The Thin Blue Line (The Empire's Corps Book 9) (v5.1) (13 page)

“I’m sorry for the delay,” she said. “I had an urgent call from the Governor’s Office and it turned out to be someone complaining about the paperclip allocation. Again.”

Glen joined in the polite chuckles, although he knew it might not have been a joke. It wouldn't be the first time someone with more power than sense had demanded answers on an utterly pointless topic. Did it really matter, he asked himself, just how many paperclips had been used over the past couple of weeks? The world wouldn't come to an end if each paperclip wasn't accounted for, would it?

“At least they’re not asking about arrest statistics,” Marshal Brant called, from the back row. “
That
would be awkward.”

“How true,” Patty agreed. “And that’s enough of that, you lot.”

Definitely
, Glen thought. Arrest statistics might seem a good idea for monitoring how well the law enforcement agencies were performing, but they didn't tell the complete story. How many crimes were prevented through aggressive patrolling? There was no way to know, so some of the departments had been arresting more people in the hopes of boosting their ratings. It had worked, to some extent, but it hadn't been particularly
just
.

“Right,” Patty said, slapping the podium for attention. “Those of you who have been sleeping the sleep of the terminally lazy won’t have heard that there were a series of minor attacks on planetary infrastructure last night. We assume” – she nodded towards Glen – “that the weapons and explosives in the captured warehouse were intended to make the attacks more unpleasant than they actually were. As it was, we’ve lost a handful of power transfer nodes and a couple of datanet routers, but the other attacks did minimal damage.”

Marshal Cho lifted her hand. “These attacks were coordinated?”

“It would seem so,” Patty said. “However, the attacks were also largely ineffective.”

Glen felt his eyes narrowing in suspicion. The best time to disrupt a terrorist attack was before it had actually begun, but once the terrorists were committed. It made securing evidence and convictions a great deal easier. However, there hadn't been any warning before the targets had come under attack – and the attacks had largely been useless. The handful of destroyed targets hardly made up for revealing the existence of a terrorist network capable of carrying out attacks on such a scale.

Isabel put his thoughts into words. “They seem to have screwed up beyond the bounds of probability, boss,” she said. “And yet it seems too big an attack to be a diversion.”

“It does,” Patty agreed. “They might have been intending to use those attacks to divert us from other possible targets, but nothing else has materialised.”

“They might have thought the warehouse terrorists were also going to go into the fray,” Glen offered. “The rest of their cells might not have picked up a stand-down order.”

“It’s possible,” Patty agreed. She took a breath. “I should note that we didn't manage to take any survivors from the attacks. That’s par for the course, I know, but it’s still a problem. We have to track down the command network before they do something more dangerous.”

Glen nodded. He wasn't the only one.

“The Civil Guard has secured the targeted sites,” Patty told them. “I’m dividing you between the various targets; I want you to investigate, find out what happened and see if you can locate anything that leads back to their base. It is of the upmost importance that we shut this band of terrorists down before they manage to get their act together and do something worse.”

She glared around the room, threateningly. “So far, the general public hasn't realised how close we came to disaster last night,” she added. “The Governor wants it to stay that way, so anyone who leaks will be skinned alive and then fed to the pigs. And I am not joking.”

There was a long pause. “Glen, remain behind,” she added. “The rest of you, collect your assignments from the desk and get on with them. And good luck.”

Glen waited until the room was empty – he knew from experience that Isabel would wait for him – and then stood up.

“Patty?”

“I need you to continue looking into the warehouse,” Patty said. “I’ve been ordered –
ordered
– to redirect all available manpower to the latest terrorist attacks, but I’m not expecting to find much. The attacks were somewhat amateurish, quite pathetic compared to the usual bloody slaughters. They may have been expending useless assets to try to force us to abandon the warehouse investigation.”

Glen looked down at the scruffy floor. “Just me?”

“You’ll be the prime investigator,” Patty confirmed. “You can call on the support staff, as usual, but I need every available Marshal out on the streets. Try not to fuck up.”

“I’ll do my best,” Glen said. He shook his head in disbelief. An entire investigation in one pair of hands! He hadn't heard of anything like it outside bad fiction and worse flicks. “And what about Helen?”

“Keep her under your wing, for now,” Patty said. She reached out and touched his shoulder. “I know it won’t be easy, Glen, but I have upmost confidence in you.”

Glen nodded, knowing there was no point in protesting. Patty literally
couldn't
give him any support. But even with the clues he’d gleaned from Helen, handling everything on his own would be an absolute nightmare.

“You can tell the bureaucrats that I have her when they start whining about purchasing too much food,” he said, instead. “Do you know what’s going to happen to her?”

“It depends,” Patty said. She shook her head. “Once we have the full story, Glen, we can start making some proper decisions.”

She frowned, then smiled at him. “Are you starting to like her?”

“Yes,” Glen admitted.

“It's always easier to like kids who aren't actually yours,” Patty said. “But remember, she may not be a suspect, yet she is definitely involved.”

Glen had always supposed it was the other way round, but he kept that thought to himself.

“Good luck,” Patty added. “And bring me something I can show the Governor when he comes knocking – again.”

Glen saluted, then walked out of the briefing room. Isabel was waiting outside, as he’d expected, reading her terminal with an expression of disbelief. She gave him a sharp look as he closed the door, then motioned for him to walk with her towards the garage.

“She wants me to go to the Southside Power Distribution Centre,” she said, dryly. “And I’m not the only one going out alone.”

“Call for support if you need it,” Glen urged. “But I’m stuck here until I turn up a lead.”

He filled her in, quickly. “Sounds tough,” she said, when he’d finished. “But the best of luck to you.”

Glen sighed, then bade her farewell and walked back to his cubicle. His computer was already online, just waiting for his access codes. He poured himself a new cup of coffee, then sat down and started inputting the data from Helen into the growing matrix. Added to the legwork Isabel and the support crews had already done, it painted a worrying picture. The warehouse had been hired by a local shipping firm, which had largely taken over a chunk of the spaceport after gaining approval for purchasing shares in the installation. Reading between the lines, Glen suspected that someone had been paid a considerable bribe to make it happen. But it had also allowed the weapons crates to be unloaded and shipped to the warehouse without an inspection.

The Humming Bee was Helen’s ship
, he mused. It had entered orbit a week before the warehouse had been raided, then left orbit two days later, after transhipping a considerable amount of cargo to the surface. There was no mention of Helen or her parents – a quick check revealed that Helen hadn’t passed through immigration, either on the orbital tower or any of the spaceports. Glen rather suspected that she’d been sedated, then loaded into one of the crates and transported down without passing through any security screening. Even now, there was still so much cargo being transhipped that it would be difficult to inspect it all.

He scowled down at the display, then rose to his feet. The shipping firm needed to be investigated, at the very least. They’d cleared the consignment, after all, which meant they were either dupes or actively involved with the terrorists. He suspected the former, if only because crashing shuttles could have done real damage and the Nihilists, so far, hadn't shown any signs of possessing shuttles.

As soon as he’d donned his coat, he knocked on Patty’s door.

“I’m going to visit the shipping firm,” he said, and outlined his reasoning. “If I don’t check in within the hour, feel free to send the SWAT team.”

“Don’t even joke about it,” Patty said. “Right now, the SWAT team is on the other side of the city, watching a gang clash that might turn into outright warfare. They can’t be called out for anything other than a major disaster.”

Glen nodded. “We should just squash the gangs,” he said. “Why don’t we kick the shit out of them and send the survivors to a penal world?”

“They have connections,” Patty said. She looked down at the table, then up at Glen. The frustration in her voice was almost palatable. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we didn't have to deal with corrupt officials all the time?”

“Yes,” Glen agreed, “it would. But what can we do about it? Even if we took the bastards into custody, they'd be out within hours.”

“True,” Patty said. She sighed, then returned her attention to her paperwork. “Good luck with the shipping firm. Don’t fuck up.”

And then there are the lawyers. As the old saying has it ... there are two sides to every problem, until the lawyers become involved. At that point, there will become a thousand sides – and all of them will appear to be correct.

- Professor Leo Caesius.
The Decline of Law and Order and the Rise of Anarchy.

Belinda did as she was expected to do as soon as she returned to the hotel and ordered room service, then tipped the steward and urged him out of the door. The steak tasted surprisingly good, although the meat was definitely vat-grown rather than natural. Belinda munched her way through the steak and chips, then had another shower and lay down on the bed. To watching eyes, she appeared to be sleeping. Instead, she was using the access codes she’d stolen to slip into the governmental network.

It was, as she’d expected, a multitier system. One general set of briefing notes and alerts for everyone with access codes, then various subsections that would require specific access permissions to enter. It was typical, she noted, as she immersed herself in the tidal waves of data spreading through the network. The civil servants worked hard to ensure they knew more than the common citizens, even to the point of ensuring that emergency warnings went to them first. If the shit really did hit the fan, she noted, the civil servants would be well-placed to grab their families and flee the cities before the general exodus began.

If they can get through the barricades
, she thought, sardonically. It wasn't obvious to the untrained eye, but one glance at the police and military deployments had shown her that they were intended to keep much of the population firmly in place. She’d seen similar deployments on worlds hit by disasters, yet she doubted that the Governor had enough strength to keep the lid on indefinitely. Panicking civilians could be dangerous, if they formed a mob, and pose a threat even to armoured soldiers.

The first set of alerts referred to attacks that had taken place over the night, while she’d been seducing Julius and stealing his access codes. None of the attacks had been reported publically, she discovered, although it might be just a matter of the Governor’s staff trying to decide what spin to put on the attacks before they told the world. But she took a long look at the targeted locations and felt her blood run cold. None of the attacks had been dramatically successful, nothing like some of the more dangerous terrorist assaults on Earth or the other Core Worlds, but collectively they added up to a dangerous picture. The terrorists had been targeting the infrastructure that kept the planet’s cities alive.

Just like Earth
, she thought, recalling the final nightmarish days of humanity’s homeworld. One by one, pieces of infrastructure – sorely abused and barely maintained over the last few centuries – had started to fail, setting off a domino effect that had eventually triggered riots and fighting on the surface of Earth. And then the government had collapsed, civil war had broken out and hundreds of asteroids had fallen from the skies. If there was anyone left alive on Earth, they were almost certain to die in the next few months. It was highly unlikely they would receive any help from the remainder of the Empire.

But not quite
, she added, a moment later.
These attacks seem remarkably half-hearted
.

The pattern was clear when she pulled back and
looked
at the records. On one hand, the attacks had been mounted with an alarming level of skill, competence and stealth. The terrorists had got into position to mount their attacks without being detected and, in most cases, had managed to break contact before reinforcements arrived. Belinda had a low opinion of the Civil Guard – she didn't know any Marines who thought highly of the overpaid and undertrained bastards – but even they should have been able to capture or kill their attackers. And yet, on the other hand, only a handful of the attacks could be deemed successful, as if the terrorists hadn't expected success. They certainly hadn't made any plans to exploit their success. All they'd really succeeded in doing was alerting the security forces that they were facing a new and dangerous foe.

Check the observed end result
, she reminded herself.
And determine if that wasn't meant to happen all along
.

Belinda sighed, thoughtfully. One thing civilians never grasped was that some operations were doomed from the start – and others had failed through no fault of the soldiers involved in launching them. The civilians always assumed that someone must be to blame and demanded that heads roll for the failure. It was quite possible that the terrorists had simply blundered, or assumed that the security forces would do a better job of fighting back than they’d actually done. But it was also possible that what had happened might be what had been
meant
to happen.