The midnight ocean whipped below Jane Hartman's shuttle in a haze of white breakers. The Hurst Sea fell several million square kilometres short of being California's largest ocean, but it was the deepest, lengthy forks stabbing into the glowing Los Angeles coastline like badly-wielded bayonets. Hartman blinked the last remnants of the night's disrupted sleep from her eyes and gave the straps that clutched her to the gel couch's fading orange padding a cursory tug as a familiar shudder begun to rattle the converted freighter, nearly drowning out the ship's droned atmospheric advisory message. To her right the midnight shuttle's only other passenger, an elderly man in a poorly-fitting suit, did the same; hands like parchment settling around the straps for the briefest of moments before returning his attention to the morning news.

Re-entry was never a comfortable experience. It didn't matter how many layers of cushioning separated Hartman from the craft's shaking exterior, tearing through the atmosphere at many times the speed of sound was a fundamentally unnatural undertaking, even for someone who had spent a significant fraction of her life outside a gravity well. Hartman tightened her grip on the armrests and dragged her mind to more practical matters. High above her Glenbrook was no doubt powering down for the night, the enormous auxiliary purging the last remnants of leaked interior atmosphere from her fuel lines. Hartman should have been aboard. Obscure favor or no, Glenbrook was still her ship and her responsibility. She fished her communicator, slim by military standards - though bulky by just about anyone else's- from her pocket and opened a line to the tanker. Only static hissed from the handheld, the scream of re-entry severing the connection. She scowled and tried again, to the same effect. After the fourth attempt she gave up, cramming the useless device away.

---

Warehouse B-61 squatted under the towering spotlights like a cockroach, entrances and exits snaking their way to the narrow main street like so many insect limbs. Ground-level land was valuable enough in Stanford to force the majority of the port's traffic to the skies, main roads slowly shrinking to little more then pedestrian walkways against the steady ingress of concrete. The only open expanse in the region were the loading docks, fields of bare concrete cleared to allow passage of the machinery responsible for unloading the fifty-thousand tonne supertrawlers that roamed L.A's oceans.

Hartman stepped around the sleeping form of a beggar, eyeing the dark building with trepidation. The few still-conscious souls that lined the narrow streets quickly sunk back into the shadows at the sight of her uniform. No police warning appeared when she tapped the warehouse's access panel. That was hardly surprising, in itself. Most of the other buildings in the area sported some corporate logo or another. A privately-owned building would hardly rate on the LPI's priority list when compared to assets like those. Still, she paused. She was a Navy Officer. Stepping across that threshold meant becoming something else, if only for a few hours, at the bequest of a man she barely knew. There was nothing stopping her from simply flagging the building to the local authorities and returning to Glenbrook. Nothing but her word. She swore under her breath and pressed her ID to the pad.

Behind the steel panel, a lock retracted with a click. Whatever its other effects, the war had done wonders for military powers. Before the shooting started, she would have been lucky to access a stock list without approval. Now, with the bullets flying, her identification bought no-questions-asked access to just about anything that wasn't corporate property; which, on a planet like Los Angeles, was precious little. Perhaps it was wrong, perhaps not. All Hartman cared was that it helped her do her job. The display helpfully flagged the owner as one Santiago Munez. She filed the information away for later reference.

Blood hung in the air as she stepped over the threshold, the familiar iron stench twisting its way into her nostrils. Hartman tugged a pair of gloves from her pocket and took in the scene. A catwalk stretched along the warehouse's side, a steady wet drip three quarters along marking a body. Another three dotted the warehouse floor ahead of her, lying in pools of congealed blood. Still clustered around the crates they had been packing, gunned down before they made it to cover. She ignored the crates, beyond a cursory glance. Drug analysis was far beyond her training. One of the three was missing a fair chunk of skull, grey matter and pieces of bone mingling with blood. They hadn't had time to suffer. The Order had done their work well. A door hung loose on its hinges at the rear of the warehouse; surrounding wall cratered with weapons fire, presumably where Bolevara's team had burst in.

Hartman stooped alongside the most intact body she could find and got to work. White, male. He could have been from anywhere in the colonies, any one of the dozens of drug dens hidden beneath L.A's streets. Hartman shook her head in the gloom. Where was she meant to start? She was a soldier, her specialty was putting holes in people before they did the same to her, not puzzling out the who or why. To her surprise, the man was carrying a wallet, an expensive leather number. She fished it from his pocket, lifting it between her gloved fingertips to avoid brushing against the man's congealed blood. The wallet was close to empty. A few credit chits and a couple of outdated coupons at Victor's Pizzeria. No identification. Well armed as the group was, she hadn't really expected a mistake as blatant as carrying ID, but you never knew. People did stupid things in stressful situations. She replaced the wallet in the corpse's pocket and snapped a photo of the man's face. She moved to the next body and repeated the process, studiously avoiding looking at the near-decapitated corpse on the warehouse floor. There were some things you didn't linger on longer then you had to.

Scans complete, at least insofar as she could take a scan with a handheld, Hartman opened a line to Glenbrook. After a long moment of silence, the haggard face of Lieutenant Trevor Mason swam into view. Despite his hangdog features, Mason was the sort of person more easily compared to a terrier then his fellow human beings. If humanity ever found a way to convert enthusiasm to electricity, reactor output would be measured in fractions of a Mason.
"Morning, Jane. Little early for calls, isn't it?" Mason chirped. "Is that blood on your hand?"
"That would be ma'am, Lieutenant, and yes and yes, respectively." Hartman tapped the communicator. Was it really that hard to use proper rank? She hadn't been called Jane since primary school, for Christ's sake. Private, Devil Dog, Nugget, Muppet and Ma'am she could take. Jane, though? Jane was a civilian name, and in Hartman's mind that was analogous to being a lower form of life. "I've got a few bodies here. Images are being sent through to you. Run it up against the lookout list, see if anyone pops up."
"Sure thing er, ma'am." A quartet of keystrokes drifted across the link. "Can I ask why you've got bodies there?"
"You can ask, but I don't have an answer for you." Hartman sifted through one of the open crates, extracting a faint orange vial from its foam-lined depths before holding it up to the communicator's camera. "See if orbital's flagged any smugglers over the past few days, too. Anything beyond the usual rock haulers. Commander Hume'll give you access if you run into any blocks."
"I can do that." Mason's eyes lit up, taking on the unmistakable and terrifying aspect of a Junior Officer with an idea. "I'll flag it for the LPI, too. Their database'll be a bit deeper then ours. You're at Stanford, right?"
"Lieutenant-" Hartman opened her mouth to protest.
"Don't stress, ma'am. Just the handheld. They've all got trackers built in these days, in case someone looses a limb or something. Anyway, I can-"
"Lieut-" Another flurry of keystrokes.
"Send that alert up now, should have a squad around for cleanup in a few."
"Lieutenant!" Hartman's voice echoed off the warehouse walls. When she spoke again, the tone could have skinned an animal all by itself. "You'll conduct that ID search. You'll search the database for smugglers. And that is all. You will not speak over me again. The LPI are not involved because I have explicit orders not to involve them. Have I made myself inescapably clear?"
"Yes ma'am." The silence drifted on. Hartman made no move to break it. Finally, Mason did. "Should I, er, should I do that now, ma'am?"
"That would be ideal, Lieutenant." She killed the connection and returned her attention to the bodies.

Hartman was three-quarters of the way through a goods register when she heard it. Sirens pierced the silence that had settled. Multiple sirens blared through the air, approaching rapidly.

Hartman paused, mid-scroll. The warehouse's database was woefully bare, official records counting for nothing more then the odd independent shipping contact. There hadn't been enough to hold her there that long, surely... She glanced at the old-fashioned digital clock mounted in the surface of the office table before her. Glowing blue figures spelled out two past two. Far too soon for a police response squad, unless Mason's digging had somehow drawn their attention. She tugged aside a curtain slung over a nearby window, squinting out into the darkness in search of the siren's source.

Three cars quickly descended through the air, setting down in an opening about fifteen metres from the warehouse. The doors opened immediately, and five men jumped out, LPI patches on their sleeves, visibly armed with standard issue pistols and moving in Hartman's direction. They did not seem to have registered her presence yet, but had clearly come to secure the area.

Acting more on instinct then intelligence Hartman dropped to a crouch behind the desk, edging her way to the door that lead to the main warehouse. Internally, she chided herself as foolish. These men were the LPI, after all. Not necessarily the finest individuals to wear a badge, but police officers nonetheless. Bolevara had been hesitant to involve the LPI, but he was on the Order's payroll. He probably wouldn't involve his own brother if he could help it. LPI or not, jumping out at armed men was rarely a life-preserving decision.

She slowly rose to her full height, slipping through the open door as the last of the armed officers moved out of view. Let them secure the primary storage area first. Once they were confident their wasn't a gunman hiding behind the next doorway, the LPI would be less twitchy.

Out of her view, the men were splitting up, looking to cover all entrances in and out of the warehouse as standard procedure dictated. Due to this miscalcuation, it was only moments before she felt a flashlight in her eyes.

"Freeze! LPI!" A gruff voice barked. Hartman froze, blinking against the sudden light.
"First Fleet. Stand down, we got the tip as well."

The man lowered his flashlight and pistol by a fraction, so she could see. A stout, vaguely unfit man in his fourties became visible to her. He didn't respond immediately, instead choosing to call this in.

"Chief, found a creeper. Claims to be Navy."

Hartman couldn't hear the Chief's response, but her assailant nodded a few times, returning his attention to Hartman.

"We'll have to confirm that. Hands above your head where I can see them."

"Captain Hartman, Logistics Corps. I've got an ID in my pocket and a ship in orbit that'll say the exact same." She complied and lifted her arms, resisting the urge to point out the fact that her identity was already stitched on her uniform. Her eyes didn't leave the pistol's barrel, though. She'd had weapons pointed at her before. That didn't mean she enjoyed the experience. "You can point that weapon somewhere else whenever you like, Sergeant."

The sergeant glared back, clearly unamused at being told what to do, and kept his gun firmly trained at her. After a minute of nerve-wrenching silence, another figure joined the two. This person was also middle aged, and looked like he had seen things, the sharp haircut and a broken nose proving testimony to that particular fact.

He took one good look at Hartman, and considered the situation briefly.

"Stand down, Ladislaw."

The Sergeant did not seem too happy to comply, but comply he did.

"So y'say you're from the Navy, huh? Interesting of you to show up at a fresh crime scene."

He nodded at the Sergeant briefly. "Search her for ID and weaponry. No offense, Miss...we've heard reports of an armed firefight in here, not taking any chances."

"Have you now? And it's Captain, not 'Miss." She released a breath she didn't realise she had been holding as the Sergeant - Ladislaw, she corrected herself - lowered his weapon. Hartman spread her arms as the Sergeant conducted his search, trying not to inhale too much of the man. Various holes aside, at least the corpses hadn't bathed in cologne. "Ain't exactly what I'd call a fresh crime scene -" She couldn't make out the man's rank insignia in the gloom. "Those boys have been dead a while now, and right messily too, if I'm any judge."

The chief did not respond immediately, looking at Hartman's ID and nodding, before listening to calls on his earpiece.

"Jackson, I'm deputy chief in charge of this precinct. Yeah they confirmed the bodies."

He then proceeded to frown at her. "Why are you here though, Captain? Ain't the navy's job, this. Who even informed you?"

"You know I can't disclose that, Chief." Hartman returned the frown in turn, replacing the ID in its casing around her neck. "Most of the contraband that hits planetside passes one checkpoint or another in orbit first. Now and then we get word of a tagged ship resurfacing. We were passing through when the alert hit the network." It was a blatant lie, and Hartman knew it, but it beat the night in a cell the truth would be sure to earn her.

"You're shitting over what is my job here, Captain. Why didn't you call us? We got no word from the Navy...."

Jackson cocked his head again, listening to something. He whistled softly in response to whatever was said.

"Looks like there's a lot of cardamine stored in there. We just got confirmation."

Somehow, he didn't seem very surprised.

"I could have told you that five minutes ago." Something was off here. Hartman didn't know what, but the tension in the room cranked up a notch. Not for the first time, she wished she'd taken that posting aboard an Overlord-class. People were a whole lot less argumentative with that sort of firepower on display. "I didn't come here to step on toes, Chief, but there are nine dead men through that door that your company took their sweet time getting to, and cardamine that belongs in a Navy lab. Once we've run our tests, you can handle it however you like.

Until then, those materials are fleet property."

Jackson and Ladislaw looked at her as if she were crazy.

"That's not going to happen." Jackson said tersely. "This matter falls under Police jurisdiction, and we'll be confiscating the Cardamine. Count yourself lucky I'm not booking you for contaminating a crime scene, kid."

He turned towards Ladislaw. "Go help the others secure the evidence."

Now it was Hartman's turn to look nonplussed. Flat denial was not a response she was used to. "In that case, Chief, we'll have to send our people to your facility for analysis." She swiped her communicator from the table where Ladislaw had deposited it. "Glenbrook has a contraband division that can be planetside in an hour. I'll need the address."

Jackson crossed his arms, looking annoyed.

"This is a Police Matter. File the necessary requests to Fort Bush if you want to involve your Navy guys into this. Until then, let us do our jobs and don't interfere."

Hartman scowled. Bolevara had better appreciate this.

"This became a Navy matter the second that transport left atmosphere. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got an investigation to conduct." She made to move around the weathered officer. Jackson did not move, staring her down.

"I do realise you're bull******** me to get your own way here, Captain. But understand this...The Navy is not the be all and end all in this House. It is up to us, and we actually are accountable. Keep testing my patience and you'll find yourself in a cell."

"Threatening me is not a path you want to start down, Deputy Chief." Hartman's own patience expired with an almost audible snap. "I've arrived at a crime scene only to have my identity questioned, a gun shoved in my face, and you threatening to throw me in a cell for doing my job. You want to be accountable? Outstanding. I've got a ship in orbit that can run those tests and find out where that cardamine came from right now and we can find whoever's accountable for this whole mess." She swiped her communicator from the desk where Ladislaw had left it and opened a line to Glenbrook. Jackson glared at her for a very long while, but eventually his shoulders drooped in surrender.

"Have it your way. But understand that I'll be taking you to court for acting in excess of your jurisdiction."

He put a hand to his earpiece. "Let the cargo go, boys. Navy knows better...as usual."

She conceded a nod, tapping the communicator. Court charges lost a lot of their significance when you got shot at on a daily basis. Even so, the prospect soured any sense of triumph she might have felt. Mason's face flashed into being again.
"Lieutenant. I need a Grizzly on location. Usual escort." She eyed the policeman. "Watch for the sirens. Can't miss it." She thumbed the connection closed before Mason had a chance to respond.

"Appreciate it, Chief." Her eyes told a different story. There would be consequences for this. She could feel it. For the moment though, she'd won. She swept past Jackson into the room beyond.

Jackson followed her closely into the Warehouse, where they were moving bodies and cleaning up the scene. The tension in the air was palpable, as the Police officers glared at Hartman briefly before turning away.

Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Jerome Irving checked the pressure readouts for the third time in as many minutes, relaxing his sweat-encased grip on the Grizzly's control column.
"The bird's fine, Irving." Drake's amused voice crackled through Irving's headset; the senior pilot adjusting the freighter's trim, turning it into a slightly more aerodynamic impersonation of a brick.
"You sure? Coolant pressure's reading a bit low in the number two." Irving flicked an eye to the offending display. Drake rolled his shoulders in a motion like a breaking wave.
"She's fine, hot-shot. Had the same issue at Pitts a month back, it's just entry burn. Give it a second. She'll be fine once we get above the ocean." Irving eyed the offending gauge dubiously, half expecting it to have taken the opportunity to creep down another notch. The red needle was smugly steady. Jerome gave a half-shrug in his flight suit and returned his attention to the view beyond the Grizzly's windows. Aircraft and women, never could trust the whims of either. It didn't mean the view wasn't worth watching, though.

Arden cut through the gray clouds above Stanford like a super-heated knife, the Grizzly's contrails etching the record of her passage on the sky. Her lights momentarily illuminated the tops of the clouds, deep furrows running along wispy tops like a giant's zen garden. Below the flight deck, Irving could hear the defiant thumping beat of an audio set. He rolled his eyes and jacked up the comms volume on his headset. When he fist came aboard, he'd tried arguing the music choice with Corporal Harton. He'd tried exactly once. Arden might have been Drake's command, but everyone knew she was Harton's bird. As if summoned by the thought, the Loadmaster's voice cut across his earpiece.
"Low-Pri comm just came through, sir." Harton sounded vaguely bored, despite the ship shuddering around her. "Captain won't be meeting us. She's been dragged off by the fuzz to sign reports on how we burnt the place down."
Irving grinned. He hadn't been looking forward to dealing with Hartman this early in the morning. "Understood, Corporal. Anything else?"
"Yes, sir. Fuzz'll be providing a guard for the building. They've still got some weapons and tactics nutcases on the perimeter. Inside's all ours."
"Outstanding." Pad lights flared atop the warehouse, an island in a sea of gray roofing, pulsing in time with Arden's docking lights. "Any chance of changing the channel?"
"None, sir."

There was no-one waiting for them atop the warehouse. Drake guided the Grizzly to the pad with an expert hand, landing gear kissing the pad with all the force of a summer breeze. Grey clouds had settled over the docks, swollen with the promise of rain. The dense air would make the Grizzly's ascent a little harder on the way back. Harton was waiting below, the Corporal engaged in conversation with Arden's resident Marine, currently hanging off the bay's pintle-mounted cannon alongside the freighter's rapidly descending ramp. She looked up as Irving descended the narrow ladder connecting the bay to the cockpit.
"Look who it is. You coming below to haul boxes too, sir?" There was something in Harton's voice that suggested it was a question only for politeness' sake. "Weller's left 'em in the warehouse for us to pickup. Cargo elevator's down and apparently they couldn't spare a hand to haul them up here."
Irving shrugged, giving the time-honored informal salute of junior officers. Drake had already claimed responsibility for the reports, and Harton's company wasn't that bad. "Why not?"

Lazy the LPI might have been, but they had been decent enough to leave the four crates stacked neatly in the warehouse's centre, safely clear of the now-veiled bodies. The warehouse was clear, at least internally. The LPI had kept their word on that. Harton swore and curled up her nose.
"Smells like a range day gone wrong in here. All cordite and cr- rubbish, sir." She wasn't half wrong. Powder and blood mingled with the faint odor of fish from the docks in a sickly combination that tugged at the lining of Irving's gut. Grizzly crews weren't used to seeing combat, weren't used to seeing bodies, even ones that had long since gone cold. Death was something that happened to other people. Irving brushed a nonexistent speck from his slides and looked away from the bodies.
"Come on." He started toward the closest container, fastening his hands around a plasma-singed handle. "The sooner we get this aboard the sooner we're back to Glenbrook."
"No arguments here, sir." Harton's eyes darted back to the closest body, a tattooed arm creeping out beneath the blue of the sheet. Then she closed her fingers around the opposite handle and lifted. Above the warehouse, the crack of thunder split the sky.

Somehow, the pair of them managed the slow ascent back to the warehouse roof, earning the plasterboard stairwell a trio of new dents in the process. Irving's back ached as they set the box down atop the upper landing. He'd been slacking off on his PT since leaving the academy. It really was time to pick that up again. The look Harton shot him suggested the same. She slid the door to the roof open and immediately slammed it shut with enough force to send a dislodge a chunk of plaster from the wall, her face frozen. She didn't swear. If Harton wasn't swearing something was horribly wrong with the world.
"What is it?" Irving asked. His voice seemed to shake off some of Harton's haze and her eyes snapped into focus.
"Down the stairs! Right now!" Harton was already moving, slipping into a bounding run that covered four stairs at a time, more a barely-controlled fall then anything resembling a sane descent. The echoes of her footfalls reverberated up and down the stairwell like the demented beating of a hundred drums.
"Harton! Corporal!" She didn't answer. Irving set off behind her at a more sedate pace, fighting the discomfort slowly settling into place at the base of his spine.

Irving almost barreled into her back. Harton had come to a stop just before the stairwell turned into the warehouse proper, and was still lingering on the landing, apparently unwilling to round the corner. She raised one hand to her lips as Irving reached her and cupped the second over her ear. Quiet. Listen. Irving listened. For a long while, he heard nothing but the pounding of his heart and the rhythm of the stairwell. The stairwell. Footfalls echoed through the warehouse, almost gently, the groan of metal nearly masked by the hammering of rain on the roof. Nearly. It was the slow, deliberate gait of someone who knew they had plenty of time. Neither he nor Harton moved. She must have seen the question in his eyes, though.
Dead. Her lips formed the words, but no sound escaped.
Both? Irving blinked, conscious mind not quite processing the news.
Yes. She nodded. Irving felt nothing. His system was too flushed with adrenaline for the words to carry any meaning. Slowly, his conscious mind retreated, fear giving way to training.

Above him, the stairwell creaked.

Jane Hartman was not a patient woman at the best of times, and tonight did not qualify as the best by an exceptionally long shot. She set the pen down and flexed her fingers, setting aside the faint ache that had settled into her wrist somewhere around the third round of identify confirmations. Whatever the LPI's faults, they remained true to the longstanding police tradition of overwhelming suspects through sheer weight of bureaucracy. The Navy's administrative processes may have been monolithic, but at least she could convince herself that they served some purpose. This... This was nothing but pointless paper shuffling that served only to dull her already exhausted mind.

Her coat hung on the chair at her back, exposing the silver epaulettes on her shoulders. The interrogation room was small, but not uncomfortable, and the usually harsh lights had been dimmed to a more comfortable amber. The police had taken her sidearm, but little else. They wouldn't risk putting her in a cell - not yet, anyway. That would have involved formal charges, and laying charges against a naval officer was a lengthy process. The subsequent exchange of information between the military and civilian police was more likely to resemble a toddler's efforts to shove a basketball into a mailbox then any coherent interaction. It was far more probable that Jackson would keep her caged for as long as his war-expanded powers allowed, purely to teach her a lesson, before turning her loose on the Navy again. Why then, did she find the entire experience so frustrating?

She forced herself to exhale and picked up the pen again. Lewis would be planetside by now, if he'd received her message. The Commander was one of only a sparse handful of people, in the Navy or out of it, that Hartman could admit to trusting to handle the situation. It didn't make sitting it out to tick boxes any easier. You knew what you were getting in to when you accepted the posting at headquarters. She chided herself. There was no point in moping around after the event.

Something buzzed in her coat pocket. Hartman tugged the communicator loose, turning the pocket inside out in the process. A message alert glowed on the screen, a response from Lewis. Hartman smiled, despite herself. She had started to wonder if he had received her request at all. The smile quickly faded as she read the message's contents. Hartman sat for the span of ten breathes, digesting the information, and bottling the tight ball of anger that had wrapped its hands around her chest. Slowly she stood, tugging the coat back over her sleeves. Someone was going to pay dearly for this. She was up and moving to the door before her chair hit the ground.

Hartman wasn't angry. She had skipped right past anger, sailed through rage and landed quite comfortably in to the sort of tranquil fury that had, in ages past, launched generation-long wars. She stalked right up to the Sergeant manning the desk and extended a hand, palm up. "Give me my pistol, Sergeant. I'm leaving."
The Sergeant, a middle aged man with sufficient girth to be eligible for his own moon, didn't look up from his desk. "No departures without the Chief's clearance. You'll be right to go when we've got that paperwork in order-" He squinted at her badge. "Jane."
"Three sailors are dead because I was promised a security team that was not there. Sergeant." Hartman's glare could have lanced a battletransport. "I fully intend to find out why. I am leaving, and I'll leave with my weapon."
"I'm not authorized to-."
"My pistol, Sergeant." Hartman forced all the authority she could muster in to the command. She was sick of the bureaucracy, sick of people fighting her at every turn. Sailors were dead, and all he could think of was authorization. It was sickening.

Finally, like a stone giving way before a waterfall, the Sergeant yielded, waddling into the storeroom behind him, grumbling all the way. He returned with Hartman's pistol, which she slid back in to the holster at her hip with a click. "Thank you." Hartman felt more comfortable with the weight at her waist, more secure. It wasn't a rifle, but it would have to do. She stepped out into the cloud-studded night, and almost walked straight in to the waiting figure.