“She looks a bit young for this,” Blake muttered, on the platoon’s channel. “What’s she doing here?”
“It’s run by a family,” Joe muttered back. The girl had shrunk back. If she’d never seen a Marine before, God alone knew what she thought they were. “She’s one of their children.”
Jasmine nodded in understanding. The space-born, the men and women who had spent all of their lives in asteroid settlements, had a habit of pressing children into work from an early age. A young child could certainly carry out most tasks in an asteroid, even if it was something as minor as minding the algae farms or repairing mining equipment. Some of them, later, joined the Imperial Navy and were among the most highly-decorated combat commanders. They knew, instinctively, the realities of space combat.
“Hello,” she said, unhooking her helmet and disconnecting from the tactical gestalt. “My name is Jasmine. What’s yours?”
“Flora,” the girl said, her eyes going wide as Jasmine emerged from the armour. “Who are you?”
“My name is Jasmine,” Jasmine said. Nothing in her training had prepared her for dealing with Young Children, but she’d helped raise nieces and nephews. “We’re the Marines. Can you take us to your parents?”
“Her father is here,” a heavily-accented voice said. Jasmine recognised the accent; an ex-asteroid miner from one of the Scottish-ethnic systems. “Why have you boarded my station?”
“We have to secure it before we start unloading,” Gwen explained. Her voice echoed from her suit’s armour. Jasmine caught the undertone of annoyance. There was no threat here, just a frightened child. “We’re not going to damage anything.”
“I hope not,” the man said. “I’m Douglas Campbell, manager of this station for my sins. Would you like me to call out my family?”
“That would make life easier,” Gwen said. She changed to the Marine-only channel. “Start searching the station. Do not damage anything if possible.”
Jasmine smiled inwardly as she pulled her helmet back on and sank into the electronic universe surrounding her. Campbell’s family – seven men and women – nineteen children – came at his call, waiting in one of the massive – and empty – loading bays while the Marines checked out the station. Jasmine guessed that it was an open family, with mixed relationships rather than a single mother and father, a not uncommon pattern among RockRats. Who cared who fathered a child, or who gave birth to her, as long as the children were loved and cherished? The conservatives on her homeworld would have been horrified, of course, but Jasmine didn't care. Besides, she and every other Marine in existence were married to the Corps. She only took lovers occasionally.
The interior of the station was in surprisingly good shape, although some of the maintenance looked jury-rigged and dangerous. That wasn't too surprising. The technology in most of the station was primitive, dating from the early days of spaceflight, just to make it easy to repair. It was something that had struck her as odd when she started reviewing the histories of settled worlds, but serving in the Marines had taught her the wisdom of the practice. A piece of technology that was impossible to repair when broken was effectively useless.
“It’s clear,” Blake reported, finally. “No weapons apart from a handful of low-power laser cannons and rail guns. There's nothing here that can threaten us.”
“Good,” Gwen said, briskly. “Blake, Jasmine, Joe; report to the shuttlebay for close-protection duty. The rest of you report back to the ship and prepare to start unloading the Sebastian Cruz. The Captain wants to be rid of us and we might as well oblige.”
Jasmine smiled, delighted. Close-protection duty meant that she would be going down to the planet first. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, like stepping onto a new world. It made everything else worthwhile.
Chapter Twelve
The Empire’s system of planetary government is intended to evolve as the planet itself evolves. In theory, within the first fifty-hundred years, the planet should have evolved a local council that eventually becomes a planetary government. In practice, with development corporations striving to extract every last credit from their investment, the planetary government becomes a corrupt sham. The game is rigged against the children of settlers, who never signed a contract and were never in hock to the Development Corporation.
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Waning Years of Empire (banned).
From orbit, Avalon looked as green and blue as Earth had looked, before the human race had come alarmingly close to killing its own homeworld. Edward watched as the shuttle started to head down towards the largest continent, admiring the green blur that hid the human settlements. Earth glowed in the night, illuminated by the lights of a thousand mega-cities; Avalon looked pristine and unspoiled. There were religions that worshipped untainted worlds and pressed for an end to colony flights, although they had never had a chance of convincing the Grand Senate to abandon their main source of wealth. Besides, the more distance between the different human sects, the better. It kept the bloodshed down.
He pressed his face to the viewport as the main continent took on shape and form. Avalon had three main continents – named Arthur, Lancelot and Galahad by the Captain of the survey vessel that had discovered the world – each one about the size of Africa and spread out across the planet. Hundreds of islands, ranging from the size of Cuba to the size of Nantucket, were scattered across the remainder of the oceans. Some of them, according to the briefings, played host to human settlements established in defiance of the planetary government. It was hardly an uncommon development on a planetary surface, but in the long run, such tiny colonies were eventually absorbed into the mainstream. The human race had learned a harsh lesson about allowing too much ethnic or religious diversity on a planetary surface.
Like almost all colony worlds developed by a corporation out for profit, development had focused on one of the continents and concentrated on building up a local farming infrastructure as quickly as possible. The survey team that had spent a year on the surface, catching and studying the wild crops and animals, had calculated that Earth’s crops could be added to the soil without risking ecological collapse. The native animals were generally edible – although there was one specific kind of animal that preferred to eat humans rather than be eaten – and fish and other creatures had been released into the sea. The blue seas below him teemed with life, including a creature that the original team had named the Jonah Whale, a monstrous creature that was the undisputed king of the food chain. They had taken to eating Dolphins and lesser fish with enthusiasm. The briefing paper had warned that hunting Jonah Whales was asking for trouble. Luckily, there weren't many of them and they tended to stay away from humanity’s ships.
The same couldn’t be said for the Gnasher. The photographs included in the briefing notes had suggested nothing more than a large black dog, one that a young boy might enjoy romping through the woods with, chasing rabbits and catching sticks. It was an illusion. The creature had a gland within its heart that somehow supercharged it and allowed it to literally rocket towards its victims, savaging them with teeth that bit though flesh and bone with equal abandon. The briefing notes had warned that the safest thing to do with confronted with one of the monsters was to shoot it at once with explosive bullets. When supercharged, they had an astonishing ability to absorb damage and somehow keep going.
He pushed the thought aside as the shuttle descended towards one edge of the largest continent. The city of Camelot lay below him, the largest settlement on Avalon, although that didn't mean very much. It was tiny to his eyes, barely holding a few hundred thousand people at most. The handful of other settlements weren't any more impressive, although the briefing papers had suggested that some of them had been built from scratch and were generally more orderly than the capital city. He pushed that thought aside too. Avalon was six months from Earth and it was astonishing how much nonsense, or downright falsehoods, could creep into the files. He’d just have to wait and see what happened when they landed.
Edward nodded. “A very droll way of saying ‘fuck you’ to the Empire,” he said, dryly. “If they have to maintain the damn thing, they can at least make it inconvenient for nosey bastards from Earth.”
He snorted. By law, every planet had to maintain at least one spaceport, even the planets inhabited by agricultural communities that had settled their worlds to get away from technology and all of its evils. Most worlds, particularly the ones that were intent on building up their own technological and industrial base, didn't regard it as a burden. It was, however, a serious expense for a stage-one colony world and not something that would pay for itself quickly. It took decades for a spaceport to break even.
Camelot looked untidy from the air, although he knew from experience that such impressions were deceptive. Massive prefabricated buildings dominated one corner of the city – the homes of the planet’s industry, such as it was – while other buildings were constructed out of bricks or stone. People thronged the streets, some gazing up at the shuttle and wondering what it portended, while others just ambled about, looking for trouble. Camelot just didn't look dynamic at all. It looked more like a city that had never quite found itself.
The spaceport came into view as the shuttle banked towards it, heading down towards a landing pad that had been clearly marked by a beacon. A handful of other pads were dominated by aggressive-looking helicopters and aircraft, either shipped in from the Empire or built on Avalon itself. He hoped it was the latter. Shipping almost anything across interstellar distances was expensive as hell. A number of prefabricated buildings dominated one side of the spaceport, covered in grass and lichen. It looked as if the planetary government barely bothered to maintain the spaceport at all. Given how few starships visited the system, it was easy to see why they thought it wasn't worth their while.
He glanced down at the datapad, showing the latest download from Orbit Station. Gwen had copied the station's logs into the Marine databases and they told a depressing story. Avalon was visited only once every two months, at best, by a freighter and they never stayed long. Avalon just didn't have much to offer beyond cheap fuel and foodstuffs. The four freighters in-system had all lost their drives and would vanish in a heartbeat if they were repaired. Their owners simply didn't have the money to hire a repair ship, or tow their freighter to a spaceport. They worked for the planetary government because it was the only game in town.
“There are no fences,” he commented, sourly. The spaceport was supposed to be secure, but it looked as if anyone could just walk down the line of helicopters and casually toss a grenade into each one. It suggested that the Civil Guard were either firmly on their toes and ran regular patrols of the surrounding area, or they were criminally incompetent. “I want one of you to stay with the shuttle at all times.”
“That’s you, Joe,” Rifleman Coleman said. Edward had been impressed with Coleman’s record, although he had been less impressed with the string of demerits for smart remarks at the wrong time. Blake would not see a permanent promotion for years at this rate. “Jasmine and I will escort you, sir.”
The shuttle paused over the spaceport and lowered itself down towards the hard ground. Edward felt the bump as the shuttle touched down, smiling inwardly at the thought of how an Imperial Navy Admiral would have thrown a fit at even the slightest bump. They had no sense of proportion at all. Any landing you could walk away from, or so he had been told, was a good landing.
“Thank you,” he said, as Jasmine moved ahead of him to climb out first. “It was an excellent flight down to the ground.”
The scent of Avalon hit him as Jasmine opened the hatch, a curious mixture of greenery and of the smell of petroleum-based engines spooling over in the distance. He could hear the sound of birds chirping – it was rare to see a wild bird on Earth, outside the reserves – and the sounds of mechanics working on some of the helicopters. Now that he was on the ground, he could pick out the sight of a handful of guards patrolling the field, watching for trouble. The spaceport might not be sealed up tighter than a virgin’s ass, but it was fairly secure. It would take a determined attack to destroy the facility.
“Captain,” Blake said, quickly. “We have one vehicle incoming.”
A jeep was making its way towards them. It was an old-tech vehicle, something that would have been horrendously out of place on Earth, yet it made sense on Avalon. The plans might have been shipped out in a database, but the jeep itself would have been produced on Avalon, giving the Civil Guard unrivalled mobility and, just incidentally, encouraging local industry. A jeep could be repaired easily. A Mark-VIII Hover Tank would have to be shipped off-world once the spare parts ran out.
“No trace of any heavy weapons,” Jasmine added. “They’re just carrying assault rifles and pistols.”
Edward shrugged, keeping his expression calm and composed. There was no such thing as a dangerous weapon. There were just dangerous men. A Marine Rifleman was a qualified weapons-master, capable of using almost any weapon in the Empire with neither hesitation nor delay. A man holding a weapon who didn't know what he was doing – or what the weapon could do, or what limitations it had – was no problem, at least not to anyone on the opposite side. Back when he’d been a mere Rifleman himself, his platoon had penetrated an Imperial Army base wearing nothing, but underpants. They hadn't even been armed and they’d managed to shut down the entire base for hours.
The jeep came to a halt and an older man jumped out, wearing a Civil Guard uniform. Like the Marines and the Imperial Army, the uniform was fairly standard, but where Marines wore their Rifleman’s Tab, the newcomer wore a stylised golden image of Avalon. The Civil Guard, unlike the senior services, owed their loyalty to their homeworld, not the Empire as a whole. There were some quite senior figures who questioned the wisdom of giving so much firepower to people who might not be entirely trustworthy.
“Welcome to Avalon,” he said. He looked rather suspicious, for which Edward could hardly blame him. No one would have informed him, or anyone on Avalon, that the Marines were on their way. No message could have reached them unless it had been carried on the Sebastian Cruz. “I am Major George Grosskopf, the commanding officer of the Avalon Civil Guard.”
“Captain Edward Stalker, Terran Marine Corps,” Edward said, saluting. Technically, he – not George – was the senior officer present, but there was no point in splitting hairs. A bad rapport with the local Civil Guard officer would not make their operations any easier. “I know that all of this was sprung on you at short notice.”
“No one told us that the Governor’s pleas for help had reached Earth,” George said. “The last help we received from the Empire was no help at all.”
Edward studied him, noted the way he held himself, and nodded inwardly. “As a former Imperial Army officer, you have to know that there are too many brushfires for us to put out,” he said, grimly. “My Company is here to help you.”
George surprised him by laughing. “And be content with what we get?” He asked. “That sounds quite like the Empire we all know and love. You’ll be pleased to hear that the Governor wishes to speak with you at once. He doesn't quite believe that you’re here to stay.”
“Believe it,” Edward said. He’d spent part of the six months in transit studying reports that would not normally have been made available to him. It was hard to think of serving in the Marines as living a sheltered existence – the very idea was absurd – but it was alarmingly clear that the Commandant had, if anything, understated the scale of the Empire’s problems. The entire system seemed to be on the verge of breaking down. Crime was on the rise, trade was falling rapidly and corruption was spreading everywhere. The official news reports were often censored to hide the true scale of the problem, leaving the general public unaware of the growing stresses tearing the Empire apart. Terrorists were mounting isolated attacks against the Core
Worlds while, out on the frontier, the Secessionist League was moving from strength to strength. “We may be here to stay for a very long time.”
George was no fool. “They’re going to close the bases then?”
“It looks like it,” Edward confirmed. “If that happens, they’ll abandon a dozen sectors to their fate, including this one. We could be here permanently.”
“I won’t lie and say that I'm not happy to see you,” George admitted. “How many men do you have?”
The Empire’s Corps: Book 01 - The Empire's Corps Page 12
