Coming out of VR, he looked around, and saw the others looking puzzled and glancing about as well.
“What do we do now?” Ashton asked then.
“Wait,” Jaime Hernandez said with a shrug.
The end of shift came and went, but General Walder kept everyone at their precinct buildings, and called in all the off-duty shifts. This included Ashton, whom Walder kept especially close.
“Because I gave my word to Maia and Lee,” he told Ashton, “that I’d look after you, mentor you, and keep any of the corrupt bastards from Sintar off your back. We already know they sent somebody after you; we don’t know how many others. And right now, there’s a hell of a lot of ‘others’ on the streets.”
“And they’re not happy,” Ashton agreed.
“No, they’re not,” Walder affirmed. “Besides, I’ve already had...word...from Sintar. Just sit tight and let’s see how this plays out.”
Some five and a half or six hours after the coronation, along about sundown, a call came in from the sector governor’s mansion from one of the staff there. Renata Palomo de la Gallego, sector governor and would-be empress, was dead, apparently shot by one of the enraged crowd. Walder called Ashton over.
“Nick, I want you to head up an investigation team,” he said. “At Captain, you’re currently my top-ranking active investigator, and from what I’ve seen and been told, have eyes like the proverbial hawk. I’ll pull together the team for you, but you’re in charge. Be careful, but go find out what really happened, because somehow I don’t think it happened like we were told.”
“Yes, sir,” Ashton said.
The shuttle hangar facility was across the side street from the sector headquarters building, and Ashton led his hand-picked forensic investigation team out the side door and toward the shuttle, which was already warming up for takeoff.
Since Coronation Day tended to be a holiday in most of the Empire, and all means of communication, news, and even financial transactions had been shut down by the VR removal, the streets were now very crowded with a lot of confused, frustrated, and angry people, and Ashton and his team had to carefully but politely elbow their way across the sidewalk, into the pedestrian-filled street, and through the gate into the hangar facility. This resulted in a certain amount of yelling, foul language, and catcalling by said pedestrians, who were by and large well on their way to thorough inebriation, but since the police officers were courteous, nobody complained too much. In fact, some even tried to help part the crowd for the group to pass, apparently thinking that the nicer they were to the Imperial representatives, the sooner they might get their VR and QE comms back.
Until one man, very drunk, shoved his way toward the fenced landing-pad gate.
“DOMINICK ASHTON!” a painfully thin Mark Martin yelled, jerking and slurring his words badly, his hands nearly black; he had been fired from his mechanic job when he’d lost all dexterity. “YOU DAMN COCK-SUCKING IMPERIAL SCUM! What the HELL do you mean, doing this to me?! I’ll KILL YOU, do you hear?”
By that point, however, the investigative team had already boarded the shuttle, which was spinning up with a loud whine; there was no chance that Ashton had actually heard any of it, let alone seen or recognized Martin.
But as he ranted, the crowd around Martin grew quiet.
Deadly quiet.
Finally, as Martin’s inebriated rant died off, a big, muscular man addressed him.
“Hey, hombre, ¿qué haces? Don’t go pissin’ off the Imperial Police, man! The bitch in the mansion done enough for us on that account already! Just shut up!” (Hey, man, what are you doing?)
But Martin wasn’t in a mood to be told what to do.
“You shut up, chico!” he yelled. “I ain’t s’posed to even be in this hick dump, an’ that guy’s responsible for me bein’ here!” (boy)
“What? Did he drag you here, hombre?” the big man asked, squaring his shoulders. “I didn’t see nobody draggin’ you here. Why you here, man?”
“I was sent after him! He’s a cock-sucking suck-up, and he got all my bosses killed!”
“Killed how?” someone else asked.
“Executed!” Martin wailed. Members of the crowd glanced at each other.
“Este tipo es un ladrón,” someone murmured. (This guy is a crook.)
“Sí,” came several responses.
“Y está loco in la cabeza, un poco, tambien,” someone else added. (And he’s crazy in the head, a little, too.)
“And he wants to kill the Imperial Police detective,” the first man said.
“Is not good,” another responded. “Esa cabrona en el palacio has done enough already. We don’t need more shit goin’ down right outside Imperial Police headquarters.” (That bitch in the palace)
“You need to shut up and go home,” the big man told Martin.
“I WON’T!” Martin yelled. “I’mma follow that shu-shuttle an’ find Ashton an’ I’mma kill ‘im!”
He shoved the man, pulling a knife…but he fumbled it in his gangrenous hands, and it clattered to the sidewalk.
Seeing the knife, the man backhanded him. He was nearly twice as big as Martin, in his emaciated condition.
Martin’s feet left the pavement as he flew through the air and smacked against the main gate post, hitting the back of his head against galvanized steel. There was a mushy thud, and Martin bounced off, face-planting the pavement.
He didn’t get up.
The street rapidly cleared of pedestrians.
An hour later, one of the Imperial Police officers glanced out the window and noticed the body lying
