Enlightened Ignorance

by Michael Anderle

  Jia shook her head. “No. This morning when Captain Ragnar briefed us on all this. I thought you were a little too passive. He would have fought it if we wanted it, but since you didn’t ask, I didn’t ask. I thought you had some big, deep reason or plan, but I guess not. You just didn’t want to be involved deeper in security.”

  “No, I had a plan. That plan was to avoid having to listen to boring speeches,” Erik explained. “You dying to listen to some?”

  “Not really.” Jia shook her head. “But I don’t like the reason the captain told us we’re sitting out here.”

  “So what if we’ve pissed off a few higher-ups? They were happy with the PR puff piece we did with that report, but they want us to have a lower profile with the chief coming up. It’s not a big deal. That’s the brass for you. We do the work, but they want all the credit.” Erik’s gaze flicked to the lidar and sensors. Nothing unexpected showed on them. Emma was screening dispatch communications for him. He sometimes took her help for granted, but it made his reaction time in critical situations much faster.

  “I’m surprised we’re still having to deal with jealous superiors after everything we’ve accomplished.” Jia rested her cheek on her palm. “Those petty little people should be happy we’re doing our jobs.”

  A luxury flitter set down in the distance and a chauffeur emerged from the driver’s seat to let out his passenger, a tall man in a tuxedo. The use of the driver amused Erik. There wasn’t a flitter on Earth that couldn’t drive itself, even if it lacked Emma’s colorful personality, but rich men still wanted other people behind the wheel just to show off status.

  “I don’t do the job to get patted on the head by a bunch of higher-ups,” he mentioned, tearing his gaze away from the chauffeur and the guest.

  “I don’t either,” Jia replied. “It makes me wonder what things would be like if Captain Ragnar wasn’t in charge of us. I know what it was like with Monahan, but that was before anyone higher up had started to push back.”

  “It wouldn’t be fun, that’s for sure. Sometimes I wonder…” Erik shook his head. Some things weren’t Jia’s concern. “Never mind.”

  “Wonder what?” Jia probed.

  He pressed his lips together, and she waited until he spoke. “If becoming a cop was the best way to go about accomplishing my goal,” Erik admitted. “I’ve made connections and found some evidence, and I’ve got suspects—everyone from Ceres Galactic to those Talos bastards—but I don’t know if I’m any closer to narrowing them down.”

  Jia nodded slowly, pity in her eyes. “I won’t claim I understand what you’re going through. I want to help you because your soldiers got screwed over, but it’s not the same thing as being friends with them.”

  Erik shook his head. “You’ve had your own troubles. You understand more than you think.”

  “And thanks to you, I got the help I needed.” She smiled. “Still, I can’t tell you what the best thing to do is. The only thing I’ll note is that being in law enforcement puts you in a position where you have a chance of finding out who was behind Molino and bringing them to justice.”

  He grunted, a feral quality to the sound. “Bring them to justice? Maybe, but I have a feeling this will end without binding ties.”

  Erik expected Jia to protest. Instead, as he looked at her, she replied with a grim nod.

  “The only better solution I can think of is joining the CID,” she suggested. “And they would have you on a tighter leash than the NSCPD does. Since the conspiracy might involve someone in the government, that might be more of a risk.”

  “I know. At least some people in the government are fighting back. Colonel Adeyemi hinted that I might be able to get better results not working as a cop, and I’m convinced Koval knows more about what happened there than she’s let on.”

  Jia frowned. “True, and I know Adeyemi has been helpful, but I’m also not sure I trust him. He’s suffered the pain of losing a son. He might be willing to sacrifice anything to get his revenge, including you. And Koval’s ID. You can’t trust ghosts. She’ll use you for her own purposes.”

  “You’re probably right.” Erik shrugged. “You don’t have to trust someone to get something useful out of them. It doesn’t matter for now. Emma’s always searching, and as she’s fond of saying, she’s the only one like her.”

  “Indeed, I am, Detectives,” Emma announced. “And I— Dispatch is putting everyone on alert. There are a high number of incoming flitters. They aren’t transmitting transponder signals.”

  Uniformed officers waved people into the building. Several screamed and rushed. Only the presence of so many uniformed authorities kept panic from consuming the crowd. TPST exoskeletons advanced toward the edge of the platform, raising their guns. A few militia soldiers yanked rocket launchers off their backs.

  Several nearby flitters abruptly changed course, most diving toward the ground.

  Erik pulled back on the yoke. The MX 60 lifted into the air.

  “According to my sensors,” Emma continued, “the flitters have unusual energy readings, but I see no thermal signatures to indicate passengers.”

  Jia hissed in frustration. “You saying they’re probably bombs?”

  “That would be my best estimate, and it seems to be Incident Command’s belief as well. Militia and police units are being ordered to prepare to fire. The flitters aren’t responding to requests to stand down, and your fellow uniformed boys and girls are sending emergency transmissions requesting everyone else vacate the local flight area. Perhaps we should clear the parking platform. I’d rather not be blown up. It’d be too ignoble an ending.”

  Erik shook his head. “No, not yet. We start flying around, we might end up getting shot down, and we make it harder for everyone outside to do what they need to do.” He spun the MX 60 around, his gaze flicking to the lidar. The flitters were coming in on all sides. If Emma was right, it was a circle of death. He narrowed his eyes. Something felt wrong about the attack.

  The flitter swarm grew from distant dots to visible vehicles. Erik had wondered if the lidar was wrong and it’d be drones, but no, scores of full-sized vehicles barreled toward the parking platform.

  “Counterattack is being initiated, on five, four, three, two, one,” Emma reported.

  Erik was used to having the biggest gun and making the most noise in police situations. Instead, he sat inside the MX 60, not even shooting his rifle as machine gun rounds and rockets streamed from the soldiers and police protecting the platform. The projectiles filled the air. Even the sound-insulated MX 60 rattled from the intense overlapping noises of so many weapons going off at once.

  TPST and militia assault flitters lifted off the platform to add their stream of bullets to the angry defensive swarm.

  Orange-red explosions filled the air. Few of the charging flitters were the victims of rockets. Most exploded after bullets ripped through them, confirming Emma’s earlier theory. A ring of flame and smoke surrounded the tower. The police and soldiers continued their merciless assault.

  “At least they don’t need fireworks now,” Erik commented, looking around. “But that was too easy.”

  “A horde of explosive-filled flitters was too easy?” Jia snorted. “What would be hard? Zitarks falling out of the sky with laser rifles and yaoguai cavalry?”

  “Detective Blackwell is correct,” Emma commented.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because the new chief has just been shot,” Emma responded cheerfully.

  “What the hell?” Erik slammed his fist on the dash. “The whole thing was a damned distraction.”

  “Someone wanted to make their own show of force,” Jia spat through clenched teeth.

  “The masked suspect escaped the security inside, but a surveillance drone just spotted a flitter breaking through the smoke not too far from here. There’s some concern about possible follow-up attacks, so the militia and TPST are staying put. Other units are ordered to give chase.”

  “Works for me.” Eri
k accelerated and the MX 60 jetted out of the parking garage through the tink-tink of parts still hitting his vehicle, a hungry grin appearing.

  “Our turn.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The MX 60 tore through the dense clouds of smoke and debris. Dozens of new lidar signatures showed up, along with matching thermal signatures, all flying straight toward the municipal tower.

  The new arrivals were much smaller than those responsible for the earlier deadly flitter wave.

  “Looks like another wave of explosives,” Jia suggested. “There’s trying to show off, but that is just being arrogant. These guys are really starting to annoy me.”

  Erik raised an eyebrow as he swerved to miss a large piece of debris. “Starting?”

  Jia shrugged. “This last year has really increased my tolerance for violent idiocy.”

  “I hope that’s only half about me personally.” Erik chuckled. “But it doesn’t matter. Arrogance is good.”

  “Huh? How can you say that?” Jia looked at him. “If they were more afraid, we wouldn’t be dealing with a wave of explosives like this was some crazy insurrectionist raid on a frontier colony world.”

  “That’s one way to look at it, but I’ve got a different one. If they're arrogant, that means they’ll slip up, and that’ll give us an opportunity to take more of them down and get the guy who shot the chief. The rest of the cops and the militia have enough firepower there to hold off the latest wave. I think whoever is doing this is just trying to keep everyone from catching up. That means they aren’t confident he won’t crack if we interrogate him. We need to move.”

  “I can quibble with some of the logic, but I can’t object to capturing the suspect.” Jia looked out the windshield, her eyes narrowing. “It was a good thing we were on the edge of the action, and a good thing you’ve put so much money into this flitter.”

  “Prepare before the battle, and you’ll win more often.” Erik shoved the yoke forward. The MX 60 slid under the cloud of drones barreling toward the platform. More explosions lit the sky, anti-aircraft barrages meeting explosive drones. What should have been a triumphant ceremony had turned into a war, but from a distance, someone might mistake it for fireworks. A huge cloud of smoke fueled by countless explosions surrounded several levels of the tower.

  Jia glanced at the lidar and back through the front windshield.

  Emma must have been sending navigational cues to Erik because Jia didn’t see how he could distinguish the suspect from any of the other civilian flitters fleeing the area. Fortunately, everyone was smart enough to obey emergency directives rather than trying to fly over and get a better view of what might be happening.

  A lot of people now understood that Earth, and even its crown jewel, Neo Southern California, wasn’t a perfect garden, or even if they believed that, they understand they needed to avoid the serpents hiding in the flowers.

  She almost laughed.

  Her former beliefs and life seemed like something from long-distant decades. It felt natural to be rushing past exploding drones in pursuit of a suspect who had shot their new police chief. Doing anything else would have felt odd and cowardly. She wasn’t sure which was the more responsible for her changes: her partner, or the cases she’d worked since he became her partner.

  The thought drifted away as the chaos of the assault fell farther behind them. No drones changed course toward the MX 60. No rockets or missiles flew toward them. No bullets struck its body. Under Erik’s determined control, the fast vehicle zoomed around a corner and closed on a red flitter speeding toward a thicket of industrial towers in the distance.

  “That’s the guy?” Jia asked.

  Erik nodded. “Yeah, that’s the guy. Might have been better for him just to try to hide in the municipal tower.”

  “Too many cameras and too much police control.”

  “Maybe.” Erik scoffed. “But this way, he’s going down soon.”

  “The suspect isn’t using his window tinting,” Emma announced, haughtiness in her tone. “Unless it’s a completely different gun goblin who happens to be wearing a dark mask, it’s definitely your man. There’s your arrogance, Erik. I believe he was overly dependent on the additional drones to cover his escape.”

  “Good,” Erik replied. “If he thinks his arrogance is going to let him escape after this crap, I’ll show him what real arrogance is.”

  The red flitter sped up and barreled toward the industrial towers.

  Erik grinned and accelerated. “You really think you can outrun me?”

  A regular police patrol flitter was overpowered compared to civilian models. His sports flitter with custom upgrades made patrol flitters look slow. There was no way the suspect could hope to escape without doing something a lot more creative.

  Perhaps he had more explosive drones nearby?

  “Need some pop-out guns or something on the front,” Erik muttered. “Especially since they don’t want me sticking a directional EMP on a non-police vehicle.”

  “There’s a limit to what even you will be allowed,” Jia commented, infusing sympathy into her voice. If the department was even slightly more flexible, it’d save everyone a lot of trouble in situations like this.

  “Pop-out laser cannon?” Erik suggested. “Maybe I should just buy an assault flitter on my dime and ask the captain for permission to use it on duty?”

  Jia furrowed her brow. “I’d say that’s overkill, but given our luck, I don’t know if that’s true. Wait, is he going to crash?” Her eyes widened. “Why give up now?”

  The red flitter abruptly changed course, skimming along the outer edge of a tower and only narrowly missing several protruding antennae and drone tubes. The vehicle was now heading straight toward a thin industrial tower. Maybe he’d made a mistake. Industrial towers tended to have fewer external parking platforms than commercial, municipal, or residential towers. If the suspect was planning to abandon his vehicle, he might have charged toward the nearest dense cluster of towers, not realizing what kind they would be. A man running from effectively all of the major law enforcement in Neo SoCal didn’t have a lot of time to think through his options.

  Something about the explanation felt off to Jia. The kind of people who had the necessary resources to send waves of flitter bombs should theoretically have planned better than that. They would have planned an escape route. Even if they hadn’t flown it themselves, they would have programmed it in.

  She would love to believe simple arrogance explained the suspect’s actions, but assuming too much could get her Erik and her killed.

  The red flitter continued closing on the thin tower. Before, he’d flown at an angle.

  Erik frowned and slowed the MX 60. “I don’t want to know how well a tower can take a flitter hit somewhere other than a window.”

  The MX 60 moved closer, and the suspect’s vehicle spun ninety degrees. Erik turned to intercept for a few seconds before hitting the braking thrusters. The MX 60 jerked to a halt, straining the passengers’ seat belts.

  “Why are you stop—” Jia gasped.

  The door of the flitter opened, and the suspect leapt out. The vehicle zoomed away, slowing. From the angle, it looked like it wouldn’t hit a building.

  Erik shook his head. “If he wanted to kill himself, it would have been quicker just to crash. Now he gets to think about everything on the way down.”

  The suspect spread his arms and legs. A moment later, dark flaps filled the gap—a convertible wingsuit.

  “Huh.” Erik let out a grunt of approval. “Didn’t see that coming.”

  Jia gaped at the sight. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  Erik chuckled. “Turns out our guy was more prepared than we thought.”

  The suspect glided in a circle a few seconds before diving toward an open loading bay door several levels down. Erik accelerated and dropped altitude. All they needed to do was slide in through the bay door. They wouldn’t even scratch the MX 60 and ruin all of Miguel’s recent repair work.
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br />   Jia frowned. “Wait. Something’s wrong. Why did he jump here?”

  “To escape? Because there was a big open space?”

  “How would he know?” Jia pressed. “He just happened to fly to a place with a huge open bay and then abandon his vehicle? He was flying at top speeds while trying to evade the police. He doesn’t have time to look at every single camera and sensor for openings, especially ones that far down.”

  Erik stopped descending. “You’re right; he wouldn’t unless it’s a trap. He probably hoped no one would be right on his ass during his escape. More misdirection.”

  Jia stared at the loading bay. They couldn’t see much from their angle, which only fueled her belief the suspect knew it was there. “Emma, do you have a drone in position?”

  “I have one flying here, but it’ll be about ten more seconds,” she explained. “It’s not as fast as my body.”

  Jia jabbed a finger at the loading bay. “Even if he got lucky, he’d risk running into a grav fence or net. They wouldn’t be able to stop his flitter, but there’s a good chance they can stop a single person gliding into them. Jumping into it without being sure it would be down would be suicide.”

  The suspect spiraled toward his destination.

  “Yeah, unless he knew it wouldn’t be up.” Erik brought the MX 60 down quickly. He caught up with the suspect as the man soared toward the bay with no hint of resistance from a grav field.

  No surprise rockets slammed into their flitter. Two large cargo flitters were parked in the bay, their long trailers pointing inward. Ten men with rifles waited on the sides of the trailers, crouched behind boxes and a few large parked cargo drones. The suspect touched down. The flaps between his arms and legs receded, and he sprinted between the cargo flitters.

  “He’s got help,” Jia muttered with a sigh. “Of course, he’s got help.”

  The gunmen opened up with the weapons, showering the MX 60 with bullets. The bullets bounced off the hardened exterior of the vehicle, sounding like soft thuds from the inside. Their suspect kept running the entire time, disappearing behind a cargo flitter.