Then big chunks of the map started folding into each other. One of the integrators must have stepped in. There were people in the zoo who were particularly good at linking and consolidating ideas, and a lot of consolidating and reorganizing was going on. It would take days yet to finalize and start to produce results, but the solution map was already starting to consolidate into a plan.
That evening after dinner, Dunham and Peters were sitting out on the balcony, looking down Palace Mall as dusk was coming on and the city lights took over from the sun.
“Have you made any progress on the governor staffing problem?” Peters asked.
“Oh, I’m sure they have, but nothing’s come back yet.”
“They?”
“I gave the problem to the Zoo first thing this morning,” Dunham said.
“Oh, my. That should be interesting.”
“Yes. You know we’ve never had a formal procedure for selecting sector governors. Normally the provincial governors are selected by the sector governor, and, when the sector governor retires, we just pick the best of those.”
“But you don’t have that here,” Peters said. “The whole structure is gone.”
“Exactly. We need a process. So we’ll see what the Zoo comes up with.”
Police Work
Turley and Gulliver had been attacked in the alley across from the Capitol View Hotel on a Monday night. The Arrest List and the GNS news article had been prepared Tuesday. Wednesday was the arrest of the media portion of the Arrest List, and Turley’s interviews with Daltrey and Pachner. Now, Thursday, it was time to move to the next phase of the Arrest List – the police and judges.
Major Parnell was force commander today, and he had two more companies with him, First Company and Second Company of Second Battalion, under Major Harvey Moore. The motor pool had moved heaven and earth the day before to get another twenty-seven APCs prepped to mount up two more companies. Moore was under Parnell’s command, and they got along, so no problem there.
Also under Parnell’s command was Major Patrick Hume, once again commanding Fourth Battalion. Parnell and Hume had had a serious talk the night before, and Hume had no problem being under Parnell as force commander. Part of the reason for that is Parnell had not been dismissive of Hume when relieving him on Tuesday night.
Another part was Hume’s bone-deep shock at the corruption of the commanders of the Sixty-Fifth Division. It ran against everything it meant to him to be an Imperial Marine. And finally, for Hume, it came down to orders. If Parnell was assigned as force commander, then he was force commander. That’s the way it worked. How else would you run a military outfit?
Talking to Hume the night before, Parnell had found himself liking Hume in a way he hadn’t when Parnell had commanded Second Company. Parnell realized that prior opinion was because of the way Hume had dismissed his concerns about what he was seeing in town. Hume had simply not seen it as part of their job. In a sense, he’d been right. Strict separation of the military from the political was necessary. It was Parnell’s Imperial Guard duties that drove his concern, not his Imperial Marine duties.
Hume also didn’t object when Parnell detached Hume’s Fourth Company and assigned it to Major Moore to balance forces. Both Second Battalion and Fourth Battalion now had three companies, which was important. Today they were arresting police, from the Stolits PD, the Dalnimir Bureau of Police, and the Imperial Police Dalnimir.
Parnell was in the APC-CV this morning. With Sergeant Major Joss Tritten of Fourth Battalion back under Major Hume, Parnell had requested of General Walsh the division command sergeant major, Sergeant Major Deke Kearsarge, and his staff for this outing. Parnell supposed he could have taken the regimental sergeant major for Second Regiment, but Kearsarge had been along on Tuesday night’s critical mission, and Parnell wanted the experience. General Walsh had agreed.
Now, on the way into town, Parnell was considering tactics with Kearsarge.
“The thing I worry about, Sir, is getting into a running gun battle with the arrestees inside these buildings, which are also all full of innocents. It’s a friggin’ disaster waitin’ to happen. And you got no clue whether somebody is an innocent or not by whether they’re on the Arrest List. It could turn into a bigger Us and Them situation. We lose a lotta guys, they lose a lotta guys, and we take out a buncha innocents, too, just because you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, and the Arrest List isn’t it.”
“So the best thing would be to get everybody out of the building, then screen them all going back in?” Parnell asked.
“That would be perfect, Sir. Got any ideas?”
“Actually, Sergeant Major, I think I do.”
Deke Kearsarge looked down the list of people on leave in town this morning. Thursday morning, so it wasn’t a big weekend leave, but he ought to know somebody. Ah. Here. That’s lucky. Couple of first sergeants from Third Battalion were in town. Probably together.
“Slayton.”
“Hey, Slim, it’s Deke.”
“Hey, Deke. What’s going on?”
“You and Shorty in town today?”
“Yeah.”
“You in civvies?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I need you guys to do me a favor.”
“Sure, Deke. Whatcha need?”
Major Parnell told Major Hume and Major Moore the plan on the way into town.
“We know they’ll be watching us, so the idea is to break up into platoons and drive around the area, and then, when you get your signal from me, converge on and seal off your target location,” Parnell said.
“Sounds good, Sir,” Hume said.
“We’re good here, Sir,” Moore said.
As the Second and Fourth Battalions neared the downtown, they split up into platoons and began driving around as if lost. The local police agencies were monitoring their locations, trying to make sense out of the confusion.
Kearsarge sent a VR message: “OK, Slim, Shorty. Go ahead. And thanks.”
Parnell was watching it all on his whole-sphere view of the battle zone, the imagery being captured by his drones aloft. The locations of his arrest targets were being overlaid on his situation view by the IFB Dalnimir Comm Center.
The Dalnimir Bureau of Police was in the large grouping of government buildings at the capitol building end of Stolits Mall. It occupied a city block. Across from its front entrance was a park, which also occupied a city block.
A tall, thin man in his thirties, dressed in casual clothes, walked up the steps of the Dalnimir Bureau of Police headquarters building, through the doors, and across the lobby. He did not have a badge to be in the building, which the door sensors told the guard behind the desk.
“Sir. May I help you, Sir? Sir!”
The guard came out from behind the security counter in the lobby and came after the visitor, who unhurriedly walked over to the elevator bank. When he got there, though, he didn’t push the manual elevator call button, or call an elevator in VR. Instead he pulled the fire alarm lever on the wall, then turned and headed back toward the entrance.
The security guard caught up with him on his way back, but the thin man stiff-armed the guard as he made a clumsy grab, then dumped him to the floor with a sweep kick that took his legs out from under him.
The thin man walked through the front doors and out of the building.
Across downtown, past the other end of Stolits Mall, was the Stolits Police Department headquarters. Built on a large grounds for so close-in to the downtown, it had a large front lawn and a paved motor pool area behind.
A short, stocky man in his thirties, in civilian clothes, walked up the front steps of the Stolits Police Department headquarters and inside. He walked across the lobby, past the front desk and the desk sergeant, into the central receiving room. He turned to the right and hit the fire alarm on the wall there with an elbow, then turned around and walked back out through the lobby. The desk sergeant tried to grab him and was knocked senseless by a hand the size of
a small ham hitting him upside the head.
The stocky man walked out through the front doors and down the sidewalk.
Major Parnell watched the feed from both buildings, with people pouring out of the buildings in response to the fire alarms. He was keeping a close eye on his arrestee icons, watching for their exits from the building.
“Major Hume, move in now,” Parnell said over his command channel.
Parnell watched the twelve scattered platoons of Fourth Battalion close in on the park across from the Dalnimir Bureau of Police, where the evacuees of the building gathered as part of their evacuation plan. Forty APCs came out of the side streets from multiple directions and encircled the park. Hundreds of Imperial Marines dismounted from the APCs and formed a cordon around the whole park.
“Imperial Guard. Remain where you are,” said the amplified voice from the command APC for Fourth Battalion. “You will be checked one at a time and allowed to return to the building.”
While this was going on, Parnell kept his eyes on the Stolits PD headquarters. People exited both the front and the rear of the building, congregating on the lawn in front of the building and in the motor pool lot behind. Looked like that one last guy was going to stay in the building.
“Major Moore, move in now,” Parnell said over his command channel.
The forty APCs of Second Battalion came out of the side streets from multiple directions and encircled the Stolits PD headquarters. Three drove across the lawn between the crowd in front and the building, while another three drove into the motor pool lot between the crowd in the rear and the building. Hundreds of Imperial Marines dismounted from the APCs and cordoned both crowds.
“Imperial Guard. Remain where you are,” said the amplified voice from the command APC for Second Battalion. “You will be checked one at a time and allowed to return to the building.”
A rifle squad detached from the cordon around the rear motor pool lot of the Stolits PD headquarters and entered the building. They knew exactly where the last arrestee was, and headed straight for his location. The ten Imperial Marines stopped along the wall of the hallway outside the room in which he was holed up.
“All right. We know you’re in there. Come on out.”
A shot rang out through the open door and the bullet hit the wall opposite the door.
“I have a hostage. Let me go or she dies.”
The sergeant spoke in VR: “Oh, fuck. One o’ those guys. Smitty, you good to go?”
“Still collectin’ data, Sergeant.”
The drones outside were mapping the room the arrestee was in with infrared. They slid up and down the frequency scale, and were getting the room from multiple angles. The Sixty-Fifth Division battlefield simulator back at IFB Dalnimir was getting the feeds, and was building a three-dimensional model of the room.
Corporal Randall “Smitty” Smith, the squad’s best tactical shooter, slid up the line toward the front, until he had his back against the wall next to the doorframe. The door was open, He pulled the matchbox with the housefly drones out of his vest pocket and opened it. Three of the tiny drones flew out of the box and through the open doorway.
Smitty dropped into the VR simulation being created by the machine. He had three-sixty vision of the situation as if the wall wasn’t there, and the computer had color-shifted back into a more comfortable black-and-white image. Now, with the new input from the housefly drones, the image sharpened and shifted to color. He could see the arrestee, mostly hidden behind a file cabinet, with the hostage in front of the cabinet, completing his concealment. There was just half his head and his gun hand showing to the doorway.
“Yeah, I’m ready, Sergeant.”
“Take it when ya got it, Smitty.”
Smitty held the SBR up like he was going to shoot the wall opposite, and made sure the rifle had been incorporated into his simulation-view. Good to go. Classic spin and shoot. He’d done it thousands of times in simulation and live-fire courses.
Smitty did a three-hundred-sixty-degree spin in four steps. It was like he rolled along the ground, but standing up along the wall instead. He spun across the doorway, ending up standing with his back against the wall on the other side. As he rotated across the doorway, with the SBR swinging into the room, he took two shots. The whole thing didn’t take two seconds.
“Got it, Sergeant.”
A woman was screaming inside. The squad advanced into the room to see the screaming woman, spattered with blood, crawling away from her dead captor. Two shots – one to the handgun, moving it off target, followed by one to the head.
“Nice work, Smitty. Ya done good.”
“Thanks, Sergeant.”
The rifle squad withdrew, taking the body with them. The sergeant walked over to the woman, now sobbing, leaning up against a desk.
“We’ll take this piece o’ shit with us, ma’am. He won’t bother you anymore.”
Parnell watched his men checking people through their lines to go back into the building. The arrestee icons were hanging back in the crowds, trying to put off the inevitable.
“Careful. They’re hanging back,” he said to his command channel.
“That’s good, Sir,” Moore said. “Clears out the innocents.”
“Yeah, but I worry they’ll get more desperate as they get closer and more isolated. There’s always that one guy who thinks we won’t really shoot him.”
“He’ll be disappointed.”
“Just make sure your people have a clear downrange if they take the shot,” Parnell said. “Let’s not go shooting each other. We’ve been real clean so far. Let’s not ruin it.”
“Yes, Sir.”
As it played out, with three companies of Imperial Marines at each building – four hundred and eighty riflemen per location – no one decided they were invulnerable today. Parnell’s men detained all their arrestees without further incident. He addressed Kearsarge in VR.
“What do you think, Sergeant Major?”
“Well, the last big concentration is the Imperial Police, Sir. I guess we oughta do those next. And pick up some of the leakers as well.”
“We could let Hume take his sixteen platoons and deploy them individually, and take Moore’s two companies over to the local IP shop.”
“Works for me, Sir.”
Parnell switched to the command channel.
“Major Moore, we’re going to give your Third Company back to Major Hume. Major Hume, you are to deploy in platoons to pick up the onesies. Major Moore, your remaining two companies will proceed to the offices of Imperial Police Dalnimir, where we’ll pick up the other big concentration.”
“Deploy in platoons. Yes, Sir,” Hume said.
“Proceeding to Imperial Police Dalnimir, Sir,” Howe said.
Parnell watched the action from above it all in VR. The Imperial Marines all re-mounted the APCs. The APCs at the Dalnimir Bureau of police headquarters and a third of them at Stolits PD headquarters broke up into groups of three and headed off in various directions. The remaining twenty-seven APCs of Second Battalion formed up into a column and headed for Imperial Police Dalnimir.
“Sergeant Major, let’s go along with Second Battalion.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The APC-CV had been on Stolits Mall, between the two active zones. It now moved off to catch up to and follow Second Battalion as they left the Dalnimir Bureau of Police headquarters. Parnell was calling up the roster of the Imperial Police Dalnimir and preparing a mail. He attached the Imperial Arrest Warrants for the Imperial Police staffers. He then contacted Ann Turley.
“Turley.”
“Major Parnell here, Ma’am. We are moving on Imperial Police Dalnimir now. I need you to send a message to them when we get there. Here’s the copy.”
Parnell sent her the text of the message, and Turley looked it over. Smart.
“Of course, Major. I have Imperial override comm codes, and the Imperial Decree authorizing activation of the Imperial Guard reserves. I’ll attach those and que
ue it up. Just let me know when.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
When Second Battalion got to Imperial Police Dalnimir, they dismounted and cordoned off the building. Then Parnell sent a message to Turley they were in place. She transmitted his message, using an Imperial override comm code. It burned through their privacy settings and other VR activities for everyone addressed, and set the emergency message alarm for them all.
To: All Personnel, Imperial Police Dalnimir
From: Lieutenant General Ann Turley, Imperial Guard
Subject: Activation and Orders
Copied: His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Trajan
The Imperial Guard is activating Imperial Police Dalnimir as Imperial Guard reserves and taking command of Imperial Police Dalnimir.
All personnel of Imperial Police Dalnimir are hereby ordered to take into custody the following individuals and turn them over to Imperial Marine units at your location.
Failure to comply with these orders constitutes Treason against the Throne.
By order of His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Trajan.
Parnell watched Imperial Police Dalnimir in the overhead view. In addition to the icons of the named arrestees, he was displaying the icons of every recipient of the message. It didn’t take long for groups of green icons to congregate around the red ones, and begin escorting them to the front door of the building. The Imperial Police had institutional memory of the likely outcome for treason against this Emperor. At the direct order of Emperor Trajan, Imperial Police Headquarters Sintar had been leveled by the Imperial Navy and the Imperial Marines for its role in the Council Revolt fifty years ago.
“Major Hume, stand by to receive arrestees.”
“So now what, Sir?” Kearsarge asked.
Parnell looked at the time. Two o’clock.
EMPIRE: Investigation Page 20
