The Empire's Corps: Book 04 - Semper Fi

by Christopher Nuttall

  And the music would make it harder for the guards to hear them as they crept towards the cabin.

  Jasmine used hand signals to issue commands, then started to crawl down towards the guardpost, followed by Blake and Carl. Up close, she could hear the lyrics as the singer attempted to deafen everyone in the vicinity, an endless stream of obscenities that was somehow considered high art. Jasmine’s father would have clouted her for listening to such songs, she thought, before deciding that it was probably a good thing she hadn't heard it while she was a child. She couldn't think of any more pointless ways to rebel as a teenager.

  She motioned Blake and Carl to watch the guardroom while she tapped on the door of the female barracks. It opened, revealing the girl she’d seen the previous day – and a trio of shocked faces. One of the girls was missing. Jasmine put one finger on her lips and tried to ask, using her hands, where the fifth girl was. The girl she’d met pointed to the guardroom. Jasmine sucked in her breath sharply, then beckoned for the girls to come out of the building and walk away from the guardpost. They'd have to get the fifth out by force.

  Carl shaped a message with his hands. Stun grenade?

  Yes, Jasmine signalled back. Now.

  She braced herself as Carl removed the grenade from his belt and tossed it through the opened window. There was a burst of male swearing, followed by sudden silence as the gas blew through the small building. Stun gas worked surprisingly quickly, assuming that the targets hadn't been immunised to the gas; Jasmine clutched her pistol tightly as she opened the door, scanning for potential targets. All five of the men – and a girl, wearing nothing more than her panties – had slumped to the floor. None of them had been immunised.

  “Get the girl out of here,” Jasmine ordered, as she swept the room for useful intelligence. A map of the surrounding area lay on a table, displaying a handful of guardposts and a small military garrison, only seven kilometres away. She snapped a photo of it with her camera, then searched the rest of the room. One drawer proved to contain a surprising amount of paper money, marked in a language she didn't recognise. Jasmine took the money and stuffed it in her bag.

  “Thief,” Blake commented.

  “Rig up the food processor,” Jasmine ordered, ignoring his dig at her. There were regulations about what to do when discovering enemy funds, although they tended to be largely ignored by both the Army and the Civil Guard. Jasmine would have handed them over to Colonel Stalker if he'd been on the same planet. Instead, she’d have to use them to fund their mission. “Hurry.”

  She looked down at the stunned men, then gently pressed a neural disrupter to the first man’s skull. His body twitched, then died. Jasmine felt an odd pang of guilt – no matter how much the men deserved it, this was cold-blooded slaughter, not honest battle – before moving on to the next one. It was hard to prove that a neural disruptor had been involved even without additional damage to the victim’s body. If they worked at long ranges, they would have been the most feared assassination weapon in the universe. But they could only operate at point-blank range.

  Sergeant Hampton slipped down to join them as they stepped out of the guardpost. “Here,” he said, holding out a set of injector tubes. Blake took them and headed back into the guardpost. They'd taken some blood from each of the girls, enough – Jasmine hoped – to convince a forensic team that they’d died in the fire. “They’re a little upset, but happy.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Jasmine said. The girls wouldn’t be waiting; they were already being taken back to the hidden shelters. Once Blake had completed his jury-rigging, they’d have to move fast. There was no way to know how much time they had before the nearby garrison responded to the fire. “Blake?”

  Blake re-emerged from the guardhouse. “She’s ready to blow, Lieutenant,” he said. “When do you want it to blow?”

  “Five minutes,” Jasmine said, as she led the way back up to the OP. She could still hear that damned music ringing in her ears. What sort of idiots maintained a guardpost while deliberately deafening themselves? No doubt their superiors would have punished them, if they cared. Jasmine still remembered the lecture she’d received from a Drill Instructor after falling asleep on watch. “Ready?”

  Blake nodded, producing the detonator from his pocket. “Ready,” he said, as his thumb hovered over the switch. “Now?”

  Jasmine smiled. “Now,” she said.

  The guardpost exploded in a sheet of fire. Food processors could be rigged to blow with a little effort, particularly cheap designs; Jasmine had a private suspicion that the one Blake had rigged to explode wouldn't be the first one that had exploded, even if it was unusually violent. But with ten people in the same room, it might just have been knocked to the floor and exploded ... any investigator would be hard pressed to explain exactly what had happened. At the very least, there would be some reasonable doubt.

  She kept one eye on the sky as the Marines slipped further into the forest, but it was nearly ten minutes before they heard the first helicopters clattering their way through the sky. One of them passed high overhead, suggesting that it had come from a different direction to the garrison they knew about. Another one, on the other side of the mountains? There was no way to know.

  If Jasmine had been in command of the recovery party, the first thing she would have done – once it became obvious that there was no one left to save – would have been to sweep the area, looking for possible insurgents or terrorists. With that in mind, she kept the Marines moving until they were well away from the fire, hoping that Sergeant Hampton had ordered the girls carried if they hadn't been able to keep up. There was no sign of pursuit, which both pleased and worried her. The enemy could have been tracking them through a drone or orbital surveillance and was just waiting to see where they would go.

  Finally, they reached the RV point and linked up with the rest of the Marines. The girls looked uncomfortable – none of the Marines had realised that they didn't have clothes suitable for the night, only skimpy nightdresses – but relived to be well away from their tormentors. Jasmine saw one of them staring towards the glow in the distance, where the fire was still blazing merrily, her eyes shining with tears. After so long as a captive, it was possible that someone might have stopped caring about those at risk if she fled.

  They'll have to be watched, she thought, remembering how some of the pirate captives had eventually fallen in love with their captors. The human mind was good at adapting to new situations, even if the methods made little sense to an external mind. Falling in love with a rapist? Mistaking rape for affection? It was absurd, but very human.

  “Get some sleep,” she ordered, once the girls had drunk some nutrient glop from a pre-packaged meal. It included a sedative that would help them to rest – and avoid nightmares that might draw attention to where they were hiding. “We’ll keep you safe.”

  She ordered most of the Marines to sleep as well in the makeshift shelters, while she and Sergeant Harris kept watch. No enemy forces seemed to come close to them, apart from a second helicopter that buzzed past a kilometre from where they were hiding. It didn't seem to be running a search pattern, although it was impossible to be sure. She might have ordered the helicopter to buzz randomly in the hope of sparking an noticeable reaction.

  The sun was rising high in the sky when the girls finally began to stir. Jasmine had Kate keep an eye on them, suspecting that they would prefer to see a female face than more men, no matter how trustworthy. Rape victims tended to shy away from all men, the innocent along with the guilty. None of them, thankfully, cried out upon discovering themselves in the forest, but they all looked astonished. Jasmine smiled as the girl she’d met started to explain.

  “I’m Lori,” the girl said, afterwards. “And you're from the Empire.”

  “That’s right,” Jasmine said, feeling a flicker of guilt at lying to the girl. It wasn't exactly a lie – the Empire had funded her training – but it wasn't the Empire that was going to go to war with Admiral Singh. “How did you
end up in that hellhole?”

  It was confusing to hear three of the girls try to answer – the other two just stared at the Marines, as if they couldn’t believe their eyes – but Jasmine put it together eventually. Their parents had been farmers, holding large tracts of land in their own name – and Admiral Singh’s new authority had ordered them to produce vast qualities of food at a controlled price. When they’d balked, their daughters had been taken from them to ensure their cooperation – and the girls themselves had been told that if they rebelled or escaped, their families would bear the brunt of their punishment.

  “I think the first priority is getting in touch with your parents,” Jasmine said, once they’d finished explaining. If Admiral Singh’s people believed the girls to be dead, they probably wouldn't tell the parents. It would be much easier just to let them continue to believe that the girls were hostages. “Where are your farms?”

  Sergeant Harris crept back towards the guardpost as the girls helped to identify farms and other places on the maps, eventually returning to report that the guardpost had been completely destroyed and that the enemy soldiers were starting to rebuild it. They didn't seem very suspicious, suggesting that they’d been convinced by the deception; Harris had slipped in and out without being caught. Still, they were inspecting every vehicle far more closely than before, just in case the fire suggested weakness. The Marines would have to give them a wide berth.

  “We’ll have to stick with the forest until we reach here,” Jasmine said, once they’d hidden all traces of their presence. “Let’s go.”

  Unsurprisingly, most of the girls proved to be capable of keeping up with the Marines as they marched through the forest. Rifleman Roger Severus, who’d studied combat medicine at the Slaughterhouse, had briefly examined the girls and reported that while there were no major injuries, there had been a lot of minor bruises, suggesting that they had been regularly hit and kicked to get them working properly. He'd added that there was a very real possibility that there might be internal damage, but he didn't have the tools to examine them – even if they’d allowed it. They'd been uncomfortable enough allowing him to examine their bodies.

  “We used to hunt here,” Lori said, as they reached the edge of her father’s land. “Rabbits, foxes, deer ... we hunted them all, before the Admiral came.”

  She hesitated. “You might want to wait here,” she added. “I can find my father and tell him that you’re here.”

  Jasmine frowned, looking towards the farm. It was larger than she’d realised from the map – and surprisingly populated. Several gangs of workers were busy in the fields, supervised by other men; a shiver ran down her spine as she realised that it was exactly like the penal farms on Avalon. Were the workers prisoners?

  “I don’t know,” Lori admitted. “They weren't there before I was taken away.”

  Jasmine exchanged a long glance with Sergeant Harris. Sending the girl to contact her father risked her being seen – and one of the workers, if they were really prisoners, might betray her in hopes of having his sentence reduced. But there didn't seem to be any alternative. If one of the Marines went, a clear stranger, it would also be noticed. And the locals wouldn't try to lie for a stranger if the Admiral’s security forces threatened them.

  “Go, then,” she ordered. Wearing what she was, she would definitely attract attention. “And try to stay out of sight.”

  Lori gave her a brilliant grin. “I know the farm like the back of my hand,” she assured her. “I won’t be seen.”

  She slipped off through the trees, walking down towards a ditch that would provide some cover as she slipped towards the farmhouse. Jasmine smiled, remembering a senior recruit from the Slaughterhouse who had also claimed to know a particular area like the back of his hand. The Drill Instructor had been particularly scathing, claiming that he must have been wearing gloves; it hadn't been until later that Jasmine had realised that the recruits had been meant to realise that they were being deliberately mislead. Their leader had played his role to perfection.

  Time passed; Jasmine watched, feeling a deeper sense of unease. A whistle blew in the distance and the workers started to head towards a large barn, where young women were already laying out some food for them. It didn't look very appetising, even from their distance, but Jasmine suspected that the workers would be glad to have it. They were probably worked from dawn to dusk.

  Her eyes narrowed as she saw a tall man striding towards them, followed by Lori. She'd changed her clothes and put on a headscarf that concealed her hair, Jasmine realised, wondering if she’d just delayed matters so she could change. Her father – or so Jasmine assumed – strode into the woodlands and stopped, looking around.

  Jasmine stepped out of the bushes, revealing herself. “The gods be praised,” Lori’s father said, when he'd stopped gaping at her. He hadn't seen the other Marines from where they were hidden, ready to intervene if things went bad. “You’re real.”

  “Real enough,” Jasmine assured him. She looked past him, towards his fields. “Who are the workers down there?”

  “People who lost the conscription lottery,” Lori’s father admitted. There was a bitter tone to his voice, a hint of frustration. Jasmine understood; she wouldn't have wanted unwilling workers either. “I don’t want them, but I wasn't given a choice.”

  He scowled. “Do you bring hope?”

  “We’re the first recon party,” Jasmine said, carefully. She didn't want to say too much; if he happened to be captured, he’d be shot full of truth drugs and then be interrogated until he made a full confession. “We need to collect intelligence – and we have to get into the city. Can you help with that?”

  Lori’s father smiled. “You know,” he said, “you saved my daughter. I do believe I can.”

  He turned and headed back towards the farmhouse. “You can come in,” he added. “Bring the other girls. We can talk there.”

  Jasmine briefly detailed Blake and Carl to accompany her, leaving the other Marines in the woods, and then followed him down towards the building.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Thus, we see elections being won and lost by struggles over issues that have little practical importance. As a very old sage put it, there are subjects about which everyone has an opinion, no matter how nonsensical they seem. Sexual conduct, for example, is of little importance as long as compulsion (or immature human beings) are not involved – and yet politicians have won office over promising to make such matters of public importance.

  -Professor Leo Caesius, Authority, Power and the Post-Imperial Era

  “My name is Robert Marhanka,” Lori’s father said, once they were inside the house and his wife had taken the girls off for a proper wash. “How ... how did you get Lori away from her captors?”

  “Stealth,” Jasmine said, shortly. “I don’t know if they will come looking for the girls or not, but you will have to hide them ...”

  “There’s quite a community in the hills,” Marhanka said, shortly. “They will be hidden.”

  He leaned forward. “You want information? I can give you information.”

  Jasmine listened carefully as he spoke, outlining everything that had happened since Admiral Singh had taken control of the planets. There had been a mass registration of farmers, then they’d been given quotas to meet – and woe betide them if they failed to provide enough food on time. Some of the farmers had planned resistance, before their daughters had been taken away to serve as hostages. Since then, they’d had to work – and put up with the presence of unwanted extra hands on the farm. Most of the city-folk hadn't had the first idea of what they were doing and the near-constant presence of their overseers made it harder for the farmers to help them.

  “That's the new money they’ve produced to replace the Imperial Credit,” Marhanka explained, when Jasmine showed him the money she’d taken from the guardpost. “I think they were talking about moving to a purely electronic system, but it never got off the ground.”

  “It might
, given enough time,” Jasmine said. Avalon’s original Council had used a similar system to maintain their grip on power. It had worked – but it had also strangled the economy. “How do you plan to get us down to the city?”

  Marhanka hesitated, then nodded slowly. “There’s an ... underground market,” he explained, reluctantly. “They smuggle people into the city as well as food – quite a few conscripts just want to go home after they’ve been sent out here.”

  Jasmine frowned. “And that will get us through their security?”

  “The people running it have identified a number of security officials who take bribes,” Marhanka explained. “They’ve never been caught.”

  There’s always a first time, Jasmine thought, coldly. She wasn't surprised to discover that corruption was already seeping into Admiral Singh’s administration. A ruthless government and a complete lack of regard for rules would encourage others to take what they could get out of the system. Besides, the planet’s criminal underground would be very capable of identifying people who might be amiable to a few bribes – or have tastes that needed criminal connections to fulfil. Even the Grand Senate was denied a few pleasures, which was probably why their jaded palates had wanted them.

  “I need to get some of us into the city,” she said. She didn't want to leave anyone outside the city, but she suspected that she had no choice. Fifteen people travelling as a group might attract attention. “How long will it take you to set it up?”

  Marhanka considered. “A day or two,” he said. “I’ve made the preparations before, so tell me: how many people do you want to send in the first batch?”

  “Five,” Jasmine said, making up her mind. Sergeant Hampton could bring another five in the following day, while Sergeant Harris could remain outside the city with four others. If the shit hit the fan and they were caught, at least he’d and his men would remain at liberty. “If that isn't too many ...”