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

by Christopher Nuttall

  “I'm not disputing that,” Kitty said, impatiently. “The problem is that you’re smashing up the local power structure. The Wilhelm Family and their allies won’t let you get away with it without a fight. Sure, legally you’re in the right, but they can keep hammering away at you until you break.”

  Edward shrugged. The Governor had been right when he said that Edward was the senior officer in the system. The closest officer who could overrule him was at the sector capital, several weeks away even under Phase Drive. It would take months before any countermanding order arrived, if one was issued. Carola Wilhelm might be a big fish on Avalon, but her concerns would hardly register elsewhere. Why would they care about her?

  “And then she might try something really stupid,” Kitty continued. “What happens if she starts trying to have you assassinated?”

  “Lieutenant Faulkner assumes command and Carola Wilhelm ends up dead,” Edward said. He knew enough not to take the threat lightly – mindless bravado wasn't a Marine tradition, although legend suggested otherwise – but it barely registered compared to the other problems he faced. The equipment they’d brought from Earth had to be protected at all costs, yet once the starships pulled out – and he’d delayed them too long already – it would be much harder to safeguard Castle Rock. “It really isn't a concern at the moment.”

  He smiled up at her. “Keep an eye on them for me,” he added. “Can you get any bugs into her mansion?”

  “I’ve tried,” Kitty admitted, “but she has some really sophisticated counter-surveillance systems. I think she must have purchased them before she came to Avalon and kept them to herself. I can't get a bug inside for long and none of the ones I have deployed have reported anything useful before they were removed. I don’t know if she knows we’re the ones watching her.”

  “Her friends are probably watching her as well,” Edward said. Marine counter-surveillance teams swept Castle Rock’s facilities every day, looking for any surprises. “A nicer crowd of smiling backstabbers you couldn't hope to meet.”

  “Yes sir,” Kitty said, with a shrug. “I’ll do my best, but I don’t think she’s going to rest on her laurels and wait for you to take her power away from her.”

  ***

  Professor Leo Caesius finally came home in the early hours of the morning, his face tired and wan. Jasmine, who had been waiting patiently – reading a copy of his famously banned book to pass the time – stood up to open the door and beckoned him inside. His eyes widened when they saw her – he hadn’t known that she was going to be inside – and she saw the fear in his eyes. He wasn't scared of her, but of what she might tell him. His wife or daughters might have been hurt. Jasmine motioned him to the sofa and, in crisp brief words, explained exactly what had happened, leaving out nothing.

  She had considered simply telling him about the spanking and nothing else, knowing that she would have hated for her father to know everything she’d done when she was that age, but the Professor had to know the full story. Mandy could have gotten herself killed – or worse – while her father did...what? She still didn't know what the Professor did now that he lived in Camelot.

  “I see,” he said, finally. His voice was calm, but Jasmine’s sensitive ears could hear a quiver. He loved his daughter, even if she could be a pain at times. It reminded her of when she’d told her father that she was leaving for Boot Camp and how he’d tried to be brave for her. He’d been more nervous than Jasmine had been! “I understand...”

  “If you want to report me to the Captain, you can,” Jasmine said, flatly. She glanced down at her timepiece, considering. She still had several hours before she had to report back to the spaceport or be declared AWOL. “He will probably not take it calmly.”

  “No, no, it’s all right,” the Professor said, stumbling over his own words. Jasmine realised that he had been in quiet despair over his daughter for a long time. But then, Mandy was the product of her environment, just as the Professor himself had been before he’d broken out and realised the truth. “I...thank you, I think. Will you stay for breakfast?”

  Jasmine would have preferred to leave, but she chose to stay as the Professor puttered around his kitchen, boiling water and brewing tea. He could easily have hired servants, yet instead he chose to do it on his own, without help. Jasmine wondered just what he did for funds; his private bank account back on Earth, which would have gone a long way on Avalon, had been frozen by the government. She took the tea gratefully and then stopped. Mandy was standing in the door. She had changed into a pair of shorts and a shirt, yet she looked pale and wan. One hand kept rubbing her behind.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and sounded – for once – as if she meant it. “I didn't mean to...I’m sorry.”

  “Live and learn,” Jasmine said, and felt a surprising burst of sympathy for the girl. “It could have been worse.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Basic Training – be it for the Marines or the Imperial Army – is designed to accomplish just one thing. It is designed to break down a new recruit and build them up again into the image of a proper soldier. Once broken down, recruits learn discipline and weapons skills along with the ethos of their new service.

  -Major-General Thomas Kratman (Ret), A Civilian’s Guide to the Terran Marine Corps.

  The bus lurched to a halt outside the spaceport and opened its doors. Michael Volpe felt a tingle of excitement running through him as the new recruits poured out, gaping around at the spaceport – which they had never seen in their lives – and the handful of transport aircraft parked on the tarmac. It wasn't much, not compared to the pictures he’d seen of Grand Central Spaceport back in the early days of spaceflight, but it was hellishly impressive to his eyes. Other buses arrived and disgorged their own passengers, all young men. The young women seemed to have gone elsewhere. A wave of chatter swept over the crowd as they stared around, suddenly unaware of what to do next.

  “ATTENTION,” a voice bellowed, loudly enough to be heard even over the chattering. “You will see lines painted on the ground. Line up facing me on those lines!”

  Michael ran forward and found a place on the front row, squashed between two other recruits. The shouter – a short man wearing a blue uniform studded with badges and a Rifleman’s Tab on his collar – was pacing backwards and forwards, tapping his baton against his thigh in irritation. The recruits finally managed to line up and stared nervously at their new master. The man seemed to have muscles on his muscles. Michael had seen cartoon superhuman characters with magic powers who were less intimidating than the man facing them.

  “I am Drill Sergeant Jared Barr,” the man thundered. His voice was no quieter, even with the recruits too terrified even to breathe. “For my sins, I am the official Drill Sergeant for you recruits. My job is to whip you into shape and make soldiers of you all. I’m not here to be your friend. I am here to turn you into soldiers. You are going to hate every last minute of the next few months. Most of you will quit. That is good! It is my job to sort out the quitters and get rid of them before we have to trust you on the front lines. You think that you understand me. You don’t. You won’t until you go through training.

  “You will address me as ‘Sergeant.’ You will not call me ‘sir!’ I actually work for a living.”

  Michael winced as the Drill Sergeant’s gaze seemed to stab into him before he passed on to the next recruit. “You are the sorriest bunch of recruits I have yet seen on this planet,” he said. “You are in this course for one purpose; you are here to become soldiers, the first real soldiers your planet has yet seen. In twelve weeks, we will break you down and build you up again into soldiers. Don’t bother crying to your mommy or whining about your pappy; they’re not here and they can’t help you. You volunteered for this.”

  His eyes swept across their ranks. “You are under military discipline now,” he thundered. “You can be punished under the Codes of Military Justice and if necessary sentenced to death by field court-martial. There is no point in whining about
lawyers and due process. You’re in the army now. In order that you know what you should not do, we will list the offences against military order every day. You will learn them off by heart. You will not commit them. Understand?

  A ragged chorus rose from the recruits. “Yes, sir,” they stammered.

  “You will not call me ‘sir’,” Barr thundered. “All of you; drop and give me twenty push-ups, now!”

  Michael stared at him and then dropped to the ground, beginning his push-ups. Barr marched from recruit to recruit, barking out advice and a few orders. “Keep your back straight,” he barked at Michael, when he passed him. “Concentrate on lifting yourself above the ground!”

  The recruits slowly finished their exercise and staggered back into line. A few looked shocked, as if they had expected an easier induction into the service. Others were breathing heavily, badly out of shape. They’d spent their last night as free men drinking and carousing and were paying for it now. Michael didn't feel any better. His heart was pounding and his breath was coming in fits and starts.

  “By the time you finish this course, you will be doing hundreds of push-ups and thinking nothing of it,” Barr informed them. It sounded like a particularly sadistic joke. His gaze flickered along the line of recruits. “Keep your shoulders straight. You’re not with your mother now.”

  Michael winced inwardly as Barr’s gaze swept over him again. “Now...offences against military order, listed as follows; insubordination, use of drugs, tobacco and alcohol, possession and/or consumption of food outside designated eating periods, possession of any contraband, failure to perform duties as assigned to you by lawful authority, being absent without leave and, last, but not least, fraternisation. To repeat; any of those offences will get you a punishment that may range from heavy exercise to being summarily discharged from the army. You will have those offences read to you every day, along with the definition of each offence. You will have no excuse for committing any of them!”

  He paused long enough to measure their reaction. “Many of you will have brought drugs, or alcohol, or even food into the spaceport,” he said, coldly. “When you are taken to be assigned your uniform and regulation-issue underclothes, get rid of them. This is your one warning. You may think that the civilian police wouldn’t charge you with a crime if you are in possession of illegal drugs, but this is the army. If I catch any of you possessing or using drugs during training, that person will wish that he had never been born!”

  Michael felt his head spin as Barr kept thundering at his cowed audience. “Insubordination; wilfully disobeying, insulting, or striking a senior officer. Absent without leave; leaving the base or your unit without permission, or failing to report back to your unit at the end of a leave period without permission. Fraternisation; sexual relationships with any of your fellow recruits, or senior officers, or anyone within your military unit. The remainder should require no explaining. If they do, you’re in the wrong line of work.”

  His gaze swept across them again. “That building there holds the medical personnel and the outfitters,” he said. “Form a line and march into the building, two by two!”

  Michael, his ears still ringing, followed the other recruits into the building. A dark-skinned man wearing a medical uniform checked his ID and then ordered him into a smaller room, where a male nurse told him to strip before running through a brief, but very through medical examination. The nurse took blood samples and inspected every one of his orifices, even though Michael couldn't imagine what half of the tests were actually for. The brief sight and hearing test, at least, made sense. The nurse kept muttering under his breath, before finally clearing Michael for duty.

  “Get rid of any drugs and shit you have in the next room,” he warned. Michael blinked at him. “Get moving; you’re in the army now!”

  Michael moved, heading out of the door into the next compartment. Seven bins stood there, inviting him to empty his pockets of anything illegal, although he hadn't brought anything with him. He glanced inside, out of curiosity, and recoiled when he realised how many recruits had brought something illegal with them to the spaceport. He hoped that they all had the sense to discard everything, no matter how much they wanted to keep it. Somehow, he doubted that Barr would be kind when he caught anyone stupid enough to keep their stash with them.

  “Take a seat,” another man ordered. Michael sat down, puzzled. “Hold still...”

  The barber rapidly cut his head with an electric buzzer. Michael had no time to protest before it was finished, allowing him to stand up and see his face in the mirror. His hair had been cut back sharply, leaving nothing but a tiny amount of stubble. It would take weeks to grow his locks back, although he suspected that he’d be expected to keep it cut down to the bone. He stared. Was that tough-looking stranger really him?

  “Yes, that’s you,” the barber said, impatiently. “Get along to the next room.”

  The next room contained a pair of harassed-looking clerks and a pile of clothing. “Strip,” one ordered, and Michael hastened to obey. The clerk swooped around him with a measuring tape, checking out every last part of his body, before picking up a pile of clothing and tossing it at him. “Put them on and then report back to be checked.”

  Michael dressed slowly. The army-issue clothing felt odd compared to the clothes he’d worn as a civilian, even though they were clearly new and not handed down from older boys. Other recruits came in to dress and he did his best to copy them, pulling the tunic over his head. Somehow, with the uniform properly fixed, he felt taller. The clerk gave him a brief once-over, placed his old clothes in a storage box for when he left the spaceport, and shoved him back out into the sunlight. A line of recruits was already gathering in front of the Drill Sergeant, who was eying them with a gimlet eye. Michael had the uncomfortable feeling that nothing they did would be good enough for the man. There would always be room for improvement.

  “You will notice footprints on the ground in front of you,” Barr barked, once the first row had filled up. Place your feet on them and stand to attention. You will learn how to do that as naturally as breathing.”

  Michael followed his orders. Perhaps it was the uniform, but he didn't feel any sense of the absurd as he posed with the others. Some people had spent the last two days mocking military pomp and circumstance, but he was starting to realise that it all had a place. Barr added others to the line as they came out of their own medical examination and dressing, forcing them to pose. He showed more patience than Michael would have expected, nothing like the teacher he’d been forced to pay attention to at school. The man had been unable to teach Michael and his fellows anything they actually wanted – or needed – to know. It had taken years for him to realise that the Empire’s mandated curriculum hadn't been designed to create thinking youngsters, but more peons for the elite.

  “Acceptable,” Barr said finally. “Now” – he pointed a hand towards one of the transport aircraft – “you will march into the aircraft for transport to Castle Rock. March; not run.”

  Michael followed his new comrades towards the aircraft. He’d never flown before and, despite the surroundings, he was quite looking forward to it. The aircraft, he discovered to his disappointment, only had a handful of windows, but he was lucky enough to sit next to one. He stared out as the aircraft accelerated down the runway and climbed into the sky. It all felt worthwhile, somehow.

  ***

  Edward stood on the prefabricated control tower and watched as the four transport aircraft floated down out of the sky to land on the runway. Hiring labour from Camelot was a risk, yet there had been no choice; the Marines and their auxiliaries couldn't do everything they needed to do in time to open the base. Once he’d started paying the labourers in cash, they’d worked with enthusiasm; indeed, he rather suspected that some of them would try to join the Marines. It would offer them a better life than working for fixed wages back in Camelot.

  Although that might change, he thought, grimly. The vast mass of civilians on Camel
ot had had no future and no hope of a better life, until the Marines had come along and started to show them that things could be better. Kitty was right; the political elite would try to slam the lid back down, but he suspected that would be impossible. The civilians in Camelot might be largely unarmed – although the city did have plenty of illegal weapons – yet the same couldn't be said for those who lived outside the city. An alliance between the Crackers and a similar group inside the cities would be disastrous. And the Marines had started the ball rolling.