Turn 51 - All My Memories
You, Michelle, and Janet all have one thing most certainly in common. You are all mothers and grandmothers. Jane, on the other hand, has never had any kids and is able to bring a bit of perspective to this. Up to this point the only thing that has truly protected the plotters has been that they’ve been operating in the shadows with nobody knowing to watch for them. They’d now burned all of their assets in the effort to protect themselves, but people like that would be constitutionally incapable of not trying again.
The law firm had set up new offices in an office building owned by one of the media companies in question, one which was howling denunciations both of the CPS corruption (laying them at the feet of everybody but the people who’d actually been in a position to make decisions about the situation) and shrieking that the Throne was scapegoating people merely for opposing her ‘foolish’ policies and trying to claim that the destruction of the original law offices had been a deliberate act, eliding over the warrants and court orders.
Unfortunately, Jane points out, for the scum, that particular office’s IT connectivity went through a Lee Communications node… a node which a simple, discrete, call had enabled the Special Squad to fully suborn. Every single bit of communications traffic into or out of that office building was now passing through Justice’s hands… completely legally.
It would take years to discreetly reroute things, all of the network nodes in that area were LeeComm after all.
All four of you get positively evil expressions on your faces at that.
For the next several weeks the fiery denunciations from the press continues… and then there is the first nibble. A communication from one of the moguls in question to one of the top lawyers at the firm, requesting a ‘sanitation’. Minutes later that lawyer leaves the office and is expertly tracked, with
SARAH’s assistance, to a particular strip bar in one of the poorest parts of town, a place where such a high-priced lawyer shouldn’t have any business.
A Special Branch agent is able to slip inside, and records footage of the lawyer meeting with a pair of men who are quickly identified as dishonorably discharged members of the military… both of whom had been courts-martialed during the Bratva mess on charges of assault and under suspicion of committing both rapes and murders, although they’d not been convicted on the latter charges. Money is observed changing hands and the lawyer departs.
The two men leave shortly afterward and are almost pathetically easy to track, given that you know about them. Fifteen minutes later they are seen in a residential neighborhood right outside Griffsport City proper. The Special Branch strikes right as the pair are observed forcing open the door of a residence, taking both men down with tranq darts.
The residence is of a young woman who had evidently been in a relationship with the son of one of the moguls. Under questioning from the Special Branch she reveals that the relationship had been extremely abusive, with the son regularly beating her and forcing her to engage in unwanted sexual practices. The son had regularly used the threat of having her and her family ‘sanitized’ if she tried to leave him or did anything at all that he disliked. The father had repeated those threats and she had personally witnessed both the father and the son at ‘parties’ that were glorified brutal orgies featuring underage ‘entertainment’... and she had seen other people who’d tried to go to the police with this being tortured to death.
Special Branch checks Griffsport PD remotely, making use of
SARAH to secretly access all relevant records. There were four complaints registered into the system, all four of which included the complainants requesting protection due to reasonable fear of retribution, in all four cases said protection was granted by the office responsible for arranging such, and in all four cases the complainants subsequently disappeared. Further checks show that there were a total of three officers and one bureaucrat involved in all four cases. The three actual officers are found to be front line personnel who would be involved in pretty much anything that went through the PD HQ, but the bureaucrat… had vanished at the same time as the medical examiner, and checks of financial records show that he was living well beyond his means.
That bureaucrat also matches the physical description of one of the common ‘guests’ at the ‘parties’.
But so far you only have something concrete for one of the six suspects, and increasing suspicion of the rest. To act now would reveal too much. You recall a case study you read about in college, and which you’d heard Jeremy refer as well, the Coventry Question. You have an intelligence source that is superbly capable of winning the war, and is always accurate. You know from it, and it alone, that the enemy is planning something that will cause a great deal of loss of life, but is ultimately meaningless in the grand scheme. You can easily shift your defenses and take action to save thousands of innocent lives, but it would risk revealing your source, and if the enemy realizes you have that source you’ll lose it…
So Special Branch takes the young woman into very special protection, hiding her on board HMS Renown, in fact, and fakes her death. They also fake the death of the two contract killers in a convenient accident, with the residence of the young lady burning down around them as the forensics will show, the killers got ‘creative’ and decided to use arson, only to get caught inside and killed as well.
Since at least a half-dozen of the murders attributed to this cabal were arsons, you are pretty sure the bastards won’t catch on, and judging by several intercepted communications from the lawyer in question they had been planning on hiring some other killers to kill the two you have stashed away in custody.
The noose is starting to tighten.
QM Note - each update will now feature a decision as to whether or not to shut down surveillance and take down the criminals. Until this decision is taken, ‘the Weak’ will continue to be in force. Each decision will show the percentage chance for all of the criminals to be caught and lawfully convicted.
| [] | Strike Now! |
- 17% chance of lawfully convicting all conspirators
- Ends ‘The Weak’
- +5 Approval Change if convictions succeed
- +5 Politics if convictions succeed
|
| [] | Continue Surveillance |
- Continues ‘the Weak’ through next update
|
| [] | Continue surveillance while turning loose Intelligence on captured accessories |
- Has a chance of accelerating the process of lawfully convicting the criminals
- Has a chance of weakening the lawful case against the criminals
|
