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

by Christopher Nuttall

  Edward smiled at her obvious enthusiasm. “Is it one that we can use against the Council?”

  “Oh yes, and more,” Kitty said. She pulled a small flat terminal out of her bag and placed it on the metal table. “We’ve been running an investigation into the various brothels and suchlike in the city after we realised that many of the kidnapped women and girls from near the badlands had been transported to Camelot and put to work as whores. Most of them were teenagers or in their early twenties, but a handful of them were younger – much younger. It turned out that most of the preteen children were sent to a single place hidden within the warehouse district, one known only to a handful of people.”

  Edward felt sick. He saw nothing wrong in visiting a prostitute, provided that she’d entered the game willingly, but including children was the greatest perversion he could imagine. The Empire shared his feelings to the degree that anything to do with child abuse and molestation automatically became the concern of Imperial Intelligence, rather than any local police force or Civil Guard. The punishments for those who abused children were harsh; if they were lucky, they were dumped on a hellish prison planet and abandoned. If they were unlucky...well, they might have a little accident while in custody. Even their fellow criminals loathed paedophiles.

  “We wanted to find out who used the place, so we slipped bugs into the buildings and started to build up a picture of who visited,” Kitty continued, blithely unaware of Edward’s growing rage. She’d known of a building that catered to paedophilias and hadn't done anything about it? The kids should have been rescued and their pimps should have been taken into custody, perhaps with excessive levels of violence. Every Marine in the Company would have volunteered to carry it out. “A few hours ago, we struck gold.”

  She tapped the terminal and an image appeared in front of Edward’s eyes. There was a man, with a very familiar face, and a young girl...Edward’s gorge rose and he pushed the terminal away, unwilling to face what he was doing to her. The girl was clearly not a teenager. If she was over ten, Edward would have been astonished.

  “The bastard,” he hissed. His knuckles itched with the desire to find the man and beat him into a bloody pulp. It would have been so easy. The sight of his fat bloated body heaving away...he concentrated, remembering the disciplines, and focused on Kitty’s face. The urge to hurt her was almost overwhelming, for she’d watched and done nothing as a little girl was raped. “We’ve got him.”

  “He’s one of the ones who make up Mrs Wilhelm’s little cabal,” Kitty agreed, calmly. She was unaware of his thoughts, luckily for her own control. “We have clear proof here of an act that doesn’t go under the Governor’s purview at all. We can pick him up, sweat him and get him to testify against his fellows.”

  Edward scowled. “Are you sure he will talk?”

  Kitty lifted a single elegant eyebrow. “You do know what the punishment is for what he’s doing in that image?”

  “You want to bargain with him,” Edward said, in disgust. “You know just what public opinion will do to us if we let him live, once this gets out.”

  “I have no intention of allowing him to go free,” Kitty said, tartly. “I intend to get him to testify against the others, and then we can deal with him. He won’t last long on an indenture gang anyway.”

  “How true,” Edward said. “Gwen?”

  “Yes, sir,” Gwen said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Take two Marines and pick this fat bloated bastard up,” Edward ordered. “Use all the force you need and then some.” He looked up at Kitty. “Once we have him in custody, I want this fucking place shut down, the kids taken somewhere safe and a team to go through the building and identify every sad fucker who has...used it ever since it was opened. Do you understand me?”

  Kitty hesitated. “Sir, with all due respect, if we shut it down now the Council may realise what we’ve stumbled upon...”

  “Fuck that,” Edward snapped. Profanity was unlike him, but he was angry. “We’re here to protect the citizens of the Empire.” He tapped the terminal with one angry hand. “Does that look like we’re doing that girl any good?”

  “No, sir,” Gwen said. She shared his anger. It occurred to Edward that she might not be the best person to send on the mission, but there was no one else at hand. “We’ll bring him in alive and cooperative.”

  “Good,” Edward said. He looked down at the map for a long moment, trying to scrub the image from his mind. It refused to fade. His memory had been excellent even before he’d gone through the weirder training exercises on the Slaughterhouse and he was cursed with the gift of instant recall. “Kitty...good work, but remember...we’re here to protect people.”

  “Yes,” Kitty said. “And we can best do that by shutting down the Council.”

  Edward didn't bother to argue.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  If insurgency is a war of perceptions rather than brute force, it must be accepted that each side will misjudge the other’s strengths and weaknesses. They will see their own weaknesses and the enemy’s strengths, rather than the enemy’s weaknesses and their own strength. Deception and deceit play a vital role in such warfare; the appearance of being strong is often actually being strong, assuming that the enemy is unable or unwilling to call the bluff.

  -Major-General Thomas Kratman (Ret), A Marine’s Guide to Insurgency.

  “Your forces have been wiped out,” Gaby said, as she breezed into the prison cell. “You’re the last Marine on the planet.”

  “Bullshit,” Blake Coleman said. He’d been fed a combination of drugs that should have helped keep him docile, but his implants seemed to be counteracting them, somehow. Doctor White hadn't been able to explain how they were working, to the point where he’d wondered if Coleman had somehow been enhanced to be resistant to drugs. Gaby would have believed him if it hadn't been for how he’d been captured in the first place. “I know you’re lying.”

  Gaby dropped the pretence as Blake’s dark eyes turned to fix on her, mask and all. “So I am,” she said, with mock surprise. “Whatever gave me away?”

  Blake smiled. “You’re not a very good liar,” he said, with calm amusement. Gaby felt her face flushing and couldn't keep the scowl under control. “Your voice betrayed a certain lack of truthfulness. You simply lack the ability to serve up a shit sandwich while calling it roast beef and horseradish sauce.”

  Gaby chuckled. “Your people are fighting well,” she admitted, as she took a seat. “How does that make you feel?”

  “Pride in my friends and comrades,” Blake said, dryly. “Regret and shame that I am not with them. Or did you expect me to somehow escape from this cell and return to the land of the living?”

  “I have read hundreds of stories about the Terran Marine Corps from the Imperial Library,” Gaby said, seriously. If half of the stories were true, the Crackers were in serious trouble. “I would not have been too surprised to discover that you had chewed your way through the iron chains and vanished through the walls.”

  “I think that you have done too good a job on these chains,” Blake said. “I couldn’t get out of here if my name was Adam One.”

  Gaby snorted. Adam One was the Empire’s favourite comic book character – or so all of his press releases said. By day, he was a loyal and conscientious bureaucrat in the Department of Colonial Representation; by night, he was the Silver Swordsman, hunting down the enemies of the Empire while cracking one-liners that never failed to get giggles from impressionable children. The comics had even reached Avalon, but by then Gaby had been seventeen and able to recognise them for the cheap propaganda they were. Even so, Adam One had had muscles on his muscles, just the sort of character to appeal to teenage boys and girls.

  “I’d prefer not to take chances,” she said, inspecting his bonds. “Is there anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable?”

  Blake pretended to consider it. “Well, I’d like my hands unbound, some food that doesn't go into me through an IV line, a lift to t
he surface and a map pointing the way back to Camelot,” he said, dryly. “This hotel has really poor service, you know. I think I’m going to lodge a complaint.”

  Gaby smiled. “I see that Adam One rubbed off on you too,” she said. “I’d like to comply, but...you’re our prisoner. Sorry.

  “Yeah,” Blake said. He looked up at her and she had the sudden, disconcerting feeling that he could see right through her mask. “I take it that you’re getting worried, right? The grand attack plan not going according to plan?”

  “Early days yet,” Gaby said. She refused to allow him to get to her. She was merely interrogating him, or so she told herself. Everything he said would grant her insights into how his mind worked. “Your people are tough. I’ll give them that.”

  “The toughest you’ll ever face,” Blake assured her. She had the nasty feeling that he was right. “You do realise that you’re just digging your own graves?”

  Gaby rounded on him. “Do you think that we have a choice?” She demanded. “Our choice seems to be between trying to take our freedom and bowing before the Council, one that has exploited us ever since the ADC sold off our contracts to raise some quick cash. Why the hell should we not fight?”

  “Things are changing out there,” Blake said, lifting his head slightly to indicate the sky. “There’s a very distant possibility that Avalon might simply be abandoned. If that happens, the Captain will have far broader latitude to come to an agreement with you...but not if you kill his men. He won’t be able to let that past.”

  Gaby gathered herself. “There’s an old story my father told me,” she said, flatly. “Once upon a time in a mythical land named China...”

  “It wasn't a myth,” Blake said, flatly. “They were on the losing side in the Third World War and came late to the party when the Phase Drive was discovered, but they settled a couple of dozen worlds before the Federation collapsed and was replaced by the Empire. Some of their worlds are pretty nice, if sometimes a little weird; a handful of them are just hellish. They’re pretty much par for the course, really.”

  Gaby frowned. “There was once a leader who decided that all crime had to be punished with death,” she continued, refusing to allow him to distract her. “Everything from stealing a chicken to rape and murder earned the death penalty. Death spread rapidly, for who can be perfect all the time? One day, a group of labourers were walking to work when suddenly the leader turns to his men and asks them what is the punishment for being late? Death, they reply. And what is the punishment for rebellion? Death, they say again.”

  She snorted. “And what does he tell them?” She asked. “They’re already late!”

  “I know the story,” Blake said. “And so they decide to go off and start a rebellion.”

  “That’s the position we’re in,” Gaby said. “Quick death at the hands of your fellows or slow death at the hands of the Council. Why should we not fight? We might win.”

  Blake somehow managed a shrug, despite the chains. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “But you should try contacting the Captain first and seeing what he might offer you.”

  “You don’t understand,” Gaby said. “I told you; I read as much as I could about the Marines. You’re great soldiers; loyal, honourable, and brave to a fault...and I bet you’re really kind to dumb animals. Except you’re here, and you’re fighting to keep the Council in power, because we know that you know just what kind of shit the Council has been pulling over the last few years. And what exactly have you done about it? Nothing! How can you claim to be a third force when you are so closely linked to the corrupt bastards who have been draining this planet dry?”

  “You might be surprised by how much authority the Captain has, if you approached him,” Blake said. “Until then...I’ll just wait here, shall I?”

  Gaby glared at him. “We could always start trying to extract information by force,” she reminded him. “What would you say to that?”

  Blake yawned. “Why, nothing,” he said. “I really doubt that you can put me through anything worse than I have already endured.”

  Gaby looked at him for a long moment, and then stormed out of the cell.

  ***

  “You really shouldn't go speak to him alone,” Julian said, when she entered the meeting room. “It’s not safe...”

  The condescending tone in his voice almost made Gaby explode. “And nothing we’ve been doing since you and I were knee-high has been safe,” she snapped. The last thing she needed was Julian pulling the over-protective big brother or boyfriend act. She’d known that he admired her from afar, but she didn't have any romantic feelings about him. Julian...was just another male friend, almost a brother. “The Marines could hit this place at any time and we’d be scooped up and arrested. This is not safe! We are not in a safe business!”

  If he had smiled, she would have knocked it off his face. “You elected me the commander of this local cell,” she said, knowing that it had been her name rather than anything else that had won her the position. The Cracker Family had an unbroken heritage of defeat, yet people still had faith. “Are you going to start challenging my authority at every turn?”

  Julian wilted under her gaze. “I meant no offence,” he said, shocked at her fury. “I merely wanted to make sure that you were safe.”

  Gaby looked him up and down, remembering the times they’d played together. Where had those moments gone? They’d been stolen by the demands of their war. Julian had grown up and become a fighter, just as she had...just as the eighty-odd dead Crackers had become. They had died because of her commands, shot down by the Marines or their new army.

  “Good,” she said, forcing a gentler tone into her voice. “I was perfectly safe.”

  “But he’s an inhuman killing machine,” Julian protested. “There’s no such thing as safe...”

  “Julian, behave,” Rufus said, firmly. The older man had entered the room and took a seat by the table. “I don’t have time to take my belt to you today.”

  Julian scowled, but fell quiet. “The fighting isn't going as well as we had planned,” Gaby said. Julian started, as if he wanted to dispute that claim, and then thought better of it. “Although we have inflicted damage, they have inflicted damage on us and both sides are hurting.”

  The memory of seeing some of the wounded rose up unbidden in front of her eyes. She’d gone to see them, despite the risk, and had ended up horrified by the sight. The Crackers had taken a beating...and for what? None of the deployment bases had been overrun. The Marines and their puppets had fought back savagely and the devil himself seemed to be helping them. She wasn't even sure how many of their people had been killed or wounded.

  “And let’s not forget the civilians,” Rufus added, casting a sharp glance towards his son. Julian had been the least caring about civilian casualties. “We have at least a hundred civilians injured and more made homeless by the fighting. It would have been worse if we hadn't run the risk of warning people to run at the first sign of fighting. Even so, it was quite bad enough.”

  “The evacuation plans are working,” Julian protested. “They’d be safe if they followed them.”

  “But they can't,” Gaby reminded him. “We’re talking about them walking away from everything they own, for what? Just to allow us and the Marines to wreak havoc on their property.”

  She stared down at her hands. Unlike Camelot and the other four cities, the countryside was decentralised to extremes; the townships didn't really have a natural existence. Once the fighting had begun in earnest, most of the uncommitted citizens had moved out of the towns and into the countryside, following an evacuation plan that had been drawn up years ago. Julian had proposed only helping those who helped the Crackers, but Gaby and Rufus had overruled him, insisting that all of their people be helped equally. Good press was worth a thousand bullets and, besides, she’d settle for just keeping people out of the firing line.

  And that brought her all the way back to the true reason for calling the meeting.

&nb
sp; “Operation Headshot,” she said. “Are we ready to go?”

  “Give us four days,” Rufus advised. “We’ll have to get all of our assets in place and prepared to move...and we’ll have to rely on our source in the Governor’s office to help hide the preparations. You do realise that this is a hideous risk?”