He was nearly at the bar when he heard the commotion.
Chapter Three
If there is one issue that can be traced as causing the decline of Empire, it is the lack of civil virtue within the ranks of the government and military. Instead of facing unpleasant truths, government officers and irresponsible bureaucrats – who are never held to account – allow the problems to grow larger. On a smaller scale, given opportunities to enrich themselves, soldiers and policemen have become incredibly corrupt, destroying the trust in Empire that made the Empire work.
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Waning Years of Empire (banned).
Rifleman Jasmine Yamane took a sip of her beer and leaned back in her chair, taking in the surrounding bar as her comrades argued over whose round it was. Being Marines coming off their combat high, the argument sounded as if it were going to explode into violence at any moment, but Jasmine knew better. Besides, she’d bought the last round and knew perfectly well that it wasn't her round. The other three were still trying to keep track of which rounds they’d bought.
The bar was dark and smoky, inhabited only by a pair of dancers on the stage and the four Marines. It wasn't too surprising, although the Barracks were normally inhabited by thousands of soldiers, spacers and their supporting officers. The Civil Guard and the local regiments of the Imperial Army had been called up to deal with the fallout from the terrorist attack, leaving the Marines of Stalker’s Stalkers to their own devices. Jasmine had heard – from rumour central – that someone high up had made the decision to keep the Marines off the streets, after the media started to blame the Marines for the recent disaster. It had hardly been the fault of the Marines that the Nihilists had decided to slaughter thousands of people to make their point that all existence had to come to an end one day, but people grieving their dead weren’t very rational. Jasmine knew – she’d been there – that the Marines had done their best to limit civilian casualties, yet with the Nihilists involved, it was often impossible to prevent them blowing themselves and their hostages sky-high. The bastards turned their own bodies to bombs and blew themselves up in the midst of their victims.
She took another sip of her beer and winced at the taste. For a beverage that cost each Marine four credits, it tasted suspiciously like something that had been poured out of the wrong end of a horse. Her experience with beer was limited – her homeworld was an officially dry world, for religious reasons – but she’d learned to drink since she’d joined the Marines and she was quite sure that it was the worst beer she had ever tasted. It was typical of spaceport bars. Merchant spacers would come off their ships, desperate for some alcohol after spending weeks on their ships, and the locals would quite happily cheat them out of their wages. They saved the good stuff for their regular customers.
“All right, all right,” Rifleman Blake Coleman said, pulling out his credit chip. His dark face twisted as he contemplated his empty glass. “I guess it’s my round.”
“Nice try,” Rifleman Koenraad Jurgen said, sticking out his tongue in a surprisingly childish gesture. Or perhaps it wasn't so childish at all. For two Marines who made up one of the best fire teams in the Company, they seemed to spend most of their off-duty time picking fights with each other. Jasmine had long since given up trying to understand the pair of them. “Try and get them to keep the cat’s piss out of it this time.”
“Nah, she only gives the cat’s piss to you,” Blake said, as he waved to the waitress. “I think the chances of you scoring tonight are minimal.”
“The chances of anyone scoring tonight are non-existent,” Jasmine said, shaking her head when the waitress offered to take her beer and replace it. There was no chance of decent beer unless she was prepared to overpay. “We’re getting called into a briefing, remember?”
“Fuck,” Koenraad said, with feeling. “You want to bet that the Old Man decided to piss us off just for the hell of it?”
“No bet,” Jasmine said, before Blake could say anything. “Chances are that they tracked down the death-worshipping masterminds and they want to send us after them before they escape.”
“I doubt it,” Blake said, as the waitress put a full glass of beer in front of him. Jasmine caught him eying the waitress’s breasts and shook her head at him. “If they found the headshrinkers behind the fucking cult, they’ll send the Civil Guard jerk-offs after them. They won’t let us get into them until the Civil Guard runs into trouble.”
“Which will be about ten seconds after they launch their assault,” Koenraad said, dryly. “Those assholes couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery.”
“With beer like this, I don’t think they would try,” Rifleman Joe Buckley said, swallowing half of his glass of beer in one gulp. “Why not organise a gang-bang in a brothel instead?”
“They couldn't get them up,” Blake said. He chuckled, rather nastily. “Has no one told you why the Civil Guard wears brown underwear?”
Joe shook his head. “No,” he said. “Why...?”
“It’s so that the stains won’t show when they run away,” he said. “They shit themselves when they go up against anyone who might actually put up a fight.”
Joe looked down at his battledress and then up again. “Does this explain the brown underwear you gave me on my birthday?”
Blake hesitated. “Well...”
“Of course not,” Koenraad said, quickly. “They suited you.”
“Asshole,” Joe said, without heat. “I’ll have you know that I wore my lucky red shirt today and got away with nary a scratch.”
“Lucky bastard,” Jasmine said, wryly. Joe had a remarkable talent for getting into scrapes that should have killed him, but somehow managing to escape with his life. He had been known to claim that he had nine lives. Jasmine was tempted to believe it. “A pity the same can't be said for the others.”
A moment of silence fell as they raised their glasses in silent unison. A Marine Company was a family, no matter how much they bickered and fought when off-duty. The dead would be remembered and entered in the permanent rolls of Marines who had died carrying out their duties, their names and records recited to new Marines who had just joined the Company. They would live on in the thoughts and deeds of their former comrades.
“No,” Joe said, softly. “It can’t be said for them.”
The music in the bar changed and the dancers started to strip off their remaining clothes. Jasmine watched them without particular interest, although both Blake and Koenraad were watching with lustful expressions on their faces. The women in the bars were almost certainly prostitutes as well as dancers, selling their bodies to military personnel for credits. She guessed, from what little she’d heard from the Earth-born in the Company, that they would never be able to aspire to anything higher in life. They had no hopes, no dreams...no future. Her homeworld had been socially conservative and constraining, but even there she’d had opportunities. The lower-class women of Earth had none. They couldn’t even find a berth on a colony ship.
“Great lookers,” Blake said, swigging down his remaining beer. “I think I’ll go try my luck.”
“Don’t be late home,” Koenraad said, as Blake started to get up. “You miss the briefing and the Sergeant will cut off your balls and stuff them down your throat.”
Jasmine snickered. “Ah, if men could bend over enough to suck their own cocks, they’d be doing it all the time,” she said. Blake gave her a one-fingered gesture. “Have fun; try not to catch anything...”
The door swung open and nine men stepped in, wearing the yellow and black uniform of the Civil Guard. They were unarmed, which suggested that they were off-duty and not coming to try to bust the Marines for some imagined infraction, but looked unpleasant. Jasmine took one look at them and knew how the day was going to end. Their leader glanced around, saw the Marines and the empty glasses in front of them, and scowled at them. The Civil Guard hated the Marine Corps. It was a hatred the Marines didn't bother to return. It would have given the Civil Guard too much credit.
“Ah, assholes,” Blake said, as the waitress scurried over to the newcomers. She had to hurry for them. The Civil Guard, unlike the Marines, was permanently attached to the Barracks. A word from the Guard could have the waitress thrown in the stockade or simply sacked and sent back to the Undercity. “They’ll insist on dancing and drinking and I won’t get a look in.”
“They might have done you a favour,” Joe pointed out. “You never know whose sloppy seconds you’re getting here.”
Blake looked as if he were going to say something cutting, when he was interrupted by a scream from the waitress. One of the Civil Guardsmen had grabbed her ass hard enough to hurt, while one of the others had started to grope her breasts in public. Jasmine blinked in disbelief before spotting the telltale signs of drug abuse. A crime that would have a Marine running the Gauntlet before being dishonourably discharged from the Corps meant almost nothing to the Civil Guard. As long as they showed up for duty reasonably sober, no one would give a damn.
“Hey, asshole,” Blake shouted, loudly enough to be heard over the din. “You want to pick on someone your own size?”
The Civil Guardsman let go of the waitress, stood up and sauntered over to the Marines. “You want to make a thing of a little bitchy whore?”
Jasmine rolled her eyes as Blake puffed up. He might have looked like a thug, with a very rough and ready demeanour, but deep inside Blake thought of himself as a paladin, a man who protected the weak and helpless from the wolves. It would be a brave man – or a fool – who picked a fight with him, yet she could see the traces of drug abuse in the man’s eye and knew that he wouldn't back down. The day was definitely going to end badly.
“Yes,” Blake said, standing up. The Civil Guardsman would have been wise to back down at that point – Blake was bigger and stronger than him and it showed – but he was too far gone to care. His pride wouldn't let him back down in the face of the enemy. “She doesn't deserve shit from you.”
“And we get too much shit from you,” the man returned. His cronies laughed as if it was the funniest thing they’d heard in years. “We just spent the last hour carting out the bodies from your fucking fuck-up!”
Blake’s eyes flashed murder. “What did you just say?”
“You killed over five hundred children,” the Civil Guardsman snapped. His cronies stood up and advanced behind him, fists balling up into readiness for a fight. “We saw the bodies. Many of them were killed by your fire.”
“And your people didn't help,” Blake thundered. “Didn’t it occur to you to make sure that you got your figures straight before you wet yourselves and screamed for help?”
“Fuck you,” the Guardsman replied, bunching up a fist and throwing a punch right into Blake’s face. Blake ducked and threw a punch back, smacking his opponent right in the jaw. He howled in pain as he toppled over backwards, just before Blake kicked him in the head and knocked him out. It had probably come as a relief.
“Get them,” one of his cronies said, and threw himself at Koenraad. Koenraad stepped aside, allowed the Guardsman to slip past him, and then grabbed him and threw him into a wall. Two more Guardsmen tried to jump Blake, only to be knocked down in seconds as Blake twisted, never quite where they expected him to be. Jasmine sighed inwardly and stood up as another Guardsman came right at her, eyes alight with an eerie lust and fury. There was no point in trying to reason with a stoned idiot. She kicked him neatly between the legs and saw him crumple to the ground.
Joe remained seated until his opponent got within range, and then he picked up his glass and hurled his beer right into his enemy’s face. Before the guardsman could respond, he lunged forward and head-butted him in the chest, knocking him down and pouring a second glass of beer over his face. His stunned opponent seemed to think that Joe was pouring acid; he kept trying to cover his face from the liquid. Joe dropped the remaining glass by his side and winked at Jasmine.
“I guess this stuff really is cat’s piss,” he said, and laughed.
Blake was still fighting with the last two Guardsmen, with Koenraad waiting to see if his services would be needed. It didn't seem likely. Even half-drunk, Blake was a far better fighter than either of the Guardsmen and seemed to find it easy to take them both on. He punched one of them in the chest, knocking him back, and then kicked the other one in the leg. His opponent toppled over and hit the ground with a sickening thud. Jasmine found herself hoping that they weren't seriously injured. The authorities might turn a blind eye to the occasional bout of fighting in the Barracks, but they’d be far less inclined to smile on actual bodily harm, even if the assholes had deserved it.
“Aw,” Koenraad said, when the final Guardsman had hit the ground. “You could have saved one for me.”
“Get bent,” Blake said, kicking his fallen opponent. The moaning Guardsmen didn't look happy at all. “You’d only waste the opportunity.”
“Look out,” the waitress snapped, her voice somehow echoing over the din. “The Patrol!”
The Marines exchanged glances. No words were needed. They took off as a group and raced down the corridor, heading back to their particular section of the barracks. The Shore Patrol wouldn't hesitate to arrest anyone caught brawling and none of them could afford to spend a night in the stockade. The Sergeants would take a dim view of any of them who missed the briefing.
“Stop,” a voice bellowed, as the Patrol gave chase. “You...stop!”
Jasmine braced herself as she ran around a corner, half-expecting to feel a stun burst bursting over her at any second. She almost missed seeing the man wearing Marine uniform, just before her mind caught up and realised that they’d almost run down a Captain. Not just any Captain; their Captain.
“Sir,” she said, coming to attention. The others followed her lead. “Marine Rifleman...”
“You,” the Patrolman snapped. Four Patrolmen, each one carrying a stunner, stumbled to a halt as they reached the Marines. “You’re under arrest...”
Captain Stalker’s calm voice somehow overrode his. “Is there a problem...ah, Constable?”
“I’ll say there is,” the Patrolman said. He was too excited to think clearly, or he would have thought before he opened his mouth. Challenging a Marine Captain in front of his men was not conductive to long life and health. “These criminals assaulted twelve members of the Civil Guard!”
“They did?” Captain Stalker said, lifting a single eyebrow. He didn't sound as if he realised the gravity of the situation. Instead, he sounded as if he were bored. “These Marines in front of you?”
“Yes,” the Patrolman snapped. “They’re going to spend the night in the stockade and formal charges will be filed against them tomorrow!”
Captain Stalker didn't sound as if he had paid attention. “And what do they have to say for themselves?”
“They started it,” Blake said, quickly. “They assaulted a waitress!”
“And they’re all still alive,” Jasmine added. The Captain’s gaze switched to her and she felt her cheeks burn. “They picked a fight and they lost.”
“Doubtless,” Captain Stalker murmured. “These...miscreants have an important briefing to attend. Their punishment will be handled by the Marines, Constable.” His voice was impeccably polite. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention.”
“But...they’re criminals,” the Patrolman protested. “I have to take them in and book them.”
“The Sergeant will see to their punishment,” Captain Stalker said, with a languid wave towards the Patrolman. The Patrolman looked behind him and jumped when he realised that Master Sergeant Gary Young had somehow appeared behind him. Jasmine wasn't so surprised – the Sergeant was the sneakiest man in the Corps – yet even she was impressed. “You do not have to concern yourself any further.”
“I have to take them in,” the Patrolman insisted. He broke off as he finally realised that he and his men were outnumbered, even if they were carrying stunners. They were trained for riot control, criminal investigation and littl
e else. The Marines could have overpowered them with ease. “Will you see to their punishment?”
The Empire’s Corps: Book 01 - The Empire's Corps Page 3