EMPIRE: Imperial Detective

by Stephanie Osborn

  Within seconds, and summoned by Mercer in VR, several ICPD officers entered with additional hand and leg cuffs, specifically designed for resistant suspects, and ensured Carr’s arms and legs were firmly strapped to, and in contact with, the chair. Once he was secured, the police officers departed swiftly, and the Imperial Guardsmen moved to the corners behind Mercer, to provide backup in case matters went badly.

  Carr snarled, then spat across the table at Mercer. The sputum fell short, landing on the tabletop.

  “That’s for your damn bitch emperor!” he growled. “I’ve had stronger than this shit at the dentist’s office!”

  “Very well, then,” Mercer said, remaining calm – which seemed only to anger Carr worse. “Doctor, a step up, if you please. Mr. Carr is tougher than this.”

  Martin replaced the yellow-marked ampoule with another which had a neon orange marker on its label. He injected this one into Carr’s neck.

  “Oh dear God!” Carr cried, as he felt the drug hit; his heart began to hammer against his ribcage as it kicked in, and he felt a panic attack looming. “No no no no! I want my lawyer, dammit! I know my rights! This is all illegal! What the hell do you think you’re doing?! Get away from me! You’re torturing me!”

  In the observation room, along with Lieutenant Cox, who monitored the telemetry from the chair depicting Carr’s vital signs, Nick Ashton sat, alongside Lee Carter, Maia Peterson, and Callista Ames. When Carr began to fight, Ashton leaned forward.

  “Be prepared, guys,” he murmured.

  “For what?” Ames wondered, as Carter and Peterson both quirked questioning eyebrows.

  “This isn’t gonna go well,” Ashton explained, “and it isn’t gonna be pretty, especially at the end.”

  “Oh shit,” Peterson grumbled under her breath. “You’re talking about that interrogation that went bad on the Medved murder case, aren’t you? The one that you and Stefan sat in on?”

  “Yeah,” Ashton confirmed. “Don’t, um, don’t look at his eyes, and don’t do the usual investigator thing of trying to put yourself in his mindset. It won’t go well for you if you do.”

  “This isn’t gonna be like the rest of ‘em, is it, Nick?” Ames wondered.

  “No, honey, it’s not. Not at all.”

  “Damn.”

  Just then, Ashton saw the third ampoule of drug come out of Dr. Martin’s bag.

  “Oh shit,” he said. “Here it comes, guys. Zone out a little, if you can.”

  When Carr continued to shout obscenities and fight, Mercer drew a deep breath, then met Dr. Martin’s troubled gaze. The two men stared at each other for long moments; both knew what was coming. And they knew there would be no going back.

  “Do it, Doctor,” Mercer said in a low tone.

  This ampoule had a label that was completely red. A brilliant crimson, warning kind of red, and for good reason. Martin loaded it into the injector and pressed it against Carr’s throat. Seconds later, Carr’s body went limp, and he stared at them with horrified eyes as his profanities silenced, apparently despite his best efforts.

  Mercer drew another deep breath and began.

  “What is your full name?”

  This time there was no resistance to Mercer’s interrogation, and Carr’s eyes grew even more horrified, and more than a little haunted. Mercer tried to ignore his expression, knowing these moments were important, in many respects.

  “William Harold Carr,” came the almost-monotone response.

  “Were you a former IPD Headquarters staffer?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you survive the destruction of the original Headquarters?”

  “Out working on a crime scene with Captain Bradly and Inspector Arnold.”

  “Where is Inspector Arnold now?”

  “He said enough was enough, and retired.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Off-planet someplace. Dunno. Home world, maybe?”

  “I see. So you were not there when the missiles struck the Headquarters building?”

  “No.”

  “How did you come to be back in the IPD?”

  “We went back to Headquarters at the end of shift. Marines were patrolling what was left of it, and digging out dead bodies. We got rounded up and interrogated… but not like this.”

  “Did they ask you if you were a straight cop?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you answer to them?”

  “I said I was.”

  “Did you lie when you told the Imperial Marines you were a straight cop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who told you about this ‘oldies’ gathering?”

  “Cap’n Bradly.”

  “Theodore A. Bradly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it his idea to kill Carter?”

  “No.”

  “Whose idea was it to kill Carter?”

  “Mine.”

  “Did you tell your idea to Bradly?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That it was a good idea and we should do it.”

  “How did he say to go about it?”

  “Put together an ‘oldies’ gathering.”

  “So it was his idea to gather a group to conspire to kill Carter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was that when he told you to organize the meeting?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he tell you to organize it for him?”

  “Yes.”

  About then, a look of panic began to grow in Carr’s eyes, and his answers grew more and more terse and monosyllabic, seeming almost strained despite the drug, as if Carr’s brain were struggling to find the answers to the questions Mercer kept throwing at him.

  “Who else was at the meeting?” Mercer continued.

  “Uh. Peabody.”

  “Investigator Winston Peabody?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who else?”

  “Holland. Seeger.”

  “Officers George Holland and David Seeger?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who else?”

  “Williams. Lowe. Wang.”

  “Police officers Hunter Williams, Matthew Lowe, and Theodore Wang?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Uhh… W-warner.”

  “Officer Noah Warner?”

  “Y-yes. Yup.”

  “Was anyone else there?”

  “Co-couple en-enforce-enforcers.”

  “Who brought them?”

  “W-Williams.”

  “Hunter Williams?”

  “Uh. Ye-yeah.”

  “Who asked Williams to bring them?”

  “I d-did.”

  “Were you ordered to do so?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who ordered you to do so?”

  “Ted.”

  “Theodore Bradly?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you remember the enforcers’ names?”

  “N-no.”

  “Was one of them Joseph Hennig?”

  “Ma-maybe. S-sounds fa-familiar. Um, yeah, I think… I think he w-was there.”

  “What about Peter Brandt?”

  “Yeah, I-I think so. Him too.”

  “Do you know why Bradly wanted enforcers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did Bradly want enforcers?”

  “Do the d-dirty work.”

  “What dirty work?”

  “Kill C-Carter a-an’ Ashton an’ the others.”

  “Why did your group need them to do the dirty work?”

  “So it c-couldn’t be tr-traced back to us.”

  “Did you run the meetings?”

  “No.”

  “Did you assist in running the meetings?”

  “Yeah, uh, yes.”

  “Who was in charge of the meetings?”

  “T-Ted.”

  “Ted’s last name, please.”

  “Buh, uh, Bradly.”

  “Theodore Bradly?”


  “Yes.”

  It was the last coherent word he ever said. Within moments, the experienced officer – who had fought the interrogation from the moment he was brought into the interrogation room, and as a result, had been taken through successively more powerful drugs – lost his mind and began to scream irrationally.

  There was no antagonist for this.

  “Dear God,” Carter murmured, even as Lieutenant Cox sighed heavily and began shutting down the telemetry equipment. “He’s become a screaming lunatic.”

  “Exactly,” Ashton replied, then glanced at his wife, who sat beside him, silent and very pale. “Cal, honey, are you okay?”

  “Um, yeah, Nick, I, um, I think…” Ames gave him a desperate glance, then looked at Peterson. “Uh, Colonel, ma’am, may I be excused?”

  “Go,” Peterson replied in a slightly strangled voice. “I may join you.”

  “Let’s all go,” Carter decided then. “Nick, you’re in the best shape of any of us, owing to experience; get us out of here to someplace we can unwind for a few minutes, and… well, and maybe barf.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ashton said. “Been there, done that.”

  Ashton rose, patting Cox on the shoulder.

  “Thanks, Peter,” he told the guardsman. “Good to see you, even if the circumstances suck.”

  “Likewise, and I feel the same,” Cox sighed again.

  Ashton led the others out of the observation room.

  In the interrogation room, Dr. Martin patted Mercer on the shoulder, then jerked his head over his shoulder at the door. Subdued and decidedly taciturn, Mercer nodded, then rose and left the room, as Martin called for medical assistance through VR. Within five minutes, several orderlies with ICPD badge-type patches embroidered on their scrubs entered the room with the appropriate equipment.

  Carr was placed in a strait jacket and taken to a padded cell in the far end of the lockup.

  Theodore Bradly was held to the very last to be interrogated. As the uncontested and acknowledged leader of the conspiracy and the one with the most to gain from it, he had been given the opportunity to see the others as they were returned to the lockup… and he had gotten a first-hand view of his old friend and colleague Bill Carr, now quite insane, being taken past his cell in a strait jacket, wild-eyed and still screaming.

  Damnation, he thought, shocked. He’s a screaming nutcase now. They broke him. They completely broke him. What the hell is going on? Did they torture him? What in the bloody damn hell happened?

  And then the guards arrived at his cell.

  The Head of the Serpent

  It was late in the day, fully two hours after normal business hours, and Dunham and Peters, while in the midst of preparing for their imminent wedding, now sat quietly on the sofa in the Imperial Residence, deep in a discussion that had nothing to do with weddings.

  “I think I need to be there, Amanda,” Dunham told his fiancée. “For this one, at least. I’ve already managed to watch all the others around my office work and in the evenings. This one? This is the head of the serpent, the leader of the conspiracy to assassinate my new IPD director. I think I owe it to Carter and his people to watch this one in real time.”

  “I’m not arguing, Bobby,” Peters replied. “I understand your point of view, and I think you’re right. And if you’ll let me, I’ll watch it right beside you. I’m just not sure whether we should try to eat yet, or postpone dinner until later in the evening, or maybe we shouldn’t even bother with dinner tonight, in the circumstances.” She shivered. “That last interrogation was… upsetting.”

  “Was it? I’m afraid I have little to no pity for them, honey,” Bobby said, his face set like granite. “I am, in fact, very, very tired of this… shit.”

  “Well, I don’t blame you there,” Amanda replied. “About the time you think you’ve managed to clean out all the rats, a few find their way back in. And apparently start breeding, after a fashion.”

  “Exactly. And if I don’t keep exterminating them, they breed until they take over… again.”

  “I have a sneaking suspicion that that’s gonna be the nature of the job of Emperor, though, sweetheart,” she murmured. Dunham flashed her a rueful smile.

  “I have a sneaking suspicion that you’re right… as usual,” he told her. “So I guess I’d better get used to it. Still, I wish, once I’ve smacked one group down, they’d have the sense to stay smacked down.”

  “I agree. Which still leaves us with the problem of what to do about dinner.”

  “Let’s postpone dinner and see how we feel after the interrogation,” Dunham suggested. “We can always eat late, after we’ve gotten a little mental distance on it. Maybe go up to the garden and relax some, then have sandwiches?”

  “That might work,” Amanda agreed. “Okay, it’s almost time. Let’s go.”

  They dropped into the channel reserved for the Emperor to view the interrogations.

  With sighs all around, Carter, Peterson, Ashton, and Ames re-entered the observation room, only this time they were accompanied by Winston Peabody, who had come over from Temporary New Headquarters to watch Bradly’s interrogation.

  They took their seats behind the physician, Dr. Martin, and technician Lieutenant Cox, and silence fell as Bradly was led into the interrogation room, seated in the lie detector chair, and firmly cuffed and strapped into position.

  Bradly was puzzled by the presence of what looked like Imperial Marines pulling guard duty in the interrogation facility. He was completely unfamiliar with the lie detector chair; IPD Headquarters had never had one, because they couldn’t afford to risk their own people being caught out in such fashion, let alone their ‘hired help.’ So when the lockup guards – accompanied by several more of those Imperial Marines with the fancy shoulder braid on their uniforms – cuffed and strapped him tightly to the chair, forcibly holding him in his seat, he instinctively fought back.

  “What the hell is this?!” he demanded as he struggled, to no avail. “Some sort of execution chair, like the ancients used? Before I’ve even been tried? Where the hell is my lawyer?!”

  As the strange ‘Marines’ moved into the corners of the room to stand guard, another entered.

  “There will be no lawyer, Mr. Bradly,” he said.

  “That’s Captain Bradly to you,” Bradly snapped. “And you can’t interrogate me without my lawyer present! Who the hell do you think you are?!”

  “I know exactly who I am, Mr. Bradly,” he said. “I am Captain David Mercer of the Imperial Guard. I will be interrogating you in the High Court, before the Emperor Trajan.”

  “You mean the murdering bastard who seized the throne after his illegitimate sister was deposed?”

  “I mean the Emperor who ascended to the Throne by proper designation after his legitimately-chosen sister was assassinated by your colleagues while on the Throne. Trial before the Throne has no recourse and no appeal, Mr. Bradly. Emperor Trajan has all of the records and evidence of the case, and he will hear your own testimony per this interrogation.”

  “He’ll be waiting until hell freezes over, then, because I’m not saying a word without my lawyer present.”

  “No, I’m afraid he won’t,” Mercer said, grim. “Due to the very nature of the High Court, resistance to answering questions whose answers are desired by the Emperor is considered treason. It is automatic grounds for execution. Should you continue to refuse to cooperate, the answers will be drugged out of you.”

  “The hell you say! That’s not legal, and you and I both know it!”

  “If I might be allowed to paraphrase something I once heard the Empress Ilithyia II say, you do not stand accused before a lower court, Mr. Bradly. You stand accused before the Throne. This Emperor is not constrained by the rules of evidence the Throne has put in place for the lower courts, but instead must act in the best interests of the Empire as perceived by him. So I’m afraid that your rights before the lower courts do not apply. We will have answers, and we will have them today,
whether you choose to cooperate or not. We will therefore use successively stronger drugs until we get the answers the Emperor requires. If you lose your mind, it is of no consequence, for your life will be forfeit. If you die in the process, it will be considered the fulfilment of the execution. Do you understand?”

  Bradly gaped at them in horror, as he suddenly understood what had happened to Carr.

  “Shit,” he murmured.

  “That is possible, as well,” Mercer said, voice very dry… and hard as adamant. “Do you understand the circumstances in which you find yourself?”

  “I… I do.”

  “Are you going to cooperate?”

  “May… I have a few minutes to collect my thoughts?”

  Mercer nodded and rose, leaving the room.

  Bradly was left to his thoughts… which were not good company at the moment.

  It was fully five minutes before Mercer returned to the room. He sat down and composed himself, then simply looked at Bradly, saying nothing.

  Bradly still had no real answer to give. If I refuse, they’re gonna kill me. If I cooperate, I ran a conspiracy to assassinate the Emperor’s chosen IPD director, and they’re gonna kill me. I got one shot to get out of this alive.

  “Is there any leeway for plea-bargaining?” he asked then.

  Mercer paused, and adopted a vacant look, as he sent a query in VR.

  Bobby and Amanda had replicated the Imperial Residence sitting room in VR so that they could relax as they watched the interrogation, so he was expecting the query from Mercer when it arrived. He bit his lip.

  “What are you going to do, honey?” Amanda asked.

  “I’m thinking,” he replied.

  “Every last one of the others nailed him as the conspiracy’s leader,” she pointed out, “testified with and without drugs. He’s committed all of the crimes he’s charged with. How can he possibly expect to plea-bargain out of any of it?”