He had lied. People still died today.
Even if it had not come from a direct order, those lives had been taken in his name and with his tacit approval.
Death came silently, drawing no attention at all. There were no grand bursts of autocannon fire, no buzzing monomolecular chainsaw blades—only the faint gunshots muffled by suppressors and laser beams that burned through skin, muscle, and bone in an instant. Multiple operations were carried out simultaneously, targeting bureaucrats, arms dealers, intelligence brokers, human traffickers, and CIA informants both inside and outside the country. The targets never had just one identity; the identities listed above were merely among them. How these people were viewed depended entirely on how the Emperor's system chose to view them.
This was a counterintelligence operation, intended to eliminate untrustworthy people and sever certain chains of interest to make room for reliable ones. Perhaps Victor von Doom intended to put them on trial, but the Emperor had no patience for criminal accusations that dragged on for years, nor did he have the patience to give his enemies time to react. The thunderbolt-like operation disrupted many plans surrounding the newborn nation. Important evidence—lists, money, weapons, emails, transaction records, and more—was stained with blood before its owners could feed it into shredders. Some people had been plotting attacks, not full-scale military invasions, but infiltrations across the border to spread panic with explosives.
In the face of such a precarious international situation, the sources of the soldiers and weapons were extremely easy to identify.
These things would inevitably provide leads for an investigation. Even deliberate framing required an exceedingly complex process, and the more complex the process, the more people it involved and the more conclusive, highly incriminating evidence it left behind. By comparison, intimidating, cheap, and difficult-to-trace chemicals were