The Empire’s Corps: Book 01 - The Empire's Corps (22 page)

“It’s odd,” he persisted. “It could be important.”

Nelson turned away from him, deliberately looking towards the church the settlers had built...and froze. Just for a second, he saw a heat shimmer in the air, a distortion that had to be concealing something. The moment of horrified realisation came too late.

***

One of the other interesting – and classified – attributes of Marine Combat Armour was the chameleon effect. It had its limits, but it allowed a Marine – walking slowly and very quietly – to be effectively invisible, as long as the enemy didn’t know what they were looking for. Edward had considered it a worthwhile gamble. The bandits might know about the Marines, but they wouldn't be looking for high tech equipment, allowing 1
^st
Platoon to get to almost point-blank range before the enemy realised that they were in trouble. On his command, the shimmer faded away, revealing no less than seven Marines standing almost within touching distance of the bandits.

The bandits froze for a second, too long. Four of the Marines carried stunners and played them over their targets, knocking them to the ground. Their horse-like steeds – Nags, according to the briefing files he’d memorised – howled under the impact of the stun rays, but weren’t badly affected. One of them lifted its hooves and tried to kick its tormentor, only to break its spindly legs on the armour. The remaining bandits opened fire with their chemical-projectile weapons, only to see the shots bounce off the combat armour and ricochet away. They were rapidly stunned, apart from one who was cuffed to the ground by a Marine and kicked in the chest. Edward smiled inwardly as the Marines cuffed their targets and piled them up in a corner. By the time they recovered, they’d be held back at the platoon house, spilling everything they knew to the interrogators.

“Mission accomplished,” Master Sergeant Young said, over the private channel. He’d dreamed up the plan and insisted on leading it personally. Edward had seen the common sense at once. Stunners had only limited range and using them too early might have given the bandits a chance to flee. “We have nine hostiles captive, sir.”

Edward nodded. Convincing the townspeople to hide in their basements had been simple enough, once he’d explained who and what they were. Not all of them had been eager – he’d seen expressions that reflected fear of the bandits and fear that the Marines would desert them – but they’d complied. The bandits had walked right into the trap.

“Excellent work,” he said, relieved. Whoever the enemy leaders trusted to carry out a raid had to be pretty high up in their organisation. Such a person could normally be relied upon to have learned as much as possible about their gang, if only to use as blackmail information. “Take them back to the platoon house and...”

The sound of shooting breaking out interrupted him.

***

Horace Netherly had never trusted Nelson, the slimy son of a bitch. He was all puffed up because he was smart and clever, yet he wasn’t really one of the Knives. How could he be? He’d been brought up in a mega-city on the other side of Earth and his original gang had been small fry compared to the Knives. The Knife could keep telling and telling them how important it was that they learned to think big, but Horace knew that that was a bad idea. The larger the organisation, the more outsiders; the more outsiders in the organisation, the greater the chance of a betrayal. One of his most trusted lieutenants had quietly followed Nelson and his men into the deserted town, reporting back from the very edge of Eddisford. The town was completely deserted.

It didn't take long for Horace to realise what Nelson had done. The bastard had warned the townspeople himself, warning them to run and hide. It was the only alternative that made sense to him. The Civil Guard wouldn't have been able to even fart without the Knives hearing of it, while the Marines...well, if the Marines were so good, why hadn't they been ordered to clean up the Undercity? Nelson was trying to set up his own organisation in direct opposition to the Knife. It could not be allowed.

He passed his orders down the chain of bandits, each one carrying rifles and grenades, as well as their signature knives. They’d take Eddisford quickly and occupy the town, before torturing Nelson to discover where the locals had gone. They would be found, punished and left in no doubt that defiance led only to death. And then Nelson would die and the Knife would be pleased with him.

“Go,” he shouted, and fired a single red flare into the air. A stream of bandits poured out of hiding and started to run towards the town. “Kill the fuckers.”

He followed his men down the long road, cursing Nelson’s nags under his breath, and watched as they approached the outskirts of the town. Nelson could ride out of the other side of the town and vanish if he acted quickly enough, although he had yet to see a nag that could outrun a bullet. A Gnasher, maybe...the thought was banished from his mind as he saw the black-clad figures standing in the centre of town. He had only a second to realise that he'd been wrong before a single bullet smashed through his head and killed him instantly.

***

Jasmine had lain in her position for over three hours, alternatively cursing and blessing her armour for its protection. They’d allowed the first group of bandits to enter the town, but she was damned if she was going to allow a second group to enter...and, now that they had prisoners, there was no need to avoid slaughtering them. The bandits seemed completely insane – they were charging right at the Marines – but to be fair, they had no way of knowing the Marines were there. The first group of bandits would have been horrified to know that the Marines had tracked them with their scopes all the way.

The order, when it came, was almost an anticlimax. “Open fire,” Gwen said. “Kill them all.”

Jasmine squeezed the trigger on her MAG-74 and had the satisfaction of seeing one of the bandits die, his head exploding like a grape. A MAG-74 was designed to shoot through light combat armour. A human head was nothing to it. Other bandits were falling as the other Marines fired themselves. She switched her rifle to another target and serviced him as well, shooting a neat hole in his forehead. A third man jumped up, for some reason best known to himself, and her shot caught him in the throat, blowing out the back of his neck.

The bandits, acting more on instinct than any plan, threw themselves to the ground and tried to fire back. It was pitiful. They couldn't even see where the shots were coming from – the MAG-74 was smokeless - and most of their firing went wild. A handful of more self-possessed bandits threw grenades towards the Marines, but most of them fell uselessly in the gap between the Marines and their targets. They didn’t stand a chance. Jasmine pushed that thought to the back of her head, squeezing her trigger time and time again. It was a point of honour not to miss with a single shot. The sharp-shooting badge she’d won at the Slaughterhouse still meant something to her.

We should have set up a MAG-54 and swept them away with a single burst,
she thought, as she picked off another bandit. Their line had come completely to pieces. Some had thrown down their weapons and were trying to surrender; others were turning and fleeing, only to be shot down in the back. Jasmine saw an overweight man running with a speed that surprised her and placed a shot right in the back of his head. He threw up his hands and crashed to the ground. She didn't smile, but moved on to the next target.

“Men talk about fair fights,” her Drill Instructor had thundered. For various reasons, new recruits at Boot Camp and the first year of the Slaughterhouse were segregated by sex. “Men are fools and morons who cannot remember that the purpose of war is to win. You are not being trained to fight a fair fight; you are being trained to defeat the enemies of the Empire! The best chance to give your enemy is none at all. A fair fight is a losing fight. Shoot him in the back, kick him in the balls, play dead till he has his pants around his ankles and then give him hell!”

Jasmine’s lips twitched as she saw a bandit who had somehow managed to hide himself behind a tree and was popping away desperately at the Marines with a little hunting pistol. It was more powerful than she would have expected – but then, Avalon’s wildlife tended to be dangerous – but it hardly mattered. His shots weren't going anywhere near the Marines. She targeted him carefully, wondering if she was aiming at one of the rapists who had left small and broken bodies behind, and placed a shot directly on his nose.

And, suddenly, it was all over.

“Cuff the survivors and prepare to take them back to camp,” Gwen ordered. Her voice was as cold and dispassionate as ever, but Jasmine could have sworn she heard a note of satisfaction hidden behind the commanding tone. If half of the rumours about Gwen’s activities were accurate, the dead bandits were the lucky ones. “I want 4
^th
Platoon to sweep the area towards the badlands. Now!”

Jasmine exploded out of her hiding place, half-expecting to feel a bullet slamming into her armour. There was nothing, but a bloody field full of cooling bodies. A handful were still moving, suggesting that they were alive, even though they had lost the will to fight. Jasmine didn't blame them. After six months of boot camp, she had thought she was good. The very first battle exercise they’d done at the Slaughterhouse had been a bloody defeat for the new recruits, a humbling and pointed reminder of how inexperienced they were. She smiled at the memory – defeat always taught more lessons than victory – and reached the first captive, a young boy barely out of his teens. He stared up at her, his eyes wide with terror.

She rolled him over with her boot, then grabbed his hands and cuffed them behind his back. He cried out at the new pain, but she ignored him, leaving him lying there for the recovery team to find. The next bandit was clearly too badly wounded to live for long, even with the best of medical care. It was tempting to leave him there to bleed out and die, but what little mercy remained in her pushed her into putting her foot on his head and crushing the remains of his life out of him. It had probably been something of a relief.

The next captive had been playing possum, holding a pistol to his chest until she got too close for him to miss. Jasmine watched with detached amusement as he levelled it at her chest and pulled the trigger four times. Four heavy punches slammed into her chest – the armour couldn't block everything – but it was nothing, not compared to what she’d been through without the armour. She reached forward, snatched the pistol out of the bandit’s hand, and crushed it in one armoured fist, before rolling the suddenly-subdued bandit over and cuffing him. He didn't offer any more resistance.

“Nineteen prisoners,” Captain Stalker said, over the general channel. Jasmine caught herself breathing heavily as she started to come down from the high of battle and carefully forced her breath into steady gulps. “Well done, all of you.”

Jasmine shrugged, staring around at the devastation. It had been the single most one-sided battle she’d ever taken part in. Her old Drill Sergeant would have been impressed. Of course, she'd also been a bloodthirsty bitch who had once told her trainees that the quickest way to a man’s heart was with ten inches of a monofilament blade, stabbed right through the chest. There had to be nearly a hundred bandits lying dead, yet there was no way to know for sure until a forensic team got out to Eddisford and started putting the pieces together.

“We done good,” Blake said, over the platoon’s private channel. “We sure kicked some ass today! Even Unlucky over there didn't get into trouble.”

“Fuck you, with the greatest of respect,” Joe said, crossly. “You want to bet that the next time won’t be so easy?”

Jasmine privately suspected that he was right.

Chapter Nineteen

The fundamental problem with human rights is that there is no such thing as a human right. By definition, a right is something that is not only self-evident, but impossible to remove. Few, if any, of the human rights cited by lawyers across the Empire meet that definition.

Regardless, it is self-evident that rights come with responsibilities, yet the vast majority of the Empire’s population demands the former without the latter. Such a system cannot survive for long.

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

The small barn had once belonged to the homesteaders, before they had abandoned their farm to fear or threats or debt. Edward’s Marines had spent a day fixing it up and turning it into a makeshift prisoner interrogation centre – the prisoners themselves would be held in another barn, one that had originally been used to hold pigs or sheep – before setting out on their mission. The Governor had questioned the expense when Edward had notified him of what he was doing, but Edward had reassured him that they’d take prisoners. The entire battle plan had been based around taking prisoners. The Governor’s reluctance to consider the possibility had surprised him, although Gwen had pointed out that most prisoners taken by the Civil Guard were probably released by their captors, upon the payment of a substantial bribe.

“Bring in the prisoner,” he ordered, as he took one of the two chairs in the barn. The other one had been rapidly turned into a holding chair. It had been splashed with blood when they’d found it in the corner of the barn, leading him to wonder just what had happened to make the original owners flee for their lives, if they had managed to escape at all. The records had suggested that the homestead had been abandoned and no one had bothered to move in to take over the farm. The owners had simply vanished.

Two Marines, wearing full body armour, marched in the first prisoner. Edward studied him with cold dispassion, noting how the fight had fallen out of the thug as he’d realised that he was up against genuine soldiers. He and his gang had been used to terrorising farmers and their families; the idea of determined opposition had come as a complete surprise to them. The first battle on Avalon’s soil – the Marines first battle, he reminded himself – had been easy. The others wouldn't be anything like as simple.