Free Exodus: Empires at War: Book 8: Soldiers (Exodus: Empires at War.) by Doug Dandridge Page B

showing her fangs in something which could never be
mistaken for a smile.  “The sooner you make them go extinct, the better.”
    *    
*    *
    Capital Police
Lieutenant Ishuhi Rykio, also known to some as Captain Rykio of Imperial Fleet
Intelligence (Reserve), looked out of the window of the transport that was
taking him over the Sutter Range, which bounded the city of Capitulum to the
southwest.  He had thought about taking the train, which actually would
have gotten him the scene faster than the subsonic transport that was built for
city patrol.  The train traveled at a thousand kilometers an hour, the
transport at six hundred.  But the transport gave him the advantage of
looking at the scene from overhead while coming in, getting the overall layout
of the area.
    They crossed the
midline of the range, falling into a valley that was sparsely lined with luxury
homes that took advantage of the high view.  Ishuhi’s implant, connected
into the planetary database through the police net, gave him basic information
on each residence as it entered his line of sight.  Size, layout, cost,
names and occupations of residents.  A glance at the small river down the
center was labeled as soon as he looked at it, and with a thought he brought up
the speed and temperature of the water.  Most of this was information that
any civilian implant could give on this, the capital planet of the
Empire.  With the exception of the residence info, which would have been
limited to the name of the primary owner, unless there was a privacy block in
place.
    The transport
crossed over the end of the small valley and onto the plains beyond.  This
was farming territory, a plain that stretched a hundred kilometers to the next
range and four hundred from north to south.  There were innumerable cities
and towns on that plain between the farmlands, the names of them all, the roads
and streams, even individual farmsteads, popping up on the implant overlay to
his vision.
    Ishuhi still
found it strange that actual farming and ranching was a going concern on such a
crowded planet, the only one in the Empire allowed to ignore the conventions
against overpopulation.  There was still a forty percent mandate for land
wilderness, while most of the oceans were maintained in a wild state. 
Every other planet was legally mandated to have fifty percent wilderness, the human
race still dealing with the memory of a homeworld they had almost killed. 
But people, especially those with disposable income, still wanted to eat real
food.  Millions of tons a day came in from other worlds, since the farms
couldn’t produce enough for a population of over twenty billion.  The
protein vats and algae farms could still produce enough to feed half the
planet, and did, for the poorer segments of the population.  Natural food
production was still a lucrative paying industry, especially on a world where
much of the aristocracy spent at least some of their year.
    The transport
banked, and the rail line came into sight.  Coming out of a black hole in
the side of the mountain, the continuation of the line into the city.  A
high fence, humming with the noise intended to chase wildlife away, rose on
both sides of the double track.  There were no trains on the track at the
moment, all having been switched to one of the higher speed underground rails
while the investigation went on.
    And there was the
investigation scene, a couple of kilometers up from the tunnel, a kilometer
down from the first station on the plain.  Multiple aircars were parked
outside the fence, which had been opened up so people could come and go. 
The flashing lights of an ambulance strobed, and the Lieutenant stared at that
vehicle for a moment, wondering why it was even here.  The thing they had
found would not be traveling in that vehicle, but in the Fleet Intelligence
retrieval van which was still on the way.
    “Welcome, sir,”
said the uniformed cop to the officer as he stepped out of the