The Empire’s Corps: Book 01 - The Empire's Corps (56 page)

“That would also threaten their own interests,” Edward reminded him. “The farmers need the industrial produce from the city.”

He scowled inwardly. That wasn't quite true, even though in the long run a mutual blockade would probably harm both sides. The farmers, some careful investigation had proven, had been stockpiling supplies for quite some time, aided by particularly inane Council policies that had been simply ignored. They would need re-supplying eventually, but they could go on long enough for the Crackers to win their war. In trying to preserve their monopoly, the Council had lost a chance to wean some of the farmers away from their deadly enemies, practically forcing them into enemy hands. The idiots could have cost the Empire the war.

The thought was galling, but it had to be faced. If the Council had been willing to make compromises, they might have been able to put off the war, perhaps even avert it all together...but no, any hint of a change in policy was denounced in the Council Chamber as appeasement. The Council would quite happily fight the war to the last Civil Guardsman or common soldier, while they skulked in their mansions and made a profit off the war. The Governor’s emergency powers didn't go far enough to prevent the Council from skimming off enough money to make themselves even more powerful.

He stared down at the map, barely seeing the notes he’d scrawled across it. The proof of High Treason they needed to find hadn't been found, not yet, leaving him wondering if the Council had realised just how badly it had been compromised. Not all of the Council were part of Carola Wilhelm’s secret cabal, but those that weren’t part of her group were isolated, abandoned without even a word of support from their Governor. As long as Carola and her allies controlled an absolute majority in the Council, they could effectively run it to suit themselves.

The Governor coughed behind him and Edward nodded. “It’s a question of keeping our nerve and holding on to what we have,” Edward said, patiently. “By taking up positions in the townships, we force them to come out and fight, giving us a chance to reduce their numbers and prove that they can be beaten.”

“At a high cost,” the Governor reminded him. He’d faced a Cracker insurgency before, but that had been a small thing, hardly a serious problem compared to the one they now faced. Avalon hadn't seen such high levels of violence since Peter Cracker had died and, this time, there was no Imperial Navy destroyer waiting high overhead to deal out death and destruction at command. Even if there had been such a ship, it would have been useless; the Crackers were far too close to the civilian population to risk a bombardment. Edward knew that there were Imperial Army and Navy commanders who wouldn't have flinched at the thought, but he had no intention of joining their ranks. It would have been mass slaughter. “Are we sure that it is worth it?”

“Unless you intend to disband the Council and seek terms with the Crackers, yes,” Edward said, tightly. A hot flash of anger was buried in his mind before it could show itself on his face. The Governor didn't need a scare. “How badly do you want to have a safe, secure and prosperous Avalon by the time you leave your post?”

“That isn't fair,” the Governor snapped back. “It isn't the task of the military to set policy objectives. They just do the fighting.”

“And the dying,” Edward said, tightly. There were too many inexperienced young men out there, armed and terrified. They’d all had a baptism of fire over the last few days. Truthfully, he was surprised – and relieved – that it hadn't been a great deal worse. Inexperienced soldiers tended to panic and make dreadful mistakes. “If you want a policy objective secured, you do have to tell us what it is.”

The Governor took a series of deep breaths, calming himself. “That was unworthy of me,” he said. He sounded surprisingly contrite. “I apologise.”

“As do I,” Edward agreed, seriously. They exchanged a long glance. “Has the Council bothered to make its views known on the war?”

“Oh, the majority have proclaimed their loud support for the war and their confidence that the Army of Avalon will bring us total victory,” the Governor said. “A couple are suggesting that we should seek terms with the Crackers, but they’re...effectively the Cracker-elected representatives.”

Edward nodded sourly. The majority of the Councillors had been elected by the cities, because the cities had the greatest population concentrations, but a handful had been elected by the countryside, mainly by men and women who had managed to free themselves and their family of debt by the time the Council started manipulating the economy to keep the majority of the population in bondage. They might not have been actual insurgent leaders – the Crackers would have to be fools to risk their leaders in Camelot, for the Governor had vast powers if he declared martial law – but Edward would have been very surprised if they didn’t have links with the Cracker leadership. He’d seriously considered making a covert approach to them, yet the Governor had refused to even consider the possibility. Besides, what could he actually offer the Crackers? The Council would block even the tiniest concession.

“In other words, nothing,” Edward said, grimly. “Don’t worry, Governor. We will win this war.”

He strode out of Government House and headed across the street to his private car. Gwen had insisted on him keeping at least three bodyguards around him at all times – she took the fourth position herself – before she’d consented to allow him to leave Castle Rock. Camelot itself was being heavily patrolled by the Civil Guard, but she’d expressed no confidence in their ability to handle matters if push came to shove. Now that quite a few of their corrupt and self-serving officers had been removed, the Civil Guard should have been able to give a good account of itself, yet Gwen remained unconvinced. Edward couldn't really blame her.

The drive back to the spaceport was uneventful, surprisingly. Patrols had discovered a handful of IEDs scattered along the road and several cars had been shot at by hidden snipers, who had melted away before they could be caught. Edward had worn his armour, expecting trouble, but nothing had materialised apart from a pair of Bloodsuckers, who had eyed his armour with disdainful eyes. They probably considered him the equivalent of tinned meat.

He nodded approvingly as the guards at the spaceport took nothing for granted, checking his ID and that of everyone in the car before allowing them to proceed. The spaceport had been attacked by a handful of mortar teams in the first couple of days, but unlike the various deployment bases the spaceport was protected by a laser counter-battery system. The shells had all been destroyed before they could detonate and patrols had forced the mortar teams to seek safer targets elsewhere. It was lucky that the Crackers didn't resort to suicide attacks, he knew; a truck loaded with explosives could have made a real mess of the main gate and its defenders.

“Welcome back, sir,” Lieutenant Howell said. He’d been moved to the spaceport to handle logistics now that the Company and the new units had been deployed. “I have a report on the financial situation that you need to read...”

Edward shook his head. “Not now,” he said, firmly. As important as finances were, they didn’t compete with the war. “I don’t have the time. I’ll read it tonight.”

“Yes, sir,” Howell said. “I should also add that Kitty Stevenson has arrived and is demanding to speak to you personally.”

“That’s
Colonel
Stevenson to you,” Edward said, reprovingly. The various intelligence services were not well liked by those who had to do the fighting – and the dying – but he had to admit that Kitty had done a good job. “Where is she now?”

“Room 19, wearing the floor out by pacing,” Howell explained. “I think that if you’d been with anyone, but the Governor, she would have demanded that you forget him and come back at once.”

“I’ll see what she wants,” Edward said. He looked up at Gwen. “Coming?”

Kitty Stevenson hadn't worn out the floor, but she looked excited and dead tired. “Captain,” she said, as Edward entered the barren room. “There’s been a very important break in the case.”

Edward smiled at her obvious enthusiasm. “Is it one that we can use against the Council?”

“Oh yes, and more,” Kitty said. She pulled a small flat terminal out of her bag and placed it on the metal table. “We’ve been running an investigation into the various brothels and suchlike in the city after we realised that many of the kidnapped women and girls from near the badlands had been transported to Camelot and put to work as whores. Most of them were teenagers or in their early twenties, but a handful of them were younger – much younger. It turned out that most of the preteen children were sent to a single place hidden within the warehouse district, one known only to a handful of people.”

Edward felt sick. He saw nothing wrong in visiting a prostitute, provided that she’d entered the game willingly, but including children was the greatest perversion he could imagine. The Empire shared his feelings to the degree that anything to do with child abuse and molestation automatically became the concern of Imperial Intelligence, rather than any local police force or Civil Guard. The punishments for those who abused children were harsh; if they were lucky, they were dumped on a hellish prison planet and abandoned. If they were unlucky...well, they might have a little accident while in custody. Even their fellow criminals loathed paedophiles.

“We wanted to find out who used the place, so we slipped bugs into the buildings and started to build up a picture of who visited,” Kitty continued, blithely unaware of Edward’s growing rage. She’d known of a building that catered to paedophilias and hadn't done anything about it? The kids should have been rescued and their pimps should have been taken into custody, perhaps with excessive levels of violence. Every Marine in the Company would have volunteered to carry it out. “A few hours ago, we struck gold.”

She tapped the terminal and an image appeared in front of Edward’s eyes. There was a man, with a very familiar face, and a young girl...Edward’s gorge rose and he pushed the terminal away, unwilling to face what he was doing to her. The girl was clearly not a teenager. If she was over ten, Edward would have been astonished.

“The bastard,” he hissed. His knuckles itched with the desire to find the man and beat him into a bloody pulp. It would have been so easy. The sight of his fat bloated body heaving away...he concentrated, remembering the disciplines, and focused on Kitty’s face. The urge to hurt her was almost overwhelming, for she’d watched and done nothing as a little girl was raped. “We’ve got him.”

“He’s one of the ones who make up Mrs Wilhelm’s little cabal,” Kitty agreed, calmly. She was unaware of his thoughts, luckily for her own control. “We have clear proof here of an act that doesn’t go under the Governor’s purview at all. We can pick him up, sweat him and get him to testify against his fellows.”

Edward scowled. “Are you sure he will talk?”

Kitty lifted a single elegant eyebrow. “You
do
know what the punishment is for what he’s doing in that image?”

“You want to bargain with him,” Edward said, in disgust. “You know just what public opinion will do to us if we let him live, once this gets out.”

“I have no intention of allowing him to go free,” Kitty said, tartly. “I intend to get him to testify against the others, and then we can deal with him. He won’t last long on an indenture gang anyway.”

“How true,” Edward said. “Gwen?”

“Yes, sir,” Gwen said. “What can I do for you?”

“Take two Marines and pick this fat bloated bastard up,” Edward ordered. “Use all the force you need and then some.” He looked up at Kitty. “Once we have him in custody, I want this fucking place shut down, the kids taken somewhere safe and a team to go through the building and identify every sad fucker who has...used it ever since it was opened. Do you understand me?”

Kitty hesitated. “Sir, with all due respect, if we shut it down now the Council may realise what we’ve stumbled upon...”

“Fuck that,” Edward snapped. Profanity was unlike him, but he was
angry
. “We’re here to protect the citizens of the Empire.” He tapped the terminal with one angry hand. “Does that look like we’re doing that girl any good?”

“No, sir,” Gwen said. She shared his anger. It occurred to Edward that she might not be the best person to send on the mission, but there was no one else at hand. “We’ll bring him in alive and cooperative.”

“Good,” Edward said. He looked down at the map for a long moment, trying to scrub the image from his mind. It refused to fade. His memory had been excellent even before he’d gone through the weirder training exercises on the Slaughterhouse and he was cursed with the gift of instant recall. “Kitty...good work, but remember...we’re here to protect people.”

“Yes,” Kitty said. “And we can best do that by shutting down the Council.”

Edward didn't bother to argue.

Chapter Forty-Eight

If insurgency is a war of perceptions rather than brute force, it must be accepted that each side will misjudge the other’s strengths and weaknesses. They will see their own weaknesses and the enemy’s strengths, rather than the enemy’s weaknesses and their own strength. Deception and deceit play a vital role in such warfare; the appearance of being strong is often actually being strong, assuming that the enemy is unable or unwilling to call the bluff.

-Major-General Thomas Kratman (Ret), A Marine’s Guide to Insurgency.

“Your forces have been wiped out,” Gaby said, as she breezed into the prison cell. “You’re the last Marine on the planet.”

“Bullshit,” Blake Coleman said. He’d been fed a combination of drugs that should have helped keep him docile, but his implants seemed to be counteracting them, somehow. Doctor White hadn't been able to explain how they were working, to the point where he’d wondered if Coleman had somehow been enhanced to be resistant to drugs. Gaby would have believed him if it hadn't been for how he’d been captured in the first place. “I know you’re lying.”

Gaby dropped the pretence as Blake’s dark eyes turned to fix on her, mask and all. “So I am,” she said, with mock surprise. “Whatever gave me away?”