TBntG-3 Chpt 50

=The Bull and the Genie=
==Chapter 50 - Book III - The Clan Invasion==
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==Katherine and the Trouble Free Occupation==
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===Handing Unsettled Population===
Whore of the Dragon! The crude lettering read on the sign around the neck o the dead woman. Her body was hanging from the street lamp, and nobody had called Katherine's people until she was quite dead. They were cutting her down now, the street deserted.
 
Didn't die easily. And of course, nobody saw a thing. Someone had thrown the nylon line over the light fixture and hauled her up, using main strength, which didn't kill you instantly. Her wrists had been torn open by her struggles against the pair of handcuffs.
 
"Thirtieth this week, Colonel," Major Trask, head of their MP unit was smaller than Katherine—in armor. Police armor was the kind of thing that only the suicidal took out into a battlefield, with a clear visor (which could be polarized, but was still a hell of a weakspot), no jumpjets, blue and white coloring, and most importantly, it had a limited control system designed to not let you accidentally rip someone's arm off when you were trying to immobilize them, and it was immune to most weapons your average crook was carrying. There were heavier weapons on the black market, especially after the collapse, but that was why the MP unit had her own troops in BA supporting them.
 
"Forty last week, maybe more." Katherine muttered. The city had been quiet for the first few days, but when people had realized the BDS weren't coming back… It had been ugly. Lots of angry people, and lots of people with reason to be Angry. The war crimes unit still wasn't done with the central police department, to say nothing of the big mass grave in the city sports center—and those were just the big ones. "Can you get an ID?"
 
"Data base was borked all to hell, but we can try. I can tell you one thing."
 
"Yes?" She asked.
 
"Fifty percent chance she just pissed the wrong guy off. Mobs like this don't wait for evidence and appeals." Jake Trask had worked in the Free Worlds League before he'd resigned to join the UMC, and was about twenty years older than Katherine. "We're not going to get it under control."
 
"We need to get it under control," Katherine growled. "That's what I have you for."
 
"Well, you need about ten thousand of me. Look, here's the problem. I'm a cop, great. But I need to talk to people and nobody is talking to us, especially since, you know, only 25 percent of my unit speak Japanese, and none of them speak colloquial Japanese. Which is the language most people here use for day to day. Even if we did, cops in this town aren't exactly trusted. We can do crime scenes like this all day, keep people from shooting each other where we are, but until we can get some kind of rapport with the locals…"
 
"If you're asking about approval for more people from other on-world commands, no, because the occupational governor is…" She sighed, "Behind."
 
"Why?"
 
"Because half his people got yanked for other worlds. I—"
 
"Ma'am, communications for you. It's from BuPers."
 
Oh thank God. More people. People from offworld. 
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===A Crew of Misfits===
Jake hadn't worked with Katherine Steiner-Davion for very long, his unit only being deployed after the fighting was over, but she was pretty good, at least letting him run his own unit. She also didn't tend to yell at people when things went wrong unless it was their fault for reasons other than bad luck. But right now…"
 
"Really, Colonel, your demands are completely unreasonable. We've sent you assistance, more than enough. A full battalion of Rommel tanks, I recall."
 
The Colonel stared at the man. "Yes, you sent me a full battalion of tanks. Which are utterly fucking useless. They can't even drive down the street without tearing it up, and how am I to break up a riot or theft with PPCs and gauss rifles?"
 
"The Black Dragons are broken and I doubt there will be resistance in your field."
 
"I'm not concerned with resistance, I'm concerned with providing the population with safety and security during the occupation as is our duty." 
 
"I'm sorry Colonel, but we simply do not have anyone else to spare. Good day." The Screen blanked. 
 
"Good day you, you…"
 
"Who the hell was that?"
 
"One of Terra's." Katherine muttered. "Most of 'em are good, but we rolled bad and BuPers for this area is headed up by someone who wonders how anyone off Terra ever graduated from smashing rocks together and going 'ook-ook'. And I bet he doesn't have anyone to give, and preferred being snooty over being honest. We're not the only occupation command screaming for help."
 
"You didn't tell him…"
"Do I look like an idiot" If I told him all those Rommels were sitting in the park and the crews are using those armored police vehicles we grabbed from the militia to bulk out our patrols, he'd probably pull them and scream something about how tank drivers aren't approved for driving duty."
 
"Gotta idea, but you may not like it, Colonel."
 
"What?"
 
"BDS left records, right?"
 
"Yeah. Mostly."
 
"We need to find some cops here from before the BDS. If command won't move, we need to and that means finding people who were hear beforehand."
 
Katherine looked at him. "Even Theodore-era cops could be…"
 
"Pretty nasty and we'll have to both judge on the spot and keep a tight leash. But stopping the kind of stuff we just saw, that's gonna need locals, locals who have networks of informants and know enough about the town that they can tell when someone's feeding them BS or trying to set up someone else to take a fall because they're pissed-off." He shook his head. "I circulated around the Free Worlds, got the difficult assignments, but this? If we don't crack down on this fast, we won't have to worry about the Dragons, because every family in this sector will have more than enough reason to hate every other family for the next ten generations. And you know as well as I do, that we're never gonna get all the guns, so..."
 
"We need to keep them from getting used." The Colonel shook her head. "Nobody's paying with money because the local currency is worthless and if you have C-bills, you might as well paint a target on your face, which means everything is by barter, and if we turn our back on food shipments they get looted… And hell, they're hungry and scared, so I can't exactly order them to be shot….Arrrrggggghhhhh." She pressed one hand to her forehead.
 
"Fine. Get me candidates. We'll have to make certain they weren't active during the BDS era, because there's no way I could sneak that past command, and I wouldn't want to. Make it plain, though. They will work with us, but anyone who is arrested gets full rights under the UMC legal code—no, wait. If you can find any acceptable judges in the system, I'm prepared to allow them to run trials in misdemeanor courts with final approval of any sentencing up to me."
 
"Ma'am?"
 
"If we just use the cops, people will see them as just our bullyboys. But if we let them judge their own people, even for minor offenses, it might help convince them we're just here until things get fixed and we have no intention of making it permanent. On that note do you have any crappy, I mean, utterly crappy jobs?"
 
"Some of the data sticks and cores may have been flushed into the city sewage system?"
 
"Oh good!" Katherine smiled, which Jake figured didn't bode well for someone. "Two new replacements got drunk and decided to show the Dragon who was boss. They tried to fly the Lyran flag from city hall. Fortunately, someone with enough intelligence to come in out of the fucking rain heard and reported it, so we got them first. But I want to really thank them for their brainstorm, in a way that never gets written down so there's no chance anyone finds out what they were planning on doing."
 
"My men will be pleased to assist these proud volunteers strain through half the untreated shit in the city for lost data sticks, Colonel."
 
"Very good."
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Book 3 - 50