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

by Christopher Nuttall

  “I can't,” the bureaucrat protested. “I ...”

  John pulled his pistol out of the holster and held it against the bureaucrat’s head. “Open the bar and take a bite,” he said, coldly. “Or die.”

  The bureaucrat started to splutter, a splutter that died away as John met his eyes, trying to convey an absolute certainty that he would shoot, if the bureaucrat failed to obey. Reluctantly, the little man’s fingers went to work, tearing open the bar and exposing the brown mass inside. Normal ration bars lasted for years, but John had been careful to ensure that the bureaucrat tested one of the new ones. The smell wasn't as bad as he’d expected, yet it shouldn't have been there at all.

  “Poison,” one of his men said.

  The bureaucrat stared in horror at him, suddenly aware of his own vulnerability. He’d lorded it over the enlisted men ever since he'd joined Logistics; like the rest of his kind, he’d forced the officers to fill out endless realms of paperwork and hampered training by refusing to issue ammunition and equipment in sufficient quantities. Now, all of the bonds that had held the Civil Guard together were gone ...

  John looked him in the eye, smiled once – and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  No one had known what would happen if Earth’s population rose up in a body, but the Grand Senate had always been worried about the possibility. Now, faced with that fear becoming reality, the Emergency Committee attempted to lock the planet down hard. It was already too late. The students at the university had become irreverent.

  -Professor Leo Caesius, The End of Empire

  Admiral Valentine looked worried. In fact, the malicious part of Stephen’s mind noted, he looked like a man who was afraid that he was going to be blamed for something.

  “The Civil Guard is revolting,” he said, quickly. “We’ve lost control of a dozen units so far!”

  Stephen stared at him. “Start at the beginning,” he ordered, finally. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  “The Guardsmen were listening to the broadcast from Truth News,” Valentine admitted. “They heard about the ration bars – some of them had even seen people who had ate the damned things. Some of them saw the ration bars they’d been issued and thought that they’d die if they ate them. So they demanded that the logistics officers nibble them first ...”

  He caught himself. “Right now, roughly nine thousand men are openly mutinous and plenty of others are leaning that way,” he added. “The barricade around Imperial University has been effectively broken; mutinous Civil Guardsmen and students are fraternising openly. A number of officers had been shot for daring to restrain their men; hell, junior officers have actually joined the mutiny. This is disastrous!”

  For once, Stephen considered, the Admiral might actually have a point. Normally, Civil Guard units were kept under tight control – and they still sometimes mutinied. When that happened, the Army or the Marines had to be called in to crush the mutiny. Now, however, there were no Marines left on Earth and most of the Imperial Army would be in a similar state. The contaminated ration bars had undermined the entire establishment.

  “Most of the ... ah, special forces are still loyal; we supplied their rations from out-system,” the Admiral said. “But the Civil Guard can no longer be considered reliable. And enough of the officers have mutinied to make it quite likely that others will follow.”

  Stephen rubbed his forehead. The Civil Guardsmen received very limited training, certainly nothing as rounded as soldiers or the Marines. Even their officers were carefully focused on the tactical part of their jobs; they were never expected to serve as strategic planners or overall commanders. If multiple units were involved, an army officer would take command. In theory, a unit that mutinied could be isolated very quickly – and without control over its own logistics, would rapidly grind to a halt.

  But if so many units had mutinied on Earth, they were very close to the supply depots ... and, for that matter, Senate Hall. What would happen if they decided to march there, or on the Imperial Palace? If they believed that they had been poisoned, either through deliberate malice or simple bureaucratic carelessness, why not? What did they have to lose?

  Silently, Stephen cursed the bureaucrats under his breath. If someone had had the wit to halt deliveries, they might have been able to nip this fresh crisis in the bud. Instead, the contaminated bars had been distributed to the public ... and, just to complicate matters, it had taken hours for the bureaucrats to put the information together and realise the true scale of the crisis. Each CityBlock had a medical centre, but the doctors hadn't reported the problem at first, unaware that it was more serious than it seemed. By the time word had finally reached the Emergency Committee, millions of people were seriously ill – or dead.

  We should make an example out of everyone in that damned plant, he thought, coldly. It would have to be something more dramatic than a public execution. Maybe they could be shoved out onto the Arena sands and fed to the man-eating monsters the staff had been saving for Roland’s coronation. But they needed those workers to produce more algae bars ... they couldn't be killed, simply because there were no replacements. He’d just have to kill the bureaucrats instead.

  “Very well,” he said, finally. “Is there anything we can do about the mutinous units?”

  “Not ... quickly,” Valentine said. “With all due respect, Grand Senator ...”

  “Spit it out,” Stephen growled.

  “The problems are not limited to the Imperial University or the Civil Guard,” Valentine said. “A vast number of workers have simply not come into work. That damned broadcast was only allowed to go on as long as it did because the censor was absent, for example, but he wasn't the only one. The orbital towers are reporting that vast numbers of workers have not shown up for duty.”

  Stephen scowled. What was the problem with just spitting out the news? “Yeah, so?”

  “So bringing additional units from the Imperial Army – or the Mars Civil Guard – to Earth is going to be tricky,” Valentine said. “We simply don’t have that many spacecraft capable of landing on Earth; we rely on the orbital towers if we need to move large amounts of men and equipment. Even if we commandeered every shuttle in the solar system, our logistics would still be very bad.”

  Stephen stared at him. Was Valentine trying to hide his own incompetence? “I happen to know,” he said tightly, “that entire occupation forces have been landed on hostile worlds before.”

  “Yes, they have,” Valentine agreed. “But the shuttles and heavy landing pods we use for that are not based on Earth. It was simply never anticipated that we might have to land troops on Earth – and if we did have to reinforce the Civil Guard, we would simply use the orbital towers. Now, however, the towers are going to be operating a reduced service for the foreseeable future.”

  “So get those landing craft back to Earth,” Stephen snapped.

  “I had my staff look at it,” Valentine said. “It would take upwards of two months to get the craft here – and that assumes that everything went perfectly, which it wouldn't. My staff figured that three months would be a more likely estimate. The best option would be to try to get one of the orbital towers back to full functionality and then ship the troops down via the tower.”

  Stephen looked down at the table. He’d never really considered the effects of absenteeism before, if only because he was careful to pay his retainers and private army enough to make them loyal to him – and to put their families on his client worlds, rather than a place as unsafe as Earth. But if it took ten workers to make something work – and five of them stopped working – that something would stop working with them. And that meant ...

  The orbital towers were no longer functioning properly. That meant that shipments of foodstuffs from out-systems were going to be delayed, which meant in turn that many of those shipments were simply going to perish before they could reach their intended recipients. And supplies of HE3 and other vital tech components to keep Earth going would
also be delayed, which meant that the planet’s infrastructure would start failing.

  And what if the power technicians walked off the job? Earth depended on the fusion power plants that produced the planet’s power supply; if they stopped working, either through a shortfall of fuel or simple absenteeism, large parts of the planet would simply be plunged into darkness. Stephen had a nightmarish vision of entire cityblocks dying as the air circulation and filtration systems failed for want of power. Or, even if the emergency systems held true, the population panicking and tearing itself apart.

  For want of a nail, he thought. The Commandant had been fond of quoting that rhyme, but Stephen had never truly understood it until now. For want of a nail, a shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, a horse was lost; for want of a horse, a message was lost; for want of a message, a battle was lost; for want of a battle, a campaign was lost; for want of a campaign, a war was lost; for want of a war, a kingdom was lost ...

  ...Or an Empire, he added silently.

  “There is one option,” Admiral Valentine pointed out, reluctantly. “You could order KEW strikes on Imperial University.”

  Stephen considered it for a long moment before shaking his head. “It would only make the whole situation worse,” he said. “Besides, using KEWs in Imperial City would send the wrong message.”

  He looked down at his hands, then back up at the Admiral. “Start making preparations to transfer as many troops as you can to Earth,” he ordered. “I don’t care how you do it, just do it. And make damn sure that those troops draw their rations from Luna or Mars. We don’t want them fed contaminated bars too.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Admiral said. “May I make a suggestion?”

  Stephen would have preferred not to hear the Admiral’s voice any longer, but he nodded reluctantly. “There are far too many people skiving off their jobs,” the Admiral said. “Perhaps you could offer to forgive them if they return to work tomorrow – one of your PR officials could make it sound good. There are simply too many people involved to punish as they deserve.”

  That was a good suggestion, Stephen decided. Far too good to have come from the Butcher of Han. One of his subordinates was clearly a more original thinker than Valentine could ever hope to be. Maybe he should identify the young officer and have him promoted. He could hardly do a worse job. Besides, he admitted to himself, part of the reason the crisis had exploded so badly was that loyalists had been promoted over the heads of more competent officials.

  Still, it wouldn't be entirely his decision.

  “I’ll bring it up with the Emergency Committee,” he said. The Committee would have to take immediate steps to maintain their power, if only because it wouldn't be too long before the rest of the Grand Senate started pushing against them. “Just get as many troops as you can to Earth.”

  ***

  Jacqueline rubbed her eyes as dusk fell over Imperial City. It had been a long, crazy day; first, she’d been arrested, then freed ... and then she’d found herself the mouthpiece of the student rebellion. She'd told her story time and time again, ensuring that the entire university knew what had happened to her. The students who enjoyed trying to hack the datanet had even managed to get a recorded version of her interview out to the wider world, even through the security officers kept trying to wipe it. She’d done her best to forget that they were surrounded by the Civil Guard and effectively trapped. A handful of students had fled the university since the uprising began, but it hadn't been long before anyone leaving the campus was immediately arrested. No one knew what had happened to them since then.

  Probably nothing good, she thought, as she flipped through the pages of Amethyst’s book. She’d known that her friend had had it; why hadn't she read it before? It was a eye-opener; they’d never truly realised just how carefully the truth was hidden from them until someone had pointed it out. Other copies were floating around the campus, with several students actually reading them to their fellows. No tutor had ever enjoyed such an attentive audience.

  It was the Civil Guard that had been the big surprise. Jacqueline had never given them much thought until a snatch squad had tried to arrest her. After that, she’d been scared of them ... and astonished when some of them actually came over to the students. Who would have expected the Grand Senate to feed its own soldiers poisoned ration bars? Maybe it had been an accident, but very few people believed it. The Grand Senate was capable of anything.

  “Jacqueline,” Laura called. “The media just announced that there is going to be a world-wide announcement from the Emergency Committee in twenty minutes. Come and see it.”

  Jacqueline sighed, marked her place in the book and stood up. Ever since Dillon-Dillon had been knocked off the air, the media had been more circumspect and bland than usual – and quite a few channels had disappeared altogether. Thankfully, the censors were having problems removing the recordings of the broadcast from the datanet. It did have the correct authorisation codes for universal distribution, after all. Not that it really mattered any longer; rumours, each one crazier than the last, were spreading at terrifying speed. There were so many dead that the Grand Senate could not hope to hide the scale of the crisis.

  The office had once belonged to the University’s Grandmaster, a political appointee who – as far as Jacqueline had been able to tell – had done nothing beyond collecting a hefty paycheck and signing expulsion orders for students who went too far. It was grand, far larger than the apartment she’d shared with her parents and siblings, decorated in a style that suggested that the Grandmaster had had no sense of taste. No one knew what had happened to him; the general conclusion was that he’d fled Earth after the unauthorised protest march, if only to escape the wrath of his political masters. They’d put him in his position to control the students and he'd failed spectacularly. It was, Jacqueline had decided, as good a theory as any.

  “They’re putting it out on all channels,” Brent said, waving to her to sit down next to him. “You want to bet that it isn't anything important?”

  A dark-skinned man wearing a Civil Guard uniform sat down beside her, his face twisted with worry. It was funny how she’d never thought of the Civil Guard – or soldiers in general – as human before; the Professor’s book had pointed out that they’d been carefully conditioned to be both contemptuous and frightened of the military right from the start. If Earth’s population shunned violence, whatever the situation, they wouldn't be able to fight the Grand Senate. Or so the Professor had believed.

  She caught herself staring and looked away, back towards the display. It was showing the Grand Senate’s emblem and a countdown ticking down to zero. They’d picked a good time, she realised; ten o’clock in the evening was normally when the population would be sitting back and watching the hugely popular Five People In A Glass Dome Show. The series featured a random selection of people who were forced to live together – and, just to make it exciting, the producers invented tasks for them to complete. Some of the tasks had been downright disgusting – one contestant Jacqueline remembered had been ordered to rape a female contestant – but her parents had loved the show. They would still be trying to watch it, even with the CityBlock dissolving into chaos around them.

  The display cleared as soon as the countdown reach zero, showing a single woman standing in front of a podium. Constance Nightingale, Jacqueline realised; the Empire’s leading anchorwoman. She was tall, dignified rather than blatantly sexual; her patrician features framed by long white hair. It was impossible not to take her seriously, even when she was reading out regurgitated crap written by propaganda departments. The Professor had had a lot to say about that too.

  “The Empire is in crisis,” Constance said. Her voice was calm, but firm. “Through an attempt to produce additional food, Algae Farm Nineteen accidentally introduced contaminated algae bars onto the streets. Those bars have since sickened or killed several hundred people. Precise figures are not available, owing to trouble-causers exaggerating the figures.”

  Jac
queline was mildly surprised that they hadn't sought to come up with a cover story, rather than admit that the bars were contaminated, but someone had evidently had an attack of common sense. There was no point in trying to conceal the truth, not now that word was spreading through the datanet as well as the rumour mill. Instead, they’d minimised the danger and dismissed the more outrageous death tolls as lies. As a damage-limitation exercise, it wouldn't have been too bad – if the news hadn't spread too far already.

  “The people responsible for this crisis have been arrested and sentenced to death,” Constance continued. “Their executions will take place at the Arena, where they will be thrown to the man-eating monsters. Tickets for the event will be sold at standard rates, but a special reduced rate will be available for anyone who has lost family to the contaminated algae bars. The event itself, of course, will be broadcast live from the Arena.”

  Her voice hardened. “However, faced with such a crisis, the Emergency Committee has declared a full lockdown on planet Earth. All citizens without employment are under curfew from this moment. They are ordered to remain in their homes until the lockdown is lifted. Citizens with employment are allowed to make their way to and from their homes, but not to travel anywhere else. Anyone caught violating this instruction will be detained indefinitely.

  “Furthermore, a number of misguided citizens have absented themselves from their place of employment,” Constance concluded. “The Grand Senate has decreed that every citizen who returns to work tomorrow will be pardoned; they cannot be blamed for believing lies spread by agitators. However, those who fail to return to work tomorrow will be marked down for arrest and exile from Earth.”