The Empire's Corps: Book 06 - To The Shores...

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Thank you,” he said, quietly.

  The maids bowed and retreated. Tomas watched them go. In their dresses, everything was covered ... but as they moved, he could see their hips and bottoms moving in a natural seductive rhythm. He felt a sudden flush of lust which he ruthlessly pushed aside. He’d been told that it happened, when death was close ... but then, death had never been close before.

  “Nice ass,” one of his comrades noted. He leered cheerfully towards the retreating girls. “Do you think we have time ...?”

  “No,” Tomas said. He paused. “Well, maybe you do.”

  They shared a laugh, then turned back to the window, preparing themselves as best as they could.

  The end could not be long delayed.

  ***

  General Bhagwandas swallowed a curse as the next set of reports came in from his commanders. Having broken into the two off-world compounds, his soldiers were starting to loot and burn rather than reforming for an assault on the final part of the complex. The Prince’s picked men had been promised vast rewards for so long that the soldiers had clearly decided to take what they could get, despite the best efforts of their commanders. But the fight was almost over.

  He glanced down at the map showing the estimated position of the enemy relief force and smiled. They would not reach the Imperial Residency in time to make a difference.

  “Bring up the reserves,” he ordered. The Prince would be happy when the Residency fell, he hoped. Maybe there would even be time to save his family before the rest of the off-worlders arrived. “They are to advance and crush the enemy beneath their feet.”

  He paused. “And order the gunners to stop shooting,” he added. Normally, no one would care about friendly fire, but the important thing now was to bring down the Residency and destroy its inhabitants. “The infantry can finish the task now.”

  ***

  Silence fell, so suddenly that it was almost a physical blow.

  “They’ve stopped,” a voice said. Edward recognised the speaker as one of the walking wounded, there to serve as part of the last-ditch defence. “Do you think they’ve decided to back off?”

  “I doubt it,” Edward answered, shortly. The drones were picking up a whole new force of black-clad infantry advancing on the double. He’d hoped that the looting would keep the enemy busy for some time, but it seemed that they had more troops in reserve. God alone knew how many they’d lost – he was sure that it was over a thousand – yet they just kept coming. “I think the final push is about to begin.”

  “They’ll be on us in minutes,” Flora agreed. She laughed, softly. “I told the Governor that we should have held the meeting in deep space.”

  “Too late now,” Edward commented. Maybe he should have asked her more about Wolfbane, now that their backs were pressed firmly against the wall. But it was definitely too late.

  He looked around the tiny compartment. “Gentlemen, it's been a honour,” he said. There was no point in holding onto hope any longer. “Fix bayonets.”

  Chapter Forty

  This caused problems – which were not smoothed over by the diplomats. Bad feelings threatened to tear apart the complex network of alliances that bound the West together. In the end, it could have been disastrous.

  -Professor Leo Caesius. Diplomacy: The Lessons of the Past.

  Blake could hear the sound of fighting in the distance as he climbed out of the tunnel and back into the city. The latest update from Colonel Stalker had not been good; the Residency was under heavy attack, with ammunition running out. If it ran out completely, the complex would fall within minutes.

  He glanced back at the rest of the untouchable freedom fighters, hoping – praying – that their brief training sessions would be enough. They would be no match for Marines, or even soldiers from the Imperial Army, but all the reports suggested that the local security troops were brutal rather than competent. Blake wasn't so sure that the untouchables could fight – they’d had all resistance beaten out of them over generations – but there wasn't anything else for them to use. The CEF was still some distance from the city gates.

  “Send the signal,” he ordered. “The attacks are to commence in ten minutes, if I don’t send the order before then.”

  He led the way outside, marvelling at the nightmare that seemed to have gripped the city’s streets as the fighting raged on. Mobs of people swarmed the streets, while the handful of security troopers in the lower-caste areas were completely overwhelmed. Homes were being looted and burned to the ground, people from different castes were being beaten, raped and killed ... absolute chaos seemed to be breaking out. No one challenged them as they made their way through the streets, despite the combination of local military uniforms and dark skins. No doubt, he told himself, the local civilians were having too much fun shedding the last veneer of civilisation to bother with their own security.

  A fireball rose up into the air from the direction of the Residency, followed rapidly by two more. The ground shook a moment later, violently. Blake briefly wished he had a direct link to the Residency, to find out what had happened, before pushing the thought aside ruthlessly. All he could do was get his people in place and then attack, hoping that there was time to save the Residency. Looking at the chaos, he tended to doubt it.

  He braced himself as a trio of enemy soldiers swaggered by, drinking and singing a song in their own language that Blake would have bet half of his salary was thoroughly obscene. Deserters, he guessed; men who’d decided that they would sooner flee than fight. Maybe they’d seen one too many human wave attacks, maybe they realised that their commanders had gone insane ... or maybe they were just cowards. He muttered orders for the team to give them a wide berth, even though none of them seemed to be carrying weapons. They were too drunk to realise that they were heading right into the most dangerous part of the city, wearing hated uniforms.

  More explosions shook the ground as they headed towards the palace that served as the enemy command post. Blake had seen the drone images, but they hadn't prepared him for the sheer staggering immensity of the building – or the awareness that it was nothing more than a palace. Government House on Avalon was much smaller, even though it served as the centre of government as well as the home of the Governor. The Imperial Palace on Earth was bigger – if it was still intact, which Blake doubted – but it was the nerve centre of an empire that stretched across hundreds of thousands of light years. He couldn't believe just how much money the local aristocracy had wasted on their homes, when their population was poor and starving.

  They saw the lower castes as less than human, he thought, in a rare moment of insight. They weren't there to be cared for, merely to be used.

  He inspected the defences quickly. There were several dozen soldiers at the gate, looking alarmingly competent; there was no way of knowing what might be inside the wall, waiting for them. Ideally, Blake would have preferred to sneak over the wall, but there was no time. Instead, he keyed his communicator, issued orders ... and waited.

  ***

  Maharashtra was burning.

  Andrew sucked in his breath as the three attack helicopters swooped over the city. A third of it seemed to be on fire, while the rest of it seemed to be under mob rule. He could see thousands upon thousands of people running through the streets, while the security forces concentrated their attacks upon the Residency and guarding the upper-caste areas. Even if the fighting ended within seconds, even if the Commonwealth or Wolfbane didn't seek revenge for the dead diplomats, the city would never be the same again.

  “We have our orders,” Briggs said. “We’re to clear the way for the insurgents.”

  “Understood,” Andrew said. He would have preferred to engage the forces attacking the Residency, but the attackers and the defenders were so closely mixed together that it would have been impossible to separate the two sides. “Taking us in ... now!”

  He braced himself for ground fire as the helicopters started their attack run, but nothing rose up to greet t
hem apart from a handful of rifle shots, which clanged harmlessly off the armour when they hit the helicopter at all. The targeting selector came online, isolating the enemy guardposts, the walls ... and, behind them, a handful of armoured vehicles. Someone had clearly been giving some thought to the defence, he decided, as he unleashed the first spread of rockets and cannon fire. But it hadn't been enough.

  “Targets destroyed,” Briggs informed him. A series of explosions billowed up from under the helicopter as the rockets found their targets. “But the palace is untouched.”

  “Good,” Andrew said, as the helicopters climbed back up into the air. He keyed his radio. “The path is clear; I say again, the path is clear.”

  ***

  Blake allowed himself a smile at the reaction of Mad and the other untouchables to the helicopter strike. It was raw power on a scale they couldn't even begin to comprehend, any more than the local commanders could grasp the sheer firepower of even the smallest Imperial Navy starship. There was nothing left of the defenders, apart from a handful of burning vehicles and dead bodies. Most of them had been simply vaporised.

  “Send the signal,” he ordered. There were untouchables scattered throughout the city, primed to attack its infrastructure and leadership ... and probably lose their lives doing it. If there had been more time to prepare, Blake knew that they could have taken out the enemy leaders and perhaps even taken the city itself, but instead they were being forced to rush. “The attacks are to commence at once.”

  He hefted his rifle, grinned at their shocked faces, and led the way towards the palace. As ordered, the helicopter pilots had left the building alone, even though they’d strafed the gardens as well as the defenders. He winced as he saw the burning armoured cars – they would have been a nasty surprise if they’d attacked without air support – and then felt an odd twinge of sadness as he saw the lake. One of the rockets must have landed in the water and exploded, he realised; there were dead fish floating on the surface. Once, the garden had been elegant and lovely. Now, it was just a wreck.

  “Hurry,” he ordered, as they ran through the garden and up to the main doors. “We have to get to the enemy CO before it’s too late.”

  ***

  General Bhagwandas picked himself off the floor with the inescapable conviction that the world had just turned upside down. One moment, he’d been supervising the final attack on the Residency; the next, the entire building had been shaken so violently that he’d lost his footing and fallen to the floor. One of his aides had banged his head on the table, he realised as he caught hold of the stonework and used it to pull himself to his feet; the aide had cracked his skull badly enough to kill him. Blood was flowing freely from a gash on his forehead.

  He reached for his telephone, only to discover that it didn't work. It should have provided a direct link to the Prince, but there wasn't even a dial tone. There was a groan as another of his aides stood upright and started to drunkenly weave towards the door. General Bhagwandas barked commands, only to see the young man stagger and fall to his knees. A third aide, showing more independence of mind, was trying to work the radio. As he made contact with some of the other bases around the city, his face paled.

  “General,” he said, “there are attacks everywhere.”

  “Give me that,” General Bhagwandas ordered. He took the radio and started to issue demands for information. “See what you can pull out of the other systems.”

  The news flowing in wasn't good. Some bases refused to respond completely, others reported insurgents – all untouchables – attacking their soldiers and wreaking havoc. The news made him shudder as he realised the full extent of their enemy’s perfidy; the untouchables might not have been allowed to handle weapons, but they did the cooking and cleaning in all of the military bases. They were everywhere; cleaning barracks, scrubbing toilets, even washing vehicles. And hardly anyone would take note of their presence. After all, they were just untouchables. The outcasts of the gods.

  Other news came in from his spotters all over the city. Palaces were being attacked; aristocratic families were being killed by once-faithful servants. The untouchables seemed to have planned carefully, committing themselves to bringing down the upper-castes when help finally arrived. And the off-worlder army was advancing towards the city at terrifying speed, utterly untouchable by anything he could put in its path. Their entire position was disintegrating.

  And he could no longer hope to direct anything.

  “Pick up your weapons,” he ordered, bitterly. His family were still hostages, held in the Rajah’s palace. Somehow, he would have to liberate them and make his way to the estates he owned, well away from the rest of the population. He could rest there, perhaps offer his services to whatever government took over the planet. “It’s time to go.”

  ***

  Blake wanted to advance carefully into the palace, turning over every nook and cranny for unwanted surprises, but the untouchables seemed to lose all discipline as they realised that they could finally lash out at their hated masters. They poured into the palace in a terrifying stream, shooting madly at the few remaining guards and servants, smashing artworks and tearing down paintings in a chilling orgy of destruction. Blake could understand the temptation to destroy so much belonging to the oppressors, but not at the expense of the mission.

  The interior of the palace was stunningly luxurious. Gold and silver artworks were everywhere, even hanging from the ceiling. It seemed as though the owners of the palace had spent generations building up a collection of artefacts; wooden toys, pieces of art and – everywhere – statues of their gods. One room was decorated with staggeringly explicit paintings showing every possible sexual act, including several Blake had never even considered before, let alone tried. Several of them looked more likely to cause serious bodily harm rather than sexual satisfaction.

  “The men are allowed to enjoy themselves with the lower-caste women,” Mad explained, as she followed him through the chamber. “But the women are expected to remain unsullied until marriage. The decorations are intended to teach them what they need to know.”

  Blake snorted. The Commonwealth was an open society, accepting just about anything as long as it took place between consenting adults in private. But this world seemed utterly and absurdly hypocritical. They didn't have reliable contraception, let alone medical treatments that would cure sexual diseases and ensure conception. What was the point of insisting that their women remain virgins when their men might easily pick up something nasty from the lower-castes and infect their wives?

  They don't have DNA tests either, he reminded himself. They have to ensure that the girls are virgins or parentage might be in doubt.

  The next room was a set of small chambers, barely larger than the tiny rooms assigned to officers at the barracks. Blake glanced inside briefly, then started as he saw something moving ... he had his rifle tracking the target before he realised that it was nothing more dangerous than a pet monkey. The beast eyed him with disturbingly human eyes, then started making loud and unpleasant noises. Blake shook his head, then headed onwards, searching for the enemy command post. The palace was just too big to be searched quickly.

  He checked his radio. There were only a handful of reports coming in, but most of them agreed that the enemy position was falling apart. Attacks that started inside bases and garrisons were always the hardest to deal with, Blake knew from bitter experience; even if the enemy managed to rally their forces, it would be hard for them to know who to trust. Besides, some of his other strikes had been targeted on the primitive telecommunications network. The primitiveness of the system might have saved it from targeted air strikes, but it had also ensured that it couldn't respond well to losing a few nodes.

  “Come on,” he ordered. “We have to find the bastards.”

  ***

  General Bhagwandas picked up a handful of grenades and hooked them onto his belt, then motioned for his three surviving aides to follow him down the stairs. The sounds from inside
the building suggested that it was being raided by the enemy and that there was no longer anyone in place willing and able to defend it. All they could do now, he told himself, was run and hope that they could recover his family before it was too late.

  The sounds of people looting grew louder as they headed down the stairs, towards the entrance to the underground network that allowed the aristocrats to meet and talk in secret. Part of him burned with rage at the thought of untouchables ransacking the palace, molesting the concubines and slaughtering faithful servants, part of him prayed that it would keep them busy long enough for him and his aides to escape. The palace was surely large enough to distract any number of untouchables, particularly ones more interested in looting than revenge.

  And then, as they headed down the stairs, he saw the figures at the bottom.

  ***

  Blake saw the enemy soldiers at the same time and lifted his rifle, opening fire on the two aides. It was hard to be sure – the enemy troops seemed to wear more gold braid than even an Imperial Army General – but he suspected that the first two were bodyguards and the third was a CO. The aides weren't remotely prepared for a fight, he realised; he shot them both down before they could get a single shot off in any direction. Their CO stumbled backwards, his face pale and wan, then lifted his hands into the air.

  “Don’t move,” Blake barked at him. Mad echoed the message a moment later. “Hold still.”

  He stepped up to the man, resisting the temptation to roll his eyes. This was a General? The man was grossly unfit, with a uniform that – no matter how carefully tailored – couldn't even begin to hide his paunch. He didn't even try to resist as Blake removed the grenades and added them to his own collection, then searched him thoroughly. With the grenades and the pistol, Blake realised, the enemy officer could have forced the insurgents to kill him ... if he had tried.