The Empire's Corps: Book 05 - The Outcast

by Christopher Nuttall

  “The resistance isn't too keen on taking prisoners,” Foxglove said. “Most of the enemy soldiers who try to surrender are simply shot out of hand.” His face twisted into a grimace. “And they want our prisoners handed over to them for execution.”

  “Tell them we need to interrogate them,” Sameena said, firmly. She understood the need for vengeance, but they needed to know just who had attacked Maxwell – and why. Revenge could come later. Ideally, the guilty would be tried and then punished. “Have we captured any senior officers?”

  “Only the planetary administrator,” Captain Yew reported. He sounded rather pleased, unsurprisingly. With the senior officer in custody, the rest of the enemy force should surrender soon enough. “The resistance has him in their clutches.”

  He showed her a datapad. Sameena looked at the picture ... and then froze. For a long moment, she was so shocked that her mind refused to process what she was seeing. It couldn't be true. It simply couldn’t be possible. But it was. There was no mistaking a very familiar face, one she hadn't seen in five years.

  Uncle Muhammad?

  Chapter Forty

  The net result was that the Empire was rushing blindly towards disaster, with only a relative handful of people aware of the coming catastrophe. And it was the colonies along the Rim that saw the first signs of trouble.

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

  Sameena still felt shocked as her shuttle descended towards Landing City, even though part of her had known that the attackers were no ordinary pirates. They acted more like a military force, complete with actual hygiene and basic organisation. And if they’d all come from Jannah, they would be starting from scratch when it came to understanding their technology. But how had they even obtained the ships?

  The Cartel, she thought, grimly. If she could leverage the sales of Firewater Mead into a trading empire, there was no reason why the Cartel couldn't do the same. It hadn't diversified; it had simply concentrated on obtaining ships and weapons for ... what? Taking advantage of the collapse of the Empire?

  Her blood ran cold as she remembered what the clerics had said, time and time again. There would come a time when the citizens of Jannah, if they placed their faith in God, would return to Earth and purge God’s finest creation of the unbelievers who had driven the faithful from their homes. Maybe it had seemed like nothing more than bravado, back when Jannah had been founded, but now ... they’d started building their own empire already. If it wasn't nipped in the bud, it might rip the sector apart.

  They couldn't match the rest of the Empire¸ she told herself. But if the Core Worlds fell into civil war ... she scowled at the mental image of the Empire’s diversity, swept away and replaced by the intolerance and stagnation of Jannah. It would merely be the prelude to war on a scale unseen in three thousand years.

  She tensed as the shuttle came in to land at the spaceport. Landing City seemed largely intact, but there were a handful of blackened ruins that had once been buildings scattered throughout the city. It wasn't hard to guess that they’d once been churches – or mosques, or synagogues, or something founded by another religion. The Guardians wouldn't hesitate to kill someone who diverted from their view by even a tiny percentage. Why would they be reluctant to smash all other religions?

  “Captain Hussein,” a man said, as she stepped out of the shuttle. “I am General Jarvis, formerly of the Maxwell Militia. Welcome to my world.”

  “Thank you, General,” Sameena said. He looked tough, but determined – and very relieved to see her. Without Sameena’s ships, Maxwell would have eventually been beaten into submission. “I need to speak with the prisoner.”

  “So I was given to understand,” the General said. “What do you intend to do with him?”

  Sameena hesitated. “Interrogate him first,” she said, finally. “He might be needed alive, General. This world isn't the only one at risk.”

  The General grunted. “So I have been told,” he said. “Very well. You may take him.”

  He pointed to an old office block at the edge of the spaceport. “He’s in there, under guard,” he said. “Do you wish to speak with him now?”

  Sameena nodded and allowed him to escort her towards the office. As they walked, he told her about how the newcomers had treated the civilian population, imposing strange new restrictions and curfews on them. As Sameena had anticipated, the invaders had executed most of the planetary leaders – and then gone on to execute priests, teachers and anyone with military experience. She had a feeling that the occupation force had assumed that without any of them left alive the population would be utterly biddable. The General and his men had been proving them wrong.

  “He’s cuffed to the chair,” General Jarvis explained, as they entered the building. “Would you like someone with you in the room?”

  “No,” Sameena said, flatly. She’d never considered running into Uncle Muhammad again, not until she returned to Jannah. Which, she suspected, was going to be sooner than she had planned. “I will talk to him, then you can transfer him to my shuttle.”

  The General gave her an odd look, but nodded in agreement, motioning for her to enter the cell. It was nicer, she couldn't help noticing, than the cell she’d been held in on Rosa – or, for that matter, an Imperial Navy brig. The walls were solid stone, painted blue and white, but her attention was drawn to the man in the centre of the room. Time had not been kind to Uncle Muhammad.

  He glared up at her, his face twisting as if he’d seen something unpleasant. One of his eyes had been blackened by his captors, while blood stained his white robes. Sameena felt an odd twinge of concern which she pushed down ruthlessly. Either through ignorance or deliberate malice, Uncle Muhammad had placed her in a position where only sheer luck had saved her life. Ethne’s lectures ran through her mind and she shivered. She could easily have died if God hadn't been with her that day.

  She felt almost insulted at his disdainful stare, before realising that he simply didn't recognise her. Her dress was so different from what she’d worn the last time they’d met – five years ago – that he probably hadn’t realised that they shared the same homeworld. The uniform she’d donned for the q-ship was tighter than anything that would have been tolerated on Jannah, even though it was quite modest by the Empire’s standards.

  His mouth lolled open. “I have nothing to say to you, infidel bitch,” he said, in passable Imperial Standard. “Kill me already and stop wasting time.”

  Sameena snorted. “Tell me,” she said, in Arabic. “Don’t you recognise me?”

  His eyes went very wide. Outside the Islamic worlds, Arabic speakers were few and far between – and she’d never quite lost the Jannah accent that flavoured her words. The only real question was if he’d meant to try to kill her or if it had been simple ignorance. She would have thought the latter, if she hadn't known about the Cartel.

  It took him several tries to speak. “Sameena?”

  “In the flesh, as it happens,” Sameena said. She allowed herself a tight smile. “Or didn't you realise that I was still alive when you discovered that someone was producing Firewater Mead?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Or didn't you know about that?”

  Uncle Muhammad stared at her. “What are you wearing?”

  Sameena couldn't help it. She burst out laughing.

  “Let’s see now,” she said. “You're in deep trouble, everyone on this planet wants to kill you in all kinds of horrible ways ... and that’s your first question?”

  She knelt down facing him. “I am wearing my uniform,” she said, snidely. “Tell me; when you sent me out into space, did you expect me to die?”

  “I never expected to see you again,” he said. “But I never meant for you to die.”

  “That's interesting,” Sameena said. “Because I really don’t believe you.”

  She straightened up and started to pace around his chair. “I believed that our homeworld was almost
completely isolated from the universe,” she said. “I believed that only a handful of freighters ever visited each year. It honestly never occurred to me that our homeworld might be building up a space fleet. So tell me ... are you really as ignorant about the outside universe as you seem?”

  He cringed back as she swung around to glare into his eyes. “And if you are,” she added, “why did they put you in command of a whole planet?”

  “The Guardians came for me two days after you left,” Uncle Muhammad said. “They told me ... they told me that I put my contacts with off-worlders to good use and work for them or I could go into one of the work camps, along with my family. I had no choice. They ... some of them were determined to eventually move out into the universe and reclaim it for us. All the profits they obtained from selling mead went into buying starships and personnel to train our young men. They wanted me to help.”

  Sameena hesitated, then asked the question that had been bothering her ever since she’d realised who she was facing. “What happened to my family?”

  “They took them all away,” Uncle Muhammad said. “I never dared ask what had become of them.”

  He snorted. “You’d have to ask them,” he added. “Maybe if you offered them your help ...”

  “Never,” Sameena said, flatly. “What else did they have you doing?”

  “They wanted this world,” Uncle Muhammad said. “I was meant to prepare it for becoming part of the new empire ...”

  “By slaughtering everyone who might have been productive,” Sameena sneered. A nasty thought crossed her mind. “Did you create the blight on Dueller?”

  The expression on her face told her the answer. “Are you mad? Are they mad? What would the blight have done to Jannah if it had escaped into the wild?”

  “They don’t care about the dangers,” Uncle Muhammad said. “I heard that they planned to unleash it on Salaam.”

  Sameena shuddered. Salaam was the oldest surviving Islamic planet in the galaxy, its foundation predating the Empire by at least seven hundred years. The founders had learned hard lessons from the wars on Earth, prior to the discovery of FTL; they’d learned the value of tolerance, disagreement and debate. Sameena had thought about going there once or twice, but she’d always known that she preferred the life of a trader. For the Guardians to sentence the entire planet to death ...

  “There can be only one, can't there?” She said. “They will only accept one version of Islam – theirs. Everyone else can join them or die.”

  The blight would spread rapidly in the Core Worlds, destroying food production facilities across countless inhabited planets. Unlike Dueller, the Core Worlds did have algae-production facilities, which should prevent starvation, but there would be riots. No one ate algae-based foodstuffs if there was any other choice.

  She gritted her teeth as she saw the full awfulness of the plan. If Jannah’s role was ever discovered, there would be a pogrom against Muslims that would exceed the mass slaughters of the pre-Unification Wars era. Muslims across the galaxy would have no choice, but to fight to defend themselves, which would force them to work with the Guardians. But even so ... she couldn't see any way the plan would end, but in total defeat and extermination. The Empire might be crippled, yet it was still vastly more powerful than Jannah – or, for that matter, every Islamic world put together.

  “The Empire outnumbers you billions to one,” she said, stunned. “You must be out of your minds?”

  “There are billions only in theory,” Uncle Muhammad pointed out. “In practice, the Empire is slowly coming apart, shattering into its component pieces. The Guardians decided to move now to establish a new power in the sector, accelerating their plan. It will give them some room to manoeuvre later on.”

  The plan was doomed, Sameena was sure. Given time, the Empire’s stagnation would merely be replaced by Jannah’s stagnation. All the factors that had encouraged the Grand Senate to limit education worked against Jannah too. They’d already shot most of the people on Maxwell they’d need to maintain their little empire, let alone make it stronger. And it would simply collapse under its own weight.

  Just like the Empire, she thought.

  “This scheme isn't going to succeed,” she said.

  Uncle Muhammad snorted. “The Empire is gone,” he said. “Who is going to stop us?”

  “Me,” Sameena said. “I will stop it.”

  “You’re just a girl,” Uncle Muhammad said. “You won’t be stopping anything.”

  “I never believed that, even when I was stuck on Jannah,” Sameena said, in a tone her mother would have slapped her for using to speak to a male relative. “Right now, I put together the force that destroyed one of your ships and sent the other one fleeing for its life. I can and I will stop you.”

  “You have a duty to your homeworld,” Uncle Muhammad said. “You should join us ...”

  “My homeworld saw fit to reject me because of my brother’s big mouth,” Sameena said, dryly. “And even before then” – she pressed her fingers between her breasts – “it saw fit to treat me as dirt merely for being born female. Why should I not show them the same kind of loyalty they showed me?”

  She met his eyes, something she would never have dared before she’d left Jannah. “Why should I not avenge my family by bombarding Jannah into rubble?”

  “Millions would die,” Uncle Muhammad objected. “Sameena, I ...”

  “Millions would die if their insane plan was allowed to succeed,” Sameena snapped. “Maybe more, maybe billions. Or maybe the Empire would forget its woes long enough to put together a task force and scorch Jannah down to bedrock. Or maybe they would just blow the entire planet out of orbit and into the sun. And even if they succeeded, in a few generations we’d all be grubbing in the dirt again.”

  She slapped him across the face. “Listen to yourself,” she ordered. “This cannot end well!”

  The slap wasn't very hard, but seemed to stun him. He would never have been hit – or even threatened – by a woman in his entire life. Jannah didn't teach its women to use violence, merely to submit to their treatment. In hindsight, Sameena could see how the Guardians had handled their inadequacy issues. They’d merely ensured that they always had an entire sex to look down on.

  “You will be interrogated by my officers,” Sameena continued. “They will drag out everything you know about the Guardians and their plans. I suggest you don't try to lie – or to hide anything. You won’t enjoy the experience.”

  “I can tell them about you,” Uncle Muhammad said. “Will they trust you after they find out where you’re from?”

  “My husband already knows,” Sameena said. She smiled at his shocked expression. It was forbidden on Jannah to marry without the consent of a male guardian. If there was no biological guardian, the Guardians would take on the role. It was easy to see how such a system can be abused. “And he doesn't care.”

  Uncle Muhammad looked around, as if he expected to see Jamie standing behind her. “He lets you out on your own?”

  His eyes sharpened. “I wish to speak with him at once,” he said, imperiously. “I am most displeased with your behaviour.”

  Sameena slapped him a second time. His head snapped backwards, blood trickling down from his lip. On Jannah, a husband was responsible for his wife’s behaviour ... but she’d left that attitude behind a long time ago. Jamie wasn't going to beat her for being rude to her Uncle.

  “This isn't your homeworld,” she said. “And soon enough, your homeworld will be changed too.”

  She looked down at him for a long moment, unable to escape understanding just how pathetic he really was. Once, he had been important ... but the price of his survival was submission to a very old evil, an evil that had infested her homeworld for hundreds of years. Now, he was a helpless prisoner, a man responsible for meting out all kinds of torments to the planet’s population.

  There were girls on Jannah who had admired the Guardians, who had cast longing glances at them from beneath their veils.
How much of that, Sameena asked herself, had been foolishness – and how much had been Stockholm Syndrome? She had always been a little afraid of the men in black, even though she’d never spoken to one of them. And then they’d come for her brother and his entire family.

  And now her family was gone.

  “I don’t believe that we will talk again,” she said, softly. She refused to acknowledge him as her Uncle any longer. “Goodbye.”

  She walked out of the cell without looking back. “General,” she said. “Please can you have him transferred to orbit now?”

  “Of course,” Jarvis said. “Do you want him drugged for the flight?”

  “Please do,” Sameena said. She hesitated. “How much longer do you need the troops?”

  “Maybe a week or two,” Jarvis said. He gave her an odd look. “Do you want to take them back home?”

  “I may need them elsewhere,” Sameena admitted. She’d have to talk to Jamie and plan the operation carefully. One of the destroyers could go to Jannah now and sneak around the system to see what they were hiding. Somehow, she doubted that the Guardians would have left their homeworld defenceless. “But it won’t be a problem until then, I hope.”

  She watched grimly as a drugged Uncle Muhammad was manhandled out of the office block and carried over towards the shuttle, then looked back towards the clear blue sky. Maxwell was far better developed than Rosa or Dueller, but there was relatively little hint of industrial pollution in the air. That might change, given time.

  “I have to get back to Government House,” Jarvis said. In the distance, there was a brief rattle of gunfire as one of the holdouts was summarily exterminated. “It may take some time to establish a working government. Everyone with any experience was targeted for death and not all of the survivors have come out of hiding.”