The Empire’s Corps: Book 01 - The Empire's Corps Read Online Free PDF

doing it all the time,” she said. Blake gave her a one-fingered gesture. “Have fun; try not to catch anything...”

    The door swung open and nine men stepped in, wearing the yellow and black uniform of the Civil Guard. They were unarmed, which suggested that they were off-duty and not coming to try to bust the Marines for some imagined infraction, but looked unpleasant. Jasmine took one look at them and knew how the day was going to end. Their leader glanced around, saw the Marines and the empty glasses in front of them, and scowled at them. The Civil Guard hated the Marine Corps. It was a hatred the Marines didn't bother to return. It would have given the Civil Guard too much credit.

    “Ah, assholes,” Blake said, as the waitress scurried over to the newcomers. She had to hurry for them. The Civil Guard, unlike the Marines, was permanently attached to the Barracks. A word from the Guard could have the waitress thrown in the stockade or simply sacked and sent back to the Undercity. “They’ll insist on dancing and drinking and I won’t get a look in.”

    “They might have done you a favour,” Joe pointed out. “You never know whose sloppy seconds you’re getting here.”

    Blake looked as if he were going to say something cutting, when he was interrupted by a scream from the waitress. One of the Civil Guardsmen had grabbed her ass hard enough to hurt, while one of the others had started to grope her breasts in public. Jasmine blinked in disbelief before spotting the telltale signs of drug abuse. A crime that would have a Marine running the Gauntlet before being dishonourably discharged from the Corps meant almost nothing to the Civil Guard. As long as they showed up for duty reasonably sober, no one would give a damn.

    “Hey, asshole,” Blake shouted, loudly enough to be heard over the din. “You want to pick on someone your own size?”

    The Civil Guardsman let go of the waitress, stood up and sauntered over to the Marines. “You want to make a thing of a little bitchy whore?”

    Jasmine rolled her eyes as Blake puffed up. He might have looked like a thug, with a very rough and ready demeanour, but deep inside Blake thought of himself as a paladin, a man who protected the weak and helpless from the wolves. It would be a brave man – or a fool – who picked a fight with him, yet she could see the traces of drug abuse in the man’s eye and knew that he wouldn't back down. The day was definitely going to end badly.

    “Yes,” Blake said, standing up. The Civil Guardsman would have been wise to back down at that point – Blake was bigger and stronger than him and it showed – but he was too far gone to care. His pride wouldn't let him back down in the face of the enemy. “She doesn't deserve shit from you.”

    “And we get too much shit from you,” the man returned. His cronies laughed as if it was the funniest thing they’d heard in years. “We just spent the last hour carting out the bodies from your fucking fuck-up!”

    Blake’s eyes flashed murder. “What did you just say?”

    “You killed over five hundred children,” the Civil Guardsman snapped. His cronies stood up and advanced behind him, fists balling up into readiness for a fight. “We saw the bodies. Many of them were killed by your fire.”

    “And your people didn't help,” Blake thundered. “Didn’t it occur to you to make sure that you got your figures straight before you wet yourselves and screamed for help?”

    “Fuck you,” the Guardsman replied, bunching up a fist and throwing a punch right into Blake’s face. Blake ducked and threw a punch back, smacking his opponent right in the jaw. He howled in pain as he toppled over backwards, just before Blake kicked him in the head and knocked him out. It had probably come as a relief.

    “Get them,” one of his cronies said, and threw himself at Koenraad. Koenraad stepped aside, allowed the Guardsman to slip past him, and then grabbed him and threw him into a wall.