EMPIRE: Intervention (EMPIRE SERIES Book 13)

by Richard F. Weyand

  The limo made its way through the parklike setting to the Security Ministry and pulled up under a side portico. A doorman opened the door for Gulliver, and a secretary met him there.

  “Mr. Gulliver?”

  “Yes. I’m Paul Gulliver.”

  “Come with me, please.”

  The secretary led him deep into the building, to a bank of elevators. He used a key to enable the elevator car to go to the top floor. They passed down a short hallway to a pair of double doors. The secretary opened one and waved him through.

  “Ah. Mr. Gulliver.”

  The placard on the large desk announced the owner as ‘Hubert Land.’ Land came around the desk and held out his hand. Gulliver shook it.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Minister Land.”

  “Very pleased to meet you as well, Mr. Gulliver. Please. Have a seat.”

  Land waved him over to a seating group to one side of the desk in the large office. Gulliver selected a club chair facing another opposite. Land sat in the other, facing him.

  “Thank you so much for meeting with me, Mr. Gulliver.”

  “No problem at all, Minister Land. Thank you for sending your car around.”

  Land waved it away.

  “Something of a necessity these days, Mr. Gulliver. We can no longer allow private vehicles in Government Center.”

  “Really. Everything seems so peaceful, Minister Land.”

  “On the surface, perhaps, Mr. Gulliver. And for most people, it’s surely true. We have a small minority of troublemakers, however, and they are growing bolder.”

  Gulliver raised an eyebrow, inviting Land to continue.

  “It has always been the goal of this government to see true justice, true equity, for all the citizens of Julian. The corporate interests and their lackeys fight us every step of the way.”

  “I hesitate to point out that I also represent a corporate interest, Minister Land.”

  “Oh, but Stauss Interstellar has never been a problem here, Mr. Gulliver, and, as the agent for the Empire’s support of the colony governments, has been a partner in so many things. It is in the context of that partnership that I wanted to talk to you today.

  “You see, while I have plenty of manpower, Mr. Gulliver, there are serious gaps in the equipment roster we need to put an end to this disruption of our peaceful pursuit of economic justice.”

  “What sort of gaps, Minister Land?”

  “Air assets for one, Mr. Gulliver. We could use surveillance drones, so we could find and track these agents wherever they flee. And of course, shuttles to send our police out to their location to effectuate their arrest.”

  “Do you not have shuttles now, Minister Land?”

  “Yes, traditional civilian shuttles, but they are easy pickings for the sort of rifles one needs on a colony planet to control the local megafauna. There have been some unfortunate incidents, with concomitant loss of life.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Minister Land.”

  Land nodded.

  “Another gap we have is in communications. The Imperial VR system and QE radios are a tremendous benefit to the people of Julian, Mr. Gulliver, but they also allow the anonymity of secure communications to the corporatist opposition. To successfully roll up their network, we need some way to intercept and track their communications.”

  “I see, Minister Land. Anything else?”

  “One more major thing, Mr. Gulliver. We need armored police vehicles – land vehicles – for patrols and other ground-based activities. Once again, normal vehicles are no match for high-powered big-game rifles.

  “Those are the major things. We have a normal need for small arms and the like. Other traditional police gear. But the ability to dig up and root out these corporatist counter-revolutionaries is going to depend on having better surveillance, better reach, and more firepower. Absent that, I’m afraid their activities will continue to disrupt the lives of Julian’s citizens, and delay us in achieving our goals.”

  “I see, Minister Land. And this is a small minority, you say?”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Gulliver. Tiny, even. His Excellency, President Mieland, was elected with the largest majority in Julian’s history. His message of equity and justice resonated with the vast majority of Julian’s people, and he is determined to carry it through. Unfortunately, it does not take many people to disrupt the peace for all the rest.”

  “I understand, Minister Land. And it’s a good thing you explained it to me. I will say it is unusual to provide this sort of equipment to a colony government. I’m not sure, as I sit here right now, whether it is even possible. Your background will help me in framing and justifying such a request. Still, I cannot promise I will be successful.”

  “Please do what you can, Mr. Gulliver. If it helps, you could meet with President Mieland, but I’m not sure he can add much to what I’ve said. It may be better to escalate the issue on your end.”

  “I’ll see what I can do, Minister Land. Assuming I get approvals for this, what kind of numbers are we talking about?”

  Henry Jensen, Turley’s XO on the Julian problem, considered his table of organization. He had filled in the headquarters positions, and they had divided up the staffing requirements among themselves.

  He put through another VR call, to Michael Dunleavy (Major, Imperial Marines, retired).

  “Michael Dunleavy.”

  “Hi, Mike. Hank Jensen here.”

  “Hiya, Hank. Long time. What’s up?”

  A Plan Comes Together

  Lyle Boardman looked out over the site.

  “Now this is more like it. How far are we from Monroe?”

  “About sixty miles,” said Lucas Joubert, the engineer from the government’s infrastructure department.

  “That’s not that far for running power lines and water pipes. And the flood plain?”

  “Any failure would hit below the city, not run through it.”

  “Excellent. I like it.”

  They had surveyed three other sites so far. One had not been suitable because the flood plain downstream from the dam ran right through the capital. Building in that kind of potential for disaster was not good planning. The other two had been much farther away, and running power lines and water pipes would have been much more costly. Power line losses would have been much higher as well.

  “What are we looking at? Maybe five hundred thousand acre-feet?” Boardman asked.

  “We’ve estimated it at between four hundred thousand and five hundred thousand, depending on how high we go.”

  “Good. That’s a nice solid number to be working with. What’s our closure span? That looks like a half-mile or so.”

  “Two thousand feet at the base. More like twenty-five hundred at the crest.”

  “And the spillway can go right over there,” Boardman said, pointing.

  Boardman turned back to Joubert.

  “This site is perfect. Nice-sized project. Fresh water as the colony grows. Free electricity. Turn the surroundings into a park, add a beach and a boat ramp, and everybody in town has someplace to go on the weekends. How can you beat it?”

  “It seems simple the way you talk about it.”

  “Oh, it is simple, just a lot of work. And with the right equipment, it won’t be that bad.”

  Boardman looked back out over the valley.

  “All right. Working assumption is this is the site, unless we turn up a deal-killer, like bad rock or something. Otherwise let’s assume this is it.”

  “Sounds good.”

  They turned and went back to the vehicles. One was a crew-cab pickup truck with the infrastructure department’s logo on the front doors, the sort of vehicle one saw on construction sites across all of human space.

  The other was a police van, with Security Ministry logos. Two uniformed members of the Special Police stood there watching. As an off-planet visitor, all Boardman’s travel out of the city had been escorted. For his own protection, he had been assured.

  They look
ed hot in their black uniforms on this sunny, warm day, but Boardman refused to feel sorry for them.

  And what was it with tyrannical regimes and black uniforms, anyway?

  It was the evening of their fourth night on the planet.

  “So what do we have?” Kersey asked.

  “Well, I didn’t get to see a hell of a lot, because the Special Police escorted us everywhere we went, and I had to tell them, each time we went anywhere, where we were going next. The infrastructure guy drove, though, so I got a lot of time looking out the window.

  “The countryside is just like the city, but more so. Drab, decrepit, and half-ass. The worst areas of the Alliance and the DP I saw during deployments weren’t this bad. In the rural areas, they’re living in hovels and farming with draft animals and homemade plows, fer crissake. Didn’t the Empire even give them tractors?”

  “I can shed some light there,” Kersey said. “Gasoline and diesel are rationed. They haven’t expanded refinery capacity to keep up with demand. That makes them expensive, too expensive for the farmers, since food prices are also controlled. There is no capital investment from outside to build refineries, and the government is loathe to give up the hard currency needed to expand refinery capacity itself. So the farmers have tractors, but they can’t afford to run them.”

  “The whole society is going backwards,” Gulliver said. “There’s no growth of anything but population. Together with low farm production, calories per capita is falling. That’s a formula for famine. And when I met with the security minister, what he wants from the Empire is offensive capability to go after the resistance movement. Nothing to help with the issues we see, just more capability to keep the lid on what they insist is a small minority of people who are unhappy.”

  “That’s complete BS,” Kersey said. “Just about everybody who isn’t part of the government and its cronies is unhappy. There’s a lot of the sort of black humor and dejected fatalism I saw in some of the worst-run DP and Alliance planets.”

  “So what all does the security minister want?” Boardman asked.

  “Pretty much the lot,” Gulliver said. “More surveillance equipment, like drones. Communications equipment to monitor VR channels. Armored personnel carriers. Armored police shuttles. Lots of small arms, but including things like squad automatic weapons. One interesting thing. I asked him what quantities of things he wanted, and he sent me his org chart and asked me to plan quantities.”

  “Wait,” Kersey said. “He sent you the organization chart for the Security Ministry?”

  “Yeah. Including the Secret Police. Got it today. Think that will come in handy?”

  “Uh, yeah. Maybe a little, don’t you think? I can’t imagine he would even do that.”

  “Give it to Mr. Mouse, here?” Boardman asked. “He probably thought it couldn’t do any harm. Nice, mild-mannered guy like Mr. Gulliver. No problem.”

  Boardman rolled his eyes, and Kersey and Gulliver both laughed.

  “For my part,” Boardman continued, “I did find a nice site to build a dam. That at least would be a positive for the population. Clean water supply, low-cost electricity, flood control, and a big recreational facility. Gonna take a lot of bulldozers and earthmovers to build it, but you have access to those, don’t you, Mr. Gulliver?”

  “Yes. Of course. I won’t have any problem getting approvals for those. All this security equipment, though, that’s a different matter. Not sure I can get sign off on that stuff.”

  “Won’t matter if you don’t,” Boardman said. “We just lie about it. Just make sure none of it shows up before our people do.”

  Kersey stirred suddenly.

  “Wait a minute. I have an idea.”

  Their conversation continued for several more hours, but at the end of it, they had the beginnings of a plan.

  “I wish I could start to war-game this, but I don’t have access to the Imperial Marine simulators anymore,” Kersey said.

  “Let me see if I can do something about that,” Gulliver said. “How soon do you need it?”

  “Not right away. But for the next level of detail – perhaps once we make contact with the resistance – they would definitely come in handy. And we’re going to need them for training the troops as they come in.”

  “Let me see what I can arrange. In the meantime, it’s time to get some things under way.”

  “Dick, I think you need to see this.”

  Dick Holden, the CEO of Galactic Equipment Supply, took the printout from his vice president of sales, Jan Vanderberg.

  “What do we have here, Jan?”

  “It’s Paul Gulliver’s order for Julian. It’s– what can I say? It’s unusual, to say the least. I thought you should sign off on anything this out of the ordinary.”

  Holden’s eye scanned down the top sheet, then he flipped to the second, and the third.

  “Wow. Unusual, did you say? Unprecedented, more like.”

  Holden flipped to the fourth page and let out a low whistle.

  “It gets better and better as it goes on, doesn’t it? All right. Let me look at this, and I’ll get back to you.”

  “Thanks, Dick. I’ll send you an electronic copy as well.”

  Vanderberg left, and Holden scanned through the list again.

  Paul Gulliver, of course, was a special case. Not a normal hire, he had been recommended direct from Dieter Stauss’s office. Holden had the distinct feeling something bigger was going on here.

  He put in a meeting request, subject ‘Colony Planet Julian,’ and got an answer back almost immediately.

  When Holden logged into the VR channel for the meeting, he found himself in a simulation of Dieter Stauss’s well-appointed office on Hesse.

  “Ah, Mr. Holden. Welcome.”

  “Thank you, sir. And thank you for taking my meeting request.”

  “No problem at all. Something going on with regard to Julian? How’s Paul Gulliver doing there?”

  “Well, that’s just it, sir. We just received an order from him for Julian, and, well, it’s more than a little unusual.”

  Holden shoved the electronic file to Stauss in VR, which the simulation modeled as him handing over a paper document.

  “Well, of course, Julian is an unusual case,” Stauss said as he accepted the document.

  Stauss scanned through the document, flipping through the pages.

  “Yes. Yes, I see what you mean.”

  “Squad automatic weapons. Aerial reconnaissance drones. Secure communications monitoring equipment. And that’s before you get into the heavy stuff.”

  “Unusual, to be sure. Still, Mr. Holden, I have the utmost confidence in Paul Gulliver. If this is what he says Julian needs, then that’s what we’ll ship them. I’ll have a chat with Steve Janski over at Interstellar Arms & Munitions and let him know this is coming through. Make sure he knows it’s OK.”

  “All right, Mr. Stauss. It’s your call. I just wanted to make sure it was OK.”

  “Understood, Mr. Holden. You were right to do so. But we’re good.”

  Gerry Conner cast his bobber line out over the lake. It was a beautiful day at his retirement home on the lake on Jora. He settled back into the seat of the little runabout and logged into VR. He was immediately in the simulation of his office in the simulation-only headquarters of Section Six.

  He pulled up today’s mails and scanned for the most important ones first. A relay from his contact mail with Paul Gulliver on Julian jumped out at him.

  BG Ann Turley and her forces require access to IM simulators for war gaming and training.

  Of course. He should probably have thought of that, actually.

  Conner sent a mail to the Co-Consul requesting the access.

  Imperial General Alexei Vasilyev, Commandant of the Imperial Marines, was in his morning meeting with his chief of staff, Field General Graeme Dunn.

  “One last thing, Graeme. I have a request from the Co-Consul to provide access to Imperial Marine simulators to retired Brigadier Genera
l Ann Turley and her designees. See to that, would you?”

  “Of course, Sir. Ann Turley. Is that the Turley of the Groton Insurgency?”

  “Yes. That’s the one.”

  “I wonder what this is all about, Sir.”

  “No telling. Maybe she wants to keep her hand in. But I’m not about to question a request from the Co-Consul.”

  “No, Sir. I’ll take care of it.”

  “All right. Easy. Easy. We’re down. Cut ‘em loose,” cargo shuttle pilot Craig Hornik told his load master.

  “OK. We’re free,” Ernst Bretz said.

  Bretz looked out the cockpit window as Hornik lifted the shuttle off the stack of standard twelve-foot by twelve-foot by eighty-foot containers. The grassy plain in this unpopulated portion of Alexa stretched to the distant mountains.

  “You sure about this, Craig? We’re out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Spot on the coordinates.”

  “Weird.”

  “Hey, I don’t issue orders, Ernst. I just follow ‘em.”

  “Yeah, you and me both. But ya gotta wonder.”

  “Wonder away. Meanwhile, let’s go get another load.”

  Bretz looked down at the stack of containers they had dropped, standing alone on the plain.

  “Yeah, I guess. But this is weird as hell.”

  They came into Alexa from hundreds of planets throughout the western portion of the Empire, their paths converging onto the few older passenger liners that served the far-western frontier planet. They came in by the hundreds, over a period of weeks.

  The first contingent of several hundred came down on separate shuttles from the IPS Sovereign of the Stars, a passenger liner that had seen better days, then been relegated to this backwater route. Regular passengers were taken down to the spaceport in Central, Alexa’s capital city. But these passengers, Imperial Marine veterans one and all, were transported to another location altogether, several hundred miles from the capital.