Peabody tagged along.
The executions were swift and as neat as such things can be. The prisoners were, by and large, quiet and resigned to their fates, though a couple begged and pleaded for mercy. When it was pointed out that they showed none themselves, they paled and silenced.
By a few minutes past one, the quintet of witnesses headed for a nearby restaurant and a late lunch together.
The case of the directorial assassins was over.
For the time.
The temporary IPD headquarters was even quieter that afternoon than it had been that morning. It was also politer and more courteous, especially to the Director and his division leads, or what passed for leads.
Midafternoon, Carter called an all-hands meeting in VR to present the preliminary plans for the new headquarters building, to be constructed on the site of the old building once the last of the debris had been carted away and the site prepared.
“…And so what I want each of you to do,” he said, “around re-doing your Oaths and your regular case work, is to think about what you think we need in that building. What facilities, what capabilities, what could we do that would make your work flow more smoothly? And then I want you to write it up – nothing fancy – and send it to your team leader, who will then collate the requests and bring them to me. And the lead team, consisting of myself and the team leads – Maintenance, Dispatch, Bookkeeping, Field, Investigations, and Special Teams, or as many of those as we have so far – will sit down and hash them out, and figure out how to incorporate and accommodate as many of them as we can, given what we have to work with.”
“What about the section leads, Lee?” Ashton wondered.
“Well, other than a couple of offices for visiting section leads, they don’t really have a lot of input into Headquarters itself,” Carter pointed out. “It’s looking like General Quan, who heads ICPD, is going to be the Imperial City section lead, and possibly my assistant director… though he’s said he has enough to do without adding Assistant Director to his titles… but he’ll be on the periphery of the discussions, at least.”
Peabody raised his hand.
“Yes, Peabody?”
“Do we know who the other section leads are going to be?”
“Pretty much, yes,” Carter said, “though the sector and empire representatives are still a little up in the air. The Emperor and I are trying to sort our way through whether or not each sector has a representative, or whether there’s a representative body comprised of sector heads that then sends a single representative…”
“This is separate from the sector governors, though, right?” another officer, one of the younger beat cops, asked.
“Right,” Carter confirmed. “We’re talking about the sector police heads, here. There’s another structure that the Emperor uses for his sector governors.”
“You’re letting us have input into the new headquarters building?” Peter Stone, Ashton’s old roommate that he’d convinced to return to the IPD on Sintar only recently, asked then.
“Absolutely,” Carter decreed. “The old Headquarters was as squirrelly as a forest full of rodents! It was hard enough to get shit done as it was, even without the crooked aspects! We want to make this job easier, without the temptations to do it the wrong way. And so we need to know what will make the job easier, from the people who do it. If you could ask for anything in this new Headquarters, what would it be? Tell me now, while we can still take a shot at incorporating it.”
“Then let’s go, people!” Ashton decreed, and the meeting broke up with enthusiastic police officers discussing what they wanted for their ‘dream’ Headquarters.
The next day, Carter called a live meeting of the Investigative and Special Teams divisions in an auditorium one floor down. Much to everyone’s surprise, Emily Walton was also there.
“Okay, guys,” he said. “I wanted to make sure everyone who works with him is in on this, as well as include a special person in his life.” He gestured to Walton. “Winston Peabody, would you please come forward?”
A startled Peabody rose and moved to the front of the big room.
“Um, here, sir,” he said. “What do you need, sir?”
“It isn’t what I need, but what I can do for you, Mr. Peabody,” Carter said. “I see you obeyed my request to wear your dress uniform today.”
“Yes, sir. When the Director tells you to do something, you do it.”
“Good man. Ladies and Gentlemen,” Carter continued, turning to the audience, “Investigator Peabody, here, did a really incredibly brave thing. He deliberately and on his own recognizance, infiltrated a conspiracy to remove – to kill – the top brass in the IPD as well as a couple of important members of the ICPD. And when he reported their existence and was asked not only to continue, but to gather evidence against them, did not hesitate, but did so.” Carter paused, and looked out over the gathered divisions. “This put him at significant risk, and in the end, he was also one of those targeted for termination.”
Carter turned back to Peabody. “Mr. Peabody, step forward, please.”
Peabody did so.
“Ms. Walton, if you please. Do it just like I showed you.”
Emily Walton moved to stand before Peabody, where she produced a medal on a short ribbon – white, with a wide central red stripe and two narrow blue stripes flanking it – and pinned it to the chest of his tunic.
“This is the Gold Shield award. From this day forward, when a member of the IPD steps forward to place him-or herself in danger in order to protect other members of this, or any other, police department from a conspiracy anywhere in the Empire, they are eligible for the Gold Shield.
