Retreat Hell (8 page)

It didn't seem fair, somehow.  Blake had been larger-than-life, a joker who would never see promotion ... but was happy serving as a Marine.  She remembered how he'd welcomed her to the platoon, just before the shit hit the fan on Han, and how they’d all played pranks on an Imperial Army unit that happened to share the same base.  And how he’d saved her life, more than once, during the maelstroms that had swept over Han, Earth, Avalon and Corinthian.  It didn't seem
right
that he should die on a world like Lakshmibai, during a pointless uprising that could only have resulted in disaster.  Even if the locals
had
wiped the CEF out, the starships would have taken a brutal revenge.

Blake would have laughed at her, she knew.  He’d never been sentimental, moving from girlfriend to girlfriend without bothering to mourn the loss of the previous girl.  All he needed was fighting, booze and sex and he was happy.  But Jasmine found it hard to let go of his memory.  He hadn't been the first to die under her command, but he was the one she’d known the best before he’d fallen.

“Not every death seems meaningful,” Colonel Stalker said, as he took the Tab.  It had been pulled out of the wreckage of the Royal Palace, weeks after Blake’s death.  “But Blake died saving lives.  None of us could ask for more.”

Jasmine nodded, not trusting herself to speak.  Blake would have teased her endlessly about sleeping with a reporter, then gently poked fun at her command style.  And he would have commanded 1
st
Platoon to Thule ...

She paused.  “Colonel,” she said.  “Who will take command of 1
st
Platoon?”

“I’m going to give it to Joe Buckley,” Colonel Stalker said.  “There aren't many other qualified candidates right now, not when I had to swap out half the experienced Marines to create room for the ones who used to be on detached duty.  Joe may screw up from time to time, but he’s very good at recovering from his mistakes.”

Jasmine nodded.  Like it or not, she would probably never be able to command another Marine platoon.  Besides, fitting in the newcomers would be a nightmare ... thankfully, Joe Buckley could be diplomatic as well as bloody-minded.  He was going to need it.

“I’ll speak to you again, probably just before you depart,” the Colonel concluded.  He placed Blake’s Tab in his drawer, then closed it.  Jasmine couldn't help feeling that she’d just said goodbye to all that remained of her friend.  “Let me know if you encounter any problems.”

“Yes, sir,” Jasmine said, tonelessly.

Outside, Mandy caught her arm.  “Are you all right?”

“I think so,” Jasmine lied.  Blake’s death
hurt
– and the unspoken reprimand was almost worse.  “And yourself?”

Mandy gave her an odd look.  “Jasmine ...”

“I’ll be fine,” Jasmine said, sharply.  The last thing she wanted was to have this discussion where someone – anyone – could hear it.  “I have to see to the loading.”

“Good luck,” Mandy said.  She gave Jasmine’s arm a squeeze, then let go.  “And tonight, would you like to join me for dinner?  Or we could go shopping.”

Jasmine had to smile at the eagerness in the younger girl’s voice, even though she recognised that Mandy was only trying to get her to talk.  God knew she’d needled Jasmine enough about her relationship ever since discovering that Jasmine was sharing an apartment with a man.

“We shall see,” she said.  There were no formal office hours in the military, no matter what some of the more ignorant politicians on Earth thought.  She would probably wind up sleeping on a cot in her office, instead of back home with her lover.  “Don't you have deployment work to handle too?”

Mandy smirked.  “That's what XOs are for,” she said, evilly.  “I merely pass on the orders, then let them handle it.”

“And you still get blamed if something goes wrong,” Jasmine reminded her.  She shook her head, running her hand through her short hair.  As always, it felt vaguely itchy to the touch, but she'd never been able to work up the nerve to remove it completely.  The treatment couldn't be reversed and her parents would have been horrified.  Her mother, in particularly, had been very proud of her long dark hair.  “Watch your back.”

“I will,” Mandy promised.

Jasmine smiled, then headed back towards her office.  There was no time to waste, not if they wanted to leave as soon as possible.  And there was deployment planning to be done.

And a new aide to break in
, she thought, ruefully. 
Bad timing.  Very bad timing
.

This seems obvious, you must admit, which leads neatly to the next question.  Why did the Empire fail to recognise that this was the problem and that it had to be tackled?

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

Violet Campbell prided herself on being the youngest spacecraft comptroller in orbit.  At twelve years old, barely entering puberty, she was a solid three years younger than the next oldest comptroller.  Indeed, she was young enough that half of the starship crews she met thought she was accompanying her mother rather than doing the job in her own right.  But she didn't let that get her down.  The excitement of meeting starship crewmen from hundreds of different worlds more than made up for them treating her as a little kid.

She stopped outside the airlock and waited, showing a patience few children from the planet below could master, while the giant starship linked hatches with Orbit Station.  Violet had grown up on the station, even during the dark years when almost no starships had visited Avalon and her father – the station manager – had seriously considered either joining the RockRats or shipping his children to Avalon, where a single failure wouldn’t risk ultimate catastrophe.  Not that Violet wanted to go, of course.  Half of what she'd heard about settled worlds made them sound hellish, while the remainder made them seem uncontrolled.  Who would want to live in a wilderness when they could live in the infinite reaches of outer space?  If her parents had seriously planned to send her groundside, she would have run away and joined the RockRats.  They would have welcomed her.

Bracing herself, she checked her reflection in the hatch’s porthole.  She was slim, the protective shipsuit she wore revealing her lack of curves to the world.  Her short dark hair surrounded a thin, almost elfin face.  She honestly wasn’t sure if she was pretty or not; her life on the station hadn't left her with many other women to compare herself to.  But she did have the glamour of working in space, her father had told her, although he’d also told her that she was too young to date.  And that anyone who tried to ask her out before she was sixteen would be hurled out the airlock without a spacesuit.  Violet suspected he was joking, but she didn't want to test it.  Her father could act rashly at times.

The hatch finally clicked, then hissed open, revealing a pressurised tube that linked the starship to the station.  Violet checked the telltales out of habit – her father had drummed caution into her, time and time again – but everything seemed fine.  None of the systems were reporting any atmospheric leaks or any other form of contamination.  The starship might be a Trade Federation liner rather than something from the Commonwealth, but there was nothing wrong with it.  Violet rather approved of the Trade Federation. 
They
never seemed surprised at encountering a young girl manning the immigration desk.

“Welcome to Avalon,” she called, as the first row of people emerged from the starship and made their way down the tube.  They were rich, she knew, rich enough to travel in cabins rather than stasis tubes.  “Can I have your papers please?”

One by one, they presented her with their credentials, which she checked against her datapad and then invited them to press their fingers against her scanner.  Avalon was an open world, her father had told her when she’d insisted on taking up the job, but there were some people who were permanently barred from entry.  If any of them appeared, he’d warned, she was to let them through into the station and sent a silent alert to the security team.  She was not, under any circumstances, to attempt to tackle the unwanted visitor by herself.  Violet found that rather insulting – she’d regularly taken top marks in armed and unarmed combat – but her father had been insistent.  Recognising the signs of a father about to withdraw permission for her to actually work, she’d shut up and stopped arguing.

She chatted briefly to some of the visitors as they made their way past her.  Most of them were coming on trade missions, opening up new lines of communication within the Commonwealth, while others were new to the planet.  A handful of younger men cheerfully told her that they’d come to join the Commonwealth Navy; Violet pointed them towards the recruitment station, then wished them well.  Who knew?  Maybe she'd see them again as naval crewmen.

The next line of passengers appeared shortly after the first set had vanished.  They looked rather more dishevelled, Violet noted; the bags they were carrying were all their worldly goods.  She had no difficulty in recognising men and women coming to Avalon to look for work and political freedom, both unavailable on their homeworld.  Most of them had no ID, so she took fingerprints and forwarded them on to the immigration office.  None of them seemed to be on the banned list.

“Report into the office when you reach the ground,” she told them, again and again.  “They’ll grant you residency permission and point you in the direction of some recruitment agencies.”

She watched them go, hoping they’d find the life they wanted.  New immigrants had plenty of opportunities to earn money, but some of them found themselves trapped in contracts that made them effective peons.  Her father had been known to grumble that the shadow of the old Council – Violet was too young to remember the days it ruled Avalon – clearly lived on in some people.  The big exploiters might have been removed, but there were plenty of others willing to exploit helpless immigrants just to save a few coins.

A final man emerged from the hatch, looking tired, thoroughly exhausted.  Violet looked at him – and stared.  He was tall, with short blonde hair and muscles that stood out even though the shapeless civilian clothes he was wearing.  There was a faint scar on his face that drew her attention to the shape of his mouth.  Violet flushed as she realised she was staring, then looked down at the datachip he held out to her.  He was yet another immigrant from a farming world.  Violet had heard about them from her father.  The highest level of technology was something called a mule plough, which forced its user to walk behind a mule for their entire life.  When she’d asked why, her father had gone on to rant about idiots who hated technology and were prepared to sentence themselves and their children to a hellish lifestyle, rather than admit they were wrong.

“Welcome to Avalon,” she said, as she plugged the datachip into the terminal.  There was a bleep as it recognised the man; apparently, one of the recruitment agencies had already cleared him through immigration and was waiting for him down below.  “You were invited here?”

“I saved the recruiter’s life,” the man explained.  His voice was almost completely devoid of an accent.  Violet was impressed.  Everyone was
supposed
to speak Imperial Standard, but there were so many different accents in the Commonwealth alone that some of the immigrants were almost incomprehensible.  “He offered me a fast ticket to Avalon, but I had to wait until I had taken care of my family.”

“Good for him,” Violet said.  She keyed her terminal, clearing the newcomer through to the first available shuttle to the surface, then smiled as she returned his datachip.  “Welcome to Avalon.”

“Thank you,” the newcomer said.

***

“I feel naked,” Joe Buckley commented.

Jasmine eyed him.  He was wearing standard combat blacks, the uniform worn by Marines when location-specific uniforms weren't issued, which fell loosely around his wiry body.  His belt was crammed with everything from spare clips of ammunition and medical supplies to a terminal and portable environmental sensors.  Apart from his head, every part of his body was decently covered.

“You’re not,” she said, shortly  “Or are you referring to actually being in command?”

Buckley scowled.  Everyone knew he had one kind of luck – bad.  Jasmine had watched in astonishment as Buckley stumbled from disaster to disaster, half of which should probably have killed him.  Only a remarkable talent for adapting had kept him alive – and only a strong friendship with the rest of the original 1
st
Platoon had kept him in the company.  Marines were rarely superstitious, preferring to leave such beliefs to spacers, but it was hard to deny that Buckley seemed to attract bad luck.

“It should be yours,” he pointed out.  “Or ...”

Jasmine nodded.  “I felt the same way when I was given command,” she admitted.  Marines weren't supposed to admit to doubts in front of outsiders, but they could confess to one another, if necessary.  “I wondered if I could handle it, particularly with you and Blake under my command.  But I have no doubt that you can do it too.”

She smiled, as reassuringly as she could.  Jasmine had been the youngest member of the platoon and, by rights, Blake should have taken command.  But he’d blotted his record rather spectacularly during the Cracker War and would probably have been demoted, if there had been any demotion possible without dishonourably discharging him from the corps.  As it was, he had been stripped of seniority and warned he might never be promoted again.  But he had redeemed himself and taken command ... long enough to die, only a few months ago.

“Thank you,” Buckley said.  He didn't sound convinced.  “And the specific orders for 1
st
Platoon?”

Jasmine took a breath.  “I have no specific orders as yet, apart from getting your asses onto the starships as soon as possible,” she said.  “I suggest you run endless drills to bond the platoon back together, after all the transfers.  There will almost certainly be work for you to do on Thule.”

“It sounds like Avalon, only worse,” Buckley agreed.  He gave her a grim smile.  “But what if my talent strikes again ...?”

“It hasn't, not since you married,” Jasmine reminded him.  “Speaking of which, how is Lila?”

Buckley grinned, openly.  “Pregnant,” he said.  “She has a little Marine ready to make a forced exit from her womb.”

Jasmine had to smile.  “Congratulations,” she said.  She felt an odd flicker of envy, which she pushed aside savagely.  Lila didn't have to worry about commanding troops in combat.  “When’s the baby due?”

“Seven months,” Buckley said.  He looked oddly worried.  “We only found out a few days ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Jasmine said.  She meant it.  Buckley had stayed on Avalon as part of Training Command, but after he’d returned to active duty he could have been shipped off at any moment.  And now ... it was unlikely that he would return to Avalon before the child was born, even if the rebels on Thule tried to launch a stand-up battle and lost.  “We could speak to the Colonel and ...”

Buckley shook his head.  “I don’t want to leave the rest of you alone,” he said.  “God knows I felt badly enough for skipping the mission to Corinthian.”

Jasmine winced, remembering the brief few hours she'd spent as a captive of Admiral Singh and her thugs.  The torture hadn't been very imaginative, but it had left her a shaken wreck long enough to make her fear that she would never return to active service.  And now she was unlikely ever to return to active service as a Marine anyway, now she was the CEF’s commander.  She was simply too important to be risked.

I didn't sign up to be a damn REMF
, she thought.

But you know what has to be done, which is more than can be said for most REMFs,
her own thoughts answered her. 
And besides, who else has the experience to take command of the CEF
?

“It wasn't your fault,” Jasmine said.

She shook her head.  How could she blame Joe Buckley for marrying a girl on Avalon when it had become increasingly clear that they would never return to the Core Worlds?  Marines did marry, they did have children ... and yet, those children rarely saw their fathers until they left active duty.  But the Slaughterhouse had provided a home for those families ... she wondered, with a bitter pang of grief and rage, just what had happened to the Slaughterhouse and the families there.  The corps had enemies who would happily take advantage of the chaos to strike at their very core.

“I still felt bad about it,” Buckley confessed.

“Never mind,” Jasmine said, bluntly.  She picked up a datachip and passed it to him.  “You will probably be deployed as raiders, capturing High-Value Targets and the like.  One target in particular is at the top of the list.”

“Our former comrade,” Buckley said.  “A Marine gone bad.”

He paused.  “
Has
he gone bad?”

Jasmine quirked an eyebrow, inviting him to continue.

“If I’d moved to Avalon ten years ago,” Buckley said, “I might well have joined the Crackers.  Would that have made me a bad person?”

“I wish I knew,” Jasmine said.  “But I do know that we need to keep Thule in our sphere of influence.”

She sighed.  Fighting the pirates and fanatics had been easy – and there had been no doubt over who was in the right.  But most of the conflicts the Marine Corps had been involved in included a great deal of moral ambiguity.  If
she’d
moved to Avalon, would she have supported the Empire-backed government – which just happened to be ruthlessly exploitative – or the insurgents resisting its control?

“Understood,” Buckley said.  He rose to his feet.  “If you’ll excuse me, then, I’ll take the platoon through at least one run on the exercise field before we make our way to the starships.  Let them hate, as long as they learn.”

Jasmine nodded, wordlessly.  That had been the motto of the Drill Instructors at the Slaughterhouse, men and women who had pushed the recruits to their limits.  Only one tenth of them had passed through Boot Camp with the qualifications necessary to progress to the Slaughterhouse – and only one tenth of
them
had graduated as Marines.  The remainder had quit, transferred into the Imperial Army, joined the Auxiliaries ... or died.  Their training was so realistic that it was quite possible for a careless recruit to kill himself – or get others killed.