Never Surrender (The Empire's Corps Book 10)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “Hey,” Kailee said, as she stepped into the compartment. “It’s time to go exercise.”

  “Later,” Gary said. He hadn't realised just how easy it was to navigate a starship, if one had the right computer programs. Or, for that matter, how parts could be replaced with jury-rigged systems, if necessary. “I need to do this.”

  Kailee stepped forward, then caught his arm and pulled. Taken by surprise, Gary stood up and stared at her. “I ...”

  “You’re coming with me,” Kailee said, firmly. “You can come back to the machine later, I promise.”

  Gary opened his mouth, then saw the glint in her eye and closed it again. Kailee held his arm, gently but firmly, as they walked down a short corridor and into a large empty compartment. Jasmine was doing push-ups on the deck, her body going up and down with an almost hypnotic regularity, her skin dry and unmarked by sweat. Her sparse outfit - a shirt and a pair of shorts - showed muscles rippling over her body, and a handful of nasty-looking scars. One of them looked as though someone had tried to cut her open with a knife.

  “There’s an outfit for Gary over there,” Jasmine said, without stopping her push-ups. “Get him into it, then run on the spot for a few minutes. I’ll be with you afterwards.”

  Gary hesitated - he hated getting undressed in public, even with Kailee - but did as he was told. Gym class - he hadn't been one of the lucky ones who had managed to claim exemption from legalised torture - had taught him there was no point in trying to delay. It was better to get changed rapidly, then get out before Barry or Moe or one of the others decided to start playing games with him. The shorts felt loose against his body, but he knew better than to complain. Gym teachers had always had more latitude to mistreat students than anyone else, particularly the ones they felt were slackers. God alone knew how Jasmine would react to any hesitation on his part.

  “Run on the spot,” Jasmine ordered. She still hadn't stopped her push-ups, merely placed one hand behind her back so she was using only one hand to go up and down. “It will warm you up.”

  “Like this,” Kailee said. “Do as I do.”

  She started to run, lifting one leg then the other. Gary’s eyes were drawn to her breasts, bouncing under her shirt, then looked away, embarrassed. Someone like Barry could stare without any consequences, but a nerd like him would be mocked relentlessly for allowing himself to forget his place. Instead, he started to run on the spot, feeling his heartbeat start to race as he pushed himself forward. It sounded as though someone was letting off a gun inside his head.

  Jasmine stood up in one smooth motion and looked at him, her dark eyes studying his body in a cold dispassionate manner. He couldn't help thinking of the first doctor he’d visited, the asshole who’d made his mother sign all kinds of papers before agreeing to take a look at Gary. Gary had read the papers later and, as far as he could tell, they indemnified the doctor for everything, up to and including a patient dying on the examination table. Given how many students he knew who hadn't survived medical treatment, he had a feeling the doctors had needed such paperwork.

  “You have a lot of work to do,” she said, shortly. “I would actually recommend you learned to use a gun, but there are plenty of worlds that don't allow people to own or carry weapons.”

  Gary stopped running. His arms and legs were aching. Normally, he hadn't walked for more than a kilometre or two each day and he’d never had to run. He tried to stand upright, but found himself sagging into himself. Jasmine shrugged, then held out her hands.

  “We don’t have any proper exercise machines here,” she said, as she dropped to the deck. “I think you should start with push-ups. Lie down on the deck, then put your hands down like this.”

  Gary looked at her, then did as he was told. The deck felt cold against his chest, but he could feel a dull thrumming echoing through it that he recalled from his first trip on a starship. His heartbeat was still racing terrifyingly fast, no matter what he did. Just how many people died of heart failure on Earth anyway? He would have bet good money that hundreds of thousands of people had similar problems.

  “Lift up your body, like so,” Jasmine ordered. She moved upwards without any difficulty, the muscles in her arms showing no sign of strain. “Lift yourself up and hold position.”

  Gary did as he was told, but his arms started to hurt almost at once. His chest hurt too, as if it were trying to pull him back to the deck. He gritted his teeth and held position, somehow.

  “Now lower your body until you are almost touching the deck,” Jasmine said. “You don’t want to actually touch the deck, because that costs you some of the benefits ... no, don’t touch the deck.”

  Gary cursed. Lowering his body without going all the way down wasn't easy. The pain in his arms was growing worse, much worse. He forced himself to hold position, somehow, then collapsed onto the deck. Jasmine snorted, then told him to get back up and lower himself once again. This time, Gary managed to hold the position.

  “Better,” Jasmine said. “Now ... up and down. Up and down. Up and down.”

  “I’m trying,” Gary gasped. Getting back up once hurt; lowering himself again was acutely painful. Somehow, he managed to do a second push-up, then a third ... and then he fell back on the deck, his arms hurting so badly he feared he’d broken something. “I can't do it.”

  “You will,” Jasmine said. “Pain is weakness leaving the body.”

  She stood, then helped him to his feet. “Move like this,” she ordered, demonstrating a series of movements that flexed his arms and legs. “You need to work your muscles to develop them, no matter what sort of background you have.”

  Gary groaned. “I thought Marines had drugs for physical enhancements.”

  “That damned Psycho Bloodlust Marine flick has a lot to answer for,” Jasmine muttered, irked. “They didn't get a single thing right in the entire movie, you know. Even if we did have performance-enhancing drugs, we wouldn't risk using them.”

  She caught his eye. “I suppose you could get a body like Carl’s if you went to the body-shops,” she added. “But tell me ... would you keep up with the exercise needed to maintain it in peak condition?”

  “Probably not,” Gary said. He slowed to a halt, then caught the warning look in her eye and started again. “But it would be easy to go back again and again, wouldn't it?”

  “It wouldn't be your body,” Jasmine said. “You wouldn't feel you owned it.”

  Gary scowled, then poked at his chest. “Do you have any idea how much I hate this body?”

  “The Imperial Army takes everyone,” Jasmine said. “There was a woman on the firebase who was stuck in a wheelchair. You can't discriminate against cripples, they said, so they gave her some basic training and put her in front of a computer, where she could do something useful. I thought she was a silly bitch until the base was attacked, whereupon she pulled a pistol out of her chair and opened fire. She killed four of the attackers before the slow reaction force arrived.”

  She looked Gary up and down, then smiled coldly. “If she can do something useful, if she can learn to fight back, so can you,” she said. “Kailee will take you for a shower, then the two of you can continue exercising later today. I expect you to get up to ten push-ups at a time within a few days, then we will just keep piling them on and on.”

  Gary groaned. Three push-ups had left him in pain. And yet, Jasmine had been doing push-ups since before they’d arrived in the compartment. How many had she done in front of him before he’d managed to get changed?

  He swallowed, then asked. “How many push-ups do you do each day?”

  “Hundreds,” Jasmine said. She gave him an evil look. “Do you know what the Drill Instructors say when you do something stupid?”

  Gary shook his head. “What?”

  “Drop and give me fifty,” Jasmine said. “It’s a very efficient process. You get some exercise and you learn not to do whatever you did wrong again. Trust me - if you keep going, you will be doing hundreds of push-ups a day too.”


  Chapter Twenty-One

  This creates a moral headache for the defenders. Terrorists and insurgents, by not following the laws of war, put themselves outside their protection. They can, on one hand, be legally shot, enslaved - or interrogated in any manner that seems necessary.

  - Professor Leo Caesius. The Empire and its Prisoners of War.

  Avalon, Year 5 (PE)

  “You took a reporter with you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Kitty said. “And he was helpful in identifying the leak.”

  Colonel Stalker glowered at her. “This isn't some embed on a starship where we control the communications,” he said, sharply. “Do you feel you can trust him to keep his mouth shut?”

  “This isn’t the Empire, sir,” Kitty said, “and he isn't really a fatheaded piece of shit from Imperial News. Even aside from his ... choice of girlfriends, he understands what is at stake and just what will happen to him if he leaks ahead of time. And besides, this will be a stepping stone to future stories for him.”

  “Right,” the Colonel said. He leaned forward, putting the issue aside. “What have you found?”

  “There was a bug hidden in the private conference room we used,” Kitty said. “The device was actually concealed within the privacy generator, an old trick used to render a room unsafe while conveying the impression that one can talk freely. Given how many important people were at that party, it is logical to assume that many of them discussed official and corporate secrets near the bugs.”

  “And every room could be bugged,” the Colonel mused.

  “Yes, sir,” Kitty said. “If one room was bugged, they could all be bugged. I had a look at the mansion’s plans on the city database and it’s clear the inbuilt processor would be capable of handling the task of monitoring and cataloguing the intake from thousands of bugs. Given even a few names of interest, their conversations could be recorded for later scrutiny at any time.”

  The Colonel sighed. “And you’re sure it is the Governor?”

  Kitty hesitated. “He does seem to have a high turn-over of staff,” she said. “There’s only a couple of long-term employees in the building, so this may not have been set up under his nose.”

  “With him as an innocent dupe,” the Colonel concluded. “He must be involved somehow ...”

  “I fear so,” Kitty agreed. She shook her head. “Imperial Intelligence has a lot of experience sneaking bugs into places they shouldn't go, sir, but a coup on this scale would be damn near impossible. The Governor would have to be stupid not to have the mansion swept for bugs on a regular basis, no matter how confident he is in his privacy generators. And my sweep picked up the bug almost at once.”

  “Damn it,” the Colonel said. He took a breath. “How do you propose we proceed?”

  Kitty met his eyes. “I understand why you might want to have this channel cut off as quickly as possible,” she said. “But I would prefer to leave it open for a few weeks, just to see what pieces of false information we can feed through the bugs and directly to the enemy.”

  “They’ll realise they’re being played, sooner or later,” the Colonel pointed out.

  “Yes, they will,” Kitty agreed. “But they won’t know when we caught on to their scheme. I think they would have to assume the worst, that we always knew about it and we were feeding them shit when it suited us to do so. They will have to throw out everything they learned from the bugs, knowing it could be compromised.”

  “Unless they can verify the information,” Colonel Stalker said.

  “They can't verify all of it,” Kitty said. “And even if they could, they might think we were lulling them into a false sense of security.”

  “This is precisely why I hate intelligence work,” the Colonel said. “Everything becomes a shadowy world of absolute confusion.”

  Kitty smiled. “I understand the feeling,” she said. “For the moment, I would like to use the channel to feed them some crap, while feeling out just what the Governor is thinking.”

  The Colonel looked her in the eye. “And the alternative? We could arrest the Governor straight away.”

  “We would lose any chance to manipulate the conduit,” Kitty said, flatly. “I would understand if you wanted to shut it down, but it is my duty to inform you of the possibilities involved in using it to our own advantage. Furthermore, we do not have an ID on anyone helping the Governor pass information to Wolfbane. If we move too quickly, the rest of the spy ring will go undercover and vanish.”

  “For the moment,” the Colonel said, “leave it in place. However” - he held up a hand - “I want you to be ready to shut it down at a moment’s notice, if necessary. There’s a limit to how far we can keep data to ourselves.”

  “We could warn people to be more careful what they say,” Kitty said. “Or engage in a little kabuki play to convince them that there are spies everywhere.”

  “I will have to see what can be arranged,” the Colonel said. “Continue with your plan, Colonel. I will expect to see a progress report by the end of the week.”

  Kitty nodded, then rose to her feet.

  “One other thing,” the Colonel added. “I will expect you to be careful just what you share with your reporter friend. There are limits to how far we can afford to trust anyone.”

  “Understood,” Kitty said.

  She stepped out of the door, then walked down to her office. The guard outside checked her ID, as if he hadn't seen her leave the room thirty minutes ago, then stepped inside to allow her to enter the compartment. Emmanuel Alves was sitting on the sofa, reading a datapad with a curious expression. He’d been warned, in no uncertain terms, not to attempt to move further into the complex.

  “Kitty,” he said. “How was the Colonel?”

  “Concerned,” Kitty said. “Did you see anything interesting in the papers?”

  “I downloaded copies of all the gossipy rags,” Emmanuel said. “Most of them raved about the latest party, then bragged about who the reporters sat next to when they were at dinner. Nothing too important, really; someone sat next to the Governor’s wife and claimed she made a great conversationalist.”

  Kitty sighed. “Nothing important, then?”

  “Not unless you look carefully,” Emmanuel said. “There’s a very definite hint that several business marriages are being contemplated, as well as relationships between two mining corporations and a new industrial start-up. Oh, and some of them are planning to lobby for an end to start-up loans to businesses on Avalon. There should be a story there.”

  “There probably will be,” Kitty said. She sat down, facing him. “The leak is in the Governor’s Mansion. There’s no rational alternative, unless we’re prepared to believe that over a third of our political and corporate leaders are planning to sell the Commonwealth down the river. This leaves us with a problem. How do we identify the link between the mansion and the other spies? And what can we do with it?”

  Emmanuel considered it. “I had an idea,” he said, finally. “I could offer to do a puff piece on the parties. They are quite famous, really. A chat with the Governor might be enough to write a story - and give us insight into his mind.”

  “He isn't going to confess to you,” Kitty pointed out. That only worked in bad flicks. “I think he’d just talk about nothing.”

  “I know,” Emmanuel said. “But you’ll be with me when he does.”

  ***

  Emmanuel had expected some resistance when he’d sent the message to the Governor’s Mansion. In his experience, most politicians and corporate leaders on Avalon were reluctant to talk to the press, not when they couldn't expect the press to either suppress an inconvenient truth or toe the political line. But the Governor agreed almost at once, much to his surprise; he’d even offered the use of his mansion as an interview site. Emmanuel had grabbed his equipment, ensured that Kitty looked like a low and naive intern, then set off to the mansion in his car. The guards allowed him to enter without doing more than a basic check.

  The former Gov
ernor was waiting for them, flanked by his wife. Governor Brent Roeder had been middle-aged when he’d been dispatched to Avalon, while Hannalore was a few years younger - and looked, thanks to the miracle of cosmetic surgery, young enough to be his daughter. Her body looked teenage, definitely, but her eyes were hard and cold. Emmanuel couldn't help wondering if he was looking at the true brains behind the Governor’s life. She would hardly be the first woman to be quietly driving her man on from behind.

  “It’s always a pleasure to meet a gentleman of the press,” the Governor said. He might have little or no effective power, but one wouldn't have known it from his stance. “I’ve enjoyed reading some of your articles.”