“There’ll be a little something extra in your pay-packets for the week, boys,” Bob said, once he'd quaffed his can of beer. “Old Smoky was very pleased with the last shipment of lumber; they're hoping to start work on building the new transit dorms tomorrow. Any of you who want extra experience in working on construction sites are welcome to apply for leave and join him for a bit.”
Darrin snorted. The lumberyard wasn't formal. Someone could sign up, work for a couple of weeks, then leave to another job. It was quite a popular job for young men who were in the city for one reason or another. Darrin had been new when he’d started, obviously. Now, he was one of the old sweats. Only Bob and a handful of others had remained with the yard since Bob had opened it, largely because they owned stock in the company. Darrin wondered, sometimes, if it would be worth investing himself.
He pushed the thought aside. For once, he could pick and choose among potential careers.
“I’ll see some of you at the shooting range this evening,” Bob concluded. “Everyone else, have a good evening and I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
Darrin put the empty can in the bucket, then strode off down the road and into the city. Sabre seemed to have kept expanding, even though there hadn't been a shipment of new immigrants for six months. But the planetary birth-rate was surprisingly high and the population was expanding naturally. Darrin wondered, sometimes, what would happen if they ran out of space. Would Meridian become like Earth – or Han? Or would the birth-rate fall once the planet was completely settled?
He unlocked the door, then stepped into the apartment. One habit he had never lost was locking the door, even though half of the colonials didn't seem to bother. But then, they all believed that a colonial’s house was his private kingdom. Even the elected sheriffs were reluctant to cross the invisible line that separated public land from private territory. On Earth, anything that wasn't nailed down and guarded 24/7 was certain to be stolen, sooner or later.
“Darrin,” Pepper called to him. She was Austin’s sister, who had moved to the city for her year away from the farm. Austin had introduced Darrin to her and they’d hit it off, immediately. She was so different from Judy that it hurt, sometimes. Would Judy have been as independent-minded if she’d grown up on Meridian? “Gary sent you a message.”
Darrin blinked in surprise. Gary and he had become friends, of a sort, but they didn't spend much time together. Not that Darrin could really blame Gary. The maturity he’d gained over the months had taught him that he’d treated Gary badly, even if he hadn't been as bad as Barry. But he had no idea how he could even begin to make up for it.
“He said that you should come visit the spaceport as soon as possible,” Pepper added. “Do you think there’s news from Earth?”
“I have no idea,” Darrin said. He'd planned to go shooting with Bob and the others in the evening, but he had a feeling that Gary wouldn't have called them unless it was urgent. “I think I’d better go.”
“I’ll come with you,” Pepper said. She ran a hand through her short red hair, then reached for her coat. The skies had been noticeably darkening while Darrin had walked home, suggesting that there was another rainstorm on the way. “It should be a fun walk.”
Darrin smiled, remembering how they’d bitched and moaned the first time they'd walked from the spaceport to the city. Now, it seemed like nothing.
***
“Push,” Kailee said. “Push!”
The woman groaned loudly, then gave one final push. Kailee watched in awe as the baby emerged from between her legs, looking so small and tiny compared to his – no, her – mother. The midwife coughed meaningfully; Kailee picked up her scissors, quickly cut the cord and watched as the baby started to breathe. She'd seen five or six births since she had started working in the maternity ward, yet they never failed to awe her. The children were being born into a world that would treat them far better than Earth.
“It's a girl,” the midwife said. “Congratulations.”
The mother let out a snicker. “He was so sure that it would be a boy,” she said. “The bastard just kept babbling on about how he would have a son to raise.”
Kailee winced. The mother had been kidnapped from a farm and held captive by the bandits – and, inevitably, one of them had knocked her up. But she’d been rescued, while the father had been dumped on a penal island thousands of miles from the mainland. She could rebuild her life ... or have her daughter adopted by someone else. Kailee had read a few rape textbooks while she'd been struggling to come to terms with her own emotions and they’d told her that children produced by a rape were often hated by their own mothers. Putting the child up for adoption might be the best course of action.
“Never mind what he thought,” the midwife said. “Have you picked a name?”
The mother shook her head. “I never thought I’d have the chance,” she said. “Can you suggest one?”
“Lillian,” Kailee said. “She was a strong woman on Earth.”
Afterwards, she went into the private rooms, showered and dressed in her everyday clothes. The midwife – Kailee’s mistress, at least until she had proved she could handle the task – had warned her time and time again about basic hygiene. She'd also pointed out that while it was easy enough to keep clean in the city, it could be harder in the countryside. Trainee doctors tended to make the rounds from settlement to settlement, she'd been warned. On Meridian, it was often impossible to get a patient – or an expectant mother – to the hospital on time.
“Good work,” the midwife said, when she came out. “There's a message for you on the datanet.”
Kailee nodded and walked over to the computer. One of the few advantages of working at the hospital was access to the planetary datanet, even though her reading skills were nowhere near as good as her supervisors wanted. She found the message, then sounded out the words one by one. Gary was asking her to come to the spaceport as soon as possible. It sounded urgent, she realised. They had an unspoken agreement that they would not interfere with their workplaces.
She spoke briefly to the midwife, then took the keys to the medical car and headed out of the hospital. The only other advantage of working in the hospital was that she was allowed to use the car, even though it was a ground car rather than the aircars used on Earth. It had been great fun to learn how to drive; she still got a kick from realising that neither Darrin nor Gary would have been allowed to learn, even on Meridian. There just weren’t enough cars for everyone to have one of their own.
Halfway to the spaceport, she spotted Darrin and Pepper, hand-in-hand. Naturally, she stopped to offer them a lift.
***
Surprisingly, Gary had come to enjoy his position at the spaceport. There was an astonishing amount of computer equipment in the building, including some that had never been installed because it had been deemed too advanced for Meridian. Gary had checked and rechecked the manifests, then dragged it out of storage and installed it himself. It didn't quite match the thrill of fiddling with Earth’s datanet – or the fun of playing games with thousands of others on the network – but it had been interesting. Besides, several of the systems weren't designed to link together and getting them to do so had been a real challenge.
There weren't actually many official duties at all, his former boss had told him. Indeed, there was only one full-time worker at the spaceport – Gary himself. When a starship landed, he would call for volunteers from the city to help unload, but apart from that all he really had to do was monitor the displays and keep himself from becoming too bored. The shuttles were stored at the Orbital Station; the crew kept themselves to themselves, rarely even talking to the people on the ground. Gary understood. There were times when he didn't want to talk to anyone either.
But it still struck him as odd, from time to time.
When the message blinked up on his screen, he read it ... and then swore out loud. It couldn't be true, could it? But the message was verified; it had all the right confirmation codes attached. He c
alled the others and waited, grimly, for them to arrive in the empty building so he could tell them in person. The council could hear the news later.
“A starship made a brief visit to the system,” he said, when Kailee, Darrin and Pepper had finally arrived. Steve and Li were on their honeymoon, exploring the Craggy Mountains. “The ship transmitted a long message to Orbit Station, then crossed the Phase Limit again and jumped back into Phase Space. By the time the message reached us, the ship was long gone.”
“So they didn't want to wait around for a reply,” Darrin said. He held Pepper’s hand tightly, as if he was nervous. “What did they say?”
Gary met Kailee’s eyes. Their relationship had surprised him, but perhaps it shouldn't have done. They both understood the limits of intimacy, as well as sharing experiences that had bound them together. But this would test them to the limit.
“The message said that Earth had fallen,” Gary told them. He'd skimmed the details, but the ending lines had made it clear that humanity’s homeworld was no longer habitable. “The planet is dead. Everyone we knew is gone.”
“Dead,” Kailee said. She sounded as though she didn't quite believe her own words. “They’re all dead.”
Gary wasn't sure he believed it either. Earth had such a high population that it was literally beyond human comprehension. How could they all be dead? It was a crime that made the Tyrant of Macedon, a man responsible for the deaths of billions of humans before the Imperial Navy put a stop to his revolution, look like a naughty boy. He tried to think about what it all meant and failed.
But maybe, on a more personal level ... he shuddered. Moe was dead. Everyone else who had tormented him at school was dead. The teachers were dead.
And his family were dead. Sammie was dead. His parents were dead.
Earth was gone.
“The message concluded that Meridian ... well, that we have effectively been abandoned,” Gary concluded. “We’re on our own.”
“If we’d been there,” Kailee said softly, “we’d be dead too.”
Gary nodded, looking at the timestamp on the message. Six months, more or less, after they’d left Earth. Six months for the most densely planet in the galaxy to collapse into chaos.
“Yes,” he said, finally. “We would be dead.”
He'd had hopes and dreams to escape the damned Rowdy Yates CityBlock. Now, he knew that even if he had managed to make it to Imperial University, he would have died when Earth collapsed. Kailee had dreamed of becoming an actress; she too would have died, unless she was lucky enough to leave the planet before it was too late. And Darrin had had no real plans at all. He would have found an apartment and a girl and started churning out babies. And he would have died too when the cityblocks fell.
God alone knew what was going to happen to the Empire now. Meridian was a very minor world. It didn't even have a cloudscoop to mine HE3 from the gas giant. Chances were that they would simply be abandoned by what remained of the Empire ... or what? What were the other alternatives? Nothing he’d read had ever suggested that the Empire could fall ...
“At least we’re alive,” he concluded. “And we should probably count ourselves lucky.”
***
Janet had never intended to stay on Meridian. It wasn't part of her calling, not after leaving one farming world. Even though she was respected on Meridian, it wasn't the same as moving from world to world. She had only taken on the task of helping with the project because Yates, who had been her mentor as well as her friend, had specifically requested her help. Now, Yates was dead and she was stuck.
There was no way to know if the message she had sent had uploaded itself to the messenger ship before it had re-crossed the Phase Limit and vanished. Janet rather doubted it – and, even if it had, who would get it? The Imperial Communications Network had been fraying for decades, a long time before Earth finally collapsed. Maybe that too had been a factor in the Empire’s decline. But then, there had always been a delay in sending the message and having it received on the other side of the Empire. It could go no faster than the starship carrying it.
She looked down, again, at her notes. She’d watched all of the Earth-born, offering advice where necessary. They'd become adults, slightly skewed by the standards of Meridian, but adults none the less. But now all of her notes were useless. No one was ever going to read them.
We didn't predict the collapse so soon, she told herself. But the Empire was – had been – vast. Who knew what spark had set off the blaze that had destroyed Earth? Perhaps it had been something small and simple, perhaps it had been something so large that it had shattered the Empire. But she had a feeling that she would never know.
Carefully, she saved her notes, then closed the computer. There was no point in collecting more data, not now. Earth was gone.
But she had a feeling that the galaxy’s troubles were only just beginning.
Epilogue
Gary wasn't sure why he bothered to stay at the spaceport. It wasn't like there was nothing else for him to do, not since Orbit Station had been placed into long-term shutdown and the remaining crew landed on the planet’s surface. Improving the planetary datanet had been a long-term project, one he was rather proud of having led. It was cruder than Earth’s, but much – much – harder to control. But, every day, he came to the spaceport, glanced at systems that had remained quiet for years, then returned to his work.
He stepped into the sensor room and stopped, dead. A light was flashing on the display, indicating the presence of an incoming starship. Gary felt his heart leap into his mouth as he bent over the systems, trying to massage data from the remaining orbital satellites. No starship had visited the system since the message from Earth, not for five years. He'd always assumed that they had simply been abandoned.
But now there was definitely a starship in orbit. And it was hailing the planet.
He cleared his throat, then opened a channel. “This is Meridian Spaceport,” he said, hoping that his Imperial Standard was understandable. Everyone was supposed to speak it, but there were hundreds of accents in the Empire. “Please identify yourself.”
The reply came at once. “This is Wolfhound, a harsh male voice said. “We represent the Wolfbane Consortium. You are ordered to surrender at once or face bombardment.”
For a long moment, Gary didn't understand what he’d been told. Bombardment?
“I will have to call the council,” he stammered, finally. “What do you want?”
“Your world has been annexed,” the voice informed him. There was a definite hint of mockery in his tone. “You belong to us now.”
The End
The Empire’s Corps Will Continue In:
Retreat Hell
Coming Soon!
Afterword - On Education
You are providing for your disciples a show of wisdom without the reality. For, acquiring by your means much information unaided by instruction, they will appear to possess much knowledge, while, in fact, they will, for the most part, know nothing at all; and, moreover, be disagreeable people to deal with, as having become wise in their own conceit, instead of truly wise.
- Socrates
It is customary for everyone from politicians to housemothers to give their opinions on education – and most of them are not worth the paper they are printed on. In order to make my credentials (or lack thereof) clear, I will outline my own educational history first. You can then decide for yourself if I’m talking sense or if I have just wasted a few hundred thousand electrons.
I have never been a teacher. The closest I have come to serving as an educator was when I assisted other students at university. However, I have been a subject – I might say a victim – of the British educational establishment. I spent seven years at a primary school in Edinburgh, four years at a secondary (boarding) school in Fife and two years in another secondary school in Edinburgh. After that, I spent three years in Manchester in a university, after which I emerged with a BA (HONS) that was largely worthless. I confess
that I understand little of the pressures facing British teachers. But I do not consider such pressures an acceptable excuse for the poor education I received at their hands.
I left university in 2003. My experience may be outdated.
I should add to the above note to explain that I am largely referring to British schools. The statements I have heard about American public schools suggest that they suffer from many similar problems to British schools, but I have no direct experience to draw on. Handle with care.
I did not enjoy my schooling. Being what is called a ‘special needs’ student (I suffer from an odd form of dyslexia), I required special treatment to move ahead. I did not receive that treatment from my primary school, at least until my final year there. As it was, they sent me to a boarding school for (in theory) such children. Many of them had far worse problems than I, others were (in my rather biased opinion) actually stupid rather than dyslexic. (To be fair, one of the worst bullies played a mean game of Chess.) By the time I left there, I had six Standard Grades (O-Levels) and was something of a nervous wreck. The two years I had at the next school were perhaps the best years of my education, although it was far too clear to me that I was quite some distance behind my classmates. Suffice it to say that I had real problems in staggering away with four Highers (A-Levels) and was quite surprised when I actually got into university. By then, much of my course had already been set.
Looking back at my education, certain things become clear. Those of us who were considered ‘special needs’ children were not really expected to do well. The real objective was to keep us out of the regular schools while getting us the minimum necessary to pass onwards to further education. We were not, for example, granted the resources necessary to learn about more than the basics. For example, there was no internet and only a handful of computers. For someone with poor handwriting, like myself, it was a nightmare.
In hindsight, the real marvel is that I did as well as I did.
The Empire's Corps: Book 07 - Reality Check Page 37