The Last Campaign (The Near-Earth Mysteries)

by Martin L Shoemaker

  I marched up to the stage and over to the speakers at the rostrum. “That is what all of Mars is about to find out,” I said. “And the Initiative. Their troops have got Boomtown surrounded.”

  Thomas took a step backward. “I don’t—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do, Ms. Thomas. And you are not the only one.” I looked out over the crowd. “My apologies to those of you who are on this committee just because you like to hear yourself yammer. And to the true patriots among you, as well, my apologies. But some of you here are just in it for the power and the money, and you are the ones who know about Boomtown and are a part of that effort.

  “So do any of you want to confess now, call your people and tell them to surrender before the Initiative has to go in shooting?”

  “You’d never do that,” Stehouwer said. “There hasn’t been an Initiative military action in . . . since Luna!”

  “This is not military,” I answered. “For this operation, I have deputized Chief Hogan and as many Initiative Security troops as he needed.”

  That shocked Alonzo. “On whose authority?”

  “On mine,” I said. “Read my oath of office and the statement of my job responsibilities: To preserve and protect the safety of the people of Maxwell City, and to ensure the enforcement of all laws of the city, and the Compact, and the Initiative where applicable. Boomtown is a violation of the Compact, which makes it my jurisdiction, and I can deputize whomever I need to put a stop to it.”

  “But . . . ,” Stehouwer said. “Shooting . . .”

  “Shut up, you idiot!” Thomas said.

  “That is close enough to a confession for me, Ms. Thomas. Do you want to give the order to stand down?”

  I gave Ms. Thomas credit for her nerves of steel. She was ready to let things turn into an all-out gun battle rather than concede a single thing. Of course it was not her facing the guns.

  In the end, though, it did not matter. As Hogan reported later, her money had bought loyalty, but not bravery in the face of Initiative troops. One shot was fired, an Initiative shoulder-launched rocket. When that took out the concealed dome of Boomtown’s main lock, it look only seconds for Boomtown to signal surrender. The Initiative troops marched in to find workers standing stone still with their hands on their heads. The only casualties of the whole engagement were a handful of project managers. Hogan eventually reported that they had been beaten to death with fists and tools and other improvised weapons, before the Initiative ever entered the settlement. I was angry at that, and not just by the brutality. Those were probably people with a lot of evidence to share if pressured properly. But I remembered Gale’s friend Jerry, and I understood why the men had been killed. In a base full of workers, the beatings had happened with no witnesses.

  But that came later. All I knew at the time was that Hogan had signaled success, much faster than I had hoped for. This time, I used the microphone to make sure I could be heard clearly by everyone. “I have news,” I said. “My Initiative deputies are in control of Boomtown. No shots were fired after the initial breach, and reports are that all evidence is intact. We are going to talk to every single person on this committee, and be aware that we will check your statements against every piece of evidence we find in Boomtown. We are going to have officers read you your rights”—in this regard, the Compact resembled American court precedent: suspects could not be compelled to testify against themselves and had to be advised accordingly—“and then you are going to be questioned. But I can tell you this: we are going to get a lot of evidence, incontestable evidence even, from the records at Boomtown. If what you have to tell us contradicts what is in those records, well, it will not look good for you in front of the magistrate.”

  That was a shot across the bow for any reluctant suspects. With a project as big as Boomtown, they could not know for sure what evidence we would find that might implicate them. Maybe the most brazen would remain silent, or even lie; but I counted on most of them to fold once they could see what was coming. If a conspiracy was large enough, some were sure to give us what we wanted before the evidence came up, just to get the best deal they could.

  This was going to be horrible for the Libertists, and I felt bad for Anthony. And even for Alonzo: as much as I resented his politicking, I understood his reasons, and I had just sabotaged his campaign.

  But I had done my job. I had upheld the truth. If that did not matter, then I wanted no part of any of this.

  I headed toward the edge of the stage, contemplating my letter of resignation. It would be better than my last one, when I had left the Admiralty. At least this one would be the truth.

  But before I could even reach the edge of the stage, Pat Knighton caught my sleeve. “Ma’am, do you have a statement for my viewers?” He nodded his head toward the door, and I got his point. Something like this would not stay secret for long, and the rest of the media would be here soon. And I had promised him an exclusive. He had not actually earned it yet, but a promise was a promise.

  So I moved back to the rostrum, in front of that giant rotating globe. I wanted to give Knighton a nice visual for his report. Then, in brief but with all the basics, I explained about Boomtown, and the effort to circumvent the development restrictions of the Compact. I hit all the major points while leaving Gale out of it. Just in case we missed some conspirators, I did not want to make a target out of him. Just like a journo, I simply talked about my anonymous sources. Gale’s identity would come out in court, but I could protect him for now.

  When my story was done, Knighton smiled, again that broad grin with the beard. Rockford and her crew had just come in through the back entrance and had missed my entire story. He had his exclusive.

  But he wanted more. “Ma’am, does Mayor Holmes know about this? What’s his part in it?”

  “These arrests”—I looked around the room—“required a high degree of secrecy, which I am sure you can understand. To protect my sources, I could not even inform the mayor. I acted on my own authority.”

  “But you could inform Chief Hogan.”

  “For reasons that will be explained in court, yes.”

  “So Mayor Holmes was not involved.”

  “Nor any of his campaign staff, we believe. This is not an operation of his campaign, it was the party Steering Committee. There is a difference.”

  “They’re all Libertists,” Knighton said.

  “They are not Libertists,” Nick interrupted.

  Knighton turned toward Nick. “Audience, that was the voice of Maxwell City Founder Nick Aames. Mr. Aames, would you care to tell us of your part in this investigation?”

  Nick looked flustered. He did not like dealing with the media. He was just not very good at keeping his mouth shut. But now he said, “No. Ms. Morais is the one you should be talking to. I was just a consultant, it’s her operation.”

  Knighton turned back to me, and I responded, “Mr. Aames—for the record, my husband—provided valuable information for this operation and assisted in the planning.

  “And he has a point,” I continued. “These people behind this operation . . .” I looked out to make sure that Rockford had her system set up, and the other journos were filing in. She would probably get this wrong, but I wanted her to get it, space it! “The people behind this were not Libertists. They were profiteers from the Red Planet League.” There. The League was in the story now. I could almost feel financial markets shudder, but it had to be done. “They were not interested in Free Mars. They were interested in buying Mars. There is nothing wrong with a little profit, but independence is about much more than profit. It is about self-determination, self-reliance. And then a little profit.” Knighton laughed. “Mars can be free,” I continued. “Mars will be free. But under the Compact, following the rules and the precedents of Free Luna and Aldrin City. There are no shortcuts, and anyone looking for them does not have Mars’s interests at heart. Free Mars is a long-term vision, not a short-term return on investment. I am not sayi
ng that people will not make money here, because what Martian doesn’t hope to make their fortune? But there are rules. We want to keep the rules small. I know the Libertist platform is to cut them way back. But until that is done, we will not succeed by ignoring them.”

  I controlled my smile at that. Neither Nick nor I were sticklers for the rules, as I have noted before. But space it, there were principles involved here! The Compact was not arbitrary, for the most part. I thought the development restrictions were excessive, but I understood why they were there. Once we were independent, we could change them. But it was not the day to discuss that. Instead, I stuck to my theme. “So I tell you, these were not Libertists, they were opportunists.”

  “You sound like a Libertist yourself, ma’am,” Knighton said. He grinned out toward Rockford. “You have been accused of that by other outlets. But they didn’t ask you to your face. I’ll give you a chance to answer: Are you a Libertist?”

  I looked at Nick. Simple truth. “Absolutely I am a Libertist. Anyone who does not believe in a Free Mars is in the wrong place, in my opinion. I might be wrong about that.”

  That drew another chuckle from Knighton. “But what do you say to those”—again he glanced at Rockford—“who allege that you can’t be independent then? Who say you can’t be unbiased as a police chief because of your political views?”

  For this one, I looked directly at Rockford’s camera, not at her. “Look at what I just did to the Libertist structure. If after tonight you think I would go easy on anyone, on any suspect, because I happen to agree with them on politics, your own politics are blinding you. I follow the facts.” I nodded toward Nick. “Let the chips fall where they may.”

  27. DAMAGE CONTROL

  As we gathered in Anthony’s office, I prepared myself for a fight with Alonzo. I was done putting up with his attitude, and I was ready to let him know that as clearly as I could.

  So I was surprised when the door closed behind the three of us, and Alonzo sank against it with a long sigh. “That . . . could have been worse,” he said.

  Leaving well enough alone has never been one of my skills, so I said, “What does that mean?”

  Anthony sat behind his desk, and he sighed as well. “I think he’s saying that by any reasonable standard, that went well.”

  Alonzo shook his head. “There’s nothing good about it, Mr. Mayor.”

  “And there wasn’t going to be,” Anthony answered. He looked at me. “We had already gone through every possible scenario.” His eyes narrowed. “Except the scenario you actually pulled off. And we didn’t see any good coming out of it. We didn’t see any way for you to keep your job, and the odds of me keeping the nomination were pretty low. Winning the election, even lower. It looked like the Libertist cause was dead.”

  “But instead,” Alonzo continued, “it turned out better.”

  “Better,” Anthony agreed. “Unorthodox, but you may have flipped a few minds there, especially with that speech at the end. You took some campaign negatives, and you turned them into positives, simply by showing your integrity.”

  Alonzo went to the wet bar and poured himself a glass of water. “It could have been even better. If you had let us in on it, we could have prepared better statements and been ready for more questions.”

  I shook my head, and I sat. “I could not do that.”

  Alonzo drained half the glass. “And that’s the problem,” he said. “By surprising us, you made it look like you couldn’t trust us. I give you odds that’s what Rockford will be saying tomorrow. You should have trusted us.”

  “I could not do that,” I insisted. “Gale trusts Nick, and Nick trusts me, but that did not mean that Gale trusted me. Once he did, that did not mean he trusted you just because I do. Trust is not transitive. It does not work that way.”

  Anthony leaned forward. “I understand that. But politically—”

  “Space politics!” I said. “If I had played this any differently, the arrests might never have happened. The Boomtown people might have gotten away with it.”

  “And in the long run,” Alonzo said, “the politics of that would’ve been worse.” I started to object again, but he held up his hand. “It’s all well and good for you to say, ‘Space politics,’ ma’am, but I have to think about it. Politics is the art of the possible. If we’re not in office, our agenda can’t get done.”

  I forced myself to sit back in my chair and relax. I knew the truth in what he was saying, but I did not want to have to think about that when I was thinking about how to do my job. But there was no sense fighting about it now.

  Anthony, meanwhile, looked almost pleased. “You really think it could have been worse?”

  “By election day?” Alonzo asked. “Absolutely, Mr. Mayor. It’s like we discussed yesterday: all of this dirt was just waiting out there to be found. Better that we found it than the journos. Our so-called friends in the League shot the party in the foot. Ms. Morais put a bandage on it. And we may still limp to victory now.”

  “I don’t see how,” Anthony said. I silently agreed with him.

  “That’s my job, Mr. Mayor,” Alonzo said. “I’ve got my team on damage control already. The police chief’s speech will go a long way for that.”

  “Maybe turn it into a campaign commercial?” Anthony asked.

  “Absolutely not!” Alonzo said. “She staked her claim as apolitical. We aren’t going to make a liar out of her now.” Alonzo turned to me. “And this should make you happy, ma’am. The one thing we must not do from this point forward is involve Ms. Morais in the campaign anywhere where the public will see her. That’s a point of principle now. If we start using her as a PR token, everything she did gets undone. You or I might reference her speech, but we don’t play it.”

  I was relieved at that. I had more than enough to do building a police force and investigating fraud and murders.

  Then Alonzo leaned forward, hands on his knees, and added, “But what would help . . . would be if we could get the founder on board.”

  Anthony nodded. “He once said he would campaign if I needed him. Could you talk to him, Rosie?”

  I hesitated. “You might want to ask him yourself, Anthony. I am not sure where Nick and I stand right now.”

  I hesitated outside of the embassy door. This visit was not an emergency. Well, not a police emergency. It was personal, and I hoped it was not trouble. But in this circumstance, I could not justify using my police chief code.

  But I did not have to. The door slid open, and Gale stood on the other side. “Hello, Ms. Morais” he said. “Come in.”

  I entered, and again I was surprised at the changes in the apartment. Now one of Nick’s bonsai palms sat on the counter between the kitchenette and the living space. There was a dark-gray area rug on the floor beneath the coffee table. Pictures of nebulae hung on the walls, along with a scrolling display of spacecraft and Mars scenes. The bare, utilitarian space was becoming a living space.

  Nick was in the kitchenette. It was smaller than our kitchen. This was an apartment designed for one, so he barely had room for the cooking he was doing. He was chopping onions and potatoes; and as I approached, he dumped them into a skillet lined with hot oil. They started to simmer.

  “That smells good,” I said.

  “Uh-huh,” Nick answered, opening the refrigerator door to pull out some soy eggs.

  I recognized that noncommittal response. Nick was acknowledging my presence but not encouraging it.

  But I was not giving up so easily. “It looks like we pulled it off, Nick,” I said. I turned to Gale. “Thanks to you.”

  Gale relaxed within the frame of his assist suit. “That’s . . . that’s the first good news I have had since I learned about Boomtown.”

  “There is a lot of mopping up to do,” I said. “Evidence to secure, cases to try. The prosecutor’s office is going to have to add staff for this, attorneys and researchers. It is going to take months for these cases to wend their ways through the courts.”

>   Gale’s jaw dropped at that. “Months?” He stiffened again. “Months until I’m safe?”

  “Gale . . .” I tried to think of what would sound reassuring. “Gale, you are safe now,” I said. “The people behind this will be going down. They have already started turning on each other. If they have any vendettas to carry out, you are the smallest target. They probably do not even know your name.”

  “Good. Can we keep it that way?”

  Sometimes telling the truth is unpleasant. “No, we cannot,” I answered. “I will have to establish the complete chain of discovery in case after case. I can minimize your role. You were caught with stolen goods, and you told us where they came from. That should be enough for prosecutors to work with. But if the defense really tries to tear down our story, I shall have to tell more.”

  “And they will,” Nick said, his first contribution to the conversation since I had arrived.

  “They might,” I said. “But if enough of them turn on each other, with enough evidence to back it up, we may never have to talk about how the case was made. That is what we are shooting for now.”

  Gale clanked into the living room and sagged down on the couch. “This will never be over, will it? The old Gale luck just keeps striking.”

  I was unsure how to respond to that. I understood: living under a threat is taxing, stressful. I really thought it would work out okay, but I was not the one caught in the middle of it.

  Instead I turned back to Nick. “Anthony sends his thanks,” I said, then turned to Gale. “To both of you.”

  Nick shook his head. “I didn’t do it for Anthony. It was my responsibility to Gale.”

  “Well, he thanks you anyway. He also has a favor to ask. He would like you to campaign for him.”

  At that, Nick looked up, an eyebrow raised. “Not for the Libertists?”

  I shook my head. “Only for him. But . . . would it make a difference, Nico? Have you given up on the Libertists?”

  He added the eggs to the frying pan. “A party is just one more damn bureaucracy, another stumbling block for those trying to get things done.”