Sunday, October 4, 2015

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 36

     Shevaughn was being lectured, and it was becoming an irritation.
     "I case you weren't aware, 'Commander', you and your 'people' might be able to wave around your diplomatic immunity, but everyone else gets investigated to the hilt.  Whoever you say that woman is, she's not on your embassy's list, and that puts her squarely in our jurisdiction.  So you can suck it."  Said the NBPD Special Investigator, Alfred Burke, with obvious hostility.
     "And as I've patiently explained, twice now, Miss Chase was wearing an Imperial medalert tag, and those are only issued to members of the Imperial House.  It would seem that, jurisdiction notwithstanding, she's my responsibility -"
     "Along with the rest of this mess too, I bet!"  Burke cut her off.  "This whole incident has a disgusting reek of typical Darkie criminality, and -"
     Chevy's hand snapped out, grabbed him by the neck, and lifted him several centimetres off the floor.  He clawed at his belt in an attempt to reach his service weapon, but her other hand clamped around his wrist with the titanic strength of muscles accustomed to far more gravity than his world produced.  His fellow officers rushed to intervene, but suddenly found themselves at the business end of three magrifles, and half a dozen Imperial Army D-68A1 assault rifles.  The resulting stalemate gave her a chance to speak.
     "Mr. Burke, I will only warn you once that I consider the term 'Darkie' insufferably offensive; regardless, you will consider Miss Chase to be under the protection of the Darkaellan Imperium, so any assault on her will have disastrous consequences.  Now, fuck off.  I have better things to do."  She let go of the Special Investigator, and turned her back on his gasping form in an attempt to rein in her still seething anger.
     The term Darkie was as racist an epithet as one could level at a native Darkaellan.  It had originated on Jefferson, where a deplorably large number of people used it to denote anyone who was not descended from the dominant, Caucasian, phenotype.  The unbelievable irony was that the original colonists of Darkael had been carefully selected from applicants whose ancestry was almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon.  The second wave was almost entirely North and Western European, with a minority of Slavic and Balkan émigrés as well.  Subsequently, there had been accusations (not unfounded, Chevy well knew) of racial discrimination in the Imperium's immigration policies, but the third wave of immigrants, all from Japan, had effectively silenced its critics.  The Imperium had shortly after begun using the Jovian moon Cerberus as a primary debarkation point for anyone wanting to emigrate.  Which had allowed the government to screen potential colonists in its own backyard, and out of sight of Terran busybodies.
     Needless to say, eighty percent of Darkael's population was of European Caucasian origin, and most of the rest were ethnic Japanese.  Yet the term 'Darkie' had traveled out into the Known Sphere and taken root, even on Minotaur; a world that was home to more combinations of ethnicities than anyone would have believed possible before the Great Exodus.  Like most Darkaellans, she knew that a person's ethnicity had no bearing on their value to society, and as a matter of principle eschewed the use of derogatory language in general.  Unfortunately, the Imperium had made decisions in its own self-interest that had earned it the enmity of a number of political, corporate, and military entities, and as a result, she heard the word Darkie with a certain regularity.
     She turned to speak with Kenjirō.
     "What do you think, Kenjirō-san?  Was this a local problem, or something else?"  She asked him in Darkaellan Gaelic, a language little known outside of the Imperium, as she gestured around the bar; now brightly lit by the forensic team's floodlights.  "The gunmen seem to have been very well equipped, QBZ-803 carbines aren't exactly rare, but it's unlikely that local criminal elements would use them; not when a 'back alley special' can be had for a fifth of what they cost."
     Kenjirō stepped in closer and held up a small object.  Taking it from him, she saw that it was a shell casing, 11mm caliber; turning it around she saw that the base of the cartridge had the letters IOF stamped on the rim next to the caliber.  An Imperial Ordinance Factory stamp meant that the ammunition had been manufactured on Darkael, which didn't necessarily prove anything, since large quantities of those had found their way onto the black market when the Imperium had pulled its advisors out of the Draconis system.
     "If you look closely, Commander, the marks from the firing pin and ejector are consistent with those made by a Hollis Mk21, standard military issue."  Kenjirō said, only adding to the incredible confusion she was experiencing.  How a military issue Mk21 had gotten on-planet was impossible to say, since their workmanship and expense limited their exportability to a few wealthy collectors, willing to pay for the sake of novelty.
     "We need to find a way to talk to the witnesses, it's the only way we're ever going to figure out what happened here."  Chevy declared.  "But I doubt the local constabulary will oblige."
     "Indeed, they will no doubt be even less inclined, after the throttling you just meted out to the good Inspector over there."  He said in mild reproach, bobbing his head in Burke's direction.
     "Yeah, well, he pissed me off with that 'Darkie' crack of his, so we'll just have to find a way around him."  She said, and signaled the rest of her team.  "We're done here, move out."

-----

     By the time she and her people were back at the embassy, she had the beginning of a plan, and quickly set about putting it in motion.  Her plan required a meeting with the ambassador, which was easy enough to arrange, since he'd already sent word while her flight was inbound that he would see her as soon as she landed.  She was going to get the Honorable Bruce Addison Stirling to contact the UniSys Police Force, and get them involved in the investigation, which would effectively sideline the local law enforcement people.  If she moved quickly enough, then she could talk to the survivors before the USPF was able to make it impossible to get to them.
     Her window of action was going to be vanishingly small, and Satoshi Hayashi was going to have to work fast to make the best of it.  If they were successful, she would be able to identify where some seemingly insignificant young woman had gotten her hands on that tag she'd been wearing.  If anything went wrong, however, she'd be lucky to be wrangling cliffcats on Cerberus.
     Actually getting the ambassador and their resident counterespionage agent on board took some effort.
     "You realize, don't you, Commander, that if our actions are discovered, then we will all be looking for new jobs?  Myself included."  Asked the ambassador, as she sat in his office, along with Hayashi.
     "Actually, Ambassador, I think it's highly probable that unemployment will be the best thing to happen to us if we fail."  She replied, much more candidly than she would have normally, but she felt that brutal honesty was best.
     "You've been quiet thus far, Agent Hayashi, What's your opinion on all of this?"  The ambassador asked, somewhat testily.
     The man seated next to Chevy, his hands neatly folded in his lap, was the Darkaellan Imperium's chief intelligence officer here on Minotaur, and his various assets would be needed to bring the plan being discussed to fruition.  If he didn't approve of the plan, then she was stuck.
     "I believe that the Commander has a good idea, but, as she herself pointed out, the timing would be critical.  If we can convince the USPF that the attack on those people constitutes a felonious act involving a Darkaellan subject, then they would be almost obligated to intervene.  There is a problem, however.  The local USPF office is the best staffed of any outside of the Terran solar system, and they have the resources available to commit themselves to a real investigation."  Satoshi told them, choosing his words with care as he continued.  "I have established a mutually beneficial arrangement with a member of the NBPD, who has been providing me with seemingly inconsequential gossip from the inside.  Most people, even intelligence agents, have no appreciation for just how useful such knowledge can be; without realizing it, he has accidentally given me some fairly confidential information. We may be able to leverage that to get him to act on our behalf, but this time a significant 'douceur' will be needed."
     Ambassador Stirling sat behind his desk of Minotauran spiderwood with his elbows propped on the arms of his office chair, and steepled his fingers beneath his nose, obviously deep in thought.  He regarded them each in turn before speaking.
     "Just so that we're all clear on this; we are going to deliberately involve an organization that has, historically, had an antithetical attitude towards the Imperium, in an effort to ascertain whether or not a member of the Imperial House itself was involved in this fracas, and then bribe a local officer of the law to provide us with a window of opportunity wherein we can snatch - or, at the very least, question - the relevant witnesses, before the USPF can sequester them out of our reach.  Does that about do it?"  The ambassador concluded somewhat acidly.
     Chevy thought that he had pretty well hit the nail on the head, but left out a critical ramification; if they failed, or got caught, then the whole situation could easily spiral out of control.  She decided not to point out the obvious.
     "In broad terms, that summary is essentially accurate, Ambassador."  She replied.
     "I can't say that the potential for grievous consequences if you fail thrills me, but I want answers as badly as either one of you, therefore I see no reason not to give you the permission, and resources, to proceed."  Ambassador Stirling told them.
     Chevy and Hayashi accepted the very subtle dismissal.
     "Thank you, sir."  They said, more or less in unison.
     As they left the ambassador's office, Chevy felt optimistic about their chances of success.  They would have to wait until UniSys got off its backside, and displaced the locals in investigating what had happened in the gambling den, but when they did, Hayashi would need to work fast.
     Thankfully, there was no such thing as a slow Darkaellan.

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