Wolf's Bane (The Empire's Corps Book 14)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “We do have a rough idea of who’s involved,” Emma offered. “At least, we know who went where and when.”

  Paula shook her head. It wouldn't be enough. It wouldn't be anything like enough to justify a crackdown, not against seven corporate directors. Even trying - without some very strong evidence - would probably spark off a civil war. Admiral Singh might come home to find that the entire system had turned into a battleground.

  We could try to grab someone and make him talk, she thought. But even that wouldn't be enough to head off a civil war.

  She looked up. “Perhaps we’re approaching this from the wrong angle,” she said. She was so desperate for ideas that she’d lower her defences and share her thoughts with her hated rival. “What if we start transferring military officers around at random?”

  Emma looked doubtful. “It would break up any cells they’d happened to form,” she said, slowly. “But it would also play merry hell with military efficiency. Admiral Singh would not be pleased.”

  “She wouldn't be pleased if we lost Wolfbane, either,” Paula snapped. “What happens if they gain control of the high orbitals?”

  “Then we’re fucked,” Emma said, practically. She shrugged. “Of course, they might hesitate to blow up the fortress from orbit. Their towers would be taken down too.”

  “Unless they evacuated them,” Paula countered. “The towers aren’t necessary, are they?”

  “No,” Emma said.

  Paula rose and walked to the window. The sun was rising slowly, mocking her. She hadn't slept for nearly thirty hours. “Is there anything we can do?”

  “We can tighten security,” Emma said. “Put more guards on the streets, double or triple the patrols running through the sensitive zones ...”

  “That’s not enough,” Paula objected. “There has to be something more we can do.”

  She looked at the corporate towers, glinting under the rising sun. A small army of infantry would be enough to seal the towers off, then storm them. The corporate royalty wasn't really necessary, was it? She could have authority passed down to their juniors, to men and women who’d been held down by those with better breeding and family ties. She’d been one of them, once upon a time. They’d be forever grateful if they were given a chance to rise to the very highest levels.

  But it would spark off a civil war, she thought, darkly. And who knows who would come out on top?

  Her expression darkened as she peered at the streets. There were guardsmen clearly visible, marching up and down the road to remind the civilians that any unauthorised meetings would be brutally crushed. But who knew which guards were truly loyal to Admiral Singh? Far too many of them had ties to the corporations. There was no way to tell who was loyal and who would turn on her when his masters gave the orders.

  “Tighten security,” she ordered. “Get some additional security units onto each of the orbital fortresses, too. If they try to take over, they can be stopped.”

  “One hopes so,” Emma agreed.

  Paula scowled. Emma Foxglove had been with Admiral Singh since Corinthian. She had no ties to Wolfbane, nothing to interfere with her loyalties to her mistress. And yet, could she be trusted? Paula didn't know. Emma might just have ambitions of her own. Coming to think of it, Emma might easily think that Paula had ambitions too. And she’d be right.

  “She’ll be back soon,” she said. They’d survived four weeks without Admiral Singh. So far, there hadn’t been any open defiance. But that might be about to change. “And when she arrives, she can decide what to do next.”

  Assuming she wins, she thought. Judging by the suddenly sour look on Emma’s face, she probably had the same thought. Defeat might mean the end of everything.

  “Good,” Emma said. “She can make the final call.”

  ***

  Jasmine hadn't been particularly surprised to discover that Wolfbane had very strict gun-control laws. Governments that suspected their populations might want to overthrow them were careful to make sure that weapons were kept out of civilian hands. She also hadn't been surprised to discover that there were hundreds of thousands of unlicensed weapons in the criminal underworld. The only people who ever really paid attention to gun-control laws were the type of people the government didn't need to worry about.

  She studied the masked students as she talked them through using assault rifles. They were keen, but they knew nothing about using guns - or other weapons, for that matter. They’d learnt how to hide themselves a long time before she’d arrived - she gave them credit for that - but they were terrifyingly ignorant in plenty of other ways. They just didn't have the kind of experience she’d taken for granted.

  But they didn't have good teachers, either, she thought. Her mask itched. She resisted the urge to remove it. They had to catch up in a hurry.

  “Make sure you keep the safety on at all times, except when you’re ready to fire,” she ordered. The abandoned warehouse had been converted into a makeshift firing range, but she was grimly aware that someone would probably hear the gunshots. “Remember the three rules at all times.”

  She watched them work the unloaded guns for a long moment and sighed inwardly. They just didn't have time for anything more than a quick and dirty tutorial. The students would probably be swatted aside, if they went up against trained and experienced troops. Cold logic told her that it was necessary, but sentiment told her it was a waste. The young men and women in front of her had never had a real chance at life.

  “Very good,” she said. It was a lie. Her firearms instructor would have broken down crying if he’d seen some of her students, if he hadn't picked them up and physically removed them from his classroom. “Your cell leaders will be issued with ammunition. Make sure you keep it under very close guard.”

  She smiled as she led the way to the next set of tables. “You’ll notice that almost everything here can be obtained easily,” she said. She’d purchased it herself, just to be sure. In theory, everything was tightly rationed; in practice, the system was easy to beat. “You won’t have any difficulty obtaining it for yourselves.”

  “That’s cleaner,” a student objected. “What’s the point of it?”

  “Simple,” Jasmine said. “You turn it into explosive.”

  She talked them through the entire procedure, then distributed pages printed from The Alchemist’s Cookbook. She’d been amused to discover copies of the text - banned almost everywhere - floating around the planetary datanet, as if the hacker community had amused itself by distributing them at random. The students would be arrested and jailed for life - or exiled - if they were caught with the text, but under the circumstances it didn't matter. Their captors would have some problems deciding just what charge to put on the official record.

  “Be very careful when you do this,” she said, after demonstrating several other possible techniques. Some of the students had practical experience in chemistry labs - or kitchens - but others were effectively virgins. “If something goes wrong, the results will be lethal.”

  The students nodded in unison. Jasmine wished, just for a moment, that she could see their faces. But she knew it wasn't possible. The student leadership had reinvented the cell structure, doing their level best to ensure that no one - not even themselves - knew everyone who was involved. Jasmine knew that her students would teach others ... she just hoped they were careful. Turning household cleaner and bleach into explosive - and using it to power an IED - was extremely dangerous.

  And some of the students will be extremely dangerous too, she thought. She’d heard stories about advisory teams who’d taught the locals how to fight, only to discover that the locals weren't inclined to be puppets. The ones who survive their mistakes will learn from the experience.

  She scratched her itchy face as she finished the lecture. “Any questions?”

  A young man stuck up his hand. “Is there anything we can do about riot gas?”

  “It depends,” Jasmine said. “A wet mask - even a cloth over your face - and gogg
les might provide some protection, if you’re lucky. If the police start deploying gas that is absorbed into your skin, you’re fucked unless you have protective gear.”

  “I thought there were drugs that helped with that,” the student said.

  “I don’t know if you could get the specific drug you’d need,” Jasmine said. “There are some standardised counter-gas injections, but they’re not always effective. The policemen will have the specific counter-injection before they march out.”

  She sighed. “Next?”

  A young woman coughed. “I saw a movie where a girl my size knocked out a man his size,” she said, jabbing a pale finger at a male student who was large enough to pass for an artilleryman. “How did she do it?”

  “She had the scriptwriter on her side,” Jasmine said, wryly. The students chuckled. It was hard to be sure, but the girl looked a little put out. “I’m serious - someone scripted that fight in great detail.”

  The girl’s masked face leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

  Jasmine silently damned scriptwriters and flick producers under her breath. “As a general rule, very few people understand real violence,” she said. “The first blow is often the last, if delivered with enough force. Even when it isn't, the force might be enough to disorient you and ensure that the second blow is the last. And the average woman is generally weaker than the average man. In the real world, without rules or a friendly scriptwriter, he’ll kick her ass soundly. It’s as simple as that.”

  She took a breath. “It takes years of training for someone my size to fight effectively,” she added. “I was taught to fight dirty, to go for the balls or the throat or anywhere that might increase the power of my blows. And I tell you that, if I had to fight a man with the same training, he’d beat me like a drum.

  “If you have a chance to run, take it. If you have to fight, go for the balls or somewhere vulnerable and don’t hold back. Take him down. Once you start fighting, you have to finish it or be finished.”

  The young woman didn't look convinced, judging by her stance. Jasmine knew she probably wouldn't be convinced until she encountered real violence for herself. She’d probably go into the fight, certain she could win ...

  “It’s time to go,” Jasmine said. “Pass on what I taught you - and be careful.”

  She turned on her heel and hurried out of the warehouse, scooping up her bag as she passed through the door and into the alleyway. Stewart was waiting for her, as agreed; she dumped the mask into the bag, then pulled her overalls off to reveal an engineering uniform. It had been hot, wearing two layers, but necessary. She smoothed down her hair, closed the bag and followed him onto the street. There was nothing left behind to connect her with the student rebels.

  “No enemy movements,” Stewart muttered. “We seem to have gotten lucky.”

  Jasmine shrugged. Three weeks on Wolfbane, three weeks spent training the locals and negotiating with corporate directors ... it made her want something to happen. The longer they remained on the planet, the greater the chance of being detected. Even now, with Mouganthu helping to cover for them, the odds of being detected were still growing higher and higher. The enemy had clearly taken steps of their own to watch for trouble.

  But they haven’t stumbled across us yet, she thought. And it won’t be long before the Colonel arrives.

  She kept her concerns to herself as they walked past a giant marble statue of the Childe Roland. Jasmine had never met the young Emperor - she had no idea what had happened to him, either - but she doubted the sixteen-year-old had been anything like as mature as his statue suggested. He looked more like a dignified thirty-year-old man than a teenager.

  “We’ll be going back to the tower tonight,” she said. It was mid-afternoon by her watch, although it felt later. “Perhaps he’ll have gotten further.”

  “Perhaps,” Stewart said. “Or perhaps he’s setting us up.”

  They walked into the skyscraper and climbed the stairs, level by level. Jasmine was glad of the exercise, even though it was alarmingly clear that hardly anyone else bothered to use the stairs. The steps were covered in dust. She led the way through the door as they reached their level, then pressed her ID card against the scanner. The door clicked open, inviting them inside.

  “Honey, we’re home,” Stewart called.

  Meade was sitting on the sofa in her underwear, a computer balanced on her lap. Jasmine opened her mouth, then closed it again. There was no point in telling Meade off, not when she’d been digging into the enemy computer network. She’d already isolated the apartment from the local surveillance network, although Jasmine knew better than to take that for granted. The enemy might easily have set up another network without linking it to the datanet.

  They’d still have too much data to sort through in a hurry, she told herself. As long as we are careful, we should be fine.

  “I got a link into the communications grid,” Meade said. She looked up, her eyes alight with mischief. “We can get a message out, if there’s anyone there to hear it.”

  “Good,” Jasmine said. They’d have to signal the Colonel, once he arrived. “Can they talk back to us?”

  “Probably,” Meade said. She sounded confident. “We’d just have to tell them where to send the message. I’ve got a tap into a pre-established data address, but I don’t know how secure it is.”

  Her computer bleeped. “Hang on.”

  Jasmine frowned. Meade sounded ... worried.

  “What?”

  “One of my flags just sounded the alert,” Meade said. She bent her head over the console, fingers flying over the keyboard. “I think ...”

  She broke off. Jasmine reached for her pistol. If they were about to be attacked, she needed to be ready to fight. “What?”

  Meade looked up. “Admiral Singh has returned,” she said. Her face was very pale. “I’m ... I’m afraid it’s bad news.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “We’re picking up a standard welcoming message,” Julia reported. “They’re welcoming you home.”

  Rani relaxed, slightly, as the verification codes popped up in front of her. Leaving Wolfbane had been a calculated risk. There had always been the possibility that her enemies would take control of the planet in her absence or that one of her trusted subordinates - insofar as she had trusted subordinates - would take advantage of the opportunity to mount a coup. But it looked as though no one had tried anything stupid while she was gone. She couldn't help feeling relieved.

  “Inform them of our victory,” she ordered. She’d had plenty of time to prepare a bulletin that hit the right notes. The Commonwealth Navy had been routed after a long battle. A number of heroic officers - including Captain Brookes - had been killed, but the enemy had been defeated. And Rani was the sole architect of the victory. “Transmit the signal over the entire system.”

  “Aye, Admiral,” Julia said.

  “And then inform the fortress that I will be landing as soon as possible,” Rani added. “I’ll be meeting with my officers to discuss future offensives into enemy space.”

  She leaned back in her chair, allowing herself a moment of wry satisfaction. There was no longer any need to be diplomatic. Victory had vindicated her, vindicated her control over Wolfbane and its growing empire. The Commonwealth had taken a beating. It would take time for the enemy to recover and by then her forces would be attacking Avalon itself. She’d win the war ...

  ... And then she’d have all the time she needed to stamp her will on Wolfbane itself.

  ***

  “It doesn't look good, Jazz,” Meade said.

  Jasmine paced the apartment. “What do you have?”

  “The Wolves intercepted our forces as they attacked Titlark,” Meade said. She looked up, cocking one eyebrow. “Our forces were attacking Titlark?”

  “Need-to-know,” Jasmine said. She and the other marines were the only ones who knew that Thule had been a decoy. “What happened?”

  “They kicked our ass,” Meade said
. “Admiral Singh’s after-action report makes it clear that they booted us back out of the system, in pieces. We lost the battle.”

  Jasmine sucked in her breath. Mandy - and Colonel Stalker - had been on those ships. Were they dead? Or were they recuperating, trying to decide what to do next? Jasmine had no doubt that Colonel Stalker would want to resume the offensive as soon as possible ... but could he? The fleet might have been hammered so badly that the survivors had to return to the Commonwealth. Admiral Singh had certainly felt secure enough to bring the fleet home.

  Although she’d want to gloat over her victory, Jasmine thought. And make sure her subordinates don’t have enough time to start plotting against her.

  She turned to look at Meade. “Are they telling the truth?”