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

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Your next client will be here in an hour,” he said, as he let go of her legs and dropped something onto the bed. “Clean yourself up, put on a grown and be ready for him. He won’t want to wait for you.”

  Bella watched as he stalked out of the room, then reached for the item he’d dropped on the bed. A ration bar, newly produced; she shocked herself by how quickly she tore at the packet and exposed the brown-coloured bar inside. It smelt faintly unpleasant, but she ignored it. Surprisingly, the taste was better than usual. But almost anything would have been better than usual.

  Moving carefully, she pulled herself to her feet. The back of her legs hurt where he’d slapped her; her chest hurt from where her last client had poked her when she didn't do as he wanted fast enough. It blurred into the aches and pains that affected her every day, the legacy of countless brutal couplings ... she was seventeen and she already knew that she was not going to reach eighteen. And even if she did, what of it? She would still be trapped, still be a whore ... where could she go?

  Ravi had placed a mirror in the bathroom; she stood in front of it and stared at herself. He was right; she did look a mess. Her straggly hair – Ravi refused to allow her to cut it – hung down past her ass, while her bones showed up clearly against her skin. She had a feeling that she was actually too thin, that the pains she felt might be more than just the result of nasty clients and her pimp, but what could she do? Her eyes were pale and worn.

  She should get ready for her client, she knew, but it seemed too much effort. Instead, she just collapsed on the floor and lay there.

  The stomach pains started moments later.

  ***

  Everyone who thought of the Undercity – at least everyone who happened to live in the Inner City – thought of it as dark and grimy. And, Dennis, would have happily conceded, there were plenty of parts of it that were dark and grimy. But it wasn't all like that, particularly for those with power.

  Dennis had started young; when he’d been seven, he’d started running errands for the gang lords in the massive CityBlock. It had taught him the true nature of power – and just how far one could go, if one had the power and the will to use it. By seventeen, he had wormed his way into a minor gang lord’s good graces and served as his personal enforcer. It had only taken him two years to learn everything he could from his master and then kill him. After that ...

  There was no shortage of people in the upper reaches of the city – and the entire planet – who wanted something from the Undercity. Instead of fighting other gang lords to carve out territory, Dennis had inched his way upwards, forming links with others in the upper levels. By the time his rivals had realised that he was more powerful than them, it had already been too late. Their enforcers had been exiled to the colonies, the gang lords had been killed and their daughters had become his slaves. Admittedly, the girls were so dosed up on Sparkle Dust that they would obey anyone who gave them orders, but nothing was perfect. It wasn't a bad achievement for the son of a whore.

  Still, his little empire needed maintenance. And something very worrying was going on.

  “Ninety-seven of our people have died, my lord,” Rufus said. “Nineteen of them were Ravi’s whores. The others were small fry; rat-runners and dogsbodies, mainly. It appears to be poison.”

  Dennis frowned. There was never any shortage of whores, or young boys ready to indenture themselves to the all-powerful gangs, but still ... losing so many of them was annoying. Ravi specialised in squeezing the last few credits out of whores shambling towards their deathbeds; his losses would affect his position within the gang. He might even do something stupid to his fellow gangsters, convinced that one of them had poisoned his bitches. Dennis wouldn't have cared – he encouraged a certain amount of infighting – but if it wasn’t one of the others, he needed his gang reasonably united.

  And the fact that others had died suggested that it was no simple poisoning.

  “Have Doctor Stockwell take a look at the bodies,” he ordered, finally. The good Doctor had been lucky to escape to the Undercity when the Civil Guard had come looking for him. If Dennis had been a more moral man, he might just have executed the Doctor himself and saved the government the trouble. As it was, a man with the Doctor’s weaknesses – and his desires – could be useful. “And then let me know what he has to say.”

  He considered the problem briefly. Poison had never been his weapon of choice – it was much more impressive to kill one’s with bare hands – but he had used it on a few of his victims, when naked force wasn't necessary. Simple logic pointed out that anyone who died of poison had to have drunk it – and someone who didn't die hadn't actually drunk it. There were poisons that could be tailored to one person, or rendered harmless by a previously-taken antidote, but it seemed unlikely that anyone would go to all that trouble and expense to kill a few whores.

  And if it was poison, what had all the victims had in common? It wasn't as if they had all shared a single drinking fountain or something else that would be instantly recognisable.

  Shaking his head, he tapped the bell and called his secretary. When he arrived, Dennis issued orders; the enforcers were to investigate all of the poisonings thoroughly. He’d spent enough time explaining the importance of intelligence to them that it had become thoroughly stuck in their heads. Given enough of it, Dennis might just be able to figure out who had attacked his gang ...

  ... And then he could make them pay.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  It should not have been surprising that the first major disaster – the first one that affected a significant percentage of Earth’s vast population – involved algae. Even before the fall of Orbit Station Seven, the algae vats had been starting to break down through lack of maintenance. When the Grand Senate insisted that production levels be massively increased, the result was a series of minor failures that added up to a major disaster.

  -Professor Leo Caesius, The End of Empire

  The compensator field held just long enough to save their lives.

  Belinda hung on for dear life as the shuttle crashed through a rooftop and into the darkness, silently relieved that the shuttle was so heavily armoured. Roland let out a yelp as there was a final series of crashes, followed by absolute silence. The shuttle’s power died seconds later, plunging them into darkness. Belinda unstrapped herself from the pilot’s chair and stood up, her eyes adapting instantly to the gloom. God alone knew where they were, but they couldn't stay there. The enemy would be coming after them.

  Roland looked scratched and bruised, but largely intact. Belinda grinned at him – his eyes might not have any augments, but his enhanced eyesight would adapt reasonably quickly - and inspected the shuttle’s hull. They’d come down hard; the shuttle would never fly again, even though it had saved their lives. She tried to ping the shuttle’s processor with her implants, but there was no response. The hulk was completely powerless. A quick check revealed that there were no other processor nodes within range. She couldn't even reach the Marine network.

  She glanced over as Roland stood up. The Prince looked oddly excited, the same sort of excitement that Belinda had felt after completing her first mission after graduation. He looked a little unsteady too – the shuttle’s deck was tilted, making it harder for him to find his footing – but otherwise he looked intact. They’d been luckier, Belinda decided, than they deserved. But if the Grand Senator had been willing to use force to capture or kill the Crown Prince, it was unlikely that they would have been left alone in the Summer Palace for much longer.

  Roland found his voice. “Where are we?”

  “The Undercity,” Belinda said. She accessed her implants and reviewed their records, but it wasn't as hopeful as she’d hoped. The desperate flight had taken them closer to the Arena, yet they were still at least fifty miles away – and they’d crashed into the Undercity. There were no proper maps of the Undercity in existence. “Finding our way out might be tricky.”

  That, she told herself, was definitely an
understatement. The Undercity was nightmarish; massive city blocks piled on city blocks, entire communities buried so far underground that they never saw the light. There were all sorts of horror stories about strange creatures running through the very lowest levels, each one a reflection of the unknown. Far too much of humanity’s history had simply been buried under the endless city blocks. Even if they got back up to the light, they were still going to be in deep trouble. It wasn't as if they could call for help.

  “Tricky,” Roland repeated. He probably knew enough to be concerned. “Can they find us down here?”

  Belinda considered it as she found the emergency packs and tossed one of them to Roland, then stripped down one of the bodies for the armour. “I don't know,” she admitted, finally. The enemy shuttles would have tracked their fall, surely, but sending troops into the Undercity would be difficult. They’d have to be prepared to fight the locals as well as operating in a strange environment. “We can’t stay here.”

  She passed the bloodstained armour to Roland, then checked for any other supplies while the Prince reluctantly donned the armour. Marines tended to be a little superstitious about using equipment that belonged to the dead, but Civil Guardsmen weren't given a choice. Their budgets just weren't large enough to provide new equipment for every recruit. Roland couldn't be given a choice either. Her mission was still to protect him, even if it had suddenly become a whole lot harder.

  Once the Prince was armed and armoured, Belinda inspected the airlock. The power cells had failed, forcing her to crank it open manually. At least it was possible to open it by hand, she told herself; there were civilian designs that turned into inescapable traps when the power failed. There was a brief hiss of air as the airlock opened, allowing the Undercity atmosphere to seep into the shuttle. Belinda couldn't help recoiling at the stench.

  Roland gagged and swallowed hard, trying to keep from vomiting. “You said people live here,” he said, his face green. “How is that even possible?”

  “You can get used to anything, if you endure it long enough,” Belinda said. Even without any enhancement, Roland would adapt to the stench if he stayed there for hours and stop noticing it. “Stay here.”

  Belinda slipped out of the shuttle and looked around. They had crashed through a concrete roof and fallen into a strange building, illuminated only by a faint glow from high overhead. There were no sign of any humans, but she could see bats and spiders lurking in the shadows, daring her to come closer. She looked at a network of tubes and half-filled vats in the shadows and decided that she was looking at a production plant of some kind. The dust lay so thick that it might be completely impossible to remove. She shook her head in silent awe. The chamber had to have been disused and deserted for hundreds of years. By now, it had developed its own ecology.

  She closed her eyes and pushed her augmentations to the limit, trying to pull what information she could from her surroundings. There was a faint buzzing sound in the distance, reminding her of the insects that had infested parts of the Slaughterhouse, the noises they made blurring into one ever-present drone. Maybe it was insects, she decided, as red alerts flashed up in front of her retina. The environment was contaminated, they warned, but her implants hadn't been able to identify the contaminant. Something in the air ...

  “Get a facemask,” she ordered, as she opened her eyes. They’d have to wear them – and pray that between the masks and their enhancements, they would be able to cope with whatever was in the air. Thankfully, it didn't appear to be radioactive. “And then we’d better start walking.”

  Roland still looked green as he clambered out of the shuttle. “What’s causing the light?”

  Belinda frowned. “Lichen, I think,” she said. “It thrives everywhere.”

  The breed had been genetically engineered to provide natural lighting; she vaguely remembered something about a religion that had believed in abandoning technology and returning to the basics of life. They’d bred a number of useful plants to help create their utopia; the fact that they’d needed technology to do that had evidently escaped them. Most of their worlds had fallen from the path within three hundred years, as the children of the believers started to ask just why their parents had abandoned technology in the first place. At least one of them had fallen down into civil war.

  She pushed the thought aside as she started to walk away from the shuttle. “Time to start walking,” she said, dryly. “There’s a long way to go.”

  Roland blinked at her. “You know the way?”

  “No,” Belinda admitted. She’d hoped he wouldn't ask that question, but he was smarter than most people had realised. “All we can really do is keep heading upwards.”

  The darkness closed in around them as they found a passageway leading out of the vast chamber and walked up it. Belinda hadn't known that Roland was claustrophobic, although it wasn't something that was likely to be obvious in the Summer Palace. Or maybe it was just nerves. At Boot Camp, recruits had had to find their way through tunnel systems – and several had simply refused to enter, unable to face the thought of crawling through the tunnels. Belinda had had problems coping at first. The vast open spaces of her homeworld hadn't prepared her for the tunnels.

  “Damn it,” Roland breathed, as a small swarm of spiders rushed past them. “Do you think they’re poisonous?”

  “You should be safe,” Belinda assured him. Roland’s ancestors had spliced all kinds of protections into their genes, according to the files. It would take a very strong poison to discomfit him. “And yes, they probably are poisonous.”

  And they didn't show any fear of humans, she noted. On her homeworld, animals that lived near human settlements kept their distance; they’d learned just what humans could do with the power of the gun. The ones who lived on the untouched continent didn't flee when they sensed humans approaching. It suggested that there were few humans still living so far underground.

  Or that they’re not the dominant life form, Belinda thought. She kept that thought to herself. There were researchers who had proposed uplifting animal life forms to sentience, but the Empire had always banned the practice. And yet there were always rumours from the Rim and the hidden colony worlds beyond. Who knew what would happen if the Empire’s authority collapsed completely?

  They stopped as they saw a metal plaque pushed against one wall. It was rusty, but Belinda managed to pick out a handful of words. DEPT ... TRAVEL ... ROGERS. She puzzled over them for a long moment before deciding that the mystery was probably insolvable – and besides, it didn't matter. Knowing what the building had once been wouldn't help them now.

  The walls seemed to change as they stepped through a door, heading upwards. Belinda had a feeling that they’d moved out of one building and into another, although it was difficult to be sure. The oldest parts of the city had been buried under the newest parts, after all. She couldn't help wondering just what that meant for the city’s structural integrity; if the cityblocks had been built on older buildings, did that mean that their foundations were unstable? Just for a moment, she wished for an Engineer, even one from the Civil Guard. He might be able to answer her question.

  Cityblocks were built out of Reardon Cement and Hullmetal, if she recalled correctly. Both materials were tough; Reardon Cement had been known to withstand and redirect nuclear blasts in the past, during humanity’s nastier wars. But what would happen if their foundations collapsed? Belinda had a vision of entire cityblocks falling, the shock shattering parts of their internal integrity ... she pushed the thought aside, grimly. If the city decided to collapse on them, they would die before they knew what had hit them.

  They rested, long enough for Roland to catch his breath, and then continued upwards. Most of the spiders and insects appeared to have vanished, although there were traces that suggested the presence of larger animals. She caught sight of a cockroach and rolled her eyes inwardly; cockroaches, rats and rabbits were epidemic on almost every world humanity had colonised, defying every attempt man had made t
o eradicate them. Even asteroid colonies had problems with unwelcome residents. She said as much to Roland, who wondered if the Undercity dwellers were actually farming them. It definitely seemed possible.

  She froze as she heard a moan in the distance. Her audio-discrimination program, operating at the very limits of its capabilities, insisted that it was a human sound. Belinda exchanged a long glance with Roland, then headed towards the source of the sound, every sense alert for signs of an ambush. Using distress calls to suck people in was a favourite terrorist trick.

  Her implants reported trace elements of several illegal drugs hanging in the air as she moved forward, enough to disorientate anyone who didn't have enhancements designed to cope with it. Belinda ignored it as they peered around a corner and saw a long room, illuminated only by more of the eerie lichen. Inside, several men and women lay on the ground, one of them groaning constantly. The others appeared to be dead, their bodies still cooling. Whatever had killed them had done so very recently.

  “Stay here,” Belinda hissed. Drug addicts had been known to accidentally overdose themselves and die, but she doubted that so many of them would do it at the same time. “And watch your back.”

  The groaning form was a woman, she realised, as she knelt down beside her. It was hard to be sure; what little she could see of the woman’s body suggested that she was almost inhumanly thin, so thin that her breasts were practically non-existent. One hand was clutching her stomach, as if she was trying to beat pain out of it; the other was torn and broken. Belinda touched the woman lightly on the forehead and felt her flinch back in shock. A moment later, there was a final convulsive shudder and she died.

  Roland stepped over to where he could peer down at the body. “What happened to her?”

  “I thought I told you to stay there,” Belinda snapped at him. “And I don't know what killed her.”