EMPIRE: Investigation

by Richard F. Weyand

  “Oh, and congratulations on your promotion, by the way. Both of them.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Wait. My mail has an attachment, too.”

  Culligan got a blank look as he opened the attachment.

  “Holy shit. I have an Imperial Decree that lets me do anything up to and including removing the provincial governor and taking him into custody. Does your mail have an attachment?”

  Purny checked her mail again. Multiple attachments.

  “Yeah. Four of them. Active-duty status in the Imperial Guard. Imperial Decree of full authority up to and including removing the provincial governor. That sounds the same as yours. Command of IFB Dalnimir and Sixty-Fifth Marine Division at my option. And Imperial override comm codes.”

  “It looks like the Emperor is not pleased with the situation on Dalnimir.”

  “You might say that.”

  They sat quietly for a long time, looking down the mall.

  “So now what do we do?” Purny finally asked.

  “We still need them to do something stupid.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “You mean, to turn up the heat?” Culligan asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I have a couple of ideas.”

  Captain Daniel Parnell also received a mail.

  To: Captain Daniel Parnell

  From: Imperial General Sean MacFarland

  Subject: Activation Imminent

  Reserve activation imminent. Local contacts: IG LG Ann Turley and Paul Gulliver, a.k.a. Jan Purny and Howell Culligan. Activation on their authority per Imperial Decree attached. Upon activation, relieve immediate superior as bvt MAJ and move to their aid as directed by them. Assume local opposition. Use of all necessary force authorized to carry out their objectives.

  Parnell read it three times carefully. In short, it was ‘Do nothing but be ready to do anything.’ ‘Assume local opposition’ could only mean moving into Stolits to support General Ann Turley. There was nobody to oppose them on Imperial Fleet Base Dalnimir.

  Turley. There was a name right out of his Imperial Marine Academy textbooks. Turley had suppressed the Groton Insurgency just before he started the Academy, and they had studied her operation in detail. He had read her AAR three times. That she was here on Dalnimir was extraordinary. And she was apparently now Imperial Guard.

  What would she need? Her Groton operation had relied on speed and overwhelming force, applied to achieve the desired result with minimum casualties on either side.

  All that implied a mounted operation here. His battalion did not have an armor company, but all Marine companies were trained to be mounted infantry, whatever their current assignment. When push came to shove, every Marine was a rifleman, and an APC was how you got to work when you didn’t have time to walk.

  Parnell called in his first sergeant, First Sergeant Floyd Atwood.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Have a seat, Top.”

  Atwood sat down and waited.

  “Top, there’s a little operation we might need to carry out, but I can’t be sure yet. I need you to grease the wheels a bit, get things ready, because if we have to do it, it’s all going to come down quickly and I don’t want us to be playing catch up.”

  “That sounds smart, Sir.”

  “Yes, but we also need to do this real quiet, because it might not happen at all. I figure fifty-fifty odds. And if it doesn’t happen, I want everything to blow over like nothing was up. Can you do that?”

  “I think so, Sir. What did you have in mind?”

  “Assume we needed to move against an opposition force in Stolits. The whole battalion. So we would need enough APCs to get everybody from here to there, and be ready to party when we got there. How would you do that?”

  “Well, Sir, we could take an inventory of the company’s weapons. Make sure all our extra play-toys were ready. You know. Have ‘em all spiffed up and everything, set to just grab and run. Our company at least would be good to go. The other guys see me doing that, they’ll probably figure I know something they don’t and do the same thing out of reflex if nothing else.”

  “And the APCs?”

  “I can talk to some guys in the motor pool, Sir. See about them havin’ a couple-three dozen APCs ready to go on a moment’s notice. Tell ‘em I got wind o’ some readiness exercise bullshit in the air, and figured I’d give ‘em a heads up. You know, we mount everybody up, drive around out back o’ the base, and then give ‘em their stuff back all dirty. Typical make-work shit. Then we’ll all grumble about it together and they’ll owe me one, ‘cause they don’t like gettin’ caught with their pants down.”

  “That sounds perfect, Top. See to it.”

  “Yes, Sir. Timeframe?”

  “It could happen any time. It could happen tonight. But I would think a couple days.”

  “Yes, Sir. I’m on it.”

  “Oh, and one of those APCs should be an APC-CV.”

  An APC-Command Vehicle? Atwood raised an eyebrow.

  “We gonna have brass observing, Sir?”

  “I think so. And you know how they like their fancy ride. It goes really nice with their stars.”

  Atwood snorted.

  “Yeah. That’ll get the motor pool’s attention. All right, Sir. I got it.”

  “Thanks, Top.”

  “Hey, Freddie, how’s it goin’?” Atwood asked.

  “Hi, Woody. Whatcha doin’ over here in the motor pool?” First Sergeant Fred Murphy asked.

  “I got wind o’ some shit goin’ down and I thought I’d give you guys a heads up.”

  “Whatcha got?”

  “Battalion readiness exercise. You know. Mount ‘em up, drive around out back, shoot up a buncha shit and get everything all dirty, then bring ‘em all back in. One o’ those short-notice deals.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Yeah. Now, it may not happen. I heard high mucky-muck ain’t made up his mind yet. But if it does, it could happen almost any time. Oh, and throw in an APC-CV.”

  “An APC-CV? No shit?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I heard. Mounted battalion, and an APC-CV, on short notice. Could happen any time, but probably in a couple days or a week if it happens at all. No notice, just 1-2-3-go.”

  “Fuck me. All right, Woody. Thanks. I owe you one.”

  “No problem, Freddie. Oh, and keep this on the QT, right? We don’t want his lordship findin’ out we knew it was comin’.”

  “Gotcha, Woody. Thanks.”

  “What the hell’s going on in Second Company?” asked First Sergeant Toby McDuff of First Company.

  “I don’t know, Duffy,” said First Sergeant Peter Hendricks of Third Company. “Woody’s got ‘em draggin’ all their shit out, checkin’ it over, and cleanin’ it up like they was plannin’ on goin’ somewhere.”

  “Did you ask him what’s goin’ on?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’d he say?” McDuff asked.

  “Nothin’.”

  “Nothin’? That’s it?”

  “Yeah, that’s what he said. Nothin’,” Hendricks said.

  “Shit. He knows somethin’. Don’t forget Captain Parnell is Imperial Guard. I bet he got wind o’ somethin’ comin’ down.”

  “You think we ought to do the same thing then?”

  “Yeah, Pete. I wouldn’t wanna be the guy who ain’t ready for the party.”

  “Makes sense to me, Duffy. What the hell. Give everybody somethin’ to grumble about. Been gettin’ too quiet around here.”

  McDuff laughed.

  By the end of the day, all four companies of Fourth Battalion, Second Regiment, Sixty-Fifth Division, Twenty-First Field Group of His Majesty’s Imperial Marines had pulled out all their field equipment and were going over it with a fine-tooth comb, getting ready for whatever was going down.

  They didn’t know what it might be, but they weren’t going to be caught unprepared.

  “Battalion, eh?” Sergeant Major Klaus Detweiler asked.


  Detweiler was the senior NCO in the Imperial Marines motor pool on Imperial Fleet Base Dalnimir.

  “That’s what he said, Sergeant Major,” First Sergeant Fred Murphy said.

  “And an APC-CV? You sure, Murphy?”

  “That’s what he said, Sergeant Major.”

  “All right. Here’s what we want to do. Pick out three dozen cherries. You know, low miles, no bad service marks. Parade stuff, but guns good, too. Service ‘em up real quiet. Make sure they’re all topped off, armed up, and ready to go, but no big hullaballoo about it, or they’ll know we know somethin’s up. Right?”

  “Sounds good, Sergeant Major.”

  “Make sure four of ‘em are a command APC, with the commo suite and private VR channels and all that shit. Oh, and throw in an extra command APC for the battalion commander.”

  “Yes, Sergeant Major.”

  “And dust off one of those APC-CVs. Make sure everything works. Full check, top to bottom. We got a handful of ‘em, so pick the best one.”

  “Yes, Sergeant Major.”

  “Good work, Murphy. I’ll let the other guys know, too. Everybody’ll help out.”

  “Thanks, Sergeant Major.”

  When the major in command of the motor pool headed out to dinner that evening, he noticed a higher level of activity in the service bays than normal. He walked up to Sergeant Major Detweiler, who was looking on.

  “Lot of activity today, Sergeant Major.”

  “Yes, Sir. We had a lot of things hit their service interval at the same time. Nothing we can’t handle, Sir.”

  “Very good, Sergeant Major. Carry on.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Turning Up The Heat

  Imperial Judge Kamakshi Anand ruled the City of Stolits’s response to petitioner’s motion had no foundation in Imperial law, and they had to provide petitioner with access to police records on the arrest, imprisonment, and autopsy of Imperial citizens detained by the Stolits Police Department. She also made it clear that corporate immunity would not protect slow learners and invited the petitioner to apply to the court for enforcement if the ordered access was not forthcoming.

  The City of Stolits asked for a stay pending appeal. Judge Anand refused. The City of Stolits applied to the appellate court for an emergency stay pending appeal, and was also refused. The Imperial Appellate Courts of Dalnimir had a lot of respect for Judge Anand, and weren’t about to second-guess her.

  After the entry of the court order, Howell Culligan again went to the records department of the Stolits Police Department. The same clerk greeted him.

  “Yes. May I help you?” the clerk asked.

  “Yes. I want arrest records for the past five years, and jail records for the past five years. Particularly the records for those who died while incarcerated. Their arrest records, jail records, and autopsy results.”

  “Let me call someone who can help you.”

  “All right.”

  The clerk disappeared into a back room. A few minutes later, the same man in his forties came out to the counter.

  “I’m the records supervisor. You’re asking again for arrest records, jail records and autopsy results?”

  “For those who died while incarcerated. Correct.”

  “I still can’t let you have those records, sir.”

  “Perhaps your supervision has not kept you informed.”

  Culligan pulled out a paper copy of the court order. On it, he had highlighted the sentence where Judge Anand had ordered the records be made publicly available, the sentence where she said those refusing to comply would be held individually accountable, and the sentence where petitioner was invited to report noncompliance back to the court.

  “As you can see here, the Imperial judge is quite explicit that those records be made publicly available, and that she will hold people who refuse individually responsible for failure to comply. Now, if you tell me No again, I will walk out this door to where my attorney is waiting, go down to the courthouse, and enter my non-compliance report, together with video of this conversation. You will then be held in contempt of court and jailed for thirty days for non-compliance, as the judge notes, uh, here.”

  Culligan pointed to the relevant sentence.

  “So produce those reports or go to jail, and, with you out of the way, I’ll deal with your replacement, and I’ll keep playing this game until I get to someone who will obey the law. But I will not be deterred.”

  The clerk hesitated, and Culligan pressed it home.

  “Look. Last time you said No, I told you I would take it to an Imperial judge, and I did. Do you have any doubt I mean what I say now? If someone wants me to not see those records, let them come down here and take the consequences. There’s no reason you should go to jail, spend time away from your home and family, while they manipulate you behind the scenes, at your cost and to their advantage.”

  That seemed to decide it for the clerk, and he led Culligan behind the counter into a room with actual physical terminals.

  “The records are accessed from here.”

  “No VR, so nobody can actually download records, eh? Ah, well. So be it. Thank you.”

  Culligan sat down behind the terminal and started accessing records, beginning with the higher-level menus. He was logged into VR while he did it, and every screen was being OCRed and processed remotely in Section Six computers as he went.

  He accessed arrest records first, and simply scrolled down the list of arrests sorted by date for the last five years. It was a long list, but he didn’t care, as it was all being OCRed in near-real-time. He did the same with the jail records, and then with the records of those who died while incarcerated. The lists got progressively much shorter, as most people arrested were not jailed, and most of those jailed did not die while incarcerated.

  When he had scrolled the lists, he had the Section Six computer run a cross-compare of those who had died in jail against on-the-record politicians of the opposition party and known contributors to and endorsers of opposition-party candidates. He had also selected editors and journalists who had published stories hostile in one way or another to the Knowlton or Pearson regimes, and included them in the cross-reference.

  There were six cases of known supporters of the opposition party, or critics of the extant regime, who actually died in prison. Culligan scanned their arrest records, their jail records, the autopsy records, and the records of investigations done into the deaths. He did this fast, scanning through pages of documentation while it was being transferred over the VR system and QE radio directly to Section Six computers, which were capturing it all. It took him two hours to track everything down and get the records he wanted.

  When he was finished, Culligan got up and walked out to the front counter.

  “Thank you very much,” he told the clerk.

  “Did you get what you wanted?”

  “Oh, yes. Thank you again.”

  Back at the hotel, Culligan and Purny pored over the records in VR together.

  “Shivved from behind; surveillance camera not operational. Shivved from behind; out of view of surveillance cameras. Shivved from behind; camera surveillance images did not allow identification of the perpetrator. This is kind of repetitive.”

  “Yeah, no kidding,” Culligan said. “And all these people were held pending arraignment. It was their first night in jail.”

  “And all on minor charges. This is outrageous.”

  “This doesn’t even include those mugged or killed on the streets. This is just the ones killed in jail. And the local media has made no stink about it. That’s also outrageous.”

  “The local press prefers to be popular with those in power,” Purny said. “It gets them invited to all the good parties. It’s very common. More than it should be.”

  “Well, it also gets them not arrested and shivved in jail. Let’s not forget about that.”

  “Fair enough. And speaking of which, if you get arrested, be careful your first night. It’ll probably take longer
than that to break you out.”

  “You, too,” Culligan said. “Because if something happened to you, I think I would probably do something rash.”

  “How rash?”

  “They’ll need more than one body bag. Lots more. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Culligan got access to the police records,” said Timothy Dennler, the director of the Dalnimir Bureau of Police.

  “How did he do that?” asked Hugh Knowlton, Planetary Governor of Dalnimir.

  “The records manager at the Stolits P.D. wasn’t willing to defy Judge Anand’s order. Culligan pushed on him pretty hard. Told him Anand would hold him personally liable and lock him up for contempt.”

  “Would she have done that?”

  “To be fair? Probably,” Dennler said.

  “Shit. This just keeps getting worse and worse.”

  “Oh, it’s worse than you think. He went straight to the records we didn’t want him to see. In minutes. I think he must have been cross-referencing with some database somewhere. He was almost inhuman in how fast he was, given the number of records in the system. He went straight to them.”

  “He’s got to have support from somewhere to have access to that kind of computer power,” Knowlton said. “The university, perhaps?”

  “Could be. Universities always have lots of computer power. They have to process all the student classes and exams and records and all. And Annalia is a big sector capital. The university is huge.”

  “We may have to take extraordinary measures here.”

  “With the visibility they have?” Dennler asked. “Like with Stauss?”

  “And do you think that will get better or worse over time?”

  “I see your point. Do you want me to go ahead with that?”

  “Not yet. Let’s wait a bit longer.”

  “All right. Remember about time not being on our side, though.”

  They had arrived back in their hotel room after going out for dinner. They went out to dinner every night, to give the enemy – for they were thinking of them now as the enemy – a chance to do something stupid.