“Shit. I’ve been so busy I lost track. You’re– what? A general now?”
“Brigadier General, yes. I just got back from a pretty intense detached duty assignment, and the promotion came with it. Last I saw you, you’d been made an Inspector, right?”
“Yup, sure have.”
“Damn. Back on the Medved case, you weren’t even a full detective yet, were you?”
“Nope, not quite.”
“We’re gettin’ old, man.”
“There’s worse things. So what can I do for you? I assume something’s up, because you’re not the type to call and just shoot the breeze and reminisce. Especially since we never even got to go out for drinks.”
Mercer laughed.
“No, that’s right, we never did,” he recalled. “I swear I meant to join you, but things were moving fast back then.”
“No shit.”
“And yes, you’re right, something’s up. Do you have a detective in your group name of Joseph Gardenia?”
“No, we don’t,” Ashton averred. “What’s going on? Did your people encounter someone claiming to be one of us?”
“We have, and it looks very much like we have a bad situation developing,” Mercer confirmed. “Is there any chance you and Director Carter can meet me and General Daggert, either in person, or in VR?”
“Sure. Give me enough time to ensure I can drag Lee into it, and we’ll meet you however you like.”
“Mm. VR is probably gonna be better, though I’d really like it to be face to face. But this is a serious security matter, so yeah, let’s make it in an hour and a half, in Daggert’s office simulation, which is channel 80. Will that work?”
“It should,” Ashton decided. “If Lee has a conflict, I’ll ping you immediately.”
“Good. Thanks, Nick. See you then.”
“Roger that, David.”
An hour and a half later, Carter and Ashton arrived in Daggert’s office simulacrum; Daggert and Mercer awaited.
“Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” Daggert said, waving them to a small conversation area in the corner. “Please be seated. I gather David has already inquired about our erstwhile detective, Inspector Ashton?”
“He has, General,” Ashton confirmed. “We have nobody by that name in my division, or even in my branch.”
“Your branch?”
“Nick Ashton is my right-hand man, General,” Carter explained. “When we re-formed – and reformed – the IPD Headquarters, I brought Nick in to rebuild my investigators group. When we flattened the heirarchy of the organization, we decided to create two branches: Administrative and Field. All the bean-counters went into the first, and all of the officers who went into the field fell into the second. That includes Investigations, beat cops, and the special teams like Forensics.”
“All right...” Daggert said, still listening.
“Well, the top beat cops turned out to be, uh, ‘old school,’ and ended up conspiring against us while not doing anything for the group of beat cops trying to play it straight, so Nick wound up helping to reconstruct that division, as well. He kind of ended up the Field branch lead, in addition to becoming the Investigations lead. And his people are pretty devoted to him. He’s really good in those positions.”
“This is excellent, then,” Mercer said. “So there is no chance this Gardenia works for you.”
“None whatsoever,” Ashton verified. “Which means either he’s with some other department, or we have a fake cop out there someplace.”
“No, he specified IPD, and we have more than that,” Daggert said. “We have an attempted assassin slash mass murderer, and a probable spy ring.”
“And we’d like to have your help to investigate and take them down,” Mercer added, “in exchange for our assistance, even using the Marines, if we need their help.”
“Tell us what’s happened,” Carter charged.
“Well, the Emperor got some warnings, directly,” Mercer began. “One was a staunch supporter, seeing weird shit in the stock market, and it looks like it’s coming from the DP.”
“What sort of weird shit?” Ashton wondered.
“The Empress, with her business and accounting acumen, understands it best,” Daggert said. “But to summarize, it seems that some of the businessmen in the DP are gambling in the markets on something really bad happening to upset the Empire’s economy...”
“And the best way to do that would be to off the Emperor,” Carter finished for him.
“Exactly,” Daggert said. “Then the last ranking official in the DP fleet stationed at Olympia surrendered under the condition that he get a private interview with the Emperor, who granted it. And he warned the Emperor not to blow off what the Empress terms ‘the plutocrats,’ the corporate chiefs who, it seems, were the ones really in charge of the DP. The powers behind what passed for a throne over there. Because, he said, they’re dangerous, and they could be just as dangerous to the Emperor. Money can buy power, after all… as we’ve seen here ourselves, only His Majesty managed to get rid of ‘em.”
“And we don’t want it back,” Mercer added.
“So… two warnings,” Ashton said.
“Directly to the Emperor,” Mercer tag-teamed.
“In one day,” Daggert averred. “From completely unrelated people, in completely unrelated fields.”
“Damnation,” Carter cursed at that. “Yeah, we have a situation developing. So what are we doing about it?”
“As soon as General Daggert let me know of the situation, I pinged the Palace staff,” Mercer said. “After doing some intel with the Imperial Marines on a recent deployment, I developed a certain, uh, skill with it, so the General here had already put me in charge of the anti-espionage effort for the Palace.”
“And he got a hit,” Daggert said. “Guy name of... what was it...”
“Timothy Pierce,” Mercer filled in. “He’s one of the regular maintenance people. Specializes in HVAC, and he’s good. He’s also honest as the day is long, and devoted to the Imperial Family, though this ‘Gardenia’ bastard doesn’t know it. So we’re going to set Pierce up to be ‘recruited.’” He quirked his fingers around the word.
