EMPIRE: Imperial Detective

by Stephanie Osborn

  “Yes, it does,” Carter said. “If any of you have personal deities, a few entreaties might be good right now. Otherwise our Investigations Lead – hell, our Field Lead – could end up in a very bad way, in a very personal fashion.”

  The others nodded and resumed work.

  The Jive

  Cally sat in the Baked Bean at a little booth in the corner, sipping her decaf – liberally laced with cream and sugar, a preference that had only hit during her pregnancy – and nibbling a slice of quiche Lorraine while she waited for Tabby Koch, trying not to eat too fast and risk appearing rude. She checked the clock on the wall; Tabby was late, and she began to grow concerned. Was Maia right after all? Is Tabby up to something?

  Just then an urgent VR call came in, and Cally recognized Koch’s identification. She answered the call, and before she could even say hello, Tabby began to babble.

  “Cally, I need your help! This is bad, this is so bad! I was taking a short cut and this perp cut me off, and he figures to rape me! And I don’t have my carry weapon anymore, because they confiscated it when I left the department! Help me, Cally! He’s gonna rape me!”

  “Calm down, Tabby. Where are you?”

  “I’m in the alleyway behind the café. There’s some lights out and it’s dark, so I didn’t see the bastard! Hurry!”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Cally paid the bill for her food in VR and held up her badge, telling the waitress to hold the table. Then she nudged the shoulder holster under her left arm – thankful that the holster adjusted for the increasing size of her breasts – felt the backup in the small of her back, and headed for the door.

  Outside, she rounded the corner of the café into a narrow alley leading back to the storage and shipping areas of the various storefronts, moving at a trot despite the discomfort to her belly and breasts. As she approached the rear corner, she slowed down and drew her primary carry weapon from the shoulder holster.

  It is dark back here, she thought, straining her ears to hear any sound of movement. Damn, I’m not hearing anything, and it’s too dark to spot much, if the perp is trying to hide things. I hope he hasn’t already done the deed and left her for dead, or worse, dragged her off someplace without my knowing where.

  She eased around the corner and behind the cover of a shipping crate, continuing to look for Tabby, or an assailant, or anything that would tell her what the hell was going down. As she slipped around another crate, she suddenly felt fingers on her throat and something cold and hard in the small of her back.

  “Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you?” Tabby’s voice snarled in her ear. “Somebody said you were an investigator. That’s hard to believe. Put the gun on the ground and kick it away. I’ve got the one at your waist.”

  Cally felt the backup weapon slipped from its holster in her back, as she bent and laid her pistol on the pavement, then nudged it away with her toe. Damn, damn, damn, I’m an idiot, she cursed herself out. I trusted the woman that everybody – especially Nick – told me was a bitch. What the hell does this bitch – and she is a bitch, and a liar, and a slut – want with me now?

  “‘You’re probably wondering why I called you here,’” Tabby quoted the ancient saying with a cruel laugh. “It’s simple, really. I want Nicky. You’re in the way. You and your bastard brat. Feel this?” She nudged the cold hard object in Cally’s back. “It’s an airgun with expanding projectiles. One good shot will take out your descending aorta, and take the baby with it. And then Nicky is free...for the taking. And I intend to do some taking.” Cally could hear the smirk in her voice. “I thought about using a knife and cutting the baby out of you, then leaving you both to bleed out, but this is faster, and doesn’t run the risk of someone coming along too soon and rescuing you.

  “Now come over here,” Tabby said, nudging Cally along with the barrel of the gun and her hand on Cally’s throat. “I’ve got a nice little place prepared for the two of you, where they’ll never find you until the shipping crate is a long way away from this miserable rock.”

  “Nick! Nick, honey, help! I’m in trouble! I need your help, bad!” Cally sent the distress call on the special emergency channel she and Ashton had reserved for themselves.

  “I hear you, Cal, and I’m already on the way. Maia called me.”

  “Oh thank God! She’s nuts or something, Nick! She wants you, and intends to kill me and the baby, to get to you!”

  “I know. Where are you?”

  “In the mews behind the café. She’s got a gun on me.”

  “I’ll be there in two.”

  “It’s really dark! Don’t come alone!”

  “I have plenty of backup.”

  Ashton, Peabody, and Stone arrived at the door of the café just as Adrian Mott exited it. Before they could say anything, the three men were surrounded by The Team.

  “She’s not inside,” Mott said. “I saw her go in here, then I hadda duck around a big truck and she was gone. I dunno–”

  “She’s behind the café,” Ashton interrupted. “Koch has her at gunpoint.”

  “Shit shit shit, and damn, for good measure,” Rassmussen cursed. “I knew that bitch was gonna be trouble for Cal.”

  “We all did,” Armbrand replied, “except Cal.”

  “She’s your wife, Nick,” Peabody said. “You call it.”

  “But hurry,” Jones added.

  “Okay. Team, split yourselves into two equal parts. Peabody, you take one half and go around that side of the café. Make it fast.” He pointed to the far end of the eatery. “Stone, you take the rest and come with me. Except I want you lot to stay about ten paces behind me. Tabby wants me? I’ll be there. I’m the decoy. I’ll get her attention off Cal, and that will hopefully give the rest of you a chance to take a shot.”

  “You want her dead?” Peabody asked, giving Ashton a sharp look.

  “Not necessarily, but if that’s what it takes,” Ashton noted. “Right this very minute she’s holding a gun on Cal, and I gathered from the flashes of imagery, in such a way as to take out the baby, too. I want Koch unable to hurt Cal and the baby. If it takes a killing shot to stop her, it’s on her own head now.”

  The others nodded, and split up.

  Tabby roughly shoved Cally away from her.

  “There!” she exclaimed with a vicious smirk. “I want to watch your eyes as you feel your brat die, as you feel yourself dying. I want to know you’re dead, and Nick is free...to be with me.” She raised the airgun.

  “I’ll never be with you, Tabby,” a familiar voice said, and Koch spun.

  Nick Ashton stood there, his weapon drawn and leveled at Koch.

  “Tabby, put the gun down.”

  “Nick, she’s the only thing between you and me being happy together. We can do this, you and me. Get the bitch here out of the way with that bastard brat she’s carrying, and then it’s just us two. Then we can get Carter out of the way, and you’ll be in charge. You can put me in charge of the detectives, and we’ll run the show! That’s what Uncle Bill hoped would happen for us, did you know that?”

  “I don’t give a damn what that asshole of an uncle of yours wanted. And don’t you dare call my wife a bitch, or my son a bastard.”

  “Nick, she’s a slut. The kid probably isn’t even yours. She trapped you into marrying her by getting pregnant and claiming it was yours.”

  “Which shows how much you know. We’ve been married closing on two years now. And Cal’s never once looked at another man, any more than I’ve looked at another woman.”

  “Not even me?” She preened.

  “Especially not you.”

  “But – but I thought...you and me...you were such a passionate lover, Nick...”

  “I don’t know who the hell you’re thinking about, but it damn sure wasn’t me, Tabby, because you and I never once slept together. And you have no idea how damn glad I am of that. How the hell many lovers have you had, anyway, that you can’t even remember?” Ashton drew down on her. “Or a
re you using psychoactives, or too much alcohol…?”

  “You wouldn’t shoot me, Nicky-baby,” she smirked, confident. She ignored his addendum entirely. “I’m your first love, your true love.”

  “The hell you say. You’re nothing to me but a heartless, manipulating bitch. I had girlfriends in school, so you’re not my first love. And my true love carries my child.”

  Tabby grew infuriated.

  “Not for long, damn you!”

  Koch raised the airgun, swinging toward Ames, but Ashton fired first – just as another shot came from the far side of the mews. One bullet caught Koch in the center of mass, the other in the head. She was dead before she hit the pavement.

  Cally ran to Nick and flung herself into his arms, beginning to cry.

  “Oh Nick! I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! I was just trying to be nice! She seemed depressed – she convinced me she was – and that she just needed a friend. She said you were nice, and if I was married to you, she thought I’d be nice, and then maybe she could have two friends, when she didn’t have anybody else left… and I believed her! I’m such a numbskull! And with Maia and everybody trying to tell me!”

  “Hush, honey, hush,” Nick murmured, holding her close. “Are you hurt? Is the baby all right?”

  “I’m fine, and the baby was bouncing up and down until she grabbed me and shoved that damn airgun in my kidney,” Ames sobbed. “Then he got real still… until I saw you. And I swear, I thought he was gonna pop right out, he jumped so hard.”

  Just then, a light hand laid itself on Ashton’s shoulder. He flinched, but before he could spin around, the voice attached to the hand said, “It’s me, lad. It’s Gene. I’ve just pinged Maia, who linked up with Lee, and they say to take Cally on home. And stay there yourself. And if you need to take tomorrow off, either of you, do it.”

  “Weapons were fired, Gene,” Ashton said with a sigh. “There’s reports to write, and there’ll be an internal investigation…”

  “I’m sorry,” Ames whimpered again.

  “Hush, there, Cally,” Peabody said. “I think I’ve got that taken care of, Nick.”

  “Huh? How, Win?”

  “Remember how Carter set me up to infiltrate and record the conspiracy meetings through my VR nanites a while back?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve still got that set up,” Peabody said with a grin. “I triggered it when I got close enough to see and hear, and it recorded the whole thing. Which means that it saw Koch draw down on Cally, and you – and me – fire on her to stop Koch murdering her… and your baby.”

  “Aha,” Stefan Gorski, now one of the two inspectors for ICPD, along with Eugene Demetrius, said with a wide grin. “And that’s proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no wrongdoing by any officers.”

  “Exactly,” Peabody said, “and I’ve already pushed it to Director Carter. Protecting innocents. It’s what we do.”

  “Go home,” Demetrius reiterated with emphasis to Ashton.

  They went.

  Once the pair returned to Temporary New Headquarters, Stone and Peabody told the whole story to The Gang, as well as Director Carter and quite a few of the available beat cops, step by step.

  “And I’ve already seen the video, Peabody, and sent it on to the Imperial Guard’s Internal Investigations bureau, over in the Palace complex, as per instructions from the Emperor, via the Empress and Consul Saaret,” Carter noted, when they were finished. “They want us to have external oversight, and I think that’s a great idea – so from now on, they review us, and we review them, whenever it’s necessary. The Guard has already reviewed the video as well as myself, and are already in agreement with me that both you and Ashton were justified in taking the shots.”

  “Good, and thank you, sir,” Peabody said, tapping his temple with his right index finger; it was the agreed-upon substitute for a full salute that his working group had come up with, and Carter had approved.

  “By the way, do you know which of you hit the head, and which the center of mass?” Carter continued. “Because the head would have been the more immediate killing shot…”

  “As a matter of fact, yes, sir,” Peabody said, solemn. “I aimed for center of mass.”

  “Which means Ashton killed her,” Stone murmured. “Damn. He used to be really gone on her.”

  “Until he found the love of his life,” Carter pointed out. “And the bitch threatened, not only that love, but the child of that love. And Nick Ashton refused to stand for it.”

  One Up

  The next morning, after everybody checked in with Ashton to make sure all was okay with Cally and the baby, Carter called Ashton and Peabody into his office. Once they were inside, he closed the door and said, “Grab a seat, gentlemen,” as he moved behind the desk and took his own chair. Once they were seated, he continued. “Mr. Peabody, thank you for the video of the confrontation – I’ve already watched all of it, twice – and thank you and Stone for being there for Nick and Cally. That was an excellent job you both did, backing up Mr. Ashton and helping him rescue his wife from Kershaw’s niece.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Peabody responded, flushing slightly. “It needed doing. That girl had some crazy ideas about things, and she was all wrong about most of ‘em. And always was.”

  “That would be the Kershaw traits coming out, I think,” Carter sighed.

  “Judging by the smell of alcohol on the body, I think there were more than just Kershaw traits involved,” Peabody noted.

  “Oh really? You thinking alcohol-induced Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome? That whole neurological syndrome from alcohol toxicity?”

  “Or some stage thereof, yes, sir,” Peabody averred. “I noted several of the symptoms when she was here the other day.”

  “Hm. Good eye.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Win figured out where Koch had taken Cal, too,” Ashton said in a quiet voice. “And helped me stay calm through the whole ball of shit on the way over.”

  “Even better. Mr. Peabody, you’ve done excellently since you’ve been back with us, and I am hereby promoting you to Detective, Level 1.”

  “Oh! Thank you, sir!” Peabody said in surprise. “I… appreciate that.”

  “Well, there’s more, if you’re interested. And it’s why I called Nick in here with you.”

  Both men sat up straight at that.

  “What’s up, sir?” Peabody wondered.

  “You’re now a detective, like Nick,” Carter pointed out, “and all things considered, you have seniority over him. And while he’s done excellently by me, I know Nick has been expecting, even wanting, to simply drop back into The Gang, as I think your division has started calling themselves, by way of analogy to the ICPD’s Team…”

  “Yes, sir,” Peabody said then. “And I think I know where you’re going with this. So let me make one little correction in your terminology, before we go any further.”

  “Oh? What would that be?”

  “It’s not ‘The Gang.’ It’s ‘Ashton’s Gang,’ sir,” Peabody said, his voice quiet and calm. “We’ve never called ourselves that in front of him, but that’s the actual name of the division, as we term it. Sometimes, when somebody wants to get formal, it’s ‘Ashton’s Division,’ even.”

  “Oh, I see…” Carter raised an eyebrow. Ashton all but gaped in shocked surprise.

  “Yes, sir. And if you’re about to offer the division leadership to me in his place, I think my answer needs to be ‘no.’ Oh, I won’t deny it – part of me would love to get that back, but the ‘new me,’ as Emily and I have been calling it, knows I don’t need that now. What I need is exactly what I have – a wonderful wife, a great set of honest bosses, the ability to do good in the world and in the empire, and friends I can trust with my life – and who trust me with theirs.”

  “But you have the experience…”

  “No, sir, I don’t. Not like what you’ve got right here.” Peabody briefly put a hand on Ashton’s shoulder. “For one thing
, except for me, you have a relatively young Investigations division. One that needs to be run by somebody who understands their mindset and what they need. In other words, someone who is young himself… or herself, as the case might be, except there isn’t a ‘herself’ in position for it. You don’t currently have a single person over fifty in that group – and most are under thirty – you have no inspectors, and very few detectives. What you do have is two detectives who have already been in a position to lead an investigations division – me, as head of the ‘oldies’ Headquarters division, which isn’t so much to recommend me, all in all; and Ashton, who effectively ran the Catalonia sector IPD investigative division. And let me note that he ran it through an Imperial crisis of sorts, and came up on top. Handling that the wrong way could have resulted in riots.”

  “True,” Carter admitted. Ashton’s eyes grew wide; apparently he hadn’t thought about that little adventure in quite that light, Carter decided.

  “Now, I know that the general regs indicate that you need someone of Inspector level running a division, Director Carter,” Peabody continued, “but if you’d be willing to accept it, I have a bit of advice to offer you for now.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “That advice would be, ‘Shit happens,’” Peabody said. “Just look at the reason Ashton was head of investigations on Catalonia. Look at why he’s been heading it up here. And you, like me, are old enough and experienced enough to recognize that that sort of thing crops up every now and then; it’s not a one-stroke sort of thing. Therefore, I would strongly suggest that the regs need to be revamped, just like the rest of the organization has been. I know you’ve pruned ‘em, and I know you’ve redone ‘em for the new hierarchy, and that’s good – but I think maybe you’re not quite done. And so the qualifications for team lead ought to read something like, ‘The highest-level officer available, possessing the requisite experience to lead the division, at the time the position becomes available,’ rather than hard-wiring in a specific level or rank or whatever.” He shrugged. “And for this bunch, that’s Ashton. Because he’s done it twice, now. Both through crisis-level incidents. Never mind keeping his cool through the kidnapping and attempted murder of his pregnant wife.” He paused, then shrugged. “He says I helped him stay calm, but I didn’t see it quite that way. Pete and I just kept him talking, planning, so he didn’t have time to stew in his juices.”