***
Bode hadn't been able to resist the chance to watch his handiwork from a safe distance. It was really pathetically easy to hack into the Civil Guard network and watch through the drones that had monitored the entire riot from start to finish, a security hole that no one had ever tried to fix. But then, Earth’s Civil Guard had never really been tested, apart from the Nihilist attacks. Other Civil Guards learned the hard way – or died.
Using the plasma pistol had been a risk, but it had paid off handsomely. The Marines would know that someone had been behind the riots, yet they’d never be able to trace the pistol back to its source. He’d taken care of that personally. It would have been nice to laugh in their faces, to rub in just how thoroughly they’d been played, but there was no need for it. Besides, his master would never have let him gloat. It would have given the game away far too soon.
Overall, he decided, it had been a good day’s work. Hundreds of students had died, but the rest had been shocked – and radicalised. The Senators had been forced to flee the Senate Hall, made to look like cowards in front of the planet’s population. Plenty of Civil Guardsmen had been killed, or had their confidence shaken; even the Marines had been blooded and shocked. The rest of the planet would watch on their displays as armoured Marines wiped the rioters off the streets and grow to fear them. Humanity’s faith in the Empire and its government had died in one bloody day.
And he wondered, as he poured himself a glass of imported Scotch, if anyone would ever realise that it had been murdered.
Chapter Nineteen
This worried the Grand Senate and they did what they could to limit the Marines and prevent them from becoming a threat. Funding was cut, starships were withdrawn and direct cooperation between the Marines and the Imperial Navy was hampered by officers with strong political connections. A number of the more noticeable Marine officers were exiled to the edge of the Empire, never to return to Earth.
-Professor Leo Caesius, The End of Empire
Roland stared in horror at the images on the display.
Belinda divided her attention between him, the media display and the constant updates coming in through the Marine network. The media seemed to have decided that the whole catastrophe was the fault of the Marines; the talking heads were raging about the decision to allow armed Marines onto the streets of Imperial City. None of them seemed interested in mentioning the shots fired from the protest march, or the Civil Guardsmen who had been killed in the student rampage. The whole affair seemed designed to blacken the name of the Marine Corps.
That might have been the point, she thought, sourly. The average citizen of Imperial City wouldn't have the slightest idea of where to get a standard projectile weapon, let alone a plasma pistol. She had a feeling that attempts to track down the source of the weapon that had killed an armoured Marine would prove futile. Someone in the Imperial Army had probably taken a large bribe to report it lost, or accidentally destroyed. So much material passed through the logistics department that quite a few weapons could vanish without anyone being any the wiser.
She listened to the updates coming through the Marine network and shuddered. The Civil Guard had arrived in force, allowing the handful of Marines a chance to concentrate on moving the wounded to the nearest hospitals. They’d commandeered every civilian aircar in the city – something else the media commenters were bitching about – but it wouldn’t be enough to save every life. Most of the nearest hospitals were already overloaded; the wounded were having to be rushed to makeshift locations or tended on the streets. More would die, Belinda realised, simply through not having proper medical attention in time.
God alone knew what they were going to do with the prisoners. Upwards of eight thousand students had been arrested, either by the Marines or the Civil Guard. The holding pens that would be required to keep them prisoner simply didn't exist, not in Imperial City. For the moment, the Civil Guard had secured a number of warehouses and turned them into makeshift prison camps, but that was a very short-term solution. These were students who were under arrest, not criminals from the Undercity. She doubted that they could all be exiled from the planet ...
And if they were, she asked herself, what would the others do?
There were over a million students in Imperial University alone, living in Imperial City, and many more in the lesser educational establishments. What would happen if they all turned radical? Keeping control over Imperial City might prove impossible, unless the Civil Guard resorted to deadly force. The thought of the carnage that might result was horrific, but it couldn't be avoided. What would happen to Earth if her streets were drenched in more blood than Han?
Roland’s voice distracted her from her thoughts. “What ... what happened to them?”
“I wish I knew,” Belinda said. The general consensus on the Marine network seemed to be that someone had deliberately planned a student march that had become a riot. It wasn’t something she could argue with, not when the protesters had not only had live weapons, but a workable plan. Whoever had carried out the planning had known precisely what they were doing. “There was a riot.”
She’d seen riots before, on several different worlds, and they were always terrifying. A person, Drill Instructor Kay had warned her, was smart, but people were dumb, panicky animals who were barely as smart as the stupidest person in the group. The students who’d rampaged through the city might have been smart enough to think better of it if they’d been alone, yet they’d been part of a mob, sucked into a collective rage that had overpowered common sense. They had been so caught up in the collective entity that even neural whips couldn't dissuade them from rampaging forward, trampling over their fallen comrades.
“I have to do something,” Roland said. He looked down at his hands. “What can I do?”
“I don’t think that there is anything you can do,” Belinda admitted.
She racked her brains, but nothing came to mind. Roland simply didn't have the prestige needed to convince maddened crowds to go home, thanks to the rumours about his conduct that had been slipping out for years. By now, the students would have good reason to believe that Roland had ordered the violent response to their violence. The fact that they had started the violence would pass them by.
But she doubted that most of the protesters had known that violence was going to break out. Whoever had planned it would have been alert to the possibility of betrayal; they wouldn't have told anyone who didn't have a need-to-know. The students would be convinced – and they would be right, from their point of view – that the whole affair was someone else’s fault, that they had been exercising their right to protest when the Civil Guard had met them with neural whips. Belinda gritted her teeth as the truth sank in. Thanks to the media, they would be convinced that Marine Corps had caused the disaster.
“There must be something,” Roland protested.
“You can exercise with me,” Belinda said, firmly. At least she’d managed to get Roland onto some exercises that would develop his muscles, as well as preparing him to fight. The genetic potential was there, thanks to his ancestors; he just needed time to develop it. Belinda had a nasty feeling that he wouldn't have the time. “And then we can play tennis.”
She frowned as the next set up media updates blinked up on the screen. The Arena Corporation had announced that their next performance would be a charity one, in honour of those who had fallen on the Avenue of Imperial Supremacy. In the meantime, the Arena’s medical chambers were being thrown open to the wounded students – but not to Civil Guardsmen. Belinda had no idea if that was even legal – by law, most medical centres had to take everyone who turned up in need of help – but it would be a great media soundbite. The students would receive help – and the nasty mean Civil Guardsmen would be left in the cold to die. It might have been amusing if it hadn't been so serious.
“All right,” Roland said, standing up. “Can I at least make a donation?”
Belinda lifted an eyebrow. “To whom?”
***
“So tell me,” Richard said. “How do you feel?”
Amethyst hesitated, trying to put her thoughts and feelings into words. Part of her was shocked at the nightmare they’d created – and she couldn't escape the awareness that it was a nightmare. The media was claiming that millions of students had been injured or killed ... she knew that the media lied regularly, but she couldn't avoid believing that there had been thousands of injuries or deaths. She’d seen enough bodies lying on the ground to believe it.
And the rest of her was excited. They’d caused the whole affair, from beginning to end. It was something significant, something that had shaken the Empire ... and they'd done it! How could anyone call her an insignificant student now, when she'd helped cause a crisis that had made the Senators flee Senate Hall and shaken the foundations of the Empire’s power? The government would know that they could no longer take the students for granted now.
She eyed Richard as he lay beside her on the bed, admiring his superbly-toned body. Most male students used the body-shops or cosmetic surgery to improve their appearance in line with the dictates of fashion, or merely to avoid having to exercise. Richard, on the other hand, seemed too toned to be anything other than the product of heavy exercise, as if he’d spent part of his life working for a living. She’d studiously avoided asking questions – the less they knew about each other, the better – but she did wonder. What had Richard been doing before he'd come to Imperial University?
He’d called her to his apartment – a simple rented room barely large enough to swing a cat, if she’d been willing to spend credits on a pet licence – before she could return to the apartment she shared with Jacqueline. The excitement had been still blazing through her, intensified by how close she’d come to being captured by the Civil Guardsmen, and she’d seduced him, pushing him onto the bed and locking her lips to his as Imperial City burned. It had been years since she’d lost her virginity – like most students, she’d spent plenty of time pursuing the holy orgasm – but fucking Richard had been different. But then, she’d never had been involved in starting a riot before. The excitement seemed almost unholy.
“I feel great,” she admitted. They might be caught and arrested at any moment, but she found it hard to care. Even watching on the display as hundreds of students were hauled off to god-knows-where failed to blunt her excitement. They’d achieved something great, whatever the cost. And the rest of the students would no longer doubt the identity of their true enemy. “What are we going to do next?”
“I have a few ideas,” Richard said, touching his groin.
“Men,” Amethyst protested. “I meant ... what are we going to do next?”
“I think we will be lying low for a few days,” Richard said. He quirked an eyebrow at her. “There isn't anything to connect this apartment to us, you know. You could stay here for as long as you liked.”
Amethyst shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. Richard had been good in bed, after all. The old reluctance to share her life fully with a man no longer seemed to apply, not after all they’d done together. And yet ... part of her knew that being too close to him would only give the Civil Guard a chance to scoop them both up. “How do you know all this?”
Richard lifted an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
“You told us how to hide, you taught us how to use weapons ...” Amethyst shook her head. “I wouldn’t know anything without your help. How do you know these things?”
“Well, if you insist on knowing ...” Richard began. He winked at her. “You do realise that most of the information I know – the stuff I taught you – is available in the computer databases? If you actually learned how to search the system, instead of only looking at the files your tutors suggested, you’d be able to find out much of it for yourself.”
“Really?” Amethyst asked. “It’s that simple?”
“Oh, yes,” Richard assured her. “Earth’s computer network is unique, babe. Even the WebHeads who play with it have no idea how deep it truly goes. There are computer cores connected to the network that date all the way back to the time before the Empire ... plenty of them are hidden treasures for archivists. Others are crammed with porn.”
Amethyst had to laugh, before realising just what he'd said. The students hadn't been taught to consider that there had been a time before the Empire, any more than they had been taught that the Empire might be in danger of coming apart. Her tutors had given her the impression that the Empire had always existed, or that there was no such thing as history, that the entire universe existed in a stasis that had lasted for thousands of years. It was obvious nonsense, when she considered it critically, but the students had been discouraged from any form of critical thinking. Who knew what the universe had been like before the Empire?
“There are history files there?” She asked. After she’d read the Professor’s book, she'd gone back to the university library and studied the history files in the databases. Most of them, she saw now, had been deliberately written to conceal the truth. “Real ones?”
“Yep,” Richard said. “And much more besides.”
He grinned as he reached out and pulled her towards him. “If you read carefully, you can learn a great deal about how the Empire maintains its power,” he said. “I was able to learn how the security systems work – and how the Civil Guard monitors the local environment. And, through doing that, I was able to work out how to subvert it. If you take a few precautions ...”
Amethyst gasped as his fingers started exploring her breasts.
“If you take a few precautions,” he repeated, whispering the words in her ear, “you can avoid being noticed for years. You can get away with anything.”
She felt his hard cock pressing against her leg and shivered, feeling excitement welling through her body again. There were more questions she wanted to ask, but they were swept away in a wave of pleasure as he lowered her onto him, his hardness pushing into her. All that mattered was enjoying herself before they went back out and caused more chaos.
It wasn't until much later that she realised that he’d never really answered her question.
***
It was a simple fact of galactic economics that the price of any given item, whatever it was, tended to depend on a number of factors. The distance from source to destination, for one; the available supply ... and yet such basic facts were lost on the sheep below. Stephen sipped a glass of Firewater from Mountbatten – a world several thousand light years from Earth – and smiled at the images on the display. The students, none of whom could have afforded Firewater if they’d saved their last credit, just didn't understand the true factors governing the Empire, or even the law of supply and demand. If they had truly understood, they would have emigrated to a new colony world.
Orbit Station Seven’s destruction had been a nasty shock – and all the more so for being completely unexpected - but he’d managed to turn it to his advantage. The unthinking students below had played right into his hands. He skimmed through the preliminary report again and allowed his smile to widen. There was no media distortion in the reports reaching the Grand Senate, although there was probably a sizable amount of ass-covering. But Stephen had been a Grand Senator long enough to make allowances for such little details – and to learn how to read between the lines. The truth could always be found if one looked hard enough.
So far, nearly two thousand students, Civil Guardsmen and civilians were dead – and one Marine, of course. The bodies had been removed, but it would take weeks to clean up the mess, let alone repair the damage to the various buildings and statues attacked by the protestors. Several thousand more had also been injured, some critically; the report’s writer stated that the full death toll was not yet known. Some of the wounded might slip away, no matter what medical care they received. If, indeed, they received any medical care.
Stephen took one last look at that section, then dismissed it. There was no shortage of students on Earth, most of whom were completely useless to h
im – or anyone else, for that matter. Most of them had no idea how the universe actually worked; they thought that their degrees gave them a right to be employed, when in truth they were ill-prepared to do anything beyond grunt labour. It was possible to get a decent education on Earth, Stephen knew, but the students had to motivate themselves. The tutors weren't there to encourage them to develop their talents.
The real question was just how much damage the protesters had caused – and that was significant. Once again, the writer had hedged his bets ... but it was clear that billions of credits worth of damage had been done to Imperial City. Orbit Station Seven’s fall had been bad enough – insurance companies were scrambling desperately to come up with good reasons why they shouldn't pay out, as it would ruin them if they had to pay all of the losers – yet this was going to be worse. How could they avoid paying, even though it would ruin them? The Senators connected to the insurance companies would want action ...
... And the Senators had been forced to flee. They’d been attacked in their own stronghold and forced to run for their lives. Cold logic pointed out that the student rioters wouldn't have been able to do much damage to the Senate Hall, but cold logic had been missing, particularly after the Civil Guard had been forced to retreat. The Senators had been made to look like cowards and they wouldn't forget it in a hurry. They'd want a little revenge.
His wristcom buzzed. “Sir,” Lindy said, “you asked to be informed when the Royal Committee reached a decision. They’ve done so. Prince Roland will visit the university campus.”
Stephen smiled. He had never been elected to the Royal Committee ... but what did that matter when he controlled three of its members? It allowed him a chance to deny any involvement in their deliberations, if necessary.
The Empire's Corps: Book 03 - When The Bough Breaks Page 18
