symmetrically on the cheap carpet. On the table next to an Internet terminal was a commercial grade hard-copy printer that could churn out twenty to thirty sheets of hemp paper per minute. Pamphlets, presumably that had come out of the printer, were stacked everywhere, most of them in stacks of a hundred or so and fastened with rubber bands. On the front of them were the words: MARTIAN INDEPENDENCE — NOT JUST A DREAM!
The inhabitants of the apartment — two men and two women, all of them dressed in faded cheap shorts and shirts — were grabbed by their hair or clothing and shoved to the carpet by the FLEB agents. They were thrown roughly down and had steel-toed boots placed against their necks while other agents held the barrels of M-24s to their heads. They were all screaming and yelling, pleading with the black-outfitted agents to tell them what was going on.
'Shut the fuck up, greenie slime,' Walker yelled at them, raising his boot and kicking one of the women in the side hard enough to make her gasp out her air.
Brian, Lisa, and the others looked on in shock at the treatment. Though they were no fans of vermin and though they were all of the opinion that they were forced to be too gentle with those they arrested, the unprovoked violence that the FLEB agents were utilizing was appalling to them. What had these people done to deserve this?
'Get 'em cuffed up,' Walker ordered his people. 'I want them downstairs in the van right away.'
The agents applied their cuffs to the various wrists and cinched them down brutally tight, causing actual bleeding in one of the men.
'Walker,' Brian said, after witnessing this, 'don't you think you're being a little rough here?'
Walker gave him a seething glare. 'I am in charge of this operation,' he replied. 'I do not recall asking you for advice in how to handle my prisoners. If it's a little too much for you to take, you can just go back downstairs.'
Brian glared back but said nothing. Soon Walker returned to his task.
The four men and women, all of them moaning and grunting, all of them still asking what they had done, were jerked rudely to their feet and pushed towards the doorway. Six of the FLEB agents went with them and led them down the hallway. This left Walker and three of his agents in addition to Brian, Lisa, and the others. The agents fanned out through the two bedrooms and the kitchen where they began dumping drawers out and upturning beds.
'You locals are dismissed now,' Walker said to Brian. 'Thanks for your help.'
'What the hell is going on here?' Brian demanded. 'Are you trying to tell me that those people were terrorists?'
'I'm not trying to tell you anything,' Walker said. 'They are charged with plotting to attack a federal building. They will be extradited to Earth for trial.'
'Extradited to Earth?' Lisa said. 'Why the hell would you do that? There's a federal court right here in Eden.'
'It is felt that Martian jurors might not be... well... exactly impartial,' Walker said. 'Considering the recent events on this planet it has been decided that all federal prisoners will be tried in Denver or Sau Paulo.'
'Unbelievable,' said one of the other cops, a six-year veteran of patrol services. 'What kind of trial are they going to get on Earth?'
'A fair one,' Walker said. 'It's the WestHem way.'
'And just where is the evidence that they were planning a bombing?' Brian asked. 'All I see here are a bunch of leaflets about Martian independence. Those are protected under the first amendment of the WestHem constitution, are they not?'
'There will be evidence here somewhere,' Walker assured them. 'They'll have it on their computer files or in their bedroom. There will be something.'
'This is not right,' Lisa said. 'What the hell are you feds trying to pull here?'
'We're not pulling anything,' Walker said sternly. 'We're just trying to keep some greenie vermin in line. You're cops aren't you? Why the hell are you taking up for these slimebags? I'd think you'd be glad to get them off the streets.'
'You thought wrong,' Brian said. 'They weren't doing anything but printing up fliers. What evidence did you have against them? What information did you use to get your warrant?'
'As I said before, that is not your concern. You folks are dismissed. Thank you for your assistance.'
'Walker,' Lisa started. 'I think...'
'Don't think,' he interrupted. 'It doesn't suit your...
Lieutenant Margaret Duran was sitting behind a desk in the downtown substation, going over some reports that had been filed by her watch the previous shift. She was smoking a cigarette and sipping out of a bottle of water. Soft music issued from the speakers of her Internet terminal. She was in a good mood, as she had been prone to lately, and she hummed along with the melody as she worked. As a veteran watch commander she was accustomed to dealing with some very sticky issues, both with the troops that she commanded and with the administrative cops that commanded her. Her position was somewhat of a buffer between the management of the police department and the labor that actually performed the work. Strife had always been present between these two groups as the working cops tried to do their jobs with what they'd been given and the captains and deputy chiefs tried to worship the gods of public opinion. But lately, since the push towards Martian independence had really started to take form, things had mellowed between these two groups quite a bit. Management was suddenly not as prone to making new, ever oppressive policies designed to break the backs of the working cops and keep them in line. And the cops were not as prone to slovenliness or morale problems as they had been, probably — in part anyway — because they weren't nearly as busy anymore. It was a strange but true phenomenon that crime had actually dropped significantly since the Whiting inauguration and the defeat of the impeachment movement. Could it be that for the first time the Martian people were experiencing hope? Duran sometimes wondered if that was the case, and as cynical and hardened as twenty-five years of Eden law enforcement had made her, she really could not come up with any other explanation.
'Incoming communication from four-delta-five-nine,' her computer terminal suddenly spoke up, relaying a message from the dispatch computer. 'Would you like to accept?'
Unit 4-D-59. That was Wong and Haggerty, two of her better cops. She took a moment to wonder why they would bypass their sergeant in the chain of command with whatever problem they had. It was a minor breach in protocol that possibly bespoke of a situation that they didn't think he could deal with on his own. Her happy mood faded just a tad. She had a pretty good idea of what the problem might be. Already some rumors from other parts of the department had filtered her way. 'Put them on screen,' she told the computer with a sigh.
Haggerty's face appeared a moment later, his eyes showing troublesome concern. 'Sorry to bother you, lieutenant,' he said. 'But there's something that I think we should talk to you about.'
'No problem,' she said. 'What's up?'
'It might be better,' he suggested, 'if we could meet face to face. I don't really want to put it out on the airwaves. No hurry, just if you get a chance to get out on the streets this shift...'
'I'll be right out,' she told him, knowing that it was best not to put requests like that off. 'All I was doing was looking over these atrocities you people call reports anyway. How about 35th Street and 6th Avenue, in the loading area of the Schuyler building? That's where the night shift cops like to hide and sleep, isn't it?'
Brian chuckled a little. 'I wouldn't know anything about that, lieutenant,' he said. 'But I know the place. We'll be there in about ten minutes.'
Duran saved her work on the computer and then stood up from her chair and stretched for a moment, relieving some of the pain in her aching back. She walked to the corner of the office and picked up her armor vest, slipping it over her shoulders and fastening it into place. She then donned her helmet, which had her rank emblem stenciled on the front of it, and activated her exterior radio link. 'This is watch commander 5-alpha,' she told the dispatch computer through the link. 'I'll be out in the field for a bit.'
'Watch commander 5-alpha out in the field,' the computer acknowledged.
A short walk brought her to the cart parking area of the building. She climbed into the non-descript cart that was assigned to the lieutenants of the downtown district and drove out through the secured gate that guarded access to the building. She wound her way through the crowded downtown streets and five minutes later pulled into
