This article is a follow-up to "Sabmadi Press Secretary Killed in Shooting" and "University President Alleges Funding Bias," both of which are available on BK.
Alastair Singh, Director of the Department of Science and Technology (DS&T) was arrested by Sabmadi authorities at the Office of Directors complex on Monday afternoon. Singh was photographed at his office window moments before being pulled back and handcuffed by police.
As Director Singh was led out of the building to a nearby police transport, he attempted to give a statement to the press:
I am entirely innocent of all wrongdoing. My many accomplishments during my tenure clearly indicate that I was so busy with my work that I would have no time to run a 'research funding cartel.' Make no mistake, I am being purged from the Sabmadi government on account of my avowed opposition to this futile war!
The remainder of the man’s protests were too muffled for reporters to hear as the door to the police vehicle closed.
Simultaneously in the Northern Technology District, the Lovelace Centre for the Sciences, which serves as the headquarters for DS&T, was raided by SI1 agents. Though early reports speculated that the agents intended only to procure the Director’s files from his office, gunshots were heard within the building and the situation turned into a messy siege for several hours before being resolved late Monday evening. SI1 Director Surya Davale later clarified that the aim of the raid was actually to arrest a number of staff members of the Sabmadi Endowment for the Sciences (SES), an Office within the larger DS&T.
Aerial drone-footage of the raid on the Lovelace Centre in its later stage, original image credit: archimatika. [Editor's note: can you find all three easter-eggs?]
The Investigation
A few years ago, Biashara Karatasi reported that SI1 had arrested two suspects in the shooting death of Press Secretary Po. Director Davale confirmed that the arrests seen at DS&T this afternoon were related to Singh’s arrest, and that both operations were connected to the investigation into the death of former Press Secretary Vikas Po.
The information gained from the confessions of Po’s assassins led investigators through a complex web of black market hackers, fixers, hitmen, and information brokers. During these interviews, a few names came up again and again in relation to the Po assassination - d4n7e (Dante), P4R460N (Paragon), ibis, and EndSci.
Though investigators hit a roadblock in identifying the persons responsible for these accounts, they were able to follow trails they had left during their prior nefarious deeds, going back several years. Potential connections were found between the anonymous group and the deaths of several Sabmadi officials, including Director Quent Q of the Office of Administrative Services and late Director Gor Tenga of DS&T. The cause of each of these deaths was previously thought to have been age-related heart disease.
The investigation ground to a halt until agents caught wind of the same four figures plotting against yet another Sabmadi official. Davale refused to comment on the name of the target in this attempt for the sake of the official’s safety.
SI1 agents posing as guns-for-hire were contacted by “Paragon” to begin planning. The agents also met online with “ibis” and “Dante” during this phase. The plotters were careful to conceal their identities, appearing to connect from different IP addresses during each conversation, among other precautions. However, the game was given up when “ibis” briefly logged into one of the sessions from a personal account, revealing his identity to be Tayut Chadee, an administrative assistant working for the Sabmadi Endowment for the Sciences (SES).
From there, an undercover SI1 agent posing as a DS&T intern managed to covertly plant bugs in Chadee’s personal and work computers. Investigators learned the identities of each of the four known conspirators, who were related through their work in various capacities within the SES. It was also discovered that these four were not acting independently, but were only small players in a much larger conspiracy that ran all the way to the top ranks of the SES.
“By about two months ago, we had collected everything we needed to arrest even Inoki [current President of the SES]. However, we chose to bide our time to discover whether the plot ended within the SES, or if it had penetrated the administration of the DS&T itself,” said Director Davale.
It seems that this patience paid off, as Davale claims to have “indisputable evidence” that Director Singh not only knew about this group - which has been dubbed a “science grant mafia” by some - but that Singh was actively involved in the scheme, and was even responsible for its coordination at times.
The Lovelace Raid
SI1 began preparations for a raid on the Lovelace Centre, which serves as the headquarters for most Offices within the DS&T. Biashara Karatasi was able to speak with one of the members of the original entry team on the condition of anonymity. The ten-member SI1 squad was lightly armed and armored and expected little resistance to the planned arrests. The raid was timed to coincide with a meeting which included a majority of the SES upper management, thereby confining most of the suspects to a single conference room on the third floor.
However, intelligence agents underestimated the resolve of the SES plotters when planning their Monday raid. As the team entered the third floor reception lounge, they were ambushed by a number of state-of-the-art combat drones which burst through the drop tile ceiling. More appeared from within the stairwell, blocking the team’s retreat. The receptionist reportedly also pulled a sawn-off shotgun from under his desk.
Under fire from the drones, as well as an ever-increasing number of SES employees, the remaining team members were forced to push forward and barricade themselves in a restroom. Only six members of the team made it in, and of those only two were uninjured.
Outside, the situation began to spiral out of control as well. Following the volleys of gunfire on the third floor, DS&T employees began to stream out the exits of the Lovelace Centre, overwhelming the SI1 units assigned to watch the doors. Police scrambled to assemble cover from potential gunfire from the building’s many windows, while also attempting to perform crowd control duties and ensure that suspects were not escaping within the crowd.
Fortunately, agency snipers positioned in nearby buildings were able to suppress any attempts by SES employees to set up firing positions in the windows of the Lovelace Centre. A new entry team was assembled to evacuate civilians from the building while other units guided the forming crowd to an assembly point near the Tonderay Technology Centre (TTC). There, a field hospital was set up to help triage and treat any injuries that the evacuees may have suffered. A few civilians had suffered wounds from ricocheted bullets and were transported to the nearby University of Tonderay North Technology District (UTNTD) Medical Complex for treatment. Most other injuries were minor and caused during the initial panicked rush to escape from the building.
The Tonderay Technology Centre, pictured left, with it's large open plaza space around its two main wings, made for an excellent place to set up a temporary treatment and assembly point, original image credit: Lu Xiaobin.
At the gathering point, authorities carefully screened each member of the crowd, searching for fleeing suspects. Niroshi Mendes, a low-level secretary within the SES, was discovered among the Tonderay Technology Centre crowd and was arrested. A local NTD police officer also happened to come across SES President Inoki and an accomplice while on patrol a half kilometer north of the Lovelace Centre. The pair were reportedly seen while exiting some type of secret passageway intended as an escape route. Officer Dewasiri recognized Inoki from a photo SI1 had passed along to local authorities and took the two into custody.
Meanwhile, law enforcement began to negotiate with “EndSci”, who was apparently the ranking member of the co-conspirators still within the Lovelace Centre. SI1’s goals were the release of the original entry team, as well as the surrender of anyone left within the building. The eight injured agents were released to law enforcement, but the two uninjured agents were kept as hostages. EndSci also claimed to have captured up to 10 additional employees who were uninvolved in the SES cabal.
SI1 could not afford to enter the third floor of the Lovelace Centre as long as SES combat drones maintained a massive firepower advantage. The drones inside were superior to the somewhat dated agency models. Luckily, SI1 still had a man on the inside, undercover as an unassuming intern. After determining that the drones were being operated from Paragon’s personal workstation, the operative temporarily neutralized Paragon in an elaborately orchestrated coffee-delivery accident, then used the criminal’s computer to disable the drones.
The moment the drones had been disabled, two teams of SI1 special forces operatives stormed the third floor. One team entered from the stairwell, while another rappelled down the sides of the building into the windows. Each team used a variety of breaching equipment and stun grenades to incapacitate the waiting defenders. The sudden coordinated attack caught the SES conspirators flat-footed, and resistance quickly folded.
The SI1 teams freed all seven hostage DS&T employees, as well as both remaining operatives from the original entry team. “Dante”, “ibis”, and one other co-conspirator were killed during the assault. 13 additional suspects were detained, including Paragon, EndSci, and the third floor receptionist. Authorities have not yet released the names of those arrested during this phase of the raid. Police later recovered 23 deactivated combat drones from the complex, in addition to two which had been destroyed by the first entry team. No SI1 casualties were reported during the final attack.
As of press time, two members of the original entry team have passed away from their injuries, and another remains in critical condition.
Reactions to the Arrests
The Lovelace Centre Raid has provoked many strong reactions, especially among online conspiracy theorists. These groups have claimed for years that a secret “Funding Grant Mafia” has been behind the assassinations of multiple top Sabmadi officials, and the mood among these groups has been borderline celebratory since the story broke. Already, they have begun to use the arrests as evidence for even more fringe conspiracies, such as the theory that deceased Chancellor Alex Lin faked her own death and has been adventuring across Sabmadi ever since. (Editor’s note: Events that have transpired between the writing of this article and its publication have rendered this example somewhat ineffectual.)
Experts on the subject say that, while these groups do appear to have successfully pieced together some elements of the truth, many other aspects of their theories were incorrect. They also warn that these types of echo chambers are dangerous and have frequently been known to lead participants down a path to vigilantism and extremism.
Subira Madaki works with the Sabmadi Museums Authority on the fifth floor of the Lovelace Centre. Reporters interviewed her Monday evening as she waited for the all-clear signal from the Tonderay Technology Centre parking lot. “I wouldn’t say that I’m necessarily surprised that there was some weird stuff going down on the third floor,” said Madaki. “Me and the rest of my office always avoided going there because it was always super sketchy. Though obviously we just thought they were weirdos. We had no idea it was anything this crazy.”
Dr. Sisay Kirubel, President of Tonderay Technical University, has also commented on the situation. She claims that the incident gives credence to her earlier accusations of biases within the university funding system of the SES, given that most of the Office appears to have been involved in some sort of shadowy cabal. Kirubel promised to resume her inquiries into the grant system whenever the Endowment for the Sciences finds replacements for its staff.
Shortly after Monday’s events, Chancellor Tahan announced that Dr. Soren Loong would be stepping in as the department’s next director. Loong previously served as the supervising technician, and only control team staffer, for the Gamma Radiating Objects Observing Telescope (GROOT) at the Sabmadi Space Program. The telescope is several decades old, and its control room has been moved to a boiler room in the basement of the Lovelace Centre. Loong's isolation from other staff is reportedly why he was one of the few DS&T employees who could be conclusively identified not to be associated in some way with the SES conspiracy:
After most of the Department was sacked or put on probation, my tenure will mainly focus on getting everything back up to full operational status. I’d like to say the process will be quick, but frankly, I only just learned that CELT has been expanded to 400 telescopes. It will take time for me to get fully up to speed on the Department's workings after twenty years running GROOT from my boiler room office.
Jaya Po, Director of the Sabmadi Intelligence Community, has a unique relationship to this case, as Vikas Po was the Director’s brother. The two siblings reportedly had had a troubled relationship due to the conflicting nature of their career paths. Vikas Po, an investigative journalist with a reputation for controversy, had inadvertently caused frequent problems for now-Director Jaya Po during background checks and security clearances throughout her career. Po recused herself early in the case due to her personal connection with the investigation:
I was not actively involved in the probe, but I did receive periodic updates from Director Davale, and therefore was familiar with the wide scope of the case and the expected arrests. I have been very pleased with the work of SI1 throughout the entire investigation. We will, of course, review the tactical planning process which resulted in such a disastrous first entry attempt; however, I think the amount of resistance seen at the Lovelace Centre today was justifiably unexpected.
Although we mourn the loss of two of our agents tonight, we take comfort in the knowledge that their deaths were not in vain. Through their sacrifice, Sabmadi has excised a cancer and brought justice to those who would taint her beautiful bureaucracy - those who would corrupt it to serve their own ill will.
Comments