Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  “You’re young,” Jasmine told her, as she pulled a small tab out of her belt. “This won’t be pleasant, but you should be able to take it.”

  She pushed the tab against Mandy’s neck—hearing a moan of disbelief from the girl—and injected her with a broad-spectrum cleanser. It was a distant relative of the civilian sober-up pills, but where sober-ups were concentrated on alcohol, the cleanser was concentrated on everything. Marines used it to clear their systems of battle stimulants or painkillers and they were never a pleasant experience. Jasmine privately suspected that the whole process was painful just to prevent Marines from becoming addicted to the rush.

  Mandy thrashed, half-gagging as her whole body convulsed, but Jasmine held her tightly as the drug worked its way through her system. Mandy had no immunity at all and it was hitting her hard. The car pulled up outside Mandy’s new house and Jasmine’s eyes narrowed. She had hoped to pass Mandy over to her parents and return to barracks, but there was no sign of life in the building. She helped Mandy out—the cold air had probably come as a relief to her—and thanked the driver for her services.

  “Mandy,” she said, as the car drove away, “where are your parents?”

  Mandy’s eyes were still defocused, but her voice was steadier. “They went out to a party,” she said, brokenly. “They didn’t care about me. All mum cares about is her social status and dad just doesn’t care. And Mindy’s fucked off somewhere else with her new friend. She doesn’t care either”

  Jasmine frowned and checked the girl’s pockets, finding a set of primitive keys. “Your parents care a great deal about you,” she said, as she opened the door and helped Mandy into the living room. The Professor had bought a good house, but it would be a disappointment after their home on Earth. She clicked on the lights and gently pushed Mandy onto the sofa. “Stay there. I’ll fetch you some water.”

  She checked the medical bracelet before she found the kitchen and poured Mandy a glass of water. When she got back into the living room, Mandy was staring off into the distance, her entire body shaking. The bracelet had reported that she wasn’t having an adverse reaction to the cleanser, but she clearly hadn’t been taking care of herself. Mandy, Jasmine realised, had never had to learn discipline.

  “My parents don’t love me,” Mandy said, between dry sobs. “Dad gets us all kicked off Earth, away from my friends and everyone I knew and love. Mum doesn’t give a damn about us. She just wants to be the woman in charge of everything.”

  “Your father may have saved your life,” Jasmine said, quietly. She had liked the Professor, even if babysitting the family had been one of the weirder duties she’d faced. “Earth isn’t a safe place…”

  “It was my home,” Mandy snapped, angrily. “I had friends, I had a life … and suddenly I’m exiled to this fucking dirty rock at the edge of Empire, a place so primitive that they barely have anything remotely fun!”

  Jasmine gritted her teeth, wishing that she’d put in for the Training Badge rather than the Sniper Badge, back during her third year at the Slaughterhouse. She had no experience of training recruits, even if she did have some experience with her sister’s children, long before she had gone to Boot Camp and never looked back. Dealing with a crying child-woman was a little beyond her. Her homeworld wouldn’t have tolerated such an adult baby.

  “And so you went out and got stoned,” Jasmine said, tightly. She didn’t want to snap at Mandy, but the words came out. “What were you thinking?”

  “I wanted some fun,” Mandy said. “Why shouldn’t I have fun? What right did you have to interfere?”

  Jasmine controlled herself with an effort. She hadn’t had much experience with the middle-classes on Earth, but their world was a safe one, barely even disturbed by terrorists or natural disasters. They barely even knew about the Undercity and, when they thought about it, considered it a kind of daring place to visit. It did a gentleman’s reputation no harm if he could drop the odd hint of roguish dealings. Mandy could have gone out and gotten stoned in the Middle City and the worst that would have happened would have been a headache the morning after. On Avalon, the results could have been far more disastrous.

  “They were going to inject you with Sparkle Dust,” she said, sharply. There was no way to be sure, but she thought that it was fairly likely. “Do you know what that would have done to you?”

  Mandy shook her head, her defiant eyes meeting Jasmine’s eyes and refusing to look away. “I’ll tell you, if you like,” Jasmine snapped. “It would have turned you into their slave! You would have done anything they told you to do while you were convinced that it was a good idea all the time, or that it was your idea, or some other self-justifying crap! You could have found yourself being gang-raped or fucked by the entire group of bastards, or you could have been sent off with orders to fuck any guy who even looked twice at you. There is a very good reason that that stuff is banned!”

  She sat down next to Mandy and put her arm around the girl’s shoulder. “What happened to you?”

  The story came out in-between sobs. Mandy’s new friends from the rich part of the city enjoyed slumming and they’d taken her to a handful of bars in the seedy area. For one reason or another, they hadn’t thought to take escorts, trusting in their names to keep them safe. They might have been right, but Mandy didn’t have a famous name or a reputation to protect her. The gang who’d picked her up had gently, but firmly pressured her into coming to the party, giving her free sniffs of several drugs to help make her pliable, and kept pushing away at her. By the time it had entered her dulled brain that she was in trouble, it had been far too late. If Jasmine and her comrades hadn’t gone to the same party, she would have been raped and murdered.

  “You’re an idiot,” Jasmine said, flatly, when Mandy had finally finished talking. “You wanted to get some pleasure and walked right into a trap. Why … ?”

  “You cannot understand,” Mandy snapped at her. “You’re surrounded by handsome men who would do anything for you. I’m … I’m just the daughter of a political exile.”

  Jasmine blinked at her, profoundly shocked for the first time. Mandy could not have been more wrong. It was strictly forbidden to have sex with Marines from the same Company. It had been hammered into their heads time and time again. Sex within the same Company destroyed unit cohesion. There were breaches of regulations that would be winked at, with the regulations considered guidelines rather than hard laws, but the no-fraternizing edict was not one of them. A Marine who was caught breaking that particular regulation—and it was impossible to keep something like that a secret for long—would be lucky if he or she wasn’t dishonourably discharged from the Marines. The idea of sleeping with Blake, or Joe … she had to admit that they were handsome, but they were her brothers in arms.

  “So you went off and went looking for someone to fuck,” Jasmine said, feeling her mind reeling. Didn’t Mandy have any sense of responsibility at all? Or, for that matter, a sense of self-preservation? “Why couldn’t you find someone from the upper crust here?”

  “Because they all laugh at me,” Mandy cried, shaking Jasmine’s arm free. “They think that mum is a social climber, even if she is from Earth and knows all the fashions. They just laugh at me and treat me like a silly girl…”

  “You are a silly girl,” Jasmine said, dryly. A few years at the Slaughterhouse would teach the girl discipline, if she managed to pass through Boot Camp. Mandy probably didn’t have the determination to even get through the entrance exams. “You have no idea how lucky you are, yet you’re bitching because your life has changed … your father might have done you a favour when he brought you here. Earth won’t be safe for much longer.”

  The memories of the Nihilist attack and its aftermath rose unbidden in front of her eyes. “What do you think,” she demanded, “will happen when Earth collapses? People like you will be butchered as blood runs in the streets. Out here, you have at least a chance of a future.”

  “I hate this place,” Mandy screamed. Tears
were flowing down her cheeks. “I hate my family. I hate you! I wish I was dead!”

  “Enough,” Jasmine said, coldly. Part of her mind told her that it was a losing battle, but she felt that she owed the Professor something, even if it was just an attempt to save his daughter from doing something stupid. “If you insist on acting like a child, I’ll treat you as a little baby…”

  Mandy raised her hand and aimed a slap at Jasmine’s face. Jasmine saw it coming and skimmed through options. Anything she did to stop the blow would injure Mandy, perhaps break her arm … she allowed the girl to slap her, recoiling slightly at the pain. It was nothing compared to unarmed combat practice back on Castle Rock. The Sergeants believed firmly in learning through pain. Jasmine caught her arm as Mandy pulled back from the blow and made her decision.

  “Come here,” she snapped, catching hold of the girl’s upper body. “I have had enough of you.”

  Mandy yelped as Jasmine pulled her across her lap. She was stronger than Jasmine had expected, but Jasmine had learned to fight with the best. There was no question of who would win in a struggle, yet Jasmine had to be careful. Inflicting permanent harm on the girl, even by accident, would not look good on her record. Mandy started to protest aloud, demanding that she be released, until Jasmine landed a hard smack on her rump. She gasped in pain and recoiled from the blow.

  “You can’t do this to me,” she protested, in horror. Jasmine ignored her, reaching for the girl’s shamefully short skirt and flipping it up, revealing a pair of near-transparent panties. “Let me go and…”

  Her voice trailed off as Jasmine yanked her panties down to her ankles, exposing her rear to the air. “If you had been brought up by my family,” Jasmine snapped, lifting her hand into the air, “your hands would have been caned before the real punishment started, just for your filthy mouth.”

  She brought her hand hard down on Mandy’s behind. The girl screamed in pain as a gratifying red handprint appeared on her pale bottom. Jasmine smacked her again and again, moving from cheek to cheek in a slow rhythmical pattern, pausing long enough to slap the back of the girl’s thighs every time Mandy tried to dislodge herself from Jasmine’s knee. Mandy forgot all dignity as she screamed and kicked; exposing everything she had to cold dispassionate eyes. It had been years since Jasmine had been spanked herself, by her parents as she had turned from a child to a young lady, yet she remembered what it had been like. The pain, the humiliation … and then, finally, the acceptance.

  It crossed her mind that spanking the girl might have been considered abuse, or assault, on many worlds, including Earth, yet she didn’t care. Fiona Caesius was simply incapable of disciplining her daughter. It might get her into real trouble, but it might also teach Mandy the meaning of discipline. If she’d been taught that from when she was a child … yet Earth no longer taught children how to behave. Mandy’s shocking behaviour was proof enough of that. She had wanted instant gratification, had thrown a tantrum when she hadn’t received it quickly enough to suit her and had completely ignored the risk. A spanking was mild compared to what could have happened to her if Jasmine hadn’t been there.

  She paused, resting her hand on the girl’s warm bottom. “You could have gotten yourself killed today,” she said, feeling rather like a mother for the first time. If she had wanted kids, she would never have joined the Marines. She couldn’t have children until her enlistment expired, assuming she didn’t try to make officer or become an NCO. “You put your life at risk, for nothing.”

  Mandy’s sobs were real, now. Jasmine held her for a long moment, and then pulled her up and hugged her tightly, the way her mother had hugged her back when she was a child. She would have been pushed into a corner and told to wait, with her hands on her head and her rear exposed, yet that would have been too much for Mandy’s first real experience of discipline. The girl had kicked her panties free and right across the room, but her skirt fell down as she stood up, covering her rear.

  “Don’t sleep on your back tonight,” Jasmine advised, dryly. Mandy looked at her with an injured expression on her face, as if she couldn’t quite comprehend what had happened. Her hand rubbing her injured rear was almost cute. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  She took Mandy upstairs and tucked her into bed, leaving her dressed. The girl fell asleep almost instantly, suggesting that she’d been tired out and emotionally drained even before the spanking. Jasmine watched her for a long moment, and then headed back downstairs. When the Professor arrived home from wherever he was, she would have to tell him what had happened, and why. He wouldn’t take it calmly.

  CHAPTER 25

  The aim of the Imperial Elites has moved from obtaining power—and using power responsibly for the good of the Empire—to holding on to that power at all costs. This is not surprising—they would be torn apart by their outraged victims—yet it is stagnating the Empire’s development. In short, the elites are unable to accept the possibility of other—newer—elites.

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

  “You cannot be serious,” Carola Wilhelm demanded, her imperious voice echoing through the room. “This is an outrage!”

  Brent leaned back in his chair, suppressing a desire to cover his ears. Carola was loud and shrill and very angry. She looked twenty years old, a strange mixture of Cascadian and Oriental features, but she was much older, even though she relentlessly attacked anyone who suggested she was over twenty-five. Somewhere back in the past, she’d had some very good regeneration treatments and it showed. Her classified file suggested that she was nearly seventy years old, yet she could have easily passed for her husband’s daughter, rather than his wife.

  “An outrage,” Brent repeated. “And what, pray tell, is such an outrage that you have to burst into my office and demand explanations?”

  Carola glared at him. “A Councillor has the right to visit the Imperial Governor at any time and demand an explanation for Imperial policy,” she said, tartly. “The Council is most concerned over your recent activities.”

  “I see,” Brent said. He knew perfectly well what had her so angry, but he chose to play the innocent for a few moments more. “And which of my activities has you so angry? I went to the scene of the riot yesterday and commended a pair of Civil Guardsmen for their bravery in preventing the riot from spreading further. I then visited the flower show at Imperial Heights and presented one of the ladies with a prize for her ingenious arrangements. And then I…”

  “Don’t be a bloody fool,” Carola snapped at him. “I’m talking about the recruiting effort! The Council was not consulted on either the public hangings or the recruiting policy!”

  “The defence of the planet is a reserved issue,” Brent pointed out, calmly. “The Council doesn’t actually get a say until it evolves into an autonomous government. Even after it becomes a government, it still has only limited authority and that only the Civil Guard. I imagine that one of your lawyers would have known that before you burst in and disturbed poor Abigail.”

  Carola dismissed his comments with a sniff. She barely regarded her servants as human, let alone anyone else’s servants. Brent had heard rumours—none of them had been confirmed, of course—that Carola treated her servants badly, whipping and beating them at the slightest provocation. He’d considered launching an investigation that might have provided the ammunition to get her off the Council, but the rest of the Council would never have allowed it to happen. They knew they had to hang together or hang separately, just as the former bandits had been hanged.

  “The Council was still not consulted,” Carola reminded him, “and I might remind you that you have consulted the Council in the past when making changes to the Civil Guard.”

  “I have no obligation to consult the Council about anything relating to the defence of the colony,” Brent said. “The lines are blurred on Avalon, I concede, but I am still under no legal obligation to consult with anyone apart from the Civil Guard commander. The fact that I have done so
in the past”—something he had rapidly come to regret—“does not create a future obligation to do so.”

  “That is as may be,” Carola said, leaning back. “You have, however, chosen to ignore a direct law. All local transactions are to be done in local currency. All businesses are to use the Bank of Avalon for their payments. The new recruits, or so I am told, will be paid in cash. That is completely beyond the pale.”

  Brent sighed inwardly, feeling overcome with a sense of cold despair. It said something about the general condition of Avalon that the planet couldn’t muster a working satellite network, or possessed a barely-functioning communications datanet, but it had a first-rate banking system, supplied by Carola and the other debt sharks. They had manipulated the law to ensure that they collected what they were owed first, discouraging businesses from hiring and indebted workers from signing up. The black market thrived; the official businesses, even the monopolies established by the ADC, were fading away. Carola might just find herself the queen of nothing when the system finally collapsed, if she wasn’t assassinated first. The bodyguards she’d brought with her testified to her reputation as the most feared and hated woman on the planet. Even Gabriella Cracker didn’t have such a terrifying reputation. Brent knew men and women who would have risked everything just to take a shot at her, not that it would have mattered in the long run. Her husband would simply have taken over the business and kept going.

  He felt a flicker of admiration for Captain Stalker. In one neat move, he had found himself with more willing volunteers than he could handle … and, just incidentally, given the local economy a boost. Without such high levels of taxation—the banking system taxed wage packets automatically, when they were uploaded into the computers—the volunteers could spend money freely, while the businesses wouldn’t have to declare all of their earnings. It would give the economy a shot in the arm … no wonder, then, that Carola wanted to squash it before it could get out of hand. It would weaken the Council’s grip on the local economy and therefore weaken their power base.