Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

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

  Market Day on Avalon had been intended as a special holiday, or so Michael Volpe had been told. The ADC had planned the day so that farmers on the outskirts of Camelot could bring in their produce and sell it directly to the grateful citizens of the city, while taking time to enjoy the city and spend time among its distractions. In reality, it hadn’t taken long before the vested interests took over the holiday and started taxing the farmers who tried to break the official monopoly on food transport, leaving Market Day as little more than just another day. Michael valued it only because it served as a chance to make some money on the sly.

  He walked from stall to stall, offering his help to the dealer in exchange for petty cash. Some of them would need a strong man to help them set out their boxes; others stared at him suspiciously, as if they suspected he intended to steal their produce and vanish into the side streets before anyone could catch him. It was a depressingly familiar scene, yet what choice did he have? There was no other employment for someone like him.

  At seventeen years old, Michael had come to the conclusion that his life was already over. The son of a indent mother and a colonist farmer, he had inherited some of his father’s debt, even though his mother had literally owned nothing, but the clothes on her back. His father might have abandoned the family just after Michael had been born, yet the debt sharks never forgot. The moment he signed on to work at any official job, they’d start tapping over three-quarters of his salary to pay the interest on the debt. Michael was far from stupid and had painstakingly worked his way through the math. If he got a good job, if he worked for over fifty years, he might just pay off the interest alone … by which point more would have piled up. It was a perfect trap. He couldn’t work without losing most of his salary; he couldn’t even refuse to pay. There was no escape.

  He saw a young-looking farmwife with old eyes and paused long enough to help her unload her nag, before accepting a handful of coins in payment. It was dangerous to carry too much—the criminal gangs who also infested the marketplace might notice and take it off him before he could get back home—but a few coins probably wouldn’t attract their interest. The coins were the only untraceable funds on Avalon and there were laws against holding too many of them, even though most people simply ignored them. Paying money into the Bank of Avalon was a sure-fire way to lose most of it to pay a debt.

  “Thank you,” he said, accepting an apple she tried to press on him as part-payment. Winking at her, he strode off, looking for others to help. He passed a set of farming tools that had been handmade by one of the local craftsman and cast an eye over some of the sharper blades, before the craftsman reached for an obvious shotgun under the table. Michael shrugged at him and walked onwards, feeling a tingle running down the back of his shoulder blades as the old man’s glare followed him.

  An hour passed slowly, but he was in no hurry. His mother would be working herself—in order to survive, she sold herself to men—and his younger half-brother would be out with his gang. It was yet another thing to worry about. The street toughs hadn’t forced Michael to join them, as they had some of their other members, but one day he knew they’d call for him. He’d seen the results of gang violence and wanted to stay away from it, yet what other choice did he have? The Civil Guard would laugh at him if they heard his complaint. No one in their right mind would trust them to solve a problem.

  As if his thought had called them forth, a group of men dressed in combat uniforms appeared at one end of the market, marching upwards towards the middle of the square. The wooden stage had been intended for live performances of plays, but now … now it was empty. Michael realised, with a shock, that someone had renovated it, adding a wooden construction he didn’t recognise. The soldiers weren’t Civil Guardsmen, he saw, as they passed him, but something else. They held themselves with an easy discipline that shouted out that they ruled … and no one else could even challenge them. Their assurance was so powerful that Michael found himself backing away before his mind had even caught up with the thought. A thought seemed to echo through the crowd …

  Marines …

  Michael felt a sudden bitter surge of envy. The young men and women had everything he ever wanted and more, free of debt and the legacy of a father who had never cared for his son. They walked with their heads held high, as if they had nothing to worry about, without any trace of fear in their stance. He wanted to be them and knew that it would never happen. Avalon’s Imperial Navy recruiting station was moribund and had been so for years. Joining the Civil Guard would have been worthless.

  And then he saw the prisoners.

  -o0o-

  Nelson Oshiro struggled against the shackles binding his hands and feet, even though he knew that it was useless. The chains were overkill, intended to make it very clear to both the prisoners and the watchers that they were prisoners and leave no one in any doubt as to what was going to happen to them. He tried to hold his head up high and face the sneers from the watching crowd with determination, but somehow he couldn’t maintain the pose. The crowd was hissing them as the truth sunk in. Here, in front of them, were some of the dreaded bandits who had been driving their food prices upwards. They were at the crowd’s mercy.

  He pulled at the chains on his hands, but he couldn’t break them free, even with the crowd started throwing rotten food at them. He wanted to memorise names and faces, yet he knew it was futile. The Marines had interrogated him, drugged him and then interrogated him again, milking him dry of everything he knew about the Knives. They’d been dumped back in the same holding pen and had tried to come up with a shared story, but it hadn’t worked. The drugs had broken all resistance. A handful of prisoners bore marks from when they’d tried to lie and their interrogators had dealt with it brutally. They had betrayed the remainder of the gang. If the Marines let them go, which didn’t seem likely, they would be hunted down and killed by their former comrades for betrayal.

  A young girl leaned forward, shouted a curse that was lost in the roar of the crowd, and threw a rotten egg right into his face. Nelson tried to twist, to evade, but it was impossible. The egg struck his chin and shattered, sending a horrifying smell wafting up towards his nostrils. He wanted to vomit, but somehow held it in. He had the nasty feeling that showing any kind of weakness would only make it worse.

  The Marines pushed them up a ramp towards a stage and lined them up in front of the crowd. The hail of rotten food had faded away as a new air of anticipation settled over the crowd, with faces exchanging knowing looks that somehow made Nelson feel sick. At first, he didn’t understand what was happening, and then a Marine hooked a noose over his neck, drawing it tight. It was suddenly very hard to breath. He wanted to open his mouth to protest, but it was far too late.

  -o0o-

  Michael watched as the Marines slowly lined up the prisoners in front of the crowd, hanging nooses around their necks. The former bandits didn’t look terrifying any more, not after the crowd had shown their fondness for their tormentors by covering them in rotten food. They looked tired and desperate, staring around as if they expected someone to come free them at the last minute. The crowd was in an ugly mode. Michael sensed, somehow, that if the Marines had freed the prisoners and dumped them into the crowd, the prisoners would have been brutally killed by the civilians. No one had any mercy for bandits.

  One of the Marines stepped forward, his voice echoing out over the crowd, somehow enforcing silence. “These men were captured in the act of pillaging their local townships, burning crops and raping innocent victims,” he said. Michael shivered. Rape was one of the local gang’s favourite pastimes. One day, it might be his half-sister lying on the ground as the assholes took turns. “They have been found guilty under Imperial Law and have been sentenced to death.”

  The ugly note of the crowd seemed to grow louder. The prisoners, suddenly realising what was going to happen to them if they hadn’t realised before, started to protest,
pleading for help and mercy. No one was inclined to give it to them. The crowd had no time for a loser. Michael had seen street thieves given rough justice at the hands of the crowd before and it made no difference that the new victims were from outside the city. They deserved to die.

  “The sentence will be carried out,” the Marine said, somehow speaking over the crowd. “May God have mercy on their souls.”

  -o0o-

  Nelson wanted to panic, but somehow he held his peace, thinking desperately. If he could think of something important, something the Marines needed to know, perhaps they would spare his life … but there was nothing. The interrogators had pulled everything he knew out of him and drained him dry. There was nothing left to offer.

  The Marines had attached the ropes to a single machine at the rear of the stage. It hummed to life, slowly pulling in the rope … and lifting the prisoners above the ground, slowly choking the life out of them. Nelson drew in a breath as the rope came tight, trying to hold on as long as possible. His legs started to stretch as the rope pulled him upwards; somehow, despite himself, he felt the life slipping out of his body …

  Faces started to appear in front of him. His mother and father, the ones who had birthed him and abandoned him when he was ten years old, shaking their heads sadly as they walked away. Jenny, the first girl he had admired from afar, a tall brunette who had somehow maintained her smile in the Undercity … until the day he’d grabbed her suddenly and taken her brutally, convinced that that was what she wanted. She’d screamed and screamed, but he’d thought he’d known better, until he found out that she’d killed herself afterwards. He’d dismissed her from his thoughts until her face reappeared in front of him, mocking him, joined by his other victims. His vision was blurring as the faces merged together into one leering shape; a voice was whispering, right at the edge of his mind …

  The rope jerked suddenly, there was a snap, and then nothing. Nothing at all.

  -o0o-

  Michael watched as the bandits died one by one, their bodies jerking as their necks snapped. Some of them had clearly been trying to struggle, others seemed to have accepted their fate, but it hadn’t mattered in the end. They were all dead, hanging from the ropes like demented puppets. Silence fell over the crowd as it sank in, and then there was a roar of approval. Michael felt his own voice echoing as he joined in the roar. The rough justice suited the crowd. How could it not have suited them?

  The Marines walked from rope to rope, cutting the dead bodies down and letting them fall onto the stage. They looked as if they had died in agony. A Marine pushed up a trolley and the bodies were unceremoniously dumped onto it, left to wait for disposal. They’d probably be taken to the mass grave outside town and buried there, unless they were fed to the creatures in the zoo instead. It was just possible.

  “We fought the bandits and won,” the lead Marine said. His voice somehow silenced the crowd again. “We proved that they can be beaten. Now we have an offer for everyone. Your planet needs you; we need new recruits for the army we intend to build to exterminate the bandits and rebels alike. If you are interested in joining up with us, please go to the recruiting booth we have opened in the Imperial Office.”

  He leaned forward, as if he were going to whisper a secret. “And we pay in cash,” he added. “Your salary can be paid each month, or it can be banked with the Imperial Bank, rather than the Bank of Avalon. You won’t have to pay off any debt-mongers if you don’t want to.”

  A rustle ran through the crowd. He had just told them that they could earn their salary … and keep it, keep all of it. Very few of the city’s population had gone into debt willingly, but they had inherited their debt from their parents. Young men like Michael had had no hope, until now. He looked up at the Marines, watching calmly in their uniforms, and wondered if he could join them. Did he have whatever it took to be one of them?

  Yes, he told himself. It was an opportunity that would never come again.

  “It won’t be easy,” the Marine said. “It will be the hardest thing many of you will have ever done, but it is worth it. We will allow any of you a chance to come and prove yourself.”

  Michael watched as the Marines jumped down and walked off, taking the dead bodies with them. The gallows they left behind, probably for the next group of captured bandits. He walked away, shaking his head; he’d seen death before, but watching an execution was something new. A thought struck him and he broke into a run as he ran towards the centre of town. If the word spread as fast as he expected, the entire city would be trying to sign up.

  He reached the Imperial Office—a prefabricated building just north of Government House—and was unsurprised to discover that seventeen people had beaten him to it. Eleven of them were young men like himself, who had grown up on the streets; the remainder were young women, including two who had probably been forced into prostitution to feed themselves. It wasn’t uncommon in Camelot, not when prostitutes—too—were paid in cash. The women would have faced the same debt problem as Michael did when they tried to hold normal jobs. As prostitutes, the only person taking a cut of their income would be their pimp.

  The queue stretched around the block by the time the doors opened, allowing three of the prospective recruits to enter at a time. Michael waited as patiently as he could for his turn, following a young woman who looked as if she had barely entered her teens into the Imperial Office. A smiling man wearing a uniform he didn’t recognise showed him into a private room, where he came face-to-face with a scarred man who scowled at him.

  “So,” he thundered. “You want to join up, do you?”

  Michael nodded, too terrified to speak.

  “Take this,” the man said, passing Michael a small egg-sized device that he held in his hand. “Understand; the first time you lie to me, I’ll boot you out and you can forget about joining anything more worthwhile than the sanitation department. Now…”

  He fired off a long list of questions at Michael, who stumbled as he tried to answer them. Some made sense, asking about his family and his father’s name, others made no sense at all. Why did the Marines want to know about his political leanings? What political leanings did he have anyway? It wasn’t as if he’d ever be able to pay off his debt and claim the franchise. He found himself growing more and more impatient with the list of questions, and then it dawned on him that the questions were a test in themselves. The Marines wanted to know how patient he was.

  “Good enough,” the recruiter growled, finally. He didn’t sound happy, which made him unusual in Michael’s experience. Most recruiters wanted as many young bodies as they could get, although he’d never met a military recruiter before. Perhaps there were limits to how many men and women the Marines could recruit. “Do you understand that you will be going into an area where heavy discipline is the norm, where you might be injured in training and where you will be expected to obey all orders, without hesitation?”

  “Yes, sir,” Michael said. “I understand.”

  “No, you don’t,” the recruiter said. “You just think you understand.”

  Michael said nothing.

  “Be at the spaceport in three days, with this card,” the recruiter said, holding out a piece of cardboard. Michael was somehow unsurprised to see his picture on the card. “Time and date are on the card. If you don’t show up then, don’t bother to show up at all. And, if you get your ass shot off, don’t blame me.”

  Michael stared down at the card and then nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

  CHAPTER 23

  …Increasingly, the young men and women of the Empire—those born to the Middle and High Classes, at least—are concentrating on living for the now and not thinking about the future. They sense, however dimly, that the Empire has no future.

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

  They heard the music long before they rounded the corner, a thumping beat that spoke of dancing and forgetfulness. Jasmine felt the beat reaching out to her
as the four Marines strode down the street, glancing from side to side. The middle-class zone of Camelot was a study in contrasts; in the day, it was all staid and respectable, but in the night the party began. Lighted shops offered everything from pornography to drugs, while hookers waited at lampposts, accosting men and offering their services. The young and desperate thronged through the streets, taking little note of the Marines as they sought the next high, or something else that could make them forget their troubles for a night.

  “It sounds like a party,” Blake said, cheerfully. Jasmine, who would have quite happily remained in barracks for the night, scowled inwardly. They might have been on leave, but platoon comrades never left each other alone—unless one of them got lucky, of course. Blake and Joe might want to look for suitable partners—and Koenraad had come along for the ride—but Jasmine didn’t share their enthusiasm. A night of guiltless sex with someone who had no idea of what she did for a living didn’t appeal. “Shall we go gatecrash?”

  “It could be fun,” Joe agreed, with a wink. “You want to bet on who comes home with the most panties?”

  “After those bastards in 1st Platoon showed them that game, maybe not,” Blake said, with a leer of his own. One of the less endearing Marine traditions was picking up a girl each night, or maybe two or three a night, and stealing her panties afterwards to prove that they had scored. Jasmine privately thought that it was a silly tradition and had said so, more than once. “They were boasting about how Camelot girls were easy.”

  “They probably want a handsome Marine to marry them and get them out of the slum,” Koenraad said, unexpectedly. He looked up at their bemused glances. “So I study local politics. You want to make something of it?”

  Jasmine shook her head. Marines were expected to have hobbies in their spare time, even though it was the shared belief of every Marine that spare time was a delusion invented by a particularly sadistic drill sergeant. Koenraad had spent his time earning a degree in sociology from the University of Earth, although they had refused to grant him a doctorate as his work was hardly ‘non-judgemental and sensitive.’ A Marine who had spent his time in various hellholes being shot at by the natives—normally after the Empire’s vast army of bureaucrats had gotten something wrong and seriously hacked off said natives—would have a very different view of their culture than a high-browed academic who’d never spent a day of his life off Earth.