An interrogation room might seem like the most boring place in the World. A table, overhead lights, a few chairs, and a mirror were all that there was. It certainly didn’t look like the sort of place where anything interesting would occur.

Yet, to a trained investigator, a lot could be learned by observing a subject alone in the room. An innocent person would stare about the room and absently scratch at their nether-regions. Guilty people almost always went to sleep at the interrogation room. Having spent days, weeks, or months on edge of being captured, actually being captured was in some sense a relief.

The man in that interrogation room is named Clive Mattilainen. He is not much to look at. Although tall, he has thin shoulders and weak arms. A ponch protruding from his belly combined with his slouched posture indicated to Mark that he had a weak torso. His black hair was in a tussle that looked like he barely brushed it before going to the interview. His wild strands and thin hair were accentuated with a large receding forehead. His face sported an angular face with some body fat below the chin, hollow cheeks, a small nose, narrow lips, a pair of light brown eyes, and ears that stood out like an open truck door. One could generously call him “homely” looking.

Sergeant Scott Fabisch was in the adjacent room to the interrogation room with Mark, both watching Clive through the one-way mirror. Mark thought to himself that Clive kind of looked like a weeny, black-haired version of Sergeant Fabisch. Being with the locals on Gebo still unsettled Mark. He was much more comfortable around his own staff like Captain Smith or 1SG Vidal. The police sergeant was kind of his staff, at least temporarily. He’d also proven himself reliable enough, but Mark still preferred people he knew. Until you’d been in the fire with someone, you didn’t really know that person.

“So, how do we want to do this?” the Sergeant asked him.

“I’ll go in and play good cop. If we’re lucky, he’ll just talk himself into a confession or something we can use against him. If I raise two fingers up, that’s your cue to come in. Threaten him with everything we have: fraud, conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, criminal conspiracy, the whole works. If that doesn’t work, I’ll enter the interrogation room and we’ll grill him until he gives up something.”

Mark went into the interrogation room with Clive. Upon seeing Mark entering, Clive stood up a little straighter in his seat.

“You asked to see me and then left me in here for an hour!” he huffed, making a show of appearing indignant.

“I know, you’re a very busy man and I’m terribly sorry to inconvenience you like this.” In reality, he’d been in the room for about half an hour, but it wasn’t worth quibbling over the final details like that. He was here to gain trust.

“Now,” Mark continued, “you are not a suspect in the investigation., but we need to talk .” This was a standard police and negotiation tactic. If you ask people’s permission, “we would like to talk”, that makes it seem like it’s a request or a favor. Most people aren’t inclined to do favors for someone they don’t know. But change that wording, “we need to talk”, and now you aren’t asking. You’re telling them what will happen.

“You are here solely as a person of interest,” Mark continued. “We’re looking for reasons why someone might want to harm people in the government, and seeing as how you’re an important man in the government as the Under Secretary of the Treasury, you seem like a good person to ask.”

This too was a common negotiation and police tactic, flattery. After Chon made the financial paperwork accessible to a lay person, a pattern emerged from Clive’s conduct. He spent lavishly on his house, vehicles, and numerous mistresses, even though he is married. More important from a forensic profile standpoint, it’s that he didn’t attempt to do anything to hide his lavish spending. That suggested to Mark a certain psychological profile.

A cautious person will attempt to hide illicit transactions. They’ll open multiple bank accounts, invest a portion of their money into legitimate businesses to create a plausible paper trail of the money, and make sure never to make large purchases that would arouse suspicion. These types of criminals were very hard to catch, and usually they got caught as part of a plea bargain from someone else who got snagged.

The sort of person who would simply spend money lavishly, make no attempt at hiding money by splitting it into multiple bank accounts, and do nothing to create a plausible source of income was arrogant. The sort of person who thought that the World owed them, that it didn’t recognize their brilliance. Or maybe it was someone who grew so used to the corruption around themselves that they decided that they may as well “sin boldy”, to use Martin Luther’s phrase.

The exact specifics didn’t really matter. Whether it was arrogance from an inflated sense of ego or arrogance from seeing corruption everywhere, it was that underlying arrogance that Mark needed to get a hold of. Arrogant criminals were far more easy to catch than cautious ones.

“For the record, the former Treasury Secretary, Margaret Copeland was your boss?”

“Yes.”

“Did anyone wish harm to the former Treasury Secretary, Margaret Copeland? This can be specific, like a jilted ex-lover, or more general, maybe a radical separatist or a disgruntled ex-employee.”

Clive appeared to give this some deliberation. “I’m sorry, but no one comes to mind. I never payed any mind to the rampant social gossip that infected the place, even if it seemed advantageous to some people’s careers.”

“In your own words, for a lay audience, can you explain what an Under Secretary does?”

Clive sat up a little straighter. A bit of self-importance started creeping into his voice.

“Let’s say that the Secretary of Treasury comes up with high-level goals. Increase trading by 40%, let’s say. Well, my job is to go out and make the deals for that to happen. What incentives would bring more traders to the region? I write up the actual contracts and rates for different companies.”

“So it would be accurate to state that your job involves meeting with important people on a regular occasion.”

“I think that’s accurate.”

Mark extended his data pad and held up an image for Clive to look at. “Do you recognize this woman?”

The photo was of a young, attractive, light-skinned woman with chestnut, curly hair, and shining green eyes. She was with Clive at a restaurant.

A micro expression of shock appeared across Clive’s face, but he recovered quickly. “Yes,” he responded, “I know her. That’s Camille Barnett. Her father owns several of the fruit and farm factories around here.”

“Was this for business or was this personal?”

Again, the micro-expression of anger flitted across his face.

“Business, obviously. I’m a married man you know.”

“So you wrote this up in an expense report?”

He fidgeted. “No. I never got around to it. That was only a month ago.”

“I see,” Mark said, still pretending to be sympathetic. “Could happen to anyone. I’m surprised you hadn’t written that expense up. It was well over 250 credits, not the Now how about this person?” Mark pulled up the photo of another woman.

This one had red hair, pale skin, and delicate features. She was cute rather than pretty, Mark thought. She was at an upscale wine loft with Clive.

“What’s the meaning of this? Why are you showing all these photos.” Clive asked, becoming indignant.

“These are all just business dates right? So why are you getting upset about it?”

Clive huffed indignantly. Mark asked, “Who is this woman?”

“That’s Ann-Marie Clark. She’s a secretary for Overton Shipping.”

“And there’s no record of this dinner getting comped?”

Clive just looked ahead. Mark raised two fingers up. A few seconds later, Sergeant Fabisch walked into the room, his own data pad out.

“See,” he said, putting the data pad, placing it next to Clive so he could see it clearly. The sergeant crowded close to Clive so that he was well within his personal space. “We have a problem. We’re going through your expense reports and things don’t add up. You paid for a house with more money than you make in thirty years. We pulled your bank account and there’s large deposits and transactions all over the place. You go to these fancy meals with pretty women, paying for everything, but you’re not filing an expense report. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

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Clive’s face was turning an ashen color while Fabisch talked. “I want a lawyer,” Clive croaked.

“Well,” Mark said, interjecting. “That’s your right. But, I’d advise you to hear us out. The deal we’ll make to you in private is going to be a much better deal than the one we’ll make with you and your lawyer. That’ll be a more official deal, and the charges we’ll have to press will also be more official. So, if you want a lawyer, speak up.”

Clive didn’t say anything.

“Good,” Mark said. “So here’s the good news for you. We don’t really technically care about you. Here’s what we think. Overton Shipping and Mr. Barnett have been running an illegal smuggling ring. The main thing this planet produces is food, it’s pretty much a tropical rain forest here. What it lacks is also obvious, it’s difficult to mine here. You could do it, but it’d be expensive and labor-intensive.

So I think the former government of this planet was contacted by a group of pirates that have access to massive amounts of metal. They trade with this planet, you mark up an outbound trade with massively overpriced goods. You give them the food, they give you the metal, you pocket a cut of the proceeds, as did everyone else. This sound right so far?”

Clive didn’t say anything.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Mark continued. “So far, dealing with pirates is not really that bad of a sin. You’re all alone out here, so you make a deal. You trade the pirates for information on Earth’s ships. Transponder codes, ship make and models, trade routes, and everything else. This also gives us a great motive for the bombing. Gravy train ended when I showed up. Sergeant, how many charges are we up to? ”

Sergeant Fabisch started ticking off his fingers. “By my count, we have treason, sedition, conspiracy to commit murder, fraud, racketeering, embezzlement, and probably a few dozen more if we sat down with a prosecutor.”

“I had nothing to do with any of that!” Clive spluttered, “I just set up meetings, negotiated exchange rates on goods, that sort of stuff. Come on, you can’t pin it all on me!”

“And I want to believe that,” Mark said sympathetically, “because I think if you were high up on the food chain, you’d have bailed with the rest.”

“But there’s a little problem,” Fabisch interjected. “We have what are known as ‘closure rates’, how many cases we close. If we don’t have anyone else to pin a crime on, well, that’s bad for you.”

“On the other hand,” Mark picked up, “If we do have someone else to pin this on, we can drop everything down to accessory after the fact. You’ll still do jail time, but only two years. Up for early release in one. The other option is multiple life sentences in prison, which means you’ll die and get resurrected until you’ve served all of those years. All you have to do to help yourself is start talking.”

So Clive did. Overton Shipping was the master behind the curtain at Gebo. They ran what essentially amounted to an extortion racket. If you were a trader and paid up, the pirates didn’t bother you. But if you didn’t pay, then you were hit by the pirates. On the official reports, Overton did occasionally get “attacked” by the pirates, but this was a ruse meant to make it look like Overton was affected like everyone else, and to get themselves a nice tax cut with a liability loss.

He claimed not to know anything about the human smuggling operations or the assassination attempt, but did confirm the inflated trading scam. The pirates pinged the planet once every two weeks, giving the coordinates to set up a series of requests. The pirates would say what they wanted, they’d facilitate, and take the haul back, not reporting any of it to the Sol System. If Mark’s team hadn’t shown up, this could have kept going on for years.

Clive also claimed that he didn’t give away any of the Sol System information, but it was theoretically possible someone else was feeding them information.

With confession in hand, Mark wrote up a warrant for a judge to raid Overton Shipping. This step was completely unnecessary in a martial law environment, but if everything wasn’t followed to the letter, there was a chance that a future judge could overrule the convictions based on not following procedure.

Mark debated whether or not to use his people or the police, but decided to use the regular police units for the raid. Colonel Rola was right that there needed to be a transfer to a civilian authority structure at some point.

A notification icon appeared in his vision. He focused on it and it expanded.

Police squads (temporary assignment)

You have temporary access to the police force of the planet. The equipment is relatively primitive compared to what the military has access to, but it’s all operational.

The police averages 5 per 10,000 citizens in Gebo. With 2.1 million citizens under the system, you have 1,050 officers under your command. The quality of your force is very low, with only 11 elite officers composing the riot police/SWAT units. Each cop is issued handguns, batons, pepper spray, and ballistic vests.

You have access to the following:

- Police Cars: 100. These vehicles are mounted with encrypted communication gear and other patrol equipment. Each car is also equipped with two shotguns and two assault rifles in the

trunk. 50k to buy, 5k per year to maintain.

- Motorcycles: 50. Motorcycles with no additional equipment on them outside from markings identifying it as a police vehicle. 40k per vehicle, 4k per year to maintain.

- Police Van (Unarmored): 20. A regular SUV with tactical police communication equipment, four shotguns, and four rifles. Most often used for a police command post. 50k to buy, 5k per year to maintain.

- Police Van (Armored): 5. An armored SUV equipped with reconnaissance equipment and communication gear. Most often used for SWAT or riot police operations. 150k to buy, 15k per year to maintain.

- Riot gear: 11. A collection of riot helmets with dense polymer face shields, riot shields, batons, crowd-released pepper spray, tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets, and Long Range Acoustic Devices designed to incapacitate a crowd. 160k per set, 16k per year to maintain.

- SWAT gear, 11. An elite group of police officers that combine tactical training and operational specialties. These are assaulters (6), sniper/recon (3), team leader (1), and negotiator (1).

The assault squads are equipped with automatic carbines and/or submachine guns, depending on load out for the mission. Additional breeching gear, special shotgun ammunition for breaking locks, blasting charges, plastic explosives, stun grenades, and full helmet and tactical body armor. Negotiators and team leaders are also given the same load out.

The sniper/recon team is equipped with sniper rifles telescopic or thermal imaging scopes, as well as audio-eavesdropping equipment and thermal scanning equipment. 250k per team member, 25k per year to maintain.

- Special operations teams: 0. Special operations teams train extensively with helicopters, night vision gear, and unusual breaching scenarios such as rooftops or underwater. They also have extra training for counter-terrorism, hostage rescue, and biological warfare on urban terrain.

Prerequisite SWAT team member. Additional cost of 150k to train, 15k to maintain per year.

- Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Team: 0. Equipped with heavy armor, explosive-detection robots, and bomb-disposal robots. Primarily a defensive unit, but can be used for combat engineering, such as destroying a structure for breaching or delivering an explosive payload to a target. 100k to train, 10k per year to maintain.

- Armored Deployment Vehicle and Combat Engineering Vehicles: 0. A mobile siege vehicle equipped with assault ramps, hydraulic breeching ramps, grapple claws, mounted machine gun turrets, and heavy armor plating. Cost 250k to buy, 25k per year to maintain.

- Armored Rescue Vehicle: 0. Designed to support 10 passengers, it features a bulletproof hull, anti-mine undercarriage, gun ports, mounted machine guns, sirens, lights, battering

rams, multi-unit thermal and electric spotting devices, eavesdropping devices, sensors for explosives, and encrypted communication gear. Cost 350k. 35k per year to maintain.

- Police Helicopter (2). A four-person carrier with night vision and searchlights. Riflemen and snipers can be deployed from the open side carriage. Cost 1.5 million. Maintenance, 150k.

Mark noted that information. The game made it simple to calculate the costs for buying and maintaining equipment. A good chunk of Gebo’s official budget was wrapped up in maintaining equipment, even though Chon had estimated that Gebo’s official budget was less than 5% of the real operational budget. and called for a meeting in the briefing room of the police headquarters.

“Listen up everyone,” he said, “This is a big bust. We’re going after Overton Shipping today. I want this operation to be clean. We’re going with non-lethal rounds, bean bags and plastic bullets. But keep the lethal ammunition on your person and switch to it if I or a team leader gives the order.”

He remembered the warehouse raid where the guards were nearly suicidal trying to kill the hostages.

“When you make an arrest, remove all items from the person. Eyeglasses, pens, anything at all. Bag it properly, but don’t take any chances. That’s not standard procedure, but we’ve gone up against terrorists before and we’re not taking any chances.”

Eyeglasses and pens had been used by spies to hide weapons and suicide capsules. He wanted to capture one of these guys alive so he could get hard evidence on their operations.

He laid out his plan. He selected forty officers to assist as backup, an unarmored police van for himself, the remaining four for holding prisoners, three of the armored police vans for the SWAT team, and the two helicopters to act as arial surveillance. He decided to make the SWAT team leader the supervising officer for the entire operation, putting him in the mobile command post with Mark. The SWAT team hadn’t seen any real action, and he wanted someone with experience to be in the field giving orders, as opposed to the supervisory role. He chose Vidal for that assignment, since he had been busy training the police and was at least somewhat familiar with their tactics and training.

The operation would be pretty simple. The majority of the police force would be barricading the area to prevent anyone from entering or exiting the scene. SWAT would clear the building, the backup officers would make the arrests and bring the personnel into waiting vans and squad cars, and he’d process and bag the scene after all the excitement was done to make sure all the evidence was gathered. An old military adage crept into his mind. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”