The Empire's Corps: Book 04 - Semper Fi

by Christopher Nuttall

“Yes,” the young man said, after a moment’s thought.

  “Good,” Jasmine said. She pointed to a door at the far side of the room. “Go through the door, sit down and wait.”

  She watched him go, then glanced through the more specific report. The young man had shown some hesitation at times, which was thoroughly understandable, but no outright intentional deceit. It was quite possible that he would be tricked or tortured into telling the security forces whatever they wanted to know, yet he wouldn’t do it intentionally.

  Or so we hope, Jasmine thought. Duress came in many forms.

  She reset the system and then settled back in her chair, waiting for the next recruit.

  ***

  Lukas couldn't help noticing that one of the recruits seemed to have vanished, rather than joining the rest of them in the next room. He kept that observation to himself as the recruiters passed out chocolate bars and fresh juice, suspecting that someone had refused to take the oath – if it was an oath. The oath of allegiance they were required to take every day in school to Admiral Singh was far more dramatic than a series of questions and answers.

  “The oath was more than just an oath,” the leader said, once they were all settled. “You didn't know it, but you were being monitored closely as you spoke. Each and every one of you who passed the test were completely truthful. You will not willingly betray your fellows.”

  He paused. “You will have noticed that someone is missing,” he added. “That person was a paid informer for the security forces. Luckily, they didn't leave a message before they set out to this meeting. We will see to it that they get their memory wiped before they can do any damage.”

  The girl leaned forward. “Why don’t you kill the bastard?”

  “Because it might be far too revealing,” the leader explained. “Having him wake up in a flophouse, head heavy with all the drugs and alcohol he took ... that should be a little more problematic for them to connect with us.”

  He smiled, coldly. “This is the first day of training for all of you,” he continued. “We will start by discussing basic security precautions; as you have just discovered, eyes and ears are everywhere. You will not risk exposing us through being careless. Once you have mastered security precautions, you will move on to other matters. Eventually, you will be separated out into cells and told to prepare for the next step.

  “I told you that you were not to share names,” he warned. “You will not share anything else, either. No stories about your life, no shared concerns ... you certainly will not share your bodies. You will come to think of your comrades as nothing more than their codenames and whatever specific training they receive. There will be times when you disagree about the best course of action, but you will always remember that your comrades are your comrades. You are not to allow your disagreements to threaten the group.

  “That won’t make sense to you yet,” he admitted. “But it will.”

  There was a long uncomfortable pause.

  “Now,” the leader said. “The security forces monitor the city through the following methods ...”

  It was a long session and Lukas’s head was aching at the end of it. He'd known that there were cameras covering parts of the city, but he’d never realised how thoroughly they were integrated into the datanet – or how they could be used to track someone without using people who might be seen. On the other hand, they had been told, it was very difficult for the security forces to actually use all the data they amassed. By the time they put it all together, it would be too late.

  “But don’t ever assume that they’re idiots,” the leader had warned them. “They can bring you in without an excuse and sweat you ... and you may well show them enough to make them suspicious. So be careful. Don’t say a word to anyone.”

  Lukas nodded. They’d had the same warning over and over again.

  “You know how we will get in touch, and where,” the leader concluded. “Now, you will all leave, one by one. And remember ...”

  “Don’t say a word,” Lukas said.

  “Indeed,” the leader agreed. “Not to anyone.”

  ***

  The Marines waited two minutes after the last of the recruits had departed, then searched the apartment to ensure that they hadn’t left anything behind. It was too dangerous to risk using the place again, even though it was ideal. Jasmine packed up the remainder of the voice analysis gear, then carried it out to the van. Inside, the drugged informer lay on the back seat, twitching unpleasantly.

  Little snitch, Jasmine thought, darkly. As far as they could tell, he hadn't been threatened or otherwise forced to work for the security forces. He’d just liked the colour of their money, little else. A loyalist would have been easy to understand. She shook her head. If they hadn't thought to test everyone, they might well have been betrayed that same night.

  “The unwilling recruits have already been returned,” Hampton reported, as he came up behind her. Using the memory drug was a risk – a doctor might think to check for traces in the blood – but they’d taken some precautions. The two recruits would wake up in one of Wolf’s brothels, convinced that they’d taken too many drugs the previous night. Drug use was rife in Landing City’s schools. Jasmine wasn't particularly surprised. “What about this one?”

  “We kill him and dump him,” she said, flatly. Properly arranged, it would look like a robbery gone wrong. “After that, we head back to base and prepare for the next part of the operation.”

  She scowled. Killing someone in battle was one thing – Marines all knew that the only way to win was to destroy the enemy’s military – but cold-blooded murder was something else. On the other hand, they didn't have a choice. An informer might merit more careful attention from the security forces than a pair of anonymous students.

  “Understood,” Hampton said. He gave her a sharp look, as if he understood what she was going through. It was a mystery why he hadn't tried to gain promotion himself, particularly given how many opportunities there were in the Commonwealth. “Do you want me to do it?”

  Jasmine shook her head, untruthfully. “The responsibility is mine,” she said. It would have been easy to give the job to the Sergeant, but she had a feeling that would be the first step towards becoming a bad officer. Far too many others had given way to that temptation in the past. “I’ll do it personally.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It is truly said that the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Human history tells us that there are two possible outcomes for well-intentioned ‘nanny’ politicians. They will either create a nightmare when the time comes to enforce their will (all in the name of their people) or they will build the tools for other, less well-intentioned, to use to take power. Claiming the right to impose curbs on free speech, whatever the motive, means eventually imposing curbs on political discourse – and opposition.

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

  Trevor Chambers scowled as he stumbled down the flophouse corridor, heading for his tiny room. The cheap alcohol had tasted vile and there hadn't been enough of it, not enough to render him comatose for the night. God knew he shouldn't be drinking, not with his post on the orbital stations, but he no longer cared. His wife and children were dead. And his superiors, far from doing anything useful, had just ordered him to take a break and report back to work the following Monday.

  He muttered curses under his breath as he stopped outside the door and searched through his pockets for the keys. He’d drunk just enough, he realised crossly, to made coordination very difficult; it took several tries before he finally managed to pluck the key out of his pocket and then force it into the lock. It was so difficult that he actually wondered if he was trying to enter the wrong room before it finally clicked, allowing him to walk inside ...

  Someone was lying on the bed. Trevor cursed the landlord under his breath as he stumbled forward, ready to evict the unwelcome guest. He’d told the goddamned man that he wasn't interested in company, male or f
emale. The landlord might have offered him a bevy of prostitutes to help take his mind off his dead wife, but Trevor had flatly refused. He missed Danielle too much to betray her with another woman. The light switch felt oddly solid in his hand, as if he were dreaming ... and then he clicked the light on, gasping as he realised that the woman in the bed was exactly like Danielle.

  “Trevor,” she said, in a relieved tone. “Thank God.”

  Trevor stared, convinced that he was going mad. His wife was dead; he’d seen the pile of ashes that was all that remained of the house they’d shared. There had been nothing left of her body – or those of his daughters – apart from a handful of DNA traces. The fire had been so intense that it had wiped out everything else. And yet ... he’d been married for over ten years. Every sense in his body was screaming that he was looking right at the woman he’d loved and married, the woman who was dead.

  “I faked my death,” Danielle said. The tone was perfect, the half-apologetic tone she'd always affected when she’d done something she knew would upset him, even if it was for the best of motives. “There wasn't a choice.”

  Trevor’s head spun, shock rapidly being replaced by anger. How could she do this to him? He’d watched as the tiny coffins, all that remained of his family, were opened and the ashes scattered onto the memorial garden ... and it had all been faked? How could anyone put someone through so much hell?

  “I had no choice,” Danielle said, again. “I ...”

  Trevor slapped her, hard.

  He watched his wife fall backwards onto the bed, half-shocked at his own action. He’d never hit her, ever. Even when they’d argued and fought, he’d never hit her, but now ... maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the shock, but he’d hit her. An ugly red mark appeared on her skin as she stared up at him, her eyes equally shocked. Part of Trevor was horrified by what he’d done; the other part felt a certain kind of grim satisfaction in seeing her pain. Was it anything like as bad as the moment when he’d seen the ruins of his house and known – he’d known – that his family was dead?

  “The girls,” he said, as a more important question emerged in his mind. He reached forward and pulled his wife forward by the collar. “Where are the girls?”

  A dozen possible answers flooded through his mind. If Danielle had been prepared to put him through the agony of losing her, just to fake her own death, what might she have done to the children? It was hard to think of her as a murderess, yet the DNA traces could have been her own daughters burning to death, just to cover their tracks? If she had, he promised himself, he’d strangle her with his bare hands. He certainly couldn’t rely on the government to give him and his family justice.

  “They’re safe,” Danielle said. “I had them sent out of the city.”

  Trevor sat down, heavily. How could he have doubted her?

  He caught his breath. “Where did you send them?”

  “There's a farm, some distance from the city,” Danielle said, softly. There were tears in her eyes. “They should be safe there, for the moment.”

  “For the moment,” Trevor repeated. God, he wanted a drink ... and yet he had the feeling that drinking more alcohol would be the worst possible thing he could do. “Danielle ... what the fuck is going on?”

  Danielle took a breath. “I’m a wanted woman,” she said, softly. “And I needed to hide.”

  Trevor listened as she explained how she’d become involved with the Democratic Underground, keeping it a secret from everyone else, including her husband. And how they’d never actually done anything until Admiral Singh arrived, by which time it had been too late. And how she’d kept her head down, fearing that the security forces would arrest her at any moment. And how she’d eventually linked up with another resistance organisation ...

  “You should have told me,” Trevor said, angrily. But what would he have said? He was no coward – no one who worked on the orbital platforms was a coward – but it wasn't just Danielle and himself who would be in danger. Amber and Rochelle would also be in danger if they were exposed. “Why didn't you?”

  He shuddered at the thought. If the girls were lucky, they would be farmed out to Admiral Singh’s supporters and brought up as proper little followers of the regime. But there were darker rumours, darker suggestions ... whispers shared in the brief moments when they knew that they weren’t being observed. The girls were hardly mature, but they could still be sent to a very special brothel and ...

  Trevor swallowed hard, trying not to be sick. And his wife, their mother, had exposed them to such a fate? How could she? He wanted to wrap his hands around her neck and strangle the life out of her for being so irresponsible ... and yet he still loved her. Maybe they should both take poison and die.

  “The house was bugged,” Danielle said. “I dared not say anything to you.”

  “Oh,” Trevor said. He thought of everything they’d done in the house and shuddered at the thought of those private moments being observed. Every so often, he’d brushed up against the security forces – they were fond of random checks – and he knew what they were like, what they might choose to observe. “Maybe that does make sense.”

  He suddenly felt very tired. “Why did you come here?”

  “The resistance needs your help,” his wife said. “Will you join us?”

  Trevor stared at her. She had faked her death ... and then she had the nerve to ask for help?

  “I’m sorry about what I did to you,” Danielle said, quickly. “And if there had been a chance to take you with us, I would have done so. But I had to act fast to protect the girls. If I hadn't, they might have been taken away.”

  “I see,” Trevor said.

  He stared down at her beautiful face, still marred by the ugly red mark. Anything was forgivable if it protected the children; he didn't want to think about what could have happened to his daughters if they had been taken away by the security forces. But on the other hand ... he’d told himself that he had a wife and family as hostages to fortune. It had prevented him from considering doing anything more dangerous than silently cursing Admiral Singh and her regime under his breath. They couldn't kill him for that, could they?

  But if he joined her, if he did something more active, they could kill him. Everyone was supposed to watch the public executions, just to remind them of what could happen if they were caught plotting treason. Some of the executions were quite imaginative; he'd watched in horror as one young man, convicted of a crime by the regime’s judges, injected with a drug that had made his phobias overwhelm his mind. He’d died screaming in absolute terror.

  And yet ... it was a chance to strike back at the regime. And to have his wife and daughters back.

  “Very well,” he said, finally. He didn't want Danielle to risk herself any more – and she would, he knew, if he didn't do it for her. When his wife got the bit between her teeth, she just charged forward and ignored the possible dangers. He was mildly surprised that she had hidden herself away for so long. “I will do as you want.”

  Danielle reached for him and drew him into a kiss. She felt heavenly in his arms, particularly after he’d thought he’d lost her. How could they have started to lose their connection in the bedroom? It had taken her faked death to remind him of just how important she was to him. He hesitated – the flophouse was hardly the romantic hotel they’d shared on their honeymoon – and then pressed ahead, one hand sneaking under his wife’s blouse to find her breast.

  And then there was nothing in the world, but her.

  ***

  Jasmine looked away, granting the couple what privacy she could. It had been simple enough to rent the room next to Trevor’s and then bore a couple of peepholes through the wall; the builders had skimped on the materials to the point Jasmine was mildly surprised that the building hadn’t already collapsed. Indeed, the drilling might well have brought the wall down if they hadn’t been very careful.

  She sat down and waited, contemplating Trevor’s words. When he’d slapped Danielle, Jasmine had a
lmost moved then, bursting through the wall to rip him away from his wife. And yet, he’d controlled himself ... Jasmine had known others who would have allowed their fury to overwhelm them. It would have even been understandable; Trevor had been allowed to believe, truly believe, that his wife and children were dead. Jasmine suspected that she would not have handled it so well if her siblings had been reported dead ... and then she’d discovered that they’d faked their death.

  Just what had happened to her family nagged at her mind from time to time. Her father had never been entirely happy with her choice of career, but he’d accepted it ... and now he and his homeworld were lost somewhere in the ruins of the Empire. Jasmine’s siblings, married or unmarried, had no way to contact her ... did they think that she was dead? Or did their homeworld have too many other problems to worry about a single girl who had largely walked away from their family? There was no way to know. Perhaps, one day, the Commonwealth would eventually reach her homeworld ... or perhaps it would never expand much further. If Admiral Singh had her way, it would definitely not exist for much longer.

  Poor man, she thought, thinking of Trevor.

  The sounds of lovemaking finally died away. It wasn't an uncommon sound in the flophouse; their first survey had revealed that it was often used by prostitutes who were unwilling or unable to work in a brothel. Still, Trevor had been so insistent that he hadn't wanted a woman in his room – according to the landlord, when Jasmine had slipped him a reasonably-sized bribe – that someone might ask questions. By then, Jasmine hoped to be long gone.

  Her lips quirked. She'd known someone who had dealt with the loss of his husband by screwing several different others, both male and female, over the next few nights. How could Danielle have blamed Trevor for finding solace in the arms of a prostitute when he’d had good reason to believe that his wife was dead? She might have realised that, intellectually, he hadn't intended to cheat, but emotionally she would have felt betrayed.