disorganised crime, 2

 

Chapter 2

 

I realised that we were dealing with more than a few bent cops when the sergeant taking the complaint asked for a registry fee to see that the complaint was filed.

“The registry fee for seeing this complaint filed is five credits,” he said. “Ten, if you want it expedited.”

“You’re asking for a bribe,” I said, flatly. “A bribe not to lose or delay my paperwork.”

He shrugged.

“Call it what you will; I call it a registry fee.”

“You’re fired,” I said. “And I’ll be prosecuting you.”

He goggled.

“And who the hell do you think you are?” he demanded.

“I know I’m your ultimate boss on this planet,” I said.

He didn’t want to leave, but I managed to persuade him.

It wasn’t that far to the ground; only the second floor, and there were flowerbeds to break his fall. Not to mention an ornamental lake. He made a good splash; I wonder if he could swim?  But then, I found myself indifferent to that conundrum.

I called my father-in-law, who was the best person I could think of.

“Dad?” I said. “I need a dozen squads of marines.”

“Whatever for, Gunny?” demanded Major-General Kerufin.

“I’m declaring martial law in the city until I find out how many police are corrupt,” I said.

“Oh, like that, is it?” said the major. “You’ll have them.”

He was as good as his word.

A troop ship arrived in the park within fifteen minutes, and disgorged a couple of hundred men, most of whom drew up to attention as the ship took off; and the officers came in to find me. We shook hands, and I briefed them.

Now I had to page every cop on this shift and bring them into the squad room, preferably after the marines had arrived, and tell them they were on administrative leave whilst I had their integrity investigated.

The babble was almost deafening.

I dodged out of the room, and threw in a flash-bang-crash grenate, known in the trade as a ‘peacemaker.’

It knocks anyone in the room half silly, overwhelms their optic nerves, half deafens them, and subdues almost everyone.

I went back in when they were subdued. I should maybe have

 

 

This would be a job for Phwedulp, bullying… er, coercing.,. other civil service Tsshst. Phwedulp would be in the Prime Pool as Tsshst designate what solcentrics refer to as seventh heaven.

And as if on cue, Phwedulp came in, followed by the rest of my squad.

“The Big Man is some aristocrat, the other criminals of the city believe,” said Phwedulp, in his precise tones.  “We should get some information from this precinct house if that fat man was allowed to call him, or if the captain alerted him, as I have had all outgoing signals tapped, and ingoing signals to the office of the captain. So far he has alerted three other high-ranking police officers that the new count is going to be difficult.”

“Bwurrf and I shook down a few Wargrini heavies,” said Arffrur, barking a laugh. “Thought they were tough, they did. Well, they weren’t.  We have the names of the chiefs of gambling, prostitution, protection, and theft.”

“What did you do with the less than tough heavies?” I asked.

“Gave them to a recruiting sergeant from the marches,” said Bwurff, and they both gave another bark of laughter.

Well, that disposed of them neatly. No testimony, but then, fewer to fight.

“We discouraged a few in the protection racket business,” said Antti. “Keaanurr and I found some of their heavies shaking down some mom and pop store, so we shook back, and harder.”

I winced. Keanurr is a mobile army on his own, and with Antti’s strength and resilience, the pair of them move from ‘army’ to ‘natural disaster.’ They’re an odd pair of friends, Kea is almost twice as tall as Antti, but they get on well.

“And how far did you shake?” I asked.

“We might have found the rest of the heavies?” said Antti. “And the head of that branch. We might have accidentally broken him beyond repair. Sorry.”

“Witnesses… I do need witnesses,” I said.

They both beamed very feral smiles at me.

“So, what was our fat man?” I asked.

“A branch of the protection racket, I think,” said Kea. “Some kind of ‘police force’ to discourage other hard types from operating.”

“They were on to us very quickly,” I said. “That either places the Big Man centrally, or your damaged protection racketeer, or good communications.”

“I’m guessing good communications,” said Serenaa. “We need to get to the Big Man before he moves, casually, and escapes to set it up again.  So, we need a volunteer to be a prisoner, and spring Arseface from jail, and go to him.”

“Why is everyone looking at me?” asked Antti, plaintively.

“Because he hasn’t seen you other than in uniform, briefly,” I said. “And because we can dress you up to look fat rather than stocky, so he sees you as a good sort of greasy grafter like him.”

Antti sighed, dramatically.

Serenaa giggled.

“It’s fun, you know, playing a part,” she said.

“You really did pick well for yourself, Gunny,” said Antti.

I tried not to look smug, I really did.

I don’t think I succeeded.

 

I heard all about it via the bug we put on Antti.

 

He was thrown roughly in a holding cell next to Arseface, whose name was Telemaan Kuraashi.

“You’re all a bunch of piddling amateurs and you’ll never amount to anything!” shouted Antti.

“It’s this new count,” said Kuraashi. “What’s your beef?”

“It was a beautiful racket,” mourned Antti. “I cooked it up with… well, let’s just say a senior police officer. Go round places with a dodgy record, and have those cops in on it stop people for minor traffic violations, and suggest they can get round any hassle by taking out a subscription to ‘Police times’ and buying an advert in it. So, you know, they know it’s a bribe, so they can’t complain about it, but you tell them to erase any citation they are messaged, and ignore them, and their subscription will make it right. O’course, the suckers will get arrested for failure to pay fines or turn up in court, sooner or later, but by then, there are other suckers.”

“I haven’t heard of that one,” said Kuraashi, interested. “You work for the Big Man, I suppose?”

Antti sneered.

“I work for myself,” he said. “There’s a big man? Maybe I should contact him; we could expand this no end. Who is he?”

“That’s none of your business,” said Kuraashi. “But maybe I can put in a word for you some time.”

 

Antti settled down. The next phase was up to me.

And it involved Antti and Kuraashi being cuffed together and taken out to a small military establishment.

They were put in a cell, still cuffed, with a guard outside.

“This is preposterous!” said Kuraashi.

“Shut it, number sixty-three,” said the guard. “You and sixty-four are going to get a trial without any prejudice or interference. And be pleased not to be number sixty-nine; so many jokes, so little time.”

Kuraashi had run out of swear words when a Wargrin in marine uniform came into the office, and put his briefcase on the table of the guard.

“Hullo,” he said, and shot the guard.

It was a tranq dart, obviously; and the Wargrin involved was Arffrur, who is about as ordinary looking Wargrin as you can get, being a brindled brown all over.

He attached a device to the lock of the cell, and walked out. A fuse hissed.

Antti pulled the bed over and got behind it.

Not a moment too soon; the explosive device went off, hurling bits of prison bars about.

“Is this a rescue attempt or is someone trying to kill us?” asked Kuraashi, nervously.

“I bought some help, but you know how Wargrin are,” said Antti. “Straightforward. And that’s the limit of what he’ll do. Come along. We’re about to have company.”

 

Antti knew the layout of the joint, but could act well enough to be sufficiently hesitant over leading Kuraashi – still cuffed to him – out. There was a ground vehicle parked, and Antti chuckled like a casino floor man when he meets a man with a system. He felt in the wheel arch and found a key.

“I wasn’t banking on being cuffed to you, you know, so just co-operate,” said Antti. “And you’d better direct me to this Mr. Big of yours, so he can separate us, see us taken care of, and expand on my scheme.”

“He’d have bailed us both out, if you’d have let me explain about you, you know, no need for this uncomfortable escape,” huffed Kuraashi.

“In a pig’s eye,” said Antti. “Did he have any way of knowing we were going to be transferred? Does he have informants in the military?  I do. It’s how my man got the tipoff and was able to get us out, but he doesn’t dare do more. I can pay for my own face and fingerprint makeover, all your big man has to do is arrange it. And tell me where I’m going at the cross-junction ahead.”

“Straight; head back for the city,” said Kuraashi. “He has a villa in the suburbs.”

This was pretty much what we wanted to know. The car was stiff with trackers, as was Antti himself, and we were a couple of streets over and five minutes behind, so as not to alert Kuraashi, who was watching every vehicle behind in the mirror.

It’s amazing how many planetary governments actually prefer ground vehicles over anti-gravity ones, since the advent of tiny fusion engines rendered fossil fuel and the even more polluting battery cars totally obsolete; I suspect it’s because it’s easier – read, cheaper – to register the number of miles travelled with pressure sensors on the roads and scanners to the car’s unique registration number for the purposes of taxing them.

Anyway, to cut a long drive short, Antti returned to the city, following instructions.

“I… I need to contact Mr. Big to let him know we’re coming,” said Kuraashi.

“There’s a public terminal here,” said Antti, pulling over, to the screech of breaks and horns sounding as he crossed three lanes. Most people communicate by their own pocket box, but there are still public terminals with higher power than the cheaper boxes, and with contacts to various helplines hardwired in for emergencies, from the fire service to youth chatline. And in a way, that was one of the main reasons for the public terminals; kids at risk whose own pocket boxes had been taken away or were monitored. That alone justified the cost of maintaining the little domes with their terminal.

Kuraashi hid the number, of course. Not that it would do him much good, Antti had crossed three lanes of traffic to pull in at this terminal for a reason; it was one we were monitoring.

“Hello? Can you tell Mr. Big this is Kuraashi?” said Kuraashi, when the signal was answered. “I’m bringing in someone who needs taking care of.”

He called off.

Antti smiled, cynically.

Taking care of was a phrase which could be taken several ways.

This would likely be an ambush, and his idea taken up without involving his participation. It was a brilliant scam, and one I had run to earth when we were involved in martial law on some one-spaceship dump of a planet, and the local bad boys had been impersonating cops.

Antti was fairly certain that the ambush should be on, as you might say, the other foot by the time they got there.

He groaned.

“I haven’t eaten since this morning, those bastards haven’t fed us; let’s pick up a meal so we can at least be coherent when we get there.”

“How the hell are we going to pick up a meal with our hands linked together like this?” demanded Kuraashi.

“There’s a drive-thru Spice-u-Like over there,” said Antti. “And we hold hands and make like it’s our anniversary.”

Kuraashi shuddered, but Antti was the one behind the wheel, buying time for our people to get in place.

Antti drove over to the take-out, and ordered two hagga birry-yummy and a lentil soup. Hagga are the local meat beast, able to process the local mineral cocktail which comes up in the vegetation, and I believe they process the dung for some of them. It was something I needed to learn more about if I was to make a good job of being count, as it was part of the local economy. Hagga-house is a widely spread eatery where you can eat hagga meat in various incarnations, from steaks to sausages, and they advertise by hagga wandering freely on the blue-green roofs where their favourite herbs have been planted. They make plenty good guard beasts too; that single, lethal horn and armoured head are formidable. Oh, did I hear some one say, ‘Oh, the Hamilcar Unicorn?’ full marks for getting there eventually.  Anyone would think they weren’t widely exported to hear some of you being so long recognising them.

So, Antti parks up to eat his meal, with Kuraashi picking at his, while we do our thing.

disorganised crime 1

 

 you may recall from 'Civics for Insurrectionists' that Harry went undercover teaching in the university, uncovered a plot to assassinate the emperor, and was put in charge as planetary count  after getting married.  This follows right on.

Disorganised Crime: a Harry Kowalski story

Chapter 1

 

Having been coerced into being a noble – and now I quite understood Mad Indira’s feelings on the subject – I decided to pull strings and have my platoon shipped in as my personal bodyguard and troubleshooters. Sure, being a count meant that I had a heap of official bodyguards, but I did not kno           w any of them, and I did not know if I would have to protect them in combat. Or, indeed, whether I could trust them.

Having dangerous people like Marines around who look as if the moment they see trouble, they shoot it, can actually prevent a lot of violent... misunderstandings.

“So, what are we really here for?” asked Phwedulp, my corporal. He’s a Tsshst, or ‘Newt’ as many call them, and they usually serve in all-Sshst battalions for their environmental needs. Phwedulp was considered insane by a lot of his kind, liking an exciting life.

“I need people I trust,” I said. “Half the nobility here were traitors and I don’t say that a lot of the rest didn’t support them.”

Phwedulp flipped his tail, happily.

“And people talk freely in front of us po’ iggerant Newts, as well as not being able to tell us apart,” he said. Newts don’t talk like tha

“How so?” asked Serenaa – my wife! I could still hardly believe it. “The arrangements of markings on your face is distinctive, especially for being assymmetric.” That’s Serenaa for you; observant to a fault, and young enough to blurt out what she sees.

“Harry, you picked a good mate. Do not let her swim away!” said Phwedulp.

“I’ve no intention of doing so,” assured Serenaa. “He’s mine.”

“Ah, a good female who knows her husband’s place,” said Phwedulp.  Newts are matriarchal.

Phwedulp, strictly speaking, is my scrounger.  Because few people are as observant as my lovely wife, and cannot tell two Newts apart, Phwedulp can walk into a supply depot to demand whatever we required, saying that it had already been requisitioned. And rather than face filling in all those forms in triplicate to say why the requisition form had never arrived, most supply officers give up and hand over whatever it is.

It’s easier to log it as ‘lost in transit’ than to have to face the Imperial Bureaucracy. We rather relied on this.

It is said that any Tsshst can quote all the regulations about anything.

Phwedulp knew the most well known ones, and made up the rest. Nobody ever checked.

“I see you believe in a diversity of experience and views,” said Serenaa, regarding my lads.

Having a Babar and two Wargini and Phwedulp was a bit of a giveaway, I suppose; but she also acknowledged with a glance Antti Jansson, my Niflheimer, his heavy, squat frame showing his high gravity origins. Jenni Devar and Eranuu Fłanaa were fairly ordinary human females, though specialists in their own way.

The Wargini would not stand out; the race made by the Forerunners out of early dogs were not common on this planet, but there were a smattering of them. I would ask Keaanuur, the Babar, to be my personal bodyguard.

Babari, seven feet and more tall of feline muscled grace and power, barrel-chested from a rib-cage built more like a geodesic dome than our own rather vulnerable ones, are intimidating even before they go into action. And Keaanurr was not merely a master of the Twelve Ways of Cutting, he could also put down an enemy without unsheathing his claws, marine fashion.

Yes, putting an enemy down is marine-speak for doing so permanently. 

You know, our rib cage is a pattern for both our early ships and roofs of houses; Babari have always built in domes made up of triangles, and had circular, rather ineffective ships.  Water ships, obviously, not space ships. Do I have to explain everything?  Their spaceships are close to the traditional Solcentric view of flying saucers. There is much to be considered of one’s own anatomy in the way architecture and machine architecture grows.

This was brought home to me when I went to see my seat in the capital.

This planet, Hamilcar, is what is generally known as a garden world. A world in the right place in the habitable zone of a nice, G-type star, and with the right combination of chemicals to have an abundance of life, and plenty of water.  The university was in the first established city, with the starport, but the show-city, to which visitors were firmly herded if not here for the university or the commercial district, was built to a design. And it was beautiful. All white with organic lines, and gardens on specially designed balconies. I had read the blurb about it, and it was inspired by a city on earth called ‘Barcelona.’ Broad walkways swept along the shopping level, for the beautiful people of the beautiful city to walk, chat, shop, and visit the many parks. There were road levels below this for anyone who drove any kind of vehicle, with discreet extractor fans for anything obnoxious, not that there should be any fumes from a fusion drive, other than helium, but it was extracted anyway, in case heavy traffic had the beautiful people speaking like a bad Immagaashu translation program. To simulate this, put your private parts in a vice, and try to speak very fast with a mouthful of stones.

You get the idea.

Immagaashu are small, frail, and a bit spindly, and cannot tolerate a gravity higher than 0.6. They have some superb engineers in their population, and do a lot of mining on moons, using moving machines into which they plug in their consciousness. This has been their method of choice for dealing with the environment since they could first make machines.  They were almost wiped out by the Wiłanu, had not the extermination force admiral stopped to watch the ‘robots’ first and discovered that they were parked up and left inert when the driver climbed out of them. The thought of plugging your consciousness into a machine makes most Wiłanu physically ill; but then, the idea of writing science fiction would never occur to anyone of Wiłu descent. But they could see the usefulness of the Immagaashu, and upon such things, the decision to commit genocide turns. With the Imperium in Solcentric hands, they aren’t allowed to be as actively racist as they used to be.

I don’t know why I’m lecturing you, you aren’t one of my students, and I don’t have to poke you through an exam.

I suppose it’s partly because Immagaashu technology was being developed for wider use than mining machines. From mining machines with laser cutters, it’s only one step to war machines with more aggressive tools, called weapons, based on an old concept long forgotten from Earth science fiction.  And the idea of being plugged into a spaceship. I thought that, had not my friend, James Beecher, been recently healed of his allergy problems, he might well have opted to test such things. Not with a new wife, however, I did not suppose!

And I, and my new wife, had a job to do.

“I’d like to do a walk-through of the city centre,” I said, to my team. “Hang loose and try not to look as if you want to kill everyone.”

“I think that goes against your training, Gunny,” said my wife, affectionately. Phwedulp, Keaanurr, Antti, Bwurff, and Arffrur laughed.

 

 

The city centre was certainly a place to attract visitors. That organic white look was exciting enough to scream the height of modernity, even if the design was taken from one hundreds of years old, but also somehow held a comfortingly primitive feel to make it simultaneously somehow cosy and inviting. Parks flowed into civic buildings, as though the buildings were natural rock structures in some respects, inviting places to spend time. Doubtless inside, the practicalities of civil services meant that they were less exciting, with space allotted ergonomically to be as efficient as possible, which is to say, usually uncomfortably close together; and then the usual headaches of civil service life of which bureaucratic red tape was the least, and the demands of a generally idiotic public paled into insignificance next to the real problems.  Such things as the brown liquid of unidentifiable origin out of the drinks machine – if it was working at all – the insistence of the automated hand-washing machines in the toilets to spray you in the face with soap, the likelihood of your favourite stall being blocked up and out of use, and the not unnatural distress of a female colleague if the sanitary protection machines were empty. Again.  Most sensible civil servants stock up on sundries and keep their own kettle and beverage stores. Locked up. Nobody is as voracious a thief as a civil servant without his first of the morning fix of whichever stimulant floats his boat, be it tea, coffee, cocajua, or biutuwu.   But I had to give credit to the external appearance. There were balconies in plenty, shaded from the sun, which as a G1 was hotter at midday in the more central zones than was totally comfortable for humans to put up with was a necessary amount of shade.  Earth’s star is G2, and one’s evolution makes a difference. There was no shortage of water, here, however, and plashing fountains and natural-looking artificial waterfalls made things much more comfortable.

There is such a thing as too comfortable, however, but fortunately I am well enough trained to overcome it.

And the man in the badly-fitting suit, the shorter leg wrinkled horribly at the knee where it stopped, and the tunic pulling across something of a paunch and setting the half sleeve into uncomfortable looking rucks looked like trouble.

The half-dozen Wargrini toughs with him did add to this appearance.

The human smiled at me.

I think it was a smile.

I’ve seen friendlier expressions on a Babar warlord whose territory has been violated.

“Do you have a problem, neighbour?” I asked.

Neighbour; it’s a neutral sort of word. I would not be calling this man ‘friend,’ and starting out a conversation calling someone ‘arseface’ is never the most diplomatic.

“You’re trying to muscle in,” he gritted out. I’ve read that expression in stories for young people, from between the ground together teeth of some baddie.  I’d never seen or heard it done before, but those authors of kids’ tales did know a thing of two.

“And you have a problem with this?” I asked. I wasn’t trying to muscle in, technically speaking, I’d been involuntarily muscled in by the emperor, who thought I might make a good job of being Count of Hamilcar.

“Mr. Big says to get off planet pronto,” said Arseface.

“Is he as ugly as you?” I asked, sympathetically. “If so, I can sympathise that he is jealous of my ineffable charm, good looks, and beautiful manners.”

“Think you’re funny, do you?” gritted Arseface. “Teach him an’ his boys a lesson, an’ bring his squeeze to me.”

Have you ever seen a squad of imperial marines in action?  If you have, it was like that. If you haven’t, well… let’s just say my lads were like a well-conducted orchestra of movement, and the opposition were soon listening to hints of the choir eternal as they lost interest.

Serenaa had gone over to Arseface, who was salivating, kneed him in the wrinkly crotch as he reached out to touch her, and nutted him as he folded. I love my wife very much.

And then the cops arrived.

“Come on, you, hands up, spread your legs,” said a burly cop.

To me.

“Excuse me? We were attacked and you are pointing your weapon at me?” I said.

“Blatant violence against peaceful citizens,” he said.

I took his weapon away from him; plainly he was not someone who should be permitted to hold one.

Then I poked my patent of nobility under his nose.

Actually, I slammed his face down on it, on a convenient park bench.

“Read that, you idiot,” I said.

He read it, perforce, as I was standing on his lumbar region to hold him steady to do so. He started babbling.

It was a grovelling apology for making a mistake, and enough sycophantic syrup to drown a candy factory.

I let him get up.

“Nothing going on here!” he shouted to his squad.

“Lieutenant, haven’t you forgotten something?” I said.

He turned, his eyes bulging.

“I… I’m a captain,” he said.

“You were a captain,” I said. “And you have forgotten to order your men to take away the trash who attacked my wife and me, whilst we were having a peaceful walk in the centre of the showcase city.”

He gobbled again, and he and his men reluctantly loaded up the semiconscious and unconscious thugs.

“And this one,” said Serenaa, sweetly, dragging over the puking thing she had manhandled. “And yes, I would like to prefer charges of attempted sexual assault.”

“And lieutenant,” I said, “He and his men had better not be processed and released without charge, or somehow manage to escape, or there is such a charge as ‘treason.’ I trust I make myself clear?”

He was sweating.

I had made myself clear.

And it looked as though the police in this city at least could do with investigation.

As could one ‘Mr. Big.’

“Like a swan,” said Serenaa.

“What?” I asked.

“Big water bird from earth; they imported some for the university lakes,” said Serenaa. I knew what a swan was, I was just failing to keep up with her metaphor. She explained. “On the water it glides gracefully and looks serene. Under the water, the little legs are pumping away and churning up mud and debris.”

“Well, as I understand that swans sing only once, on their deathbed, we shall call the cleanup, ‘Operation Swansong,’” I said. “Come, my dear, let us go and file charges, and see what we can extract from officialdom; lads, you know what to do.”

My lads, including the lasses amongst them, knew what to do. Separate and question people to find out what they might of the ‘Mr. Big,’ and the perceived depth of the involvement of the police.