Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales

by Jay Allan

  “Took the easy way out, did you?” George growled. Even with Imperial medical science, there was no hope of saving his life. “I’ll find the rest of your friends and they’ll pay too.”

  -o0o-

  “It wasn’t suicide,” the medic said, an hour later. The compound had been completely cleared and a group of logistics officers were going through the inventories and comparing the records to reality. “There was no trace of propellant on his skin.”

  George saw the implications at once. “Someone killed him to silence him,” he said, flatly. “Who the hell killed him?”

  “I don’t know,” the medic said. “We don’t have a proper forensic team or even a WARCAT unit on Avalon. It may go down as a complete mystery.”

  “Fuck,” George said, coldly. It wasn’t hard to guess why Smuts had been killed. Logically, he could have led investigators all the way back to his backers. “Bag up the body and prepare it for transport to Camelot. I have to go see the Governor.”

  “Good luck, sir,” Captain Bertram said. He looked uncomfortable. “Sir, after this…”

  “Everything changes,” George agreed. They shared a moment of silent understanding. “I know just what you mean.”

  CHAPTER 34

  The Marine Corps is a family. When one of the family dies, we all mourn, once we are free to mourn without being distracted from our work.

  - Master Sergeant Jackson Hendry (Ret), The Meaning of a Marine.

  The word had come down from the Drill Instructors; two days ago, a Marine had died. Michael had known that something had happened—the sudden spate of activity had been impossible to miss—but they hadn’t been told what, not until Barr had called the recruits together and told them the truth. It had brought home to many of them just how dangerous their chosen profession actually was and Michael, along with most of the others, had found himself searching his soul for answers. When the shit hit the fan, he asked himself, could he truly stand up and fight? The armoured warriors who had boarded their Raptors had looked invincible. The bandits had just proven that they were not.

  “You are invited to attend the ceremony in two hours,” Barr had said, in tones that had made it very clear that it was an order. “Until then, you should spend your time in silent contemplation, or weapons practice. One of the family has died.”

  The odd contrast had made no sense at first, but as he’d sat on his bunk, he had started to understand. The contemplation was for coming to grips with the fact he could die; the weapons practice was to burn off steam afterwards. The lectures on what it meant to be a Marine had been empty words until he had finally understood just what Barr had been trying to teach them. The Marine Corps was a family and even bastard sons like the new recruits were part of something far greater than any of them were individually.

  He’d never seen the parade ground so full, nor had he been allowed to wear his dress uniform in public before the tragedy. The unfortunate Marine’s platoon were standing on the front row, wearing a black version of their standard uniform, while the other platoons were wearing their dress uniforms with black armbands. Michael did a quick headcount and realised that at least two platoons were not taking part in the ceremony, although he had no idea why. The Company was a family, the only family most of the Marines had, and all of them would want to be present when they said goodbye to their brother. They had to be on deployment away from Castle Rock. He couldn’t imagine anything else that would have kept them away.

  The cap felt itchy on his head, but he’d been ordered to wear it and not remove it until the Sergeant ordered them to uncover their heads. Michael hadn’t been religious in the conventional sense, but his mother had tried to develop a sense of religion in her children’s lives, sending them to church from an early age. He’d stopped going as soon as he’d been old enough to make his decision stick, having concluded that the money his mother paid the priest was better spent elsewhere. The church was never short of money and the family often barely had enough to eat. It just hadn’t seemed fair. Now, staring at the silent Marines, he understood the depth of their faith. It wasn’t in God, but in themselves and in the integrity of the Marine Corps. Barr’s comment—that some political leaders were terrified of the Marines—suddenly made sense. The Marines presented themselves as beyond corruption or intimidation. They could be killed, but they couldn’t be scared.

  He wanted to speak to his fellows, but the entire area was silent. No one had ordered silence; it had just fallen, with no one speaking aloud at all. He heard footsteps from behind him as someone entered the parade ground and twitched his eyes, catching sight of Captain Stalker and a short woman wearing a Sergeant’s dress uniform and a sword. Her stripes proclaimed her to be a Command Sergeant. Barr had told them that Command Sergeants were, in a way, the actual second-in-command of their units, whatever the Table of Organisation might say.

  Captain Stalker marched up to the front row, paused in front of the casket, and then stepped around it, taking his place on a podium. He stared down at his men for a long moment and then, still silently, reached up and removed his cap, placing it neatly in his uniform pocket. A rustle ran through the air as everyone uncovered their heads, holding their caps in their hands. The ceremony, Michael realised, had begun.

  “One of our brothers is dead,” Captain Stalker said. His voice was very composed, but Michael was sure he could hear … something behind the calm, a hint of bitterness and anger. The dead Marine might have served in Stalker’s Stalkers for years, developing relationships with his fellows that transcended the rights and duties of rank. The Marines seemed oddly informal at times. Perhaps the dead Marine had been Captain Stalker’s friend, as well as his subordinate. “He died on the field of battle, among his brothers and sisters, as a Marine should. His death will be avenged.”

  He spoke for nearly ten minutes, speaking about the dead Marine in a manner that somehow made him alive again, if only long enough to say goodbye. Michael hadn’t known him, not personally, but he felt a lump in his throat as he gazed at the casket. It had been sealed shut and there was no way to see inside, which didn’t look good. Most injuries that weren’t immediately lethal could be healed, given time, but Barr hadn’t hidden the truth from them. They were training to be soldiers and soldiers sometimes got injured in battle, directly and indirectly. It wasn’t unknown for Marines to survive as cripples, shadows of their former shelves, or to develop mental problems as they grew older. The Slaughterhouse tried to weed out vulnerable personalities, but it didn’t always work. One day, Michael himself might be in a casket while his friends said goodbye. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

  “It is traditional for a Marine’s body to be transported back to the Slaughterhouse, with his Rifleman’s Tab placed within the Mausoleum to be stored for all time,” Captain Stalker said. “We cannot transport the body back now, but I swear to you all that the body will be transported one day, so that he may rest in peace among the thousands of other Marines who have given their lives in the line of duty. The Honour of the Terran Marine Corps demands that we who knew him when he was alive do his corpse the final honour. We will stand on Flag Hill and pay our final respects to his soul.”

  There was a long pause, long enough for Michael to feel uncomfortable. “I would like to read to you from the words of Major-General Thaddeus Carmichael, the founder of the modern Terran Marine Corps,” Captain Stalker continued. “Carmichael was appointed the first commanding officer of the mixed force that the Terran Federation had assembled from its most prestigious military units. It was Carmichael who, against all opposition, turned the ramshackle force the Federation had created into what we call Marines, the finest soldiers in the known universe. The Corps has changed over the years and he would no longer recognise our organisation or even our technology, but his wisdom still lives on.

  “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers … we came together from across the world,” he quoted. “When we were pulled together, after the burning blaze of the Third World War, the
y told us that we were outdated, that there would be no need for the Marine Corps in the brave new world we had won for them. They were wrong. The world may have advanced, but yet it stayed the same and the values of the Corps—honour, loyalty and integrity—remain of value. When we were pulled together, we were just men, but when we fused together, we were Marines. To be a soldier is to be part of a world that a civilian can never understand or enter, to be part of a brotherhood that transcends time itself.

  “And, as the years go on, we look to the past to remind ourselves of where we came from. The old guard—we who were there at the beginning—grow older, yet our memory lives on. And, as long as a single Marine remains alive, our memory will never fade. Out of a culture that practices democracy and self-determination, we embody the best of that society. We fail in that charge at our peril.”

  He looked up, staring down at the assembled Marines. Just for a moment, his eyes met Michael’s and they seemed to share a moment of communication, of understanding. “We will not forget our brother, who gave his life so that we may live,” Captain Stalker said. “Sergeant, assemble your men.”

  A Sergeant Michael didn’t recognise stepped forward, followed by his platoon. Silently, in perfect formation, they marched apart and lined up on each side of the casket, producing their rifles and pointing them into the sky. Michael realised what was about to happen just before the Sergeant barked the first command and the rifles fired, so close together that it seemed that only one shot had been fired. The Marines fired a second volley, and then a third, before returning their rifles to their shoulders and picking up the casket. As a lone trumpet played, they carried the casket off the stage and out of the parade grounds.

  “We will not forget,” Captain Stalker said. His voice seemed quieter after the shooting. “You are all dismissed.”

  Michael followed Barr as he assembled the recruits and marched them back down towards the shooting range. Part of his mind realised that Barr wasn’t giving them any time to brood, but he couldn’t help thinking about the dead Marine … and about a tradition that had lasted for over a thousand years. Barr had made them study the history of the Marine Corps—somehow, he expected them to read massive volumes in their abundant spare time—yet it had all been dusty words, until he’d realised what the tradition meant. It would never die, not as long as men like Captain Stalker kept it alive.

  -o0o-

  “Here’s to David,” Blake said, as 2nd Platoon gathered in their barracks. “God rest his soul.”

  Jasmine took her own plastic glass and sipped the fine brandy carefully, enjoying the taste as it rolled off her tongue and down her throat. David Robertson’s wake wouldn’t be the grand carouse it would have been on the Slaughterhouse, or on a more mundane deployment, but he would understand. The brandy had been shipped all the way from Old Earth, which made the bottle Blake had produced expensive as hell. The Marine who had donated it could have sold it to the locals and made a fortune—in local currency, at least—but instead it had been preserved for a wake.

  “God rest his soul,” she echoed, as she took another sip. There was no hope of seeing another bottle like the one they were drinking until they returned to Earth, if they ever returned to Earth. The brandy was so far ahead of the local rotgut that it wasn’t even funny. “May he always be remembered by us, wherever we may wander.”

  There was a long pause as the platoon drank, remembering the dead. Jasmine remembered being partnered with Robertson for a brief scouting mission back on Han, when she’d been the new shrimp from the Slaughterhouse, convinced that she knew it all and didn’t. Robertson hadn’t been interested in promotion, or graduating to become an NCO, but he’d been patient with the newcomer and taught her the tricks the Slaughterhouse had never shown her. Like the rest of the Company, he’d been her sibling in every way that counted, apart from biology. She would miss him.

  She’d seen other Marines die, of course, but back on Han she hadn’t had time to make friends with her new comrades before the shit had hit the fan. Afterwards, back when she’d woken up and discovered that she was a veteran, she had bonded with the rest of her unit, only to lose some of them when they were killed in action. It never got easier. Jasmine had hoped that 2nd Platoon would have a chance to crack some heads when the Civil Guard hit their own supply depot, but the Civil Guard had handled it themselves. She held them in contempt—they’d met far too many Civil Guard units that broke at the first sniff of enemy action—but she had to admit that they’d handled themselves well, once they’d realised that they’d been ambushed.

  The brandy aftertaste was fading and she took another sip. The aftermath of the battle had been confusion incarnate, but once they’d realised that it was all over, the Marines had settled down to hashing out what had happened and assimilating the lessons—getting their stories straight, as Blake had joked at the time. It was never easy to put together what had happened during a battle, but a comprehensive picture had slowly begun to emerge. The Civil Guard had followed a predicable path and walked right into an ambush, one that had threatened to snare the Marines as well. The lessons had been hammered home by the Sergeants; take nothing for granted, they’d warned, and watch for advanced weapons that shouldn’t exist outside the Civil Guard, or the Marines themselves.

  Always learn from mistakes made by other people, her first Drill Sergeant had bellowed, after verbally tearing apart a particularly disastrous exercise. It’s much cheaper than learning from your own.

  “He saved my life during the HangChow extraction,” Blake said, slowly. He’d been a shrimp then too, but he’d grown up rapidly. “Without him, I wouldn’t be here today.”

  “He used to play chess with me,” another Marine said. “We’d spend some of our off-duty time playing together, competing endlessly for victories. We even invented our own form of chess and tried to market it on Earth.”

  Jasmine smiled slowly, sipping her drink as more stories emerged. One day, they’d give her the same wake, telling the new recruits stories about her life before she finally bought the farm. She wondered just how many of the young faces staring at her would be alive to see her off at her wake, or if they would all die together, going out in a blaze of glory. If nothing else, Han had proven that Marines could die just as easily as civilians, when their transports were hit by missiles and destroyed.

  Blake poured the last of the brandy into their plastic glasses and threw the bottle against the wall. “That’s the last of it,” he said, quietly. It was odd to see him so subdued. “It’s the local piss-water now.”

  Jasmine shook her head as the bottles were offered around. It had always struck her as odd that drinking wasn’t discouraged in the Marine Corps, although rendering oneself unfit for duty was an offence against military order and heavily punished. If necessary, the Marines would inject themselves with sober-ups before they returned to duty, although the experience wouldn’t be pleasant. Running the Gauntlet for being unfit for duty would be worse. She’d heard of Civil Guard units that had spent their entire tours in a permanent drunken stupor, and then had been surprised when all hell had broken loose in their sectors.

  “Leave it,” she said, and put the glass down. “I’ll see you all later.”

  She stood up and walked out of the barracks, heading towards the shooting range. She had an urge to blow off as much steam as she could, yet there was no one in the practice ring who could give her a bout. The targets would have to face her wrath.

  -o0o-

  Edward watched one of his Marines heading to the shooting range, and then turned back to the communicator. “So the Governor didn’t order your immediate arrest, then?”

  “No,” Major Grosskopf said. “I think he was a little scared of the public reaction after rumours of what happened to the Civil Guard started to leak out. We may not be entirely popular on the planet, but our soldiers do have friends and relatives in the cities. And we smashed a bandit ambush and killed or captured over two hundred of the fuckers. It’s not all bad n
ews, even if I did … exceed my authority.”

  Edward smiled at the understatement. He’d signed off—unofficially—on the Major’s plan and had even stationed Marines nearby to help if Kappa Company had decided to try to fight rather than surrender, but he’d half-expected to hear an urgent message from the Governor demanding that he move to suppress a Civil Guard mutiny. That would have been awkward, to say nothing of placing both Grosskopf and himself in a very dangerous position.

  “The bad news is that Smuts was definitely assassinated,” Grosskopf added. “There’s a good chance that we swept up the assassin in the purge and we’ll get him when we pass him through the lie detector, but for the moment we’ve hit a blank wall … as far as anyone on the outside knows.”

  “The bandit we captured with the radio,” Edward said. They shared a long look. Officially, no bandit leaders had been taken alive, or so they’d informed the media, knowing that it would get back to the right ears. “We were going to start interrogating him tomorrow.”

  “And find out if he knows who was behind this,” Grosskopf agreed. “He has to be important if they trusted him with a radio.”

  Edward wasn’t convinced of that—someone important would have known that the radio transmissions could be tracked—but he held his peace. “We’ll see,” he said. “How are your men coping?”

  “Morale is surprisingly high after we invaded the supply dump,” Grosskopf said. “I think we could probably turn the whole thing around in a few months, if we have the time.”

  Edward nodded. “I’ll let you know what our friend knows once we’re finished with him,” he said. “And then we can decide what to do next.”

  CHAPTER 35

  The dividing line between legal and illegal combatant is blurred and—like all other such principles—is effectively determined by the winner. Given the nature of the wars we fight, expecting an enemy to conduct themselves according to the Azores Conventions of 2052 is foolish. We can therefore define a ‘legal’ combatant as one who attempts to spare civilian lives, where possible, and an ‘illegal’ combatant as the opposite. The latter, under the Articles of War, have no rights whatsoever. This does not sit well with civilians—or, rather, it does not sit well with civilians who are isolated from the war.