The Empire's Corps: Book 04 - Semper Fi

by Christopher Nuttall

“Thank you, sir,” Zed said. “And Mr. Patterson?”

  Horn considered. It had been relatively simple to arrange an excuse to keep Patterson at the office, working late, even though the man had been twitchy and clearly nervous, expecting his next meeting with the blackmailer. Tomorrow, Horn would have to give him some kind of explanation; tonight, Patterson would be allowed to have some fun with the girls Horn kept as rewards for his most loyal servants. It should help him to forget his wife and son, if they couldn't be recovered.

  “He can sleep in the office tonight,” Horn said, finally. “After that ... well, we’ll see.”

  It would be a shame to have to demote – or fire – Patterson. He was competent and sane, terms that could hardly be applied to his most trustworthy subordinates. On the other hand, the man had allowed outside concerns – his wife and child – to interfere with his work. It wasn't the kind of dedication that Horn wanted or needed. Maybe it would be for the best, Horn decided, if Patterson wasn't to recover his family. Their loss would give him new cause to focus on Admiral Singh’s enemies.

  “Yes, sir,” Zed said. “And our new captive?”

  “Have her moved to Black Block,” Horn ordered. It was unlikely in the extreme that the mysterious agent was working alone, but no one else had been apprehended nearby. Whoever she was working for had probably realised that something was wrong and pulled back before they could be caught ... unless it was someone living none too far from Patterson’s house. “And then do a full workup. I want to know everything about her.”

  He considered possible suspects as he watched his men move the captive into an armoured prisoner transport van. Patterson was in a good position to aid and abet one or more of Horn’s enemies; it was quite possible that whoever had captured his wife and child had intended to bring pressure to bear on Horn himself – or, more likely, attempt to embarrass him in front of Admiral Singh. After all, the other senior officers hated and feared Horn; they’d do whatever it took to discredit him.

  But they weren’t the only suspects. There were plenty of criminal gangs who would sell their own grandmothers for leverage over someone in Internal Security – and Patterson was probably about as high-ranking as they could hope to subvert. Or there was the mysterious new terrorist organisation in the countryside. No doubt they’d predicted that Horn would gain greater leverage over the security forces outside the cities and intended to use Patterson to monitor his activities. It seemed one hell of a gamble, but the terrorists had to be desperate. And desperate men did stupid things.

  Mulling over the possibilities, he climbed into his car and told the driver to take him to Black Block. He had a long night ahead of him.

  ***

  Rifleman Blake Coleman loved fighting and fucking, not always in that order. He didn't see it as a weakness, no matter what some sarcastic senior officers had pointed out more than once; peaceniks and wimps didn't join the Terran Marine Corps. If he hadn’t wanted to fight – and fight for a decent cause, at that – he would never have walked into the recruiting office and faced the scarred Sergeant on the desk. His love of fighting had kept him alive, while his love of fucking reminded him that there was something else to live for apart from the fight.

  Blake knew that it was unlikely that he would be promoted – or even allowed to switch sideways to become a Sergeant. He didn't mind that as much as some of his comrades thought; he had been pretty stupid back on Avalon ... and besides, promotion meant extra work rather than fighting. Just look at the Colonel, he’d pointed out, when he’d been asked; Colonel Stalker, who’d once led his unit into battle, had been reduced to a desk-jockey fighting hard to remember what it was like to actually fight. Maybe he did have a shiny new insignia and a desk, but he’d lost something important. He couldn't fight with the rest of his men.

  Damn it, Blake thought, as the prisoner transport van started to move. What the hell do I do now?

  He watched from his hiding place as the rest of the security troopers, no doubt convinced that they’d swept every possible hidey-hole, climbed into their own vehicles and drove off, leaving Patterson’s house alone. Blake gritted his teeth; the view from where he’d been hiding hadn't been great, but he’d seen enough to know that the Lieutenant had been captured, taken alive by the security forces. He gritted his teeth at the thought; he’d reviewed enough entertainment channels to know just what sort of fate was in store for her, if she lasted long enough. It was possible that the interrogation would push her hard enough for her implants to kill her ... if she didn't kill herself first.

  Silently, Blake slipped out of his hiding place and started to walk down the street, keeping to the shadows. They had to assume the worst; Lieutenant Yamane would talk, eventually. Blake knew how tough the Lieutenant was – and how capable her implants were of keeping her from talking – but they dared not take anything for granted. But Lieutenant Yamane knew too much; if she talked, just about every rebel cell they’d formed would be blown right open. Admiral Singh would be able to defeat them without ever being in serious danger.

  “You,” a voice snapped.

  Blake looked up, his enhanced eyes seeing through the darkness as if it were the brightest day. Two young men stood there, both carrying makeshift weapons; it was all Blake could do to keep from laughing at their pose. He’d produced more dangerous weapons when he’d been showing the new resistance members how to arm themselves. But these little thugs preyed on the rest of the human population, the sheep who couldn’t defend themselves.

  Just like the Civil Guard, Blake thought, with an odd moment of reflection. He was not normally given to reflecting at all. They exist to put thugs to use.

  “You,” the leader snapped, again. “There’s a toll for entering our territory at night and ...”

  Blake rammed a fist into his throat, feeling the thug’s neck break under the impact. He dropped like a sack of potatoes, blood spewing from his mouth, and hit the ground with a dull thud. The other thug was starting to move away, somehow resisting the urge to panic and run, but it was already too late. Blake caught him, broke his neck effortlessly and dropped him on the ground beside his leader. Perhaps the rest of the street thugs would take warning that there were more dangerous predators in the darkness than themselves.

  Or perhaps not, he thought, remembering some of the unofficial clean-up missions the Marines had performed on Rocky Mountain, before they’d been thrown into the nightmare on Han. None of these thugs recognise true danger when they see it.

  He scowled and continued to walk. There was no choice. They had to get the Lieutenant out before it was too late. And if that meant risking the rest of the section’s lives ... well, the Lieutenant deserved it. She’d saved their lives too.

  ***

  “She’s secure,” the doctor reported. “But there are a number of odd things about her body.”

  Horn smiled as he studied the monitor, showing the girl in the examination chamber. Her clothes had been stripped from her, exposing a body that seemed almost freakishly developed. Horn had seen more than one wealthy woman who had used gene-sequencing or the body-shops to improve herself, but this was different. This woman had pushed herself right to the limit. His gaze rested on her small breasts for a long moment, before he looked back at the doctor.

  The doctor cringed under his gaze. Whatever the general public might believe, it was almost laughably easy to find doctors who were corrupt and willing to break their oaths, no matter how seriously they’d taken them when they’d started to study medicine. Money worked in most cases, but Horn preferred doctors who shared his tastes – or had no moral objections to experimenting on living subjects. Interrogators needed doctors in any case; who else could patch the victims back together so they could be interrogated again?

  “Odd things,” Horn repeated. “And just what are they?”

  The doctor scowled, then flushed. “First, she is almost unbelievably healthy,” he said. “I ran a brief DNA analysis and there’s quite a few modified genes spliced into
her body. In particular, she is stronger than the average human and will remain that way, as long as her body receives sufficient fuel. Her eyesight, hearing and sense of smell are all well above the human average.

  “Second, despite all of those improvements, there are definite signs of heavy medical treatment in her past,” he continued. “Her bones have been broken and put back together using quick-heal or rejuvenation techniques, her body was pushed right to the edge of starvation at one point ... in short, whatever she does for a living is physically punishing, even for someone with such a modified genetic base. There are even hints that her maidenhead was removed surgically, rather than by a man.”

  Horn frowned. “Is there a medical reason for that?”

  “There shouldn't be,” the doctor admitted. “It’s possible that she came from a world that practiced genetic modification on females, preventing them from engaging in sexual intercourse without surgical intervention, but her DNA doesn't show the signs of inbreeding and hackwork that is normally visible for a poor bitch unlucky enough to be born to that sort of person. Indeed” – he nodded towards the screen – “her reproductive system has largely been frozen. She doesn't even get cramps.”

  “I see,” Horn said. “Anything else?”

  “Yes, sir,” the doctor said. “There are a handful of implants inserted into her body.”

  He picked up a datapad and passed it to Horn. “Four of them are at the base of her spine, almost completely impossible to remove without killing her,” he explained. “One of them looks like a standard neural link, except it doesn't seem to have any actual connection to anything. The other three don’t seem to have any visible purpose, at least based on what I can actually see.”

  Horn eyed him, darkly. “Did it occur to you to go inside her and look?”

  “It would kill her,” the doctor said, tightly. “The implants, whatever they are, are woven too deeply into her physical form. Trying to examine them would, I suspect, cause mental trauma and kill her outright. I’m not even sure how they got inserted without risking her life.”

  Horn shrugged. He’d known people in Imperial Intelligence who had volunteered for implantation, even though they'd known that the odds weren’t exactly on their side. Some of the survivors made hellishly effective agents, but from what he’d heard the odds of survival were roughly one in five. Horn had never seriously considered gambling with his own life, not at such pathetic odds. His life was just too important to him.

  He pushed the thought aside for the moment. “And the other implants?”

  “One seems to be a fairly standard contraceptive implant, inserted near the vagina,” the doctor said. “The other appears to be a weapon, probably a nerve-burst implant, inserted into her finger. I suggest that you don’t try to shake hands with her.”

  Horn smirked at the weak joke. “Remove it,” he ordered. “Now.”

  “She may lose the hand altogether,” the doctor warned. “The weapon, whatever it really is, has been woven into her nerves ...”

  “Do it,” Horn said, sharply. “Is there anything else you can tell me about her?”

  “Nothing,” the doctor said. “I suspect that one of her implants is designed to prevent her from being interrogated. You may wish to take care.”

  Horn nodded and called for Zed. “You’ve had plenty of time,” he said, when the man arrived. “Did you pull anything on her out of the files?”

  “Some very odd results,” Zed said. “We ran her fingerprints, retina patterns and DNA code against the files. They produced a very vague file” – he passed Horn another datapad – “that is almost completely uninformative.”

  Horn scowled down at the datapad. Admiral Singh had insisted on registering everyone on the planet in her database, threatening arrest and detention for anyone foolish enough to think that the law didn't apply to them. It provided a useful tool for managing manpower and, more importantly, for tracking down the relatives of any would-be rebel. And yet there were people who had managed to slip through the cracks, if only by bribing the registers. Quite a few criminals remained unregistered.

  The file was bland to the point of being almost completely useless. Jasmine Yamane, if the name attached to the file was genuine, twenty-four years old, granted exemption from conscription on the grounds she worked for the security forces. The ID card she’d had in her pocket when she’d been captured would probably go unquestioned, at least by any patrolling guardsmen. Questioning a security operative was a good way to ensure that one’s next station was out in the countryside, patrolling the most rebellious parts of the globe.

  But Jasmine Yamane wasn't part of his security forces ...

  He considered it, thinking hard. Was the attempt to subvert Patterson the first shot in a campaign against him?

  It was certainly possible. She was implanted – and that suggested someone with a high position in security ... or the navy. Vice Admiral Sampson hated the security officers – and Horn in particular. Horn had no illusions about what would happen if Sampson took over the planet, replacing Admiral Singh with his own people. And yet, he wouldn't have thought that Sampson had the nerve to launch a covert war. A straight-up fight would be more his style.

  Maybe he has an ambitious underling offering him support, Horn thought, ruefully. He’d prospered by being willing to do things that Admiral Singh was reluctant to do for herself. The fact it had allowed him to indulge himself as well as build up a significant power base was just the icing on the cake. There was no reason why Sampson couldn't have his own underlings ready to do the dirty work for him.

  He looked back at the girl’s body and frowned. An alternate explanation was that she worked for a crime lord, someone intent on expanding his operations ... someone who wanted to get into a much stronger position by subverting a security officer. It was possible that she’d been implanted before Admiral Singh had taken over the planet and banned any further unauthorised augmentation. And she’d clearly not had the sources in Internal Security that might have warned her that she was walking into a trap.

  And yet that seemed unusually daring for a crime lord.

  There had been one crime lord, just one, who had tried to treat Admiral Singh as he had treated the Governor. Admiral Singh had unleashed hell on him, literally. His organisation had been ripped apart, his footsoldiers sent to the labour camps while his senior subordinates had been publically executed – and the population had turned out to cheer. The remaining crime lords had learned to keep their heads down after that.

  Or ... could he be looking at an infiltrator?

  Horn had worked in Imperial Intelligence long enough to have heard countless rumours about special forces. The Marine Pathfinders, the Green Lights, the Unspeakable Ones ... all organisations that were wrapped in secrecy, more rumour than reality. Or so he had been told by his superiors. But if the rumours had some basis in truth ...

  He looked at the girl’s body. Truth be told, she wasn't that impressive, certainly not when compared to the rumours. Men and women so enhanced that they were more machine than man, surviving in space without the benefit of spacesuits, each one an army in their own right ... what was a little DNA modification and a handful of implants compared to the stories?

  And yet ....

  What if, he asked himself, she works for the Commonwealth?

  The thought was a nightmarish one for him personally. He, not Sampson, was responsible for security in Landing City. If someone had been operating below the radar in the city, there might well be more than one – and that meant that he had made a dreadful series of mistakes. What if his enemies found out? Admiral Singh might have been willing to allow him to indulge himself, but she would hardly tolerate incompetence ... and his enemies would take the opportunity to paint him as an incompetent bumbling fool. It could not be allowed.

  “We will break her,” he said. Zed, at least, could be trusted to assist him without breathing a word to anyone outside the office. His position was entirely dependent on Horn. “And
then we will decide what to do next.”

  He scowled. Admiral Singh would not be pleased if he delayed informing her, but he needed to know the truth first. His power and position were all he had. Without them, he was a dead man walking. Whatever else happened, he needed to know the truth.

  And if it was the first shot in a plan to unseat him, he promised himself, whoever was behind it would suffer.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  That left us with a dilemma. We needed to replace the Empire, at least in our sector of the galaxy, and yet we needed to avoid the mistakes of the past. This was not easy. The Empire had been shaped by circumstance as much as human will. Our circumstances could be too close at times to the Empire’s early history for comfort.

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

  Jasmine kept her eyes shut as she fought her way back into wakefulness, despite the complete lack of awareness of her surroundings. She’d been captured, taken alive by the enemy ... wherever she was now, she was in the gravest possible danger. Carefully, trying not to betray the fact that she was awake, she reached out with her senses. Where was she?

  She was lying on a hard metal surface, cold and unyielding against her back. Metal bracelets – manacles, she guessed – were wrapped around her wrists and ankles, holding her firmly in place. They didn't have to be hullmetal to hold her, she knew with a flicker of grim amusement; the dull throbbing pain from her hand suggested that her captors had scanned her body and discovered the hidden weapon implant. She knew from her Conduct After Capture course that the cranial implants might have been discovered too, but it was unlikely that her captors had tried to remove them. The process would almost certainly kill her.

  Did they know, she asked herself, what she was? It was possible; Marine implants were highly-classified, the details largely unknown outside the Corps, but the genetic modifications would be harder to conceal. There was no shortage of people with genetic improvements, some of them close to Marine standards without ever having been near a Marine, yet if someone combined the DNA modifications with her implants ... she mentally shook her head, straining her ears to the utmost. One way or another, she was sure that she would find out soon.