A War Most Modest (JNC Edition)

by Hiroyuki Morioka

  Those soldiers seemed intent on increasing his workload, the bastards. At this rate, their crime-arrest ratio would drop for sure. The only saving grace was that the commissioner’s approval rates would also drop.

  Resentment toward the police themselves was also beginning to bubble to the fore. Processing complaints wasn’t in the Criminal Investigation Department’s job description, but Entryua had his acquaintances, and they spared no time hammering him with blame.

  And now, this.

  Police Commissioner Aizan (EYE ZAHN) had summoned him.

  They hated each other, so what could this be about? He should have given him three days’ notice so he could prepare himself psychologically.

  “It’s me, Entryua,” he shouted in front of the door to the commissioner’s office. Aizan despised crude, loud voices.

  The door opened. Entryua entered with swinging strides.

  “Well if it isn’t my little Entryua,” said Aizan with a fat smile and wheedling voice.

  Aizan being pleased to see him could only portend calamity. Him going out of his way to extend a warm welcome was the most definitive proof there could be that a disaster was unfolding.

  There with them was another visitor to the commissioner’s office, a young man who seemed the sociable sort on first blush. Were it not for the army fatigues that’d become an eyesore to him these days, he’d have had no reason to feel any antipathy.

  “This here’s Entryua, one of Criminal Investigation’s finest inspectors. Entryua, meet Kyte, Military Police Lieutenant of the UH Peacekeepers.”

  Kyte extended a hand. “Nice to meet you, Inspector.”

  Entryua stared at that hand dubiously. What was all of this about?

  Kyte smiled broadly. “Oh, sorry, that was rude of me! This is how people greet each other here, right?” he said, clasping his hands in front of his chest.

  Seeing that beaming grin, Entryua felt the urge to pat his head and go “attaboy.” An urge he suppressed as he returned the gesture.

  “Sure, nice to meet you, Lieutenant,” he said curtly. Then he faced Aizan. “So, what’ve you got for me?”

  Though he already had a decent guess: the “Peacekeepers” would be subsuming Criminal Investigations and ordering them around.

  Now, a commissioner with any pride would’ve brushed aside that kind of demeaning demand. But this was Aizan, so Entryua couldn’t be so optimistic. After all, their occupiers had detained politicians and high-level bureaucrats, and though Aizan was nothing more than the commissioner of a small city, if he displeased the army, they’d spare a thought or two as to a good use for the remaining vacant cells of the planet’s jails.

  Not that Entryua would care in the slightest. He hoped they threw the bastard in a filthy, damp, sunless cell so cramped he couldn’t take a single step.

  “Please, sit, Entryua, my lad. You too, Lieutenant.” Aizan pointed at the ottomans.

  They were arranged in a circle. Entryua took a seat. The chairs’ legs were short, so he had to stretch his own legs out in front.

  “Would you care for some peppermint tea, Lieutenant?” asked Aizan.

  “Sounds good. Thank you,” he replied smilingly.

  Without asking for Entryua’s preference, Aizan ordered the group three cups of peppermint.

  Soon, the set of three cups rose gradually from the center of the circle of chairs.

  Entryua wasn’t thirsty. He left the cup be and instead watched with irritation as the other two commenced sipping. “You want to tell me what I’m here for, or what!? I’m busy, you know!”

  “There’s no need to get upset, Entryua.”

  “I agree with the Inspector,” said Kyte, to his surprise. “Time is of the essence.”

  At that, Aizan nodded readily. “I see. Well, my lad, as it turns out, the Lieutenant will be cooperating with us.”

  “What?” Entryua had guessed wrong. “The soldiers occupying Clasbule, helping us?”

  “We’re not ‘occupying’ anything. We’re liberating Clasbule,” said Kyte.

  “I don’t know if your translator’s on the fritz, or if my dictionary’s got a misprint, but that’s the first time I’ve heard the word ‘liberated’ used that way.”

  “We’ve liberated you from the tyranny of those disgusting homunculi, the Abh. We’ve come to spread the word about democracy,” he waxed sonorously.

  “Oh, I know democracy. It was the will of the people that put Commissioner Aizan in office.” And he wanted nothing more than to take democracy by the collar and share a few choice words with it.

  “That was slave democracy, without any of its true substance. Your leaders accepted Abh rule as a face of life. Yet if they’d been operating by the will of the people, they would have taken a stand against the yoke of oppression.”

  “You mean Senator Kindee?” Entryua shook his head. “I’ve always voted Democratic, but the man’s a good egg, Liberal Party member or not.”

  “That’s just it! The very idea that parties with ‘Democratic’ or ‘Liberal’ in their names exist on a planet conquered by the Abh is a mockery of genuine democracy!”

  “So that justifies throwing them in jail?”

  “They’re not ‘jails.’ They’re Democracy Reeducation Camps.”

  “The hell is that? A euphemism for concentration camps?”

  “They’re camps for education. Schools, just as the name implies.”

  “Uh-huh.” Entryua raised an eyebrow. “Then why’s nobody signing up for the bloody things?”

  “No getting belligerent, Entryua,” Aizan butted in nervously.

  Feh. Damned coward.

  Here the police were getting swallowed up by outsiders, but the commissioner was too scared of “reeducation” to do a thing about it.

  Kyte kept calm. “It’s fine, Commissioner. These are misunderstandings we knew would come up. And clearing them up is our mission.”

  “You’re young, but you’ve got a good head on your shoulders,” lauded Aizan.

  Their little spat had strengthened Entryua’s impression of Kyte as a “good guy.” But in his eyes, there were two types of “good guy” — passive, and proactive.

  Passive types were great. The only people gratified by proactive types like Kyte, on the other hand, were themselves. Proactive types loved pointing out “problems” that people were living just fine without solving. Those “problems,” meanwhile, had never been thought of as such, which led to the dismay of the previously untroubled. Then Mr. Do-gooder rolls into the tangled mess he caused and gallantly lends a hand. Once the person who’d been “helped” in this way snapped out of it, they usually found themselves worse off than before.

  “What happened to time being of the essence?” said Entryua. “And what exactly do you mean, you’ll be ‘cooperating’ with us? Somehow I doubt the Lieutenant is going to be working under me.”

  “I think you’re being rather rude,” Aizan chided.

  “No, the Inspector has every right to be suspicious. Allow me to lay it all out for him.”

  “You’re ever so kind,” said Entryua bitingly.

  “We’ll be cooperating on a specific case. Yesterday, three citizens of this town were injured, and their car stolen. We’re very, very interested in this incident.”

  Well that’s a very, very blah case to be so interested in. Obviously, there was more to this thing.

  “What’s the case number?”

  “08-337-8404,” answered Aizan.

  Entryua connected the telephonic line to the Police Information. He picked out the case in question and displayed it on the monitor.

  “So, these three were the victims, huh...” He’d known their names already. And Entryua could only laugh upon skimming through their testimonies. “They were attacked after ‘offering help to a boy and girl in trouble on the road’?”

  “What’s so funny about that?” Kyte cocked his head inquiringly.

  “They’re a notorious bunch around here. In fact, they’ve been pu
tting more work on our plates since they were brats. May I offer you some advice? If you want to up your popularity, you ought to round them up and get a firing squad to execute them in public. They’re ‘minors’ so we’re forced to handle them with kid gloves. You’re telling me these numbskulls suddenly turned over new leaves? If you ask me, they made a pass at the girl, things got physical, and the two fought back. Because if their testimonies are true, then we’ve got bigger news in this one case than the Occupation of Clasbule.”

  “The Liberation of Clasbule,” said Kyte earnestly.

  Entryua ignored the remark. “So, why the interest in this case, anyway?”

  “Take a closer look. The ‘girl spoke Baronh and was as beautiful as an Abh.’”

  “Yeah, I read that part. You can’t take them at their word, though. They’re not exactly the brightest of bulbs. I don’t even know if they could distinguish between Baronh and birdsong. Besides, to them, there are only two types of females, the ‘smex’ and ‘uggos,’ with two-thirds of all ladies falling under ‘the smex.’ So their eye for beauty can’t exactly home in on a bona fide Abh, if you catch my drift.”

  “But what about the boy? They said he looked ‘average,’ and that he spoke the local language, if imperfectly. They must have been an Abh woman and her laimh (imperial citizen) attendant.”

  “What was this Abh of yours doing trudging down the road?” asked Entryua, far from convinced. “That’s the one thing I can’t picture an Abh doing. I’ve always thought their lot get antsy when they get dirt on their soles.”

  “Well, this is nothing more than a hypothesis, but an Empire landing hull was discovered not far from the scene of the crime. My superiors in the army of liberation are seeing that as a sign the two events are linked.”

  “You sure like flapping your gums, don’t you? Long story short, you’re trying to say the two were in that ship.”

  “I’m saying there’s a high possibility that’s the case. It’s true that the girl might NOT be Abh. But it’s worth looking into. Please, let us aid in the search. In exchange, we ask only that you hand the criminals over to us.”

  “Hold your horses. We’re talking aggravated burglary here. That’s a serious offense. And you want us to just hand them over?”

  “About that,” said Aizan. “We’ve already come to an agreement. You don’t get a say in this.”

  “Of course, Commissioner,” Entryua shrugged.

  “Then you’re on board!” Kyte smiled.

  “Because I’m forced to be,” said Entryua, as he glanced at the column with the person in charge of the case data. “It’s being handled by Assistant Inspector BcCoonin’s team. Let’s hurry up and get you acquainted.”

  He didn’t like this. BcCoonin was already still chasing a backlog of more than three years’ worth of burglaries and murders, with three fresh incidents on his lap at the moment. Now he’d have to pursue this one case full-time for the time being.

  “Forget that,” said Aizan, who was likewise less than keen to push it on BcCoonin. “You’ll be heading this case, Entryua.”

  “Me?” He had a hunch this would happen, but he feigned being taken aback.

  “That’s right, lad. Team up with Lieutenant Kyte and find them. Naturally, you can use as many deputies as you like. We aim to arrest these criminals with the Lune Beega police force’s whole power.”

  “Wait a second, Commissioner. That’d only tie the investigation up. You might not be too clear on what goes down at crime scenes, but I’ve got my own job to do.”

  “And Inspectors heading up investigations is a common occurrence.”

  “Yeah, for big cases.”

  “And this case isn’t big? It involves the occu— the liberating army.”

  This is what Entryua and most of the other officers hated about Aizan. He paid about as much attention to the force’s putative neutrality as he did clipping his overlong nails, swayed as he was by outside opinion. He’d made a mess of the organization through his focus not on case-by-case level of importance, but on what the press would make of things.

  He wouldn’t complain as much if they were given an organizational structure that enabled them to be flexible in their responses. But in reality, the commissioner had been obsessed with budget cuts due to the climate in Parliament, and thereby reduced the force down to a husk of skin and bones. To top it all off, he then had the nerve to issue unreasonable order after unreasonable order.

  That, however, was what endeared him to his constituency, and as a consequence, he’d held the office for a long while.

  “There’s something I still don’t get. What you want is the Abh in cuffs, right?” Entryua asked Kyte.

  “We mustn’t forget the imperial citizen. He was born a free man, and yet he aided their tyranny. He is an odious lout.”

  “The Abh, the laimh, whatever. There are so many of you people around, though. What’s the point of enlisting the police force of a country town like this?”

  “Entryua, the Lieutenant is helping us.”

  “Can we drop the cockamamie pretext, Commissioner? How many people have you got under you, Lieutenant?”

  Kyte threw out his chest. “I’m an officer who’s been cleared to work solo.”

  “In other words, you haven’t got anyone under you.” Entryua looked at Aizan with arms outstretched. See, Commissioner? There’s no room for debate anymore. I’m no donkey; you can’t take me for a ride.

  “This is a big opportunity for all of you, Inspector,” he said in fevered tones. “Under ordinary circumstances, I’d have liked to ask for the help of the local police to unmask slave democrats as well. Working alone, we aren’t very knowledgeable as to this planet’s state of affairs. Unfortunately, those servile traitors of humanity can’t be sentenced as such under Clasbule law, and even worse, they were people’s neighbors, so I’m sure there would be resistance to the mission even amongst you. This incident is different. In this case, they are indisputably criminals...”

  Entryua understood where he was going with this and got straight to it. “It’s our job to apprehend them, yes. But where’s the ‘big opportunity’?”

  Kyte lowered his voice. “It’s your chance to contribute to true democracy. This is between us, but some of my higher-ups are of the opinion that the police force should be replaced wholesale. They say it was ‘state violence on behalf of the slave democracy.’ But here you have an opportunity to show them there’s a possibility you can be rechristened as a democratic organization. All you need to do is align your goals with ours.”

  “Oh, gee, thanks a ton. But are you sure that isn’t just your own bag?”

  “Don’t be absurd. On the contrary, the opinion that we should seek cooperation with preexisting administrative structures enjoys rather broad support. The Supreme Commander is also of that belief. And depending on your police force’s actions, that prevailing opinion can turn into policy.”

  “Surely you see now, Entryua,” said Aizan with a triumphant look. “Through our conduct, we have to make an appeal for the very existence of the police.”

  I’d love to appeal your existence, Entryua thought bitterly.

  “I have an idea; why don’t you do it, Commissioner?” he suggested, but when he saw Aizan give it serious consideration, he immediately took it back. If he let the Commissioner head the case, he’d feel bad for his junior officers. “Okay, okay, I’ll head the search.” Bridling his indignation, Entryua lit himself a smoke.

  “What is that?” asked Kyte.

  “You don’t know about tobacco?” he shot back sullenly.

  “Oh, is that what that is. So it’s legal here.”

  “Of course. I’m a guardian of the law, and this is a police building.”

  “In our society, tobacco has been banned for over 200 years.”

  “That right? Guess they’ve got anti-smoking proponents all over. This little guy’s totally safe, though. Doesn’t even smell. It’s like medicine; soothes the nerves and such.”
>
  “That medicinal effect is the problem,” said Kyte guilelessly. “It’s unethical to suppress the mind using drugs. The fact that this planet was forced to legalize such unethical drugs just goes to show how extreme the slave democracy’s oppression truly was. It’s our responsibility as the Liberation Army to eliminate the drugs themselves, as well as the reasons people have taken a liking to them.”

  “That so.” Entryua took a deep, deep drag. I hope you’ve realized, Military Police Lieutenant Kyte, that with those words, you’ve just made me into a reactionary for “slave democracy.”

  Chapter 12: Bar Glairh (Abh History)

  “What a nice morning,” said Jinto, taking in the sight of the city of Guzonh as dusk was falling.

  “It’s noon to me.” Lafier had her legs crossed, comfortable in her chair as she vacantly consumed some holovision programming.

  “You already get a handle on the language?” Jinto asked, looking back from his position at the window.

  “A little,” Lafier nodded slightly.

  “...About which you have been fed mistaken information. This is a grave injustice. You have the right to know...” droned the level box that was the holovision receiver set. A semitransparent stereoscopic image of a woman’s portrait was projected above the box, and she was talking to Lafier.

  “Yet more army propaganda, huh. You having fun watching that stuff?”

  “No. It’s dreadfully dull. But there’s nothing else to do.”

  She’s not wrong. Their only two diversions were watch holovision or talking. Clasbulian holovision wasn’t exactly edge-of-one’s-seat entertainment. On Delktu, there was so much programming that a viewer could spend a lifetime failing to watch all of it, and could watch whatever, whenever. Here, however, they couldn’t so much as change the channel.

  That wasn’t due to some Clasbulian cultural deficiency, though. Clasbule’s array of programming had been just as robust as Delktu’s until mere days ago. The occupying army made sure to change that. They had to give up hope of anything entertaining; this was likely a straight week of “special messaging.”