He shuddered. The Marines wore lightweight powered armour and the crowd didn’t look to have any weapons capable of penetrating their protection, but if it came down to a fight a lot of civilians were going to die. Sidney had been through a modified training course, including one horrific simulation where they’d been shown precisely what happened when the suit was matched against unarmoured people. Bones had been shattered like twigs, skulls had been smashed to pulp; none of the simulated enemies had even been able to break into the suit and drag the Marine out.
The crowd grew louder and nastier. A handful of rocks came sailing over the wall, seemingly tossed at random. They didn’t come close to any of the Marines. Even so, Sidney’s hands felt sweaty as he gripped his rifle. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt any of the civilians, but he knew they would have no choice if the walls collapsed. It looked as though the crowd was putting intense pressure on the stone.
“We’re transferring the governors and their staff to the shuttles,” the Sergeant said. “Once the complex is clear, we’ll pull out.”
He must have decided that the buildings are indefensible, Sidney thought. The crowd was getting louder, several young men working hard to psych up the rest for a charge. Or expendable.
A dull roar of anger echoed through the air as the crowd saw the governors being pushed towards the shuttles. There was a loud crack as the gate broke open. Sidney cursed out loud, despite the order to maintain strict communications discipline, then lifted his rifle and fired warning shots over the crowd’s heads. It didn’t work. The pressure of the people at the rear kept pushing the people at the front forward, even if they’d changed their minds after seeing the Marines up close. Sidney braced himself, unsure of what to do. If they opened fire, there would be a massacre.
“Deploy gas,” the Sergeant ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Post said.
Sidney watched as gas shells crashed down amongst the rioters. Blue gas sprayed everywhere; the rioters disintegrated into a churning mass of panicky civilians as the gas worked its way into their eyes and throat. They stumbled everywhere, some of them knocked to the ground and trampled by their fellows; Sidney saw a young boy crushed to death before he could do anything to intervene.
“RETURN TO YOUR HOMES,” the Sergeant bellowed, through his suit’s loudspeaker. His voice drowned out the panic from the crowd. “GO HOME, REMAIN THERE.”
“You know,” Howell remarked, as the rioters slowly dispersed, “I thought we were meant to be liberating these people.”
Sidney rolled his eyes. Who could trust planet-dwellers to have any common sense? The rioters had only managed to hurt themselves. There were at least a dozen bodies on the ground, mixed in with choking people who had had a bad reaction to the gas. But at least the Marines hadn’t had to chop the crowd to pieces. There was no such thing as strength in numbers when one side was armed with plasma cannon and rail guns.
“They’re stupid panicky idiots,” the Sergeant said, sharply. Behind them, the first shuttles took off, clawing for sky. “Do what you can for the wounded, place the bodies somewhere out of the way. Hopefully, we won’t have to set up an administration for the entire planet.”
Sidney reflected on the Sergeant’s words as they patrolled the outer edge of the walls — and then the nearby streets, ensuring that looting and rioting was kept as far from their positions as possible. Planet-dwellers didn’t seem to have the intrinsic concern for their environment of the space-born. The moment the planet’s government had surrendered, he saw, the civilians had started to riot. And there was nothing he and his comrades could do.
The populace, those they saw, looked bitter and resentful. Sidney shook his head in disbelief. Didn’t these people know they’d been liberated from the Empire? But it looked as though they honestly didn’t care — or didn’t realise that it would be better after the Thousand Families were destroyed. And yet… he shook his head, grimly. These people had been lucky. The Empire hadn’t come down on them too hard. They had no conception of what life was like elsewhere…
By the time they were finally recalled to the ships, he was thoroughly sick of the population on the ground.
It wasn’t too surprising, Colin knew, that there were a handful of cabins in the superdreadnaught that were thoroughly wired for sound, despite being intended for senior officers. Imperial Navy officers and crewmen had no right to privacy, no matter what they thought; Imperial Intelligence heard and saw everything that took place on the starship. It seemed to have escaped their attention that there was so much data they couldn’t hope to analyse it all, Colin had decided, although Anderson had pointed out that the intimidation value alone was worth the effort. Colin, after all, had held most of his planning meetings on Jackson’s Folly.
Admiral Ravi Lanai, according to her file, wasn’t an experienced officer. Colin had expected someone older, with more time on a command deck, but he had to admit that was nothing more than prejudice. Ravi had certainly given him a hard time, even if she hadn’t managed to stop the rebel advance. But he knew that she hadn’t had the firepower to win. The question, Colin knew, was if her superiors would see it that way.
He nodded politely to her as he opened the hatch and stepped into the cabin. Ravi was seated on a sofa, reading her way through a book. She looked older than Stacy Roosevelt, as if she hadn’t really bothered to have her body kept young. But then, she did project an air of maturity that would have been utterly out of place on Stacy’s teenage body. Colin shuddered at the memory, then sat down facing Ravi. Maybe there was time to have a proper talk.
“Admiral,” he said, carefully. “You fought well.”
Ravi’s lips quirked. “As did you.”
Colin waited, then continued when it was obvious she wasn’t going to say anything else. “I understand that you want to return to the Empire,” he said. “Can I ask why?”
“It’s my duty,” Ravi said, simply. “My family have always been loyalists.”
“I read your file,” Colin said. “You’ve been quite lucky.”
Ravi nodded, but said nothing.
“Your people speak well of you,” Colin continued. “We have only had a relative handful of recruits from your crews, despite the beating they took at our hands. Quite a few of them have insisted on returning to the Empire. I think you had quite a bit to do with their loyalty.”
“Thank you,” Ravi said.
Colin studied her for a long moment. Ravi had been lucky. With so many competing interests in the system, she had been able to carry out her duty with only a minimum of political interference. She was unlikely to rise any higher, but then she was already high enough to suit her ambitions. Besides, when she retired, she could look forward to quite a few patrons ensuring that she had a comfortable retirement. The smarter patrons knew to ensure that they looked after their clients until the end of their lives.
“They’re going to die,” Colin said. He didn’t know for sure that whoever was in command at Morrison would kill the returning crewmen, but he knew how Percival had treated those who’d had enough loyalty to return home. They’d been interrogated and brain-sucked, then dumped on Camelot. Colin had rescued some of them when the planet had been taken, but others had died before he arrived. “And you too, for that matter.”