Cry Wolf (The Empire's Corps Book 15) Read online

  His smile grew wider as he stood and slipped further into the industrial estate. A chunk of it, according to the files, had been turned into living space for the Forsakers, but the remainder was still empty and cold. He glanced into a giant warehouse as he passed the door, seeing absolutely nothing inside. The building itself was designed to survive everything the planet could throw at it, but the owners had declined to turn it into a homeless shelter. Clarence snorted in disgust as he took a quick snap of the interior, then resumed his walk into the estate. It hadn’t escaped his notice that the number of homeless camps - and beggars on the streets - had been increasing recently. There was probably a good human interest story in there, somewhere. And perhaps a story asking precisely why the estate had been abandoned when it could be turned into a homeless shelter.

  He walked around another warehouse and stopped, dead, as he saw the second fence. The owners might have deeded part of their territory to the Forsakers, willingly or not, but they’d clearly been determined that the Forsakers would not leave the handful of warehouses that had been put aside for them. This fence was even newer than the last one, with barbed wire on the top. Clarence wouldn’t have cared to bet that it hadn’t been electrified, if not alarmed. The owners looked to be selfish bastards. They probably wouldn’t give a damn if some poor hobo touched the fence and got a nasty shock ...

  Wankers, Clarence thought.

  He put the thought aside as he peered into the semi-darkness. Nothing was happening, as far as he could tell. A small fire burned merrily outside one of the closer warehouses - a handful of people clearly visible in the light - but little else. It looked like a homeless camp, not ... he tried to decide what it looked like, then gave up. It didn’t matter. It didn’t look as if anything important was happening within the darkness, certainly nothing demanding his attention. Shaking his head, he walked over to the nearest abandoned warehouse and scrambled up a ladder onto the roof. The air felt colder, somehow, as he lay on the rooftop and looked towards the Forsaker camp. Nothing was happening.

  Waste of time, he thought, as the cold started to seep into his bones. I should have stayed in bed with my wife.

  He allowed himself a moment of irritation, then reminded himself to be patient. The really great reporters didn’t sit in their offices and wait for someone to bring them the news. No, they went out and got the news. Sometimes, it went badly wrong and then they were the news ... Clarence shook his head, again. Nothing was going to go wrong. He was just going to wait a few hours and see what happened, then sneak back over the fence, call a hovercab and go home. His editor would have a few nasty things to say if Clarence turned up at the office without a story - or hopped up on stims - but he’d understand. It wouldn’t be the first time a tip had turned into a giant waste of time. Clarence reached into his pocket, produced his recording spectacles and placed them on his nose. They were a pain in the ass to wear, but their recordings had saved his bacon more than once. If nothing else, they’d prove he hadn’t been doing nothing in the dead of night.

  Although I am doing nothing, he thought, silently starting to compose his latest story for the newspaper. I’m lying on my chest on a freezing cold rooftop when I could be having naked time with my wife.

  Another aircar flew overhead, lights flickering in the darkness. Clarence did his best to ignore it, telling himself that the aircar wasn’t looking for him. It wouldn’t take military-grade sensors to pick him out on the rooftop, but who would give a damn? He looked like a hobo himself - he’d been careful to dress as a dockyard worker, rather than a flashy reporter - and it was unlikely that anyone would care about a hobo in an abandoned estate. It wasn’t as if there was anything worth stealing ... not really. The only thing of any value within the estate was the buildings themselves. It wasn’t as if a small army of hobos could pick them up and carry them away.

  Which won’t stop the police chasing the hobos out if someone makes a fuss, he thought, grimly. There was another human interest story there, he was sure. The homeless simply want a roof over their heads when they sleep, just like the rest of us.

  It was nearly an hour - and he was on the verge of giving up - when he heard the faint sound of engines. He tensed, peering into the darkness. A small handful of trucks were pulling up at the distant gate. Were they coming for him? He silently calculated a handful of ways to get out of the estate in a hurry, although - as policemen started spilling out of the trucks - he had a nasty feeling that there would be no way out. It looked as if the police had arrived in force, ready for war. He could see men wearing helmets and body armour, carrying shockrods and neural whips in the foreground, while others - armed with real weapons - hung back. They looked ready to intervene at any moment.

  His blood ran cold. This was wrong. The police did not come in the dead of night, certainly not to a harmless estate. It was hard enough to get them to come out when one lived in a middle-class estate in the heart of the city, let alone the homeless camps and ghettos along the edge. But now ... a shiver ran down his spine as the policemen moved forward in eerie silence. He tapped his spectacles, making sure they were recording the scene. The policemen moved through the gates and straight towards the warehouses ...

  Someone shouted. A handful of men appeared, carrying makeshift weapons. Clarence winced, unsure if he should laugh or cry. The Forsakers were carrying baseball bats and iron rods, nothing really dangerous to a man in body armour. They didn’t even have a chance to try before a flurry of stun bolts left them lying on the ground, twitching helplessly. The policemen marched over them, abandoning all pretence at stealth. Clarence covered his eyes as the policemen turned on the lights. The estate was suddenly bathed in brilliant white light.

  “ATTENTION,” a voice boomed. The warehouse seemed to shake with every word. “COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!”

  Clarence covered his ears, a fraction of a second too late. He couldn’t help thinking, as he turned his head to capture as many details as possible, that half the city had been awoken by the racket. The warehouse district was large, but it wasn’t that large. He watched, feeling a twinge of sympathy, as dazed Forsakers stumbled out of the warehouses. The policemen grabbed them, male and female alike, and snapped on the cuffs before forcing them to lie on the ground and wait. Clarence made sure to record it all. The public wouldn’t be sorry for the Forsakers unless they saw the poor bastards being made to suffer.

  And it is so pointless, he thought, as a crying child was made to sit next to her mother. What does it matter?

  He shuddered, helplessly. The Forsakers had a bad reputation. They were lazy and arrogant beggars, walking around in their traditional clothes as if the world owed them a living, utterly unwilling to abandon their primitive culture and join the mainstream. Everyone knew the Forsakers were a drain on the planet’s public funds ... until they actually ran the figures for themselves. Clarence had, more out of curiosity than anything else. The Forsakers weren’t draining the planet dry. They weren’t even claiming a percentage point of a percentage point of the government’s budget. The government spent more on bureaucracy than it did on public aid.

  A scream rent the night air. Clarence scanned the scene before him, then zoomed in on a young girl who was being harassed by two policemen. One of them was holding her, the other had his hand up her dress ... Clarence shuddered again, as a senior officer marched over and rebuked the two coppers, who didn’t look remotely repentant. Clarence wasn’t really surprised. The news file in the office contained lots of stories about policemen who abused their powers, stories that the editor had killed on the grounds they’d incite social unrest. And some of the stories had been a little hard to believe ... Clarence swallowed. It was clear, now, that the stories had some basis in truth.

  But that doesn’t mean they’re true, he thought. The poor girl, crying silently, had been dumped with her fellows. Just that they could have happened.

  The dreadful night wore on. Clarence watched, helplessly, as the policemen stripped everything out of the warehouses and piled it up in the trucks, then marched the prisoners to the gate. He filmed everything, from the crying children to the broken spindles and other primitive tools that were part of the Forsaker heritage. The policemen seemed to take an unholy delight in breaking things, although it was nothing but spite. There was certainly nothing to be gained by smashing tools the Forsakers would need ...

  It hit him in a moment of insight. Dear God, he thought. They’re deporting the bastards!

  Clarence swallowed, hard. It couldn’t be true, could it? There was nothing to be gained by shoving the Forsakers on a starship and tell them never to come back. He ran the calculations in his head and scowled. It would probably cost the government more, in the long run, to deport the Forsakers than to keep them. Hell, there was no reason the Forsakers couldn’t be given land and told to farm it if they wanted to stay alive. But they’d already been evicted from lands they’d held for generations. The big farming corporations had wanted the land for themselves and the government hadn’t had the will to say no. Who cared about a bunch of weirdoes in outdated clothes when there was money to be made?

  Not that the price of food went down, Clarence thought, coldly. He made a decent living, but even he had noticed that the cost of living was steadily inching upwards. God alone knew what was really happening in the countryside. The Forsakers were evicted for nothing.

  He looked towards the spaceport in the distance as the rest of the pieces fell into place. The Forsakers were easy targets. Harmless, by and large; unarmed, certainly. And easily demonised by radical politicians. The pressure to do something about them was overwhelming ... no, had been overwhelming. It was clear the government had decided that deporting the Forsakers was a concession they could afford to make, although it was pointless. Clarence hoped, in a moment of naked horror, that the government actually was deporting the Forsakers. There were nastier things that could happen ...

  This will not stand, he promised himself, as the police started to drive away with their prisoners. They were heading towards the spaceport, at least, although he knew that proved nothing. There was plenty of room for a mass grave in the wastelands beyond the spaceport complex. I’ll tell the world.

  Clarence rolled over and stood, hurrying back towards the ladder. The show was over, as far as he could tell. He had to get his story out before the Forsakers were actually loaded onto a starship - or sold into slavery or whatever other horrible fate the government might have in mind for them - and deported forever. He’d make sure the people knew what was being done in their name. He silently reviewed the footage he’d recorded as he slipped down the ladder and ran towards the fence. The Forsakers weren’t popular, but the right footage - carefully chosen - would change that. He’d have the entire population shouting in outrage by the time he was done.

  Scrambling over the fence, he fled into the darkness. There was no sign of anyone on the streets, not even a handful of homeless or a patrolling police car. It was easy to believe that he’d imagined everything, he thought, as he reached a diner and called a hovercab. If he hadn’t had the footage, it would have been hard to convince anyone that it had really happened. It was so unthinkable that ... it was unthinkable. The government was harsh, at times, but it wasn’t monstrous ...

  Hard times make people do monstrous things, he thought, as the hovercab dropped him off outside his apartment. And people who think they cannot be called to account can be the worst of all.

  Clarence allowed himself a tight smile as he sat down in front of his terminal - his wife had long since gone to bed - and started to review the footage and write the story. It would make his career, he was sure. Every reporter yearned for something that would make him famous, something that would change the world. The truly great reporters had been household names, once upon a time. They’d exposed corruption, they’d caught criminals ... a couple had even had flicks made of their lives. Clarence wanted that kind of fame for himself. And he would have it ...

  He finished writing the story, uploading it and the footage to the newspaper’s server, then went to bed. His wife shifted uncomfortably as he climbed under the sheets, but otherwise didn’t move. Clarence didn’t really blame her. She’d been up for most of the day, first taking their son to nursery and then handling her job. Clarence would have liked to be the sole breadwinner - he didn’t like the tired look in his wife’s eyes - but there was no alternative. He simply didn’t bring in enough money to ensure a good start in life for his son.

  Things will be different, he silently promised his wife. And they start from tomorrow.

  And he was right. The following morning, he received an email that told him he’d been fired.

  Chapter Two

  That, too, should be no surprise. The difference between what the general public was being told and reality, what they were actually seeing, was too great to be wished away. People refused to believe - and quite rightly too - that their eyes and ears were lying to them.

  - Professor Leo Caesius. Crying Wolf: The Media and the Fall of the Empire.

  Clarence stared at the email in shock.

  It was hard, so hard, to process what he was actually seeing. He’d expected praise, not ... he hadn’t expected to be fired. His thoughts ran in circles as he read the email again and again, trying to make some sense out of it. He’d been fired. He’d been fired. He’d been ...

  He swallowed hard, unable to believe what he was seeing. He’d been fired ... it was the end of the world. He was jobless ... he’d never get another job, not if he’d been fired. His heartbeat was suddenly very loud, pounding in his ears. He’d been fired. There was no hope of finding another job, not in the cutthroat world of the reporter. Every news service on Tarsus would blacklist a reporter who’d been fired. And even if they didn’t ... he was all too aware of just how few jobs there actually were. A reporter - a man who wasn’t qualified to be anything else - had no hope of finding another job. He wouldn’t even have a hope of becoming a street-sweeper. The union would make sure of that. He didn’t even have the right qualifications.

  Clarence’s fingers shook as he made himself a cup of coffee, his head spinning. It was the end of the world. He found himself looking around the apartment numbly, silently cataloguing just how many things had been bought on account. It wouldn’t be long before the bank started talking tough, demanding to know how he intended to pay his mortgage, let alone his credit chip debts. They’d be right, too. Clarence didn’t have that much in his savings account. It wouldn’t be long before he couldn’t pay his debts and everything would be repossessed. What little he owned that was his would be taken away and sold to offset the debts ...

  He took a long breath, forcing himself to calm down. Perhaps it wasn’t as bad as it looked, he told himself. Perhaps ... he sat down in front of the terminal and tapped a key, bringing up the email again. It was hard, so hard, to concentrate. How long would it be before they cancelled his datanet account? It didn’t cost much, in the grand scheme of things, to have access to the datanet, but if he’d been fired ... he tried to imagine life without the datanet and shuddered. He wouldn’t even be able to file stories to the media networks without datanet access ... if, of course, the networks accepted them. The union would bitch and moan about an independent reporter trying to make a honest living. And no one would risk speaking up in his favour.

  The email stubbornly refused to change, no matter how he stared at it. Clarence sipped his coffee, forcing himself to read through it once more. It was a masterful piece of bureaucratese, he had to admit, claiming that he’d been fired for a handful of unspecified offences ... he cursed, savagely, as the truth dawned on him. Whoever had fired him had set out to do him a favour ... no, it just looked as if whoever had fired him had set out to do him a favour. In reality, they’d stuck a knife in his back. There was no way he could disprove the claims against him, no way he could defend himself from charges that were maddeningly undefined ... there was no way anyone would hire him, when they didn’t know what he’d done. Clarence found himself shaking in horror. His life was over. A petty thief had a better chance of getting another job than him, now. He was going to starve to death. His wife and son were going to starve to death beside him.

  A surge of helpless anger ran through him. He’d been screwed. He’d been thoroughly screwed ... and why? What had he done? He couldn’t understand it. He’d been a good reporter, damn it! He’d written stories covering everything from politics to flower arranging, as his bosses had decreed. And now he’d been fired. He stood, pacing the room as he tried to understand what had happened. Why had he been fired? And why had he been fired in such a manner? He’d never heard of anyone being fired in a manner that made it impossible for them to get another job!

  He grabbed his coat out of habit, keying his terminal to call a hovercab before remembering - too late - that he could no longer afford to waste money on indulgences. His finger hovered over the cancel button before he decided that there was no point in trying to claw back half the taxi fare. It was only ten credits ... he shook his head as he pulled on his coat and snapped his terminal into his belt. He couldn’t take the time to walk to the office, not when he needed to see Alistair Allrianne before the man’s daily routine of meetings began. The Chief Editor would understand, surely, when Clarence explained that he needed his job. He’d tell Clarence that he hadn’t been fired ... wouldn’t he? Clarence knew he was clutching at straws, but ... he had to try to get his job back, somehow. He’d do anything to get his job back.