Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  His gaze swept across them again. “That building there holds the medical personnel and the outfitters,” he said. “Form a line and march into the building, two by two!”

  Michael, his ears still ringing, followed the other recruits into the building. A dark-skinned man wearing a medical uniform checked his ID and then ordered him into a smaller room, where a male nurse told him to strip before running through a brief, but very through medical examination. The nurse took blood samples and inspected every one of his orifices, even though Michael couldn’t imagine what half of the tests were actually for. The brief sight and hearing test, at least, made sense. The nurse kept muttering under his breath, before finally clearing Michael for duty.

  “Get rid of any drugs and shit you have in the next room,” he warned. Michael blinked at him. “Get moving; you’re in the army now!”

  Michael moved, heading out of the door into the next compartment. Seven bins stood there, inviting him to empty his pockets of anything illegal, although he hadn’t brought anything with him. He glanced inside, out of curiosity, and recoiled when he realised how many recruits had brought something illegal with them to the spaceport. He hoped that they all had the sense to discard everything, no matter how much they wanted to keep it. Somehow, he doubted that Barr would be kind when he caught anyone stupid enough to keep their stash with them.

  “Take a seat,” another man ordered. Michael sat down, puzzled. “Hold still…”

  The barber rapidly cut his hair with an electric buzzer. Michael had no time to protest before it was finished, allowing him to stand up and see his face in the mirror. His hair had been cut back sharply, leaving nothing but a tiny amount of stubble. It would take weeks to grow his locks back, although he suspected that he’d be expected to keep it cut down to the bone. He stared. Was that tough-looking stranger really him?

  “Yes, that’s you,” the barber said, impatiently. “Get along to the next room.”

  The next room contained a pair of harassed-looking clerks and a pile of clothing. “Strip,” one ordered, and Michael hastened to obey. The clerk swooped around him with a measuring tape, checking out every last part of his body, before picking up a pile of clothing and tossing it at him. “Put them on and then report back to be checked.”

  Michael dressed slowly. The army-issue clothing felt odd compared to the clothes he’d worn as a civilian, even though they were clearly new and not handed down from older boys. Other recruits came in to dress and he did his best to copy them, pulling the tunic over his head. Somehow, with the uniform properly fixed, he felt taller. The clerk gave him a brief once-over, placed his old clothes in a storage box for when he left the spaceport, and shoved him back out into the sunlight. A line of recruits was already gathering in front of the Drill Sergeant, who was eying them with a gimlet eye. Michael had the uncomfortable feeling that nothing they did would be good enough for the man. There would always be room for improvement.

  “You will notice footprints on the ground in front of you,” Barr barked, once the first row had filled up. Place your feet on them and stand to attention. You will learn how to do that as naturally as breathing.”

  Michael followed his orders. Perhaps it was the uniform, but he didn’t feel any sense of the absurd as he posed with the others. Some people had spent the last two days mocking military pomp and circumstance, but he was starting to realise that it all had a place. Barr added others to the line as they came out of their own medical examination and dressing, forcing them to pose. He showed more patience than Michael would have expected, nothing like the teacher he’d been forced to pay attention to at school. The man had been unable to teach Michael and his fellows anything they actually wanted—or needed—to know. It had taken years for him to realise that the Empire’s mandated curriculum hadn’t been designed to create thinking youngsters, but more peons for the elite.

  “Acceptable,” Barr said finally. “Now”—he pointed a hand towards one of the transport aircraft—“you will march into the aircraft for transport to Castle Rock. March; not run.”

  Michael followed his new comrades towards the aircraft. He’d never flown before and, despite the surroundings, he was quite looking forward to it. The aircraft, he discovered to his disappointment, only had a handful of windows, but he was lucky enough to sit next to one. He stared out as the aircraft accelerated down the runway and climbed into the sky. It all felt worthwhile, somehow.

  -o0o-

  Edward stood on the prefabricated control tower and watched as the four transport aircraft floated down out of the sky to land on the runway. Hiring labour from Camelot was a risk, yet there had been no choice; the Marines and their auxiliaries couldn’t do everything they needed to do in time to open the base. Once he’d started paying the labourers in cash, they’d worked with enthusiasm; indeed, he rather suspected that some of them would try to join the Marines. It would offer them a better life than working for fixed wages back in Camelot.

  Although that might change, he thought, grimly. The vast mass of civilians on Camelot had had no future and no hope of a better life, until the Marines had come along and started to show them that things could be better. Kitty was right; the political elite would try to slam the lid back down, but he suspected that would be impossible. The civilians in Camelot might be largely unarmed—although the city did have plenty of illegal weapons—yet the same couldn’t be said for those who lived outside the city. An alliance between the Crackers and a similar group inside the cities would be disastrous. And the Marines had started the ball rolling.

  He watched as the aircraft landed and the new recruits were urged out of the aircraft and rapidly formed up into lines. Drill Sergeant Barr and a handful of Marines who had served as training officers at the Slaughterhouse had organised themselves to deal with the first wave of recruits, but Edward was all-too-aware that they were spread thinly. There were five hundred recruits in the first wave and that was pushing the Marines right to the limits. He’d seriously considered borrowing some Civil Guardsmen with training experience, but Major Grosskopf had dissuaded him. Far too many of the training officers had two masters. They simply couldn’t be trusted. Besides, the majority of the competent Civil Guardsmen were out along the badlands, patrolling with the Marines and hunting for bandits.

  Edward scowled as the recruits were introduced to Castle Rock. There had been only a handful of reported bandit sightings since the brief and bloody battle in the badlands, which suggested that they’d either wiped the bandits out in one fell swoop or that they were hiding and keeping their heads low while they waited for the Marines to get bored and go away. The media on Camelot—owned, like the rest of the planet’s business, by the elite—had been claiming that it was the former, but Edward would have been astonished if that were true. It was far more likely that they were plotting something. They’d invested too much time and effort in their grand plan to take over half of the continent to back away now.

  And then there were the Crackers, who had been keeping very quiet. How long would it be until they joined the fight?

  He glanced down at his timepiece and turned towards the ladder. It was time for the oath.

  -o0o-

  The heat struck them as soon as they stepped out of the aircraft, a wave of heat that was almost physical in its intensity. Michael recoiled and then stepped forward, feeling sweat trickling down his back. The aircraft had been air-conditioned, but it had only served to leave them unprepared for the heat of Castle Rock. He stumbled slightly as he moved forward, hunting for the lines before realising that there were none. They had to form up without any aids at all. Barr watched, his face turning darker and darker with every little mistake, until he finally barked a series of orders. The new recruits formed up and waited under the blazing sun.

  “Stand to attention,” Barr said, as a newcomer appeared at one end of the field. “Captain Stalker will now give the oath.”

  Michael tried to stand up straighter as the Captain paced from recruit to recru
it, his eyes passing from face to face. He wore a dress uniform with at least a dozen decorations, although Michael had no idea what they all represented, if anything. Apart from the Rifleman’s Tab at his collar, they were all meaningless, so far. The Captain’s stripes on his shoulder only made sense when he realised what they had to stand for.

  “The Marine Oath has remained unchanged since the Empire itself was founded,” Captain Stalker said. There was an air of calm competence in his voice, the voice of a man who didn’t have to prove himself, or scare the recruits shitless for their own good. Barr had commanded obedience through shouting; Captain Stalker claimed it as his right. “Its basic form goes all the way back to the days before the Federation, before Earth itself was united under one government. It is living history. It is also your last chance to back out. If any of you have changed your minds, now is the time to leave.”

  There was a long pause. No one left. “Good,” Captain Stalker said. “Repeat the Oath after me, inserting your own name at the beginning. I, Edward Stalker, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Empire against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Imperial Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

  “I, Michael Volpe, do solemnly swear…”

  Michael felt … odd as he spoke the words, as if a thousand generations were looking over his shoulder. He had never seen it in the Civil Guard, but then, the Civil Guard of Avalon was barely a hundred years old. The Terran Marine Corps dated all the way back to the days of the Terran Federation and then all the way back to Old Earth’s pre-spaceflight era. It was older than the Empire, older by far than Avalon itself, older than he could imagine. The various military forces that had given birth to the Marine Corps dated back centuries even before spaceflight itself. History itself was tapping him on the shoulder.

  He felt a lump at his throat as he finished the Oath, before standing to attention and saluting the Imperial Flag waving from one corner of the field. It wasn’t a perfect salute—Barr had promised them that they’d be spending as long as it took to practice—but somehow it meant more to him than it had before.

  “Welcome to the Marine Corps,” Captain Stalker said. It was impossible to imagine him as a young recruit, yet he must have been one, years ago. If he could do it, so could Michael. “Dismissed!”

  CHAPTER 27

  Freedom of information is one of the Empire’s fundamental tenets. Indeed, by law, every colony world has to have a branch of the Imperial Library established in its capital city, free for all to enter and use. And yet, the Empire has grown more and more restrictive of information over the last few decades, concealing everything from economic data to political statistics. It is therefore very hard to draw a comprehensive picture of the Empire’s overall state. It is even harder out on the Rim.

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

  Leo sat at his desk in the Imperial Library, staring down at a sheet of paper without actually reading it. The Imperial Library should have been bustling with life, like the famous Library of Earth or the planet-sized Library of Alexandra, but there were only a handful of visitors. It wasn’t surprising. Avalon’s Council had pulled a fast one and banned anyone who had any debt at all from claiming any of the Imperial services that were theirs by right. Knowledge was power, after all, and the Council had a good reason to keep the rest of the population as powerless as possible.

  The Imperial Library was one of the prefabricated buildings constructed in the centre of Camelot, built out of heavy battle steel. It should endure for centuries, even without human care and attention, and could survive anything short of a direct nuclear hit. In the early days of interstellar spaceflight, Leo knew, colonies had failed and their populations had fallen back to barbarism. The Empire, in a bid to prevent the loss of knowledge that might have saved them, had ordered that each new colony play host to a branch of the Imperial Library, which would store all of humanity’s hard-won experience. The farmers and miners of Avalon should have been visiting the library regularly, searching through its vast databanks for information that would be useful to them, or would make their farms and mines more productive. Avalon was a new colony and it was quite possible that any problem encountered on the planet had been encountered before, by other human colonies. The library existed to help the human population survive.

  It had been Fiona, desperate to find her husband something to do, who had asked her friends for suggestions. Avalon didn’t have a university yet and it was unlikely Leo would have been allowed to teach there in any case, not after his exile from Earth. One of her new friends had suggested the Imperial Library, pointing out that the last librarian had quit in disgust and caught the first starship back to the sector capital. Leo had been delighted at first—if nothing else, he would have access to research materials for his future works—but it hadn’t taken him long to realise that it was a dead end. The library’s restricted nature prevented most people from coming and using the massive files.

  The Imperial Librarians would be furious when—if—they found out, he knew. In many ways, they were just as determined and coherent as the Marines, devoted to ensuring that the spark of knowledge remained alive right across the Empire. Their Imperial Mandate would certainly prompt them to action, yet they might not be able to do anything. If the former librarian hadn’t been able to convince them to intervene, protests from an exiled professor wouldn’t get any further. Avalon was so far from Earth that it might be impossible to do more than issue orders and hope that they would be obeyed.

  He stood up and paced over to the small coffee machine the previous librarian had left behind. It had been imported from a more advanced world at considerable expense and still worked perfectly, although the coffee grains had decayed long ago. Leo had replaced them with grains grown on Avalon itself and put the machine back into service, although the taste wasn’t quite up to the standard of Earth’s coffee. But then, the Imperial University had always had the best, demanding—in exchange—that professors and students didn’t think for themselves. Leo himself had lost himself in academia until it had been too late.

  The small office held nothing, apart from a desk, a computer and a small row of printed books. In theory, Avalon should have set up a printing press long ago and started to copy all of the manuscripts waiting in the massive library databanks, but Leo hadn’t been surprised to discover that only a handful of books had been reproduced. Most of them were fictional works, rather than practical books that might aid the planet’s population, distributed to distract them from their problems. Leo had added a picture of his family and nothing else.

  He sat back down and sipped his coffee, wincing at the taste. The job was boring because there was nothing to do. Anything that might have required his services had already been done before the last librarian quit. There were few visitors to attend to. Fiona might have wanted him out of the house, or she might have believed that a librarian would have enjoyed the same sort of social cachet as a Professor at the University of Earth, but he was bored. He could feel his mind slipping away into hopeless boredom. The job didn’t even pay that much.

  Mandy’s picture seemed to wink at him and he smiled, even though his daughter was a constant worry. He’d known that she had had an active social life on Earth—even though he hadn’t wanted to know the details—but he’d also known that it was safe, unless she was insane enough to walk into the Undercity. On Avalon … she’d come far too close to being raped and murdered. The thought kept running through his head. He could have lost his daughter barely two weeks after they’d landed on their new home. Colonists had had that experienced throughout history, of course, but nothing like that—or so he told himself. Mandy had walked quite willingly to her own doom. If the Marines hadn’t been there … the consequences didn’t bear thinking about, yet he c
ouldn’t stop thinking about them. Horrible visions kept rising up behind his eyes.

  Leo knew parents who would have screamed the place down if their daughters had been spanked by a stranger; indeed, on Earth, it would have been regarded as physical abuse. He could only be grateful, for it had caused a change in Mandy. She was more subdued and thoughtful than she had been in years, although that might also have been because of her lucky escape. A few nights sleeping on her tummy was infinitively preferable to being raped and murdered. Who knew … perhaps she would grow into some form of maturity. Or perhaps he was just dreaming. He knew from his own studies that if a child wasn’t taught right and wrong from a very early age, the behaviour would never truly improve.

  The Marine communicator he’d been issued buzzed. “Professor,” a voice said, “would you be able to come to Castle Rock at your earliest convenience?”

  Leo smiled. He was so bored that an invitation to visit anywhere would have been welcome. “Of course,” he said. “Where do I go to be picked up?”

  “The spaceport,” the voice said. Leo was sure that he knew the speaker, although he couldn’t put a name to the voice. “There are flights from the spaceport every hour on the hour.”

  Leo stood up and walked out of the library, closing and locking the doors behind him. The library position came with a car and driver—the car burning primitive gasoline rather than using batteries—who waited outside every day. Leo had suggested that the young woman spend time in the library herself, but she had refused, being more interested in watching some of the vision shows on her terminal. They were, in fact, copies of shows that had been fashionable on Earth years ago, designed to help keep the population’s mind off their own affairs. Leo’s position had caused him to be aware of the various social dampeners operating within the Empire, trying to prevent internal strife. They had been breaking down for years.