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

by Christopher Nuttall

  “The Empire is doomed,” he repeated, quietly. “And so are you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  The simplest way to understand the permanent power balance between the Grand Senate families is to view the Empire as being made up of vital locations that had to be fought over for control. The Imperial Navy was one such location, as was Luna Naval Yard, Civil Guard HQ and the Imperial Palace. Each of the families attempted to place their own people in positions of power there, so they could manipulate the location to their own advantage. (For example, an Imperial Navy starship might carry out a technically unauthorised mission on behalf of the Captain’s patrons.)

  -Professor Leo Caesius, The End of Empire

  “Don’t draw your weapon unless I do,” Richard muttered. “And don’t show any sign of fear.”

  Amethyst made a face. She was terrified; terrified of the darkness surrounding them, terrified of what she’d seen on the upper levels of the block ... and terrified of the man beside her. The Undercity lay in shadow, barely illuminated by flickering lights and glowing lichen; anything could be out there, hiding in the darkness. Her imagination populated the shadows with monsters in human form, just like the thug she’d shot. Or real monsters. God knew that there were plenty of rumours of what had escaped from the Arena over the years.

  The passageway came to an end, revealing a dimly-lit dome covering a number of small buildings. Amethyst realised in astonishment that the dome had been erected over the buildings, then the megacities had been built on top of the dome. The buildings looked quaint, almost like something from a drama set on one of the more rustic colony worlds, yet there was a sense of age around them that almost overpowered her. She was looking at buildings that might well have been older than the Empire.

  “There was a time when they wanted to preserve this place,” Richard muttered. “So they domed it and built the Rowdy Yates CityBlock on top of the dome. And then they forgot all about it.”

  Amethyst nodded. The Professor’s book had explained that the Empire had deliberately sought to erase its own history. Few people truly realised that Earth had once been as green and blue as any of the colony worlds, rather than covered in megacities and pollution. Even the students had never understood the truth. Given the level of indoctrination and outright lies they were subjected to from birth, how could they have? It had taken someone born outside Earth to start the Professor questioning his own assumptions.

  Four men, carrying guns, appeared out of one of the buildings. “Keep your hands where we can see them,” one ordered. “Who are you?”

  “We wish to speak to Dennis,” Richard said. “And you may call me Culp.”

  There was a long pause. “The boss will probably want to speak with you,” the leader said, slowly. “We will take your weapons and escort you to him.”

  Richard nodded. “Give him your guns,” he ordered Amethyst, as the men closed in. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Amethyst scowled as the man took her gun, then ran his hands over her shapeless uniform to search for more weapons. He pulled her datapad out of her belt and examined it briefly, then passed it to one of his friends and continued to search her. Another man searched Richard, removing several weapons and devices that Amethyst didn't recognise. Richard didn't seem too bothered when they were finally finished; instead, he seemed almost amused.

  “Follow us,” the leader ordered. “You will have your weapons and equipment back when you leave – if you leave.”

  The strange buildings seemed eerie, almost haunted, as they walked closer and through a large front door. Inside, it was a whole different picture; it was clean, warm and brightly lit, bright enough to force Amethyst to cover her eyes against the glare. A set of young women, completely naked, were carrying trays of food and drink through the corridors. Amethyst couldn't help shivering at the strange expressions – half-vapid, half-ecstatic – on their faces, or the lustful glances fired at them by the escorts.

  “Sparkle Dust addicts,” Richard said, when he saw her staring at the girls. “By now, they won’t have any real free will left for themselves. They’ll go do whatever they are told, no matter who is issuing the orders – and it will please them to obey.”

  He seemed rather amused at the whole concept. Amethyst just shivered. She'd never used Sparkle Dust herself, but several of her first-year girlfriends had insisted that it was a fantastic rush. How many of them had gone on to become addicts? She couldn't understand why anyone would do that willingly, if it turned you into an willing slave. Maybe the girls had started out, like so many other addicts, convinced that they could control their addiction. Or maybe they’d simply been fed the drug by force until it had taken effect ...

  “Drugs are a good way to control people,” Richard muttered. “There are entire communities – even planets – where the population is addicted to a specific drug. As long as they behave, they get their fix; if they start causing trouble, they are left to die. How do you think many of the gang lords keep their pawns under control?”

  Amethyst had no answer as they were ushered into a large office. A man sat behind a desk, studying a datapad; he looked up as they entered and nodded briefly. Amethyst met his eyes for a long moment and saw an absolute ruthlessness, a complete lack of scruples, that scared her to death. She had never believed that such people could exist, despite all the evidence; she had never truly grasped the concept of evil. Now, she saw it everywhere she looked. The man – Dennis, perhaps – was a monster. And so was Richard ...

  “Culp,” Dennis said. “It has been a long time since I heard that name.”

  “Yeah,” Richard agreed. “It has.”

  He smiled, rather dryly. “I won’t mince words,” he added. “Two people are missing within the Undercity, within your territory. We need to find them both or recover their bodies. If you assist us, we are prepared to pay heavily.”

  Dennis stared at him, coldly. “You are aware, no doubt, that we were fed poisoned ration bars,” he said. “Tell me, Culp; why should I do anything for you?”

  “Because in the future, if not right now, you are going to need support from my patron,” Richard said, sharply. “If you help us find the missing fugitives, you will be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams. Money, weapons ... it would not be impossible to give you your own colony world to run, if you thought it might not be a good idea to stay on Earth. But you only get the reward if you help us.”

  “No doubt,” Dennis said, dryly. “Who are these people?”

  “I’m afraid your men took my datapad,” Richard said, “so I cannot give you their details. However, I can tell you that they’re wanted on charges of high treason; the Grand Senate Emergency Committee wants them, dead or alive. They must be found.”

  Amethyst kept her expression as blank as she could. It defied belief that Dennis wouldn't recognise Prince Roland on sight ... or did it? Everyone who’d seen Roland on the datanet had seen a teenager in fine robes, wearing a small crown on his head. He might look quite different in real life, enough to make him unrecognisable if someone passed him in the streets. The gangsters might never realise who they’d caught.

  “And you believe them to be alive,” Dennis said. He placed his fingertips together and leaned back. “What makes you think that they have survived so far?”

  “The woman is a trained survivalist,” Richard said, tightly. “We know she survived the landing – and I doubt that the Undercity could kill her.”

  “You make her sound dangerous,” Dennis mocked. “Maybe I should keep my men out of her way.”

  Richard grinned. “And miss your chance to set up on your own world?”

  The gang leader smiled. “Very well,” he said. “As it happens, I might just be able to find your friends for you.”

  Amethyst shivered.

  “Excellent,” Richard said. “And there are some precautions that you will have to take ...”

  ***

  It was several hours, by Belinda’s internal clock, when Bat knocked on
the door. She used her implants to listen for the heartbeats of anyone near him, but as far as she could tell the gang leader was completely alone. Nodding to Roland to stay alert, she opened the door and beckoned Bat into the room. The gangster looked tired, but relieved.

  “I have spoken with my superior,” he said, bluntly. “He is prepared to grant you safe passage, in exchange for a large amount of cash. The cash is to be transferred to an unmarked cash-chip once you reach the Inner City and handed over to me. I will see to its distribution.”

  Taking a small amount for yourself, of course, Belinda thought, silently. It was always the same, on Earth or a far-distant colony world. Corruption beget corruption. Everyone in a position to skim a little for themselves did so – and why not? They knew perfectly well that everyone else did it. But she could hardly complain as long as it got them out of the Undercity. The longer they stayed in one place, the greater the chance of someone else tracking them down.

  “Good,” she said. “Will you be escorting us alone?”

  “Four of my soldiers will be accompanying me,” Bat informed them. “I do not want to go unprotected.”

  Belinda snickered. “I suppose not,” she said. “We’ll be ready to go in five minutes.”

  Roland stood up, looking disgustingly fresh. He'd slept; Belinda hadn't dared, even though they should have been safe. The Prince’s enhancements had never really been tested until Belinda had started to push him into self-development, she knew; it was a relief to see that they worked properly. Given enough time, maybe Roland would have made it as a Marine after all.

  The Prince rubbed his tummy. “Is there anything to eat?”

  “There are some stocks we saved for emergencies,” Bat said. “They should be healthy, but ...”

  “Bring some anyway,” Belinda ordered. They were both enhanced; contaminated ration bars shouldn't be able to do much damage. Besides, her implants should be able to detect something dangerous before she swallowed it. “We can pay for that as well.”

  Bat nodded and left the room.

  “This isn’t going to be fun,” Belinda warned Roland, as the Prince headed into the bathroom. Oddly – or perhaps it wasn't odd after all – the Prince seemed almost cheerful. “The Undercity is a very dangerous place.”

  “Gangsters fighting over power and pushing the weak around,” Roland’s voice drifted back. “Why, it’s just like the Grand Senate.”

  Belinda had to laugh.

  Bat stepped back into the room, carrying a pair of ration bars. “The escorts are ready now,” he said, as Belinda opened the first bar and inspected it. “They’re ready to go.”

  “We’re on our way,” Belinda said. The first bar seemed to be fine, so she passed it to Roland and opened the second bar. As always, it tasted like cardboard, but at least it was edible. “How far do we have to walk?”

  “Several miles,” Bat said. “I’m afraid that there’s a state of emergency up top. If you go straight up into Rowdy Yates, you might be arrested. We’ve lost several rat-runners that way; the Civil Guard stunned them and carted the poor bastards away. We don't know what happened to them after that.”

  Belinda could guess, but said nothing as she pocketed the rest of the ration bar and motioned for Bat to lead them out of the room. Outside, there were fewer gangsters than before; Bat probably didn't want them to see him treating Belinda and Roland as honoured guests. Her lips twitched in bitter amusement. The merest suggestion that Bat was scared of the crazy super-strong bitch who’d killed his enforcer would undermine his position like nothing else. Any of his subordinates might decide that he could be killed at leisure ...

  She wasn't entirely sure what Bat did. A simple protection racket might not work very well so far below the megacities; the inhabitants had very little to offer the gangsters. Drugs or women might work, she decided; there might be little money in offering girls to the poor, but there was no shortage of civilians from high overhead who would want to visit a brothel. And those brothels might offer services forbidden even to the Grand Senate. She shuddered as she remembered what some of the insurgents on Han had done to raise money to continue the fight. God knew the Undercity dwellers would have even fewer scruples about doing whatever they had to do to survive.

  “Anything that tends towards survival is moral,” the History and Moral Philosophy tutor had said, back at the Slaughterhouse. “How many of you would be appalled by the thought of selling one of your sisters into prostitution to raise money? All of you? Good – but that is a measure of your situation rather than any universal morality. If you had no choice but to do so, you would find yourself rationalising it to yourself – and defending it to any outsider.

  “It's easy to say that you would sooner die than sell your sister into slavery,” he’d added. “It’s much harder to avoid doing it when you are actually confronted with the need ...”

  Belinda scowled as she pushed the memory aside. The Undercity bred nothing, but survivalists, every one of them out for themselves and no one else. If it would help keep them alive, they would think nothing of selling their sisters into slavery – and many other horrors beside. There was no shortage of girls and boys who could be sold into brothels, all under the legal age of consent – and the hell of it was that many of them would consider it an improvement in their lives. It was shocking, it was disgusting ... and the Empire just didn't care.

  But what could they do? The Civil Guard could do its duty and arrest the paedophiles who visited such brothels – and even send the children to a colony world where they could grow up away from Earth - but it wouldn't be anything more than a drop in the ocean. There was never any shortage of victims or people willing to prey on them. She could do nothing to stop it. And it never stopped gnawing at her.

  Bat’s guards met them as they reached the edge of his lair. “We have to move quietly,” Bat explained, as they checked their weapons. Bat himself carried an outdated pistol; the others carried nothing more dangerous than makeshift clubs and swords. A trained Engineer – either from the Marines or the Imperial Army – could have produced better from the junk lying around the Undercity. “We are going to be moving through disputed territory.”

  Though enemy lines, Belinda thought, wryly. Moving around without being seen was what Pathfinders did. Roland’s joke about the gangsters being exactly like the Grand Senate was more accurate than he realised. The gang lords controlled territory and skirmished with their rivals, trying to push them back and eventually occupy their possessions. But if there were so many gangs, there would be an uneasy balance of power ...

  She followed Bat as he led the way out of the lair, every sensor stepped up and watching for trouble. The passageways seemed largely empty at first, until they reached a wider corridor that seemed to have once been part of a mass-transport system. A number of people were lying in the grooves, trying to stay out of sight. Belinda felt her heart twist in bitter guilt – there was nothing she could do for them, any more than she could help any of the others – until she looked away.

  There seemed to be more life in the Undercity than she had expected. One long low room included a marketplace, where people were buying and selling items from high overhead. Several sellers were loudly proclaiming that their food was free of all contamination, although as they were selling sealed ration bars it was hard to tell. Several gangsters moved through the market, others flinching away from them as they passed, keeping the peace as best as they could. Roland had definitely been right; swap the gangsters for the Civil Guard and the market could be in the Inner City.

  They walked past a group of young men, one of whom reached out to grab Belinda’s ass. Without looking back, she caught his hand and squeezed with augmented force, crushing his bones into paper. Her companions roared with laughter as he screamed in pain. Belinda regretted her overreaction a moment later – she’d effectively crippled him for life, which wouldn't be very long in the Undercity – before she pushed the thought aside. If he was prepared to try to molest a girl
escorted by five gangsters, what would he do to a girl without any protection at all?

  Bet led them out of the market and into another series of tunnels and large rooms. There were dozens of people scattered around, many of them clearly having marked out their own territory. The larger gangs seemed to give the smaller ones a wide berth, something that puzzled Belinda until she realised that squashing them could be costly; the smaller gang might be exterminated, but the larger gang might be crippled. She caught sight of a handful of children and shivered at the cold hard expressions on their faces. They were barely seven and yet they were already monsters by civilised standards. But what else could they do to survive?

  The sense of threat grew stronger as they walked into a larger room. Belinda tensed, unsure of what she was sensing; her instincts were telling her that something was wrong. But her implants couldn't pick up anything at all ... and then it struck her that was what was wrong ...

  And then something fell on her from high overhead.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  What the Emergency Committee had done (with remarkable speed, suggesting a considerable level of pre-planning) was to remove a number of officers and replace them with their clients. It gave them, at least on paper, control over both Home Fleet and the considerable armed forces stationed on Sol’s inhabited planets – which gave them a formidable advantage. In theory, the Grand Senate could cancel their charter; in practice, the emergency committee held the guns.

  -Professor Leo Caesius, The End of Empire

  Amethyst couldn't help feeling a little impressed by how easy it had been. Once Dennis had been convinced to help them, he’d admitted that two strangers – one of them matching the descriptions Richard had provided – had forced their way into a lair belonging to one of his subordinates. The subordinate had then gone to Dennis and requested safe passage through Dennis’s territory for his unwanted guests, claiming that they'd offered the gang a vast sum of money in exchange. Dennis and Richard had planned the ambush carefully, without telling the subordinate anything. Prince Roland and his bodyguard had walked right into the trap.