“All right then.”
“Are you in bed now? You sound…horizontal, sorta.”
“Yeah.”
“Jammies?”
“By now you should know better than to have to ask. No.”
“Ooo.”
Nick laughed.
Catalonia
The next day, Ashton went out in plainclothes, sans disguise and thankful for the fact, with Sergeant Investigator Jaime Hernandez. Ashton had more investigative experience than Hernandez, but Hernandez knew the city better, so Walder decided to team them up, at least initially. Hernandez gave Ashton what he called “the ten-credit tour” of Catalonia Ciudad, or Catalonia City. He showed him the barrios in which he needed to watch his back, and took him by the governor’s mansion, as well as the Imperial Government Park. It was, Ashton decided, not unlike the Imperial Park on Sintar, except considerably smaller; the entire complex, including the mansion, was only about a mile and a half long by perhaps three-quarters of a mile wide. Given the more lucrative and government-oriented businesses tended to cluster around it, it seemed oddly…dwarfed.
But that looks…like a copycat design, Ashton thought, as they walked about the park. The governor’s mansion, the mall, the departmental building…I only wonder if it was ordered by a previous empress, or by a previous governor. Some of the buildings look awfully new.
And then Hernandez unwittingly answered his question.
“You like the design of the Imperial Park?” he wondered with a smirk. “It seems familiar, no? It was completely redone about fifteen years ago, when Señora Renata Palomo de la Gallego entered the sector governor’s office. She had most of the old buildings demolished, and the Sector Governor’s Mansion renovated and enlarged. All of this is new,” he said, waving his hand at the governmental buildings. “It is much nicer than it was, but it was very expensive. Not everyone approved of the taxes she levied to raise the funds.” He laughed. “Señora Governor Palomo likes to call the mansion ‘El Palacio del Gobernador.’”
Uh-oh, Ashton thought.
Mark Martin, comprehending that he was stuck on Catalonia until he could afford to get himself off it, had spent the night in the bar, alternating between shooting cheap whiskey, sipping black coffee, and dozing in a corner booth. He had ducked into the bar’s restroom to freshen up and change into clean clothes from his suitcase, then located a public locker facility and rented one in which to stuff his soft-sided case.
At this rate, he thought, I’m gonna scrape bottom on the bank account by the end of the day. I gotta start bringing some in.
Then he went in search of employment. If he could find a job, he could find a place to stay. It might not be much, and it might be in a bad part of town, but it would be a roof over his head and a bed to sleep in, until he could save up for the fare home to Sintar.
And take out that damned Ashton somewhere along the way, I hope, he thought vindictively. This is all his fault.
To his shock, however, that very afternoon, Martin spotted Ashton wandering the city with a young uniformed police officer.
“What the hell?!” he wondered, shocked. “What’s he doing out here, just lollygagging?” He paused, then patted down his pockets as he stepped around the corner of a building. “Where’d I put it, where’d I put it…”
Finally he fished out a small pistol. Then he ducked into a shaded alcove.
“Now let’s see what I can do,” he said with a smirk of glee.
Hernandez was answering some questions that Ashton had about the history of the city when a loud crack sounded from the masonry nearby, and a spray of stone chips pelted them. This was closely followed by a sharp report. Within seconds, the sequence repeated twice.
“¡Mierda! That was a gunshot! Someone is shooting at us!” Hernandez cried, as the two ducked instinctively, then swiftly sought shelter, leaping over a low brick wall and crouching behind it. “Where did it come from?” (Shit!)
“I dunno, dammit,” Ashton said, once they’d placed the brick wall between themselves and the general direction from which the shot had come. “Dammit to hell! Don’t tell me those jerks got people here after me!”
“You have enemies, mi amigo?”
“Yeah, and they don’t seem to know when to quit,” Ashton grumbled. “Their bosses are all dead, and yet they’re still out to get me, it looks like.” He shook his head. “Sorry to drag you into this, Jaime. I think we need to get back to the Headquarters building pronto, and get outta sight.”
“I think you are right!”
“Dammit,” Martin fussed. “I missed! I kept telling Gorecki I needed more marksmanship training, but no! I’m the snitch, the spy who slinks around and runs back and tells ‘em. Where the hell did they go? I want Ashton bleeding out on the ground, dammit!”
Martin sneaked over to the location where Hernandez and Ashton had been standing, keeping his weapon in hand but hidden in his pocket.
But when he got there, they were nowhere to be found.
“Damnation,” General Walder cursed, when Ashton and Hernandez reached Catalonia Sector Imperial Police Headquarters and reported in. “I didn’t think we had any of the Sintaran IPD toadies here!”
“I might have been followed here, sir,” Ashton noted. “There’s nothing to stop someone from having seen me depart Sintar and catching the next flight here. For that matter, I don’t know for a fact they weren’t on the same ship with me. I spent the entire trip holed in my cabin, out of sight, per advice from Captain Carter and Colonel Peterson.”
“Mmph,” Walder grunted. “That’s a possibility, I suppose. And it makes better sense than vipers already here. I’ve seen no sign of such at all until this. Are you sure it wasn’t just a barrio war?”
“We were walking around the gubernatorial park, sir,” Hernandez pointed out. “There should be no gang warfare near there; Señora Governor Palomo would not have it.”
“Well…shit,” Walder cursed. “That just complicated my plans by an order of magnitude or two. Lay low for a while, Ashton.”
“Yes, sir,” Ashton sighed. “Again.”
In the meanwhile, Mark Martin managed to find a blue-collar job as a transport mechanic in a shop only a few blocks away from the Imperial Police Sector Headquarters. It only paid the base amount because it was a starting position, but he wasn't cut out for much else in the way of work available in Catalonia Ciudad, and was barely competent at that, so he had to take what he could get. At least they provided him with coveralls to work in, and that, combined with the underwear in his suitcase and the sneakers he had on, would do for everyday wear. That was all he needed for the time, anyway.
Then he managed to set up a bank account and tie it into his account on Sintar. Not that that did him any good; he'd mostly cleaned out that account in order to change his starliner tickets and come to Catalonia in Catalonia Sector instead of the pre-paid trip to Java in the Sunda Sector for his vacation. What was left had been burned on expenses while he found a job; there was only pocket change left, if that. Still, if any of Kershaw's people had survived and managed to make his reimbursement payment, he could transfer it to his Catalonia account and use it to get home to Sintar.
He considered the possibility of hiring onto a freighter long enough to reach Sintar, but that meant abandoning his vendetta against Ashton, and somehow, he felt like he was finishing off a job for Kershaw if he managed to off Ashton. Never mind his own feelings in the matter.
After that, he looked for someplace to live that he could afford, and still manage to put back sufficient funds to eventually get off Catalonia. He finally found a small room for a rental fee he thought he could manage, in an ancient house in one of the oldest barrios in Catalonia Ciudad. It wasn't much; a mildewy, rather decrepit bedroom on the third floor that didn't even have a kitchenette or bathroom of its own, just a hotplate on the corner of a tiny table.
His laundry was done in the tub in the common bathroom down the hall, then hung around his room to dry, which lent his r
oom an atmosphere of continual slovenly disorder… especially given the fact that his coveralls very quickly developed grease stains that didn’t want to come out in what he termed the “tub scrub,” using the cheapest detergent he could find.
He shared that same bathroom with the four teen males of the household – he assumed they were all from the owner’s family, though he wasn’t sure – whose bedrooms were on that floor. They carried bright red bandannas all the time, and he suspected them of being gang members. They certainly eyed him like predators. He tended to watch his back in the house, and always locked door and window before going to bed.
He reached the room via a rusty old outside fire-escape stair, and climbed through the sole window to enter. The room accessed the upper hallway of the rambling old house, but since he wasn’t family, he wasn’t allowed on the other two floors. He idly wondered sometimes if the family was involved in illegalities, but didn’t much care.
He wasn't able to find a lot that he could afford to eat – especially given how much he was trying to save to get back to Sintar. The nature of the various original polities that made up human space was based on the original nation-states of Earth, and many kept a good bit of the culture from which they originated. The Catalonia Sector had once been the star nation of Catalonia before a huge interstellar war had broken out; many of those same star nations essentially collapsed in the wake of that conflict, and the Sintaran Empire had absorbed them. But Catalonia had been settled largely by those dubbed Hispanics on Earth, and much of the culture remained, even to a prevalence for Spanish in the local language and cuisine.
Unfortunately, while the basic cuisine tended to be inexpensive to acquire and prepare, most of it disagreed with Martin's belly rather violently. And the longer he ate it, the worse it seemed to get.
It didn't help that it was just one more chunk out of his paycheck to buy food, and one he did his best to minimize. He could stuff himself once he got back home. As a consequence, much of what he did consume was poor quality at best, and half-spoiled, at worst. He had never heard of ergotamine poisoning.
He walked several miles each day, to and from the mechanics shop from the barrio where he lived. He couldn't afford to take mass transit – which, in Catalonia Ciudad, unlike most of the other planets in the Empire, required payment… which went into the Sector Governor’s coffers.
And so week after week, Mark Martin grew thinner and thinner, and his health poorer and poorer. As this happened, his mental state, in turn, deteriorated severely.
Thus determination became obsession.
Ashton, meanwhile, worked with Walder to develop a functional investigatory division within the sector department. Walder tried to use Ashton in an administrative role as much as possible, since it tended to keep him off the streets and thus less of a target.
But occasionally Ashton got sent on cases here and there, usually with a forensic team of some sort, the members of which were always charged to watch out for their investigative lead.
When nothing else happened for a couple of weeks, both Walder and Ashton drew deep breaths of relief.
But the forensic teams were still instructed – by Walder personally – to keep an eye out for any attacks on Ashton, and prevent them if at all possible.
As the time for Emperor Trajan’s coronation neared, the media push against him in the Catalonia Sector ramped up in intensity. Finally the sector governor consented to an interview. When she was pressed by the reporter regarding the new ruler, she opened up at last.
“This just will not do,” Catalonia Sector Governor Renata Palomo de la Gallego said. “An Emperor, not an Empress? No, no, no. And he’s her brother! We all know that the Throne of Sintar is not hereditary! It has never been passed within a family – ever! This makes the succession troublesome at best, if not outrightly illegal. Do we even know if this brother was our beloved Empress Ilithyia II’s actual choice for ruler, or might that terrible destruction that killed not only the Imperial Council, but the thousands of people in the building, have been a ploy to kill the rightful successor, and cement this ‘Trajan’s’ illegitimate rise to the Throne of Sintar? After all, there is no actual, real, tangible evidence that his counter-attack was ever anything more than a fit of pique. We’ve seen no proof at all that the Imperial Council or the Imperial Police were even involved in the assassination. It is entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that her own brother was responsible, and chose this means for clearing his way to the Throne!”
“Son of a bitch!” Ashton expostulated, sitting forward and jabbing an accusing finger at the screen. “That’s a flat-out lie! I met Major Dunham and the Empress in my last case on Sintar! They were all but twins in everything but age! Even as an Imperial Guardsman, it was obvious he loved his sister! There’s no way in twenty-three levels of hell he’d ever have done anything to hurt her! And the Council and the Imperial Police Headquarters were as crooked as an entire shipment of springs! It’s why I’m here!!”
“¡Hijo de puta!” Jaime Hernandez exclaimed. (Son of a bitch!)
“You know that,” General Walder noted. “And I have no doubt that she knows that. But the average inhabitant of this sector? They have no clue. The majority only know what they are told about such things. And Ms. Palomo is ensuring that she is doing the telling – directly, or indirectly.”
“Damnation.”
“Exactly.”
The interview with the sector governor continued.
“…So I am forced to consider what kind of ruler this ‘Trajan’ will be,” Palomo declared. “A man that would kill his own sister has little if anything in the way of a heart. I do not expect benevolence. I fully anticipate despotism.”
“Are you considering what to do about it? Is there anything you can do about it?” the reporter queried.
“That is under discussion with my advisors,” Palomo admitted. “We believe there are steps we can take, yes. And we are prepared to take them. I will not have my people,” here she swept her hands about, as if to gather the entire sector into her embrace, “fall victim to a tyrant.”
And the interview ended.
“This isn’t going to go well at all, is it?” Ashton asked then.
“No, son, I don’t think it is,” Walder agreed. “This may not have been the best place to send you to keep you safe. If matters go south under her regime – and make no mistake, she wants a regime, she just doesn’t have it quite yet – then we may end up under siege here, or even under attack. I’ve heard rumors she’s working on suborning the military commanders assigned to the sector. Both Navy and Marine, but I think the Navy commander is already in her pocket.”
“Damn her to hell.”
“I’d like to, yes.”
“Is there anything I can do, sir? Something to help?”
“I don’t know yet, Nick. I’m watching and waiting, and doing my job while staying in the background as much as possible. When you get down to it, we may be the police force, but we’re grossly outnumbered by the population as a whole, and if that population turns nasty toward anything to do with the imperium, and if the naval forces back them instead of us, we’re in a great deal of trouble.”
A few days later, Ashton was on his way back from a quick investigation for Walder; the assumed perp had been caught at the scene of a robbery, but Walder wanted Ashton to give it a once-over to verify that the arrested person was indeed the suspect. It hadn’t taken him long – not all such criminals were exactly masterminds, after all – and Ashton was headed back to Imperial Police Sector Headquarters.
When he rounded a corner into an alley shortcut and came face to face with a wild-eyed man holding a pistol on him.
“Whoa!” Ashton said, taking a step back. “Sir, please don’t brandish a weapon like that. You could accidentally hurt somebody.”
“Oh, I’m gonna hurt somebody,” the man practically snarled. “You’re a dead man, Ashton.”
“Ah. So you’re the one,” Ashton said, heart sinking. Damn. I
thought this was finally over, he thought. Instead, I let my guard down, and I’m caught.
“Yeah, I’m the one that shot at you right after you got here,” the man said, shaking lightly. “Because it’s your fault I’m here at all!” He flexed his free hand absently, and Ashton noticed the man’s fingers were swollen and peeling, and the nails were dark. A quick check of the gun hand revealed the same condition there.
“I…don’t understand,” Ashton said, now studying the other man carefully. He noted the coveralls, and the name patch on the left breast. Martin, he thought. Shit, is this the informant Kershaw kept, Mark Martin? What the hell is he doing here? And damn, is he skinny. Doesn’t look like he’s been eating that well lately. I wonder what’s up with that. But those eyes, and the spasms…has he gone ‘round the bend? He definitely isn’t well.
“Dammit, Ashton, do I gotta spell it out for you?!” the man demanded, incensed and frustrated. He waved the pistol around wildly, and his head jerked to the side repeatedly in a tic-like spasm. “I’m here because of you! I saw you, reported it to Kershaw, and Kershaw sent me after you, you bastard, instead of on my vacation! I spent all my cash to change my tickets to follow you, with the promise that Kershaw would get me back on track and the money reimbursed! Then all your cock-sucking, shit-nosed pals killed him! Killed all of them! Every last damned one of ‘em – except me! So he NEVER REIMBURSED ME, DAMMIT! Here I am in this Godforsaken hellhole of a shit planet, with only a suitcase fulla resort clothes, no cash, no place to stay, no way of even gettin’ to my damn home! Because of YOU! YOU KILLED ‘EM! You stranded me here, you sonovabitch!”
“Um, okay, wow,” Ashton said, faking dumbfoundment, all the while realizing, Yeah, this is Martin. And he was never the brightest bulb in the box. Sounds like he’s teetering on the brink now. Maybe he’s already gone over the edge, by the sound. “So you’re gonna…what?”
EMPIRE: Imperial Police Page 27