They Shall Not Pass (The Empire's Corps Book 12)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Tell me about it,” Tad said. His accent was surprisingly strong. “A mate of mine tried asking for an interview with a spaceport worker, but she called the guards and he’s currently under arrest.”

  “How unfortunate,” Emmanuel said. He knew from Jasmine that reporters couldn't be allowed to get in the way, even if it did lead to be the best stories. It could also lead to the reporters becoming the news themselves. “Is he going to be all right?”

  “I have no idea,” Tad said. He shrugged “Normally, you can talk to anyone here, but as you can see ...”

  He waved a hand at the line of buses. “It’s a right nightmare,” he added. He lowered his voice, significantly. “Say ... is this true?”

  Emmanuel blinked. “Is what true?”

  “That there’s going to be an attack,” Tad said. “That ...” - he waved a hand around the scene - “that this isn't all just an attempt to loot our world.”

  “I believe it to be true,” Emmanuel said, stiffly. He couldn't see Colonel Stalker deciding to loot a world for fun and profit - or Jasmine, for that matter. “Admiral Singh is likely to be attacking soon, you see.”

  “I see,” Tad said. “But not everyone believes it.”

  Emmanuel sighed. It was something he'd never really understood until he’d started travelling between the stars. Word spread slowly, even within the Commonwealth, and news from hundreds of light years away often seemed less important than local affairs. It was hard to blame someone for not believing that Admiral Singh had not only survived, but prospered on Wolfbane. But she had and now she was out for revenge.

  “It's true,” he said, quietly. “We wouldn't be wasting time preparing defences if it wasn't true, would we?”

  “I don’t know,” Tad said. “After Singh ... there’s so much people will believe - or won’t believe, depending.”

  ***

  Mindy Caesius let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding as the shuttle slammed into the ground, then sprang to her feet as the hatch banged open. The Stormtroopers lined up in rows and hurried out of the shuttlecraft, following directions from the military policemen that led towards a giant hanger. It was a bare and a barren space, she noted, as she slowed to a walk, but it provided some shelter from the racket as the officers fought to keep everyone in line. She’d seen enough quick-deployment exercises on Avalon to know they could disintegrate into chaos very quickly.

  “All right, stand at ease,” Sergeant Rackham bellowed. “We have a lot of shit to get through and there isn't much time.”

  Mindy winced. Sergeant Rackham was a tall man who had intimidated her more than she cared to admit, back when she’d applied to join the Stormtroopers. He’d ridden her constantly, alternatively insisting that no woman could pass the course and suggesting that she quit before she was seriously injured. It hadn't been until she’d completed the course that she’d realised he’d been driving her onwards, pushing her right to the very limit just to make sure she could handle it. She still loathed him - and she hadn't been pleased when he’d been assigned to the troop - but she trusted him.

  “This is Corinthian,” Sergeant Rackham continued, without lowering his voice. “You’ve read the briefing packets, so remember what they said! Follow the rules; anyone caught breaking them will be in deep shit! Stay with your unit unless you are given clear permission to leave and behave yourselves!”

  She forced herself to listen as Sergeant Rackham ran through a brief overview of the cultural rules - Corinthian was considerably looser than Avalon, although rather less loose than Earth - and then joined the line of troopers heading towards the buses. The local drivers eyed them curiously, without the fear she’d felt - herself - when she’d seen her first soldier. But then, she reminded herself, Corinthian had been under occupation for three years. They might dislike off-world soldiers, but they wouldn't see them as wild animals.

  The bus roared to life as soon as the last trooper was onboard. Sergeant Rackham slammed the door, then kept a sharp eye on his men as the bus lurched once, then started forward down a long ramp. Mindy stared towards the towering skyscrapers in the distance, feeling an odd flicker of Déjà Vu. Corinthian was nothing like Earth, but there was something in the skyscrapers that felt familiar, a sense that both attracted and repelled her. She’d expected the spaceport to be some distance from the city, yet as they drove onwards it was obvious that the spaceport was surrounded. The city had just expanded outwards at terrifying speed.

  There’ll be an accident one day, she thought, morbidly. A shuttle will crash into a populated zone and all hell will break loose.

  She sucked in her breath as she saw a line of protestors, holding up banners that demanded everything from all offworlders being kicked off the planet to the immediate resignation of the planetary president. Most of them appeared to be young, no older than Mindy herself; they looked more like students than soldiers. She’d never seen anything like it on Avalon, but student protests had been strikingly common on Earth. And none of them, according to her father, had done anything more than let the students blow off a little steam.

  Trooper Hicks had another question. “Why aren't those bastards in the militia?”

  “Silence,” Sergeant Rackham snapped.

  Surprisingly, the driver answered. “Because certain kinds of students have exemptions, assuming they keep their grades high,” he said. “I’d imagine that lot have received draft notices by now.”

  Mindy shook her head in grim amusement as one of the protesters - a topless girl - danced into view, swinging her breasts as she held a sign aloft in the air. It attracted attention, she had to admit, but she could barely read the sign. Something to do with freedom of expression for all, something that puzzled Mindy. Corinthian was a signatory to the Commonwealth Charter, wasn't it? Freedom of expression was part of the charter.

  The bus drove past the protesters, who didn't seem inclined to do anything more than shout insults and slogans, and headed further down the road. Mindy couldn't help noticing that the streets were almost empty, save for military and commandeered civilian vehicles. A long line of earth-moving equipment was slowly making its way to the lines, followed by a handful of other vehicles carrying supplies. She rather suspected the building industry was enjoying a boom time, even as the remainder of the planetary economy staggered under the need to evacuate as much of its trained personnel and industrial nodes as possible. But then, it was equally possible that the building industries had been rapidly nationalised, just to make sure they did their damned job without quibbles. She rather doubted she’d ever know.

  She braced herself as the bus slowed to a halt, outside a gate guarded by armed soldiers and a pair of AFVs. The camp looked like a makeshift barracks, a neatly-organised set of tents surrounded by barbed wire. She'd slept in them before during countless exercises; they were uncomfortable, but heaven itself compared to sleeping in a muddy trench. She had a feeling she’d have enough of both before the coming war was over.

  “All right, dismount,” Sergeant Rackham barked, as the doors banged open. He jabbed a finger towards two of the larger tents. Mindy could see lines of computers and operators inside one, but the other was empty. “Get into the second tent and wait for orders!”

  Mindy jumped to her feet and followed the others out of the bus.

  ***

  “It looks like a giant radar dome,” Danielle observed, as she studied the shield generator. She was no expert, but she’d expected something a little more ... dramatic. “Is it really capable of protecting the city?”

  “And a great deal more,” Trader Engineer Susan Coomb assured her. She was a tall girl, young enough to make Danielle worry about her competence. And yet, the Traders were renowned for being among the most advanced faction in known space. “As long as the power holds out, the shield will remain firmly in place.”

  “Unless the enemy unleashes planet-cracking levels of force,” Danielle muttered. She recalled Colonel Stalker’s warning far too clearly. “Or if the
power does run out.”

  “We’ve tied Gladys into the power grid,” Susan said, “but we’ve also brought along nineteen fusion generators, three times as many as we need to keep the shield up. They will practically have to take out the shield generator itself to take the shield down, which will not be easy.”

  “They should be able to locate the generator,” Danielle pointed out. She rather liked Susan’s attitude, but she wasn't going to allow her feelings to sway her judgement. “If only by deducing the centre of the shield.”

  Susan grinned. “Oh no they won't,” she said. “The shield is actually fuzzed, a little, just to keep someone from doing just that. They’ll be able to tell that the generator is somewhere within five square miles, but nothing more precise. A random hit would be pretty bad, I admit, yet we’ve done everything we can to keep that from happening. They’d really have to have a stroke of very good luck to score a direct hit.”

  “They’ll certainly try,” Danielle observed. “Can't you curve the shield to prevent them from flying underneath it?”

  “There actually is a very slight shield curvature, in line with the planet itself,” Susan said, ruefully. “Doing what you suggest would be very useful, Madam President, but the shield generators can't hold a curved shield in place for long. It would put too much stress on the field manifolds.”

  She launched into a long and complicated explanation filled with technobabble Danielle couldn't begin to understand, although she managed to force herself to keep listening until the younger woman was finally finished. Danielle had thought she’d had a fairly complete education, but it hadn't taken long for her - as President - to realise just how little she actually knew. The whole concept of force fields was new, in any case. Admiral Singh had grown up in a universe where there was nothing protecting a planet from marauding starships.

  And let us hope the bitch gets gnashed to death when she tries to land on our world, she thought, coldly. We are getting ready for her.

  She sighed as another flight of shuttles roared over the city, heading to the starships waiting in orbit. Ordering the evacuation had been one hell of a fight with her cabinet, once she’d convinced them that Corinthian was likely to come under attack. Even with the offer to evacuate their relatives too, along with the trained manpower, she’d had to call in every favour she was owed to convince the cabinet to declare martial law. And even with martial law, she knew there were people who were dragging their feet ...

  And if Admiral Singh doesn’t show up in a couple of months, she thought wryly, I’ll be thrown out of office and hanged.

  “Thank you,” she said to Susan. “How quickly can you power up the generator?”

  “I intend to run power-curve tests once the final control circuits are in place,” Susan said, glancing at her datapad. “Once Gladys is confirmed fully-functional, we’ll keep her active - on low power - so we can bring her up at any moment. We shouldn't have any problems maintaining her power curves for several months, at least. There’s a lot of redundancy built into the system.”

  “That’s good to know,” Danielle said. “And can you repair it while the system is active?”

  “It would depend on what needed to be repaired,” Susan said, after a moment. “But yeah, we should be able to repair the system.”

  Danielle nodded. Far too many of the devices the Empire had produced, in its last century of life, had been impossible to modify or repair. It had been intended to save people from damaging their possessions, according to the corporations, but she knew the real purpose was to keep people from repairing a device instead of buying a new one. How many of the devices she’d owned had started to show problems after a few years of life? The Trade Federation, thankfully, preferred devices that could be repaired by the user.

  “Of course, if the generator was under heavy stress, it might not be possible,” Susan added, darkly. “But if that were the case, we would have more important things to worry about.”

  Danielle nodded, crossly. Susan was, if anything, understating the matter.

  And if the generator fails, she thought, we lose the war.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Another interesting problem facing the Commonwealth - which caused a great deal of debate prior to the Battle of Thule - was the Battle of Lakshmibai. It is beyond doubt that a single starship, from either the Commonwealth or Wolfbane, would have rendered the entire battle over in half an hour.

  - Professor Leo Caesius. The Role of Randomness In War.

  It was quiet at night, very quiet.

  Jasmine lay on the ground, listening carefully as she crawled through the darkness towards the militia camp. An owl-like creature was hooting softly in the distance, but otherwise there was nothing to mask their approach. She peered through the darkness, her enhanced eyes picking out the pair of sentries on guard and scowled in disapproval as she realised that they were chatting quietly while smoking cigarettes. The light from one’s match, as he lit a second cigarette, would blind his night vision for a few precious seconds.

  At least they’re not sleeping, she thought. Falling asleep on duty in Boot Camp would have resulted in weeks of Incentive Training, falling asleep on the Slaughterhouse would have been an automatic fail ... but falling asleep on watch in a combat zone could get someone killed. And yet it isn't much of an improvement.

  The three marines scouted the camp carefully, noting the enemy positions from the outside and planning their approach. It was clear that the militia hadn't done any real drills for years, she thought; they’d made a number of mistakes that would get them killed, if they were on the battlefield. They knew that someone was going to be probing their defences, yet they weren't watching for signs of an incoming attacker. And their camp was practically designed to allow someone to count the militiamen without needing to sneak through the wire.

  Her lips thinned in disapproval as she monitored the guards on patrol. Even the merest imbecile knew to vary the timing, just to make sure no one could try to sneak through the wire while the guards were somewhere else, but this bunch hadn't bothered to read a tactical manual. Unless, of course, it was a trap ... she puzzled over it for a long moment, then decided she’d need to spring it anyway. Who knew? Maybe the enemy CO had some fiendish plan that would catch all three marines before they could do any real damage.

  She glanced at Thomas Stewart and Joe Buckley. It was hard to read expressions on their blackened faces, but neither of them looked very impressed by the camp. Jasmine briefly contemplated capturing the guards first - it would be thoroughly embarrassing to the locals if she succeeded - before dismissing the thought. There was just too great a risk of setting off an alarm before they got into position to do some real damage. Sneaking under the wire would be far more effective.

  Holding up her hand, she communicated her intentions and waited for their nods, then turned and crawled towards the wire. Up close, it was nowhere near as impressive as it looked from a distance; they’d established a fairly solid line separating the camp from the rest of the great outdoors, but it wasn't pinned to the ground or wired to sound the alert if anyone tampered with it. The Imperial Army had had a regular problem with men sneaking off to the nearest bar, she recalled, and their senior officers had eventually stopped responding to alerts. It was amusing, although not in a good way, that Corinthian’s militia had the same problem.

  She lifted the wire quickly, maintaining a silent countdown in her head, and crawled underneath, bracing herself for an alarm or gunfire. Neither happened; she held the wire up long enough for Stewart and Buckley to join her, then remained low as the guards made their next sweep around the fence. Marines were taught to watch for something - anything - out of place, on the grounds it was better to sound the alarm over nothing than get throats slit while they were sleeping, but whoever had trained the militia hadn't done a very good job. The report she intended to make to her superiors was growing longer by the minute.

  They’ve had five fucking weeks to prepare, she thought, as s
he watched the guards vanish into the darkness. The damned idiot was still smoking his cigarette! Five fucking weeks and they can't even maintain a decent night watch!

  She found herself hoping that it actually was a trap as they rose and hurried soundlessly towards the five tents. If someone had tracked them, lured them into the camp ... no, only a complete idiot would take such a risk. Maybe it would work, in bad fiction or worse flicks, but she would hand in her Rifleman’s Tab if someone tried it in the real world and it actually worked. The grenades she and her fellows were carrying were enough to ensure a high casualty rate, whatever else happened. She briefly considered deliberately breaking a twig, just to see if it provoked any reaction, then shook her head. Right now, she wasn't particularly inclined to do the militia any favours.

  Buckley held up a hand, signalling idiots. Jasmine nodded in agreement, feeling a flicker of unearned sympathy for the militia. Joe Buckley had been a tough instructor, according to Mindy; he'd be drawing up his own list of issues to report to their superiors. And he might even be assigned to fix them. She held up a response, ordering the pair of marines to unhook their grenades from their belts and get ready to hurl them into the tents. As soon as they were ready, she counted down from three and hurled the first grenade.