Usurper

by Richard F. Weyand

“We think she’s got a line to somebody in that department, or somebody who came out of that department.”

  “That’s tough. One of your own people working against you.”

  “You said it, George. A traitor, right in my own organization.”

  “Any idea who it is?”

  “No. Not yet. We’re looking for him, but who knows if we find him. We have to be careful we don’t draw too much attention and set her off. She could do damn near anything.”

  “I think we have something,” Henry Wilkins said.

  “Finally,” Pomeroy said. “It’s been three weeks.”

  “Two and a half, but yeah. It took a while to track down. We had to look at everybody in Fairfield’s department. It was none of them. Then we looked at everyone who used to be in his department, working backwards. We went back almost four years before we got a hit.”

  “What’d you get?”

  “Woman worked for one of Fairfield’s people. Almost four years ago now, they asked her to sign off on an ATP as senior QA process engineer. She refused, and got a negative review. Not a team player. So she went into Fairfield’s office and told him to go fuck himself – her words – and quit. Went to work for an appliance manufacturer.”

  “And?”

  “And about two years ago she went to work at the Imperial Palace. She still works there.”

  “That’s it. That’s our traitor.”

  “Well, we don’t know that for sure.”

  “Bullshit. You got anything else? Anything else at all?”

  “No. She’s the only hit.”

  “There you go, then. When you eliminate everything else, whatever you got, that’s it. What’s her name?”

  “Vasilisa Medved.”

  “It’s been three weeks, General Daggert. Are you seeing things heating up or cooling down?”

  “It’s hard to say, Ma’am. It was confused at first, and then it was pretty hot, but now it – well, it hasn’t cooled down so much as – I don’t know quite how to say it.”

  “It’s like everything’s waiting. Like there’s something going to happen, but we don’t know what it is.”

  “Exactly, Ma’am. It’s my gut instinct rather than anything I can point to, but there you have it.”

  “Trust your gut, General Daggert. I feel it, too. It’s too quiet.”

  “Exactly, Ma’am.”

  “When whatever it is happens, don’t worry about reporting to me or getting permission for anything. Do what you need to do, General Daggert. I’ll authorize it later.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Thank you, Ma’am.”

  Lord Pomeroy and Chief Stanier were at dinner.

  “We found out who’s providing the weapons testing information to the palace.”

  “Who is he?”

  “She. Vasilisa Medved. A former employee in the test plan department. They had to go back four years to find her. She got a bad evaluation for not being a team player and left to go work for an appliance manufacturer. Two years ago, though, she got a job in the palace.”

  “Not a team player? I’ll say. To go and rat out the team.”

  “Exactly. And to this pretend Empress, to boot. Now she’s mucking around in stuff she doesn’t understand. The only information she’s going to get – or listen to, apparently – in interpreting the documents that come in is going to be from a disgruntled former employee with an ax to grind.”

  “Somebody like that should be careful, Larry. Imperial City is pretty safe, as big cities go. But there’s still a certain amount of crime. You never know what could happen.”

  “That was my thought exactly, George. Of course, if anything did happen to her, the palace would be all over my shit, whether I had anything to do with it or not. I have to keep my nose clean.”

  “Hey, what are friends for?”

  Vasilisa Medved was unaware of the consternation she was causing people in high places. The documents had finally started coming in from the manufacturers, and it was as she suspected. Every single one of the fourteen weapons systems had been compromised in the corruption of the test plans. She performed her first review of the documents, taking no notes at this point but just getting a feel for what was there and considering her plan for an in-depth plunge into the documentation once it had all come in.

  “Hi, Vash. How’s it going,” Cindy said as she flopped into the guest chair in Medved’s office.

  “Good. I’ve started reviewing the documents that have come in to get an overall impression. I’ll begin the deep dive once everything is here.”

  “Seeing anything interesting?”

  “Oh, yes. They’re corrupted, all right. All of them. None of these weapons systems will perform to the original intention in many of the expected use scenarios. If they’re babied, they will probably work almost all the time, but in real-world scenarios, it’s scary how wide open these test plans are.”

  “So it’s as bad as you thought.”

  Medved ran her hand through her long red hair.

  “Actually, it’s worse than I thought. I had only seen what happened to my PUTs. Some of the others were bent much worse than mine.”

  “OK. Well, let us know when you can brief us on the overall picture, and start thinking about a detailed report once you’ve sifted through everything.”

  “Will do, Cindy.”

  “OK, Vash. See you.”

  First Blood

  Vasilisa Medved rode up in the elevator of their apartment building that evening tired but happy. She would finally get to the bottom of what was happening in weapons acquisition design test planning. She had the time, the resources, and the experience, and soon she would have all the documentation.

  The elevator doors opened at her floor and she stepped out. There was a delivery man there waiting for the elevator, dressed in his company uniform and carrying a box. He smiled at her as she got off the elevator and she smiled back.

  He got on the elevator as she got off, and, as the elevator doors started to close, he withdrew an air pistol from the open side of the box toward him and shot Medved twice in the back of the head.

  She was dead before she hit the floor.

  The Imperial Guard had been operating on alert status for the three weeks since the subpoenas had issued. A ready squad waited in the motor pool in the palace basement loading dock area, along with a driver for the command car. From there, they could respond anywhere in the Imperial Palace, Imperial Park, or in the city beyond.

  General Daggert was still in his office that evening when the alert came in of an unexpected death on the Empress’s staff. Her VR system had signaled the death of its host to the palace system, which alerted the Guard.

  Daggert checked the alert. Vasilisa Medved? She was young, and healthy, but she was also working on the project for which the documents were subpoenaed. Was in fact the critical person working on it. The vital signs readouts prior to her death indicated no physical stress or trauma. Death had been almost instantaneous.

  It took just seconds for this to register, and Daggert hit the alarm.

  The alarm blared in the ready room and barracks at the Imperial Marine facilities at the Imperial City spaceport. The ready company jumped to their feet, food and cards and drinks scattering. One fellow doing his business in the bathroom took one quick wipe and came running out pulling up his pants.

  “Go! Go! Go!” sergeants shouted as troops came boiling out onto the flight apron. The pilots in the shuttles were spooling engines up even as they loaded. Nearby, the attack ships were already leaping into the sky.

  They beat the sixty-second window and the shuttles were airborne even as the clock ran out. They angled up into the sky and screamed in the direction of downtown as the troops aboard pulled their rifles from the racks in the shuttle.

  Nearby, the rest of the battalion was making their best speed from the mess hall, the barracks, and the rec rooms of the off-watch companies. They dressed and made for their shuttles on a ten-minute window.

  The
alert also went off in the ready room of the Imperial Guard squad in the basement of the palace. They ran for the transport and banged the doors shut even as the vehicle started moving.

  The on-duty commander was Major Robert Dunham. He triggered the emergency elevator call in VR, and an elevator made an unscheduled stop at the watch duty floor and took him directly to the basement motor pool, the requests of the others on the elevator notwithstanding.

  Bobby got into the command car waiting at the doors of the elevator, and the command car screamed off after the transport.

  Daggert had the location in longitude, latitude, and altitude of the death of Vasilisa Medved. He passed this information on to all the converging forces with the instructions to seal off the area of the murder and to protect the area from disturbance for the forensic team. Most especially they were instructed to keep the Imperial Police away from the crime scene.

  Daggert dispatched the Imperial Guard’s best forensic team to follow along as soon as they were ready. They mustered in their equipment area in the palace, grabbed all their gear, and headed for another transport.

  With all this under way, Daggert sent a message to the Empress.

  Dee and Cindy were just recapping the day in Dee’s office before knocking off and getting ready for dinner. Bobby would be off duty soon.

  “Oh, my God,” Dee said suddenly and her face went ashen.

  “What? What’s going on?” Cindy asked.

  “Somebody just killed Vash.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. Daggert says her VR just reported her dead. No warning. Bang. Dead. He thinks someone assassinated her.”

  “Oh, shit. Now what?”

  “He’s got the Guard on the way to the scene. Bobby’s going as watch commander. And the Imperial Marines are in-bound from the airport. They have orders to keep Imperial Police away from the scene until our forensics team has been over it.”

  “Sure. Whoever ordered this is going to want them to stomp around and destroy any evidence.”

  “And we need to preserve the evidence. Because we need to find out who ordered this. And when we do, his life is forfeit. I’ll shoot him myself. As a matter of fact, I’m looking forward to it.”

  Dee shot out a message to Daggert for transmission to all responding units authorizing his orders in the Empress’s name.

  It wasn’t long before another resident coming home from work arrived at the apartment floor where Medved’s body lay sprawled on the floor. He sent out an emergency message over VR to the police and medical emergency services.

  The Imperial Police were monitoring the Imperial City P.D. VR channels, and they caught the dispatcher’s orders for units to respond to the apartment building for ‘woman shot, likely dead.’

  As it happened, there was an Imperial Police squad en route back to headquarters from a training mission, who were redirected to respond. An Imperial Police lieutenant colonel was also en route to headquarters and was diverted to the scene.

  With their more immediate alarm and the proximity to the palace, the Imperial Guard showed up first. Bobby issued orders over the command channel as they were pulling up.

  “Shut off the front elevators. Post a man to direct people to the rear elevators. Take the rear elevators up to floor 117, and circle around both ways to block off the hallway forty feet short of the body on both sides. Do not enter that area yourself.”

  The transport came to a halt, the rear doors opened, and Imperial Guard in MCUs with the black fourragère streamed out of the back and ran into the building. Bobby and two of the Imperial Guard stood at the front of the building by the vehicles and waited for back-up.

  Next to show up were the Imperial Police. A transport pulled up from one direction and a command car from another. A lieutenant colonel got out of the command car and came up to Bobby at the front door as Imperial Police were debarking the transport.

  “A little far from the palace, aren’t you, Major?”

  “Just around the corner, sir.”

  “Five miles? No matter. Thank you for securing the building. We’ll take it from here.”

  “No, sir. You will not be allowed to enter the building.”

  “Pardon me, Major, but I am ordering you to stand down.”

  “I’m sorry, Sir, but you do not have the authority to countermand my orders.”

  “Your orders? Your orders from whom?”

  “From my sister, Sir.”

  “Your sister? Who the fuck is your sister?”

  “My sister, Sir, is the Empress of Sintar.”

  To put point to Bobby’s answer, four Imperial Marine attack ships passed low over the buildings overhead in formation, then split up and circled back as they set up their combat air patrol over the area, followed by four big Imperial Marine shuttles coming in fast in a combat drop. The big engines on the shuttles spooled up hard to break their fast descent as they landed, and a hundred and sixty Imperial Marines in full combat gear debarked the shuttles on a run and set up a perimeter.

  The lieutenant colonel – Peabody, his name tag said – turned back to Bobby in slack-jawed astonishment.

  “I’m really going to have to insist, Sir, that your men stand down,” Bobby said.

  Bobby got a VR message from Dee.

  “Bobby, I’m watching all this on your feed. There’s no way they could have been there that fast without being pre-deployed. Take all the Imperial Police there into custody.”

  Bobby sent a command over the Imperial Marine command channel to the captain of the responding company, and one platoon of Marines came up at a run from one of the shuttles.

  “As a matter of fact, Sir,” Bobby said to Lieutenant Colonel Peabody, “I’ve just received orders from the Empress to take you and your men into custody. I hope you will come quietly.”

  Peabody looked at his ten Imperial Police officers, armed only with sidearms, and the platoon of forty Imperial Marines with select-fire rifles standing ready.

  “What choice do I have, Major?”

  “None, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”

  Bobby signaled the platoon lieutenant in VR, and he came up to the lieutenant colonel and held out his hand.

  “If you would, please, Sir.”

  Peabody unholstered and handed the lieutenant his sidearm.

  “Thank you, Sir. This way, please.”

  The other Imperial Police also surrendered their sidearms and were led off to sit together on the ground by one of the shuttles, under guard of an Imperial Marine rifle team. A close-field VR jammer was set in their midst to keep them from reporting in to Imperial Police headquarters.

  At that point the Imperial City PD arrived with two squad cars and a detective’s car. Bobby expected no confrontation with Imperial City PD. They and the Imperial Guard worked together a lot, and respected each other.

  The detective walked up to Bobby.

  “Good evening, Major. Detective Gorski. What’s our status?”

  “Good evening, sir. We detected the sudden death of a staffer on Her Majesty’s personal staff. Any such occurrence may portend an attack on the Empress, and we responded to secure and investigate the scene.”

  “Can we go take a look?”

  “Sure. But we won’t disturb the scene until our forensic unit gets here. Our best team is rolling now.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Come with me, sir. Let’s go see what we have.”

  Bobby and Gorski went on into the building and around to the rear elevators, then up to floor 117. They walked back around the perimeter of the building to the front elevators and stopped at the Imperial Guard perimeter.

  Vash lay sprawled facedown where she had fallen. A small pool of blood had spread from her head. It had only been fifteen minutes since the shooting.

  The noise of the descending shuttles had had everyone on the street side of the hallway looking out into the street, but some of the apartment doors were partially open on the courtyard side of the hallway as people peeked out to see what
was going on. A few wandered out into the hallway and toward the scene to get a better look, but stayed well back from the perimeter.

  Deepak Gupta was one of them. He watched curiously, but when one of the Imperial Guard shifted position, he caught a glimpse of bright red hair....

  “VASH! Oh, my God. Vash!”

  Bobby turned at the sound as Gupta came running down the hall. He caught him in his arms and held him back.

  “No. Sir, you have to stay back.”

  “It’s Vash. I have to go to her. Vash!”

  Bobby got a short message from Cindy in the VR.

  “Vash’s husband, Deepak Gupta.”

  “Mr. Gupta, I’m sorry. Vash is dead. Murdered. You can’t disturb the evidence. Or we’ll never catch her murderers.”

  “Vash, oh, Vash,” Gupta said as he continued to struggle.

  “Deepak. DEEPAK. Look at me.”

  Gupta turned half-crazy eyes to Bobby. Bobby spoke to him in short sentences. To break through to his reason.

  “I’m sorry. Vash is gone. Your wife. My friend. We have to catch them. Make them pay. We need the evidence.”

  All the strength went out of Gupta then. His legs buckled, and Bobby lowered him to the floor. He sat there rocking back and forth.

  “Vash! Oh, Vash. I am so sorry. What have I done? What have I done? Oh, Vash. I am so sorry.”

  “What did you do?” Bobby asked.

  “I told her to go to the interview. I encouraged her to take the job. And now those bastards have killed her. Oh, my God. Vash, I am so sorry. You were right, you were right, you were right.”

  He looked up at Bobby.

  “She didn’t want to go back into that snake pit. With those bastards. I said, but you will be at the palace, not with them. And now those bastards have killed her. Vash, oh, Vash. What have I done? What have I done? I am so sorry. Vash! Oh, my poor Vash. What have they done to you?”

  The forensic team showed up then, excusing themselves through the small knot of bystanders in the hallway and edging past Gupta, rocking back and forth on the floor.