The Empire's Corps: Book 05 - The Outcast

by Christopher Nuttall

  The miners didn't seem convinced. Several of them wanted to try to break into the shuttle and take her hostage, it seemed, others merely wanted to get off-world. Sameena couldn't help wondering how carefully they’d thought the entire scheme through; if they’d damaged the shuttle, it wouldn't be able to get them up into orbit. And the starships would know that the shuttle had been hijacked. Paddy would never let them board.

  “This is pointless,” she said, lowering the volume slightly. “There is no way that this shuttle can get you out of the system. You would do better to wait for the others to arrive with the food.”

  She turned off the loudspeaker and called Paddy, updating him on her situation. Paddy sounded unsurprised – he’d told her that miners could be brave and desperate, a dangerous combination – and offered to redirect the other shuttles. Sameena shook her head, then flickered another switch, powering up her own shuttle’s engines. The miners started to fall back as they heard the sound.

  “The hatch will have to be opened,” Paddy said. “Have they taken control of the system?”

  “Unknown,” Sameena said. He was right. The shuttle was effectively trapped, unless she managed to blast the hatch open with her onboard weapons. And that would risk destroying her agreement with the colony. “Give me a moment.”

  She switched the loudspeaker back on. “The hatch is about to be opened so that the new shuttles can land,” she said. “I strongly suggest that you vacate the shuttlebay, now!”

  The miners hesitated, then started to walk back towards the airlock. Sameena let out a sigh of relief, even though their expressions promised ill for the future. They still felt abandoned by society. How could she blame them? They had been abandoned by the Empire.

  “I’m dreadfully sorry about this,” the Director’s voice said, over the radio. “I didn't realise that they were on the verge of losing control.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Sameena said. She wasn't in the mood to be diplomatic. “Open the hatch so that the shuttles can land, then start unloading. And I suggest that you provide all of your security officers to defend the crews. I will not put my people at risk.”

  She boosted the shuttle out of the shuttlebay as soon as the hatch opened, looking down on the handful of domes as the shuttle clawed its way upwards. Unlike Jannah – and almost every other Earth-like world – Marigold’s Folly didn't spin, always presenting the same face to its parent star. She’d looked at the images from the light side and seen rivers of molten metal flowing across the landscape, while the dark hemisphere was cold – or at least as cold as the planet ever got. All of the human settlements had been established on the dark side of the planet.

  “The shuttles are landing now,” Paddy said. “I suggest that we bring heavier escorts next time.”

  “Sure,” Jayne’s voice said. “Like the entire 1st Marine Division, for one thing.”

  Sameena snorted. It was unlikely that the Empire, at the height of its power, would have spared an entire Marine division to distribute food to a mining colony. Now, thanks to Jamie, she knew that the Marines had been pulled out of the sector, along with most of the Imperial Army units. Paddy, retired as he was, might well be the only Marine for hundreds of light years. They’d have to bring some of Fox’s men from Rosa or hire mercenaries. She wasn't keen on either idea.

  She took the shuttle towards Lead Pipe and docked, then scrambled through the hatch and into her ship. The atmosphere definitely tasted better onboard ship. She’d grown up on a planet – unlike most of the traders – and yet she’d picked up their attitude towards planet-side life. But then, she had been comprehensively rejected by her homeworld. The other traders rarely stayed on any planet long enough to grow used to it.

  “That could have gone better,” Paddy said, as she walked into the galley. “Next time, take someone with you.”

  “I could take Jayne,” Sameena pointed out. “What about that?”

  Jayne snorted, patting her chest. Her pregnancy was only just starting to show. Sameena had wondered why she hadn't moved the child to an artificial womb, but when she’d asked Jayne had told her that every woman should have at least one child naturally. Paddy had – unsurprisingly – agreed with his wife, even though he was clearly worried about her. It wouldn't be long before Jayne would have to go on reduced duty or even transfer to an asteroid until she gave birth.

  “Maybe not,” Paddy said. “We have to take care of her.”

  Jayne elbowed him sharply. Sameena hid her amusement with an effort; Paddy seemed very solicitous of his wife, which appeared to irritate Jayne, even though she was pregnant. There were times when she seemed to relax into his care and times when she was annoyed that he felt the urge to wrap her in cotton wool and protect her from the universe outside. It made her wonder how Brad would have treated her if they had ever lived together as husband and wife, even though the thought no longer hurt so badly.

  “I thought so,” Sameena said. “And someone has to stay here to provide supervision.”

  “Just you wait until your next physical,” Jayne muttered, darkly. “I can really make it uncomfortable.”

  Sameena shrugged and picked up the datapad. The unloading was, much to her relief, going quite well. Marigold’s Folly would survive, at least for another few months.

  “I wouldn't be so sure,” Paddy predicted, when she said that out loud. “These colonies are always run very close to the margin. The slightest delay in shipping could cause major problems, maybe even push them over the edge.”

  “We’ll have to ship in some algae-production facilities,” Sameena agreed. “Help them to become a little more self-sufficient.”

  “Or start evacuating the miners,” Paddy added. “Or even just the kids. Rosa might want to take some of them, if the scholarship program doesn't have room for them.”

  Sameena allowed herself a smile. The scholarship program was starting to pay off, even if the rewards – as she’d told herself earlier – didn't come in money. Some of the graduates could tutor new students, which allowed the entire program to expand rapidly. Given enough time, she was sure, she would have a small army of workers, starship crewmen and other educated personnel.

  “Maybe,” she said. She doubted that the miners would fit in on Rosa, although it was possible that they might be retrained to mine the asteroids or moons instead. The plan for producing a new cloudscoop for the system was still in its planning stage. “But that will have to wait.”

  The unloading was completed without further incident, allowing all of the shuttles to return to their ships. As soon as they docked, Sameena took the small flotilla out of orbit and headed directly for the Phase Limit. Paddy debriefed the shuttle crews, getting their impressions of Marigold’s Folly, then passed their words to Sameena. They hadn’t seen anything that contradicted her thoughts on the planet.

  She kept a sharp eye on the sensors – pirate attacks had been increasing as the Imperial Navy withdrew from the sector – but nothing appeared as they crossed the Phase Limit. Sameena ran one final set of checks on the drive, then powered it up and jumped into Phase Space. It would be two weeks before they reached Madagascar. By then, she wanted to have the next stage of her plan carefully worked out.

  “Steve will definitely be pleased,” Paddy said, as he sat down beside her and passed her a datapad. “He was saying that he needed more raw materials.”

  Sameena nodded. They would have to ship the raw materials through interstellar space in any case. Using Marigold’s Folly ensured that they wouldn't have to mine for themselves, although she had no intention of becoming dependent on any one source. It would have been lethal, particularly if the next riot actually destroyed the processing facilities on the planet’s surface.

  And becoming dependent on a handful of suppliers had crippled the Empire.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  This created a vicious cycle whereupon increased government demands would lead to collapsing businesses, more people out of work and ever-increasing numbers of p
eople demanding access to the social safety network.

  - Professor Leo Caesius. The Science That Isn’t: Economics and the Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire.

  The junkyard was a depressing sight. There were upwards of two hundred starships in various states of disrepair, thousands of pieces of debris and ancient equipment and countless items that had never been properly catalogued. Sameena stared out of the viewing port and wondered, absently, why so much had simply been abandoned. It could have been used until it collapsed into dust.

  “Heartbreaking,” Steve said, coming up behind her. His face was very grim. “You’d be surprised how much of the equipment is still workable.”

  Sameena wasn't. Space wasn't a planetary environment. Vacuum didn't really damage starship components, no matter what it did to living beings. The starships had effectively been frozen in stasis since they had been abandoned, once their former owners had seen no further use for them. And much of the equipment was in the same state.

  “They cannibalised quite a bit over the years,” Steve added. “Some of these ships will need a complete refitting before they can fly again. But it can be done. The real problem lies in some of the more sophisticated equipment. We haven't been able to crack the access codes.”

  “Blast,” Sameena muttered, quietly. “What were they thinking?”

  But she knew the answer. The corporations that had built the equipment had encoded protections into their systems, making it impossible to use them for anything other than their designated purpose – assuming that they could be used at all. Much of the older equipment didn't have such protections, or they could be easily broken, but they tended to be less efficient than the newer tools.

  The Imperial Navy-issue military production equipment had the same problem. There had been quite a few pieces lying around the junkyards, which had puzzled Sameena until she’d discovered that it was effectively useless without the right codes. She'd given some thought to obtaining them, but she hadn't been able to think of a workable method that wouldn't be far too revealing.

  But even without the codes, the production lines were coming online, she reminded herself. They were inefficient – and the spare parts would often need to be replaced quicker than the spare parts from the Core Worlds – but they were all the sector had, now that shipments from the Core Worlds had almost ground to a halt. Her supplies were all that stood between the sector and complete collapse.

  She looked back towards the junkyard and remembered walking through one of the abandoned starships. Even in a heavy spacesuit, the sight had been chilling, a reminder of what might happen if the Empire collapsed completely. What if there were no more production facilities, ever? Interstellar trade would fall apart so completely that nothing would be left, but a handful of low-tech worlds. She told herself that was an exaggerated fear, but in truth she didn't know. Some of the whispered reports from the Core Worlds spoke of civil war and massive bloodshed, with the Empire in full retreat. There was no way to know for sure.

  “The kids are doing very well,” Steve added. “You did good.”

  Sameena had to smile. Training the refugee children had definitely been one of her better ideas. Steve now had an expanding workforce, which was paid the best wages in the sector if they didn't want shares in Sameena’s corporation. And the more students it trained, the faster it could expand. Thanks to her, Professor Sorrel had opened up an entire training school.

  “Thank you,” she said, softly. “Have there been any unexpected problems?”

  Steve shrugged. “We found a dead body in one of the ships,” he said. “It had been dead for at least three hundred years. There was no record of the man’s existence when we ran his prints through the database, so we gave him a funeral and launched his body into the sun.”

  He shrugged. “Other than that ... there has been some interest in our operation from the Imperial Navy.”

  Sameena felt her eyes narrow. She hadn't expected the operation to remain secret indefinitely, particularly now that the sector was effectively cut off from Earth. The traders might sneer at the Imperial Navy, but it did have an excellent window into trader activities, merely by monitoring places like Madagascar and Tabasco. And she had a feeling that Jamie’s superiors would be becoming desperate.

  “Ah,” she said, keeping her voice under firm control. “That’s the sort of thing that should probably be mentioned first.”

  Steve shrugged, apologetically.

  Sameena sighed. “What sort of interest?”

  “Some of our people were questioned during their visit to Madagascar,” Steve said. “And they’ve been running ships past the junkyard ever since we bought the place outright. I think they think we’re up to more than simply striping the junked ships apart for cannibalised supplies.”

  “But no overt threats,” Sameena mused. “Or attempts to seize our ships.”

  “I don’t think they know about the mobile factory,” Steve said. “But the more factories we set up on other worlds ...”

  Sameena cursed, inwardly. This might be the most dangerous moment, no matter how carefully she’d tried to plan for it. They’d been noticed ... before the Empire was too weak to do more than irritate them. If the massed power of the Imperial Navy was brought to bear against her, it would smash her like a nut under a sledgehammer.

  “I know,” she said. “How many people have moved back from the factory?”

  “None,” Steve said. “Once we started providing entertainments, few people wanted to actually leave.”

  Sameena shook her head. How much did the Imperial Navy know?

  She worked it out, slowly. They might well have slipped an agent in with the crews Steve had hired – and if that agent hadn't gone to the interstellar factory, he might well have managed to report in at some point. Or they might have tried to track one of the freighters that made up the distribution network ... or they might just have seen the new supplies of spare parts and put two and two together. There was no way to be sure.

  “Tell everyone to beware,” she said, finally. The mobile factory could be moved, but the factories they’d set up in interstellar space couldn't be hidden so quickly. “We’ll have to see what they want.”

  She was still mulling it over when she docked at Madagascar and strode onto the asteroid, keeping a sharp eye out for possible spies. As always, she drew some attention from the asteroid’s denizens – she was famous, if not for the right reasons – but she couldn't help noticing at least two people watching her. Both of them looked like experienced spacers, but they were wearing civilian clothes as if they found them uncomfortable. Did they come from the Imperial Navy? There was no way to be sure.

  Lamina greeted her as soon as she walked into the eatery, waving her over to the backroom and pointing to a chair. The restaurant was doing a roaring trade, thanks to the cheaper shipments of meat and vegetables from Rosa; Sameena was quietly delighted that it had worked out so well. She'd even heard that Lamina was considering trying to start a chain of eateries across the sector, although that would be tricky. Only a handful of big corporations had ever managed to make it work.

  “The kids are doing fine,” she said, taking the other seat. She’d definitely blossomed since coming to space, becoming a hard-nosed businesswoman rather than a helpless refugee. “I assume that you’ll want to see Brad?”

  Sameena nodded. Brad Junior was – technically – her child, but her feelings towards him were mixed, to say the least. He'd been born from an artificial womb, raised on processed milk and cared for on the asteroid by his grandparents. Sameena felt almost nothing towards him, something that bothered her more than she wanted to admit. Perhaps Jayne had a point, she told herself whenever the guilt gnawed at her soul. Carrying the child herself might have helped her to develop feelings for him.

  Or perhaps I’m just not the motherly type, she told herself. It didn't make it any easier to bear.

  “Barbara has been taking quite good care of him when the grandparents are busy,�
� Lamina assured her. “She’s still young, but her master says that she will probably qualify as a basic doctor within the year and then can go on to take specialised courses that will prepare her for her future career. I think she was planning to stay in space rather than go back to Rosa – she still has nightmares, the poor little mite.”

  “Still?” Sameena asked. She was no stranger to nightmares, but they tended to fade away over the years. Or at least hers had. It bothered her that there were days when she couldn't remember what her father or mother had even looked like. “I knew she had nightmares on the ship, but now?”

  “I think she should have chosen another career,” Lamina said. “This one reminds her of what she had to do on her homeworld.”

  Sameena scowled. “I’ll make time to see her,” she promised, although there wasn't much she could do. She'd held Barbara on the ship during their flight to Madagascar, but she had barely seen the girl since. “Can you take me to Brad?”

  Lamina nodded and led her through a hidden door, into the next section. They’d taken several apartments in the asteroid and added new doors, turning it into one vast apartment. A couple of refugee women had found husbands on the asteroid, but they had merely moved in rather than finding their own home. Sameena wasn’t sure what to make of it. On Jannah, a woman would go live in her husband’s house rather than the other way around.

  Brad Abdul Hussein-Hamilton had surprisingly pale skin, despite his mother’s dark complexion. His father’s genes had obviously been quite strong, Sameena thought, as she looked down at her son. But he definitely had her dark eyes. He was going to be very handsome when he grew up. And yet she still felt nothing as she picked the child up and cradled him in her arms.

  “He’s growing like a weed,” Ethne’s voice said. She was sitting in the corner, playing with one of the older children. “You’ll be able to take him with you in a year or so.”