Petrona Hamasaki was reviewing the final paperwork for her current cases, while simultaneously wondering if she couldn't just finish it tomorrow, and spend the rest of the day at her favorite bowling alley. She had always disliked doing paperwork, and the UniSys Police Force - by its nature - generated a lot of it. It had to be done, however, and she knew that it wouldn't get any better if she put it off.
Her boss suddenly burst into the office with some serious speed, startling her, since he'd been gone for less than twenty minutes after being summoned upstairs for an unscheduled meeting, and she had assumed he would be tied up for at least an hour.
"Get your kit, Pet." He said, urgently, as he rushed to his desk, grabbing up his badge folder and holstered pistol from the top drawer. "Whatever you're doing is officially on hold until further notice; we've got ourselves a massive situation, and it needs to be handled before it gets uglier." He finished, waiting for her to get her own ID, and service weapon, as well as her wristcomp, which she strapped on while he led the way to the lift that accessed the VTA landing pad on the roof of the building.
"What the hell's going on JB? I've never seen you this wound up before." She asked, as the elevator doors closed behind them.
"There was a shootout in a local watering hole last night," he grinned at her uncomprehending look, "and the initial report has one of the victims wearing a medalert tag issued exclusively to members of the Darkaellan Imperial House itself." His grin took on an ominous tone as he finished speaking. "Sorry, Pet."
There was sudden silence in the lift as Petrona found herself unable to respond. She suddenly felt like something had coiled itself around her chest and started squeezing the air out of her lungs. If there was one group of people she never wanted to get involved with ever again, it was the Imperium; the idea itself was enough to make her feel sick. She took long deep breaths as she leaned forward to brace herself against the lift's mirrored wall before speaking.
"Why us? They're not signatories to the Interstellar Judicial Agreement, and they won't cooperate with any request we make, so why bother? More to the point, the locals know it, so again: Why us?" She asked, in a voice that bordered on petulant.
"You're assuming that the request came from the locals, but it's not." He told her. "The call came from Ambassador Stirling himself."
For a split second, Petrona Hamasaki laughed, because she genuinely thought that JB had been playing a practical joke, but the look on his face was completely devoid of amusement.
"That makes even less sense!" She exclaimed, incredulously. "And it just brings me back to my original question: Why us?"
JB fidgeted with the cuffs of his shirt, obviously trying to find an answer to the question that would make any sense. "I wish I could say, Pet, but we are both going to have the chance to find out."
Petrona was on the verge of demanding clarification when the lift doors opened, and they stepped out onto the walkway to the rooftop landing pad. The sight that met her eyes was not one calculated to make her feel better. There was a military VTA painted in the unmistakable flat charcoal black of the Darkaellan Imperial Guard detachment here on Minotaur sitting on the pad. The only other person visible was a woman wearing the standard working uniform of an officer of the embassy's guard detachment. As they got closer, Petrona saw a that the officer was wearing the rank insignia of a Guard Commander.
The Commander was, to put not too fine a point on things, extremely attractive, and Petrona felt a subliminal pull of desire. She spent a moment trying to figure out what her background might be; the eyes were large and expressive, her face triangular, with high prominent cheekbones, and richly colored, full lips. Her hair was cut short, in a style common to people who had to wear sealed helmets. The commander's name tag read: S. Turlington. The name rang a bell, and within a few seconds she remembered why; the Turlingtons were an extremely wealthy mercantile family, and members of the lower nobility on Darkael itself.
JB was the first to extend an olive branch.
"Good morning, Commander, I am Julius Benedict Harlow, UniSys' SAIC here in Níngjìng Bay; I'm given to understand that we have been invited to meet your Ambassador Stirling." He introduced himself, in his native Oxford accent. "This is my assistant, Agent Hamasaki." He continued, gesturing in her direction.
The Commander regarded each of them in turn before speaking in a very businesslike manner. "Commander Shevaughn Turlington, Darkaellan Imperial Guard. I have been instructed to convey you to the embassy. If you'll follow me?" She said, waving them to the insectile aircraft a few meters away.
Petrona forced herself to move forward with JB to the VTA, although the idea had her sweating. It wasn't that she was afraid of flying, but rather the four heavily armed Imperial soldiers who were standing guard around the aircraft; they weren't overtly hostile, but they radiated a sort of barely restrained aggression, as if they fully expected to be attacked at all times. Decked out as they were in full combat uniform, armor, including full face helmet, their compact assault rifles at the ready, she had to admit that if anyone was stupid enough to make trouble, it likely wouldn't last long.
The smooth, angular slab exterior of the aircraft gave no indication of how surprisingly comfortable an interior it possessed, as Petrona was guided to one of four comfortable seats in the rear of the troop compartment by one of the flight crew. He stopped to say something to the Commander, but it was impossible to make out over the engine noise from outside; well, that, and the fact that he said it in a language she couldn't understand.
Now seated across from Commander Turlington, she took the time to think over what JB had said when he'd burst into their office to collect his badge and sidearm. The latter of which their hosts had not yet bothered to confiscate, which suggested that either the Imperial Guard didn't consider them a threat, or they just didn't care. She decided that it was probably the fact that there were at least a half dozen heavily armed, and armored, soldiers in the cabin with them, and there was no one for the Commander to protect.
A feeling that she'd missed something, which had been nagging at her since JB had dragged her out from behind her desk, popped up from her subconscious.
"You don't know who it is, do you?" She blurted out, impulsively.
"Sorry?" Turlington replied, looking confused.
"I've been trying to figure out who it might have been; whoever got hit last night, but I can't, and neither can you. Can you? JB said that they had a medalert tag belonging to the Imperial family, but it wasn't. Was it?" She said, watching Turlington intently, looking for any indication that she had hit a nerve.
There wasn't one. The look she got back was so bland that it was, in its own right, as good as a scream in the face.
"The ambassador no doubt hopes that you can help to determine the facts surrounding recent events, certainly." Commander Turlington replied noncommittally.
"This may come as something of a surprise to you, Commander, but we do have some passing experience with the local police, and I can just imagine that they were thrilled with the idea of having to deal with your people. Then imagine their delight when they discover that there's no need to involve you at all, and this all starts to make a twisted sort of sense." Petrona expounded, with a more sarcastic tone than the Commander probably deserved.
She sat back in her seat triumphantly, and caught JB's expression from where he was, seated across from her. He looked as though he was choking on something, and his face was a mask of martyred patience.
She would remember the trip to the embassy later, and readily admit that, if she'd known at the time what the future held, she might just have jumped out of the VTA then and there.
Her boss suddenly burst into the office with some serious speed, startling her, since he'd been gone for less than twenty minutes after being summoned upstairs for an unscheduled meeting, and she had assumed he would be tied up for at least an hour.
"Get your kit, Pet." He said, urgently, as he rushed to his desk, grabbing up his badge folder and holstered pistol from the top drawer. "Whatever you're doing is officially on hold until further notice; we've got ourselves a massive situation, and it needs to be handled before it gets uglier." He finished, waiting for her to get her own ID, and service weapon, as well as her wristcomp, which she strapped on while he led the way to the lift that accessed the VTA landing pad on the roof of the building.
"What the hell's going on JB? I've never seen you this wound up before." She asked, as the elevator doors closed behind them.
"There was a shootout in a local watering hole last night," he grinned at her uncomprehending look, "and the initial report has one of the victims wearing a medalert tag issued exclusively to members of the Darkaellan Imperial House itself." His grin took on an ominous tone as he finished speaking. "Sorry, Pet."
There was sudden silence in the lift as Petrona found herself unable to respond. She suddenly felt like something had coiled itself around her chest and started squeezing the air out of her lungs. If there was one group of people she never wanted to get involved with ever again, it was the Imperium; the idea itself was enough to make her feel sick. She took long deep breaths as she leaned forward to brace herself against the lift's mirrored wall before speaking.
"Why us? They're not signatories to the Interstellar Judicial Agreement, and they won't cooperate with any request we make, so why bother? More to the point, the locals know it, so again: Why us?" She asked, in a voice that bordered on petulant.
"You're assuming that the request came from the locals, but it's not." He told her. "The call came from Ambassador Stirling himself."
For a split second, Petrona Hamasaki laughed, because she genuinely thought that JB had been playing a practical joke, but the look on his face was completely devoid of amusement.
"That makes even less sense!" She exclaimed, incredulously. "And it just brings me back to my original question: Why us?"
JB fidgeted with the cuffs of his shirt, obviously trying to find an answer to the question that would make any sense. "I wish I could say, Pet, but we are both going to have the chance to find out."
Petrona was on the verge of demanding clarification when the lift doors opened, and they stepped out onto the walkway to the rooftop landing pad. The sight that met her eyes was not one calculated to make her feel better. There was a military VTA painted in the unmistakable flat charcoal black of the Darkaellan Imperial Guard detachment here on Minotaur sitting on the pad. The only other person visible was a woman wearing the standard working uniform of an officer of the embassy's guard detachment. As they got closer, Petrona saw a that the officer was wearing the rank insignia of a Guard Commander.
The Commander was, to put not too fine a point on things, extremely attractive, and Petrona felt a subliminal pull of desire. She spent a moment trying to figure out what her background might be; the eyes were large and expressive, her face triangular, with high prominent cheekbones, and richly colored, full lips. Her hair was cut short, in a style common to people who had to wear sealed helmets. The commander's name tag read: S. Turlington. The name rang a bell, and within a few seconds she remembered why; the Turlingtons were an extremely wealthy mercantile family, and members of the lower nobility on Darkael itself.
JB was the first to extend an olive branch.
"Good morning, Commander, I am Julius Benedict Harlow, UniSys' SAIC here in Níngjìng Bay; I'm given to understand that we have been invited to meet your Ambassador Stirling." He introduced himself, in his native Oxford accent. "This is my assistant, Agent Hamasaki." He continued, gesturing in her direction.
The Commander regarded each of them in turn before speaking in a very businesslike manner. "Commander Shevaughn Turlington, Darkaellan Imperial Guard. I have been instructed to convey you to the embassy. If you'll follow me?" She said, waving them to the insectile aircraft a few meters away.
Petrona forced herself to move forward with JB to the VTA, although the idea had her sweating. It wasn't that she was afraid of flying, but rather the four heavily armed Imperial soldiers who were standing guard around the aircraft; they weren't overtly hostile, but they radiated a sort of barely restrained aggression, as if they fully expected to be attacked at all times. Decked out as they were in full combat uniform, armor, including full face helmet, their compact assault rifles at the ready, she had to admit that if anyone was stupid enough to make trouble, it likely wouldn't last long.
The smooth, angular slab exterior of the aircraft gave no indication of how surprisingly comfortable an interior it possessed, as Petrona was guided to one of four comfortable seats in the rear of the troop compartment by one of the flight crew. He stopped to say something to the Commander, but it was impossible to make out over the engine noise from outside; well, that, and the fact that he said it in a language she couldn't understand.
Now seated across from Commander Turlington, she took the time to think over what JB had said when he'd burst into their office to collect his badge and sidearm. The latter of which their hosts had not yet bothered to confiscate, which suggested that either the Imperial Guard didn't consider them a threat, or they just didn't care. She decided that it was probably the fact that there were at least a half dozen heavily armed, and armored, soldiers in the cabin with them, and there was no one for the Commander to protect.
A feeling that she'd missed something, which had been nagging at her since JB had dragged her out from behind her desk, popped up from her subconscious.
"You don't know who it is, do you?" She blurted out, impulsively.
"Sorry?" Turlington replied, looking confused.
"I've been trying to figure out who it might have been; whoever got hit last night, but I can't, and neither can you. Can you? JB said that they had a medalert tag belonging to the Imperial family, but it wasn't. Was it?" She said, watching Turlington intently, looking for any indication that she had hit a nerve.
There wasn't one. The look she got back was so bland that it was, in its own right, as good as a scream in the face.
"The ambassador no doubt hopes that you can help to determine the facts surrounding recent events, certainly." Commander Turlington replied noncommittally.
"This may come as something of a surprise to you, Commander, but we do have some passing experience with the local police, and I can just imagine that they were thrilled with the idea of having to deal with your people. Then imagine their delight when they discover that there's no need to involve you at all, and this all starts to make a twisted sort of sense." Petrona expounded, with a more sarcastic tone than the Commander probably deserved.
She sat back in her seat triumphantly, and caught JB's expression from where he was, seated across from her. He looked as though he was choking on something, and his face was a mask of martyred patience.
She would remember the trip to the embassy later, and readily admit that, if she'd known at the time what the future held, she might just have jumped out of the VTA then and there.
