

“You don’t have to live like this,” Anita told her quietly, and vanished into the shadows.

“That was damned foolish,” she muttered to herself. “Someone could have seen you.” She thought of the woman—someone had seen her. The man, if he lived, would probably remember nothing and admit to even less. The woman might or might not have seen enough of her to tell someone. But if she was living here, in this place, she would probably not be able to explain much of what she had seen.

Anita hoped that woman had sense enough to run. Three gold Imperials should take her far away from here and set her up comfortably wherever she went.

She continued to straighten her clothing until she found her groundcar. She made sure she was unobserved, then slipped on the shirt and jacket she carried as a reserve against emergencies.

She felt better when she slipped back into the guest residence. The fury generated by the numbers was gone, replaced by an icy certainty. She was purged of all her anger. She could let the numbers be just that, numbers. She wouldn’t be haunted by what they represented. She would ship the summary report through the Trade Factor from Prenger’s Station, then make her own way back to Headquarters on Home as best she could, carrying the original data chips with her. Getting out of the Empire would be easier than getting back. She would not need to create a new persona, just use the one she already had, and travel wisely. That’s what she kept telling herself.