The Empire's Corps: Book 04 - Semper Fi

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Or someone could have bought the drone off the pirates and used it against us,” Horn countered. A possible outside threat would automatically increase Sampson’s power base, Rani knew, weakening Horn’s relative position. “You can buy anything on a pirate base. They could have hired a crew of mercenaries there.”

  “True, but their broadcast claimed that they were fighting on behalf of Greenway,” Sampson said, dryly. “I don’t think that they would want to compromise themselves so badly.”

  Rani scowled, inwardly. It had been easy to occupy Greenway’s high orbitals, but it had been harder to take the ground and secure it. The locals were tough fighters, genuinely devoted to their homeworld; they were staunchly patriotic in a manner that few in the Core Worlds would have recognised, let alone emulated. And some of them had managed to capture one of her freighters ... could it be that the freighter had doubled back and attacked Corinthian? No, that was absurd. Where would they have found the missile pod?

  And, she thought, what happened to Proud?

  “So we clamp down harder on Greenway, to make the point that resistance is futile,” Horn said. “And then we redouble our efforts to bring all of the mercenaries into the fold – or eliminate them.”

  “Good thought,” Rani agreed. She looked over at Sampson. “Send a message to Greenway ordering a couple of punitive strikes.”

  Sampson looked doubtful, but he didn't object openly.

  Rani smiled to herself. “In the meantime, we will run additional patrols of the system and see what we stumble over,” she added. It wasn’t in her nature to sit where she was and wait for the enemy to show himself again, but there was little choice. “And once we get the reports of the scoutships, we can plan our operations towards the Rim.”

  She met Horn’s eyes, wondering – again – how such a harmless looking man could be so unpleasant. “How much leaked to the planet below?”

  “Rumours that the Imperial Navy attacked in force,” Horn reported. “We swept most of them out of the datanet, of course, but it is harder to do anything about word of mouth. Quite a few chatterboxes have been identified and we’re watching them now, trying to see if they’re part of a wider network before moving in ...”

  “Good,” Rani said. “Do you know how word leaked down to the surface?”

  “The broadcast was picked up by civilian receivers too,” Horn admitted. “And I think there was probably some chatter between installations in orbit and the ground ... it might be impossible to identify a specific person to blame.”

  His eyes glittered. “We could pick a handful of people and publically punish them for being unable to keep their mouths shut,” he added. “Their example would encourage the others ...”

  “To rebel,” Sampson said. “We never told them that they should keep their mouths shut about possible threats from outside.”

  “I would have thought that went without saying,” Horn said, smoothly. “We do not encourage people to talk outside of work.”

  “But people do talk,” Sampson countered. “We can punish deliberately bad behaviour, but not ... not just talking.”

  Horn scowled at him, seeing his advantage slipping away. “But what about spreading rumours?” He demanded. “If the population comes to believe that the Imperial Navy is coming to the rescue, what are they going to do?”

  “And if we clamp down on it,” Sampson said, “we will lend credence to the rumours. People will come to believe them.”

  Rani listened, thinking hard. Horn was right; if the population started to believe the rumours, they might start getting rebellious. It was hard to say why anyone outside the Core Worlds would feel any loyalty to the Empire – Corinthian had been ruled by an Imperial Governor and exploited by interstellar corporations, like so many other worlds – but they had had Rani’s forces telling them what to do for the last two years. By now, they would probably be feeling nostalgic for the Empire.

  But on the other hand, Sampson was also right; if they clamped down on the rumours, people would think that they were scared.

  And well we might be, she thought darkly, if the Imperial Navy actually was coming back.

  “There’s no point in random punishment,” she said, before the bickering could get any worse. “If we can find someone originating these rumours, we will deal with him. Everyone else ... we will just ignore them. Completely. Let our silence show our contempt.”

  She looked around the table, wondering how many of her chief subordinates would be stupid enough to see it as an sign of weakness. No one doubted that she was more competent than Admiral Bainbridge – a comatose squirrel would be more competent than Admiral Bainbridge – but he’d had legitimacy conferred on him by a system that had existed for over three thousand years. Rani had balanced the different departments as best as she could, preventing any or all of them from gaining an advantage, yet she was still vulnerable if one of them decided he could make a grab for supreme power. Admiral Bainbridge hadn't had to worry about one of his subordinates stabbing him in the back.

  The thought made her smile. Perhaps, if the Admiral had worried about such an unthinkable event, he would still be alive today.

  “Tobias, stay behind,” she added. “Everyone else ... dismissed.”

  She watched as the room emptied, noticing how her subordinates kept their distance from one another – particularly from Horn. The man was diseased. Very useful, but also very dangerous; one day, she might have to sacrifice him to keep her position. She wondered, absently, if Horn knew that he was vulnerable, or did he mistake the appearance of power for true power?

  “Admiral,” Sampson said, as soon as they were alone. “You don’t think that they were terrorists, do you?”

  “They would have had to be pretty incompetent terrorists,” Rani said. In truth, she wasn't sure of what the mysterious attackers had hoped to achieve. Firing missiles from a position well outside their engagement range had caused panic, but little else. “Or maybe they were pirates attempting to distract us.”

  “Maybe,” Sampson said, “or maybe another power is intervening in our territory.”

  Rani considered it, stroking her chin as she thought. “They’d have given away their existence,” she said, “the moment they opened fire. Why not bring in a full battle fleet and launch an attack at point-blank range? They might well have won.”

  “Assuming that they have such a fleet,” Sampson pointed out. “You know how many ships we lost, Admiral.”

  Rani nodded. They’d managed to secure the heavier ships, but several of the smaller ships had been gutted by internal fighting. The commanding officers of destroyers – even light cruisers – tended to be closer to their men than the commanders of battleships ... and not all of them had been inclined to swear loyalty to Rani. Some of them had had to be chased down and destroyed, but a handful had escaped. Two years later, Rani still had no idea what had happened to them.

  “You think that the escapees could be finally showing their hand,” she said. It was difficult to keep a starship going for two years without visiting a shipyard at least once. They’d have to cannibalise non-essential systems to keep the rest going ... maybe they’d linked up with pirates or black colonies. They’d be happy to trade spare parts for future services. “But they'd know better than to waste a missile pod.”

  “Perhaps,” Sampson said. “Or perhaps there’s something we’re not seeing.”

  “True,” Rani agreed. “But all we can do is watch and wait.”

  She tapped a switch, activating the holographic display. Her scouts had already identified several other worlds that would make good conquests, including two with small industrial bases of their own. A third had factories on the planet’s surface, which was inconvenient; they couldn't be moved to Corinthian without considerably more effort than she was willing to spend on the matter. Instead, they’d just be given a list of components to produce and supply to her growing empire – or else.

  Expansion was necessary, as was increasing her own in
dustrial base, but it brought its own dangers. The more space she controlled, the more space she had to patrol ... and the more authority she had to delegate to lesser commanders. If she didn't give them enough ships, they couldn't carry out their mission; if she gave them too many ships, they might consider rebelling and setting themselves up as independent states. Why not? It was exactly what she’d done. Part of the reason she’d uprooted every industrial node she could and had it transported to Corinthian was to make it impossible for anyone else to create an industrial nexus of their own. But were all of her subordinates capable of realising that they couldn't last long if they declared themselves independent?

  And dragging everything to Corinthian caused other problems. If someone took the system, her empire was doomed; there simply wasn't enough material to rebuild outside Corinthian itself. She dared not leave the planet for long ... and she’d divided up command authority, despite the risks, knowing that it would make it harder for one of her people to stage a coup. But if the planet was attacked, a divided command was asking for trouble ...

  “Yes, Admiral,” Sampson said. he gave her a half-bow. “With your permission ...?”

  “Dismissed,” Rani said.

  She sat down on the Governor’s throne and scowled. Admiral Bainbridge had spent most of his time enjoying himself, leaving his subordinates to do the work. The former Governor of Corinthian had been even worse. Rani’s forces had discovered a harem of genetically-modified sex slaves in his quarters, trained in all the arts of pleasure – or so their supervisor had been quick to assure his captor while he'd been bargaining for his life. Many of his subordinates had had their own sources of pleasure.

  Rani picked up the datapad with all the documents she had to read and shook her head. She honestly couldn’t think where they’d found the time.

  On the other hand, she told herself, power was very definitely its own reward.

  ***

  There were enemies everywhere.

  Grytpype Horn had been told to always keep that in mind when he’d first been recruited for Imperial Intelligence, after he’d been caught spying on people who lived in the neighbourhood. Imperial Intelligence had told him that he had a natural talent for intelligence work; they’d been particularly impressed by how he’d sneaked microscopic cameras into the mall’s changing room. If he’d had better equipment, they’d added, he would never have been caught at all.

  Horn had taken to intelligence work like a duck to water. It was spying on people, it was learning information that others wished to conceal ... and it was perfectly legal. He could – and often had – insist on full searches of crewmen he considered suspicious ... and there was nothing they could do about it. Even their commanding officers could do little more than issue protests to Horn’s superiors, who often commended him for being thoroughly pro-active in his pursuit of spies, subversives and sabotages.

  He still wasn't quite sure when he'd made the decision to join Admiral Singh, rather than have her arrested for plotting a mutiny against Admiral Bainbridge and the Imperial Navy. There had been rumours, whispers passed from intelligence officer to intelligence officer, that the Empire was in deep trouble ... or, on a more personal level, that his over-zealousness had finally gone too far. If the Empire was to fall, it would be replaced ... and Horn had no illusions about his popularity. He was the most hated person on Trafalgar Fleet Base, bar none. Everyone hated and feared his all-seeing eyes.

  Except Admiral Singh, who had found him useful. And being useful meant that someone would have to keep him alive.

  Watching an entire planet – to say nothing of the orbital stations, asteroid habitats and settlements on the other worlds – was far harder than monitoring Trafalgar. There had been very few places on Trafalgar that hadn't been under one kind of surveillance or another, even – and the thought always made him smile – the changing rooms and sleeping compartments. Even the privacy tubes were bugged ... he kept a database of some of the more interesting footage he’d recorded over the years and looked at it when he was bored.

  But a planet was far harder to monitor. The datanet was massive, there were vast sections of Landing City that were utterly unmonitored by the security network ... and the rest of the planet was even harder to keep under surveillance. Horn had built up networks of informants very quickly – it never failed to amuse him just how easy it was to convince someone to betray their fellows, if the right motivation was applied – but it still worried him. Anything could be being planned in the shadows, anything at all. And he had no illusions about what would happen to him if there was a coup either.

  He looked up as one of his bodyguards lumbered into the office. The man was big, brawny ... and had been carefully conditioned to be loyal to Horn, even unto death. He would obey orders without question, no matter what they were, and never thought for himself. The conditioning prevented it. Horn knew that others in the Admiral’s inner circle preferred to have bodyguards that could actually think, but he disdained them. A bodyguard who could think was a bodyguard who could turn disloyal.

  “A message has arrived from the interrogation chambers,” the bodyguard said. Even his voice was flat, utterly unemotional. There was no light behind his eyes at all. “They are ready to begin the session.”

  Horn smiled. Constant vigilance had led them to yet another cell of plotters – and his forces had swooped down on them in the dead of night. Their families had also been rounded up; he couldn't help licking his lips at the thought of the treat in store for him and his more enthusiastic assistants. It was amazing how talkative parents became when they realised just what fate was in store for their children if they didn't start talking fast.

  “Excellent,” he said, standing up. “Let us go see what we can learn.”

  The bodyguard led the way as they walked out of the office and down towards the interrogation chambers, passing dozens of assistants who worked on monitoring the bureaucrats who made the planet actually work. Not everyone had the stomach for real intelligence gathering, but they could still be useful. Horn still kept a close eye on them, just in case.

  He stepped past the two guards outside the interrogation chambers and into the first room. Inside, there were a set of computer monitors showing the chambers ... and the first suspect’s daughter, being strapped to a table by a pair of leering men. Behind her, a man – her father, Horn assumed – was struggling against a set of iron shackles, desperately pleading with his captors. Horn allowed himself a moment of disappointment. Judging by the man’s expression, he was going to break before the real fun could begin.

  The next monitor showed a teenage boy lying face-down on a table, being systematically whipped until the blood flowed freely. He’d been caught stealing food, according to the files, and dragged into the interrogation chambers. The food might have been sold on the black market, or to criminal gangs ... or to people intent on remaining unregistered. He was loudly protesting his innocence, but no one was listening.

  Horn smiled and licked his lips. This wasn’t going to be disappointing. This was true entertainment – and intelligence gathering. And he honestly didn't understand why others disagreed. Did they gain no pleasure from watching the forbidden?

  Chapter Seventeen

  However, this runs into a major problem with the democratic system. The more voters there are in the system, the less value each single vote has. Cases where a politician has lost an election by precisely one vote are vanishingly rare – and, of course, it is completely impossible to predict in advance when that will be. The net result is that democratic elections often become about the lowest common denominator.

  -Professor Leo Caesius, Authority, Power and the Post-Imperial Era

  “They check in every hour on the hour,” Sergeant Harris reported, as Jasmine crawled up to where he’d been watching the guardpost. “I guess they don’t have the imagination to do anything else.”

  Jasmine nodded. Sergeant Harris had slipped back towards the guardpost at first light and watche
d it from hiding all day. Apparently, the crossroads they’d discovered wasn't very busy; the other Marines had only reported seeing seven large vehicles driving down the road, all apparently belonging to farmers. Oddly, they had been powered by gasoline, rather than anything cleaner – or related to HE3. Jasmine couldn't help wondering if Admiral Singh was restricting its distribution on a colossal scale.

  “Three of them search; two stay back and watch from a safe distance,” Harris added. “The girls generally stay in or near their barracks until they’re called upon; they don’t seem to have any real freedom at all.”

  “I guessed that,” Jasmine said, tartly. The girls were hostages to their relatives good behaviour. If they ran off, their families would suffer. It was a more effective way of keeping them prisoner than chaining them down every night or guarding them constantly. “Tonight, that is going to change.”

  They'd talked through the plan twice, until they all knew what was going to happen. Once darkness fell completely – and the guards had made their call to their superiors – the Marines would creep closer and carry out the plan. If they were lucky, Jasmine knew, the guards would never even realise that the Marines had been there. But if they weren't lucky, they would just have to kill the guards and make it look like an accident.

  The sun dipped down over the horizon and darkness fell across the land. Jasmine had a sudden sense of Déjà Vu, remembering midnight walks on her homeworld many years ago, before looking towards the faint glow in the distance. Landing City never slept, any more than Camelot did ... and it was a much larger habitation. In contrast, the farmhouses they’d observed had been hidden in the darkness.

  She looked back towards the guardpost and smiled. Someone was playing music, a thumping tune she vaguely recognised from her time on Earth. Unlike Avalon, it seemed that Corinthian hadn't developed its own musical tradition after being separated from the Empire, although maybe it was just a matter of time. Corinthian had a more integrated population than Avalon ever had.