EMPIRE: Imperial Police

by Stephanie Osborn

  Books in the EMPIRE Series

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  EMPIRE: Reformer

  EMPIRE: Usurper

  EMPIRE: Tyrant

  EMPIRE: Commander

  EMPIRE: Warlord

  EMPIRE: Conqueror

  by Stephanie Osborn:

  EMPIRE: Imperial Police

  EMPIRE: Imperial Detective

  EMPIRE: Imperial Inspector

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  EMPIRE: Intervention

  EMPIRE: Investigation

  EMPIRE: Succession

  Books in the Childers Universe

  by Richard F. Weyand:

  Childers

  Childers: Absurd Proposals

  Galactic Mail: Revolution

  A Charter For The Commonwealth

  Campbell: The Problem With Bliss

  by Stephanie Osborn:

  Campbell: The Sigurdsen Incident

  Other books by Stephanie Osborn

  The Division One Series:

  Alpha and Omega

  A Small Medium At Large

  A Very UnCONventional Christmas

  Tour de Force

  Trojan Horse

  Texas Rangers

  Definition and Alignment

  Phantoms

  Head Games

  Break, Break, Houston

  Tourist Trap

  Mega Moth

  Coming soon:

  Byegones

  Everywhere Signs

  Shake, Rattle and Roll

  Die Glocke

  Diplomatic Catfight

  Forming Terra

  Popular Science:

  INCOMING! The Chicxulub Impactor

  Kiss Your Ash Goodbye: The Yellowstone Supervolcano

  Rock and Roll: The New Madrid Fault System

  The Weather Out There Is Frightful: Solar/Space Weather

  Sherlock, Sheilas, and the Seven-Percent Solution:

  Victorian Era Drugs

  A New American Space Plan, with Travis S. Taylor

  EMPIRE

  Imperial Police

  by

  STEPHANIE OSBORN

  Copyright 2020 by Stephanie Osborn

  All Rights Reserved

  EMPIRE Universe and characters used with permission

  ISBN 978-1-7340758-2-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover Credits

  Cover Art: James Lewis-Vines

  Back Cover Photo: Fritz Ling

  Published by Weyand Associates, Inc.

  Bloomington, Indiana, USA

  July 2020

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  In The Beginning

  Round Two

  Scrambling for Position

  Repercussions

  Hitting the Ground One Way or Another

  First Case

  Teamwork and Leadership

  Reprisals

  The Sandman

  Sitting Ducks

  Background Work

  Recuperation and Other TLC

  First Blood to the Council

  Surveillance Time – Team Armbrand

  Surveillance Time – Team Rassmussen

  Surveillance Time – Team Ashton

  Bronze Gets Busy

  Evacuate!

  Busting Asses

  Interrogations

  Looking for Trouble

  Getting the Hell Outta Dodge

  Catalonia

  Coronations and Assassinations

  Unexpected Welcomes

  Author Notes

  Foreword

  Dialogue in scenes that are common between this trilogy and previous trilogies written by Mr. Weyand in this series is used verbatim, in order to maintain the content of this book as a stand-alone story.

  In The Beginning

  Nick Ashton was from the city of Norwich, on the planet Flanders, in the Allemagne Sector. It was a relatively nice city, on an average planet, in a sector that was neither Earthside, nor farside, and not that far from Sintar. It was neither rich nor poor, relatively stable politically and economically, and as such, his family had found it a good location to raise children for several generations. Nick Ashton was the latest product of that family, and an only child. His doting mother ensured his intellectual progress, and his loving father taught him calm discipline and determination.

  At the age of ten, Nick discovered that the Ashtons’ neighbors in a quiet subdivision of Norwich had their house burgled, and considerable quantities of household goods robbed as a consequence. Since their son Andrew was Nick’s best friend and playmate, he saw quite a bit of the investigation, which ultimately led to the capture of the burglars, if not to the recovery of all the stolen goods.

  Seeing young Nick’s interest in and curiosity about the investigation, a quick discussion between father and mother resulted in the father introducing Nick to the investigating detective, who took a liking to the boy. Meanwhile, the mother introduced Nick to classic mystery novels, ranging from ancient texts by Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie to those by more modern authors. Quickly, Nick was hooked.

  More, Detective Waterford stayed in touch with the bright youth, answering questions and mentoring him.

  So Leya and Hans Ashton were not surprised when, a year later, Nick declared he wanted to be a detective when he grew up.

  Ten years later, Dominick “Nick” Xavier Ashton, formerly of Norwich on Flanders, was a rookie officer in the Imperial Police, in the sixteenth year of the reign of Empress Ilithyia I. Not just a rookie, but a soggy-green-behind-the-ears rookie, fresh out of the Empire’s police academy. But he was not without gray matter; he’d been the top cadet of his year with a certain amount of ambition – specifically, to become a detective – and as a consequence, had drawn the attention of the Imperial Police on the capital planet of Sintar. So instead of returning to Flanders – he had no close family left there; his parents had died when the house in which he’d grown up got struck by lightning and burned down overnight, shortly before he had graduated from the police academy – he’d been assigned to the Imperial City office on Sintar, though not to the Imperial City Police Department, which was… somewhat separate, though he hadn’t understood why, at the time.

  His superior was Captain Lee Harding Carter, the veteran officer over all of the beat cops, an older, grizzled man who tended to mentor the rookies whenever possible. This resulted in considerable respect from most of the younger officers, though the captain was somewhat overlooked, if not outrightly scorned, by the older ones. Ashton sometimes wondered why Carter wasn’t farther up in the hierarchy; he was old enough, and had the experience. So he had asked Carter that once, and Carter had replied it was because he preferred looking after the young ones like Ashton, just coming into the system, to try to ensure they stayed…safe. Given the fact that the rookies were generally either assigned experienced partners, or placed under experienced investigators – sometimes both – the statement had made little sense to Ashton at the time. Ashton had also noted the wry, almost sardonic smile Carter wore as he made the statement, and puzzled over it, but Carter hadn’t offered additional explanation, and Ashton had nothing else from which to reason, so he let it drop, deciding he was only more confused by the “explanation” than he had been by the question.

  It wasn’t long – only about three months into the job – before Ashton began to see what Carter had meant.

  “…But wait a minute,” Ashton had said, as he watched the inspector survey the crime scene of his “first investigation.” Not, he thought, that he was actually the one doing the investigating; he had simply been the first officer on the scene after the emergency call. One of these days, though, he promised himself, he would
be.

  “What’s the matter, kid?” Imperial Police Inspector Ron Thomas said. “Ain’t used to seein’ dead bodies?”

  “No, not used to seeing dead bodies labeled ‘random violent crime’ when they’ve taken a clean double-tap to the head by a professional’s .25 caliber airgun,” Ashton declared, annoyed. “This is just like that murder a year and a half ago, over on the east end. I know, because I did a case study on that at the academy, my last year. VR imagery and all.”

  “Did you, now?” Thomas said, walking over to stand in front of Ashton. “So you’re an expert, eh?”

  “No, sir, but I know what random crime looks like, and that ain’t it,” Ashton averred, standing up to the other man. “That was a professional hit. Probably done by a guy named Bron–”

  “That, kiddo, was a random violent crime, and you’d do well to remember it,” Thomas said, dropping his voice in both tone and volume; the result sounded menacing in the extreme. “Cops what don’t remember it tend to find themselves the victims of random violent crime their own selves. Do I make myself clear?”

  “But sir–” Ashton tried again.

  “Hey, Stash,” Thomas called to one of his team, “come escort young Ashton out to the street, please. I want him to stand guard and keep any civvies from marching all over our random violent crime scene.”

  “You bet, Ron,” Stanley “Stash” Gorecki declared, coming to Ashton and taking him by the shoulder. “C’mon, kid, you heard the inspector.”

  Ashton was hustled out of the suite, down the hall to the elevator, and thence down to the street by the big, burly Gorecki. There, the older man took hold of both of Ashton’s shoulders.

  “Now you listen here, squirt,” Gorecki said in a low voice, nearly a growl, and just as intimidating. “You’re new, or you wouldn’t be standing here beside me right now. You’re no detective. You’re barely even a cop. Hell, you’re nothing but a punk kid. They say you’re smart, but I ain’t seeing signs of it, ‘cause you still got a few things to learn. One of those is, when an inspector tells you something, you say, ‘Yes, sir,’ and don’t question it. Another is, the situation is what we tell you it is, no more and no less. So don’t go putting something into it that the inspector says ain’t there. Got it?”

  Ashton glared at him. Gorecki squared his shoulders…and scowled.

  “I said, you got that?”

  “Yeah, I got it,” Ashton grumbled.

  “Got it, what?”

  “Got it, sir.”

  “Good. Now you stay here like a good little rookie and make sure nobody comes inside unless me or Inspector Thomas says so.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ashton was stuck on guard duty, without a break for food, water, or hygiene, for the next six hours straight.

  “Gorecki?! Oh hell no! Stay away from him!” his friend and roommate, fellow rookie Peter Stone, declared. “Do not do anything to draw his attention!”

  “Why?” Ashton wondered.

  “When he shows on your doorstep, it’s bad news, Nick,” Stone said. “Haven’t you been paying attention to the grapevine among the rookies?”

  “No. You know me and all that rumor crap.”

  “Yeah, but sometimes it has things you need to know, Nick. You already realized something was wrong about the detective…”

  “No shit.”

  “Well, from what I can tell, that sort of thing runs through the whole damn department, at least what’s on Sintar. And Gorecki?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s their enforcer.”

  “What?!”

  “Yeah. You heard me. I heard some of the older guys talking in the men’s room; they didn’t know I was there, ‘cause I was in a stall, takin’ a dump. So I know this is no rumor: If one of the police officers, or for that matter, almost anybody, civilian or otherwise, goes against Kershaw or Stanier, or any of their cronies on the Council, Gorecki gets sent in. If he and his goons don’t do it personally, he knows who to bring in to, uh, ‘clean things up,’ is the way I heard it.” Stone shrugged. “It’s entirely possible this guy you think really did the murder was one of those clean-up guys.”

  “And you’re sure, Pete?” Ashton pressed, shocked. “You’re saying the force is corrupt from the top down! I mean, I went into the force to catch criminals, not help enforce their rule!”

  “No joke. It’s why I’m transferring back home at the end of the year, or as soon as I can get it arranged,” Stone noted. “I kinda think it’s gonna take longer than that, but I’ve got the paperwork in; I just have to wait for a slot to come open. At least there, I know they’re honest. I thought working in the capital planet’s headquarters would be a big perk, help me along in my career and be a nice bullet on the curriculum vitae, but this sure ain’t what I thought it was.”

  “But are you sure?!”

  “I can’t say a hundred percent, Nick,” Stone said, “but think about the story you just told me. The detective basically threatens you with ‘random violent crime,’ then calls Gorecki over to escort you out? That’s showing Gorecki who you are, in case he needs to know, in future.”

  “Damn. You’re right.”

  “Yeah, pal. Now Gorecki knows exactly who you are. Trust me. You do not want to get his attention again. Believe me, Nick, it’s nothing but bad news if you do.”

  Around his work shifts for the next few weeks, Ashton went back and reviewed his case study on the earlier cold case murder in private for his own satisfaction, and realized that there was definitely a similar modus operandi: in both cases, the murder victim saw nothing coming, had no evidence of elevated vital signs per VR data, and had received two shots to the back of the skull from a weapon that did not leave residue, resulting in essentially instantaneous death. There were rumors in both instances of stray handymen, delivery persons, or utilities workers wandering in the area, which made him suspicious.

  Digging even deeper convinced him, as he had become convinced at the academy, that a certain con artist named Josip Bronsky, a.k.a. Joey Bronze, was responsible.

  Born in Odessa Sector, Bronsky’s mother had deserted him soon after. His father, Mikhail, was a con man and brought Josip up in his footsteps. They left the sector when it got too hot, and Mikhail was killed by an angry mark when Josip was in his teens. Josip landed on Wollaston.

  As a young man in the Estvian-controlled city of Savanna on Wollaston, Bronsky had started off as a small time crook, but had shown a certain skill for the con; while they knew he was running the cons, no Imperial investigator could ever find enough evidence to nail him. And given the political environment on Wollaston, it proved easy for the sharp-witted youth to play both ends against the middle, sometimes scamming Sintaran supporters, sometimes Estvian, carefully walking a tightrope between the two and never taking sides himself.

  So he had quickly moved from small-time, penny-ante stuff into the big leagues, conning richer and richer victims, sometimes alone, and sometimes with the help of one or more skilled – or unskilled – cronies, usually attractive females that went with Bronsky to various nightclubs and parties. Speculation among those trying to apprehend him varied on whether they were also his lovers, and if they knew they were taking part in a con.

  And business – and life – had been good for Bronsky.

  Until one of those cons had gone wrong.

  Johnston Eustace Petticord, who had emigrated from elsewhere in the Empire of Sintar, and who was a strong supporter thereof, had not fallen for Bronsky’s scam. Somehow, he had figured out that his friend Mia was not a young billionaire heiress from Travers World, ripe for marriage; it never even occurred to Bronsky that someone might check to find out that there were no heiresses of significance on Travers World – it was far too rural in general, and had too few inhabitants, for anyone as wealthy as that. For that matter, Bronsky himself hadn’t bothered to check…which taught him a significant lesson: Don’t just wing your con, make sure your background story is good enough to withstand scrutiny.r />
  More and worse, however, was the fact that Petticord had friends in powerful places; if he turned Bronsky and his lady compatriot over to the police, it would have meant a sure conviction and many, many years of imprisonment.

  But at least on Wollaston, Petticord also had powerful enemies due to his political stance. And he traveled in, and on, a world where men and women were not afraid to take what they wanted…or hire it taken. Given the political intrigue rampant on Wollaston, and the fact that he was a major political player for one side, Petticord had had a price on his head for over a year from the other side; he had simply been fortunate so far, in that he could hire better bodyguards.

  So when Petticord had immediately realized there was a scam going down as soon as Bronsky told him about “Bambi’s” purported background, he looked into the con artist’s past and learned the truth. Then Petticord had summoned Bronsky and confronted him. He had subsequently been stupid enough to draw on Bronsky, evidently planning to hold him for the authorities to take into custody.

  Bronsky had responded in kind. And proved faster.

  Slipping the desired proof of Petticord’s death – an hereditary signet ring; the Petticords were an old, well-pedigreed, and very wealthy family from Adonar, on the Earthside of the empire – from Petticord’s finger and tucking it into the secret pocket of his jacket, Bronsky executed the escape plan he always developed when working a new con, thankful that Mia wasn’t with him to slow him down. He made it out of the house and off the grounds before the alarm was raised.

  From there, he headed straight for the house of Albert Armstrong, an émigré from the Kingdom of Estvia who had come to Wollaston expressly to restore the Wollaston system to that star nation, and the mortal enemy of Petticord. There, Bronsky showed the ring to the guard at the gate, then to successively higher members of Armstrong’s staff, until he finally reached the man himself.