The Empire's Corps: Book 05 - The Outcast

by Christopher Nuttall

  Jamie quirked an eyebrow, inviting her to continue.

  “My ... adopted parents have been held at the asteroid,” Sameena said. “Is there a reason for that?”

  Jamie scowled. “The requirements for what we want from them – and the others who signed up to help us – keep changing,” he admitted. “We haven't been able to settle on a final contract.”

  Sameena scowled openly as she stood up. It was yet another sign of decay.

  People glanced at her as they walked back to the spaceport. She was used to attention by now, but there was a new edge to it that was faintly disconcerting. Paddy had reported that there were already exaggerated rumours flying through the asteroid, including one that she was closer to the Imperial Navy than any self-respecting trader would consider proper. The rumour was explicit enough to make her blush. And then there was the story that suggested she’d killed all of the assassins herself in single-combat.

  Paddy met them at the airlock, wearing body armour and carrying an immense rifle slung over one shoulder. Sameena muttered her goodbyes to Jamie, painfully aware of Paddy’s amused gaze, and then stepped into the airlock, relaxing slightly when the airlock closed behind them. She’d outfitted her ship with a handful of weapons that made her feel safe inside it, even though she knew better than to relax completely. A light freighter, no matter how heavily armed, was no match for a warship.

  “He seems to like you,” Paddy commented. “Should we be worried?”

  Sameena hesitated, confused. The traders were so loose that it was sometimes had to remember that they had morals, morals that were completely alien to her homeworld. By being friends – and perhaps more – with Jamie, was she betraying Brad? But Brad had died two years ago and traders had been known to marry again much sooner. Or was there something else involved?

  “I don't think so,” she said, finally. “He did suggest that I get bodyguards.”

  “And quite rightly too,” Paddy said, as they stepped into the galley. “We can't expect the truce to last for much longer.”

  “It’s already broken,” Jayne pointed out. She was seated at the table, reading from a datapad and rubbing her swollen belly. “At this rate, Madagascar will be a war zone within the month.”

  Sameena scowled. She didn't quite understand the relationship between the Imperial Navy and Madagascar, but she did understand that the asteroid was generally viewed as neutral territory. As long as they didn't cause trouble, anyone was welcome to dock and take advantages of the facilities, even though there was an Imperial Navy base right next to the giant asteroid. People could bicker if they wanted, but outright warfare was discouraged and the asteroid’s staff stomped on it whenever it cropped up. Now ... that truce had been broken.

  “I don't know how to judge bodyguards,” Sameena said, as she poured herself a cup of tea. At least she’d learned how to delegate. “I want you to find a couple of good people, ones you would trust at your back.”

  “He’ll go for Marines,” Jayne predicted.

  “If I could,” Paddy agreed, without heat. “No shame in wanting the best, is there?”

  Jayne snorted.

  “But there may not be any to be found,” Paddy added. “Most Marines who go into retirement tend to go to stage-one colony worlds. I might get lucky, but I wouldn't count on it.”

  “Let me know what you find,” Sameena said. “But they have to be trustworthy.”

  “Everyone has a price,” Paddy observed, gloomily. “But I’ll do my best.”

  Sameena nodded. “We’re going to have to go out to the factory,” she said, changing the subject. The datachip Jamie had given her felt heavy in her pocket. “And then ... I don't know where we will go.”

  “I was looking at possible contracts,” Jayne admitted. “There’s almost nothing suitable for us – and certainly nothing long term. Costs are skyrocketing, Captain. I have a feeling that most of the freighters out there” – she nodded to the hull – “are going to be stuck at Madagascar soon enough. There’s even a suggestion flowing through the datanet that they should go to one of the abandoned colonies and just take over.”

  Sameena grimaced. That would certainly add to the chaos spreading through the sector – and the rest of the Rim. Worlds would drop out of contact entirely as interstellar shipping ground to a halt ... she pushed the image aside, angrily. It was something else she would have to handle, somehow. The contingency plans would have to be updated yet again.

  She smiled, suddenly. Perhaps she could point them towards Jannah. The planet had no defences, no starships ... even a handful of freighters would be able to take control of the high orbitals and bombard the planet into submission. Such a disaster would shatter the Guardians and their grip on the planet. And then the influx of outsiders would change Jannah forever.

  If nothing else, she thought, they can't keep pretending that low-tech is a good idea when it left them utterly defenceless.

  But Jannah was hers. One day, she promised herself, she would return.

  And then there would be a reckoning.

  “I’ll see if we can hire others,” she said, flatly. Rosa was producing enough food to keep several mining colonies supplied. A few additional freighters might come in handy too. “But I don't know how long society will hold together.”

  “Not long,” Paddy said. He paused. “All of the rumours are growing worse. Something is going to blow.”

  Sameena nodded, remembering just how quickly Jamie had given up the unlocking codes, even though it might destroy his career. The Imperial Navy – or at least the fraction of it that remained in the sector – was definitely desperate. Who knew what was in the classified communications they received from Earth?

  “We’ll leave this evening,” she said, finishing her tea. “By then, I should have made arrangements for their starship to be handed over to Captain Hamilton. We might find a use for it.”

  “We can cannibalise it, if nothing else,” Paddy grunted. “God help us.”

  Chapter Thirty

  And when so many people are desperate, politicians will seek to redirect their desperation against others. Many societies fell into the trap of blaming unpopular minorities for economic problems. Small – and therefore powerless – groups of humans made excellent scapegoats. However, destroying them solved nothing.

  - Professor Leo Caesius. The Science That Isn’t: Economics and the Decline and Fall of the Galactic Empire.

  Space was … immense.

  Out in the wastelands of interstellar space, there was no hiding from the truth. Humans were utterly tiny on a cosmic scale, hardly noticeable at all. The stars had been burning for millions of years before the human race had been born, Sameena knew, and they would be burning for millions of years after the human race was gone. And, as far as anyone knew, humanity was alone. It was easy to see why the Nihilists believed humanity to be a plague on the universe. Intelligence was very much the exception, not the rule.

  Sameena couldn't agree with them. If God had created mankind, He had not created them to be a plague, but to bear witness to His works. Mankind added randomness to a universe otherwise run by clockwork, eyes to a universe that would never go appreciated by anyone other than its creator ... humans were important, even if they seemed tiny. But then, germs were important and they were smaller still.

  It was rare for anyone, even the RockRats, to establish bases light years from the nearest stars. Apart from the giant slowboats, generational starships that crossed the interstellar void slower than light, few humans could tolerate the aching emptiness for long. It was psychological, they knew, and yet they feared the void. Anything could be lurking out in the darkness between the stars.

  But it had been the safest place to establish her factory. Hundreds of industrial nodes floated in place, taking in raw materials from Marigold’s Folly and a dozen other mining colonies and reprocessing them into spare parts and duplicate factories. Freighters, some of them larger than the industrial nodes they served, nudged up beside them
, unloading the ore and loading on the cargo. Given time, Sameena knew, her operation could grow into a full-sized shipyard, an industrial node to rival Earth’s Halo or Terra Nova’s Belt. But they might not have the time.

  “The RockRats weren't too keen on trading with us,” Steve admitted, coming up behind her. “I had the feeling that their leadership believes that hiding is the best option.”

  Sameena scowled. The RockRats kept themselves isolated from the Empire, refusing to have anything to do with it – and, in turn, the Imperial Navy treated them as criminals. She couldn’t blame the RockRats for wanting to hide, even though their assistance would have been very helpful. They knew more about building a space-based industry from scratch than anyone else.

  “They probably think they can just take over when the Empire destroys itself,” he added, sourly. “Some of them are probably doing what they can to make it worse.”

  “No doubt,” Sameena agreed, never taking her eyes off the void. She refused to allow it to get to her. “Did the codes work?”

  “Yes,” Steve said. “They work.”

  He’d taken four days to inspect the datachip thoroughly before agreeing to test it. It would have been easy, he’d argued, for the Imperial Navy to have added something else to the chip, perhaps a virus intended to copy all their files and then smuggle them back to Madagascar. But nothing had turned up after a brutal investigation that had left Sameena worrying that they might accidentally destroy the chip.

  She smiled in relief. “So you unlocked the equipment?”

  “And the classified technical specifications,” Steve confirmed. “We can now produce just about anything that can be produced in the Empire, provided that we have the right raw materials. Give us a couple of months and we’ll be drowning in spare parts, tools and weapons.”

  Sameena smiled. “Weapons?”

  “We can produce as many as you like, given time,” Steve said. “But it will be at least a year before we can start producing our own warships, unless you want us to drop everything and concentrate on the ships. Hullmetal alone is a bitch to produce.”

  “True,” Sameena agreed. They had to make the machines to make the machines before they could turn out a shipyard – and producing starships took much longer than spare parts. “Can we start bolting weapons onto freighters and other ships?”

  “Yes, but that won’t make them warships,” Steve warned. “If they go up against a real warship they’ll be cut to ribbons.”

  “Pirates don’t want to risk their lives or their profits,” Sameena reminded him. “If a few freighters happened to be armed to the teeth, the pirates will go elsewhere rather than risk losing their ships.”

  “There will be legal problems,” Steve said. “At least until the crunch finally comes.”

  Sameena nodded. The Imperial Navy frowned on armed merchantmen, although the official excuse – that armed merchantmen could easily turn into pirates – didn’t hold water. It had taken her some research to discover that the real reason was that the Imperial Navy could and did charge fees for escort work, which might not have been so bad if the Navy had been able to provide half the escorts interstellar shipping needed. Instead, they ensured that most tramp freighters were unarmed and unable to deter pirates.

  The bigger corporations also left their ships unarmed, even though they could have paid the colossal fees for the permits out of pocket change. She honestly wasn't sure what they were thinking. Sameena had paid the fees herself and it had cost her a sizable chunk of her fortune. Maybe they just didn't care about losing a handful of freighters. The insurance would pick up the bill.

  “Under the circumstances, I think we can afford to pay for permits,” Sameena said, dryly. “Besides, it won’t be long now before permits become immaterial.”

  Steve nodded. “I’ve been following the reports from the network,” he agreed. “Far too many planets are now outside Imperial Law, whatever the Empire says. Madagascar will be abandoned soon, I suspect. Are you going to recruit the people there?”

  “Some of them,” Sameena said. They’d hired hundreds of experienced workers from Madagascar, as well as training up new ones. The entire program would have to be expanded soon, she suspected. It would give the children of Marigold’s Folly a chance to be more than miners – or dead before they reached their twenties. “I don’t know about the others.”

  She caught sight of Pleasure Palace and scowled, feeling a twinge of disapproval – and guilt. The starship had been a luxury liner before it had been decommissioned and abandoned; Steve had had it towed to the shipyard and retrofitted into an entertainment complex. It was easy to accept movies, but harder to tolerate prostitutes, even though Steve had pointed out that their crewmen were going to be living and working on the complex for years, without a chance to leave. She'd insisted on selecting volunteers, paying proper wages and providing excellent medical care, but she still felt guilty. Could anyone truly be said to be a volunteer when it was a choice between prostitution and starvation?

  A surprising number, she’d discovered, had been pleasure workers before accepting their new contracts. Sameena had talked to a few of them and had been astonished by how calmly they accepted their positions – and how hard they had worked to earn their qualifications. She had never thought of the arts of pleasure as a scholarly qualification, certainly not one that could be earned. The women had explained, quite seriously, that there was more to it that just sex.

  “We’re there to make people relax into pleasure,” she’d said. “It isn't just a quick fuck, but a long session that can include a massage, a long soak in a bathtub and much else besides.”

  She dismissed the memories and looked over at Steve. “Can we meet the Navy’s requirements?”

  “We have a stockpile of spare parts now,” Steve mused. “It wouldn't be hard to give them enough to keep some of their ships running. But I should warn you that providing everything in their list of requirements will take years, unless we devote everything we have to meeting their demands. This isn't the Halo. Not yet.”

  Sameena nodded, thinking wistfully of Earth’s colossal network of orbiting industrial factories. At its height, Earth had been capable of supplying the entire Empire with everything from spare parts to mass-produced starships. Combined with a handful of other major industrial nodes, it had encouraged the other worlds not to develop their own industries. Now, the Empire’s great success had turned into a disaster of the first order.

  And the Grand Senate was still trying to discourage competition.

  She scowled. “Robbing Peter to pay Paul,” she muttered. “What can we reasonably give them?”

  “We can give them half of our production of spare parts,” Steve said. “That production line is fairly stable now. Combined with a few additions once we get the military-grade equipment up and running, they should have enough to keep them going. As we expand our facilities, we should be able to provide the rest of their requirements. But it may be some time before we can do so.”

  “It’ll have to suffice, for the moment,” Sameena said. She knew that Jamie wouldn't be happy, but she couldn't promise more than she could deliver. “Do you have any leads on more industrial gear?”

  “Several,” Steve said. “I’ve dispatched a team to inspect another junkyard, ninety light years away. But by now it could easily have been cannibalised. We won’t know until they return.”

  “I know,” Sameena nodded. “I don’t suppose you have a working theory for an FTL radio?”

  Steve laughed. “No,” he said. “And there may not be one for a very long time.”

  Once, back when they’d started working together, he'd told her a secret belonging to the Engineer’s Guild. They’d come to believe, he’d said, that the Grand Senate was deliberately impeding the process of scientific research and development. All of the discoveries over the last four hundred years, he’d claimed, were really improvements on technology that had gone before, rather than anything completely new. Theoretical science
into new power sources, starship drives and other ways of breaking the light barrier had largely been discontinued. It was as if the Grand Senate believed that the human race no longer needed to advance.

  “A starship with enough power reserves can project a gravity shield and rotate it around the hull to interdict incoming fire,” he’d said. “In theory, one can link together generators and create a bubble that would shield the ship completely. The Imperial Navy would love such a development. But all research into it has been barred.

  “And, in theory, you could produce just about anything from energy, with the right equipment,” he added. “But research into that has been barred too.”

  Sameena understood, she thought. The Grand Senate was on top of the universe; directly or indirectly, they controlled the lives and destinies of trillions of people. And there was no threat outside the Empire to encourage technological advancement. Why would the Grand Senate want the universe to change? What might it do to the universe if Earth’s population ever learned what the Grand Senate did to the colonies in their name? Or if a word of a rebellion spread faster than it could be suppressed?

  Maybe it’s for the best, right now, she thought. An FTL radio would show everyone just how badly the Empire is falling. Panic alone would take down the rest of it before we were ready.

  She scowled. In the hope of turning out compliant peons who didn’t even want to think for themselves, the Grand Senate had sabotaged the schools ... which had had the unintended consequence of reducing the pool of trained manpower available to the Empire. This in turn had ensured that the Empire’s infrastructure had begun to decay. It seemed like absolute madness, but if they’d believed that they would never have to face the consequences of their actions ... it was the only explanation that made sense. They were simply too isolated from the universe to see the decay pervading through the Empire.

  “Maybe we can invent one soon,” she said, although she wasn't hopeful. If the stories of the old days were true, the genius engineers had been able to come up with a concept on Monday, produce a working model on Tuesday and start mass production on Wednesday ... and then the whole cycle would begin against the following Monday. Real life had taught her that research and development could take years. “Or see what other developments we can produce.”