Julia tilted her head, squinting at her father. “What are you playing at, Old Man?” He was being entirely too agreeable.
Lazarus tried to look affronted, but it wasn’t very convincing. “Can’t a father show pride in his daughter?” he asked. “Our family has produced only four colonels in three hundred years, and now we have a brigadier?”
“Maybe,” she corrected. “The Emperor nominated me, but the Senate still has to confirm the promotion.”
“They will,” Lazarus insisted, “or Irricana might just rebel for real this time. They want you back as soon as possible.”
“Enough work talk,” Julia declared. “I’m going to show Paul the grounds.”
Lazarus frowned. “I’m not sure that’s wise,” he cautioned. “The ‘scalers’ are still out there, working on the hedges.”
“They know I’m always armed,” she replied. “As long as you don’t get too close, they’re no problem.”
She led Paul back to the main hall and out a set of tall doors that opened onto a stone-paved surface overlooking several acres of trees and various exotic plants. the sky was growing darker, but it seemed to have no effect on the heat.
“So what did he do,” she asked him, “offer to pay you off if you leave me alone?” She angled to the left, taking them down a tree-shaded pathway.
“Uhhh…” Paul was worried this might actually hurt his chances, but he knew he couldn’t keep it from her. “He kind of told me he’s given up on finding you a husband.” He grinned. “Are the cops really looking for one of your old suitors?”
She laughed. “Technically, I suppose. He fled the planet after the hospital released him.”
“You put him there?” Paul asked. “Let me guess, he wasn’t quite as charming as your father thought?”
“And then some,” she said, stopping to tease out a venus-magnolia flower. “He thought he could ‘seal the deal’ by force. I gave him a chance to back off, but when he ripped my shirt I broke one of his arms and most of his face.”
“So now he has to rely on his winning personality?” Paul grinned again, taking a deep breath of the cool fragrant air.
Cool was a relative term on Ganges. It was certainly better than standing out on the stone terrace where the air was still shimmering with heat accumulated from the recently-obscured sun. Still, he’d be looking for the environmental controls if it were this warm on a ship.
She resumed walking. “So the old man’s given up, has he? What was he really harping about when we came in then?”
“He’s decided to pin his hopes on me. Told me not to waste time asking him for your hand if you ever showed an interest in getting married – just find a captain and get it done.”
“Are you seriously telling me he’s got no objections to having you as his son-in-law?”
Paul spread his hands. “Why do you have to put it like that?” He affected a hurt tone but his grin took off the edge. “I’ve got prospects, y’know…”
That won him a treasured giggle.
“I know,” she said. “I’m just surprised the old bastard is willing to consider any man who can’t trace his lineage back to Montgomery himself.”
They reached the west edge of the garden, rounding the corner to find flashing orange lights on a red utility vehicle. Two police officers were sipping bags of coffee while a technician loaded a dead Gangian native into the vehicle.
“Afternoon, Officers.” Urbica the Marine was back suddenly.
Polite nods. “Miss Urbica,” the slightly older officer replied. “We’ll get this cleared up right away.”
The younger officer frowned. “Ma’am, have you heard of any disturbance, anything that might help explain what happened here?”
His partner shot him an angry look. “Don’t trouble yourself, ma’am; we’ll sort it out.”
“It’s no trouble, Officers,” Urbica assured them. “I shot him this morning.”
Paul stared at her. “You what?”
“He came at me with that hedge trimmer over there,” she pointed to a long implement that looked like an old-fashioned bow, except it had a plasma arc instead of a draw string. It lay crackling on the dirt beside the path.
“No hedges anywhere near here,” Paul mused, “and yet it was turned on.”
The younger cop ran a scanner over it before reaching down to turn it off. “His prints are all over it but no evidence that Miss Urbica even touched it. Not even any dead skin cells from handling it while wearing gloves.”
“Salazar!” the older man growled, “of course she wouldn’t plant evidence; she’s the governor’s own daughter, you idiot!”
“Officer…” Paul waited for the older man to look in his direction. “You should let him do a proper investigation. Any number of vile stories can be cooked up about this if we don’t have all the facts available.”
“And you,” the older man retorted, “should stay out of police business, Mr. …?” He knew who the local elite were, and Paul wasn’t one of them. He might have had the sense to consider the fact that Paul had just arrived on the scene in Julia’s company, but his blood was up.
Paul activated his transponder, the standard response of any citizen when being questioned by a cop.
The older man’s face seemed to lose some of his Gangian tan. “Inspector, I meant no disrespect. I…”
Paul waved off the apology. “Never mind about that,” he insisted. “Have you had an increase in native trouble lately?”
The man looked relieved to talk business. “As a matter of fact, we’ve been seeing a lot more lately. The last week or so, they’ve been acting like there’s a double full moon or something.
“Not like a planned thing, though,” the younger cop added, “more like they’ve hit a boiling point and the frustration’s just gotten out of control.”
The older man nodded. “That’s about it. Mouthing off to the cops, property damage, substance abuse. Hells, they’ve even assaulted a few Humans, but this is the first time one of em’s gone after anybody important.”
Paul looked at Julia and she raised an eyebrow.
“There’s no such thing as coincidence,” she said.
He nodded. “They’re acting like you’d expect them to, assuming they had high expectations. Expectations that were shattered.”
Julia’s eyes flickered over to the cops.
“The local cops need to know,” Paul insisted. It would help if they understood why the native aliens were causing trouble but, more importantly, it would lead to another bump in the media cycle, pushing the Imperium toward taking action.
The angrier the public was about the Grays, the better it was for the Imperium. It might even lead to another war.
The economy had been in a steady, slow decline since shortly after the end of the Warlord Era. Empires either grew or shrank. The Imperium, with no new aliens to subjugate, had turned to subjugating its own people.
That was a formula that led to disaster.
“I think aliens throughout the Imperium may have known that something big was coming,” Paul told the two cops. “The Grays thought their time had come to bring us to our knees, so they probably had agents on every world to prepare for the big day.”
“Jiàn tā de gui,” the older man muttered in shock. “They might have all sorts of weapons stashed away on Ganges.”
“And they might just decide to use them anyway,” Paul told him. “They’re pissed and they don’t have much to lose. It’s a dangerous combination. Tell your boss. Say you got it straight from the Eye.”
They continued their walk while the cops climbed back into their vehicle.
“Things are going to get ugly,” Urbica remarked.
Paul shrugged. “Things were always ugly for most Imperial citizens,” he said. “The only difference is that now the rich will be affected along with the poor.”
The first drops of a Gangian rainstorm slapped wetly against the foliage above and she led him toward the shelter of a broad-leafed tree.
>
“I suppose I’ve had a privileged childhood – especially compared to what you had to go through.” She perched herself on a well-worn low-hanging tree branch. “I’m amazed you don’t hate me for it.”
Paul sat next to her gazing out at the lawn where the first drops were already on their way back up in the form of a fine mist. “You left all of this behind for the hardship of military service. If anything, I respect you even more because of the choices you’ve made.” He nodded out toward the lawn.
Tendrils of water vapor snaked their way into their leafy sanctuary, teasing out moisture collectors on the red lichen covering the trunks.
“I left my life behind for the relative step up in living standards when I joined the military,” he told her.
She hopped off the branch, brushing fragments of bark from the back of her dress. “Let’s go back to the house and see if a messenger from the Grand Senate is waiting for me.”
It was time for General Urbica and Inspector Grimm to get back out on the Rim and keep the newly augmented 1st Gliesan Dragoons busy.
The Eye had finally agreed with CentCom on something. It was useful to embed an inspector with troops on the Rim.
Paul’s role in finding the lost citizens had not gone unnoticed and he was being sent back out to work with the recently decorated dragoons. He’d even been included in the list for the Emperor’s unit-citation.
1GD would continue to aggressively patrol the border regions and seek out trouble. It was small, as Imperial responses went, but it was a start.
Both the Imperium and the Grays had been dealt a shock. It was only a matter of time before someone decided it was an ideal time for something daring and unexpected.
Julia intended to be that someone.
From the Author
First off, many thanks to Chris Nuttall for offering me a work visa in the Empire of Ashes. Quite a few of the folks reading my stories also read Mr. Nuttall and I’d already read my way through his excellent Outside Context series before hearing of this project.
He’s put a great deal of thought into the structure and rules of this universe and I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent in it (hopefully you have as well).
I’m giving thought to returning in the near future. I figure a posting to the Rim would cause a curious guy like Paul to start thinking about the beyonder colonies.
He’d been to the Rim before, as a military cop, and he’s heard the rumors. He’s watched desperate Humans take ship for the enigmatic colonies where the Imperium doesn’t regulate your every thought or tax you into an early grave.
Seems to me, a lot can happen on planets like that.
It also sounds like the kind of place the Imperium might look if they were shopping around for a short war of expansion to bolster a flagging economy.
There’s also the Grays.
I doubt that Brigadier Urbica (You don’t really think the senate would refuse to confirm her, do you?) would sit quietly on the Imperial side of the border. On arrival at Irricana, she’d probably go straight to her new flagship and take her beloved dragoons back into Gray territory.
After their lightning raid on Narsa, they could use a break from the adoring crowds down in Vermillion.
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Rebels and Patriots (Imperium Cicernus Book 3) Page 24
