The Empire’s Corps: Book 01 - The Empire's Corps

by Christopher Nuttall

  Brent winced inwardly, trying to keep his face blank. The Major was right, even though he was associating himself with the victory. The Crackers fought because they had a political ideology and a political goal in mind. The bandits looted, raped and burned because they could…and because it was easier than actually having to work for a living. They wouldn’t want to continue their activities if they were being hunted relentlessly, even into the heart of the badlands themselves.

  “There is also another issue here,” Captain Stalker said. “A population will support a war as long as it seems that there is a chance of victory. The problem here is that your population doesn’t believe in victory. Executing the bandits will send a very clear signal that you, at least, believe that victory is possible. It will encourage people to sign up for the new army.”

  He smiled thinly, meeting Brent’s gaze. “As for the fact that the captured bandits are still in debt…you should just forget it,” he added. “Those debts are never going to be paid off.”

  Brent scowled at him. It wasn't Brent who cared about their debts, but the men and women who had purchased their debts off the ADC before it collapsed into a shell of its former self. Markus and Carola Wilhelm, among others, would certainly push the issue in the next Council meeting, even though Captain Stalker was right and they would never see any return on those investments. But then, Captain Stalker couldn’t be removed from office…legally, Brent couldn’t be removed either, but the Council could make governing the planet impossible. Again, he cursed his predecessor under his breath. The man had been a moron. Avalon was nowhere near ready for an independent Council.

  “I take your point,” he said, finally. He had a nasty suspicion that if he refused his permission, the Marines were just going to go ahead and hang the captives anyway. Abigail had looked up the relevant section of the Imperial Code of Military Justice and had concluded that the Marines owned the prisoners, body and soul, until they chose to hand them over to local authority. “What do you intend to do with them?”

  “Two days from now, it is market day in Camelot,” Captain Stalker said. “I intend to hang them publicly.”

  “Are you out of your…there’ll be a riot,” Linda protested in disbelief. “The bandits have friends within the city!”

  “All the more reason to hold the executions there,” Captain Stalker said. He sounded amused by her protests. “Their friends should learn the price of supporting the bandits.”

  Brent stood up and paced over to the window, staring down over his capital city. It wasn't much, but it was his. There would be no other posting for him once he left Avalon, no other chance to make his mark in the history books. He had long since realised that even now, he wouldn’t have that chance. Avalon had a habit of taking dreams and sucking them out, leaving nothing behind, but the tired bitter shell of a man. Officially, there were no homeless on Avalon. There was enough work for all. Unofficially…things were different.

  He looked towards the slums and shuddered. The reports were terrifyingly clear. Every year, a greater percentage of Avalon’s population found themselves homeless, so deep in dept that it was hopeless to even dream of escape. The conditions in the slums were appallingly bad. Only the foodstuffs provided by the handful of Church missions kept the population alive. It was a nightmare, one that could never end as long as Avalon remained unchanged. He had once hoped to change it, but now…all he could do was wait and see out his term. The next Imperial Governor might have more authority or backbone.

  Oddly, the thought spurred him on. “See to it,” he ordered, without turning around. A fishing boat was coming into the harbour and he watched, feeling a moment of envy for the sailors who had so little else to worry about. They could set their sails of silver and sail over the horizon, vanishing to one of the unexplored continents or illegal settlements on the Golden Isles. They weren't bound to a city permanently on the verge of collapse. “I want them hung and I want you to make it very clear why they were hung.”

  He ignored Major Grosskopf’s surprised look, or Captain Stalker’s half-smile. “If it is to be done, then it might as well be done properly,” he added. Perhaps showing the mailed fist inside the velvet glove would convince some of the Council to moderate their knee-jerk opposition to everything he did. “It may even serve a useful purpose.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Captain Stalker said. If he was pleased at his victory, he showed no sign of it. But then, he barely had to care. “They will be hung on market day.”

  Brent barely heard him. He was too busy watching the sailing boat as it docked at the harbour, unloading a silvery horde of fish. Haddock, Cod and other Earth-native fish competed uneasily with Avalon’s own native creatures. Some of them had to be carefully weeded out, for they were deadly poisonous. Others were a delicacy if prepared properly. His own cook was a past mistress at preparing proper meals.

  “Thank you,” he said, finally. “And well done. Please congratulate your men for me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  One of the commonest signs of social decline lies in the separation of the elites from the masses. Where the elites – the leadership – share the concerns of their people, government proceeds smoothly. Where the elites are physically and socially separated from their people, they start designing policies that are actively harmful to the masses. This is nowhere clearer than it is in the issue of criminal justice.

  - Professor Leo Caesius, The Waning Years of Empire (banned).

  Market Day on Avalon had been intended as a special holiday, or so Michael Volpe had been told. The ADC had planned the day so that farmers on the outskirts of Camelot could bring in their produce and sell it directly to the grateful citizens of the city, while taking time to enjoy the city and spend time among its distractions. In reality, it hadn’t taken long before the vested interests took over the holiday and started taxing the farmers who tried to break the official monopoly on food transport, leaving Market Day as little more than just another day. Michael valued it only because it served as a chance to make some money on the sly.

  He walked from stall to stall, offering his help to the dealer in exchange for petty cash. Some of them would need a strong man to help them set out their boxes; others stared at him suspiciously, as if they suspected he intended to steal their produce and vanish into the side streets before anyone could catch him. It was a depressingly familiar scene, yet what choice did he have? There was no other employment for someone like him.

  At seventeen years old, Michael had come to the conclusion that his life was already over. The son of a indent mother and a colonist farmer, he had inherited some of his father’s debt, even though his mother had literally owned nothing, but the clothes on her back. His father might have abandoned the family just after Michael had been born, yet the debt sharks never forgot. The moment he signed on to work at any official job, they’d start tapping over three-quarters of his salary to pay the interest on the debt. Michael was far from stupid and had painstakingly worked his way through the math. If he got a good job, if he worked for over fifty years, he might just pay off the interest alone…by which point more would have piled up. It was a perfect trap. He couldn’t work without losing most of his salary; he couldn’t even refuse to pay. There was no escape.

  He saw a young-looking farmwife with old eyes and paused long enough to help her unload her nag, before accepting a handful of coins in payment. It was dangerous to carry too much – the criminal gangs who also infested the marketplace might notice and take it off him before he could get back home – but a few coins probably wouldn’t attract their interest. The coins were the only untraceable funds on Avalon and there were laws against holding too many of them, even though most people simply ignored them. Paying money into the Bank of Avalon was a sure-fire way to lose most of it to pay a debt.

  “Thank you,” he said, accepting an apple she tried to press on him as part-payment. Winking at her, he strode off, looking for others to help. He passed a set of farming tools that had been
handmade by one of the local craftsman and cast an eye over some of the sharper blades, before the craftsman reached for an obvious shotgun under the table. Michael shrugged at him and walked onwards, feeling a tingle running down the back of his shoulder blades as the old man’s glare followed him.

  An hour passed slowly, but he was in no hurry. His mother would be working herself – in order to survive, she sold herself to men – and his younger half-brother would be out with his gang. It was yet another thing to worry about. The street toughs hadn’t forced Michael to join them, as they had some of their other members, but one day he knew they’d call for him. He’d seen the results of gang violence and wanted to stay away from it, yet what other choice did he have? The Civil Guard would laugh at him if they heard his complaint. No one in their right mind would trust them to solve a problem.

  As if his thought had called them forth, a group of men dressed in combat uniforms appeared at one end of the market, marching upwards towards the middle of the square. The wooden stage had been intended for live performances of plays, but now…now it was empty. Michael realised, with a shock, that someone had renovated it, adding a wooden construction he didn’t recognise. The soldiers weren't Civil Guardsmen, he saw, as they passed him, but something else. They held themselves with an easy discipline that shouted out that they ruled…and no one else could even challenge them. Their assurance was so powerful that Michael found himself backing away before his mind had even caught up with the thought. A thought seemed to echo through the crowd…

  Marines…

  Michael felt a sudden bitter surge of envy. The young men and women had everything he ever wanted and more, free of debt and the legacy of a father who had never cared for his son. They walked with their heads held high, as if they had nothing to worry about, without any trace of fear in their stance. He wanted to be them and knew that it would never happen. Avalon’s Imperial Navy recruiting station was moribund and had been so for years. Joining the Civil Guard would have been worthless.

  And then he saw the prisoners.

  ***

  Nelson Oshiro struggled against the shackles binding his hands and feet, even though he knew that it was useless. The chains were overkill, intended to make it very clear to both the prisoners and the watchers that they were prisoners and leave no one in any doubt as to what was going to happen to them. He tried to hold his head up high and face the sneers from the watching crowd with determination, but somehow he couldn’t maintain the pose. The crowd was hissing them as the truth sunk in. Here, in front of them, were some of the dreaded bandits who had been driving their food prices upwards. They were at the crowd’s mercy.

  He pulled at the chains on his hands, but he couldn’t break them free, even with the crowd started throwing rotten food at them. He wanted to memorise names and faces, yet he knew it was futile. The Marines had interrogated him, drugged him and then interrogated him again, milking him dry of everything he knew about the Knives. They’d been dumped back in the same holding pen and had tried to come up with a shared story, but it hadn’t worked. The drugs had broken all resistance. A handful of prisoners bore marks from when they’d tried to lie and their interrogators had dealt with it brutally. They had betrayed the remainder of the gang. If the Marines let them go, which didn’t seem likely, they would be hunted down and killed by their former comrades for betrayal.

  A young girl leaned forward, shouted a curse that was lost in the roar of the crowd, and threw a rotten egg right into his face. Nelson tried to twist, to evade, but it was impossible. The egg struck his chin and shattered, sending a horrifying smell wafting up towards his nostrils. He wanted to vomit, but somehow held it in. He had the nasty feeling that showing any kind of weakness would only make it worse.

  The Marines pushed them up a ramp towards a stage and lined them up in front of the crowd. The hail of rotten food had faded away as a new air of anticipation settled over the crowd, with faces exchanging knowing looks that somehow made Nelson feel sick. At first, he didn’t understand what was happening, and then a Marine hooked a noose over his neck, drawing it tight. It was suddenly very hard to breath. He wanted to open his mouth to protest, but it was far too late.

  ***

  Michael watched as the Marines slowly lined up the prisoners in front of the crowd, hanging nooses around their necks. The former bandits didn’t look terrifying any more, not after the crowd had shown their fondness for their tormentors by covering them in rotten food. They looked tired and desperate, staring around as if they expected someone to come free them at the last minute. The crowd was in an ugly mode. Michael sensed, somehow, that if the Marines had freed the prisoners and dumped them into the crowd, the prisoners would have been brutally killed by the civilians. No one had any mercy for bandits.

  One of the Marines stepped forward, his voice echoing out over the crowd, somehow enforcing silence. “These men were captured in the act of pillaging their local townships, burning crops and raping innocent victims,” he said. Michael shivered. Rape was one of the local gang’s favourite pastimes. One day, it might be his half-sister lying on the ground as the assholes took turns. “They have been found guilty under Imperial Law and have been sentenced to death.”

  The ugly note of the crowd seemed to grow louder. The prisoners, suddenly realising what was going to happen to them if they hadn’t realised before, started to protest, pleading for help and mercy. No one was inclined to give it to them. The crowd had no time for a loser. Michael had seen street thieves given rough justice at the hands of the crowd before and it made no difference that the new victims were from outside the city. They deserved to die.

  “The sentence will be carried out,” the Marine said, somehow speaking over the crowd. “May God have mercy on their souls.”

  ***

  Nelson wanted to panic, but somehow he held his peace, thinking desperately. If he could think of something important, something the Marines needed to know, perhaps they would spare his life…but there was nothing. The interrogators had pulled everything he knew out of him and drained him dry. There was nothing left to offer.

  The Marines had attached the ropes to a single machine at the rear of the stage. It hummed to life, slowly pulling in the rope…and lifting the prisoners above the ground, slowly choking the life out of them. Nelson drew in a breath as the rope came tight, trying to hold on as long as possible. His legs started to stretch as the rope pulled him upwards; somehow, despite himself, he felt the life slipping out of his body…

  Faces started to appear in front of him. His mother and father, the ones who had birthed him and abandoned him when he was ten years old, shaking their heads sadly as they walked away. Jenny, the first girl he had admired from afar, a tall brunette who had somehow maintained her smile in the Undercity…until the day he’d grabbed her suddenly and taken her brutally, convinced that that was what she wanted. She’d screamed and screamed, but he’d thought he'd known better, until he found out that she’d killed herself afterwards. He’d dismissed her from his thoughts until her face reappeared in front of him, mocking him, joined by his other victims. His vision was blurring as the faces merged together into one leering shape; a voice was whispering, right at the edge of his mind…

  The rope jerked suddenly, there was a snap, and then nothing. Nothing at all.

  ***

  Michael watched as the bandits died one by one, their bodies jerking as their necks snapped. Some of them had clearly been trying to struggle, others seemed to have accepted their fate, but it hadn’t mattered in the end. They were all dead, hanging from the ropes like demented puppets. Silence fell over the crowd as it sank in, and then there was a roar of approval. Michael felt his own voice echoing as he joined in the roar. The rough justice suited the crowd. How could it not have suited them?

  The Marines walked from rope to rope, cutting the dead bodies down and letting them fall onto the stage. They looked as if they had died in agony. A Marine pushed up a trolley and the bodies were unceremoniously
dumped onto it, left to wait for disposal. They’d probably be taken to the mass grave outside town and buried there, unless they were fed to the creatures in the zoo instead. It was just possible.

  “We fought the bandits and won,” the lead Marine said. His voice somehow silenced the crowd again. “We proved that they can be beaten. Now we have an offer for everyone. Your planet needs you; we need new recruits for the army we intend to build to exterminate the bandits and rebels alike. If you are interested in joining up with us, please go to the recruiting booth we have opened in the Imperial Office.”