EMPIRE: Investigation

by Richard F. Weyand

  Books in the EMPIRE Series

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  EMPIRE: Reformer

  EMPIRE: Usurper

  EMPIRE: Tyrant

  EMPIRE: Commander

  EMPIRE: Warlord

  EMPIRE: Conqueror

  by Stephanie Osborn:

  EMPIRE: Imperial Police

  EMPIRE: Imperial Detective

  EMPIRE: Imperial Inspector

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  EMPIRE: Intervention

  EMPIRE: Investigation

  EMPIRE: Succession

  Books in the Childers Universe

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  Childers

  Childers: Absurd Proposals

  Galactic Mail: Revolution

  A Charter For The Commonwealth

  Campbell: The Problem With Bliss

  by Stephanie Osborn:

  Campbell: The Sigurdsen Incident

  EMPIRE

  Investigation

  by

  RICHARD F. WEYAND

  Copyright 2020 by Richard F. Weyand

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN 978-1-7340758-6-1

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover Credits

  Cover Art: James Lewis-Vines

  Back Cover Photo: Oleg Volk

  Published by Weyand Associates, Inc.

  Bloomington, Indiana, USA

  November 2020

  CONTENTS

  Alexa

  Shopping

  Assignment

  In Transit

  Annalia and Earth

  Dalnimir

  Reports And Reactions

  More Stirring The Pot

  Preparations

  Turning Up The Heat

  Something Stupid

  Follow The Money

  Activating The Reserve

  Arrest and Assault

  Showdown

  Now What?

  First Arrests

  A Tale Of Three Governors

  Taking Power

  Arrest List

  The News Gets Out

  The Media

  The Commanders

  Amanda’s Idea

  Enter The Zoo

  Police Work

  Frazzled

  Some Relief

  Provincial Governor

  Imperial Guidance, Imperial Justice

  Back To The Zoo

  Punishments And Promotions

  Many Things In Flux

  Going Home

  New Assignment

  Reunion

  Alexa

  The Imperial Commercial Vessel Vladimir Sorokin made down-transition into the Alexa system, inbound from Julian. She reestablished contact with the Imperial QE network.

  Aboard the Vladimir Sorokin, Paul Gulliver and Ann Turley, both Imperial agents for Section Six, looked at their newly arrived mail messages.

  They had been curious about what their next assignment could be. Both were pretty ‘hot’ in the Empire’s western colonies at the moment. Their overthrow of the Julian government by bringing military aid – an entire mechanized brigade of retired Imperial Marines – to the resistance there, and then Turley’s stint as absolute ruler and president for life, had made them pretty well known in that part of human space. So they were expecting an assignment somewhere in the Empire’s vastness while their infamy in the colonies faded.

  What that assignment might be was another matter. Gulliver was an expert on the colonies, while Turley was a retired brigadier general of the Imperial Marines. Where could they be used to best effect?

  Even expecting something different, they were unprepared for their actual assignment.

  “Dalnimir?” Turley asked.

  “It’s corrupted from the Russian. It means ‘Distant World,’” Gulliver answered.

  “Yes, but where is it?”

  “Earth Sector.”

  The crossing from Julian to Alexa had only been seven days in hyperspace, even aboard a freighter. Freighters always had some extra cabins on which one could book passage. It was the most common way to travel from the Empire into the western colonies, which received lots of cargo from the Empire but were not populous enough yet to support scheduled service by passenger liners. The accommodations were not up to passenger liner standards – the cabin was a normal crew cabin and would have been considered steerage on a liner, while they ate with the ship’s crew in the crew’s mess – but passage was passage.

  The ICV Vladimir Sorokin had been deadheading back, like most return transits to Alexa from the western colonies, so she made good acceleration. They had had close to one gravity for the passage. The ship didn’t move any faster in hyperspace, but it was more comfortable if the ship could maintain one gravity of felt acceleration.

  During that week, Gulliver had been teaching Turley the ins and outs of disguise. He called it ‘stage makeup,’ since nowhere on the Vladimir Sorokin was a secure environment. Ship’s crews were notoriously gossipy on shore leave – in fact, that was a real good way of spreading rumors you wanted to be known, one which Gulliver had used in the past – so they kept everything low-key. Turley already had good makeup skills from her time as an executive with Kendall, the agricultural supplies giant, and Gulliver built on that.

  Turley had worn Marine-issue MCU pants, boots, and sleeveless tee shirts on ship, which discouraged both unwanted familiarity and dismissal from the ship’s crew. She had not gone soft in the six years since she had retired from field command in the Imperial Marines, and anyone with that upper-body development, in Marine-issue kit, was probably not someone you wanted to either mess with or ignore.

  The crossing had been uneventful, even relaxing after the stresses of the Julian assignment. They had spent their time studying disguise, playing cards with Kyle Gordon in his cabin, which had a table, and making love, usually on the deck of their crew cabin, the bunk arrangements being notably unavailing in that regard.

  “I also got a mail from Morena Prieto on Verano,” Gulliver said.

  “President Prieto?” Turley asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s pretty amazing that she ran for president and got elected. I wouldn’t even think she met the residency requirements to be eligible.”

  “Each colony has its own requirements, and those on Verano are pretty open,” Gulliver said. “If you move there and declare yourself a resident, you are. And she was pretty popular there at the end.”

  “She took a much more visible role than you did.”

  Gulliver gave her a sharp look, and Turley shrugged.

  “Yes, she did. Anyway, she’s moving her parents and her daughter to Verano, and she wonders if we can’t help them get set up for the last leg. They just arrived on Alexa.”

  “Morena Prieto has a daughter?” Turley asked.

  “Yes. Prieto was widowed during an assignment – her husband’s assignment, actually – maybe ten years ago. She completed his assignment. That’s how she ended up– uh, where she was.”

  “So how old’s her daughter?”

  Gulliver got a distant look for a moment as he consulted some database or other.

  “Eighteen. She just graduated from finishing school.”

  “Wait. Morena Prieto is pushing forty?” Turley asked.

  “She’s actually forty-three. Three years older than me.”

  “That’s remarkable.”

  “Wait till you see her daughter,” Gulliver said.

  He pushed Turley the file, which included pictures, school records, and other data.

  “My God. I can see why she graduated finishing school, ‘cause she’s done. She’s an open invitation to riot.”

  “Look at her grades. That’s Imperial cu
rriculum for the scholastic part.”

  Turley scanned down her school records. At eighteen, Marie Louise Bouchard had already completed her bachelor’s degree in history and government. With Spanish and French thrown in so she could read source materials in the original.

  With honors.

  “OK, so she’s living proof God does give some people everything. I wonder what she’ll make of it.”

  “No telling,” Gulliver said.

  Passage on a freighter was also different from a liner in that it did not maintain gravity while making planet stops. The Vladimir Sorokin was coming to Alexa to take on another load of cargo for the colonies and so inserted into a planetary orbit. Crew members helped Gulliver, Turley, and Gordon negotiate the final passages to the crew shuttle for transfer to the planet, with Turley struggling to keep her stomach well behaved the entire time.

  Once the shuttle had left the freighter and begun the drop down to the planet, holding against the planet’s gravity, some apparent gravity returned and Turley was much more comfortable.

  She belched loudly. A couple of crewmen tittered at that.

  “Excuse me. I always swallow a lot of air trying to hold my stomach together in zero gravity.”

  “Really?” Gulliver asked. “I would think an Imperial Marine would be used to it.”

  “Nah. Marines are either landlubbers or flyboys. Not spacers. I’m a landlubber. I could never be Imperial Navy. I don’t have the stomach for it. Literally.”

  “Yeah, the Navy’s just the way we get to the job site,” Gordon said.

  “Huh. You learn something new every day.”

  The spaceport on Alexa was as the three had left it months before, and they took a cab together back to the same hotel in Central, Alexa’s capital city, where they had met up prior to going to Julian. This time, Gulliver and Turley booked into a room together, and it was Gordon who had his own room.

  They had dinner together, that first night back on Alexa.

  “It seems only right to have a farewell dinner to bookend the kickoff dinner,” Turley said.

  “Yeah,” Gordon said. “The hotel clerk gave us funny looks, though. He must remember us from months back. But this time, Gulliver’s got the girl. You stole my wife, Paul.”

  Gulliver chuckled.

  “Indeed I did. So you’re going back to Hydraulix, Kyle?”

  “Yeah. It’s what I know, and I’m good at it. What about you guys? You sticking together?”

  “Yes,” Turley said. “We’ve become a couple, somehow.”

  “That’s great,” Gordon said. “Off to a new assignment?”

  “Yes,” Gulliver said. “We’re waiting to see what Stauss wants us to do next. I’m hoping for something a little more low-key.”

  Gordon and Turley both laughed.

  “Mr. Low-Key,” Gordon said. “That’s our man. Well, just remember, if you need us, me and the boys are around.”

  “Oh, I sincerely hope not,” Gulliver said.

  They took their leave of each other that evening. Gordon’s liner was already in-system, and he would ship out in the morning.

  After a luxurious – and entertaining – night in a real bed once more, they enjoyed a late breakfast on the balcony of their room, looking out over downtown Central.

  “I guess we should look up Ms. Bouchard and her grandparents today,” Turley said.

  “That shouldn’t be hard. They’re in this hotel.”

  “Ah. Easy.”

  “Yes,” Gulliver said. “And then I think some shopping.”

  Gulliver called Lorenzo Oberto, Morena Prieto’s father, and they agreed to meet in the lobby of the hotel. Gulliver and Turley were already there when the Obertos arrived. They were hard to miss. He was dark and handsome, and she was still radiant despite her age. The young woman following behind was stunning, wearing what had been known from time immemorial as ‘the little black dress.’ She drew the frank stares of men and women alike as the trio walked across the lobby.

  “Mr. Oberto? I’m Paul Gulliver.”

  “Hello, Mr. Gulliver. Let me introduce my wife, Andriana Oberto, and my granddaughter, Marie Louise Bouchard.”

  “Ms. Oberto.”

  Gulliver shook her hand. He would not have dated her a day over forty-five, yet she must be in her sixties.

  “Mademoiselle Bouchard.”

  Gulliver shook the hand of Prieto’s daughter. She had mastered the trick of looking at you as if she could see into your very soul.

  “Mr. Gulliver. I am so very pleased to meet you.”

  She said it like meeting him was the high point of her day – if not her month – and with a candor that made it real, not put on.

  “Allow me to introduce my companion, Ann Turley.”

  “Mr. Oberto. Ms. Oberto. Ms. Bouchard.”

  Turley shook hands with each in turn, then gestured to the lobby bar.

  “Should we find a place we can sit and talk?”

  When they were all seated around a table and had ordered drinks, Ms. Oberto started the conversation. Bouchard, Turley noted, ordered a non-alcoholic drink, despite being of age. Under Imperial law, one was an adult at 18, for every purpose.

  “We’re so pleased to meet some of Selena’s co-workers. We know very little about what she did. Some sort of corporate trouble-shooter, we understand. But we’ve never met any of her friends before.”

  “Selena?” Turley asked.

  “Morena Prieto is my mother’s stage name, as it were, Ms. Turley,” Bouchard said. “Her actual name is Selena Oberto Bouchard. Jean-Pierre Bouchard was my father.”

  “Ah, I see. It must have been hard for you, with your mother traveling so much.”

  “It was a mixed blessing, Ms. Turley. My mother would have months-long absences, followed by months-long periods at home. And, of course, there was VR. I had all her support, yet it fostered a certain independence.”

  And made her grow up well before her time, Turley guessed. The mature young woman before her could have passed for half-again her actual age. Easily.

  We are all the product of our experiences, Turley thought.

  “And now my Selena is the president of a planet?” Lorenzo Oberto asked.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Turley said. “She helped liberate the planet from a dictator, and then was elected president. She is very popular there.”

  “That is amazing to me.”

  “We’ve moved before, to be close to her when she was on a long assignment, but this is something else entirely, isn’t it?” Andriana Oberto asked.

  “Yes,” Gulliver said. “She’s retired from Stauss Interstellar now, and is the president there for four years. And she can run again. Twice more, I think.”

  “You’ll probably live in the presidential palace, in San Jacinto,” Turley said. “No more travel. No more separations.”

  “That will be wonderful,” Andriana Oberto said.

  “Yes. Well, we have to get you there first. Now, there are no passenger liners running into Verano, so passage is normally booked on a freighter. You basically stay in unused extra crew cabins, and eat with the crew. The accommodations are pretty spartan, but it’s only for a week. What sort of luggage do you have?”

  “We’re actually traveling pretty light, because we’re moving,” Lorenzo Oberto said. “All our things are packed into a container being held at the spaceport freight warehouse for transport up to the ship. We only have our traveling clothes as luggage.”

  “At the same time,” Turley said, “we might need to get you some additional things here before you depart. Traveling as passengers on a freighter is best done with some dressing down. There’s no one to impress, and one doesn’t want to be an invitation to trouble.”

  Turley raised an eyebrow to Bouchard, and Bouchard laughed. It was a wonderful laugh. It was a laugh one wanted to hear again.

  “I understand, Ms. Turley. I would appreciate your suggestions.”

  Later, in their room, Turley and Gulliver compared not
es.

  “OK, so she has personality and maturity, too. Other than that, what’s she got?” Turley asked with sarcasm.

  “Her mother’s the president of a planet?”

  “Well, yeah. There’s that. Criminy, what a package.”

  “And she’s had some martial arts training, too,” Gulliver said.

  “Really?”

  “I think so. It’s the way she walks.”

  “Well, if she dresses like that on a freighter, she’s gonna need it,” Turley said.

  “As far as that goes, I think we can kill two birds with one stone on this shopping trip.”

  “How so?”

  “I know this little store. You’ll see.”

  Shopping

  Gulliver made the passage accommodations to Verano for the trio. He had long experience traveling into the colonies and back, and some of the ship captains and crews knew him. As luck would have it, the ICV Abigail Sturm was headed for Verano in five days. He’d been on the ‘Abby Storm’ a couple times in the last five years, and knew her captain, at least then. He checked her roster, and indeed Karl Linden was still her master. Gulliver VRed him.

  “Karl Linden here.”

  “Hello, Captain. Paul Gulliver here.”

  “Well, hello, Mr. Gulliver. Long time no see. Will you be shipping out with us this week?”

  “No, Captain, not this time. But several friends will. I thought I would call and give you a heads up.”

  “I appreciate that, Mr. Gulliver. Friends of yours, you say?”

  “Yes. An older couple and their granddaughter. A couple of items there. They are the parents and daughter of the current president of Verano. And the president of Verano is a personal friend of Dieter Stauss.”

  The ICV Abigail Sturm belonged to and was operated by Stauss Interstellar Freight Services, so that was no minor matter.

  “That is always good to know, Mr. Gulliver. I thank you for that. Is there anything else I should know?”

  “One other thing, Captain. The daughter is eighteen, and insanely good looking. Stunning, even. The combination of circumstances is a disaster waiting to happen.”