Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  “Good work, all of you,” Captain Stalker said, on the general channel. “The medic reports that Rifleman Buckley will be fine in a few weeks.”

  There was a general cheer. “I guess he was still wearing his lucky red shirt,” Blake said. He sounded relieved. He might have argued with Joe and the others from time to time, but Marines always looked out for one another. And, on a more practical level, they couldn’t afford to lose anyone. Joe Buckley would have been missed even by those who didn’t like him. “Did we get enough prisoners?”

  “Over fifty,” Captain Stalker said. Jasmine smiled. There was a good chance they’d taken one of the bandit leaders alive, then. “And we’ve captured plenty of their weapons and deprived them of one of their bases. It was a very good day’s work.”

  CHAPTER 21

  What is won by soldiers, at a high cost, is often given away by political leaders.

  - Professor Leo Caesius, The Waning Years of Empire (banned).

  Lucas Trent was a careful man by instinct and training, such as it was. He’d mastered the skills required to stay alive on Earth, in the Undercity, and many of them had proved applicable to Avalon when he’d been transported to the planet. Indeed, or so he told himself, he had never truly failed. The Civil Guardsmen who had arrested him had had no idea who they had caught. They’d thought he was just another thug. Some of his subordinates had thought that he took excessive precautions, but they hadn’t dared complain to his face. And, now, some of them would never have the opportunity.

  His headquarters was in a secret location, known only to his most trusted subordinates and the guards he kept around him at all times. The slaves—the women the Knives had kidnapped from various homesteads over the years—were never allowed to leave, although few would dare pass through the badlands without weapons and armour. There were nastier things than human beings lurking in the undergrowth. The last slave who had tried to escape had stumbled into a mud hole and been devoured by a lurking crocodile-like creature. It seemed, now, that all of his precautions might have been insufficient.

  “They definitely took out the entire camp,” Steven said, after the runner had been debriefed. Literally; the Knives hadn’t wanted to believe him at first. “They just walked right up to it and smashed their way into the camp.”

  Lucas stared down at the table, unwilling to believe what he had heard. His local leader had known—he’d certainly been ordered often enough—to have scouts out on every possible angle of approach, watching for trouble. The Civil Guard might have been largely corrupt, but even they had their dedicated leaders and soldiers, men and women who might brave the badlands to hunt down the bandits. The Marines … the Marines were just inhuman. They’d slaughtered over a hundred gang members and if they’d lost anyone …

  He looked up at the naked runner, seeing the sores covering his body from the whipping. The runner had claimed that a dozen Marines had been killed, but Lucas discounted that claim automatically. It was his experience that runners always lied, if only to avoid being punished for bringing bad news to the leaders, and in any case, the camp had had few heavy weapons capable of penetrating even light armour. He’d have to plan on the assumption that none of the Marines had been killed, which gave them a depressingly big advantage. If a handful of Marines could wipe out an entire camp, his grand plan was on the verge of coming apart at the seams.

  “The idiot should have had scouts out watching for their approach,” Lucas said, trying to put a brave face on affairs. As sure as eggs were eggs, any sign of weakness would have his subordinates thinking about sticking a knife in his back. He trusted Steven, yet even he might be tempted by the prospect of supreme power. It was one of the other reasons for persistent gang warfare in the Undercity. The gang leaders knew that they had to keep their thugs happy or they might revolt. “Have we heard anything from our sources?”

  “Nothing,” Steven said, calmly. The Civil Guardsmen who had been bribed should have warned them if the Marines were planning anything, yet the whole thing had been assembled and launched terrifyingly quickly. The last time the Civil Guard had attempted to make a showing in the region, it had taken those weekend warriors two weeks to get ready and the bandits had had a month’s warning, more than long enough to make preparations. And they’d never dared go into the badlands in force. “Either they didn’t know … or they simply didn’t inform us.”

  Lucas frowned. Treachery was part of his daily existence and he always assumed that the same was true of everyone else. He’d had all of his sources warned that failure to deliver would be punished—if only by revealing their activities to their superiors, who wouldn’t hesitate to hang them for it—yet they were out of easy reach. One of them might have decided to withhold information in the hopes that the Marines would slaughter the Knives before they could betray them to the Empire. In that, Lucas was sure, they would be disappointed. He had taken pains to leave a dead man’s chest behind to make sure that any betrayer was punished.

  “All military operations have to be cleared through the Governor,” he said, tightly. The Governor didn’t completely trust the Civil Guard—not an unwise position—and insisted on approving all operations personally. The sources he had in the Governor’s office insured that he would hear about all planned operations in advance. “Could the Marines operate without the Governor’s approval?”

  “Perhaps the Governor didn’t mention it to his staff,” Steven suggested. “It’s not like you tell us everything you’re planning.”

  “Oh, come on,” Lucas snapped. “That idiot of a Governor can’t even take a shit without polling his staff and taking opinions from anyone who feels that having a pulse gives them the right to have opinions. He insists on filling out requests in triplicate just to have new pencils forwarded to his office! He’d have run it past at least a few of his most trusted allies and one of them would have leaked.”

  “And if the Marines can operate nearly independently, we may be in trouble,” Steven pointed out. “They could be anywhere.”

  Both men looked upwards, towards the foliage that hid the base camp from intrusive eyes high above. Lucas had never considered the possibilities of satellite observation before he’d been transported to Avalon, but he’d learned quickly. Cold unblinking eyes, eyes that never tired or lost focus, were watching from high above. The old satellite network had been a joke, yet he was sure that no one competent would allow it to remain that way. The Marines still had a pair of destroyers in the system, according to his source in System Command. They could have rotated one over the badlands and used its onboard sensor suite.

  “There are only a few dozen of them,” he protested. It might not matter. Horace Netherly had had nearly a hundred bandits under his command, but they’d been rapidly and quickly slaughtered. The camp the Marines had attacked had been built to stand off an attack, yet it had been destroyed. It wasn’t easy to admit, but he was starting to realise that his imagination might have been inadequate for the task at hand. If the Marines were really that deadly, the Knives might be totally outclassed. “They cannot be everywhere.”

  “They can give the locals hope,” Steven reminded him. “That would encourage them to call in to the Marines and warn them of our movements. The whole plan might come apart.”

  Lucas rubbed the back of his head, feeling a headache pounding away at his temples. A protection racket—and that was what government was; a large-scale protection racket—depended on two things. It had to be capable of carrying out its promises—both of protection and of retribution—and it had to be present. If a rival force entered the picture—and he saw the Marines as a rival force—it had to be destroyed before it could break the racket completely. If he pulled back into the badlands, the prudent course of action, the Marines would have all the time they needed to prepare for the next encounter.

  “We can push at the locals when the Marines aren’t around,” he said, firmly. “We’ll see how many of those fucking idiot farmers support the Marines when we hit them
after the Marines are gone.”

  “Except that would force us to keep a presence in the area, outside the badlands,” Steven reminded him. “We might lose someone to interrogation.”

  Lucas ground his teeth. Against the Civil Guard, that wasn’t so much of a concern, not when all prisoners had to be transported back to Camelot, if they weren’t released by the jailers. The Marines might have taken the time to interrogate the prisoners themselves … no, that was wishful thinking. They had taken the time to interrogate the prisoners. The attack on the base camp proved that, if nothing else. And the thugs … the Marines could have used drugs, or bribes, or simply kicked the shit out of them until they talked, but it hardly mattered. Anyone could be broken, given enough time. The farm girls who now serviced the Knives as if they’d been born to be whores were proof of that.

  And if the Marines captured someone who knew more than the bare minimum … the consequences didn’t bear thinking about. They could find their way to the main camp and destroy it. He could almost feel a rope around his neck already.

  “We pull back,” he decided, finally. “Pass the word to the other camps. They are to pull back into the badlands and wait for the Marines to get tired and leave. Once they leave, we can remind the farmers who really rules here.”

  He smiled. The farmers might be armed, but they couldn’t afford to keep a militia on permanent alert, waiting to be attacked. The Knives could choose the time and place of their attacks, striking hard against vulnerable homesteads. The Marines would be gone soon enough, but the bandits would always be there.

  -o0o-

  “How many prisoners did you take?”

  “Fifty-nine,” Captain Stalker said. Brent stared at him, noting the calm confidence of the Marine. Fifty-nine prisoners … no one had bothered to take so many bandits alive in the past, not when they knew that most of them would simply be released by their gaolers. Most bandits who fell into the hands of the Civil Guard’s more competent formations didn’t survive the experience. “Four of them are wounded, but the remainder are fit and healthy.”

  “Good,” Brent said, wondering if it really was good. He looked up at Linda, seeing the expression on her face. She was worried about how it would all play out in front of the Council. “We’ll have to hold a trial, of course.”

  “There’s no need for that,” Captain Stalker assured him. “They were all captured in battle. We have interrogated their former prisoners and have a comprehensive case against each of them for terrorism and bandit-related activities. Under Imperial Law, they can be hung at once—and they should be hung at once.”

  Brent opened his mouth, and then closed it again, rendered speechless. “You would simply execute them now?” Linda asked, stepping into the breach. “You don’t want to indenture them and put them to work?”

  “Many of them started out as indentured workers,” Captain Stalker pointed out, calmly. He didn’t seem bothered at all by the implication. “There is no reason to believe that they will revert to being good workers, now that we took them prisoner. Justice needs to be done, Governor, and the punishment is laid down in Imperial Law. They are sentenced to death by hanging.”

  His gaze sharpened. “And, besides, if we put them back to work, how long are they going to stay there?”

  Brent stared down at his hands, and then up at the map of Camelot his aide had placed on the wall. It was a political map, rather than one reflecting the local population demographics, and it mocked him every time he looked at it. The Council wouldn’t be happy if he simply went along with the Captain, yet … if he refused to execute the bandits, he’d lose whatever remaining support he had from the middle class. They’d know that they had spared the bandits for political reasons.

  “Captain,” he said, finally. “You must realise that there are political issues here.”

  “There are none,” Major George Grosskopf said, coldly. The Civil Guardsman leaned forward, his dark eyes aflame. “Governor, with all due respect, the Marines have just handed out a decisive lesson to the bandits, one that they will not soon forget. We killed over a hundred of their raiders at the cost of one injured Marine. We tracked down and obliterated one of their bases, rescuing—in the process—nineteen women who were being used as sex slaves. This isn’t something we should hide, as if we were ashamed of our own success, but something we should shout to the skies. We beat the bandits and utterly smashed them!”

  Brent winced inwardly, trying to keep his face blank. The Major was right, even though he was associating himself with the victory. The Crackers fought because they had a political ideology and a political goal in mind. The bandits looted, raped and burned because they could … and because it was easier than actually having to work for a living. They wouldn’t want to continue their activities if they were being hunted relentlessly, even into the heart of the badlands themselves.

  “There is also another issue here,” Captain Stalker said. “A population will support a war as long as it seems that there is a chance of victory. The problem here is that your population doesn’t believe in victory. Executing the bandits will send a very clear signal that you, at least, believe that victory is possible. It will encourage people to sign up for the new army.”

  He smiled thinly, meeting Brent’s gaze. “As for the fact that the captured bandits are still in debt … you should just forget it,” he added. “Those debts are never going to be paid off.”

  Brent scowled at him. It wasn’t Brent who cared about their debts, but the men and women who had purchased their debts off the ADC before it collapsed into a shell of its former self. Markus and Carola Wilhelm, among others, would certainly push the issue in the next Council meeting, even though Captain Stalker was right and they would never see any return on those investments. But then, Captain Stalker couldn’t be removed from office … legally, Brent couldn’t be removed either, but the Council could make governing the planet impossible. Again, he cursed his predecessor under his breath. The man had been a moron. Avalon was nowhere near ready for an independent Council.

  “I take your point,” he said, finally. He had a nasty suspicion that if he refused his permission, the Marines were just going to go ahead and hang the captives anyway. Abigail had looked up the relevant section of the Imperial Code of Military Justice and had concluded that the Marines owned the prisoners, body and soul, until they chose to hand them over to local authority. “What do you intend to do with them?”

  “Two days from now, it is market day in Camelot,” Captain Stalker said. “I intend to hang them publicly.”

  “Are you out of your … there’ll be a riot,” Linda protested in disbelief. “The bandits have friends within the city!”

  “All the more reason to hold the executions there,” Captain Stalker said. He sounded amused by her protests. “Their friends should learn the price of supporting the bandits.”

  Brent stood up and paced over to the window, staring down over his capital city. It wasn’t much, but it was his. There would be no other posting for him once he left Avalon, no other chance to make his mark in the history books. He had long since realised that even now, he wouldn’t have that chance. Avalon had a habit of taking dreams and sucking them out, leaving nothing behind, but the tired bitter shell of a man. Officially, there were no homeless on Avalon. There was enough work for all. Unofficially … things were different.

  He looked towards the slums and shuddered. The reports were terrifyingly clear. Every year, a greater percentage of Avalon’s population found themselves homeless, so deep in dept that it was hopeless to even dream of escape. The conditions in the slums were appallingly bad. Only the foodstuffs provided by the handful of Church missions kept the population alive. It was a nightmare, one that could never end as long as Avalon remained unchanged. He had once hoped to change it, but now … all he could do was wait and see out his term. The next Imperial Governor might have more authority or backbone.

  Oddly, the thought spurred him on. “See to it,” he ordered, wit
hout turning around. A fishing boat was coming into the harbour and he watched, feeling a moment of envy for the sailors who had so little else to worry about. They could set their sails of silver and sail over the horizon, vanishing to one of the unexplored continents or illegal settlements on the Golden Isles. They weren’t bound to a city permanently on the verge of collapse. “I want them hung and I want you to make it very clear why they were hung.”

  He ignored Major Grosskopf’s surprised look, or Captain Stalker’s half-smile. “If it is to be done, then it might as well be done properly,” he added. Perhaps showing the mailed fist inside the velvet glove would convince some of the Council to moderate their knee-jerk opposition to everything he did. “It may even serve a useful purpose.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Captain Stalker said. If he was pleased at his victory, he showed no sign of it. But then, he barely had to care. “They will be hung on market day.”

  Brent barely heard him. He was too busy watching the sailing boat as it docked at the harbour, unloading a silvery horde of fish. Haddock, Cod and other Earth-native fish competed uneasily with Avalon’s own native creatures. Some of them had to be carefully weeded out, for they were deadly poisonous. Others were a delicacy if prepared properly. His own cook was a past mistress at preparing proper meals.

  “Thank you,” he said, finally. “And well done. Please congratulate your men for me.”

  CHAPTER 22

  One of the commonest signs of social decline lies in the separation of the elites from the masses. Where the elites—the leadership—share the concerns of their people, government proceeds smoothly. Where the elites are physically and socially separated from their people, they start designing policies that are actively harmful to the masses. This is nowhere clearer than it is in the issue of criminal justice.