Applause went up, and Ashton turned almost beet-red, much to Detective Ames’ amusement.
“This has led,” Carter continued, “to my decision – at the urging of a certain person of high office in the Palace, name of Saaret, who apparently knows about all these gewgaws – to present Inspector Ashton with the Director’s Award of Merit. It’s years late, but as the ancient saying is, ‘better late than never.’ Detective Ames, if you please?”
Detective Ames stepped forward, holding a medal on a small ribbon, striped with yellow, white, and black.
“It goes to the left of the other medal, Cally,” Carter murmured softly, as she moved to stand before her husband. She nodded acknowledgement, then fastened the medal to Ashton’s uniform tunic in the place indicated. Then she stepped back.
The room erupted in applause.
War!
Late in an extended parental leave period, Ashton got a private call from Carter in the same classified VR channel they had used while he was on Carolina. Ashton popped into the virtual room to find him waiting.
“Hey, Lee. What’s up?”
“I thought you should know. I got, uh, ‘privileged information’ just now. The Alliance vote just occurred. We’re at war.”
“Shit. Can I tell Cal?”
“Yeah. Maia just got the same notification. We’re supposed to let the entire team that’s been working on this intelligence stuff know – just don’t tell anybody else yet. I think it’ll soon become public information when the various militaries start making their moves, but until then, we keep quiet. Intelligence information and all that, you know. Don’t wanna accidentally reveal the source of the information and get ‘em killed… something you know about all too well, first-hand. I’m about to ping Honda and Browning on Carolina and get Honda headed home as fast as he can; I’d gathered he was working on infiltrating one of the other consulates, but that’s a bad place for him to be right now. Daggert said he’d get someone else in there, because he agrees – at this point, it needs to be a trained intelligence officer making those infiltrations. They stand the least chance of getting killed, because of their training. He just didn’t have anybody handy when you and Honda went, but he’s spent the time since positioning people. Once I get all that squared away, I’ll call a meeting of Ashton’s Gang; Maia’s calling a Team meeting herself, right now.”
“How do we stand?”
“Good, from what little Daggert would say. If I had to interpret his expression, really damn good, but I dunno for sure. That’s just a guess on my part; for all I know, Daggert loves battle and just anticipates the fight.”
“That’s good that we’re in good position, but the whole situation is scary.”
“No shit.”
“Do you need me to come back from leave early?”
“I don’t think so, unless you just want to. We’ve got things set up okay since the time you left, and it’s functioning decently. There’s not quite as much enthusiasm for Peabody and Stone as there is for you, but between ‘em, they’re pretty damn good, and the Gang acknowledges that. So you have good backup. If we need you, I’ll ping you.”
“Okay. Anything else I need to know?”
“No, I don’t think – no, wait. Yeah, there is, ‘cause I think you need to know about this.”
“What?”
“We seem to have a serial killer in Imperial City,” Carter told him. “Remember that Berinia spy that was murdered?”
“Yeah,” Ashton said, grim. “The one that I nearly got killed over.”
“That one, yeah. Well, it’s a cold case.”
“But you got the Garland spy who killed him.”
“No, we didn’t. We thought he had. But we ended up putting him in the chair, and it said he wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t kill the guy. And the doc and the tech confirmed it. We never figured out who did do it.”
“Wow. Okay. Keep going.”
“So when we went to take the various spies into custody while you were en route home, we – ‘we’ being plural; it was IPD, ICPD, the Imperial Guard, and the Imperial Marines – found two more, already dead, in their homes. One had been dead a pretty good while, the other was more recent, probably within a day or two.”
“Huh. Maybe there is a vendetta among ‘em, an’ you just didn’t grab the right one.”
“That’s the premise we’re going on, yes,” Carter agreed. “But we took out all of the spies on your list already. They’ve been taken into custody, interrogated, and executed, per the standard procedure we worked out with General Daggert. He says the Emperor barely even blinks now, when Daggert goes to him with another batch of confirmed names. He just has his personal secretary copy over the form warrant and fill in the names on each, then he signs ‘em.”
“Been that bad, huh?”
“Kinda, yeah. So anyway, your list has all gone bye-bye, as little Paul said the other night...”
“Okay. So?”
“So we’ve had three more people bite it since then. All what you might term ‘imports,’ all living in Imperial City... and all from the farside, this time. In this case, one was from Midlothia, and two from Westhaven. Known spies in the case of Westhaven, we just hadn’t gotten the goods on ‘em to take ‘em in yet. The big intel team has been studying them and looking to see what we might be able to glom onto.”
“Huh. Maybe the Democracy of Planets? Or is someone trying to knock out the competition?”
“That’s what we’re wondering. It’s definitely someone who has an idea about who’s who. The problem is, they goofed this time, we think. One of the most recent deaths appears to be innocent.”
“Whu-oh.”
“Exactly.”
“Are we sure it isn’t someone the
