The Empire's Corps: Book 03 - When The Bough Breaks

by Christopher Nuttall

  ***

  Judy Thornton disliked students intensely. As a rule, they were arrogant bastards and bitches who thought that the sun shone out of their assholes. They all looked down on Judy and her fellow university cops, considering them little better than morons who couldn't even pass the entrance examinations to a very basic university. Given that few students could even read – and Judy could – it took some nerve to think such dumb thoughts. But most of the students were thoroughly dumb.

  She stood in front of the nightclub, scowling at the students as they walked past, ignoring her so blatantly that she knew they were trying to annoy her. The sense of growing anger on the campus was easy to sense, but she did her best to ignore it. If it had been up to her, she would have suggested allowing the Civil Guard to take over sole responsibility for policing Imperial University; they’d certainly given the students a nasty fright during the riotous protest march. But her superiors had disagreed. The last thing the university cops needed was to suggest to the beancounters that the cops were no longer necessary.

  Her wristcom buzzed an emergency alert. Judy glanced down at it in surprise and saw a red alert blinking up, an alert that was only used in situations when there was no time to contact their superiors and make a full report. The localiser had already homed in on the signal; it was coming from an apartment block only a few hundred metres from the nightclub. Judy hesitated, then started to run towards the source. If she were in trouble, she would want her fellow cops coming to the rescue.

  She checked her uniform belt as she ran. Unlike the Civil Guard, university cops weren't allowed to carry anything more dangerous than a stunner and neural whip. It had always grated on her, even though she'd known that most students were pussies – at least until the big riot. Now, she wished for something more lethal, but her superiors had refused to authorise it. The beancounters always took years to authorise new equipment, particularly equipment that required vast amounts of paperwork.

  The apartment block seemed to have attracted attention from the Civil Guard as well as the university cops. Four Civil Guardsman, wearing armour that could only make Judy fume with envy, were standing outside, talking rapidly with two university cops. Judy slowed as she approached them, blinking in surprise as a second aircar with seven more Civil Guardsmen dropped out of the sky and landed beside the apartment block.

  “A Civil Guard snatch squad went inside the building,” one of the university cops explained. “Forty minutes later, there was an emergency transmission – and then nothing.”

  Judy blinked in surprise. What could have happened to the squad? Maybe it was a drill ... no, with so much tension on the streets, no one would consider holding a drill. But what else could it be? One Civil Guardsman might be overwhelmed by a bunch of student pussies, but an entire snatch squad? She listened to the rest of the details and shook her head in disbelief. Two girls had overcome an entire squad? That only happened in bad entertainment flicks.

  “We’re going to move in once the building is secure,” a Civil Guardsman called. He appeared to be the highest-ranking officer in the vicinity. “The Civil Guard will take the lead; university cops will back us up.”

  Judy felt a flicker of annoyance at the calm dismissal in his voice, before deciding that it was probably for the best. The Civil Guard would take the blame for any screw-ups if they happened to be in command – and besides, if the snatch squad had run into something it couldn't handle, the Civil Guard was better armed and armoured than the university cops.

  It took nearly thirty minutes before the Guard was ready to move into the building. Judy would have preferred to go in at once – it was the quickest way to stop trouble from getting worse – but the Guardsmen seemed to disagree. Anything that could stop an entire snatch squad had to be dangerous. She followed the Guardsmen into the reception hall and stopped in surprise. Normally, the reception halls were crammed with students chatting to their friends or catcalling down from the balconies, but this hall was as dark and silent as the grave. The doorman – a student who made a little extra cash by pretending to be a security guard – was nowhere to be seen.

  “We’ll take the stairs,” the Civil Guard CO muttered. The Guardsmen advanced towards the double doors that permitted entrance to the stairwell, clutching their weapons nervously. “And then ...”

  Debris started to rain down on them. Judy had barely a moment to realise that the students had concealed themselves on the balcony before a piece of falling rock slammed into her arm. She staggered under the impact, silently grateful for the protection woven into her uniform. It was all that had saved her arm from breaking. The Civil Guardsmen lifted their weapons, just in time to be hit by a wave of bottles from high overhead. A moment later, a powerful stench assailed them and sent the Guardsmen stumbling backwards. Gas! The students had made gas! Other bottles released multicoloured smoke that suddenly made it very hard to see properly.

  The Civil Guardsmen started to open fire, before their CO bellowed for them to hold fire and get back out of the building. Judy, her arm aching, was only too glad to obey. A handful of Guardsmen had been badly injured, desperate their armour, and had to be dragged out by their comrades. Thankfully, the students didn't bother to harass them as they retreated, although Judy wasn't sure if that was a deliberate decision or sheer luck. Maybe whoever was in charge of the students knew that giving chase would expose them to the men outside the building.

  Her wristcom had been smashed, but she heard emergency reports echoing through the wristcoms worn by the other cops. The entire campus seemed to have gone crazy. Mobs of students were pouring out of their apartment blocks and heading for the main buildings, as if they intended to capture or destroy them. She heard the sounds of more rioting in the distance as the Civil Guardsmen attempted to reorganise themselves. In all of her career, she’d never heard the campus sound so ... aggressive.

  And then she turned and saw another mass of students pouring out of a nearby building ...

  No, there were other students pouring out of other buildings. She glanced from side to side, realising that both cops and Guardsmen were doing the same ... they were trapped, with an angry mob on all sides. The Guardsmen had their aircars, but Judy knew with a sickening certainty that they wouldn't be able to get off the ground and into the air on time. She saw the faces of the students as they came closer and realised that they were no longer pussies. The Civil Guardsmen might shoot hundreds of them, but there were thousands waiting to join the attack.

  “Throw down your weapons,” a voice bellowed, from behind them. She turned to see a student standing in the doorway, the same doorway that they’d just been thrown out of. He had to be a leader. “Throw down your weapons or die.”

  Judy hesitated, then obeyed. She hadn't been trained to fight – and she wasn't paid enough to face an angry mob. The Civil Guardsmen followed suit, many of them looking completely terrified. They’d been quite happy to push unarmed civilians around, but when they were challenged ... she winced as strong arms grabbed her and removed everything she’d been carrying, before securing her hands with a long roll of duct tape. The others were getting the same treatment before they were hauled into the apartment block.

  Dear God, she thought, stunned. Everything had just turned upside down so quickly. What now?

  ***

  Her first thought when she woke up was that the whole affair had been a nightmare caused by eating too many algae bars. Some of the foodstuffs she’d tried at university had given her bad dreams and tummy upsets; she’d never heard of anyone ever suffering after eating an algae bar, but there had to be a first time. But her wrists hurt and her bed felt odd and ...

  Jacqueline opened her eyes. She was lying on a strange bed, in a strange room, wearing her nightgown. There were nasty marks on her wrists and odd bruises on the rest of her body. She realised, to her horror, that the dream hadn't been a dream at all. They’d come for her, arrested her, and then ...

  Her memory failed her.

&nbs
p; “Hey,” an unfamiliar voice said. “You’re awake!”

  Jacqueline turned her head and saw a dark-skinned girl looking down at her, wearing a white shirt and shorts. “I’m Jo,” the girl said, by way of introduction. “How are you feeling?”

  “Headachy,” Jacqueline said, truthfully. “What ... what happened?”

  “We attacked the Civil Guardsmen who arrested you,” Jo said. “How could you be so stupid as to be caught with a forbidden book?”

  “It isn't mine,” Jacqueline admitted. If they’d attacked the Civil Guard ... she couldn’t feel sorry for the Guardsmen, but what was she going to do now? There was no way she could go back home and vanish, not on Earth. Perhaps she should just walk into the indenturing office and surrender herself. It would certainly save time. “What’s happening outside?”

  “Everyone seems to know, apart from you,” Jo said. She smiled, reducing the sting in her words. “We’ve taken the campus!”

  Jacqueline blinked. “Taken the campus?”

  “Occupied the university,” Jo explained. “And we have some hostages too. This time, they will have to listen to our demands.”

  Jacqueline shook her head slowly, feeling the ache growing stronger. She’d once thought that the universe was fair, but that had been before the riot – and before she’d been arrested. God alone knew what would have happened to her at the station. Now ... she was a wanted fugitive – and the Civil Guardsmen always got their man. It was the plot of a thousand entertainment flicks. What the hell could she do now?

  She looked down at her wrists again and shuddered. How could she escape?

  And it hadn't even been her fault!

  “Brent would like you to tell the world about your experience,” Jo said, as she passed Jacqueline a glass of water. “They all have to know what happened to you.”

  “Ok,” Jacqueline said, finally. What else could she do? She wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. All she could do was follow Jo and Brent, whoever they were, until the end. “I’ll do my best.”

  “That’s all we ask for, darling,” Jo assured her. At least she sounded more comforting than the tutors. “That’s all that anyone can do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Grand Senator Stephen Onge was one of the Senators who was caught between two very different positions. His solution was to attempt to speed up the Empire’s collapse, hoping that he could use the first upswings of violence to declare a state of emergency and put himself (and his allies) into a position of supreme power. In effect, they would not attempt to enlarge the Empire’s pie, but snatch it all for themselves. The first step in the plan was to covertly create a terrorist group that answered to him personally. That group would take steps that would create the chaos he needed for his plan to succeed.

  -Professor Leo Caesius, The End of Empire

  Roland came at Belinda, fist outstretched. Belinda stepped to one side and stuck out a foot. The Prince tripped over her and fell headfirst onto the mat.

  “You’re coming at me too blatantly,” she said. It had been years since she'd been in Boot Camp, but she’d done better than that. But then, her father had been a firm believer in the school of hard knocks. “And you're over-committing yourself.”

  She watched as Roland slowly climbed back to his feet. The Prince was angry; not at her, but at the Grand Senate. His insistence on thinking about the marriage proposal hadn’t prevented the Grand Senate from making it official, telling the Empire that Prince Roland would marry Lady Lily Sapphire. It hadn't taken too long for the media to turn a blatant act of political opportunism into a romantic saga to thrill every heart, male and female alike. By now, the entire world believed that Roland had fallen in love with Lily after meeting her eyes across a crowded room. The fact that Roland rarely attended functions hosted by the Grand Senate families had somehow passed them by.

  “I want to hurt someone,” Roland said, angrily. “Why ...?”

  “Anger is a poor servant and a terrible master,” Belinda said. She’d been taught to push all emotion aside to focus on her appointed task, whatever it was. Anger could come later. But Roland had never been taught the self-discipline he needed to keep himself under control. “You won’t be able to think of anything while you’re fuming.”

  She sighed, inwardly. Roland hadn't been able to sleep properly; eventually, he climbed out of bed and demanded that they go to the mat. If he’d been an experienced Marine, it might have been an interesting challenge; as it was, she had to work hard to stay just ahead of his level of development. Roland wouldn't learn anything if she beat the crap out of him every time. The Drill Instructors, she had decided, were underpaid. Whatever the Corps paid them was too little.

  “They just want me as their puppet,” Roland said, tartly. “They have even denied me the right to choose the mother of my children. Why should I not be angry?”

  “You need to put the anger aside,” Belinda said, patiently. “If you’re mad at the world, you won’t be able to think clearly.”

  Roland scowled as he rubbed his chin. “Fine,” he said, grudgingly. “Did your friends find out anything useful?”

  Belinda shrugged. She hadn't been able to pull much about Lily Sapphire out of the datanet, so she’d forwarded the question to Marine Intelligence. Colonel Chung Myung-Hee, who had extensive files on every member of the high-ranking families, had filled in the details for Belinda. The files hadn't been very encouraging.

  Grand Senator Onge didn’t have any direct family tie to the girl, at least not without going back at least seven generations. However, he did have strong financial ties to the girl’s parents, as did several other Grand Senators who might be in his camp. In fact, two of them were serving on the Emergency Committee. It was impossible to escape the impression that Lily would be the Grand Senator’s puppet, influencing and controlling her husband – at the very least, she’d certainly be spying on him.

  Belinda couldn't blame Roland for being angry. She’d considered the matter carefully and hadn't been able to find any way to get the Prince out of the arrange marriage. If Roland said no, the Grand Senate would blame him for refusing to marry Lily – which would be a public relations disaster. Marine Intelligence had warned that Roland was taking the blame for many of the emergency measures instituted by the Emergency Committee; what would happen, she wondered, if the public felt that they had been denied a Royal Wedding?

  Cold logic suggested that a wedding would do nothing to improve the state of the Empire – and would almost certainly make it worse – but cold logic wasn't involved.

  Maybe Lily wouldn't be that bad, she thought, before deciding that wasn't likely to be true. Even if she had been the sweetest person in the world, she would still have been forced into a man’s bed – and Roland would feel much the same way. Maybe they’d couple long enough to produce children – there were fertility treatments that would guarantee successful contraception – and then have nothing more to do with one another. The Imperial Palace was large enough to allow them never to see one another again, if they didn’t want to. It would be a very unhappy marriage.

  Belinda had never really given much thought to her own marriage. Marines were not allowed to date within the ranks and she had very little in common with non-Marines. Besides, her work kept her busy and her enhancement ensured that she wasn't under any time limit. She’d always planned to marry and have children, perhaps after she retired, but she’d always envisaged choosing her own man. The thought of having a man chosen for her was horrific.

  But you are stronger and nastier than most men, Pug’s voice seemed to say in her head. He'd always been the joker in the unit. Who would feel safe being forced into marriage with you?

  Dickhead, Belinda thought.

  Her implants sounded the alert before she could say anything. “You have a call from the Grand Senator,” she said, reluctantly. She knew that it would only upset the Prince. “He wants to talk to you.”

  Roland pulled his dressing gown on, covering his s
horts and sweat-stained shirt. “He probably thought he was going to wake me,” he muttered. “I’ll try to look thick-headed and see what he has to say.”

  Unsurprisingly, Roland’s communications room included the very latest in holographic display technology. Belinda, who knew that such equipment was desperately needed on the front lines, hadn't been too impressed when she’d seen it, although Roland had admitted that there were some special functions that weren't generally included in military equipment. One of them allowed the user to magnify specific parts of the incoming image to hilarious results.

  Roland sat down in front of the console, checked to make sure that Belinda was out of the sensor’s reach and tapped a key. The Grand Senator’s face appeared in front of them. He looked surprisingly tired, as if he’d been woken up early himself. That was ... odd.

  “Your Highness,” the Grand Senator said. “There has been a ... development at Imperial University.”

  “Oh,” Roland said. He studied the Grand Senator for a long moment. “What sort of development?”

  “A student uprising,” the Grand Senator said. “The Civil Guard has been driven out of Imperial University. Hostages have been taken.”

  Belinda blinked in surprise, then accessed her implants. The Marine network had been crippled by the departure of most of the HQ Staff, but the channels she had access to as Roland’s liegeman confirmed the Grand Senator’s words. Mobs of students had seized Imperial University, driven out the tutors ... and taken hostages. Upwards of seventy law enforcement personnel seemed to be hostages. How the hell had it happened so quickly?

  Planned in advance, the cynical side of her mind suggested.

  She skimmed through the details, cursing the officers who seemed to speak in riddles rather than admit that they didn't know. A snatch squad had vanished, student rioters had attacked a back-up force ... and Civil Guardsmen had been attacked all over the campus. It certainly looked as if someone had planned it all in advance, although there were curiously few weapons. But that wouldn't be a problem now that the Civil Guard had been overcome. Their weapons security was non-existent.