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  Retreat Hell

  (The Empire’s Corps – Book VIII)

  Christopher G. Nuttall

  Series Listing

  Book One: The Empire’s Corps

  Book Two: No Worse Enemy

  Book Three: When The Bough Breaks

  Book Four: Semper Fi

  Book Five: The Outcast

  Book Six: To The Shores

  Book Seven: Reality Check

  Book Eight: Retreat Hell

  Author’s Note

  Retreat Hell probably requires some explanation.

  In my previous books in this series, even the mainstream ones, I tried hard to create books that could be read without having read the previous books. It is up for debate just how well I succeeded. However, Retreat Hell is probably complete incomprehensible without having read the previous four mainstream books; The Empire’s Corps, No Worse Enemy, Semper Fi and To The Shores. The events surrounding the Fall of Earth, mentioned in this novel, were detailed in When The Bough Breaks, while the foundation of the Trade Federation was covered in The Outcast.

  Retreat Hell also marks the start of the Commonwealth-Wolfbane War, an event I anticipate taking at least another two-three books to resolve. As such, it ends on a cliff-hanger of sorts. But don’t worry. The Marines will be back.

  As always, free samples of the previous books are available on my website (www.chrishanger.net) and full copies can be downloaded from Amazon Kindle. And if you like the book, please don’t hesitate to leave a rating and a review on Amazon.

  Thank you

  Christopher G. Nuttall

  PS – I’ve included a snippet from a Kindle book written by a friend at the back of this book. Why not check it out?

  Dedication

  Over the past year, several of my readers have emailed me with spelling and grammar corrections for books in this series and others. As editing is a tricky task for a Kindle author, such assistance has been very helpful. This book is dedicated to everyone who has submitted a correction.

  Thanks

  Chris

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Prologue

  Dateline – Two Months After the Fall of Corinthian

  Admiral Rani Singh hated to lose.

  She’d worked her way up the ranks through sheer stubbornness and native ability, forsaking all the shortcuts lecherous older officers offered her. She’d taken pride in not surrendering herself to the temptations, even when she’d been assigned to Trafalgar Naval Base by a particularly vindictive superior after she’d declined his advances. She’d even managed to turn a position that should have killed her career into a springboard to supreme power when the Empire started to withdraw from the sector, turning herself into a military dictator and ruler of a small empire of her own.

  But then she’d lost everything, but her life and a handful of starships.

  In hindsight, she saw – all too clearly – where she’d gone wrong. She hadn’t taken the Commonwealth seriously, not at the time. It was a gathering of stars and human settlements towards the Rim, on the opposite side of her headquarters to Earth. The Commonwealth should not have been able to put together a challenge to her forces, not the sector fleet she'd snatched almost intact during the final chaotic days of the Empire’s rule. But the Commonwealth had sent its people to Corinthian and undermined her rule. And when the ghost fleet had turned up, she’d panicked and lost everything.

  Oh, she’d had plenty of time to think, she recalled, as the remains of her fleet had crept from hiding place to hiding place, fearful of an encounter that could have drained their finite supplies still further. Smaller and older ships had been cannibalised to keep the bigger ones operational, although she knew that even a victorious engagement could cost her everything; her crews had grown more and more restless, their loyalty only assured by the looming presence of her security forces. One day, she'd known, they might rise up against her – and, if they took the ships, surrender them to the Commonwealth. She'd slept with a pistol under her pillow and armed guards at her hatch.

  She’d known – she had never truly been able to lie to herself – that the situation was desperate. Battleships required constant maintenance and an endless supply of spare parts, which they no longer possessed. Sooner or later, she would have to abandon some of her crewmen or run out of life support. Maybe she could have found a world they could occupy – she did have far more firepower with her than the average Rim world could deploy in its own defence – but that would have been a form of surrender. And yet it had started to look like the only option. It had been then, when she'd been in the depths of despair, that they’d stumbled across the ship from Wolfbane.

  Rani had known, vaguely, that another successor state was taking shape and form, coreward of Corinthian. She’d always known the value of good intelligence and her officials had interviewed the crews of every freighter that had made landfall within her territory. But she had always assumed that she would contact them from a position of strength, not weakness ... not when weakness would invite attack. She knew that better than any of her former superiors, none of whom had realised the true scale of the looming disaster. And yet there was no choice.

  She looked up from the screen as Wolfbane came into view, her ragtag fleet escorted by a handful of battleships. They weren't – quite – pointing their weapons at her ships, but she knew it would be a matter of seconds between the decision to open fire and the ships actually firing on her. She'd come to Wolfbane, after sending a message through the captured ship’s crew, knowing that it could easily be a trap. But there was still no choice.

  I do have cards to play, she thought, although she had no idea if they would be sufficient to win her a place on Wolfbane. I have ships – and I have intelligence. And I have a few tools I dare not share ...

  She gritted her teeth as the fleet finally entered high orbit. Wolfbane had been the most successful world in its sector, hence the Sector Government’s decision to base itself there. It was surrounded by orbital weapons platforms, industrial nodes and starships – hundreds of starships. The general economic decline that had presaged the Fall of the Empire, it seemed, no longer cast a shadow over the Wolfbane Sector. She couldn't help feeling a flicker of envy – even her work on Corinthian hadn't produced so much activity – which she thrust aside ruthlessly. There was no time to waste on self-recrimination.

  Her wristcom buzzed. “Admiral,” Carolyn said, “the shuttle from Wolfbane is making its final ap
proach.”

  Rani nodded. Her aide was loyal – but she had no choice. Rani’s security officers had seen to that, conditioning Carolyn until she couldn't even conceive of betraying her mistress. But the price for such conditioning was a reduction in the woman’s intelligence and ability to act without specific orders. Rani was all too aware of the weaknesses in the system, but she dared not take the risk of leaving her aide unconditioned. It would be far too dangerous.

  “Understood,” she said. “I’m on my way.”

  She straightened up and studied herself in the mirror. Long dark hair framed an oddly fragile face, her dark skin and darker eyes giving her a winsome appearance that belied her inner strength. Her dress uniform was perfectly tailored to her slender form, tight in all the right places. It should have been no surprise when her former superiors had tried to seduce her, she admitted bitterly. The recruiting officers had never mentioned that aspect of the military when they’d convinced her to join up. Nor had it been a problem, she had to admit, until she’d graduated from the Imperial Academy with the rank of Lieutenant.

  Absently, she wondered what Governor Brown would make of her. There had been little in the files on him, including a note that he had strong ties to a dozen corporations that presumably no longer existed. That suggested flexibility, Rani knew. It was rare for an official to be beholden to more than one set of masters. But Brown had clearly managed it long enough to reach the post of Sector Governor. His word would have been law in the sector long before the Empire collapsed.

  I’ll seduce him if I have to, she told herself. It was a bitter thought, one she resented after everything she’d done to avoid trading sex for favours, but she was damned if she would not use all the tools in her arsenal to claw her way back to power. And I will have my revenge.

  Chapter One

  If you start by reviewing a generalised (and highly sanitised) history of the three thousand years of the Empire’s existence, you could be forgiven for thinking that between the Unification Wars and the End of Empire there was no war. Certainly, no major conflict threatened the existence of the Empire. But was there peace?

  - Professor Leo Caesius. War in a time of ‘Peace:’ The Empire’s Forgotten Military History.

  Darkness wrapped the landscape in shadow, unbroken by the merest hint of mankind’s technology. The moon had yet to rise, leaving the stars as the only source of light. And it was very, very quiet.

  Pete Rzeminski sat on the edge of the clearing, looking up at the stars and waited, patiently, for his contacts to arrive. The darkness – and the sound of nocturnal wild animals coming to life now the sun was gone – didn't bother him. He’d been in far worse spots when he'd been on active duty. But that had been a long time ago.

  Pete wondered, absently, what his Drill Instructors would make of him now. Would they understand, he asked himself, or would they condemn him for making his choice? Once, he'd sworn an oath to the Empire that had defined his life and his service. It had once meant everything to him, even after he’d quit in disgust and retreated to Thule, where his family lived. But now the Empire was gone. What was the point, he asked himself, of swearing to something that no longer existed?

  And yet, it had taken him years to take sides. In the end, only the death of his wife and family had convinced him to take up arms.

  He wrapped the thermal cloak around him tightly as the temperature continued to fall, pushing his recollections aside. The youngsters had complained when he’d insisted on meeting the outsiders alone – not all of them trusted him – but Pete had been insistent. He did have training they lacked, training in escaping pursuit and – if necessary – in resisting interrogation. There was still the very real possibility that the entire operation was a loyalist trap. If so, it would be foolish to risk more than one life to make contact.

  They called him the old man, he knew. And he was old, by their standards, even if he was in excellent shape for a fifty year old man. His hair was slowly turning grey, but his body was still strong, the result of exercise and genetic treatments he'd undergone in the past. And his wife had never complained about his performance before she’d died ...

  Memories rose up unbidden as he forced himself to relax, mocking him. There had been the Slaughterhouse, where he’d first known true companionship, and then a series of endless bloody battles, each one only a symptom of the Empire’s steady decline. And then there had been the final bloody cataclysm ... and his departure from the Terran Marine Corps. In the end, he knew, he’d failed. He hadn't been able to stay in the Marines, knowing that they’d become the Empire’s bully boys, the people responsible for fixing problems the Grand Senate caused for itself.

  He pushed the self-pity aside as his ears picked up faint sounds, blown on the wind. High overhead, something was descending towards the clearing. Pete tensed, one hand reaching for the pistol at his belt, as his enhanced eyes finally picked up the shuttle. Despite himself, he was impressed. Thule was hardly a stage-one colony world, utterly incapable of detecting a starship in orbit or a shuttle passing through its atmosphere. Their contacts had managed to slip through a detection system that was rather more elaborate than anything Thule really needed. But then, the government had attempted to spend its way out of the financial crisis by investing in the local defence industry. It was just a shame that the crisis had proven well beyond the planet’s ability to surmount.

  The shuttle came to a hover over the clearing, then dropped down towards the ground. It was a boxy shape, coated in materials that absorbed or redirected sensor sweeps from both orbital and ground-based stations. The contacts had refused to discuss precisely how they intended to avoid the local defences, but Pete’s private guess was that they’d hidden the shuttle on one of the freighters in orbit. He’d taken a look at the listings and seen several dozen that could easily have carried the shuttle, hidden away in a cargo hold or even bolted to the hull. It wouldn't be detected unless the inspection crew was very thorough.

  Not that the government bothers to examine off-world ships unless they’re independent, he thought, feeling a twinge of bitterness. He hadn't realised how closely he’d associated himself with Thule until after his extended family had been affected by the first political shockwaves sweeping across the planet. A system that had seemed logical – and a change from the Empire’s maddeningly hypocritical ideology – had shown its weaknesses as soon as the winds of change had begun. The Trade Federation would complain.

  The shuttle touched down, a faint hissing sound reaching his ears as the warm hull touched damp grass. Pete hesitated, then stepped forward as the hatch opened. No light spilled out – it was impossible to be certain that an orbital satellite wasn't looking for anything that stood out on the ground – but his eyes could pick out a figure standing in the hatch, carrying a rifle in both hands. The figure wore light body armour and goggles that enhanced his eyesight. A long moment passed, then the figure waved at Pete. Bracing himself, Pete walked up to the hatch.

  “Alpha-Three-Preen,” he said.

  “Beta-Four-Prime,” the contact replied. He stepped aside, inviting Pete into the shuttle. “And may I say what a relief it is to be dealing with professionals?”

  Pete felt his lips quirk in silent amusement. The underground movements that had sprung up in the wake of the financial crisis – and mass unemployment, followed by disenfranchisement – had a cause, but no real experience. Most of their secret passwords and countersigns had come from books and entertainment programs, both of which sacrificed realism for drama. It had taken him years of effort to teach the youngsters about the virtues of the KISS principle. Maybe it lacked drama, but it was certainly one hell of a lot more effective.

  Inside, the shuttle was dark, the interior illuminated only by the light from a single display monitoring the orbital situation. The hatch closed with a hiss, then the lights came on, revealing a handful of metal chairs and a single control stick. Pete felt a moment of nostalgia – it had been years since he’d ridden an infiltrati
on shuttle down into hostile territory – which he pushed to one side. He couldn't afford the distraction, not now.

  “We have weapons for you, as per request,” the contact said. In the light, he was a bland young man, someone who could have passed unnoticed on any cosmopolitan world. Not too handsome and not too ugly. “And some intelligence as well.”

  He paused, significantly. “You are aware, of course, that both the Commonwealth and the Trade Federation plan to expand their activities in this sector?”

  Pete nodded. He’d heard rumours, some of them more reliable than others. Joining the Commonwealth had seemed the ticket to economic recovery, but the Commonwealth either couldn't or wouldn't buy most of the planet’s produce. He rather suspected the latter. The planetary development corporation – and then the elected government – had invested heavily in industrial production equipment, citing their belief that the sector would continue to grow and develop under the protection of the Empire. Now, Thule had more industrial production than she could use. Even throwing money into the planetary defences hadn't solved the growing economic disaster.

  “We would like to come to terms with you, after you take over the government,” the contact added. “Would that be acceptable to you?”

  Pete kept his expression blank. No one did anything for nothing, not even the ivory tower intellectuals who’d provided the ideological base for the Empire’s growth, development and slow collapse. Long experience in the Marine Corps had taught him that anyone who supplied weapons to underground movements wanted something in return. Sometimes, it was cold hard cash, paid in advance, but at other times it was political influence or post-war alliances. He would have preferred to pay in advance, rather than have the terms left undetermined. But he knew the underground could not hope to purchase advanced weapons systems with cash in hand. The planet’s currency was almost definitely useless outside its star system.