He knew the local sector fairly well, for he’d been based there for his entire career. Avalon’s sector was right on the Rim, the border of space controlled by the Empire. Beyond the Rim, there were hidden pirate bases, black colonies and strange eerie rumours about encounters with aliens, told in spaceport bars by drunken spacers. If the Empire abandoned Avalon completely, what might come out of the darkness to threaten his adopted world?
And yet, even that wasn't the real worry. The Crackers had been smashed once before by the Imperial Navy. What would happen if they realised that the Imperial Navy would never return to Avalon? They’d push forward as quickly as they could and the Civil Guard wouldn't be able to stand in their way. How long would it be before they took Camelot and put her inhabitants to the sword? The Crackers had no reason to love the Council or respect its authority. His never-to-be-sufficiently-damned predecessor had made sure of that.
“George,” he said slowly. “How much of an impact can they make on the enemy?”
George hesitated. “In the short term, quite a bit,” he said. “In the long term, perhaps nothing, unless they succeed in turning out new recruits for the Civil Guard. Even so, the Council will probably try to hobble it, if only because a stronger army is a danger to them as well.”
They shared a long look. George and a handful of other professional military officers did what they could, but the Avalon Civil Guard was an unwieldy creature. Officially, it had five thousand soldiers, yet realistically it was far fewer. Many of the senior officers were political appointees, men and women trusted by various Councillors to respect their interests. Others were deeply corrupt and – perhaps – working for the enemy. Launching any sort of military campaign against the bandits, let alone the Crackers, was impossible.
“I see,” Brent said. “I’m going to give him complete control over Castle Rock. Legally, the Council won’t be able to do anything about it, not without compromising their own positions.” He snorted at the thought. Half of the Councillors were in it for the money, what little of it there was on Avalon. The other half were in it for the power. “At least that should keep their influence off the island.”
“Maybe,” George said. He stood up. “With your permission, I have to get back out to my men. I want to do a sweep through the countryside. We might just catch a few bandits to hang.”
“Good luck,” Brent said. They both knew that the operation wasn't likely to succeed. “And good hunting.”
***
One of the little secrets the Marine Corps had somehow never got around to sharing with anyone who hadn't passed through the Slaughterhouse was that each Marine was issued a subcutaneous communicator. It was low-powered, meaning that it had very short range, but it was effectively completely undetectable outside of the Core Worlds. Marines trained endlessly to be able to speak privately to each other, without anyone on the outside having any idea of what was going on. It had been used, more than once, to give the Marines a tactical advantage.
“So,” Blake said. Anyone looking at him would have just seen him standing there, as unmoving as a rock. His jaw didn't even twitch. The two Civil Guardsmen eying the Marines warily heard nothing. “What do you make of our posting?”
“There's more trouble than they told us about,” Jasmine said, in reply. One of the Civil Guardsmen was staring at her as if she was a creature from another world. The thought made her smile. In a sense, it was perfectly true. “They took a risk when they drove the Old Man from the spaceport to here.”
She glanced at the wooden doorway leading to the Governor’s office. A wooden door would have been unthinkable on Earth, outside of the Imperial Palace itself. What few forests remained on Earth were under heavy protection, with guards authorised to shoot on sight. On Avalon, it was commonplace and a single hard kick would bring the door down in splinters.
“Or perhaps they were exaggerating the threat,” Blake said. “It wouldn't be the first time that someone has tried to convince us that matters were worse than they seemed.”
Jasmine nodded, remembering deployments where the Marines had been sucked into the maelstrom of local politics, where one side had attempted to use them to forward their own political agenda. Avalon might be barely developed, but it certainly had a political maelstrom brewing. She sighed inwardly. Wonderful; another campaign where no one knew who was the good guy.
The door opened before she could reply. “Come on,” Captain Stalker said. He looked as calm and composed as ever, but Jasmine could just see something else beneath his face. “We have to go back to the spaceport.”
Chapter Fourteen
One of the many symptoms of decline is the sudden profusion of intelligence agencies. Where once Imperial Intelligence (the dreaded Double Eyes) handled all of the Empire’s intelligence requirements, there are now dozens of different intelligence agencies. Some work for specific branches of the armed forces – Naval Intelligence, Marine Intelligence – while others work for individual Senators and even for the media. The results have not been good.
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Waning Years of Empire (banned).
Four hours after Edward returned to the spaceport, fifty Marines had landed and conducted a thorough sweep of the surrounding area. They’d found nothing incriminating apart from a few caches of locally-produced drugs, but it hadn't been hard to convince the Civil Guard to move their helicopters to a nearby airstrip and leave the spaceport to the Marines. There was simply nowhere else on Avalon that could be used to land so much gear so quickly. Lieutenant Howell had set up a command post in one section of the spaceport and was conducting operations quickly and smoothly, while Lieutenant Young had been dispatched to Castle Rock to carry out a quick survey. Edward wasn’t entirely happy at being based on an island – even if they were Marines – but it would provide a barrier between the Marines and the local political struggles. It would also be easy to secure.
He’d had orbital images downloaded to his terminal on the trip back to the spaceport and he’d studied them carefully. Castle Rock – and he had no idea how it had picked up that name – was a medium-sized island about twice the size of Nantucket on Old Earth. It had some good farmland and fishing opportunities and he hadn't understood why it wasn't more heavily settled, but a quick look at the survey report had informed him that there was simply much better farming on the continent itself. The settlers who had started to try to farm on the island hadn’t been very successful, something that puzzled him. They should certainly have been able to feed themselves by now.
“The remainder of the Company is assisting Captain Yamato to unlock the pods and start loading them onboard the shuttles,” Lieutenant Howell explained. “I think we’re going to have to run our own security until we get everything set up on Castle Rock. I didn't realise just how dirt poor this planet actually is until I had a good look at their local records. We might as well have landed entire mountains of gold, sir.”
“Keep two platoons back at all times to maintain guard on the spaceport,” Edward ordered. It was a dangerously thin security blanket. Marines or not, it really required at least a full Company to hold and secure a spaceport. Twenty-one Marines wouldn't be enough to stand off a determined assault. “Once we get the drones and assault vehicles unloaded and set up, we can start deploying them to the island and on random patrols.”
“Yeah,” Howell said. He didn't sound happy, but then, few logistics officers ever were. The Marines rotated such posts around the Lieutenants to ensure that they all understood how to handle logistics, yet Howell had been unlucky. Stalker’s Stalkers had never had to operate at the end of such a long supply chain before. Offhand, Edward couldn't remember any Marine unit in recent history that had. “I bet you ten credits that we’ll have locals out here soon enough offering to assist us in exchange for vital supplies. A single fusion reactor would completely change the balance of power here and we have ten of them.”
Edward nodded. “I didn't discuss what we’d brought with the Governor,” he said. �
��We’ll have to see who we can bring in locally to assist us. God knows, we can't handle everything ourselves.”
“No,” Howell said. “In fact...”
Edward’s communicator buzzed before he could finish speaking. “Captain, this is Rifleman Lin on the front gate,” a voice said. “You have a visitor. She says she’s from Naval Intelligence.”
Edward exchanged a brief glance with Howell. “Naval Intelligence?”
“Yes, sir,” Lin said. “She wants to talk to you as soon as possible.”
“How unusually polite,” Edward murmured. Naval Intelligence, in his experience, tended to issue demands and threats instead of polite requests. They considered themselves the senior military intelligence service, second only to Imperial Intelligence. “Check her, and then have her escorted into the main building. I’ll see her in the spaceport manager’s office.”
He’d inspected the office earlier. It was surprisingly simple for such a post, decorated only by a handful of posters of movie stars who had been out of fashion long before word that they were in fashion reached Avalon. The manager, he’d been told by the Civil Guard, only worked part time, unsurprising when starships only visited the system every few months. She had offered to come in and assist the Marines, but Howell had turned her down, warning her that it could be dangerous. The real reason was far darker. Spaceport managers on the frontier had a habit of assisting smugglers and thieves to supplement their limited income. It was something he felt that they could do without. He took one of the seats – the manager hadn't believed in comfort, evidently – and waited.
“Captain, this is Colonel Kitty Stevenson of Naval Intelligence,” Lin said, knocking on the open door. “She’s clean.”
“Thank you,” Edward said, standing up and holding out a hand for Kitty to shake. “Please close the door behind you.”
Kitty Stevenson was a tall redheaded woman, wearing a simple Imperial Navy tunic without rank insignia. She actually reminded Edward of Mandy and Mindy, apart from the air of quiet desperation that seemed to hang around the older woman. Her tunic was unbuttoned, showing off a certain amount of cleavage, but her gaze was sharp and direct. Edward let go of her hand and waved her to a chair, holding out a datapad to her.
“I'm afraid I’m going to have to ask you for your prints,” he said. “I wasn't briefed that you were going to be here.”
Kitty nodded and pressed her fingers against the pad’s sensor. A moment later, the pad bleeped up a file; Colonel Kitty Stevenson, Naval Intelligence, assigned to the local sector fleet and then to Avalon, for reasons unknown. Edward skimmed through the highlights and nodded inwardly. Kitty was who she claimed to be.
“I wasn't told that the Marines were going to be coming,” Kitty said. “I was just promised that Avalon would receive some support sooner or later.”
Edward felt his eyes narrow. “Who promised you that?”
“One of my superiors on Earth,” Kitty said. Her face revealed nothing. “He just told me that some form of military support would be coming soon.”
Edward frowned inwardly, thinking hard. He hadn't known that he would be heading to Avalon until just after he’d told the Grand Senate exactly what was wrong with them and their ideas, yet the Commandant had organised the transfer remarkably quickly. Had he intended to send a Marine Company out to Avalon, or had it simply been a matter of slotting a round peg into a round hole? And then there was the encryption key he’d been given. Just what, he asked himself angrily, was the Commandant up to on Old Earth?
“I see,” he said, finally. It wasn't something he could ask her. Chances were that she was just as ignorant as him. “And, now you’re here, why are you here?”
Kitty showed no offence at his brusque manner. “Officially, I am in charge of the Imperial Navy recruiting station on Avalon,” she said. “Practically speaking, the station is moribund and has been so for years. I have thousands of kids on my lists who want to enlist, but without transport to a training centre they get nowhere. By the way, I’d like to send them back on your transport.”
She shrugged. “Unofficially, my task is to monitor the situation on this planet and report to higher authority.”
“Sneaky,” Edward said, dryly. “What’s on Avalon that makes it so important?”
“It's not on Avalon,” Kitty countered. “It’s the cloudscoop. If the system was to be...lost, the cloudscoop might fall into pirate hands, allowing them to become more aggressive. If it fell into Secessionist hands, the results might be far less pleasing.” She snorted. “And, Captain, this world is within six months of falling into enemy hands.”
Edward jerked upright. “Hellfire,” he said, sharply. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve been on this godforsaken planet for the last ten years,” Kitty snapped. “Of course I'm sure!”
“Six months,” Edward repeated. He looked up at a frayed map hanging on the wall. “What the hell is going on here?”
Kitty assumed a pose Edward recognised, the pose of an intelligence officer on the verge of impacting information to the ignorant – everyone else. “Just under a hundred years ago, there was a brutal rebellion on this planet, which the Imperial Navy terminated by striking from orbit,” she said. “The original rebellion was broken, but seeds of a new movement survived and prospered. The first two Governors didn't help...”
She took a breath. “The first Governor put heavy restrictions on the planet’s inhabitants,” she explained. “He tried to ban guns, issue ID cards...everything seemingly calculated to annoy people who might otherwise have been loyal. The local wildlife wouldn't be impressed by unarmed humans; the farmers didn't dare disarm, not when their children could be attacked and eaten by one of the local monstrosities. There was no second rebellion, but there was a great deal of discontent, passive resistance, and brief outbursts of violence. Eventually, some kindly soul put a bullet through his head and he was killed.
“The second Governor wasn't much better,” she continued. “He relaxed the restrictions, but he firmly believed that the only way to heal the planet would be to allow the inhabitants to have some say in their future, so he created the planetary council. On paper, it was an excellent idea, but in practice it was a dreadful error. By law, the only people who could vote in elections were people who had paid off their debts, and barely ten percent of the planet’s population – if that – could legally vote. The results weren't pleasant. The Council is effectively dominated by interests who don't want to extend the franchise, cancel debts, make vast new investments...or anything else that might actually help fix the world’s problems. Worse, seeing the Council has been legally formed, the third Governor cannot simply dissolve it. He has to listen to them.”
“Fuck,” Edward said, mildly. He’d seen screwed up planets before, but this was something new. “And the rebels are trying to tear all of this down?”
“Yes,” Kitty said. She paused for a moment to gather her thoughts. “One group is effectively bandits, without any political agenda. They’re largely composed of escaped indents who have nowhere else to go. They’re responsible for some of the worst attacks, but have absolutely no hope of surviving if the Civil Guard had the firepower and numbers to go after them. They have no support whatsoever from the locals unless they take it at gunpoint. A few hours before you arrived, one of their groups attacked a township, wiped out the men and took the women as slaves. Or worse.
“The other two groups are both descended from the original Cracker movement,” she said. “They want to get rid of the planetary government, scrap all debt and establish a new representative government. They differ in their aims slightly. One group basically wants autonomy within the Empire; the other wants complete independence. They may have links to outside forces.”
“The Secessionists,” Edward said. “Or it could be pirates.”
“Could be,” Kitty agreed. “I have no proof either way. This planet’s satellite network is barely functional and no one has bothered to put aside the funds to repair i
t.”
She shook her head, sending ripples running down her red hair. “You’ll get a fully military briefing from the Major, no doubt, but the short version of it is that the government is losing control over the outer settlements and may well be on the verge of losing complete control. There is almost no support whatsoever for the government outside of the main cities, because the government is seen as the enemy, the tool of the debt sharks who keep the locals in debt. The Crackers don’t have to intimidate the population, Captain; they have more friends and allies than they could possibly require. I suspect that their aim is to force the Civil Guard to come out and fight on even terms, whereupon they will crush it and march on Camelot.”
The Empire’s Corps: Book 01 - The Empire's Corps Page 14
