The Prince’s War

(The Empire’s Corps – Book XIX)

Christopher G. Nuttall

http://www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/ChristopherGNuttall

Cover By Tan Ho Sim
https://www.artstation.com/alientan

All Comments Welcome!

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
Book Nine: The Thin Blue Line 
Book Ten: Never Surrender
Book Eleven: First To Fight
Book Twelve: They Shall Not Pass
Book Thirteen: Culture Shock
Book Fourteen: Wolf’s Bane
Book Fifteen: Cry Wolf
Book Sixteen: Favour The Bold
Book Seventeen: Knife Edge
Book Eighteen: The Halls of Montezuma
Book Nineteen: The Prince’s War

Cover Blurb

Prince Roland - the Childe Roland, Heir to the Imperial Throne - grew up in a gilded cage, surrounded by men who wanted to use his powers while keeping him under tight control.  He was growing into a petty sadistic brat until a Marine Pathfinder took him in hand, helping him to overcome his caretakers - jailers - and make something of himself.  But it was too late for Earth and, as the planet collapsed into chaos, Roland and his mentor barely escaped before it was too late.  He was taken into the care of the Marine Corps and given a chance to go to Boot Camp and forge a new life.

But now, unsure what to do with him, his superiors set him a task.  Roland has to take command of a training mission and travel to New Doncaster, a planet on the verge of exploding into civil war.  His mission is to build an army and stabilise the situation as quickly as possible ...

... But, for an untried prince in a snake pit, facing enemies on both sides of the war, it will be far from easy ...

Historian’s Note

The Prince’s War is written to be as self-contained as possible, but refers to events within When the Bough Breaks (The Empire’s Corps III) which are summarised in the prologue.  It takes place roughly a year after When the Bough Breaks and a month after The Halls of Montezuma.

CGN.
Prologue

From: An Unbiased History of the Imperial Royal Family.  Professor Leo Caesius.  Avalon.  206PE.

It is extremely difficult to trace the history of the Imperial Royal Family - as it became known - past the final stages of the disintegration and the early days of the Unification Wars.  Part of this, of course, is an inevitable result of the wars and their attendant devastation; a great many records were lost and/or deliberately destroyed during the fighting.  Certain factions, particularly during the opening stages of the conflict, believed that it would be better to erase the past so the human race could stride forward into a brave new future, and therefore set out to capture or destroy as many records as possible.  Others simply ignored the danger of historical erasure, and revisionism, until it was too late.  

But a far more significant problem was caused by the newborn Imperial Household’s determination to legitimatise its position.  There were no shortage of academics willing to take thirty pieces of silver - or, more practically, lands and titles - in exchange for creating largely or entirely fictional genealogies for their patrons to use as propaganda.  The results were quite remarkable.  The First Emperor was hailed as the direct descendent of such figures as Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, Elizabeth Tudor and many others, ranging from Albert Einstein to George Washington and Joe Buckley.  Links were drawn between him and nearly every figure of consequence, to a truly absurd degree.  He was not only the sole heir to every kingdom on Old Earth, but also lands that simply never existed, including little known fictional kingdoms such as Gondor, Narnia and Wakanda.

This had two unfortunate - and entirely predictable - effects on academic enquiry.  An unwary student, more intent on getting a good grade rather than actually think about the material in front of him, might not notice the inconsistencies and frank impossibilities, such as a marriage between Queen Elizabeth Tudor of England (1533-1603, PSE) and Shaka Zulu (1787-1828, PSE), a marriage that would have been unlikely even if the two hadn’t lived and died nearly two hundred years apart.  A more perceptive student, on the other hand, might realise there were just too many discrepancies to be accidental and come to the conclusion that the whole field was irredeemably damaged beyond repair.  Such students would either leave of their own accord or, if they alienated their academic supervisors, would be pushed out or simply sidelined.  The Imperial University’s administrators knew very well there were fields of enquiry that could not be touched, not without angering their patrons.  What was the life of one student compared to the whole university?

Perversely, the truth is better than the fairy tale.  The First Emperor - whose name was largely stricken from the records, to be replaced by a decidedly impersonal title - was a high-ranking military officer during the early years of the disintegration.  Realising the endless wars were futile - his autobiography makes no mention of the burning ambition that was a mark of his career - he convinced a number of his fellows to mount a coup, seized control of the government and then embarked upon a series of increasingly sophisticated military campaigns to bring the rest of the settled worlds under his control.  He was more than just a naval officer, it must be noted; his skill at convincing former opponents to join him, or at the very least not to oppose him, was quite remarkable.  When he took the title of Emperor, he rewarded his followers by making them Grand Senators.  They in turn rewrote history to make it appear they had always been part of the rightful ruling class.

Whatever else can be said about the First Emperor, he did his work well.  By the time his son succeeded to the Imperial Throne, the empire was on a solid footing and could easily survive a handful of weak or clumsy rulers.  There was enough of a balance of power, the ruling class felt, to ensure both a degree of stability and a certain amount of social mobility.  It should have endured forever.

It did not.  

It took years - centuries - for decay to start to take hold, but it did.  A trio of weak emperors allowed the Grand Senate to take more and more power for itself, then - worse - failed to play the different factions within the senate to right the balance of power.  Social mobility slowed to a crawl, successive emperors losing much of their influence as they were increasingly dominated by the aristocracy.  Many lost themselves in mindless hedonism, whiling away the hours with wine, women, song and pleasures forbidden even to the aristocracy.  The handful who tried to reclaim their birthright were swiftly slapped down by the new rulers of empire.  Emperor Darren II was assassinated - it was blamed on terrorists, but the act was clearly ordered by the aristocracy - and Empress Lyudmila was held prisoner by her unwanted husband, then murdered when she produced an heir.  

By the time the Empire entered its final days, the Imperial Throne was occupied - to all intents and purposes - by Prince Roland, known to the public as the Childe Roland.  He was officially declared a great moral and spiritual leader, but the reality was somewhat different.  Prince Roland - the Grand Senate hadn’t been able to decide on when he should be formally crowned - was, by the time he entered his teenage years, a useless layabout.  The only good thing that could be said about him, it should be noted, was that he’d not fallen as far into depravity as some of his ancestors.  It was generally believed that it was just a matter of time.

The Commandant of the Terran Marine Corps, in a desperate bid to turn the situation around, made use of the Corps’s long-held power to appoint bodyguards to the Imperial Household and assigned Specialist Belinda Lawson to take care of the prince and, hopefully, make a man out of him.  She was rather more successful than one might expect, knocking some sense into the nearly adult prince, but it was already too late.  Earth collapsed into chaos and it was all Belinda could do, along with the prince, to escape.  The Empire died and, as far as anyone outside the Corps knew at the time, Prince Roland died with it.  In reality, he was transferred to a Marine Corps starship.

This was, as far as the Corps was concerned, an awkward position.   Roland was the legal ruler of the known galaxy.  However, practically speaking, he ruled nothing.  The Empire was dead and gone.  The Corps could not recover even the Core Worlds, already blighted by civil war, let alone the rest of the settled worlds.  Roland was an Emperor without an Empire; an unfinished young man who might be an asset but might equally become a burden.  And that left the Corps with a serious problem.

What - exactly - were they going to do with Prince Roland? 

Prologue II

Earth, Ten Years Before Earthfall

Sarah Wilde awoke, in pain and darkness.

It wasn’t the first time she’d awoken in a strange place, head throbbing as she tried to recollect what she’d done the previous evening.  The sorority motto was practically “one evening in heaven, the next morning in hell” and she knew from bitter experience, after a year at Imperial University, that it was more than technically accurate.  She and her peers had consumed vast amounts of everything from alcohol to mood-altering drugs in pursuit of mindless hedonism, all the while doing as little actual studying as they could get away with.  It wasn’t as if the professors cared.  Sarah had heard, from one of the more radical student activists, that the staff preferred students to be zonked out of their minds.  It kept them from considering how little they actually learnt at the university.

She kept her eyes closed as she quietly assessed the situation.  She was lying on a hard stone floor ... a relief, given how many times she’d woken up in a stranger’s bed.  The air stank ... she didn’t want to think about what it might be.  Her clothes were rumpled, but in place.  Her body was aching.  Her wrists ... a flash of alarm shot through her as she realised something cold and hard was wrapped around her wrists.  Her hands were firmly bound behind her back ... she heard someone moan, the sound far too close for comfort.  Her eyes snapped open and she looked around in panic.  She was in a cage, surrounded by cold metal bars.  And she wasn’t alone.

Her memory returned in a flash.  There’d been a protest march.  She’d gone because it was the popular thing to do, not out of any real conviction.  She didn’t understand the issues, nor did she care.  She’d joined the marchers and then ... her memories were scattered, so badly jumbled she wasn’t even sure they were in the right order.  There’d been bangs and crashes and flashes of light so painful she’d thought she’d been blinded and then ... and then nothing, until she’d woken in a cell.  Her heart sank as she looked from face to face.  She didn’t recognise anyone within eyeshot, but they were all clearly in the same boat.  They’d all been arrested.

Sarah swallowed, hard.  It wouldn’t be that bad, she told herself.  The cops would realise they’d made a mistake soon enough.  She’d heard stories of being arrested, stories told by activists, that made it sound like a grand adventure.  She heard someone being sick behind her, coughing and spitting to keep from choking on their own vomit.  An adventure?  She promised herself that she’d never go to another protest march as long as she lived.  The activists could find someone else to march in their protests.

Someone catcalled.  She looked up and through the bars.  There was another cage on the far side of a walkway, crammed with male prisoners.  They looked savage ... she shuddered helplessly, trying not to draw attention.  The bars didn’t seem solid any longer.  She lowered her head, wishing for water ... wishing it was just a nightmare, wishing she could wake up in her own bed.  She heard banging and crashing in the distance and forced herself to look, just in time to see two uniformed women marching towards them.  They were banging their truncheons on the bars, waking the prisoners from their slumber.  Sarah groaned in pain as the noise grew louder.  She wanted - needed - them to stop.

The women stopped in front of the cage and peered at the prisoners.  “You,” the leader said, jabbing a finger at a girl in a tattered pink dress.  “On your feet.”

The girl shook her head.  “I want my lawyer.”

“Hah.”  The guards laughed.  “She wants a lawyer.”

Sarah opened her mouth to protest, but it was too late.  The lead guard pointed a flashlight-like device at the protesting girl.  Her entire body jerked, twisting unnaturally.  She screamed in pain, then collapsed in a heap.  Sarah stared in horror, unable to understand what had happened.  It was ... it was unthinkable.  It was beyond her imagination.  It was ...

The guard pointed at her.  “You.  On your feet.”

Sarah forced herself to stand, despite her fear.  The guard beckoned her forward, through the cage door, then shoved her down the corridor.  Sarah tried to keep track of their movements, as they frogmarched her through a string of unmarked corridors and elevators that went up and down at random, but rapidly lost her bearings.  It occurred to her she was being marched in circles, just to confuse her, although it seemed pointless.  The building was just too big.  She wondered just where they were.  She hadn’t seen any large police station within the university sector, not on any of the public maps.  But she’d also been told there was a great deal that was never put on the terminals.

They shoved her into a small room and pushed her onto a stool, then stepped back.  Sarah looked up and saw a man sitting behind a desk, his eyes on a terminal in front of him.  He looked bored and harassed, his face suggesting he no longer gave a damn about his job or anything.  She shivered, despite herself.  She’d seen that expression before, on the maintenance staff who kept the university running.  They seemed to loathe the students they served with a white-hot passion.  She had always wondered why they didn’t look for better jobs.

The man spoke in a bored monotone.  “You have been convicted of public disorderliness, taking part in an unlicensed political rally and various other charges.  Your appeal has been filed, reviewed and rejected.  The original conviction stands.  You have been sentenced to involuntary transportation.”

Sarah blinked.  It was hard to follow his words, but ...  “I ... I want a lawyer.”

“You have already been convicted,” the man said.  His tone didn’t change.  “You were caught in the performance of illegal activity.  The state-appointed lawyer made a valiant attempt to defend you and your comrades, but the evidence was damning.  The appeal was unsuccessful.  You have been sentenced to ...”

“I ...”  Sarah swallowed, hard.  “It was ... you can’t do this!”

“You were caught in the performance of illegal activity,” the man repeated.  “You have been convicted.”

Sarah stared at him in shock.  It ... she’d heard rumours, sure, about what happened to people who stepped too far out of line, but she’d never taken them seriously.  No one she knew really believed them.  The police were a joke.  It was ...

The man didn’t wait for her to speak.  “Your contract has been sold to the New Doncaster Development Corporation.  You will be transported to New Doncaster shortly, once the remainder of the involuntary transportees have been processed.  You may make a choice.  As a young and presumably fertile woman, you may marry a farmer on the planet and assist him in developing his territory.  If you agree to this, the corporation will forgive the debt you owe them.  If you ...”

Sarah found her voice.  “I don’t owe them anything!”

“They bought out your contract,” the man said.  “They own you.”

“You can’t own a person!”  Sarah tried not to raise her voice, but it was hard.  “Slavery was banned under the constitution ...”

“You’re a convicted criminal,” the man said.  “You have to pay your debt to society.  The corporation has bought your contract and is offering you the chance to repay them ...”

“By marrying a man I’ve never met and ...”  Sarah found it hard to put her thoughts into words.  “It’s barbaric!  My parents ...”

“Are no longer part of the issue,” the man said.  For the first time, she heard a hint of exasperation.  “The corporation owns you.  You can repay your debt, in the manner they suggest, and the slate will be wiped clean.  Or you will find yourself on contract duty when you reach the planet, which could be anything from working in the fields to slaving in a brothel.  You would be well-advised to accept their terms and strive to make it work.  This is the one chance you’ll get.”

Sarah shook her head.  “I’m not a slave!”

“The corporation owns you,” the man repeated.  “Maybe you are not legally a slave.  The fact remains they can treat you as one until you repay their debt.  Choose.”

“I can’t ...”  Sarah tried to protest.  “I don’t know ...”

“Choose,” the man repeated.  “I have no more time.”

Sarah pinched herself.  Nothing happened.  It was ... it was a nightmare.  She’d only gone to a protest march!  It wasn’t as if she’d done something really wrong.  And yet ... she recalled hearing, somewhere, that Earth was so overpopulated that the sentence for just about anything was deportation, unless one had a good lawyer.  She wanted to demand her rights, as a free citizen, but ... tears prickled in her eyes as she realised she wasn’t a free citizen any longer.  She was property.  She’d been sold to the highest bidder.  Her family would never see her again.  Would they ever know what had happened to her?  Would they try to come looking?  Or would they simply wind up arrested and deported themselves?  Or ...

Cold anger burnt through her as she gathered herself.  She’d survive, she vowed.  She’d build a new life for herself ... no, she’d make the corporation regret it had ever enslaved her.  She’d make it pay, even if it cost her everything.  She’d make it pay.

“Very well,” she said.  She needed to play dumb, for a while, until she knew what was really going on.  And then she’d find a way to take advantage.  “I’ll do as the corporation says.”

And then, her thoughts added silently, I’ll make them pay.

Chapter One

Marine Boot Camp, Merlin

The woods were dark, oppressive.

Roland, once Prince Roland of Earth and now Recruit Roland Windsor of the 7th Training Regiment, kept his head down as the squad picked their way through the trees.  Visibility was terrifyingly variable, streams of light broken by pools of shadow that made a mockery of his enhanced eyes.  The trees were large enough to conceal infantrymen below, their branches easily big enough to host a sniper or two.  He swept his eyes from side to side, all too aware the enemy could be lurking anywhere.  The mission had to be completed successfully.  He wanted - needed - to progress.  He couldn’t go to the Slaughterhouse until he convinced his instructors that he could become a full-fledged Marine.

Take it seriously, he told himself, sharply.  You don’t want to get into shit because you were woolgathering when you needed to watch for trouble.

He inched around a tree, then darted to the next.  The mission was relatively simple, they’d been told, but the simplest things were often the most complex.  The training company - broken down into squads - had to make its way through the forest, flushing out the enemy positions before they could rally and counterattack.  Roland was tempted to wonder if they’d been sent on a wild goose chase - he’d heard shooting, yet hadn’t seen the enemy - but he knew better.  The fact the enemy hadn’t greeted them with a hail of fire was almost certainly a bad sign.  They were probably dug in somewhere further into the forest, waiting for the recruits to stumble into their trap.  Roland cursed under his breath as he paused, listening carefully for the slightest hint of movement.  It was hard to be sure.  The local wildlife was just too loud.  A drunkard could pass unnoticed against the din.

Goddamned insects, he thought.  He wasn’t sure who’d thought to introduce the tiny bugs to the training ground, but it was a stroke of evil genius.  The chattering bugs provided all the sonic cover a hidden enemy force could want.  If only we could get rid of them.

Recruit Walsh stepped up beside him, her face pale.  Roland glanced at her, then held up a hand to signify she should remain behind as the rest of the squad advanced.  They were dangerously spread out, and he was tempted to suggest they closed up, but he knew it would be asking for trouble.  Their uniforms were supposed to make it hard for the enemy to detect them, yet hard wasn’t the same as impossible.  A single drone, orbiting so far above them even his enhanced eyes couldn’t see it, would be enough to call fire down on their heads, if they slipped up and showed themselves.  Better to remain spread out until they knew where their targets were.  He nodded to the others, then resumed the advance.  If he drew fire himself ...

Nothing happened.  The treeline remained quiet.  Roland frowned.  He wouldn’t be happy if someone hit him - the instructors would be very sarcastic, even if he hadn’t fucked up - but the rest of the squad could unleash hell on their opponents.  It would be better to know the worst at once, rather than remain in ignorance of the enemy positions.  The training ground was huge, easily large enough for an entire army to remain hidden if it wished.  Roland kept his eyes open as the squad moved up to join him, but there was nothing.  It was all too easy to believe they were completely alone.

Or we’re lost, which puts us on track for promotion to lieutenant and a court-martial, he thought, with a flicker of amusement.   He’d no idea why so many Marines seemed to believe their lieutenants couldn’t read maps - his first exercise in map-reading had been a disaster, yet he’d gotten better at it with practice - but it didn’t matter.  There’s no way we can simply march out of the training ground and get hopelessly lost.

The squad continued to advance, pushing through the trees and avoiding the handful of half-baked trails within the woods.  Roland couldn’t tell if they’d been made by animals or humans, although they’d been taught to stay off the paths as much as possible. A smart enemy would have their mortars already zeroed on the path, ready to unleash hell the moment their targets came into view.  Unless ... sweat continued to trickle down his back as the trees opened suddenly, revealing a grassy valley with a farmhouse and a pair of barns at the bottom.  It looked deserted, but that was meaningless.  The enemy could be using it as a base.  They had to clear it before they continued the advance.

He glanced at the rest of the squad, then led the way forward at a run.  Their uniforms were designed to provide a certain amount of concealment, but he’d been cautioned not to rely on it.  The human eye was attracted to movement, even if it couldn’t make out what was actually moving.  Roland had heard cautionary tales of defenders who’d been so keyed up they’d fired at shadows.  He’d thought the stories were absurd until he’d been on guard duty himself.  It had worn him down so much he’d nearly fired on a friendly convoy.  And that would have landed him in real trouble.  Better to get into attack range before the enemy had time to react to their presence.

Roland reached the side of the farmhouse, unhooked a flashbang from his belt and hurled it through the window, looking away as the grenade detonated.  The flashbangs weren’t lethal, at least under normal circumstances, but anyone caught in the blast would be too busy projectile vomiting or trying not to collapse to worry about the intruders.  He counted to five, then allowed Walsh to heft him up and through the window.  He landed neatly, weapon raised and ready.  The room was deserted.  There weren’t even any tripwires that might be linked to IEDs or other surprises.  He frowned as the rest of the squad joined him, then carefully led the way through the rest of the house.  It looked oddly clean for a building in the middle of a training ground.  That worried him, although he wasn’t sure why.  The corps was known for its attention to detail.  The instructors would have gone to some trouble to make sure the building looked as though it had been abandoned in a hurry.

“Search the barns,” he ordered, as they completed their sweep and hurried outside.  “Quickly.”

His heart pounded as they glided through the rest of the farm.  The farmhouse was nice and rustic, but it might also be a trap.  They hadn’t had time to thoroughly search it.  He checked his threat detector and saw nothing, but it wasn’t reassuring.  There was an ongoing war between the techs who designed early warning and detection technology and the insurgents who tried to come up with ways to fool it.  It was quite possible they’d missed something.  The instructors were ruthlessly pessimistic.  If there was even a slightest chance someone would be hit, they’d be hit.  There was no room for the luck of the draw on the training ground.

Hard training, easy mission, Roland quoted, silently.  Easy training, get the shit kicked out of you on a real mission.

Recruit Singh caught his eye.  “It’s clear, sir.”

Roland nodded, turning his eyes towards the far side of the valley.  Anything could be hidden within the trees, anything at all.  He was tempted to call in and ask for support, perhaps even an update from the drones, but he knew it would be pointless.  They’d been cautioned not to risk any sort of contact until they encountered the enemy, just in case.  His superiors would not be amused if he risked contact just because he needed his hand held.  They’d be very sarcastic.

He scowled as the squad prepared to resume the advance.  His fellow recruits didn’t know him as anything other than Roland Windsor, a young recruit keen to be the best of the best, but his instructors knew who he’d been, only a few short months ago.  Roland didn’t blame them, not really, for having their doubts about him.  He looked back at himself when he’d been the Childe Roland, Heir to the Imperial Throne of Earth, and cringed.  He’d been a spoilt little brat, a mindless pleasure-seeker who’d drunk and drugged himself constantly just to stave off boredom... he shuddered when he remembered everything he’d done, to people who didn’t dare say no.  He’d been trapped in a gilded cage and he hadn’t even known it, not then.  He’d been a puppet who couldn’t even see the strings!

His eyes swept the distant hills, although his thoughts were elsewhere.  Specialist Belinda Lawson, a Marine Pathfinder, had saved his life and soul.  She’d swept into his palace and transformed his life, knocking some sense into his head ... too late to save the planet, perhaps, but not too late to make a man out of him.  Shame swept over him as he remembered how he’d tried to get her into bed, as if she’d be interested in an overweight princeling.  And she was dead ... or worse.  His superiors - his new superiors -hadn’t been entirely clear on what had happened, but he feared the worst.   She would have come to see him, wouldn’t she?  He wanted to believe she would have.

Perhaps you were just another assignment to her, his thoughts pointed out.  You were surrounded by people who were paid to keep you happy and dumb, people who didn’t give a shit about you.  She might not have given a shit about you either.

He tensed, suddenly, as he heard rotor blades in the distance.  A helicopter swept low over the hills, heading straight towards them.  Roland swore as he saw the weapon pods hanging under its stubby wings; antitank rockets and heavy machine guns that would punch through his body armour as though it wasn’t even there.  The training brief hadn’t mentioned helicopters ... not directly, at least.  The instructors had a habit of throwing unpleasant surprises into the mix, just to make sure the recruits knew their intelligence, no matter how much the spooks vouched for it, couldn’t be taken for granted.

“Take cover,” he shouted.  “Hurry!”

The sound grew louder as he hurled himself into a ditch, near the farmhouse.  His mind raced as he saw Walsh take up position near the treeline.  The farmhouse might have been a trap after all, although not in the way he’d thought.  There could be someone on the hillside with a low-tech telescope, linked to a simple telephone line ... he sucked in his breath.  His instructors had warned him, time and time again, that just because something was outdated didn’t mean it was useless.  A pre-space telescope and telephone wire would be pretty much impossible to detect unless the Marines got lucky.

He stayed still as the helicopter thundered over the valley, rotors chopping through the air.  Insurgents had learnt to fear the ugly aircraft a long time ago, all too aware the pilots could rain down death on them from overhead in relative safety.  It took a great deal of luck to take down a helicopter without MANPADs or other heavy weapons, luck the umpires wouldn’t grant in a training exercise.  Roland gritted his teeth, hoping the helicopter pilot would assume they’d gotten into the treeline before the aircraft got into position.  Between the camouflage and the local wildlife confusing the craft’s sensors, they might just get lucky.

They know we can’t have gotten that far away, he thought.  It didn’t look as though the helicopter was carrying a squad of troops, but appearances could be misleading.  The aircraft was big enough to carry six or seven men in addition to the pilot and gunners, if they didn’t mind getting very friendly.  Roland himself had been crammed into tiny aircraft with his peers several times, during the last few months.  And they might think they have us pinned down ...

The helicopter fired a machine gun burst into the trees.  Roland frowned, unsure what the gunner had seen.  None of the shells had gone anywhere near the recruits, not unless he’d misjudged where the other two had hidden.  Perhaps they’d seen a fox or something move and fired on instinct or ... perhaps they were just trying to intimidate the recruits.  It might work out for them.  Roland didn’t dare move, which meant they’d be pinned down right until the exercise ended or they were caught by the bad guys and humiliated ... he peered towards the treeline, wondering if there was already a line of enemy troops moving towards them.  It wasn’t as if they had to worry about being seen.

He frowned.  He could hit the helicopter with a rifle-launched grenade, if he could get up and take aim before the craft blew him to atoms.  But ... he didn’t have time.  Roland knew, without false modesty, that he was one of the fastest gunners in the training company and even he didn’t have enough time to take out the helicopter, not unless something happened to divert its attention.  His mind churned.  He needed a diversion.  If he did nothing, they were screwed.

A plan occurred to him.  He put it into action before he could think better of it.  He signalled Walsh, instructing her to send a microburst message to their superiors.  The messages were supposed to be undetectable and untraceable, but he knew the helicopter would have the very latest in detection gear, manned by people who knew precisely what to look for.  The aircraft rotated rapidly, bringing its machine guns to bear on Walsh.  Roland didn’t hesitate.  He rolled over, slotted the grenade into place and fired it at the helicopter.  It went through the gunner’s hatch and detonated inside.  A moment later, the helicopter rose into the sky and vanished.

Got you, Roland thought.  The boot camp was supposed to be realistic, but even his instructors drew the line at using real bullets and grenades.  The helicopter was officially dead now and would remain so until the exercise terminated.  You’ll be buying the drinks when we finally get some leave ...

He tried not to feel guilty as he stumbled to his feet and looked at Walsh.  She wasn’t dead, of course, but her training suit had locked up.  She would remain immobile until the exercise ended or, depending on timing, the umpires collected her and put her on the sidelines.  She’d be hopping mad afterwards, Roland reflected as the other two joined him.  He promised himself he’d make it up to her, if he could.  He would almost sooner have preferred to be ‘killed’ himself.  At least he would have volunteered to serve as a human sacrifice.

There was no time to discuss it, he told himself, firmly.  She’ll understand.

He gritted his teeth as they resumed their march through the trees.  He’d been told, when he’d been a child, that it was his duty to look after the empire as a whole, rather than the individual people within it.  He hadn’t realised, until much later, that it was a form of manipulation, that one could justify almost anything by insisting it was for the good of the empire.  What was a single life compared to the uncountable trillions who made up the empire as a whole?  It was nothing more than a number, perhaps even a rounding error.  It was hard to argue that a single life mattered ...

And yet, Walsh was a friend.  He knew her.  He knew she’d had hopes and dreams of her own before Earthfall.  He knew she wanted to be a Marine, that she’d joined the training company in hopes of making it to the Slaughterhouse.  She was a living breathing person, a friend and a rival, a comrade and an enemy ... no, never an enemy.  They might have been on opposing teams, from time to time, but they weren’t enemies.  He respected her and the rest of the company in a way he’d never respected anyone, back when he’d been the Childe Roland.  And she was going to be mad at him in the aftermath of the exercise.  She was probably going to punch him in the face.

Which is no more than you deserve, his thoughts mocked.  If someone had done that to him, without his permission, he would have been livid.  Belinda would probably have kicked you in the nuts.  It was bad enough when you tried to cop a feel ...

He pushed that thought out of his mind and forced himself to keep going, heading towards the enemy position.  Time was running out.  They had to flush the enemy out before the umpires called a halt, before ... he wondered if he’d be ordered to retake the training section again.  He’d done some sections of boot camp twice now, at the whim of his superiors.  Roland wasn’t sure if they were testing his patience, if they thought he’d tell them he wanted to quit if they didn’t let him complete boot camp and advance to the Slaughterhouse, or if they just wanted to be sure he knew everything he needed before it was too late.  The Slaughterhouse was the final test, as far as the corps were concerned.  And he was damned if he was failing.  He owed it to Belinda to succeed.

Singh made a gesture as he peered around a tree.  Enemy in sight.

Roland nodded, pushing his thoughts and doubts aside.  They’d located the enemy lines.  It was time to make war.  He’d worry about the rest afterwards …

... And yet, as he braced himself for the advance, he couldn’t help wondering if he really had what it took to become a Marine.

Chapter Two

Baraka Island, New Doncaster

“They’re late,” Steve Rowe whispered.

Sarah Wilde shook her head as she pulled the cloak tighter around her hair, concealing as much as she could.  They were over twenty miles from the nearest official settlement, well away from anyone who had any interest in reporting their presence, but there was no point in taking chances.  She’d learnt her lessons well, in the ten years she’d spent on New Doncaster.  They’d been paid in blood and pain and humiliation ... she clenched her fist, then calmed herself.  There was no point in showing her anger so openly either.  Her men wouldn’t be impressed.

She clasped her hands behind her back and waited, feeling sweat seeping into her shirt.  The heat had once daunted her, leaving her drained and worn after an hour in the sun, but she’d grown used to it over the years.  The sky was darkening rapidly, the twin moons hidden behind tropical clouds.  A storm was on the way.  She could feel it in the air.  It was never easy to predict the weather, not on a world as bizarre as New Doncaster, but the locals knew how to read the signs.  Those who didn’t learn before it was too late rarely lived long.

Steve glanced towards the distant peaks.  “The squad is in position.”

“Good.”  Sarah allowed herself a tight smile.  The militia had been patrolling more aggressively lately, as if the landowners had come to realise they had worse problems than a few bandits or runaway indents.  She had no idea what had gotten into them - her sources hadn’t been too clear on who’d issued the orders, or why - but there was nothing to be gained by worrying.  “Tell them to keep a close eye on the approaches.”

“Of course.”  Steve shot her a jaunty salute, then turned away.  “I’ll see to it at once.”

Sarah hid her amusement as the younger man hurried into the shadows.  It wasn’t easy to keep the young men from starting a fight, from allowing years of bitter resentment and anger to turn to violence ... a fight, she knew all too well, the rebels would lose.  It had taken her years to come to grips with the local power structure, to understand how the landowners dominated the world; she’d needed months to put together a plan to take the bastards down, then longer - perhaps too long - to put the pieces in place.  Steve and his comrades didn’t understand the value of patience, even though they’d seen militiamen - and the regular troops - crashing through the jungles and swarming the islands to get at rebels and runaways.  It wouldn’t be long, she feared, before they jumped with or without her.  They wanted to be free while they were young enough to enjoy it.

Something moved in the darkening sky.  Sarah sucked in her breath as a dark shape materialised from the clouds, dropping rapidly towards them.  The orbital satellite network was a joke, and the weather patterns made it hard to track even a full-sized shuttle passing through the atmosphere, but it was still possible someone had caught a sniff of the shuttle as it dropped out of orbit.  Or that there was a spy, somewhere within her organisation.  Sarah had done everything in her power to keep the information compartmentalised - she’d isolated or killed a handful of chatterboxes, even though they’d probably been innocent - but she was uncomfortably aware word might have spread further than she’d like.  The loudmouths and agitators weren’t the problem.  The real problem was the spy who kept his mouth shut, then reported back to his masters.  She couldn’t keep everyone in lockdown or all hell would break loose.

The shuttle descended smoothly, barely slowing until it was only a few short metres above the treeline.  Sarah held up her flashlight, blinking it on and off to tell the shuttle precisely where to land.  She hadn’t given them precise coordinates, not when the spacers couldn’t be trusted.  Some of them hated and feared the landowners as much as the plantation workers, debtors and townies; some were only in it for the money.  She felt a wave of envy, mingled with resentment.  If she’d been sent to the spacers instead, who knew what she might have made of herself?

She put the thought aside as the shuttle landed neatly on the ground, hatches snapping open a moment later.  Sarah heard thunder in the distance as she motioned to the coolies, then hurried forward.  The coolies were too much like the debtor labour gangs for her peace of mind - she’d once spent a few hours looking up where the word came from, then shuddered - but there was no choice.  There were few paths in the jungle.  The rebels couldn’t have driven trucks to the landing zone even if it wouldn’t have drawn unfriendly attention.

A spacer, face already shining with sweat, met her at the hatch.  “Everything’s here.”

Sarah nodded.  There was no time for anything else, not even basic politeness.  The shuttle had to be unloaded quickly, the coolies carrying the boxes deeper into the jungle before it was too late.  If the militia caught a shuttle on the ground ... it would be bad.  The spacers prided themselves on not bending the knee to the landowners, but they weren’t meant to get involved in planetary affairs.  It would cause a major incident if the shuttle did get caught.  The landowners would insist on more supervision of the high orbitals ... if nothing else, the more independent-minded spacers might decline to continue supplying weapons to the rebels.  They’d be embarrassed as hell.  Their peers would be pissed for bringing more planetary control and regulation into their lives.  And they might leave the system once and for all.

She hefted a box, then carried it out of the shuttle.  Her subordinates were already dividing up the goods, directing the coolies to carry them to the hidden bases with the ease of long practice.  Sarah allowed herself another smile.  The rebels weren’t entirely democratic - they couldn’t afford to take a vote in the middle of a war - but she’d made sure everyone took a turn at being the boss, partly to see who had real potential and partly to ensure everyone remembered they were all in it together.  The last thing they needed was a split between upper and lower rebels.  The landowners would take full advantage of a crack in the ranks.

“We’ll see you in a week,” the spacer said.  His shipsuit looked drenched, as if he’d gone swimming without bothering to undress first.  Sarah understood.  The heat had caught her by surprise too, the moment she’d been marched out of the shuttle.  “Good luck.”

Sarah nodded and turned away, slinging the box over her shoulder.  It was uncomfortable as hell, but bearable.  Besides, it was important that she was seen to be doing her fair share of the work.  Too many of the older rebels still saw her as an upstart... she’d loathed it at the time, but she understood now.  They’d never been sure how much they could trust a newcomer.  She had the same problem now.

Steve hurried up to her, his face grim.  “We have incoming, from the north!”

“Shit!”  Sarah forced herself to think.  The northern trail was wide enough to take armoured cars, but they’d have heard them coming a long time before they came into view.  “How many?”

“Looks like a platoon, perhaps two,” Steve told her.  “No heavy weapons.”

Sarah bit down on a curse.  Men on foot could make it to the landing zone before the shuttle took off, before the rebels had a chance to get into the jungle and vanish.  It was unusually brave of the local militia to come so far from the plantations ... she wondered, suddenly, if they were facing regular troops rather than the militiamen.  It wasn’t impossible, but unlikely.  The regulars normally drove around in armoured cars, rather than advancing on foot.  But if they’d caught a sniff of the shuttle ...

“Tell the guards to engage them, at a distance,” she ordered.  “Keep them back.”

Steve frowned.  “We could take them.”

“No.”  Sarah shook her head.  Steve was right, in the short term.  They could wipe out the enemy platoon.  In the long term ... they’d draw too much attention too quickly.  “Give the order.  Slow them down long enough for us to escape.”

“Understood,” Steve said.  “I’ll see you back home.”

Sarah nodded and turned away, motioning for the remainder of the coolies to pick up speed as the shuttle crew prepped for departure.  The thunderstorm was growing closer now.  It wouldn’t be long before the rain started, reducing visibility to almost nothing.  The rebels and the militia might be within bare metres of each other, neither side aware the other was there until the skies started to clear.  It had happened, time and time again ...

And just pray Steve does as he’s told, she thought, as she joined the retreat.  We don’t want to alert the landowners until we’re ready to put a knife in their backs.

***

Lieutenant Richard Collier had decided, after only a few short hours, that he hated Baraka Island.  The air was hot and humid, the insects seemed to love the taste of human blood and, worst of all, the militia thought they were the best of the best, swanning around in uniforms so ostentatious that he was surprised they weren’t all dead from heatstroke.  Their leader, Captain Tarquin Ludlow, was so keen to make a name for himself that he’d even insisted on going out on a night patrol, despite the complete lack of air cover and armoured cars.  Richard scowled at the upper-class twit, seriously wondering what would happen if he accidentally put a bullet in the young man’s back.  Richard had faced enough runaways, bandits and outright rebels to know the militiamen were dangerously exposed.

He kept his face under control as the platoon advanced up the trail.  Ludlow was brave enough, he supposed, but there was a difference between bravery and sheer, pig-headed stupidity.  The militiamen were trained to fight in defence of their homes, and landowner plantations; they weren’t experienced enough to face the rebels deep within the jungle.  It would be nice to bring home a few scalps - Ludlow had openly promised to put heads on display to discourage other rebels - but Richard hoped they made it through the patrol without encountering the enemy. Ludlow seemed bound and determined to bring the rebels down on their heads.

Which would make sense, if we had supporting elements in place, Richard told himself.  He’d forced himself to study tactics throughout the ages when he’d been promoted, all too aware a townie officer had to be twice as good as any landholder if he wanted to see promotion again.  But we don’t ...

Thunder rumbled, in the distance.  Richard glanced at the sky.  Lightning was flashing within the clouds.  It was going to rain... they’d have to find shelter, somewhere, and hope for the best.  The roads were going to turn to mud, once the rain began.  He’d been in convoys that had been stopped by the roads suddenly turning into swamps.  The ever-present sound of buzzing insects grew louder, just as a dark shape appeared above the treeline and kept rising.  Richard blinked.  A shuttle?  It couldn’t be a legitimate landing.  The ATC system was a joke, but the militia would have been told if someone had requested permission to land in the backcountry.  And why the fuck would anyone so much as want to land so far from the plantations?  Smugglers.  It had to be smugglers, delivering arms to the rebels.

“Move faster,” Ludlow bellowed.  “We have to catch them before they scatter!”

Richard glared at his back.  “Don’t charge into their fire,” he snapped.  Their window of opportunity was closing rapidly, if it hadn’t already closed, but running forward like mad fools would only get them killed.  “We need to ...”

“Shut up,” Ludlow snapped.  He raised his voice.  “Follow me!”

The militiamen picked up speed, hurrying up the road.  Richard cursed under his breath.  The rebels wouldn’t have picked the landing zone unless they were entirely sure they could cover the shuttle long enough for it to escape.  And it already had.  The rebels could either linger long enough to give the militiamen a bloody nose or simply vanish further into the jungle, relying on the weather to shield them long enough to make a clean break.  Richard hoped Ludlow wouldn’t try to keep up the pursuit.  It would be folly.  The militiamen would wind up in deep shit ...

Gunshots rang out, directly ahead.  Richard saw Ludlow fall, like a sack of potatoes.  Richard hit the ground a second later, screaming for the rest of the militiamen to take cover.  A handful were gunned down before they even realised they were under attack, the remainder crawling back as fast as they could.  Richard cursed Ludlow and his superiors as savagely as he could, even as he lifted his assault rifle and emptied a clip towards the rebel positions.  It was wasteful - and he was sure he hadn’t hit anyone - but it might force the rebels to keep their heads down for a few seconds.  The militiamen were right in the open.  It was just a matter of time before they were wiped out.

“Get back,” he shouted.  “Stay low and get back!”

He bellowed orders as loudly as he could, grimly aware the rebels could already be closing on his location.  If they swept in from the east and west as well as the north, the militiamen would be captured and slaughtered before they could make it out of the trap.  Bullets whipped through the air, the rebels pouring fire into their position.  Richard saw a couple of his men raise their rifles and return fire, trying to force the enemy to keep their distance.  He doubted it would be effective.  The rebels had too much of an edge.  

His hand dropped to his radio.  The piece of shit - it was made locally; he’d heard the contract had been given to the landowner who’d offered the largest bribe - crackled loudly, but little else.  There was certainly no reply when he tried to call for help.  Between the planet’s atmosphere and their location, miles from anywhere of importance, it was unlikely there would be any help coming before it was far too late.  Ludlow might not even have bothered to clear his patrol with his militia superiors, let alone the army command.  No one would know they were in trouble until they were reported missing the following day.  His lips quirked as he reloaded, taking aim towards the enemy positions.  For all he knew, they might be logged as AWOL.  His superiors might never know what had really happened to the patrol.

“You three, keep firing towards them,” he ordered, gesturing to three militiamen who looked slightly more composed than the rest.  “Everyone else, keep inching back.”

He forced himself to think.  They were a long way beyond the wire, but ... if they could break contact, they could get out of the trap before the rebels killed them.  Perhaps.  The rebels had to know the patrol was isolated, perhaps even alone.  There would have been far too much disturbance if the entire militia, and the regulars, had started to advance north.  The rebels couldn’t possibly have missed them.  A blind man would have noticed ...

Thunder rumbled, again.  Rain started to fail, the first few drops giving way to a torrent that threatened to sweep away the ground underneath.  Richard allowed himself a moment of relief, then ordered the platoon to slip away.  The rebels seemed to have the same idea, breaking contact and heading north.  Richard shook his head as the firing came to an end.  The bastards had good reason to feel pleased with themselves.  They’d given the militia a bloody nose - and they’d killed an officer, as well as a bunch of volunteers - and they hadn’t lost a single man.  Richard tried to tell himself they’d killed a few rebels, but he couldn’t force himself to believe it.  The odds suggested the rebel force was completely unharmed.

And they were getting something from the shuttle, he thought, numbly.  What?

He put the thought out of his mind as they kept walking, slipping and sliding as the ground started to turn into a swamp.  There was no time to go back for Ludlow’s body, no time to recover any of the dead ... hell, some of them might only be wounded, doomed to die alone before dawn.  He felt sick, even though he knew there was no choice.  The patrol had been cut to ribbons.  The remaining men were in no state to recover the bodies.  He needed to report back...

His heart sank.  His superiors would probably blame him for the disaster.  Ludlow was dead.  He was in no state to answer charges of gross incompetence.  And even if he’d survived ... Richard wondered, suddenly, if Ludlow had known something was going to happen.  It defied belief they’d just coincidentally stumbled onto a smuggler landing.  Ludlow was - had been - smart enough to pay for information and yet dumb enough not to share it with his superiors, not when he thought he could use it to make a name for himself.  Hell, he might just have been lured into a trap.

A surge of hatred overcame him.  And if that fool had been a little more careful, he might not have gotten himself killed.

Chapter Three

Marine Command Base, Safehouse

Major-General Jeremy Damiani, Commandant of the Terran Marine Corps, stood at the armoured viewport and peered into the storm.  Safehouse was not, and never would be, safe for unprotected humans.  The snow looked pretty, the white flakes promising a winter wonderland that would keep a child occupied for days, but it was poisonous.  A young child who sought to play in the snow, without a spacesuit, would be dead before their parents could yank them to safety.  The morbid thought persisted, even though he knew he had many other things to worry about.  The corps had won battles on Hameau and Onge, at the cost of revealing their survival as a fighting force to the remains of the empire.   He knew there would be consequences.  He just didn’t know what form those consequences would take.

He sighed, feeling his age.  It had been a year since Earthfall, a year since all hell had broken loose, a year since ... he didn’t want to think about how many untold billions had died in the last twelve months.  The number was beyond calculation.  Earth was dead.  Many Core Worlds had been devastated, perhaps even destroyed; hundreds of thousands of smaller settlements, asteroid habitats and starships had been lost, either dropping completely out of what remained of the civilised galaxy or - worse - running out of supplies and dying, alone and unmourned, in the night.  The spooks insisted that the galaxy was starting to calm down, that newer governments - some democratic, some dictatorial - were starting to re-establish order.  It felt like a sick joke.  So many had died that the galaxy would never return to normal.

The storm seemed to blow stronger, poisonous snow brushing against the viewport.  Jeremy had never been blind to the empire’s flaws, but he was all too aware that the order it had tried to maintain - sometimes at gunpoint- had been far superior to the chaos that had replaced it.  The idealists spoke of democracy, while the would-be rulers insisted people were divided into masters and slaves; the truth, Jeremy knew, was that the vast majority of people wanted security, stability and a guarantee the rules would not change on a whim.  The Empire had brought order, of a sort.  It had tried - at least in theory - to impose a framework on the settled galaxy.  And now that framework was gone.  He thought, wistfully, of the seeds the corps had planted along the edge of explored and settled space.  It was tempting to believe they’d survived and prospered, that they were raising new hope thousands of light years from the remnants of the jaded and cynical empire.  He feared he would never know.

His intercom bleeped.  “Sir, Colonel Anders and Doctor Williamsburg have arrived.”

Jeremy let out a breath.  “Send them in,” he ordered, as he turned away from the windows.  “And then hold all my calls unless they’re Priority One.”

“Aye, Sir.”

The hatch opened.  Jeremy nodded to the newcomers, directing them to seats.  He wasn’t sure how long they’d be talking, let alone what sort of resolution they could make.  The matter was an odd one.  Part of him was tempted to bury it, to let the matter rest in peace along with Earth itself.  And yet, he couldn’t help feeling as though they should be able to make something of it.  He sighed, inwardly, as he poured the coffee, a sign that they were to talk freely.  Being indecisive wasn’t one of his normal traits.  But then, there was a difference between dealing with volleys of incoming fire and political headaches that might plague his successors long after he was gone.  They might curse him in the future, if he made the wrong choice now.

He placed the mugs on the table, then sat himself.  “It’s good to see you again,” he said, truthfully.  “I take it Merlin hasn’t caused any real problems?”

“No, sir,” Anders said.  “The planetary government hasn’t raised any objections to us continuing to operate the boot camp, as long as we stick with the pre-Earthfall agreements.  I have a feeling that may change, as the government gets used to no longer receiving orders from Earth, but right now no one wants to rock the boat.”

“It will certainly change if we turn the facility into a full Slaughterhouse,” Jeremy predicted, taking a sip of his coffee.  “And right now we desperately need one.”

“Yes, sir,” Anders said.  “Frankly, I doubt Merlin will accept any proposal to actually upgrade the facilities.  Even if they did, it would be a headache for us.  I would prefer to set up a new Slaughterhouse on an uninhabited world, rather than someplace with a local government and red-light district.”

“True,” Jeremy agreed.  “But that’s not why we’re here.”

He took a breath, then leaned forward.  “How is Prince Roland coping with Boot Camp?”

Anders frowned.  “With your permission, sir, I’ll allow the doctor to give you the medical report.”

Doctor Williamsburg nodded, curtly.  “Physically, the prince is in the top tenth percentile of the entire human race.  His family bloodline received all the latest enhancements over the years, resulting in everything from perfect eyesight and hearing to an immune system that is capable of handling almost every disease known to man, save perhaps for a handful of genetically engineered biological weapons.  His enhancements are so advanced, sir, that the combination of proper food and hard work caused him to slim down, then build up his muscles at astonishing speed.  Frankly, if I hadn’t read both his own testimony and Specialist Lawson’s reports, I wouldn’t have thought he was ever a drunkard or a drug addict.  His enhanced body flushed most of the toxins out before they could do permanent damage.”

Jeremy quirked an eyebrow.  “You didn’t believe the reports?”

“The prince was drinking from a very early age, if he is to be believed, as well as taking all sort of drugs, ranging from purified bliss-out to solid-rock,” Doctor Williamsburg said.  “If a normal person had abused his body like that, he would be dead within weeks.  The caretakers were certainly not trying to actually take care of him.  They practically gave him whatever he wanted, when he wanted it.  The simple fact he did put weight on is testament to just how badly he pushed the enhancements to the limit.  Enhancements or no enhancements, if he’d continued down that route I think he would still have killed himself within two to three years.”

“I see.”  Jeremy shook his head.  He’d known the Grand Senate had a vested interest in keeping the prince fat, happy and dumb, but it still shocked him just how badly they’d allowed the young man to get out of shape.  It wasn’t as if they’d had to let him turn into a slug.  “And now?”

“Physically, he’s fine,” Doctor Williamsburg said.  He pulled a terminal from his belt and placed it on the table.  “I did a complete assessment before we left, as per orders.  Under normal circumstances, sir, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend he be sent on to the Slaughterhouse.  Mentally ...”

He paused.  “I’ve conducted a handful of psychological interviews with the prince over the past year.  He is undoubtedly smart.  Many of his problems stemmed from ignorance and inexperience and they can both be corrected.  He’s also deeply ashamed of the ... person ... he was, to the point he’s determined to make something of himself by joining the corps and climbing all the way to the top.  And he is also determined to make Specialist Lawson proud of him.  He hasn’t said so, in so many words, but he has something of a crush on her.”

Jeremy frowned.  “And do you think we should let him begin advanced training?”

“I have my doubts, to be honest,” Doctor Williamsburg admitted.  “Most of the time, he’s the perfect recruit.  He does learn from experience and he’s never made the same mistake twice.  And yet, there are worrying hints of ... brittleness, if not entitlement, buried within his psyche.  He might make it through enhanced training, or he might not.”

Anders cleared his throat.  “He also shows worrying hints of ruthlessness, sir,” he added.  “In a previous training exercise, he used one of his comrades to lure an enemy helicopter out of position so he could hit it with a grenade.  It worked, to be fair, but it came at a price.  And he doesn’t mingle that well with his teammates.  He isn’t a slacker or a barracks-room lawyer or any other flavour of asshole.  There’s no suggestion he doesn’t carry his weight and more.  He hasn’t had his behaviour corrected by his instructors and his comrades.”

He made a face.  “On paper, he’s pretty close to perfect.  In reality ... maybe not so much.”

Jeremy sipped his coffee.  “What do you suggest we do with him?”

“I doubt Boot Camp can make him better,” Anders said.  “He’s already retaken two of the four training cycles, passing with flying colours.  We’re reaching the limits of what we can reasonably teach him, or when we can reasonably hold him back.  He needs to either go on to advanced training or be shunted aside into the auxiliaries.  I doubt he’ll quit.”

“He won’t,” Doctor Williamsburg said.  “He’s not a quitter.”

Jeremy nodded, appreciating the irony.  The corps didn’t kick someone out of basic training unless they committed one of the cardinal sins, breaking the rules that were read out to new recruits until they could recite them in their sleep.  A man who was too stubborn to quit might become a good Marine, if he overcame the hurdles and made it through the entire training course; a man who did quit was discharged as soon as possible, just to ensure he didn’t infect the rest of the recruits.  It was traditional that a recruit had to make that decision on his own.  Jeremy understood the value of tradition, but there had been times - during his stint at Boot Camp - that he’d thought it was a mistake.  There’d been some recruits who really should have been removed before they quit of their own accord.

And if we did tell him he couldn’t continue, he mused, it would raise the issue of precisely what we should do with the prince.

Jeremy’s lips twitched in cold amusement.  Legally, Prince Roland was the ruler of the entire galaxy.  Practically speaking, hardly anyone who’d survived the past year would recognise the claim.  The newly independent planets, star systems and sectors wouldn’t place themselves under the rule of the Imperial Family again, let alone the deeply corrupt and self-serving Grand Senate.  And ... Prince Roland hadn’t done a good job of winning hearts and minds when he’d been younger.  The Childe Roland had been a useless lump of flesh, a spoilt brat who made all other spoilt brats looked sweet, charming and innocent by comparison.  It was unlikely, to say the least, that the galaxy would decide a year of military training would turn a bratty youth into a grown man.  They’d be far more likely to assume the training had just made him worse.

He considered the options, briefly.  It wouldn’t be hard to hide Roland.  He could go into deep cover, perhaps on a colony ship heading out past the Rim, or simply change his name and take up residence on a black colony.  And yet, that would mean depriving the corps of what little advantage could be gleaned from possessing the legitimate heir to the throne.  Jeremy was too experienced a Marine to believe it would be a war-winning advantage, but it sat ill with him to simply discard something before he was sure it wasn’t worth keeping it under his control.  And yet ... he felt a flicker of irritation.  Prince Roland was a person, one that had grown up considerably even before Earthfall.  He wasn’t a tool Jeremy could use however he liked.

You might feel that way, his thoughts mocked.  But far too many others will try to either kill the poor bastard or use him.

“Your last report made it clear he has nearly passed the fourth training quarter,” Jeremy said, to Anders.  The younger man knew the prince far better than his superior.  The chances were good he had at least some idea of how the corps should proceed.  “What do you propose?”

Anders met his eyes.  “We were recently tapped to put together a training mission for New Doncaster,” he said.  “They need to expand their army rapidly and begged for help, which was eventually forwarded to us.  I earmarked a handful of training staff to be sent at the end of the current training quarter.  I’d hate to see them go, but ...”

He shrugged.  “I’d like to put Prince Roland in command of the detachment.”

Jeremy said nothing for a long moment.  “A brevet promotion?”

“He’s already qualified as an auxiliary, on the command track,” Anders said.  “It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve rotated a promising young officer through a detached command, just to give them some experience and see if they want to make the role permanent.  The training staff would understand.  We can ask them to keep a close eye on him too.”

Jeremy nodded.  Technically, the training staff were low ranked; practically, they were senior and experienced enough that only a fool would discount their opinions.  Anders hadn’t told his staff about the prince’s true identity, and he wouldn’t even if the prince was sent to New Doncaster, but he’d make it clear they were to evaluate his officer potential as well as his chances of getting through advanced training.  And if the prince turned into an arrogant ass who refused to listen to his NCOs ... at least it would happen somewhere relatively safe.

“It might work,” he said.  “We would have to take care of him, though.”

“We’re sending a company of Marines to bolster the locals until their forces are ready to take the field,” Anders said.  “They can take care of the prince.”

“That wouldn’t give him room to flourish,” Jeremy said.  “Or make a complete ass of himself.”

“No,” Doctor Williamsburg agreed.  “The prince holds qualified Marines in high regard.”

Anders frowned.  “And we cannot attach a qualified Marine to his staff without raising eyebrows,” he said.  “Someone will smell a rat.”

“No,” Jeremy agreed.  

His mind raced.  No mere auxiliary could be allowed to outrank a full-fledged Marine, not without a very good reason.  A starship captain could issue orders to the Marines on his ship, but ... he shook his head.  There was no way to finagle the arrangement without tipping off the more experienced men that there was something special about Prince Roland.  It was just possible someone might figure out the truth.  In hindsight, perhaps they should have insisted Roland change his name when he entered Boot Camp.  Roland was hardly an uncommon name - there were dozens of people with the same name in the military - but Roland Windsor was in the right age bracket.  If he was being treated as a hot potato, with rights and privileges not normally offered to anyone ... 

And if he thinks we’re appointing a babysitter, he’ll rebel, Jeremy thought, crossly.  It was what he would have done, when he’d been a young man.  He’d given his old babysitter a very hard time indeed.  Roland was ten years older than the young Jeremy, but perhaps - if the reports were accurate - not much more mature.  We need to protect him without making it obvious what we’re doing.

He looked at Anders.  “When do you intend to return to Merlin?”

“Tomorrow, unless you want me to stay longer,” Anders said.  “I want to be back there for the end of the training quarter, then detach the training staff as per orders.”

“Roland can be attached to the training staff as their CO,” Jeremy said.  “Make sure someone on the staff knows they have the authority to override him, if he fucks up spectacularly.  This is a chance for him to prove himself, but not at the cost of a dozen lives.  Make sure they know it.  I’ll give the matter of his protection some thought.”

“Yes, sir,” Anders said.  “What about Specialist Lawson?  He already respects her.”

“He has a crush on her,” Doctor Williamsburg said, again.  “Frankly, I wouldn’t expect them to develop anything resembling a healthy partnership.  The relationship is just too tangled.”

“It isn’t as if they were ever lovers,” Anders said, curtly.  “They’re professionals.  They can deal.”

“Specialist Lawson is currently unavailable,” Jeremy told them.  Technically, Belinda Lawson should have been placed on long-term leave, with a quiet understanding she didn’t have to come back if she didn’t feel up to it.  She’d been through utter hell even before she’d been assigned to the prince.  Practically ... she was on detached duty, carrying out a mission well above their pay grade.  They didn’t need to know anything beyond the fact she was unavailable.  “I have something else in mind.”

He finished his coffee and stood.  “It is possible we’re wasting our time with the prince,” he said.  “It’s also possible he could be the key to everything.”

“He needs more seasoning before he can be the key to anything,” Doctor Williamsburg said, softly.  He tapped the terminal, meaningfully.  “Right now, I worry about him.”

“We all do,” Jeremy said.  He wondered, coldly, if it would be better just to advise the prince to move to a distant colony and keep his head down.  His instincts told him the prince would be useful, though the more practical side of his mind insisted on pointing out that the prince was effectively powerless.  “But the needs of the empire, or what’s left of it, outweigh the needs of any one man.”

Chapter Four

Marine Boot Camp, Merlin

Roland felt ... oddly out of sorts.

It wasn’t something that sat well.  The training company had completed its final set of tests, from military exercises to exams that tested their knowledge and their ability to think under pressure.  He’d slept for hours afterwards, when they’d been ordered to leave the old barracks and move to the transient barracks near the spaceport, then found himself at something of a loose end.  They were technically graduates, ready to move on to the Slaughterhouse - or whatever had replaced it - but they were in limbo.  He didn’t like it.  He preferred to know what was going to happen next.

He stepped into the firing range, signed for a pallet of ammunition and started to practice his shooting.  The rest of the company had headed to the local town, to celebrate their success before they were sent out, but he’d chosen not to accompany them.  He’d been to the town once and ... he simply hadn’t felt comfortable.  It wasn’t something he could put into words, just a sense that the environment was slightly out of kilter.  Besides, it wasn’t as though he could let himself relax into wine, women and song.  He had strict orders to keep his true identity to himself.  And his comrades couldn’t be allowed to suspect he was keeping something from them.

The rifle twitched in his hand as he moved from target to target.  Roland watched the holograms come and go, seemingly at random.  The programmers delighted in having the enemy troops materialise in impossible places, as if he was playing an arcade game rather than training for war.  He supposed it made a certain kind of sense - training was designed to push them to the limits, in hopes war itself would be easy - but it still struck him as odd.  He pushed the thought out of his mind as a little girl in pigtails wandered in and out of his vision, his rifle tracking her before she vanished again.  He breathed a sigh of relief.  He knew terrorists liked using women and children to carry bombs, but he didn’t want to think about the implications.  He certainly didn’t want to have to shoot an unwilling bomber, particularly a child, if it could be avoided.  And yet, the practical part of his mind pointed out, the poor kid was probably doomed anyway.

He sat back and clicked the safety as the simulation came to an end.  His score appeared in front of him, calculated with absurd precision.  One hundred possible targets, ninety-three hit; ten civilians, none hit.  He breathed a sigh of relief.  They might have graduated, they might have been told they’d be marching boldly into the unknown future, but he was sure the instructors would have told him off for shooting a holographic civilian.  It might even have been classed as a war crime.  And there was no way to keep the enemy from turning the child they’d forced to carry a bomb into a martyr for the cause.

“Good shooting,” a voice said, from behind him.  “The colonel would like to see you in his office.”

Roland blinked as he spun around.  He’d been so wrapped up in his own thoughts he hadn’t noticed Sergeant Flint, coming up behind him.  The sergeant would probably have said a few sharp things about his lack of situational awareness, under other circumstances.  Roland nodded, returned the unspent ammunition to the trays and inspected his rifle before slinging the weapon back over his shoulder.  It had taken him months to get used to the idea of carrying the rifle everywhere, even in the shower.  The instructors would have bawled him out - or worse - if he’d left it behind.  Who knew when one might be attacked without warning?

“Understood, Sergeant,” he said.  “I’ll report to him at once.”

He frowned, inwardly, as he started to walk towards the cluster of administrative buildings to the north of the camp.  The base had always felt, to him, as though the staff were on the verge of packing up and departing at a moment’s notice, even though it had been in place for several decades.  Roland didn’t pretend to understand precisely why the local government had authorised the Marines to set up shop some distance from the capital, but he didn’t need to know the specifics to understand the base might turn the entire planet into a target.  The corps had enemies.  One of them had turned the Slaughterhouse into radioactive rubble.  Who knew what they’d do to Merlin if they thought the corps was moving operations there permanently?

The colonel’s secretary nodded curtly, then jabbed a finger at an open door.  Roland nodded back politely - it always paid to be polite to the staff, Belinda had told him - and stepped through the door.  Colonel Anders was sitting beside his desk, studying a paper report.  Roland guessed it was something secret.  Computer terminals were wonderful, and the corps had the best WebHeads in the known galaxy, but it was impossible to be sure they were entirely secure.  Anyone who wanted to read a paper report would have to break into the colonel’s office first.  It wouldn’t be easy for anyone, even a fully trained Marine.

Roland straightened as the colonel looked up at him.  “Recruit Graduate Windsor, reporting as ordered.”

“At ease.”  Colonel Anders gestured to the door, then the coffee pot.  “Shut the door, pour yourself a drink and sit down.”

“Yes, sir.”  

Roland did as he was told, an uncomfortable frisson of unease shooting through him.  It wasn’t hard to notice he hadn’t been called in for career counselling, not yet.   Unless ... he frowned inwardly, unsure why the colonel would deal with him personally.  Did the colonel even know who he was?  It wasn’t clear.  He’d been told never to discuss it with anyone unless they broached the topic first.  He made a mental note to watch his tongue carefully, just in case he said the wrong thing.  He’d spent enough time in the barracks to know the recruits were always under observation.

“Your stats are very good, in most places,” Colonel Anders said.  His face was artfully bland, his voice calm and controlled.  “You do, however, have some curious issues we want you to tackle before proceeding to advanced training.  Or do you wish to proceed sideways to the regular formations or auxiliaries?”

“No, sir,” Roland said.  He’d almost sooner have been hauled up in front of the camp’s CO for a bollocking.  It couldn’t have been worse than this.  “I want to continue to the Slaughterhouse.”

The colonel’s lips twitched.  “Right now, that would be nothing more than a thoroughly unpleasant way to die,” he said.  “But I take your meaning.”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his desk.  “We feel you need more seasoning before you proceed onwards.  And we are prepared to offer it to you, if you are prepared to make use of it.”

Roland didn’t hesitate.  “I am.”

“We shall see.”  Anders smiled, openly.  “Have you ever heard of New Doncaster?”

“No, sir,” Roland said.  

It wasn’t quite true.  He vaguely recalled hearing something about the planet, back when he’d been living in the Summer Palace, but he hadn’t paid any attention.  It had been something he’d had to sign, in his position as heir to the throne ... it wasn’t as if he’d bothered to think about it enough to realise he wasn’t being given a choice.  He’d signed the papers and then gone back to whatever he’d been doing.  And ... he kept the memory to himself.  Better to let the colonel think he was completely ignorant than assume he knew more than he really did.

“You’ll be given the full reports, if you accept the posting, but the short version of the story is that the planet is dangerously unstable,” Anders informed him.  “The local power structure was unsteady even before Earthfall and we think it unlikely any of the moderate factions will be able to establish order, let alone assist the planet in transitioning to a more stable power structure.  If the government loses control, the best the planet can possibly hope for is a brief civil war followed by either a fascist or a communist state.  From the point of view of the average citizen, there will be very little to choose between them.

“The government has requested the corps provide both a sizable force to stiffen their militia and a training mission to expand their regular army into a force capable of imposing order long enough to make a more orderly transition.  We simply don’t have the numbers to do more than provide a very minimal force to stiffen their forces, but we can and will provide a training mission.  We’d like you to take command of the detachment.”

Roland blinked.  “Me?”

“You.”  Anders met his eyes evenly.  “Your orders are to establish a training post, start churning out soldiers who are able to face the rebels on even terms and eventually become training officers themselves.  Ideally, you should be able to avoid being drawn into the fighting yourself, but - under the circumstances - we’re not expecting you to refrain from engaging the enemy if you feel it necessary.  We doubt the rebels will let you train a few thousand soldiers without making some attempt to stop you.”

“No, sir,” Roland agreed.  He forced himself to think.  “Why me?”

“Because you have promise,” Anders said.  “And, at the same time, that promise needs to be tempered and shaped by actual experience.  This deployment is a very low priority for us - if not for them - but it does offer a chance for you to get that experience and prepare yourself for the next stage of training.  I have it on good authority” - he smiled, briefly - “that command experience at this stage of your career will look very good on your resume.”

Roland said nothing for a long moment.  It sounded good - command experience was hardly something to sneer at, not if he gained it before starting advanced training - and yet he was sure he wasn’t being told something.  New Doncaster didn’t sound very important, in the grand scheme of things.  The corps couldn’t be everywhere.  It might be better to let the locals fight it out, then dicker with whoever came out on top.  And yet ... if the corps stood aside, it would have no influence over the final victors.

A thought struck him.  “How important is New Doncaster?”

Anders gave him an approving look.  “The planet itself provides a considerable amount of raw materials that are difficult, if not impossible, to produce elsewhere, along with much of the foodstuffs for the star system.  The remainder of the planets and asteroids within the system are very loosely under the planet’s control, at least on paper, but practically speaking they are effectively independent.  There’s a very real chance they’ll make that independence official if the planet collapses into civil war, or simply ally themselves with warlords, secessionists or flat-out pirates.  The planet’s atmosphere is unusual, as you’ll see in the survey reports, but even a pirate ship would have no trouble dropping KEWs on the cities and towns.  And, right there and then, another set of warlords would be born.”

“With support from the industrialised asteroids,” Roland said.  “It might be tricky to deal with them.”

“Quite.”  Anders tapped the desk.  “We want a fairly stable planetary government that is capable of taking the cork out of the bottle and letting some of the pressure escape before the whole bottle explodes.  There are factions on the surface that might be reasonable, if they feel they can risk offering compromises without having the offer be seen as a sign of weakness.  A strong and reliable army is the first step towards putting the planet on a more stable basis.”

Roland said nothing for a long moment.  “The only training I’ve done was back when I was assisting with the first-quarters,” he said.  He didn’t want to think about being a first-quarter recruit himself.  He’d been told the recruits went through Boot Camp to get the inevitable mistakes out of their systems, but he’d made so many he was sure he’d set a new record.  “And all I really did was show them how to take a punch.”

“You don’t have to do the training yourself,” Anders informed him.  “You merely have to command the training detachment.”

“Yes, sir.”  Roland wasn’t convinced.  If all they wanted the CO to do was sit in his office and play with himself, they didn’t need him.  They didn’t need anyone.  “Sir ... permission to speak freely?”

“Of course.”  Anders sounded vaguely amused.  “You do know you have to ask questions, if you wish to be enlightened?”

Roland didn’t rise to the bait.  “Sir, you don’t need me to command the detachment,” he said, carefully.  “Or am I missing something?”

“You don’t need to train the new recruits,” Anders agreed.  “But do you think you’re just going to sit around doing nothing?”

“No, sir,” Roland said.

“Quite right,” Anders agreed.  “You’ll be handling the negotiations with the local military establishment.  You’ll be arranging for a training camp, you’ll be organising recruitment and planning for newcomers to start proceeding along their career tracks; you’ll be a barrier between your men, who will want to get on with the jobs they’re trained to do, and local officials who’ll want to get in their way.  Your job is not to train the new recruits.  Your job is to make it possible for the training staff to do their jobs.”

He smiled.  “And you’ll find, quite quickly, that the devil is often in the details.”

Roland supposed that made a little more sense.  The concept of running interference was hardly unknown.  Hell, he understood how to stall and delay as well as study the official and unofficial power structures to determine what was really going on.  Belinda had made him study, back on Earth.  He’d dared to hope he’d make something of himself before the final collapse had begun, forcing them to flee.  Once he got there ...

“I see, sir,” he said.  “I’ll do my best.”

“Good.”  Anders reached for his terminal and tapped a command.  “Your orders will be in your inbox, along with your brevet promotion to Auxiliary Captain.  I suggest you remember this promotion will not be permanent, even if you decide you want to transfer to the auxiliaries permanently.  Your work will be reviewed, so you’d better be prepared to justify your decisions.”

Roland swallowed.  “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t take it too personally,” Anders said.  “A great many decisions are scrutinised, no matter who makes them.  There’s always someone who thinks he can do better than the man on the spot.”

He paused.  “You’ll meet the training staff this evening, then board the freighter tomorrow for transport to New Doncaster.  I suggest you and your aide spend the remainder of the afternoon studying the intelligence reports, then putting together a list of resources you wish to draw from our stockpiles here.  There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to ship anything to New Doncaster after your arrival, so you may find yourself thrown back on the planet’s resources.”

“Yes, sir,” Roland said, then stopped.  “My aide?”

Anders keyed his terminal.  The door opened.  Roland glanced behind him, then stood as an auxiliary officer - a lieutenant - stepped into the room.  She was ... frumpy, he noted; she dressed as if she was trying very hard to vanish into the shadows.  Her red hair was tied up in a bun, her uniform hung loosely, as if it had been tailored for someone bigger and fatter.  It was hard to take her seriously.  She might have cleaned up nicely, he decided, if she’d let her hair down, donned something a little tighter in all the right places and put on a little makeup, but ... she didn’t even begin to have Belinda’s presence.  Roland was almost disappointed.

“Roland Windsor, please allow me to introduce Marine Auxiliary Lieutenant Rachel Green,” Anders said.  “She’ll be your aide for the duration of the deployment.  I suggest you make sure she stays by your side as much as possible.  You will not be able to rely on anyone else outside the corps once you land on New Doncaster.”

And she wouldn’t have reached that rank unless she was actually very good at her job, Roland thought.  What was Rachel’s job?  She was clearly no fighter.  She’d know the basics, perhaps, but ... even that was hard to believe.  Administrative assistant?  Someone who knew how to navigate the files might be very helpful.  Or ... or what?  They wouldn’t have assigned her to the deployment unless they felt she’d be useful.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, holding out a hand.  Rachel took it and shook it lightly.  “I’m sure we’ll get along fine.”

“I have some files for you to review,” Rachel told him.  Her voice was businesslike.  “I’ve also taken the liberty of booking an office for our use.”

“Make sure you review all the files,” Anders said.  Roland’s attention snapped back to his superior.  “And good luck, Captain Windsor.”

Roland nodded, hiding his feelings as best as possible.  If he screwed up ... his career was doomed.  He might as well stay on New Doncaster.  God alone knew what the corps would do with him if he couldn’t complete even a single assignment ...

I’ll just have to make it work, he thought.  He had the feeling the assignment was going to be far more complicated than he’d been told, but ... he told himself, firmly, he wasn’t going to fuck up.  Whatever it takes, I’ll make it work.

Chapter Five

Kingsland, New Doncaster

Lieutenant Richard Collier stood on the deck and watched, keeping his thoughts to himself, as the crew steered the boat towards the giant harbour.  The entrance was half-hidden by a number of larger ships, ranging from paddle steamers to giant freighters that bound the islands together into a single political entity; smaller ships, from tiny rowboats to mid-sized sailing and motorboats, buzzed around them, too small to have to worry about the tides.  He gritted his teeth as a small aircraft roared overhead, rattling through the air as it vanished into the distance.  It would have been easier for his superiors to order him to get onto an island-hopper and fly from Baraka to Kingsland.  He couldn’t help feeling that the orders to take a small boat instead had come from people who were half-hoping he’d go AWOL somewhere along the way.

He gritted his teeth as the boat made its way past a pair of giant freighters, their hulls covered with rust, and into the mouth of the harbour itself.  He’d been tempted.  God knew he’d been tempted.  It would have been easy to jump ship at some point and vanish into the countryside, or sign on an independent freighter and simply never bother to look back.  He doubted anyone would care enough to try to track him down - and, even if they did, good crewmen were so hard to find that it was unlikely any of the captains would betray him.  If push came to shove, they might even tell the searchers he’d fallen overboard one dark night.  But he owed it to the men who’d died to tell the truth, even if it cost him everything.  It wasn’t as if he’d been likely to rise any further anyway.

The wind shifted, blowing the stench of dead and rotting fish across his nostrils.  He grimaced in disgust.  The harbour wasn’t the cleanest place in the world.  The dockyard workers were forbidden to unionise, or do anything that might improve their lot, and so they did as little as possible.  Richard had heard suggestions that underground activity was steadily increasing, with work slowdowns and lost or destroyed machinery and tools putting a damper on harbour activities.  The wiser MPs argued for at least some concessions, but the dockyard owners kept blocking them.  They owned the docks, as well as the worker contracts.  They weren’t going to give them up for anything.

Richard hefted his knapsack as the boat slid alongside the pier, the crew hooting and hollering in anticipation of a night on the town.  The captain would start signing wage chits shortly, sending the crew to the harbour bank before they headed out to get drunk, chase girls and pick fights.  Richard almost envied them.  He would have liked to get drunk himself.  Instead ... he winced, inwardly, as he spotted the official car waiting at the top of the pier.  They were desperate to hear his testimony, after forcing him to spend days in transit.  He stepped aside, took a moment to steady his legs, then started to walk to the car.  The driver greeted him with a salute.  Richard wondered if that meant good news, then shook his head.  The driver didn’t know anything about him.  He might have been a great deal less respectful if he’d known Richard was en route to a formal inquiry, if not a court-martial.

He sat in the rear of the car and watched, grimly, as the vehicle picked its way through the giant harbour and out onto the streets.  There were more police and militiamen in evidence, a number searching passing pedestrians while others looked around as if they expected to be attacked at any moment.  The prostitutes who normally lined up outside the gates, looking for sailors with money and a desire for female companionship, were gone.  Richard doubted they’d gone very far.  The red-light district - a warren of bars, brothels and everything else a sailor might need when he returned from the sea - would steer the sailors towards the waiting girls.  Richard shuddered, inwardly.  He’d met a couple of the women during training.  They were indents who hadn’t known what they were getting into - or what was getting into them - when they signed their contracts.  The vast majority would probably give it up in a flash if they were given better options.  

The car picked up speed as it left the red-light district behind, passing through a military checkpoint and heading onto the motorway to First Landing.  Richard leaned back in his chair as the countryside rolled by, trying to meditate as best as possible.  There’d be no rest when he reached the capital.  He’d be lucky if they pointed him to a washroom before putting him in front of the board.  He wondered, idly, if his superiors really had hoped he’d quietly get lost during the voyage home.  It would certainly have helped them sweep the whole disaster under the carpet.

He sat up as they passed another military checkpoint, then entered the capital itself.  The outer districts were little better than makeshift shacks and hovels, a grim reminder of the economic slowdown that had swept over the planet shortly before Earthfall.  The transient barracks had overflowed months ago, leaving far too many people on the streets.  Richard was surprised they hadn’t been sent out to the islands yet, perhaps drafted into indent or debtor work gangs.  As it was, the districts were steadily turning into a powder keg, dominated by criminals and underground factions.  It was just a matter of time before something blew.

They passed yet another checkpoint, then entered the heart of the city.  The buildings here were stone, the old, prefabricated structures removed and repurposed long ago, but they bore the marks of constant rainfall and high temperatures.  Richard had heard rumours the buildings were literally melting, but he didn’t believe it.  Not really.  New Doncaster’s government wasn’t known for efficiency - the landowners dominated the government and intended to do so for the rest of time - but even the weak government should be able to take care of its property.  The truth was probably a little more mundane.  He didn’t care what it was.

He took a breath as the car stopped in front of Government House.  That he’d been called here, rather than the military headquarters or the local militia garrison, boded ill.  And yet ... he clambered out, the heat billowing around as soon as he stepped out of the air conditioning, and nodded to a young woman in a simple shirt and skirt.  She was pretty enough, he noted, but if she was working at Government House she was probably way out of his league.  The landowners didn’t like the idea of their daughters actually doing more than marrying well and perpetuating the dynasty, but even they had to admit their daughters were more trustworthy than townies or debtors.  Richard knew, all too well, that the landowners were right to be paranoid.  They had far too many enemies.

Government House was, thankfully, air conditioned.  His escort showed him to a washroom, waited patiently as he splashed water on his face and adjusted his uniform, then took him to a small conference room.  Richard felt his heart sink as he stepped inside.  There were five men sitting behind a table, studying him with grim eyes.  He recognised the Prime Minister and General Falk, the highest-ranking uniformed officer on the planet, but the others were strangers.  And yet, one of them looked oddly familiar.

He winced, inwardly, as he snapped a perfect salute.  If the PM himself was in attendance ...

General Falk nodded, curtly.  “Lieutenant Richard Collier,” he said.  “State, for the record, precisely what happened during your recent engagement with the enemy.”

Richard wanted to stand at ease, but he didn’t quite dare.  “Sir,” he said.  “Captain Ludlow led a patrol consisting of two platoons of militiamen, thirty-seven men in total, into the backwaters of Baraka Island.   The stated objective of the mission was to give the militiamen a chance to operate beyond the wire, without any real danger of encountering something we couldn’t handle.  As night was falling, with us isolated from the nearest fortified position, we spotted a shuttle taking off and returning to orbit.  We believed it was a smuggler landing in the outback and hastened towards the landing zone, in hopes of catching the groundside party before they had time to scatter.

“We ran into an ambush.  The enemy force caught us, picking off Captain Ludlow as well as most of the vanguard.  The largely untried militiamen started to panic, adding to the chaos.  A number were shot in the back as they attempted to run.  It was clear to me that remaining where we were was suicidal, so I organised a fighting retreat.  The enemy pressed us until the rain started, at which point they broke contact and retreated into the backcountry.  I took the remnants of the patrol back to the nearest base, where we made contact with our superiors and reported the incident.”

He took a breath.  “The following day, an armoured patrol linked up with us and we returned to the battleground.  We found nothing.  There was no trace of any bodies, either ours or theirs.  We were unable to determine what was landed, or where it was taken.  We swept through the area, with aircraft and artillery on call as well as armoured cars, but the enemy declined to show themselves.  The local militia HQ ordered us to return behind the wire before nightfall, which is what we did.  At that point, I received orders to make my way back to Kingsland.  I handed the remnants of army detachment over to the next officer in line, then did as I was told.”

“My son died on your watch,” the oddly familiar person snapped.  “What were you thinking?”

Richard cursed, silently.  The man had to be Captain Ludlow’s father.  Damn it.  The family was so well connected that they could force the PM to take a personal hand or risk losing his post when the next election cycle began.  He wondered, again, if he should have jumped ship somewhere during the voyage home.  The PM wasn’t likely to stand in Lord Ludlow’s way if he wanted Richard hung, drawn and quartered.  General Falk wouldn’t muster anything more than a token protest.  He knew which side his bread was buttered on.

“We had no reason to believe we would encounter a sizable enemy force,” Richard said, although he had his doubts about that.  Captain Ludlow might have heard something and decided to tackle the issue himself, rather than referring the matter to his superiors.  Or the shuttle might have been bait in a trap.  “Your son was caught by surprise.  He died well ...”

“But he died, when you were there,” Lord Ludlow said.  “Why didn’t you stop him?”

Richard almost laughed.  Even if Captain Ludlow and himself had been social equals - and they weren’t, not by a long way - he’d still been outranked.  There were times when a junior could offer blunt advice to a senior, but never in front of the enlisted men.  Captain Ludlow would have ignored him if he’d tried to suggest a more careful approach to the landing site.  He might not even have been wrong.  The longer the militia took to get there, the longer the enemy would have to scatter and break contact without a fight.

“He was my commanding officer,” Richard said, finally.  “I couldn’t override his decision.”

“The fact remains, a patrol was largely destroyed on your watch,” General Falk said.  “Why didn’t you retreat at once?  Or try to charge the enemy positions?”

“The enemy positions were concealed within the foliage and probably quite well dug-in,” Richard said.  If it had been a planned ambush, the enemy had carried it out perfectly.  “If we had charged their positions, we would have been slaughtered.  I ordered a retreat as soon as I managed to assert control over the remnants of the patrol, who were panicking under enemy fire.  It was not easy to get them falling back in an orderly pattern, laying down fire to keep the enemy from chasing us down.  The rain saved our bacon.”

He sighed, inwardly, as the argument ran around and around the table.  The fix was definitely in.  Captain Ludlow wouldn’t be blamed for the disaster, even though it had been largely his fault and he wasn’t around to complain.  The army would give him a posthumous medal and cover up the whole affair, ensuring that neither the army nor the militia learnt anything from the ambush.  He wondered, bitterly, if he’d be put in front of a formal court-martial or simply dishonourably discharged from the army, despite the years he’d spent working his way up the ranks.  It wasn’t as if anyone would stand up for him.  He had no connections worth a damn.

“This is what you get for letting townies join the army,” Lord Ludlow insisted, curtly.  “He should have stopped my son from being killed.”

Richard cleared his throat.  “My Lord, what would you have had me do?”

Lord Ludlow glared.  Richard didn’t blame him for being angry over his son’s death - Captain Ludlow had planned to do a term in the regular, then switch to the militia until he inherited his father’s land and titles - but there were limits.  Captain Ludlow had never realised there was no peace beyond the line, not on the plantation islands.  He’d given the enemy - bandits or rebels, no one seemed to know - a clear shot at him. They’d taken it.  And he hadn’t lived to learn from his mistake.

He forced himself to wait, listening to the argument as it went on and on.  Lord Ludlow wanted him shot - or, at the very least, dismissed from the service in disgrace.  The two strangers seemed more concerned about the implications of the disaster, arguing that the army should deploy more troops to Baraka before all hell broke loose; Richard suspected, privately, that there just weren’t enough regulars to make a difference.  The landowners were reluctant to recruit townies, like him, and flatly refused to recruit debtors and indents.  And yet ... without more manpower, there was little hope of securing even the major islands.

The PM tapped the table, then nodded to General Falk.  Richard straightened, bracing himself for the worst.  They’d had four days to argue over what to do before he’d arrived, four days to read the reports from militia officers who hadn’t been anywhere near the engagement as well as the report Richard himself had submitted.  The politics had probably been smoothed out well before he’d realised what awaited him.  They wanted a scapegoat.  Richard - a townie in an army dominated by landowners - was practically tailor-made for the role.

“Lieutenant Richard Collier,” General Falk said.  “Your conduct during the engagement has been assessed and found wanting.  You failed to inform your superior of an obvious trap, resulting in his death; you failed to rally your men in time to counterattack; you gave the order to retreat too late, resulting in the deaths of several more militiamen.  It was sheer good luck that your failures did not result in the destruction of the entire formation.”

Richard gritted his teeth in frustration but said nothing.

“These charges merit a general court-martial,” General Falk continued.  “However, given your previous service record, it has been decided that you will be summarily withdrawn from front-line combat duties and assigned to the interstellar training program as a liaison officer.  If you perform well in that role, your career will be reassessed and - hopefully - you will be permitted to return to the front lines.  We trust that meets with your approval?”

Richard felt his cheeks redden in humiliation.  The fix was definitely in.  His court-martial would be a formality, and probably held well away from anyone who might blow the whistle, but it would still require an open discussion of how Captain Ludlow’s mistakes had contributed to his death.  Richard would go down, but he’d have the satisfaction of taking the Ludlow family’s reputation down too.  Assigning him to a training post would keep him out of the way, perhaps even keep him from saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.  And just what was an interstellar training program anyway?  The Empire was gone.  

He forced himself to think.  He was tempted, very tempted, to tell them to take the transfer and stick it somewhere the sun didn’t shine.  Who knew?  If they tried to court-martial him, he could hire a good lawyer and make it hard for them to pin anything on him.  Except ... he shuddered.  The landowners had so much influence he probably didn’t have a hope in hell of getting a fair trial.  General Falk wouldn’t have dumped on him so badly if he hadn’t been dumped on himself by his superiors.  The political firestorm would sweep over his career, and his family, and every hope of political reform.  There was no hope at all of coming out ahead.  He doubted he’d be able to do more than dent their reputation.

“Yes, sir,” he said, finally.  “Might I ask who I’ll be working with?”

“The Terran Marine Corps,” General Falk said.  “They’ve finally agreed to send a unit to stiffen our lines.”

Richard nodded, keeping his thoughts to himself.  The Marines were supposed to be good, the best of the best, but he’d heard that before.  Captain Ludlow had been an up-and-coming young man, a credit to the service, or so Richard had been told.  And the young man had walked right into a trap and been killed before he had a chance to realise his mistake.  

“Dismissed,” the PM said.  “And we wish you the best in your new posting.”

“Yes, sir,” Richard said, stiffly.  “I’ll do my best to make the planet proud.”

Chapter Six

Marine Boot Camp, Merlin

“This planet is heading for trouble,” Roland said, after an hour spent reading through the reports.  “There’s no way to get around it.”

He frowned as he surveyed the stack of paper files.  The official government reports from New Doncaster were mindlessly optimistic, to the point it was hard to take them seriously.  They seemed to believe that everything would go exactly the way they wanted, as if nothing whatsoever could or would go wrong.  It was like looking at a gambler who’d busted out repeatedly and yet continued to insist he’d hit it right next time.  The more practical reports from the spooks, and a handful of traders passing through the system, made it clear the planet was on the verge of civil war.  There were just too many fault lines and too few people willing to admit something needed to be done.

“Yes, sir,” Rachel said.  Her voice was flat, emotionless.  She’d proved she knew her way around the file system - she’d printed out hard copies, pointing out it was easier to absorb things written on paper rather than a terminal screen - but little else.  She seemed willing to do whatever she was told yet unwilling to do things on her own initiative.  “The best-case projection is that the explosion will take place in two years, assuming nothing is done about it.”

Roland scowled.  That projection struck him as mindlessly optimistic, too, although ... his scowl deepened as he remembered the early post-Earthfall assessments that had been passed around the recruits.  The spooks had insisted that it had been easy to predict that Earthfall was on the way, before it actually happened, but impossible to say precisely when it would happen.  Roland understood - the chain of events that had triggered the final disaster had been hard to predict - but it was still irritating.  He would have preferred a world that exactly followed the predictions.

No, you wouldn’t, he told himself.  The projections were horrific.  New Doncaster was in for an orgy of score-settling, with vast numbers of people raped, murdered or simply enslaved.  It was going to be a nightmare.  Something is going to have to be done.

He buried himself in the files, assessing how the locals saw their government working and comparing it to how the government actually worked.  On paper, the official government was remarkably reasonable; in practice, the system was so sewn up that the landowners - the ones on top - saw no reason to hide or cushion their dominance.  Roland shuddered.  He’d watched the Grand Senate tighten its grip, unaware of just how many people were coming to realise the Empire no longer worked for them.  In hindsight, it was no surprise that Earthfall had been followed by a series of civil and interstellar wars.  The Empire’s population had taken advantage of the chaos to settle a few scores of their own.

Rachel cleared her throat.  “Do you want to get something to eat before we make our way to the shuttle?”

“Please.”  Roland stood, brushing down his uniform, then did his best to parody a male romantic lead.  “Would you care to join me for dinner in the commissary?”

Rachel smiled.  It was a very tiny smile, so faint that Roland knew he would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking at her, but it was very definitely a smile.  He hid his own amusement as they walked down to the commissary, idly wondering what sort of fool would take a date to the Marine restaurant.  The food was plentiful, and they didn’t have to pay, but it was hardly a good place to take anyone.  The girl would probably dump the poor fool on the spot.

The thought made him smile as they entered the hall - it was nearly empty - and collected trays of food, before sitting at a small table.  He’d grown up eating only the finest foodstuffs in the empire - he dreaded to think, in hindsight, just how much food he’d wasted every month - and yet he knew he was going to miss the commissary when he left the camp for the final time.  The food might be basic, but it was filling.  And the company was better.  The Summer Palace had been filled with servants, who had put up with everything from rudeness to sexual assault, and political figures who wanted his blessing.  He wondered, idly, what had happened to the men who’d seemed to think his signature would make a difference.  If they were still alive, they were probably cursing themselves for not doing something more practical with their time.

He studied Rachel thoughtfully as he chewed his food.  She was polite and professional and ... he was sure, deep inside, she didn’t have the slightest idea who he really was.  And yet, she was so professional she refused to talk about herself.  Roland had been trained to show an interest in people - he could say the word fascinating in a hundred different tones, each one encouraging the listener to keep talking - but Rachel seemed to have been taught to keep her mouth shut.  He’d barely been able to pry anything out of her.  She seemed to want him to think of her as nothing more than part of the furniture.  It was a very odd attitude for a Marine auxiliary.

Although you haven’t met that many, he reminded himself, dryly.  And the ones you have met were all trained to assert themselves over the recruits.

His terminal bleeped as a message arrived.  He glanced at it, then shook his head.  He’d filed a request for a message to be passed to Belinda, wherever she was, but it had been rejected.  He hoped that was good news, but ... it was hard to be sure.  It wasn’t as if he was a close relative.  She’d been badly injured during the flight and ... he’d been told she’d survived, that she’d resumed her duties, but he didn’t know.  It was quite possible her superiors - his superiors - had lied.  Her unit had been so highly classified he hadn’t even known it existed until well after he’d met her.

Rachel looked up at him.  “Good news?”

“No,” Roland said.  He was tempted to ask her if she knew any backdoors they could use to get into the files, but that would get them both in deep shit.  “But it doesn’t matter.”

He kept his eyes on her as she finished her dinner.  It was odd.  He knew he was jaded - he’d seen nothing he wanted in the brothels near the camp, the few times he’d gone on leave - but he was barely aware of her femininity.  Perhaps it was because of the training - he’d never been aware of the female recruits either - but it was still odd.  He wondered, suddenly, what the rules were on relationships between auxiliaries.  He’d never thought to look them up.  It had never crossed his mind he’d be one of them.  And he supposed it should have.

You outrank her, he reminded himself, sharply.  Fucking a subordinate in your chain of command is a court-martial offense.

Rachel’s terminal bleeped.  “The training detachment has assembled,” she said.  “They’ll meet us at the shuttleport, before departure.”

Roland stood.  “And then we’ll be on our way.”

“Quite,” Rachel said.  “Are you looking forward to it?”

“Yes,” Roland said.  “And no.”

He felt a yawning sensation in his stomach, despite the meal, as they returned to the transient barracks to pick up his carryall.  On paper, the mission should be simplicity itself.  The corps had handled hundreds of training missions over the past century, using Marines as a stopgap to keep insurgents from overrunning the local government while training troops to stabilise the situation and give the locals a stake in their own protection.  In practice, the more he looked at the files, the more he wondered if they were about to be dropped in the shit.  New Doncaster was important, but not that important.  The corps might have written the planet off if they’d needed the manpower elsewhere.

“You won’t be coming back,” Rachel reminded him.  “Is that all you’ve got?”

Roland nodded, curtly, as he slung the carryall over his back.  He’d once had so much luggage that he - or, more accurately, his keepers - had had to hire a small army of servants to pack, transport and unpack his trunks.  He’d never gone anywhere without his personal cooks, maids, tailors and cleaners.  Now ... he had a couple of uniforms, a small collection of underwear, a personal terminal and very little else.  He’d been called bland and boring by his bunkmates for not having a porn collection.  He hadn’t been able to find the words to explain he considered most porn to be boring.

Not that we had much time for jerking off, he reflected.  There must have been something in the water.

He felt oddly nostalgic as they made their way through the barracks, past a pair of checkpoints and down to the spaceport.  The new recruits were already arriving, drill instructors shouting as they stumbled into ragged formations.  It would take weeks for them to learn the basics and a number would decide they couldn’t take it and quit.  Roland approved, when he thought about it.  If someone couldn’t handle the first month of Boot Camp, better they quit rather than trying to stick it out until they passed the first quarter.  There was nothing to be gained from wasting time.

Rachel kept pace with him easily as he picked up speed, jogging along the roadside.  Roland was surprised.  He’d had the impression she was slightly overweight, although her uniform was so baggy it was hard to be sure.  He’d certainly met more than his fair share of politicians who’d had their outfits expertly tailored, just to hide their paunches.  He didn’t know why they didn’t simply have the fat removed.  It wasn’t as if they couldn’t afford it.

A flight of heavy shuttles flew overhead as they reached the outer gates.  The guards checked their ID chips, then their orders, before letting them enter with strict instructions not to go wandering outside the designated areas.  Roland nodded in understanding.  The spaceport was a military base, de facto if not de jure, and anyone caught in the wrong place by the MPs would find themselves in hot water very quickly.  Roland doubted anyone would cut any slack for him, even if they knew who he was.  The spaceport came first.

He put the thought out of his mind as he led the way into the hangar.  The training detachment had already requisitioned their supplies, piled up and waiting to be transferred to the shuttles.  The men themselves - ten auxiliaries, all with more years in the corps than he’d had of life - were inspecting the supplies or reading the files, quickly listing everything else they might need.  Roland hoped they’d get what they wanted before it was too late.  Logistics wasn’t his field - he had a feeling he would need to brush up very quickly - but even he knew there were shortages everywhere.  It would be a long time before Merlin could make up much of the shortfall.

A short, stocky man caught his eye and stood to attention.  “Officer on deck!”

This isn’t a starship, Roland thought, with a flicker of amusement.  This is a spaceport.

The humour faded as he surveyed his new command, leaving him feeling like an imposter.  He hadn’t had much time to read up on his people, to do more than memorise their names and faces, but it was clear they could handle much of the mission without any input from higher authority.  They were strong and capable, perfectly able to do everything he could... it struck him, suddenly, that he’d been put in a position where he could sit on his ass and do nothing and still succeed.  The men in front of him wouldn’t hesitate to relieve him if he turned into a real burden.  It would be embarrassing and the corps wouldn’t be pleased, but it would be better than an actual disaster.  The files had made it clear the planet was on the verge of outright civil war.

“For those of you who don’t know me,” Roland said, “I am Marine Auxiliary Captain Roland Windsor.  I have been placed in command of this deployment” - he felt more like an imposter than ever - “and I intend to make it a success.  I hope to have a chance to speak with each of you while we’re in transit, to get to know you all a little better, but - for the moment -I want you to know you are welcome to speak freely to me.  I think I know what I’m doing.  You may well disagree with me.”

He hesitated.  Did that hit the right notes?  The men in front of him had over a century of experience.  Did they think him a promising young man - or a fool?  He wanted to ask, and yet he didn’t dare.  It would show his insecurities ... as if they’d expect him not to be insecure.  He doubted he was fooling them.  They’d trained more young recruits, from all kinds of backgrounds, than he’d had hot dinners.  They knew he was making it up as he went along.

“The mission may be straightforward,” he continued, “but we will proceed on the assumption it will be anything but.  There are too many political factions on New Doncaster for us to expect them to be rational, particularly when their interests are threatened by our activities.  If you have any concerns, I expect you to bring them to me.  My experience is somewhat limited.”

Non-existent, he corrected himself, silently.  And they know it, too.

“We should be boarding the shuttle in four hours,” he finished.  “Is there anything else you need, now, that they’re reluctant to provide?”

The short man - Master Sergeant (Auxiliary) Brian Wimer, according to the files - took a step forward.  “Sir,” he said.  Somehow, he managed to make the sir sound real.  “Our first tier of requests have all been filled.  Our second tier” - he held out a datapad - “has been a little harder.”

Roland took the datapad, dismissing the remainder of the group to return to their duties as he scanned the file.  “Modified construction equipment?  Automated diggers and builders?”

“I read the file, sir,” Wimer said.  “The weather on New Doncaster is terrible.  The locals use quarried stone or wood to build most of their habitations, neither of which is ideally suited for us.  Even laying down a training ground is going to be difficult.  A small collection of automated equipment would make the difference between a defensible position and one we might have to abandon, if we come under fire.”

“I see.”  Roland vaguely recalled reading that Wimer had been in the Construction Corps before transferring to the training unit as an auxiliary.  He was surprised Wimer hadn’t been sent elsewhere.  The corps was short of trained manpower almost everywhere.  Wimer could have written his own ticket, given his skills.  “You think you can make the training base secure?”

“A combination of secure firing positions and trained defenders, sir, would make it a great deal harder for anyone to overrun the base,” Wimer said.  “If we had only one, we would have to abandon the position before it was overrun.”

Roland nodded.  He’d been taught how to attack and defend a fortified position.  A small force, heavily dug in, could stand off an entire army ... as long as the ammunition held out or the enemy didn’t bring up heavy weapons.  It was hard to believe a concrete blockhouse could be blown out of the ground, but there were smart shells and heavy bombs that could effortlessly vaporise the entire structure.  He’d seen bunker-busters that could tear a complex out of a mountainside or clean nukes designed to punch holes in enemy lines, allowing the Marines to advance through the rubble.  Wimer was right.  If they could secure their bases, they’d be harder targets for anyone who wanted to start a civil war.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said.  He knew better than to promise, not when there was no guarantee of success.  “Is there anything else?”

He placed the request into the system, then spent the next few hours - Rachel constantly at his back - checking through the pallets of supplies.  He’d learnt the hard way just how easy it was to miss something, for the supply officers to forget to provide something upon request; he’d been cautioned, time and time again, that it was harder to file complaints if one discovered something was missing in the middle of an engagement.  Rachel seemed to approve, he noted, as he finished going through the boxes.  If nothing else, he reflected, he knew what he had at his command.  Weapons, ammunition, drones, machine tools, training supplies ...

“Sir,” Wimer said.  “We’re ready to load the shuttle.”

Roland nodded, feeling a twinge of regret.  He doubted he’d ever return to Merlin.  Either he went on to the Slaughterhouse - or its replacement - or he died on New Doncaster.  Unless he became an instructor himself.  It wasn’t impossible.  The corps believed in rotating experienced men through the boot camps, just to ensure the training program was constantly up to date.  Who knew what lessons might be lost if the ones who learnt them weren’t allowed to spread the word?

“I’ll give you a hand,” he said.  Marine officers weren’t allowed to keep themselves that aloof from their men.  It wasn’t as if he had anything more important to do.  “And then we’ll be on our way.” 

Chapter Seven

Baraka Island, New Doncaster

The morning heat seemed to be constantly rising as Sarah Wilde slipped out of the outback and stepped onto the muddy road, making her way down towards the plantation and the town beyond.  The wind constantly shifted, at times blowing the stench of alien foliage across her nostrils only to switch, moments later, to a warm sea breeze that was almost a relief.  She checked that her hat was firmly in place, then brushed down her skirt as she continued to walk into the open.  It was risky to expose herself now that her plans were being finalised - and she’d convinced most of the rebel factions to unite under her leadership - but there was little choice.  It was easy to lose the sense of what was really happening if one remained in one’s base, isolated from the outside world.  She’d learnt that lesson the hard way.

Sweat trickled down her back as the road widened suddenly, revealing the plantation on the edge of town.  The fields were lined with bushy trees that were somehow, subtly, wrong to her eyes, a grim reminder that New Doncaster wasn’t a wholly human world.  Sarah had never been a country girl - she’d grown up in a CityBlock where there were no parks or gardens - but even she felt oddly ill at ease when she looked at the crops.  They were just wrong.  Dark figures - indents and debtors - moved among the stalks, tapping a handful to drain the oil and transport it to their masters.  Sarah didn’t pretend to understand the details of the planetary economy, but she knew the basics.  The oil - and many other biological products - fetched a high price on the interstellar market, providing the outsider currency that kept the landowners from having to share power with the townies, let alone the debtors and indents at the very bottom of society.  It was no wonder that the planet was permanently on the verge of a giant explosion.  She’d spent the last few years working to make sure the explosion actually destroyed the old order and created room for the new.

She kept moving, careful not to draw attention.  Their masters insisted they only had to work until they paid off their debts, but the smarter ones quickly worked out they’d never pay off the debt.  They’d be angry, then start plotting ... some of them would flee into the backcountry, some would turn into bandits and some would start plotting bloody revenge.  She hoped the latter kept their heads down until the rebellion began.  An uprising now would risk alerting the landowners before it was too late.  It was bad enough they’d had to engage a patrol that had gotten too close to the landing site.  She feared the enemy commander had gotten a little too lucky.  One spy somewhere in her chain of command would be enough to ruin everything.

Her heart twisted as she passed the fields and hurried to the town.  It looked small and picturesque, from a distance, but the appearance hid an ugly reality.  Most of the wooden buildings were built with slave labour - whatever the law said, there was no doubt the indents were little more than property - and the population lacked any real control over their own lives.  Only a handful of citizens had any real autonomy - the doctors, the dentists, the trained professionals - and those careers were only open to townies and landowners.  The sheer scale of the corruption had astonished her, when she’d finally realised just how deeply it was woven into the entire society.  Didn’t they realise they were running out of time?

She shook her head, allowing her eyes to wander over the distant ocean.  A handful of bigger ships were resting in the waters, waiting for the tides to rise so they could enter the harbour and start unloading; dozens of smaller fishing boats darted around, splitting their time between the big island and the uncounted dozens of semi-legal settlements within the habitable zone.  She sucked in her breath as she spied the clouds, forming with terrifying speed.  It had scared her, once, to see how quickly the weather could change from dry to a total downpour.  Now ... she was used to it.

A militiaman spotted her as she walked into town and moved to block her way.  “Papers, please.”

Sarah sighed inwardly and dug into her pouch.  The locals didn’t seem to realise that simply handing out dozens of ID papers, from simple residency permits to internal passports, made it very easy for corruption to flourish.  Sarah and her comrades had had little trouble finding someone in the issuing office who could be bribed, someone who’d issued them all the - perfectly valid - documents they needed to go anywhere they liked.  It wasn’t as if the local militia would dare get in their way.  And even if they did ...

She grimaced.  The militia were largely time-servers.  She’d gotten out of trouble more than once, in her early days, by going down on her knees and giving her would-be captor the best oral sex he’d ever had.  It was astonishing how much they’d overlook in exchange for venality.  Now ... she wasn’t so sure that would work.  The militia had lost a dozen militiamen, only five days ago.  They might be a little more alert.  She silently assessed the man in front of her, preparing herself to draw her dagger and stab him before he could stop her.  She might get away.  The militia wasn’t always popular amongst the townies.

“You may pass,” the militiaman said, clearly disappointed her papers had checked out.  She was sure he’d been hoping for a chance to angle for a bribe, either monetary or sexual.  “Just remember to be back at the farm by nightfall.”

Sarah bobbled a curtsey, took her papers and hurried away before he could change his mind.  Her papers insisted she was a farm girl, the daughter of an independent farmer; she was, she’d been assured, too high and yet too low to draw the wrong kind of attention.  There weren’t many independents on Baraka and the ones who’d made it, paying off their debts to the settlement corporation, tended to have powerful connections.  It was a good cover, although she was all too aware of the risks.  There was a slight, but unavoidable chance she’d encounter someone who knew the farmer didn’t have a daughter like her.

Or someone who thinks he’ll get a part-share in the farm if I marry him, she thought, with a flicker of grim amusement.  Her papers insisted she was nineteen, nearly nine years younger than she really was, but the average farm girl married at sixteen, as soon as she was of legal age.  Sarah didn’t pretend to understand it.  He might be very disappointed if he finds out the truth.

She smiled as she made her way down the street, stepping between puddles of water from the previous rainfall.  The townspeople either ignored her or nodded politely, perhaps assuming she wasn’t particularly important.  Sarah kept her eyes lowered demurely, but she was well practiced at taking information in without making it obvious.  There were armed guards outside the bank, as well as the harbour gates.  The latter looked surprisingly professional.  They didn’t even wolf-whistle at her as she walked past.

Troubling, she thought.  Are they bringing in reinforcements from the rest of the inhabited islands?

The thought mocked her as she entered the alleyway, then knocked once on a plain wooden door.  There was a long pause, long enough for a normal visitor to knock twice, then the door opened.  Sarah allowed herself a moment of relief as she stepped into the cool air inside, closing the door before she removed her hat.  The interior smelt faintly of perfume and something indefinable.  It brought back memories, most unhappy ones.  It also reminded her of precisely why she was fighting the war in the first place.

“Welcome back,” Joyce said.  “You’re looking well.”

“Thanks,” Sarah said, as she gave the older woman a hug.  “How’s business?”

“It never falters.”  Joyce led her into the tiny sitting room.  “It won’t be long before the afternoon rush begins.”

Sarah nodded, curtly.  There was never any shortage of customers for the brothel.  The sailors, the militiamen ... even townspeople with no qualms about cheating on their wives ... they all passed through the brothel’s doors.  And they talked ... oh yes, they talked.  Sarah had taken full advantage when she’d started to put her plan together, developing networks that stretched all the way to Kingstown and beyond.  She felt a flicker of the old disgust as she took a seat and accepted a cool drink, leaning back in her chair as she sipped.  She was prepared to do anything to advance her cause, but ... she liked to think there were at least some limits.

“The girls have been busy, then,” she said.  “How are the newcomers?”

“Patty is too flirty to be of any real use, although she does have a knack for making customers happy,” Joyce said.  “Hannah and Bella are doing well.  I’ve got them listening to what their clients say and reporting back to me.  Grace” - she shuddered - “I’m afraid Grace got the treatment.  She’s nothing more than a walking corpse.”

Sarah shuddered, too.  She’d been threatened with being adjusted once or twice, when she’d been shipped to New Doncaster and put to work in the brothels.  It was a far cry from the handsome farmer she’d been promised.  And if Grace had been adjusted ... she cursed under her breath.  The poor girl might walk and talk and open her legs on command, but her personality was gone.  Her will was gone.  She followed orders, any orders.  It was sickening.  

Joyce seemed to sense her unease.  “The militia has been in a bit of a tizzy,” she said.  “They lost fifty men in the outback, from what they say.  Their commander got recalled to Kingstown in a hurry, leaving someone else in command.  I don’t know if reinforcements are on the way ...”

“They didn’t lose fifty men,” Sarah said.  They’d recovered five bodies and stripped them of everything before dumping them in the swamp.  There might have been more, but she doubted it.  The militia couldn’t have moved fifty or more men up the road without being noticed a long time before they sprang the ambush.  “They’re lying again.”

“Or a bunch of young twats deserted and their superiors decided it would be better to claim they’d been killed in honourable combat,” Joyce said.  “One of our clients was going on and on about someone who got himself killed, along with a few others.”

Sarah filed it away for later consideration.  The militia was very much a mixed bag, from men who wanted to look brave and heroic without actually being in any real danger to time-servers who’d been given a flat choice between service or jail.  The men who wanted to genuinely face danger joined the army instead, which shipped them from trouble spot to trouble spot without giving them much, if any, time to rest and recuperate.  She knew from grim experience they tended to be tougher than the militia.  They certainly had more mobile firepower and air support on call.

And the person who was complaining might be worth trying to recruit, she thought.  She had a number of militiamen on the payroll, from dissidents to outright traitors.  It’s something to think about when we have a moment.

“We also got a message from Kingstown,” Joyce added.  “It’s not good news.”

Sarah braced herself.  She’d been expecting the hammer to fall for months now.  The more she’d woven the disparate rebel factions into a single entity, the greater the chance of a single mishap - or traitor - leading to the destruction of the entire force.  She was all too aware there were people, like Steve, who wanted to take action, who wanted to lash out at the landowners and their allies.  And yet, if they didn’t manage to crush most of the opposition in their first strike, victory would become a great deal more challenging.  She thought of the facilities along the coast and shuddered.  If they remained in enemy hands, the war would never be won.

“The government has concluded an agreement for the deployment of two Marine units to the planetary surface,” Joyce said.  “One unit will apparently secure the spaceport while stiffening the militia, the other will embark on an ambitious training program to raise new soldiers to strengthen the army.”

Her lips twitched.  “Stiffening the militia is our job.”

Sarah ignored the weak joke as she forced herself to think.  The army was tough.  Anything that made it stronger was bad news.  And yet, where were the recruits going to come from?  She’d done her best to assess the manpower available to the landowners - a difficult task, given how much was considered classified - and even her most pessimistic calculations had suggested the landowner manpower was reaching its limits.  They were reluctant to draw on townies ...

They might have changed their minds about that, she thought.  If they think we’ll kill most of the new recruits, they might think they won’t have to pay a price for giving the townies guns and teaching them how to use them.

It was possible, she supposed, although she had her doubts.  The townies might be quieter than debtors and indents - and rebels - and they certainly had more to lose, but they also knew they were just as screwed as the rest of society.  They would demand a high price before they started flocking to the recruiting stations; they’d want better political representation, perhaps even a widened franchise.  They might even want some of the unsettled islands to be declared estates, then constituencies.  And who knew what would happen then?

“It might be nothing more than a flash in the pan,” she said.  She had some allies amongst the townies, mainly younger citizens who were starting to chafe against society’s rules.  “Or it might be quite serious.”

“The Marines are supposed to be good,” Joyce warned.  “Their combat record is unmatched.”

Sarah smiled.  “They said that about the militia, too,” she pointed out.  “And half the time the militiamen don’t stand their ground when they don’t have heavy firepower on call.”

“And half the time they do,” Joyce pointed out.

“Yeah.”  Sarah leaned back in her chair and tried to recall what little she’d heard about the Marine Corps.  She’d had a lone professor who’d seemed to have a man-crush on the Marines - he’d left the university under unexplained circumstances, shortly before she’d been arrested and deported - but the remainder had been long on military-bashing and short on details she could use.  “They might just be overrated.”

She shook her head.  “When are they due to arrive?”

“I don’t know,” Joyce said.  “There was some suggestion they were either on the way or already here, but details were sparse.  Reading between the lines, I think our Prime Minister and his cronies got the negotiations started without bothering to get approval from the MPs, then did a lot of arm-twisting to get them to agree to support the plan.  It’s possible the government wasn’t given much of a choice.  We supply products that simply can’t be had anywhere else.  It’s possible outside powers told the government to take the Marines and clean up their mess, or else.”

“Or else what?”  Sarah wasn’t so sure.  “An invasion?”

“It’s possible,” Joyce said.  “And if that happens it would be pretty bad for the landowners.”

“True.”  Sarah snickered.  “I guess they’d outlive their usefulness very quickly.”

“Within seconds,” Joyce confirmed.

Sarah smiled, then leaned forward.  “Do we have any confirmation?  Anything we can use to make contact with off-world allies?”

“Not as far as I know,” Joyce said.  “A lot of what I hear, as you know, is second or third-hand.  There’s just no guarantee even a majority of it is accurate.  The negotiations were conducted by people who don’t patronise my brothels, so ...”

“They don’t talk out of turn,” Sarah finished.  The truth would get out - it always did - but it would take time.  “If we secure control of the world, quickly, would they deal with us instead?”

“I don’t know,” Joyce said.  “There are just too many unanswered questions.”

“And no way to get them answered in a hurry,” Sarah said.  She glanced at the clock as it chimed, once.  Time was running out.  She wanted to be well clear of the town before the sailors were released from the docks.  “We may have to move our timetable up a little.”

“It might be a good idea,” Joyce agreed.  “If they tighten up the sensor network in orbit, it’ll certainly make life a great deal harder.”

Sarah stood, brushing down her skirt.  “Keep me informed,” she said.  “Try and cultivate someone with the access we need, perhaps someone in the militia HQ.  There has to be someone who can be induced to give us more accurate information.”

“Oh, there will be,” Joyce said.  “I know a couple who have ... left themselves open to blackmail.  It will be risky to make contact, but ... it might work.”

“Do it.”  Sarah pulled her hat into place.  “Leave the regular message in the standard dead drop.”

“Understood,” Joyce said.  “Do you want to meet the new girls?”

Sarah shook her head.  It was better they never saw her.  What they didn’t know they couldn’t be forced to tell.  And besides ... she shivered.  She didn’t want to remember what it had been like to work in the brothel.  She knew, all too well, that she could easily have been worked until she dropped and then left to die.

But I survived, she told herself, as she took her leave.  And I’ll make them pay.

Chapter Eight

New Doncaster Spaceport, New Doncaster

Roland had been cautioned, more than once, that military service was ninety-nine percent boredom and one percent screaming terror, but he’d never understood how true that saying was until he’d boarded the transport and found himself forced to wait, with very little to do, until the freighter reached New Doncaster.  He hadn’t entirely wasted the time - he had spoken to each of his subordinates, as well as reading and rereading all the files - but it still felt as though he’d done nothing.  It was a relief, when the freighter finally entered orbit, to board a shuttle for the surface.  At least he was doing something.

He strapped himself in and listened, with half an ear, to the pilot’s safety briefing.  It was remarkably serious, compared to the normal quirky lectures from pilots who took their small craft into danger time and time again.  New Doncaster’s weather was dangerously unpredictable, the pilot warned, and they might run into a storm at any moment.  Roland doubted it could be as hazardous as a drop into the teeth of enemy fire, but he checked his belt and straps carefully as the shuttle disengaged from the freighter.  Rachel sat next to him, as prim and composed as ever.  He still hadn’t managed to draw her out of her shell.

The viewscreen came to life as the shuttle descended into the atmosphere.  New Doncaster was a blue-green orb, but - as the shuttle continued its flight - the planet started to look decidedly odd.  A green-blue band of life was wrapped around the equator, the northern and southern hemispheres -  outside the habitable zone - half-hidden under white clouds that looked harmless, but were actually incredibly dangerous to anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the storms.  It wasn’t impossible to live outside the band of islands that made up the habitable zone, according to the files, but it was extremely difficult.  The only people who risked it were isolationists or runaways.   Everyone else kept their distance from the de facto border.

He gritted his teeth as the shuttle rocked, violently.  He’d made a dozen parachute drops during his training, jumping from aircraft carefully designed to look as though they were going to fall apart at any moment, but this was worse.  The shuttle shook again and again, unnerving him despite his appearance.  He felt powerless, helpless.  There was nothing he could do to save himself, if something went badly.  Taking a parachute and jumping into the heart of a storm would be suicide.  He wondered, grimly, if the shuttle would try to abort the landing and head back to orbit.  The files had cautioned that it had happened on a regular basis.

There’s no danger, he told himself, as the shaking grew even worse.  The shuttle was in the grip of an angry god, intent on ripping the craft to pieces.  There’s no danger ...

Rachel seemed perfectly calm, somehow, as the shuttle steadied just long enough for them to relax before the shaking started again.  Roland asked himself how she could remain so calm in the face of apparent danger.  It wasn’t as if she was stupid.  He was sure there was a sharp mind hiding behind her frumpy exterior, a degree of expertise he knew he couldn’t hope to match.  And yet ... he resisted the urge to take her hand as the shaking grew worse and worse.  It wouldn’t make things any better for either of them.

The shuttle dropped, abruptly.  Roland saw a cloud of something rushing towards them, an instant before the viewscreen blanked.   The shuttle’s gravity field flickered - for a horrible moment, he was sure the shuttle had flipped upside down - before the flight steadied once again.  He didn’t allow himself to relax, not this time.  He’d been caught by surprise once before.

“Lady and gentleman,” the pilot said, through the intercom.  “We have passed through the worst of the storm and are now en route to Kingstown Island Spaceport.”

Roland frowned as the viewscreen came back to life.  Kingstown was a fairly large island, large enough - according to the files - that calling it an island understated the point.  There was enough land surface for everything from farms to factories, from a spaceport that shipped raw materials to high orbit to a fishing industry that kept the islands fed.  His unease deepened as the shuttle swept over the waters, the viewscreen focusing - briefly - on hundreds of ships in the blue waters below.  They were a strange mixture, everything from simple sailing ships to metallic tramp freighters and even a large cruise liner.  The files had insisted the planetary tech base was actually quite low, allowing the inhabitants to maintain it without a constant stream of supplies from the interplanetary and interstellar community.  It made sense, but Roland suspected it was a political nightmare.  People who knew about the existence of fusion cores and drive fields wouldn’t be happy with anything lesser.  Who wanted to drive a petrol car, or sail a wind-powered boat, when they could have something far more efficient?  And yet, a colony world that became dependent on the outside universe was doomed.  Roland had been told that hundreds had regressed, sharply, as interstellar trade fell into the shitter.   New Doncaster was fortunate to have escaped that fate.

He leaned back in his seat as the spaceport came into view.  It was larger than he’d expected; a handful of prefabricated hangars, a cluster of landing pads and runaways, several aircraft that looked disturbingly primitive, a pair of buildings that looked like military housing and were probably transient barracks for new colonists.  A pair of air defence units were clearly in evidence, situated a little too close to the fence for his peace of mind.  His heart sank as he realised just how many buildings were far too close to the fence.  They provided far too much cover for anyone who wanted to sneak up on the fence and start shooting.  There were no clear fields of fire outside the spaceport.  Whoever had designed the installation clearly hadn’t considered the possibility of it coming under attack.

And it will, Roland thought.  It’s the gate to the stars.

The shuttle came to a halt, then lowered itself to a landing pad.  A thump ran through the craft as it touched the ground.  Roland felt tired and worn, as if he’d been through a major firefight rather than a bumpy shuttle ride.  It was all he could do to unstrap himself, as soon as the safety light clicked off, and force himself to stand.  His uniform was damp with sweat.  Rachel, beside him, looked utterly unbothered by the flight and landing.  Roland eyed her thoughtfully, then hefted his knapsack and headed for the hatch.  It was already hissing open.  The shuttle pilot probably wanted to get back to orbit as quickly as possible.

“Captain Allen said he’d meet us at the spaceport,” Rachel said, quietly.  “Remember, he outranks you.”

Roland nodded, curtly.  He might be a captain, at least on paper, but it was nothing more than a brevet rank.  Captain Michel Allen, on the other hand, was an experienced officer who’d been in the corps longer than Roland had been alive, with a string of accomplishments that made Roland feel like a fraud.  He tried to tell himself that Captain Allen had been young too, once upon a time, but it was hard to believe.  The man’s record was just too long.  The idea of Roland working with him, let alone giving orders to him, was absurd ...

And you don’t have the authority to give him orders, he reminded himself.  You’re meant to work closely with him, not to boss him around.

The shuttle was cool, but the heat struck him the moment he stepped through the hatch.  He started to sweat, again, as he looked around the spaceport.  The sunlight was a shade too bright, the blue sky a strange shade that felt subtly wrong.  He saw a haze over the distant city, suggesting that visibility was going to be as variable as everything else.  A pair of tiny aircraft rested near the hangar, both so small he couldn’t help wondering if they were toys.  It seemed impossible that they could fly.  The shuttle wasn’t the largest spacecraft in the galaxy and yet it made the aircraft look tiny.

His sense of unease grew stronger as they made their way towards the spaceport terminal.  A cluster of Marines were guarding the fence, and running patrols around the hangars, but the whole arrangement looked dangerously insecure.  People in local clothing – short-sleeved shirts and shorts - were everywhere, carrying boxes and goods towards the waiting shuttles without - as far as he could tell - any real vetting.  He doubted Captain Allen was pleased.  Why hadn’t he done anything about it?  His men could have taken a great many more precautions, without impeding the spaceport’s staff as they went about their work.  He glanced up as a pair of Raptors passed overhead, weapons pods clearly visible under their stubby wings.  The Marines were making a show of force.  He had a feeling that boded ill. 

The terminal loomed in front of them.  An older man, wearing simple BDUs, stepped outside and looked them up and down.  Roland straightened automatically.  Captain Allen - he’d read the man’s file - bore the scars of decades in the corps, his bearing suggesting he’d been in and out of the hospital several times during the course of his career.  His hair was hidden under his helmet, but Roland was sure it was cropped close to his scalp.  Captain Allen looked like an officer who’d decided practicality was more important than appearance.  Roland approved.  He’d been cautioned that anyone who put appearance ahead of practicality was likely to get himself and far too many other people killed.

“Sir.”  Roland didn’t salute.  They were in a combat zone.  “Marine Auxiliary Captain Roland Windsor, reporting.”

“Glad to see you.”  Allen’s voice was terminally unimpressed.  “This way.”

He led them into the terminal, past a set of empty inspection stands and into a small office.  It looked strange, a combination of expensive furnishings and military-grade folding tables, chairs and terminals.  A small coffeepot hummed by the wall, next to a drinks cabinet that had been carefully sealed with duct tape; the wall was covered with maps of the planet and the major islands, pinned over more elaborate decorations that were more likely to distract rather than inform.  Roland guessed the office had once belonged to the spaceport manager.  It had the unmistakable whiff of someone who saw his position as a chance to get rich while doing as little as possible.  He wondered, idly, what had happened to the former owner.

“Sit.”  Allen poured them both mugs of coffee, then sat himself.  “What do you make of our defences.  Speak freely.”

Roland hesitated, then took the plunge.  “Dangerously insecure, sir.”

“Correct.”  Allen met his eyes.  “On paper, I have an entire company under my command.  In practice, I have sixty-three Marines and thirty auxiliaries.  Half of those are required to remain on Quick Reaction Alert at all times, when they’re not flying on patrol or sweeping through suspected rebel camps.  I don’t have the manpower to secure the spaceport properly and, for political reasons, I am not allowed to tighten security, vet the workers or do much of anything as long as the spaceport doesn’t come under direct attack.  The only reason we’re stationed here, Windsor, is because the local government cannot afford to lose the spaceport.  It would put a real crimp in their operations.”

“And cut off their income from off-world,” Roland added.  “I assume the rebels know that too, sir?”

“Yes.”  Allen indicated the map.  “So far, they’ve made no major effort to test our defences, but we suspect that’ll change shortly.  They have a certain interest in keeping the spaceport intact too, as large parts of the planet’s economy are dependent on a constant flow of income, but” - he shrugged - “there are limits.  They’d take a hit, sure, if the spaceport went up in flames.  It wouldn’t be lethal, not for them.  It’s just a matter of time before they decide the spaceport has outlived its usefulness.”

He made a face.  “I won’t sugar-coat a shit sandwich for you.  The locals are in denial - their intelligence staff couldn’t find its own asshole with both hands and a GPS terminal - but there’s a constant low-level insurgency going on beyond the line.  Lots of little incidents, some of which are probably spontaneous, some of which are clearly planned and carried out by larger rebel cells; a steady stream of murders, kidnappings, bombings and general harassment operations.  The rebels haven’t yet made the transition to a high-level insurgency, one that poses a threat to the government, but I think it won’t be long now.  Quite frankly, they should have taken the threat seriously a great deal sooner.”

“I read the reports, sir,” Roland said.  “How long do we have?”

Allen snorted.  “My mid-case assessment is six months to a year, unless the government wises up and starts making - and honouring - promises.  A lot depends on just how many cells the rebels manage to establish over here, how many alliances they form between the different factions.  Best-case, we’re looking at five years, which is probably mindlessly optimistic; worst-case, it could kick off tomorrow.  I think the only thing holding them back is the grim awareness that once the operational tempo gets up and running, they’re going to have to take and hold territory and that will pin them in place.  They won’t be able to slip back into the undergrowth and vanish.”

Roland took a breath.  “How much support can you give me?”

“Very little,” Allen said.  “Like I told you, most of my force is pinned down guarding the spaceport.  I can’t spare more than a couple of platoons, at best, for supporting the local forces.  If you don’t get your forces up and running before the balloon goes up, the locals are fucked.  Whatever emerges after the war, it won’t be anything like the current order.”

“I see.”  Roland wasn’t sure if Allen was being realistic or defeatist.  The Marines could and would hammer the insurgents, whenever they showed themselves, but they couldn’t be everywhere at once.  And if they took down a Raptor ... Allen would lose half his deployable force in a single, terrible moment.  “How are the locals, as a fighting force?”

“A very mixed bag,” Allen said.  “Their regular army is reasonably professional, certainly when compared to the militia, but it is just too small to be effective.  The militia ranges from very tough and experienced bushwhackers to pretty-boy units that refuse to patrol, even inside the wire, because they’d get their uniforms mussed.  Their officers are sometimes very good, with genuine leadership skills, but the majority are - at best - little more than timeservers.   They also have issues with serving away from their homes and families.  The regulars have been trying to deploy officers to stiffen the militia, just as we’re intended to do, but the results have been decidedly mixed.  The militia officers are usually high-class assholes and refuse to take orders from middle-class assholes.”

“I know the type, sir,” Roland said.  “They’ll be screaming for help when the insurgency kicks into high gear.”

“By then, it will be too late,” Allen said.  “There was a bill proposed in their parliament, six months ago, for regular officers to outrank their militia counterparts.  The MPs were outraged at the very thought and flatly refused to allow the bill to be debated, let alone voted upon and signed into law.  The bottom line, as I said in my reports, is that the planet is unwilling or unable to help itself and, if it wasn’t so important to the sector’s economy, I would advise pulling out and letting the locals fight it out for supremacy.”

Roland grimaced.  “Who do you think will win?”

“Hard to say.”  Allen sipped his coffee.  “The rebels have the better cause.  They also have a great deal of support.  There’s a lot of resentment nearly everywhere, even here.  We’ve picked up rumours of a new rebel leader, one who’s united the cells under his banner.  And we think they have some support from off-world.  It isn’t impossible.  There’s quite a few factions amongst the spacers who want to give the planetary government a black eye.

“On the other land, the government has a sizable amount of firepower - with or without us - and, if used properly, could prevent the rebels from gaining control over the core islands and, eventually, winning the war.  They could promote their better officers and discharge the incompetents, allowing the former to actually fight without being held back; they could take action to address the inequalities in their society, the electoral system that makes it hard for anyone who isn’t a landowner to make any real changes to their society.  But that would require them to take a good hard look at their own world, and how their own actions are making things worse for themselves.  I doubt the government can do it without being overthrown by their own people.”

“Crap,” Roland said.

Allen laughed.  “The government liaison officer is on his way,” he said.  “He’s a good man, but he’s in the political doghouse.  Hopefully, you and your team can work with him to build up the regulars before it’s too late.  Time is not on your side.”

Rachel cleared her throat.  “Sir, why is he in the doghouse?”

“He had the misfortune to survive when an upper-class twit got himself and a bunch of others killed,” Allen said.  “And they made sure he got the blame.”

Roland’s heart sank.  That boded ill.

Chapter Nine

New Doncaster Spaceport, New Doncaster

It was hard, as Richard drove the official car through the checkpoint and parked outside the spaceport terminal, not to feel a flicker of resentment.  No, he corrected himself; a lot of resentment.  He was an officer on detached duty and he should have had a driver, as well as a bodyguard, but both of those perks had been denied.  He’d been cautioned, in the week since he’d been assigned to the Marines as a liaison officer, to keep his head down as much as possible.  He had too many enemies in high places now, all determined to make him pay for their failings.  And ...

He felt a moment of wistfulness as he spotted the Marines patrolling the perimeter.  They didn’t have to wait for orders from superiors who didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on, any more than they had to work their way through a long checklist before they called down fire on enemy positions.  Their officers knew what they were doing and, when their subordinates had concerns, responded with neither sarcasm nor total indifference.  It was hard not to feel he should have joined the Marines instead, even though it would have meant service light-years from his homeworld.  The Marines didn’t have so many nitwits in high places.  Insisting their commanding officers worked their way up the ladder, rather than buying commissions, ensured they developed an understanding of the realities of war before it was too late.  They wouldn’t have walked straight into an obvious trap.

His heart clenched.  He’d spoken to his father, and some of his friends, and they’d all agreed he needed to keep his head down.  He wasn’t even allowed to talk about what had happened to his former CO.  He could have cautioned the other regulars about how the rebels had better weapons and tactics now, but ... he wasn’t even allowed to do that.  No one wanted to hear about the ambush, let alone think about the implications.  He liked to think that someone in the military was aware of the threat, and was considering what to do about it, but he doubted it.  The landowners had spoken.  The ambush had succeeded because Richard had been an incompetent failure; anyone who dared suggest otherwise would rapidly find themselves reassigned to the islands on the edge of the habitable zone.

There haven’t been many incidents here, he reminded himself, crossly.  It’s easy to believe there’s nothing to worry about if you haven’t seen the enemy at close range.

He sighed.  He’d checked the records, when he hadn’t been feeling sorry for himself, and discovered the rebels hadn’t been active on Kingsland.  It wasn’t reassuring.  The rebels would have to take the battle to the capital island if they wanted to win and the lack of enemy activity suggested they were planning something.  There hadn’t even been much labour agitation over the past six months.  It was quiet.  Too quiet.  Richard was grimly certain it was just a matter of time before something exploded.

And then we’ll have no time to recover, he thought.  They’ll hit us so hard we’ll lose the war in the first blow.

He looked up, then climbed out of the car as two people came into view.  One was a young man, so handsome he could have stepped right off a recruiting poster; Richard loathed him on sight.  Short dark hair, dark eyes, a strong chin, muscles on his muscles ... the bastard had either had genetic enhancements spliced into his bloodline or he’d spent an awful lot of time having cosmetic surgery.  Richard was sure all the young women wanted him.  The young woman behind him was ... Richard frowned, unsure if he was seeing things.  She looked ... odd, wearing an ill-fitting uniform that didn’t, he noted, impede her movements in any way.  Sloppy, without actually being such; he wondered, suddenly, if she wanted to be underestimated.  She looked like a woman on the plantations, someone who’d wear a very loose dress to hide her figure.  And yet, she was a Marine.  Perhaps.  He wasn’t entirely sure what a Marine auxiliary was.  The briefing notes had been so vague he’d been unable to make head or tail of them.

“Welcome to New Doncaster,” he said.  He was damned if he’d call the newcomer sir, not until he proved himself.  “I’m Lieutenant Richard Collier, Regular Army.”

“Captain Roland Windsor, Marine Auxiliaries,” the newcomer said.  His accent was odd, a strange mixture of upper and lower class.  “Thank you for meeting us.”

Richard nodded, curtly, as the woman introduced herself too.  Roland was a Windsor?  There was a family with that name amongst the landowners, although - as far as he knew - none of their members had left the planet and joined the Marines.  The only one he’d met had been an excellent sniper, although - like the rest of the landowners - reluctant to follow orders from a townie.  He dismissed the thought in a moment of irritation.  The odds of Roland Windsor being related to the Windsor Family were incredibly low.  It wasn’t as if they had a monopoly on the name.

He opened the car doors.  “I have orders to show you the training grounds, then I am at your disposal.”

“Thank you.”  Roland sat carefully, in a manner that would allow him to draw his pistol in an instant.  “I understand you recently encountered the rebels?”

“Yes.”  Richard bit off a response that would probably get him marched in front of a court-martial board.  Again.  “It’s all in my report.”

“It wasn’t forwarded to me,” Roland said.  “And I would like to hear it from you.”

Richard sat in the driver’s seat and turned the key in the ignition.  He wasn’t surprised the report hadn’t been sent to the newcomers, even though they needed to know what they were up against.  The brief report of Captain Tarquin Ludlow’s death had been long on praise for the dead man and short on actual detail, to the point no one who knew anything about the military could believe a word of it.  There’d certainly been no attempt to examine the lessons of the brief, yet violent encounter.  They weren’t even trying to examine the mistakes they’d insisted he’d made.  And now the newcomers were asking him.

He guided the car through the gates and onto the road.  “Are you asking on or off the record?”

“Off,” Roland said.  “A great deal gets left out of the official reports.”

Richard said nothing for a long moment.  It was hard to be sure, but he had the impression Roland had seen very little - if any - active service.  Marine training was supposed to be good, the best of the best, but - outside bad flicks - drill instructors didn’t really torture, maim and kill their recruits.  There were limits to how far they could go, particularly with live ammunition.  Roland might have aced training exercises while never having been in any real danger.  A bullet - a real bullet - cracking through the air could easily ruin someone’s day.

“Off the record, then,” he said.  Roland had asked, after all.  It would be rude not to answer.  “What happened was a goddamned nightmare.”

He went through the whole story, starting with Captain Tarquin Ludlow being assigned as the unit’s CO and ending with his recall back to Kingstown.  Roland listened, asking a handful of questions that ranged from practical to pointless.  Richard wasn’t sure if Roland was trying to cover all the bases, get a solid read on Richard himself or doing something that only made sense to an inexperienced Marine.  He understood questions about rebel weapons and tactics, but the politics of landowner militiamen?

The car glided down the road, circumventing the capital until it finally reached a checkpoint outside the garrison.  Richard stopped by the armed guards, allowed them to inspect his papers, then drove into the garrison itself.  Memories rose in his mind as the skies started to darken.  He’d done his basic training here, when he’d been young and foolish.  He wondered, idly, how many of his peers had survived.  The government might not be interested in acknowledging it, but there was a war on.  The loss rate was terrifying.

He parked the car, then climbed outside and opened the doors.  The air felt hot and humid, a clear sign a thunderstorm was on the way.  Roland looked around with interest, his face under tight control.  Richard tried to see the training ground through his eyes and winced, inwardly, at just how primitive it must seem.  The prefabricated barracks were watertight, and the training ground itself was solid concrete, but the remainder of the facilities were sorely lacking.  His superiors had had to fight for every clip of ammunition, filling in reams of paperwork every time they wanted to hold a training exercise.  It wasn’t a surprise that most of the regulars were terrible shots.  They wanted to do better, of course, but they just couldn’t get the ammunition.  The budget wasn’t there.

Rachel caught his eye.  “Where is everyone?”

“There are two training garrisons,” Richard told her.  He wasn’t sure what she really was, if indeed she was anything beyond an aide, but he wasn’t going to be rude.  “Right now, the current training class are exercising in the second garrison” - he waved a hand towards the distant hills - “somewhere over there.  This garrison is largely empty right now.”

“Really?”  Roland sounded concerned.  “How many men can you train at any one time?”

“In theory, a thousand,” Richard said.  It was hard to keep the bitterness from his voice.  “In practice, considerably fewer.”

“How so?”  Roland didn’t look at him, choosing instead to survey the rows of prefabricated barracks.  “You need a steady stream of replacements.”

Richard hesitated.  He knew the answer.  Everyone knew the answer.  But telling the truth to outsiders might get him in trouble.  More trouble.  And who knew what would happen then?

Roland seemed to read his mind.  “Whatever you tell us will not be repeated.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Richard said.  Oddly, he almost believed Roland.  The young man - Richard thought Roland was a year or two younger than he was - had an air of cool certainty that made it hard to doubt Roland.  It was probably an act, but ...  “Do you really want the truth?”

“Yes.”

Richard took a breath.  “First, the bosses are reluctant to recruit from the lower classes,” he said.  “They were reluctant to accept me, when I volunteered, and my family is not in debt.  And second, the training cadre is often parcelled out to the combat zone.  Too many of them get killed, or worse, before they can be rotated back again or new ones prepped to take over.  Does that answer your question?”

“I see.”  Roland said nothing for a long moment.  “We did bring a handful of new training staff with us.  We should be able to start recruiting and training on a far larger scale.”

Good luck with that, Richard thought, sardonically.  There weren’t enough landowners to fill the training slots, even if they wanted to be infantry, and they remained reluctant to recruit townies.  Taking debtors and indents ... the nasty part of his mind wanted to suggest they tried to propose just that, in hopes half his superiors would have heart attacks the moment they got the message.  The problem isn’t a shortage of warm bodies, the problem is that they don’t want to use the warm bodies they’ve got.

“We’ll also need to expand the facilities,” Roland continued.  A low rumble split the air.  “What is that?”

“Thunder,” Richard said.  He was surprised Roland didn’t recognise it, although ... if the stories about humanity’s dead homeworld were true, most natives had lived in warrens far beneath the surface.  They might not even have seen the sky, not until it finally fell.  “We’d better get into cover.”

He led the way into the nearest barracks and stayed by the door, watching as they looked around the building.  It wasn’t bad, just very basic.  The recruits had cleaned it from top to bottom before boarding their buses, leaving it as good as new.  Richard remembered his first days in the barracks and winced.  It hadn’t been easy, not when he’d been away from home for the first time.  Others had had it worse.  They’d never so much as shared a room with anyone, not even their siblings, before joining the army.   They’d had to get used to it in a hurry.

Lightning flashed.  The rain started to fall.  Richard crossed his arms over his chest and watched the raindrops splashing on the training ground, his heart sinking as visibility dropped to almost nothing.  There were guards at the gates, and a handful of regular patrols around the fence, but the training camp was almost undefended.  The rebels hadn’t attacked yet, but it was just a matter of time.  The only upside, as far as he could tell, was that there was nothing irreplaceable within the base.  They could repair any damage quickly, if the base remained in their hands.

Roland joined him after he’d finished inspecting the bunks.  “Just how close are we to the capital?”

“Not far,” Richard told him.  He had happy memories of scrambling over the wire and sneaking out for a night on the town, then sneaking back into the base before sunrise.  It had cost him badly - he shuddered to think of going through morning exercises with a hangover - but it had been worth it.  There hadn’t been much to do in the barracks after lights out, beyond sleep.  “We used to sneak out every so often for fun and games.”

“Really.”  Roland sounded disapproving.  “That’ll have to change.”

Richard felt a hot flash of anger.  “Do you think you can just say something and make it happen?”

“No.”  Roland looked, just for a second, as if Richard had struck a nerve.  “This training centre is far too close to the city.  We’ll need to establish a more permanent base somewhere a little further away.”

“And how do you intend to do that?”  Richard gave him a sardonic look.  “Do you think it’ll be easy buying the land and turning it into a base?”

“No,” Roland said.  “But there are lots of uninhabited islands, are there not?  One of them could become a training base.”

“Sure,” Richard agreed.  “If you can convince the owner to sell.”

Roland shrugged, his eyes on the rain.  “There’s never any shortage of problems to solve,” he said.  “And none of them will be solved if you don’t try.”

“Trite,” Richard said.  “Is that what they teach you in the Marine Corps?”

“It makes a change from fifty-nine ways to kill someone with both hands tied behind your back,” Roland said.  It was hard to tell if he was joking or making a threat.  “It’s easy to point out problems.  It’s harder to solve them.”

He met Richard’s eyes.  “What do you see as our biggest problem?”

“You’re here to assist us in expanding our regulars, right?”  Richard looked back at him, evenly.  “The problem is, most of our issues are not ones you can solve.  The recruiting pool is pretty small, the number of people willing to join for shit pay, shittier officers and the chance to wind up being shot at by even shittier rebels is even smaller.  You’re coming in from somewhere on the far side of the universe, convinced you can fix our problems.  You don’t even know what those problems are.”

“Then help me to figure them out,” Roland said.  His voice was so calm Richard knew it was an act.  “We can solve the problems together.”

“I don’t think you can.”  Richard turned away, staring into the rain.  It was growing hotter, despite the downpour.  “There is no way you can solve one set of problems without solving them all and the people you’d need to convince to help you ... they won’t help you, because they’ll be cutting their own throats.  I don’t think you have a hope in hell of accomplishing anything before time runs out, when everyone on the wrong side - and everyone caught in the middle - gets it in the neck.”

He shook his head as the downpour finally started to trickle to a halt.  His family would be caught in the middle, when the shit really hit the fan.  They’d be blamed for being townies or for contributing to the army or even trying to play a political role, in hopes the world could be changed before it was too late.  Whoever won, they’d lose.  He wondered if they shouldn’t try to leave, to purchase shuttle and starship tickets and depart before it was too late ... he shook his head.  He knew his family wouldn’t leave.  New Doncaster was their world.  And if they did go, they’d have to leave everything they’d built behind.

“We have to try,” Roland said.  He sounded optimistic.  Mindlessly so.  He could leave at any moment, if he wished.  He didn’t know what it was like to be trapped, to be locked in a cage with bars that were hard to see, yet very definitely there.  “And we can work together to do it.”

“We shall see.”  Richard shook his head.  “There are just too many problems to overcome.”

“Problems can be solved,” Rachel said.  

Richard tried not to jump.  He’d almost forgotten she was there.  

“It’s just a matter of taking the big problems and breaking them down into smaller problems, then solving them one by one,” Rachel added.

“Sure,” Richard said.  “And what if the problems are too big to break down?”

Roland grinned.  “There’s no such thing,” he said.  “Just ask the drill instructors.”