The Empire’s Corps: Book 01 - The Empire's Corps (27 page)

The ugly note of the crowd seemed to grow louder. The prisoners, suddenly realising what was going to happen to them if they hadn’t realised before, started to protest, pleading for help and mercy. No one was inclined to give it to them. The crowd had no time for a loser. Michael had seen street thieves given rough justice at the hands of the crowd before and it made no difference that the new victims were from outside the city. They deserved to die.

“The sentence will be carried out,” the Marine said, somehow speaking over the crowd. “May God have mercy on their souls.”

***

Nelson wanted to panic, but somehow he held his peace, thinking desperately. If he could think of something important, something the Marines needed to know, perhaps they would spare his life…but there was nothing. The interrogators had pulled everything he knew out of him and drained him dry. There was nothing left to offer.

The Marines had attached the ropes to a single machine at the rear of the stage. It hummed to life, slowly pulling in the rope…and lifting the prisoners above the ground, slowly choking the life out of them. Nelson drew in a breath as the rope came tight, trying to hold on as long as possible. His legs started to stretch as the rope pulled him upwards; somehow, despite himself, he felt the life slipping out of his body…

Faces started to appear in front of him. His mother and father, the ones who had birthed him and abandoned him when he was ten years old, shaking their heads sadly as they walked away. Jenny, the first girl he had admired from afar, a tall brunette who had somehow maintained her smile in the Undercity…until the day he’d grabbed her suddenly and taken her brutally, convinced that that was what she wanted. She’d screamed and screamed, but he’d thought he'd known better, until he found out that she’d killed herself afterwards. He’d dismissed her from his thoughts until her face reappeared in front of him, mocking him, joined by his other victims. His vision was blurring as the faces merged together into one leering shape; a voice was whispering, right at the edge of his mind…

The rope jerked suddenly, there was a snap, and then nothing. Nothing at all.

***

Michael watched as the bandits died one by one, their bodies jerking as their necks snapped. Some of them had clearly been trying to struggle, others seemed to have accepted their fate, but it hadn’t mattered in the end. They were all dead, hanging from the ropes like demented puppets. Silence fell over the crowd as it sank in, and then there was a roar of approval. Michael felt his own voice echoing as he joined in the roar. The rough justice suited the crowd. How could it not have suited them?

The Marines walked from rope to rope, cutting the dead bodies down and letting them fall onto the stage. They looked as if they had died in agony. A Marine pushed up a trolley and the bodies were unceremoniously dumped onto it, left to wait for disposal. They’d probably be taken to the mass grave outside town and buried there, unless they were fed to the creatures in the zoo instead. It was just possible.

“We fought the bandits and won,” the lead Marine said. His voice somehow silenced the crowd again. “We proved that they can be beaten. Now we have an offer for everyone. Your planet needs you; we need new recruits for the army we intend to build to exterminate the bandits and rebels alike. If you are interested in joining up with us, please go to the recruiting booth we have opened in the Imperial Office.”

He leaned forward, as if he were going to whisper a secret. “And we pay in cash,” he added. “Your salary can be paid each month, or it can be banked with the Imperial Bank, rather than the Bank of Avalon. You won’t have to pay off any debt-mongers if you don’t want to.”

A rustle ran through the crowd. He had just told them that they could earn their salary…and keep it, keep all of it. Very few of the city’s population had gone into debt willingly, but they had inherited their debt from their parents. Young men like Michael had had no hope, until now. He looked up at the Marines, watching calmly in their uniforms, and wondered if he could join them. Did he have whatever it took to be one of them?

Yes
, he told himself. It was an opportunity that would never come again.

“It won’t be easy,” the Marine said. “It will be the hardest thing many of you will have ever done, but it is worth it. We will allow any of you a chance to come and prove yourself.”

Michael watched as the Marines jumped down and walked off, taking the dead bodies with them. The gallows they left behind, probably for the next group of captured bandits. He walked away, shaking his head; he’d seen death before, but watching an execution was something new. A thought struck him and he broke into a run as he ran towards the centre of town. If the word spread as fast as he expected, the entire city would be trying to sign up.

He reached the Imperial Office – a prefabricated building just north of Government House – and was unsurprised to discover that seventeen people had beaten him to it. Eleven of them were young men like himself, who had grown up on the streets; the remainder were young women, including two who had probably been forced into prostitution to feed themselves. It wasn’t uncommon in Camelot, not when prostitutes – too – were paid in cash. The women would have faced the same debt problem as Michael did when they tried to hold normal jobs. As prostitutes, the only person taking a cut of their income would be their pimp.

The queue stretched around the block by the time the doors opened, allowing three of the prospective recruits to enter at a time. Michael waited as patiently as he could for his turn, following a young woman who looked as if she had barely entered her teens into the Imperial Office. A smiling man wearing a uniform he didn’t recognise showed him into a private room, where he came face-to-face with a scarred man who scowled at him.

“So,” he thundered. “You want to join up, do you?”

Michael nodded, too terrified to speak.

“Take this,” the man said, passing Michael a small egg-sized device that he held in his hand. “Understand; the first time you lie to me, I’ll boot you out and you can forget about joining anything more worthwhile than the sanitation department. Now…”

He fired off a long list of questions at Michael, who stumbled as he tried to answer them. Some made sense, asking about his family and his father’s name, others made no sense at all. Why did the Marines want to know about his political leanings? What political leanings did he have anyway? It wasn't as if he’d ever be able to pay off his debt and claim the franchise. He found himself growing more and more impatient with the list of questions, and then it dawned on him that the questions were a test in themselves. The Marines wanted to know how patient he was.

“Good enough,” the recruiter growled, finally. He didn’t sound happy, which made him unusual in Michael’s experience. Most recruiters wanted as many young bodies as they could get, although he’d never met a military recruiter before. Perhaps there were limits to how many men and women the Marines could recruit. “Do you understand that you will be going into an area where heavy discipline is the norm, where you might be injured in training and where you will be expected to obey all orders, without hesitation?”

“Yes, sir,” Michael said. “I understand.”

“No, you don’t,” the recruiter said. “You just think you understand.”

Michael said nothing.

“Be at the spaceport in three days, with this card,” the recruiter said, holding out a piece of cardboard. Michael was somehow unsurprised to see his picture on the card. “Time and date are on the card. If you don’t show up then, don’t bother to show up at all. And, if you get your ass shot off, don’t blame me.”

Michael stared down at the card and then nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

…
Increasingly, the young men and women of the Empire – those born to the Middle and High Classes, at least – are concentrating on living for the now and not thinking about the future. They sense, however dimly, that the Empire has no future
.

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

They heard the music long before they rounded the corner, a thumping beat that spoke of dancing and forgetfulness. Jasmine felt the beat reaching out to her as the four Marines strode down the street, glancing from side to side. The middle-class zone of Camelot was a study in contrasts; in the day, it was all staid and respectable, but in the night the party began. Lighted shops offered everything from pornography to drugs, while hookers waited at lampposts, accosting men and offering their services. The young and desperate thronged through the streets, taking little note of the Marines as they sought the next high, or something else that could make them forget their troubles for a night.

“It sounds like a party,” Blake said, cheerfully. Jasmine, who would have quite happily remained in barracks for the night, scowled inwardly. They might have been on leave, but platoon comrades never left each other alone – unless one of them got lucky, of course. Blake and Joe might want to look for suitable partners – and Koenraad had come along for the ride – but Jasmine didn't share their enthusiasm. A night of guiltless sex with someone who had no idea of what she did for a living didn’t appeal. “Shall we go gatecrash?”

“It could be fun,” Joe agreed, with a wink. “You want to bet on who comes home with the most panties?”

“After those bastards in 1
^st
Platoon showed them that game, maybe not,” Blake said, with a leer of his own. One of the less endearing Marine traditions was picking up a girl each night, or maybe two or three a night, and stealing her panties afterwards to prove that they had scored. Jasmine privately thought that it was a silly tradition and had said so, more than once. “They were boasting about how Camelot girls were easy.”

“They probably want a handsome Marine to marry them and get them out of the slum,” Koenraad said, unexpectedly. He looked up at their bemused glances. “So I study local politics. You want to make something of it?”

Jasmine shook her head. Marines were expected to have hobbies in their spare time, even though it was the shared belief of every Marine that spare time was a delusion invented by a particularly sadistic drill sergeant. Koenraad had spent his time earning a degree in sociology from the University of Earth, although they had refused to grant him a doctorate as his work was hardly ‘non-judgemental and sensitive.’ A Marine who had spent his time in various hellholes being shot at by the natives – normally after the Empire’s vast army of bureaucrats had gotten something wrong and seriously hacked off said natives – would have a very different view of their culture than a high-browed academic who’d never spent a day of his life off Earth.

“All the better for us,” Blake declared, as they passed a line of street toughs. Jasmine braced herself, expecting a fist-fight, but the toughs somehow picked up on their true nature – even though the civilian clothes they were wearing – and wisely backed off. There might have been nine of them, but the Marines would have handed them their heads, even without weapons. “We can have all the pussy we want and no one will say boo to us.”

Jasmine rolled her eyes. “Do you ever think about anything apart from women?”

Blake pretended to consider it. “No,” he said, finally. “I guess I’m a naughty Blake. Mama Coleman would not be impressed.”

Joe chuckled. “Remember,” he said, in a passable impression of Sergeant Young, “a soldier who won’t fuck won’t fight.”

“And a soldier who fucks when he should be fighting won’t be fucking for much longer,” Jasmine said, in a rather less passable impression of her first Drill Sergeant. The fornication excuse for being late back to barracks worked once; after that, it was punishment duties for any repeat offender. “Just remember to pay them in local coins.”

“I am
offended
at your suggestion that I might have to pay them,” Blake countered, archly. “Why, there are women who pay me to have sex with them.”

Koenraad laughed. “If that is true, Blake, why are you still here?”

“Because without me, you’d all be dead by now,” Blake said. He snorted dryly. “Who has the local cash anyway?”

Joe reached into his pocket and brought out a roll of paper notes, produced at the Bank of Avalon. Jasmine hadn't been impressed when she’d first seen them. Any halfway competent forger could have produced millions of counterfeit banknotes and used them to wreck an already-unstable currency. They were, in theory, equal to the Imperial Credit and could be exchanged one-for-one, but the Bank of Avalon had tried to overcharge the first Marines who had attempted to exchange their money.

It had been Joe who had come up with the solution. He’d taken an inventory of the songs and tunes the platoon had brought with them from Earth, and then sold them to distributors in Camelot, giving them advance access to the currently-fashionable music from Earth. Jasmine disliked the howling racket that was the height of fashion on Earth – it sounded like an army of cats howling at the moon while being savaged by wild dogs, in her considered estimation – but it had brought the platoon plenty of local money. By the time the official releases reached Avalon, the music would already be old and forgotten.

“There’s enough here to wipe your bottom after eating in the mess,” Joe said, as he passed out bundles of notes. Jasmine took hers and stowed it in her inside pocket. “I’m not sure what else it will buy here. It won’t be long before they start producing million-credit banknotes.”

“Probably,” Koenraad agreed. “They’re in the middle of an inflation spiral right now and it’s only going to get worse before it gets better.”

“Hey,” Blake said, as they turned another corner and saw the party. “We don’t want to know about economics and maths and boring shit like that. We want to go to a party!”

He slapped Jasmine on the shoulder. “And you can play the game too,” he said. “We’ll let you bring home underpants instead of panties and see who wins.”

“Get fucked,” Jasmine said, dryly.

“I intend to,” Blake countered. He smiled at her. “Come on; live a little. It might be fun.”