by Jay Allan
“This is the finest hotel in Camelot,” Jasmine said, as she pulled up in front of a blocky stone building. It looked reasonably clean, at least. “The Governor suggested that you stay here for a week while you look for somewhere more permanent.”
“Thank you,” Leo said, as they stepped out of the car. Apart from a few bags of clothing they’d brought from Earth, they had almost nothing with them. Fiona had mourned the loss of her jewels and fashionable clothes ever since the Marines had taken them in. A mob had looted their house and burned what was left of it to the ground. He looked down at his wife and scowled at her expression. “Coming?”
Jasmine followed them as they stepped into the lobby. If it was the finest hotel on Avalon, Leo would have dreaded walking into a less-prestigious hotel. The lobby was barely clean, with paint coming off the walls and carpets that had never been washed or even vacuumed. He was sure he saw something move on the table as he walked up to the single desk, operated by a girl who looked bored. Her mouth chewed incessantly on a piece of gum.
“Welcome to the Hotel Avalon,” she said. Her voice somehow suggested that their presence was an imposition. “One room for the five of you?”
“Two rooms would be fine,” Leo said. Mandy looked as if she wanted to protest, but Fiona shot her a glance that made her shut her mouth. He looked over at Jasmine. “Ah … ?”
“I’ll be returning to the spaceport tonight,” Jasmine said, dryly. “I won’t have to stay here.”
The receptionist stared at Jasmine, and then looked back at Leo. “Two rooms,” she said. She quoted a price that made Leo splutter, all in credits. Avalon’s local currency clearly wasn’t very strong. He named a counteroffer and she nodded, leading him to suspect that he was still overpaying them for the rooms. “If you’ll follow me…”
The rooms weren’t actually as bad as he’d feared, although the chambermaid didn’t look very competent at all. Fiona spent an hour inspecting them minutely, complaining about everything, before finally admitting that they were acceptable, for the moment. Mandy had thrown herself down on her bed while Mindy bombarded Jasmine with questions about the Marine Corps and how one joined up. Jasmine answered as patiently as she could, even when Mandy started firing off questions about what it was like to serve with so many handsome men and which one was best in bed. Fiona slapped her and sent her back to her bed in a rage.
A knock on the door revealed a messenger wearing the closest thing to a formal uniform they’d seen on the planet. “Professor, Chief Councillor Ron Friedman would like the pleasure of your family’s company at Afternoon Tea,” he said, once Jasmine had checked his identity. “He wishes to welcome you to the planet personally.”
“Excellent,” Fiona said, before Leo could say anything. “Please tell the Chief Councillor that we would be happy to attend his little meeting. We’ll be along as soon as possible.”
Leo opened his mouth to object, saw his wife’s face, and knew that it would be futile. There was no stopping Fiona when she got into one of those moods. Besides, a new social life might just help her adapt to their new home.
“Very well,” he said, seriously. “When does it start?”
He’d half-expected Jasmine to object to them going to the meeting—or get-together, or whatever it was—but the Marine Rifleman said nothing. He wasn’t quite sure why Captain Stalker had assigned her to look after them anyway. The town might not be as nice as the briefings from the ADC had made it sound, but they hadn’t run into any actual danger. Fiona spent the next hour trying on dresses and insisting that the girls changed as well, while Leo donned the traditional suit worn by an Imperial Professor. He might have been fired from the University of Earth—a very rare occurrence—but no one had stripped him of his professorship. Fiona’s one suggestion that Jasmine abandon her uniform for a dress was met by a harsh stare.
Chief Councillor Ron Friedman’s house was more like a castle, built out of solid stone and guarded by a number of tough-looking men carrying locally-produced weapons. Leo would have been more impressed if he hadn’t spent time with Captain Stalker during the long voyage to Avalon; the guards struck him as thugs, rather than disciplined soldiers. They wore uniforms that made them look uncomfortably like wasps—yellow and black—to make them stand out in a crowd.
“Easy targets,” he heard Jasmine mutter. He couldn’t disagree with her assessment. “A single platoon would go through them like a knife through butter.”
The interior of the house was easily the finest building he’d seen on Avalon, even if it didn’t quite come up to the levels of some buildings on Earth. A number of men and women chatted together about nothing in particular, while children ran around or played in the pool just outside the house. Their hostess, a charming woman with a big smile, gently took Mandy and Mindy and put them in the care of her own daughter, who led them off towards the pool. Leo hoped that they’d be all right. It had been years since either of them had swum for pleasure.
“You’re from Earth,” a voice cooed to Fiona. It belonged to a woman who was quite astonishingly fat, making her way through the crowd like a battleship. “You must tell me, my dear; is that the latest fashion?”
Leo blinked, and then smiled. He hadn’t thought of it, but Avalon was so far from Earth that all of its styles would be six months out of date. It hadn’t struck him as important, of course, but it would make Fiona happy if she was suddenly one of the local fashion leaders. He watched with wry amusement as the newcomer—he hadn’t even heard the woman’s name—steered Fiona away to a cluster of other women, all of whom looked thoroughly vapid.
“And you must be Professor Caesius,” another voice said. He found himself looking at a middle-aged man, with brown hair and an oversized moustache. “I’m Councillor Friedman. On behalf of my constituents, welcome to Avalon.”
“Thank you,” Leo said. The man’s handshake struck him as limp, insincere. He tossed a nervous look at Jasmine and led him over to a smaller group of men and women. “It’s good to be here.”
Councillor Friedman laughed, too loudly. “Excellent,” he proclaimed, slapping Leo on the back. “Now, you must tell us all about Earth and Imperial politics. We hear so little out here.”
And, for the next twenty minutes, Leo did.
-o0o-
Jasmine had once been told that the Marine uniform was not only a sign of achievement, but also a barrier. She was uncomfortably aware of the gazes being tossed at her by people who thought that they were being subtle, as if they weren’t quite sure what to make of her. She stayed close to the Professor and listened, pretending to be isolated in her own little world.
Captain Stalker had given her two sets of instructions. The first was to keep an eye on the Professor and his family and effectively act as their bodyguard, should one be needed. The second was to gain what intelligence she could about Camelot and the true state of affairs on the ground. She hadn’t objected to going to the Afternoon Tea because it offered a priceless opportunity to carry out her second set of instructions … and it was proving very educational. The men and women gathered around the Professor, she was sure, were most of the Councillors of Avalon. They were systematically picking his brains.
A young man was giving her the eye. Jasmine met his and gave him what Marines called the Stare, a wordless challenge to do battle. He lowered his eyes and walked away, with his metaphorical tail between his legs. Jasmine would have preferred to go out drinking with her platoon, or even to have undergone another punishment duty, rather than spend time at such a party. Everyone was just being painfully polite to one another. There was very little love lost between them.
Slowly, she inched closer to Leo and listened carefully. He hadn’t mentioned his own disgrace, but he was talking about some of the Empire’s problems. Jasmine silently memorised the reactions, carefully placing names to faces. The briefing notes had warned her that some of the most hated men and women on the planet were on the Council. And now, the most dangerous ones were gathering intellige
nce, for what?
She shook her head. The deployment was going to be very interesting.
CHAPTER 16
What motivates resistance to the Empire? There are simply too many reasons to list; political, economic, and even personal. The real problem, however, is that the number of anti-Empire groups has skyrocketed in the last five decades. None of them pose a threat on their own. The real danger is that they will get organised as a group if we give them time to develop.
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Waning Years of Empire (banned).
Lucas Trent laughed aloud as he shot his load deep into the girl, and then pulled out of her, ignoring her protests and cries of pain. She didn’t have any right to protest, not as far as he was concerned. The stuck-up bitch had once been the daughter of a paid-up settler family, looking down on indents like himself because she’d been lucky enough not to be shipped to Avalon as an indentured labourer. Lucas had suffered more than enough abuse from such bitches—and their families—in the six months he’d spent as an indent to want to spend the rest of his life punishing them for their crimes. And, besides, it was fun.
He stood up and wiped himself, using water from a bucket, before pulling on his clothes. The girl had stopped whimpering and was staring up at him, fearful of what the future might hold. It had only been two days since she’d been snatched from her homestead and she’d been raped at least seven times, slowly breaking her sprit and turning her into a girl any bandit could be proud of. She’d spend the rest of her life in one of the refuges in the badlands, hidden from any search parties that came out so far from civilisation, servicing the gang until she grew old and died. He reached out and pinched her nipple, savouring her scream as if it were a fine wine, and then walked out of the room. The door banged closed behind him and one of the guards locked it. The girl wouldn’t be going anywhere.
“Yah, Boss,” Steven said, looking up as Lucas strode into what he liked to think of as his operations compartment. In reality, it was just another hidden room, with a pair of maps spread out on the table. “Good ride?”
Lucas leered at him. “The best,” he said, with a sneer. “Go try her out yourself sometime.”
Steven shook his head. “Wrong plumbing,” he said. “You should try out the buck I have in my storage bin.”
Lucas laughed, part of his mind marvelling at how relaxed he was around Steven. Back on Earth, he’d hated homosexuals, considering them weak and disgusting pieces of shit. His gang had fought homosexual gangs in the Undercity and never even considered making peace with them, even if they were one gang that would never be fighting over women. On Avalon, so far from the Undercity that it seemed like a dream, old hatreds didn’t matter. Steven was tough, dependable and loyal. He made an excellent deputy for the bandit gang.
Earth’s authorities didn’t know it, but they’d made a serious mistake when they’d send Lucas to Avalon, rather than simply dumping him on a far less Earth-like world or executing him on the spot. His deportation papers stated that he’d been nothing more than yet another gang member, but the truth was very different; he’d been their leader. Lucas had been born to a mother in the Undercity—he had no idea who his father had been, or that of his brothers and sisters—and he’d never even had a hope of climbing out to the shining towers of the Middle City. At five years old, he was already a vicious fighter, working for one of the gang lords in his city-block. At nine, he started to run whorehouses, pimping girls to his fellow gang members and to richer people from the Middle City, who wanted tastes of things they couldn’t have high above. At fifteen, after a brief and bloody gang war, he’d been the undisputed ruler of his city-block and a terror to anyone who knew him.
Lucas had been born with a talent, one that might have taken him far had he been born elsewhere. He instinctively understood how to build an organisation—the Knives—that supported his primacy, and how to maintain it. His Lieutenants had known that he would support them as long as they were loyal and that if they were disloyal, there was nowhere they could run to that would keep them safe. He’d bribed the Civil Guard and forced them to turn a blind eye to his people as they raided along the edges of the Middle City. At nineteen, he’d been expanding his power into other city-blocks and considering ways and means of making an assault on the Middle City. It wouldn’t be the first time a gang lord had become respectable.
And then it had all come crashing down. The first he’d known of it was when a Civil Guard assault squad had come crashing into his city-block, apparently looking for someone else! The irony hadn’t amused him as he’d sat with the other Knives, chained up and awaiting what passed for a trial in the Empire. They hadn’t known who they were dealing with. It had been the only thing that had saved him. Like almost everyone else born in the Undercity, Lucas was unregistered. The Civil Guard hadn’t made the link between him and the dreaded Knife, leader of the Knives, and merely transported him and some of his men to Avalon.
They had been promised opportunities. They had come, all right; the opportunities to be kicked, beaten and treated like dirt. Lucas had had quite enough of it very quickly and he’d planned their escape with care. They’d escaped one night and slipped into the badlands, encountering other bandits as they fled. And Lucas, formally a gang lord of Earth, had risen to become a bandit chieftain. The irony was not lost on him.
He shook his head, changing the subject. “Has there been any sign of pursuit?”
“Nothing,” Steven said. “The spotters reported that the Civil Guard merely swept the area around the township and went home. We haven’t monitored any communications that suggest that they’re planning an offensive.”
Lucas nodded. It would have horrified the Civil Guard to know that one of their officers had quite happily sold the bandits one of their tactical radios, but as far as he knew, they had no idea that it had happened. The officer in question had been waylaid as he came out of a brothel and knifed to death. At least he’d died happy.
“The other report, however, is more worrying,” Steven said. One of the other reasons Lucas tolerated him was because Steven was a great organiser. Lucas knew that it was important to be carefully organised, but it bored him and most of his men. “The men who landed at the spaceport are definitely Marines.”
Lucas looked down at his hands. “How much damage can a single Company of Marines do to us?”
Steven shrugged. “Our sources in Camelot claimed that the Marines were the most dangerous men on the planet,” he said. “It’s hard to know for sure. But then, they do have a good reason to go after us.”
Lucas smiled, thinly, thinking about his growing power. He had realised, at a very early age, that there was no difference between the Empire’s government and his own gang. The Knives took money or beat up the people who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay. The Empire’s tax collectors took money or jailed the people who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay. Hell, a third of Avalon’s population was so deeply in debt that their great-grandchildren would be working to pay off the interest. There was no moral difference at all. The thought had led to another thought, one that could be applied in full to Avalon.
There were hundreds of homesteads and townships scattered around the badlands, most of them rarely capable of standing off a bandit raid. He’d sent representatives to each of them, offering them the choice between paying tribute and being raided. Some—like Kirkhaven, which no longer existed—had refused, or screamed for help from the Civil Guard. Others, the vast majority, had swallowed their pride and knuckled under. A vast web of fear and servitude was slowly being woven around the townships, holding them all under his thumb. It was a direct challenge to the government in Camelot. They had to respond, if they knew that it was taking place.
“I suppose that they do,” he agreed. “Get back in touch with our sources in the Civil Guard. Tell them that I want to know in advance if the Marines so much as fart publicly.” Steven snickered. “And then send the tax collectors”—another joke, one with a nasty sting in the tail—“around t
o warn the townships not to cooperate with the Marines. We can hand out another object lesson if necessary.”
He glanced down at the map, considering. “The Marines will be gone soon enough,” he added, “and we will still be here.”
“Perhaps,” Steven said. “Or perhaps our allies at Camelot will try to betray us.”
“They’d be fools to try,” Lucas said, with a leer. They hadn’t kept all of the women and children they’d taken on the raid. A handful had been assigned to a far darker fate. “With everything we have on them, they’ll be lucky if they’re only beaten to death by an outraged public.”
He winked at his friend and headed back out of the room. There were other newly-enslaved women in the complex and they wouldn’t deflower themselves. Lucas was on top of the world, the real power in the badlands and in much of the surrounding area. His power was intangible, barely seen unless it was time to give some stupid bastard a clout, but none the less real for all that. What could the Marines, no matter their reputation, do against him?
-o0o-
“Our sources in the Civil Guard were quite clear on the matter,” Rufus said. There was a bitter tone in his voice. “Our esteemed Governor’s pleas for help have finally brought the Marines.”
Gabriella Cracker blinked at the hopelessness in Rufus’s tone. The older farmer had been her father, to all intents and purposes, ever since her real father had died when she was very young. He and his family had brought Gaby up as their own, along with their own children, and he’d always been a reassuring presence in her life. To hear him sound broken was startling.
“One Company of Marines,” Julian pointed out. His handsome face twisted into a sneer. “We are legion.”
Rufus eyed his son with an expression that would have promised a belting, if Julian had been younger. Rufus had survived successive attempts by the Civil Guard to exterminate the Crackers and had learned caution. Julian—and many of the others from the younger generation—was keen for action. They thought that the thousands of Crackers—in both movements—could take on the might of the Empire and win. Gaby knew better. Peter Cracker, her grandfather, had lost his life when the Empire had dispatched a tiny destroyer to Avalon and dropped kinetic weapons on his army.