The Empire's Corps: Book 04 - Semper Fi

by Christopher Nuttall

  She still felt tired when she walked through the hold with the official from the base, who insisted on inspecting each of the security tags before agreeing to accept the pallets. Mandy couldn't fault his paranoia – he would be blamed for any discrepancies in the manifest, once he’d formally accepted them – but she found it irritating. It was a relief when his crew finally came into the hold to take the pallets, then transfer several more pallets of raw materials onto her ship for transport back to Corinthian. At least they wouldn't be in immediate danger of running out of money.

  But we’re not trusted to take stuff out of the system, she reminded herself, sardonically. I wonder why.

  The return journey to Corinthian was almost completely uneventful, until they neared the planet and were ordered to hold position while a pair of light starships entered orbit. Mandy puzzled over the orders – it wasn't as if there was any real danger of a collision – until she realised that the two starships were scouts, rather than proper warships. The database she’d memorised had noted that the Imperial Navy rarely used scoutships any longer – had rarely used them, she reminded herself. It was easy to imagine just what worlds Admiral Singh might be scouting out.

  “We've got permission to dock,” Jones reported, once the scoutships were in orbit. “Same place, Captain.”

  Mandy nodded, absently. Maybe she could go out with Tam again and try to pump him for information. Or maybe he wouldn't know anything. She had had the impression that Admiral Singh’s people never told their subordinates anything more than what they actually needed to know.

  “Take us into dock,” she ordered.

  Once they’d unloaded their new cargo, they could start looking for a new contract – while trying to figure out how much the scoutships had actually been able to tell the Admiral. Mandy had seen how pirates scoped out star systems for possible attack. It was surprisingly easy to pick up a vast amount of information without being detected at all.

  The datapad Tam had given her chimed as soon as she linked into the local network. There was a note from him inviting her to dinner again, several responses to enquiries she’d sent to people who might be interested in hiring the freighter ... and a number of pieces of junk mail. Back on Earth, there had been laws against spamming the datanet, which hadn't put a stop to the torrent of junk everyone with a working datanet address had received daily. It hadn't been until she'd reached Avalon that she’d realised that the laws were carefully written, allowing anyone willing to pay a small fee the right to send as much spam as they wanted. Somehow, Mandy wasn't surprised that Admiral Singh’s regime had done the same thing.

  She glanced through it ... and froze. One of the messages looked perfectly harmless – it was offering fresh food from the planet below, something that freighter crews wanted if they could afford it – but there were a handful of code phases embedded in the text. It couldn't be a coincidence, she knew; Jasmine had finally managed to get in touch with her! Mandy sucked in a breath and started composing a reply, one that would report on the scoutships ... and what they might find out. And who knew what would happen then?

  Mandy scowled. If Admiral Singh dispatched her fleet at once, the Commonwealth would be in deep trouble. Hell, she might just decide to trash the systems, rather than try to occupy them. It would be one way to ensure that the Commonwealth never became a rival. She gritted her teeth. That was not going to happen.

  Once the message was written – it looked like an agreement to buy a small quantity of food – she uploaded it into the datanet and stood up, preparing to head down to the hold. The inspectors would want to do their job before they took the pallets, just like the inspectors on the other planet. It never came to an end.

  Maybe I shouldn't go trading after all, she thought, as the ship docked with the station. I just don’t have the patience to deal with the bureaucrats.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The Empire's basic failure lay in its inability to maintain the balancing act. In a sense, it was simply too large and yet too centralised to have any hope of keeping the balance. It was impossible to represent its inhabitants fairly, let alone take account of their needs and wants; indeed, even if the Grand Senate had been controlled by the most capable and altruistic humans in history, it would have been a task well beyond its capabilities.

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

  “Well,” Rani said, “what do we have here?”

  She studied the star chart with considerable interest. Apart from François, the likely destination of the refugees from Greenway, there were four other worlds highlighted as belonging to a new power. Beyond them, there were a handful of other worlds that might well be other members of the same power. Enough, perhaps, to give her and her fleet a fight.

  “We surveyed all of those worlds from a safe distance,” Captain Timothy Lombardi reported. He looked nervous at reporting to her directly; she could promote him beyond his wildest dreams, or sent him to an asteroid mining station for wasting her time. “There was quite a bit of radio chatter talking about a Commonwealth – several other planetary names were mentioned, headed by Avalon. I think that is the core of their empire.”

  Rani nodded. Avalon had, for some reason that she doubted had made sense at the time, a working cloudscoop. It had been vastly uneconomical before the Empire’s fall, but it seemed that holding a near-complete monopoly on HE3 in its sector had given Avalon the chance to build itself into a new political entity. An impressive feat, all the more so given the lack of any other heavy industry on the planet. Perhaps the RockRats had gotten involved. They tended to shy away from planetary politics – RockRats merely split up if political disputes grew too close to violence, an option that was rarely available on a planet’s surface without causing other long-term problems – but some of them might have decided to build a political unit of their own.

  Actually, she considered, that would make a great deal of sense. RockRats were natural spacers, capable of turning raw asteroids into habitats, industrial nodes and even shipyards very quickly. The Empire had long worried about the consequences if the RockRats had decided to turn on the Empire, rather than tamely flit away into the darkness when the Empire felt inclined to flex its muscles and banish them from the inhabited systems. No one knew how many RockRats there were, not even themselves. Rani had once read an intelligence report that suggested the RockRats might enjoy a population far larger than the Empire’s trillions of human beings.

  Still, it was well not to jump to conclusions.

  “We ran sensor drones near a number of starships and monitored them,” Lombardi continued, carefully. “Most of them were ex-Imperial Navy vessels, but there were a number of new-build ships, built to new designs. Nothing larger than a light cruiser, Admiral, yet it is still an impressive achievement.”

  Rani nodded in agreement. Even her own industry had yet to produce any new designs for starships, not when there was just too much else to do. It was irritating – like any Imperial Navy officer who didn’t owe their position to patronage, she had an entire list of suggested improvements for even the oldest designs – but there was no way to speed the process up. Once she was secure, she could get the designers working on the next generation of battleships and heavy cruisers.

  “Good,” she said, finally. “Do they know of our presence?”

  “I don’t know,” Lombardi admitted. “The chatter we picked up didn't speak of any new threats ...”

  “But you didn't go close enough to be certain,” Rani concluded. She couldn't fault his caution, or his honesty. If he’d risked going closer, he might have been detected, alerting the Commonwealth to Rani’s probes. “Good work, Captain. You will be promoted.”

  She smiled inwardly as Lombardi relaxed, noticeably. One didn't need to distribute patronage to build up loyalty, not when one could reward good work and punish incompetent officers. She considered him for a long moment, considering her options, then smiled outwardly as well.

  “I
want you to put together an operation to seize one of their ships,” she ordered. “A freighter, for preference; they won’t be so worried about losing one of them. Once you take her intact, have the ship and crew brought here for interrogation.”

  “Yes, Admiral,” Lombardi said. He hesitated, then asked the obvious question. “When should we depart?”

  Rani made a show of considering it. His crews would need some shore leave – and it wasn't urgent. Besides, selecting a suitable target would take time.

  “One week from now,” she ordered, finally. “Make sure your crews have plenty of rest. Dismissed.”

  Lombardi saluted, then walked out the door.

  “Interesting,” Horn said, once the door was firmly closed. “Do you think that this ... Commonwealth destroyed Proud?”

  “It seems the most likely possibility,” Rani said, coldly. “But there may be no way to find out for sure without invading their space.”

  She scowled. If the Commonwealth knew nothing about her, it wouldn't be taking any precautions ... which gave her plenty of time to scout out its space, plan her offensives and eventually attack. But if the Commonwealth had captured her ship, or found out about her empire from an independent trader, it would be making preparations of its own. Just how capable was its industrial base? If it was producing new designs as well as new starships, it had to be quite formidable. And it might be considering ways to attack her right now.

  Sampson leaned forward. “We know very little about them,” he warned. “We could easily find out that we have bitten off more than we can chew.”

  “Nonsense,” Horn snapped. “How can a handful of ragtag worlds stand up to us?”

  “That is the voice of ignorance talking,” Sampson snapped. “Winning a war against a space-capable political entity covering a handful of star systems is considerably harder than bombarding defenceless planets into submission.”

  He pointed a finger towards the holographic display. “The enemy can fall back, bleeding us all the way, while making it hard for us to secure our supply lines,” he said. “Every time the Imperial Navy had to overrun a rebel force that held more than a couple of star systems, it always took months – and really, this is on a far greater scale. There hasn't been anything on this scale since the Unification Wars.

  “And there’s no rule that prevents them from attacking us,” he added. “They might just raid our system here ... might I remind you, hey, that we have all of our industry concentrated here? A few lucky hits and we will be in serious trouble. We will have to keep this system covered, which means that we won’t have much firepower to free up to actually invade their star systems. And we know almost nothing about them!”

  “We know they destroyed one of our ships,” Horn said. “That isn’t exactly a friendly action.”

  “We think they destroyed one of our ships,” Sampson reminded him. “We do not know that they have done anything of the sort.”

  Rani kept her face expressionless as they argued. Sampson was largely right; a war between her empire and the Commonwealth, unless the Commonwealth was far weaker than she dared assume, would take months, perhaps years. On the other hand, she dared not try to sign a treaty with them and agree on a shared border, not when the Commonwealth was clearly expanding rapidly. It might manage to overwhelm her empire economically and fight later at a time of its choosing.

  And yet, all of her experience with wars between multi-system powers had been largely theoretical.

  Some rebellions had taken entire star systems into revolt, a handful had even consumed several systems. But they’d only had a makeshift force in space to defend themselves ... and the Imperial Navy had still had to work hard to overwhelm them, despite possessing vastly superior firepower. The Commonwealth was certain to be a great deal more dangerous.

  “We shall continue to survey their space – and, once Captain Lombardi has captured one of their ships, we should have some hard data,” Rani said, finally. Not knowing was the worst of it. She’d had too many bad experiences with what was laughingly called Imperial Intelligence to feel entirely confident about jumping into the unknown. “In the meantime, we will expand our patrols and attempt to intercept any intelligence probes of their own into our space.”

  Vice Admiral Jubal Birder cleared his throat. “Admiral, there was the missile attack on this world,” he said. “That might have been supported by the Commonwealth.”

  Rani nodded. It was possible – supporting insurgent groups would tie up her assets, winning time for the Commonwealth to prepare for war – but it seemed a little too blatant. On the other hand, it wouldn't be the first time that insurgent or terrorist groups – there was a fine line between the two – took the weapons and then did something that horrified their patrons. Maybe a little careless on the Commonwealth’s part, but much of the Rim was awash with weaponry anyway.

  “We shall just have to remain vigilant,” she said. She looked over at Horn. “Perhaps some extra checks on any newcomers, just in case.”

  Horn grinned, unpleasantly. “Of course, Admiral,” he said. “Might I suggest that we concentrate on anyone who wants to go down to the planet?”

  Rani nodded, then looked at the others. “We knew that we would have to fight on a much larger scale one day,” she added. “From this moment onwards, we prepare for all-out war.”

  ***

  Jasmine looked down at the brief message and swore under her breath.

  “It’s confirmed,” she said, savagely. “The Admiral is definitely aware of the Commonwealth.”

  Blake looked over at her from where he was lying on the bed, trying to relax. “What does she have in mind?”

  “The source doesn't say,” Jasmine said. “But I don’t think it will be anything good.”

  She put the datapad down and wiped her forehead, tiredly. Two weeks spent nurturing the growth of rebel cells, building up a network that should be far more resilient than the Democratic Underground ... and, just incidentally, preparing the farmers for their phase of the operation. It wasn't long enough to launch the operation with any hope of success. Even if they threw caution to the winds and gambled, she couldn't predict anything other than ten to fifteen percent chance of actually winning.

  But it was going to be a major headache if the Admiral did start mounting raids on the Commonwealth. If nothing else, her fleet was going to be distributed widely, making it harder to capture a number of ships. And if she took her battleships alone and hit Avalon, the war might be lost in a single stroke.

  Which means that we really need to distract her, Jasmine thought, grimly. And that means burning up some of our assets.

  “I’ll send a message to Sergeant Harris,” she said, reluctantly. “They can start carrying out small attacks on the guardsmen, just enough to make sure that they know they’re under attack, but not enough to spur the Admiral into massive retaliation.”

  “We should be out there,” Blake observed. “The locals shouldn't have to carry all of the burden by themselves.”

  “I know,” Jasmine admitted, feeling a flicker of guilt. No doubt a Pathfinder would have happily sacrificed as many of the locals as necessary to accomplish his objectives. “But we may not be able to slip out of the city again.”

  She scowled. It had been hard enough to get Danielle’s children out to an isolated farm – and their minders had reported that both of the children were spoilt brats. God knows what they’d thought; they’d been drugged in the safe house and when they’d woken up, they’d been on the farm, with papers to prove that they’d been adopted by the farmer and his wife. They weren't behaving themselves at all ... and if they’d known how to get back to Landing City, they might have had to be restrained.

  Jasmine shook her head tiredly. Two kids uprooted from their homes. It was just something else to feel guilty about, really.

  Recruitment was going well among the young civilians, the ones who were facing conscription or unemployment in their futures. It wasn't going so well among the unwillin
g immigrants; unsurprisingly, Admiral Singh’s people kept a close eye on them and there had been several close shaves. Jasmine hoped that Trevor Chambers would be able to get closer to the ones on the orbital platforms, but that was just too dangerous. The security forces could monitor the platforms far too comprehensively.

  And she’d had an idea. It was, she told herself, born of desperation.

  “The surveillance on Johan Patterson has been completed,” she said, out loud. “We could use him.”

  Blake sat upright. “Approaching him is way too dangerous,” he objected, bluntly. If he felt something was too dangerous, it was probably near suicide. Jasmine had seen him pull crazy stunts in the middle of outright firefights. “He’s loyal.”

  “But he has a family,” Jasmine said, softly. “And we have people who we can send to kidnap his children.”

  “Lieutenant,” Blake started, and then stopped.

  Jasmine understood. Fighting a honest battle was one thing, but actually acting like terrorists was quite another. If they kidnapped a child and threatened him, even without actually intending to carry out the threats, it was another step closer to the line. It was funny how ... insubstantial the line seemed to be when they needed to cross it. Or when they told themselves that they had no choice.

  But they didn't, did they? The more cells they built up, the greater the chance of a mistake ... something that would expose them to the security forces. Jasmine had no illusions about their ability to fight and win now, if the security forces came hunting. They’d lose; at best, they’d have to go underground and start rebuilding. And at worst, they’d be dead and the Commonwealth would fall soon afterwards.

  “Start planning the operation,” Jasmine said, in tones that should have ended the conversation right there and then. “Unless you can think of another way to subvert someone high up in the security forces?”

  Blake hesitated, then shook his head. “I can’t,” he admitted. “But this is ... this is obscene.”