The Empire’s Corps: Book 02 - No Worse Enemy Read online

  No Worse Enemy

  (The Empire’s Corps: Book Two)

  Series Listing

  Book One: The Empire’s Corps

  Book Two: No Worse Enemy

  Book Three: When The Bough Breaks

  www.chrishanger.net

  http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/

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  No Worse Enemy

  Christopher Nuttall

  Copyright 2012 by Christopher Nuttall

  Cover Blurb

  Six months ago, Colonel Edward Stalker and his Marines were abandoned on Avalon, left to fend for themselves as the Empire withdrew from the Rim. Since then, Avalon has been isolated from the settled universe...until now.

  As a mysterious pirate organisation attempts to take over Avalon, the Marines find themselves struggling against a shadowy figure with dreams of power, while a young civilian is kidnapped and press-ganged into a pirate crew. They’re fighting to preserve something of the Empire’s order in the wake of its departure, but the pirates appear to have far greater resources and a plan that seems unstoppable.

  The Empire is gone. What will take its place?

  Dear Reader

  This book is number two in a series that starts with The Empire’s Corps, currently available on Amazon Kindle. You can download a free sample of that book from my website. If you like my books, please review them on Amazon – it helps boost sales and convinces me to write more in certain universes.

  As I am not the best editor in the world, I would be grateful if you email me to point out any spelling mistakes, placing them in context. I can offer cameos, redshirt deals and suchlike in return.

  Have fun! And if you want a third book, let me know...

  Christopher Nuttall

  2012

  Prologue

  The Galactic Empire was dying.

  Why? There were a thousand reasons. The Grand Senate’s monopoly over legitimate political power. A colossal growth in the bureaucracy that kept the Empire together. Endless delay and procrastination worked into the governing system. Corruption in all ranks of the military, with the possible exception of the Marines. A police force more interested in political correctness than law enforcement. An upswing of interstellar piracy along the Rim and even the inner sectors. Rising taxes that strangled all hopes of creating new jobs and saving the economy. An educational system more focused on rights than responsibilities. And, perhaps worst of all, a rising tide of lawlessness that threatened to overwhelm Earth and the Core Worlds.

  Captain Edward Stalker and his Marines were called in to deal with a Nihilist attack on Earth, where the death-worshipping terrorists had seized a city-block. After defeating the Nihilists, Captain Stalker made a single mistake; he told the Grand Senators exactly what had gone wrong and why. The problems that had impeded the response to the crisis had been caused by laws laid down by the Grand Senators themselves. In response, the Grand Senators ordered Captain Stalker and his Marines exiled to Avalon, an isolated world on the edge of the Empire, six months from Earth. It was intended as a permanent exile.

  On Avalon, the Marines discovered that the planet suffered from a multitude of different problems. The Planetary Council had trapped most of the population in a stranglehold of debt, there were bandits threatening the countryside and a growing rebellion – the Crackers - among the people, an insurgency that threatened to topple the government at any moment. Undaunted, the Marines landed and started to operate against the bandits, using that success as a spur to start breaking the Council’s monopoly on political power, as well as forming a new army to replace the Civil Guard.

  Realising that the Marines might actually succeed in building an army that could secure the planet, the Crackers prepared an assault on Camelot, the planet’s capital city. Unknown to them, the Marines had collected the evidence needed to remove the Council and attempt to make peace with the Crackers, a plan that was derailed when the Crackers launched their desperate attack. Although the Marines were surprised and the Crackers achieved many of their early objectives, the Marines and the new Army of Avalon rallied and were able to break the Cracker offensive. In the aftermath, with the Council’s removal and the Cracker defeat on the battlefield, a new government was forged that would represent the entire population.

  It was then that Captain Stalker received his last message from the Empire. The Rim – including Avalon’s sector – was being abandoned. Military bases were being shut down, Sector Governors were being recalled and the inhabited worlds were left to fend for themselves as best as they could. The Marines would remain trapped on Avalon indefinitely.

  Six months have passed since then...

  Chapter One

  It should not be surprising that involuntary settlers from Earth often ended up as either slaves or bandits. The lucky ones endured education that taught them more about their rights than about their responsibilities – or about vital living skills – while the unlucky ones grew up in the undercity, little more than feral animals. Put bluntly, the Empire lost the ability to socialise its children.

  Indeed, by the time I was exiled from Earth, almost all of the Empire’s military and much of its civil service were reporting massive recruiting shortfalls. The educated students they needed simply didn't exist.

  - Professor Leo Caesius, The Perilous Dawn (unpublished).

  “It’s quiet,” Rifleman Blake Coleman said, over the communications link. “Too quiet.”

  “Shut up,” Lieutenant Jasmine Yamane said, lightly. “We are meant to be quiet.”

  She smiled inwardly as they crept closer to the bandit camp, hidden in the Badlands. The bandit leader had been smart – his camp was very well hidden – but he’d reckoned without the Marines. No one would deny that the Badlands were damn near impassable in places, yet they weren't as bad as the Slaughterhouse. Jasmine and her comrades had all graduated from the harshest training camp in the Empire.

  The geologists had yet to come up with a good explanation for why the Badlands existed. They were a tangled nightmare of forests, river and lava pools, as well as enough minerals to confuse sensors hunting for targets. There were even places where lava bubbled up from the planet’s underground. The best guess was that the badlands had been the site of an asteroid impact thousands of years before the planet had been settled; the alternative was a botched terraforming project, which was unlikely. There had been no need to improve Avalon when the planet had been settled, not when it was already perfect for human habitation.

  “There,” Joe Buckley said. He inclined his head towards an outcropping that looked like a tuff of land. The bandits hadn't done a bad job of disguising their lookout; it would have been almost invisible if the Marines hadn't been looking for it. “You see the guy behind it?”

  “Yeah,” Jasmine answered, studying the position. The bandits wouldn't have based themselves in a place with only one exit; stupid bandits wouldn't have lasted long, even before the Marines had arrived on Avalon. “I’ll deal with him. You stay here and watch my back.”

  She crawled forward, trusting in her camouflage to keep her from being spotted. Up close, it was obvious that the bandits had put some thought into their position; anyone sitting in the lookout should have been able to spot oncoming enemies from a distance. Or they would have been able to see them, if they’d cleared away the foliage. But that would have betrayed them to the orbiting satellites used by the Marines. Quite a few bandit camps had been eliminated since the Battle of Camelot because their occupants had made careless mistakes.

  The bandit sitting in the lookout didn't look very comp
etent, but Jasmine checked around carefully anyway before she closed in for the kill. Appearances could be deceiving, as Jasmine herself demonstrated; very few people would have realised that she was a Marine if they saw her out of uniform, or armour. Up close, there was a faint stench surrounding the lookout, suggesting that the bandits didn't give a shit about basic hygiene. Jasmine wasn't too surprised. Unlike the Crackers, who had been offered amnesty after the Battle of Camelot, the bandits had no long-term political objective. They just wanted to have fun. Jasmine pushed her irritation aside as she rose silently to her feet and moved forward. The bandit didn't even realise she was there until she’d cut his throat.

  “Got him,” she subvocalised into her implant. There had been no time for a battlefield interrogation – and the bandit would have been hanged if she’d dragged him back to Camelot. “I’m going onwards to the camp.”

  The bandits had built their camp in the middle of the forest, half-hidden in a hollow that would make it harder for orbital observation to pick up on their activities. Jasmine studied it as they crept closer and scowled; the bandits had clearly kidnapped at least one person who actually knew how to build basic huts out of wood and clay. They were rare skills on Earth, which had long since become an entire planet of city-blocks, but quite common on newly-settled worlds. Wood was simply too efficient a building material to ignore.

  “I have eyes on hostages,” Blake said, suddenly. Jasmine scowled. If the bandits had been alone, she would have called in an airstrike and then cleaned up the mess. “At least five, all young girls. And they’re limping”

  Jasmine muttered a curse under her breath. The bandits raided the local farms regularly, carrying off food, drink, weapons and women. It wasn't uncommon for them to cripple the girls, just to make sure that they couldn't run away after they’d been dumped in the camp; one camp they’d destroyed had had two girls who’d had their legs amputated by their masters. The girls she could see didn't look as if they’d been treated that badly, but they had broken expressions on their faces that made Jasmine wince. They’d had the fire beaten out of them ever since they’d been kidnapped and trapped in a living nightmare.

  “Those sick fuckers,” Joe breathed. He cleared his throat. “Orders, Lieutenant?”

  Jasmine pushed her anger to one side, activating her communicator. “Bring up the rest of the platoon,” she ordered. “And then prepare to engage.”

  She scanned the camp quickly as the remainder of 1st Platoon closed in on the bandit camp, considering options. If they’d been wearing heavy armour, she would have been sorely tempted just to stand up and walk into the enemy camp, secure in the knowledge that they didn't have any weapons that could touch them. But instead they only wore light armour – and she didn't want to risk causing harm to the prisoners. If they ordered the bandits to surrender and the bandits started firing instead, the prisoners might be caught up in the crossfire. And they would open fire. They knew better than to expect mercy from the new government. Why not fight?

  Jasmine smiled, humourlessly. Everything had seemed simpler when she’d been a mere Rifleman.

  “Sound off,” she muttered, as the platoon got into firing position. She listened briefly to the responses, confirming that her ten subordinates were all in position. “And engage on my command.”

  There was a shout from the bandit camp. They’d seen something, perhaps one of the Marines as they crawled into position. Jasmine didn't hesitate; she barked the command to open fire as she squeezed the trigger of her own rifle. The bandit she’d targeted, shot through the head, collapsed in a crumpled heap on the ground. Jasmine was already searching for new targets as the Marines wiped out every bandit in sight. The hostages were clinging to each other, panicking.

  Jasmine keyed her mike as the Marines inched forward. “GET DOWN ON THE GROUND,” she ordered, praying that the hostages would obey. A handful of bandits were trying to fight back, or flee westwards away from the Marines. “GET DOWN AND STAY DOWN.”

  One muddy hut seemed to be held by at least four bandits, who were shooting wildly towards where they thought the Marines were. It hadn't been designed as a blockhouse, Jasmine noted absently, but it would suffice, as long as the Marines kept the gloves on. She used hand signals to order Blake and Joe towards it, while the other Marines provided covering fire to force the bandits to keep their heads down. Blake used a shaped charge to smash in the wooden door, while Joe charged in, weapon at the ready.

  “Two down,” Blake reported. “Two others surrendered.”

  Jasmine nodded. “Secure them,” she ordered, as she rose to her feet and headed down into the bandit camp. “And secure the hostages as well.”

  The girls might have been pretty once, but that had been before they’d spent several months in a bandit camp, where they’d spent the days cooking and cleaning and the nights being raped by their captors. Jasmine’s heart went out to them, yet she knew better than to trust them; people did odd things when they were held captive for so long and it was possible that the women had actually fallen in love with their rapists. The human mind was good at twisting itself and inventing excuses to make suffering bearable.

  She switched channels as the handful of prisoners were dragged out, searched and then secured, left to wait on the ground while the Marines searched the remainder of the camp. Unsurprisingly, there was nothing particularly interesting about the camp, nor was there a large stash of weapons. The Civil Guard had lost several consignments of weapons before the Marines had arrived, some of which remained unaccounted for, but the mystery wouldn't be solved today. Jasmine, who shared the general feeling that some of the Crackers had hidden the weapons in case the provisional government turned out to be a trick of some kind, was privately relieved. The bandits could have been more than a nuisance if they’d had some heavy weapons.

  “Bring in the helicopters,” she ordered. The bandits hadn’t been fool enough to build their camp right next to a clearing, but they’d spotted a potential LZ not too far away. Jasmine had had it checked out before they’d started sneaking up on the camp. If someone needed emergency transport back to the medical clinic on Castle Rock, they would need an LZ. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  The former hostages were being helped to their feet by the Marines. They looked badly shocked, even though they were being rescued. Jasmine couldn't blame them; the Marines looked intimidating as hell – and they’d secured the girls with plastic ties, just in case. The Marines would have to carry the girls to the LZ, she realised; they’d never be able to walk that far without assistance. Jasmine was used to horror – she’d seen too much of man’s inhumanity to man even in her relatively short career – but it never failed to sicken her. How could anyone do that to their fellows?

  They wanted slaves and sex objects, she thought, answering her own question. The really sickening part was that the bandits had been amateurs. Some members of the former Planetary Council of Avalon had been truly sadistic little shits, raping children and other helpless victims. And she’d seen much worse in the Empire, back during the nightmare that had enveloped Han, or in the Undercity on Earth.

  Blake buzzed her. “The WARCAT team wishes permission to approach,” he said. “And the Knights wish to take over the scene.”

  Jasmine had to smile. The Knights – the newly-raised Army of Avalon – weren't as well-trained as the Marines, but they were learning fast as the former Civil Guardsmen were integrated into their ranks. Captain – no, Colonel - Stalker had decided, as Avalon was no longer part of the Empire, to merge the two, knowing that the Civil Guard had a poor reputation. Jasmine had a feeling that the Colonel had some other plan for his Marines, even though a good third of the company had been parcelled out to help the locals. Who knew what they could do once they got the tech base set up?

  “Tell them they’re welcome,” she said, finally. They had asked for a joint attack on the bandit camp, but Jasmine had vetoed it, pointing out that slipping eleven men close to the camp would be hard enough.
Colonel Stalker hadn't overruled her – but then, that wasn't the Marine way. She was the officer on the spot, charged with accomplishing her mission. Success – or failure – would be her responsibility. “Let the WARCAT team take samples from the prisoners before we get them back to Camelot.”

  “Understood,” Blake said. “You think they’re going to be hung that quickly?”