Enlightened Ignorance

by Michael Anderle

  The show of force was wasted. The lobby was vacant.

  Empty hallways led away on either side. A gray double door stood closed at the back of the room. Light Lunar neoclassical played in the background. It was everything they’d expected, minus the people.

  “They must have seen us coming.” He gestured to hallways on either side. “Let’s find them. Other entrance teams, report.”

  “We’ve got nothing at Entrance Alpha, Detective,” reported one officer over the comm.

  “Beta’s clear. It’s a ghost town.”

  “Gamma’s clear, too. There’s a cargo flitter in the garage here. It’s still on, Detective.”

  Jia looked around, eyes narrowed. “Something’s wrong. This place has hundreds of employees. Even if they saw us coming, they couldn’t empty out the entire place.”

  Erik spoke into his mic. “Emma, did anyone leave?”

  “No,” she replied. “There has been no outgoing vehicle traffic since my drones began monitoring the area about two hours ago. A cargo flitter arrived in the back about thirty minutes ago, but it hasn’t left. Judging by the feed from Gamma Team, it’s the same vehicle.”

  Erik marched toward the closed door. “Go ahead and start hacking their systems. They might be trying to purge their files, and Digital Forensics won’t be here for a while since they’ve got most of them on the Shadow Zone teams.”

  “Very well. Initiating efforts.”

  Erik approached the closed doors. He stepped to the side and raised his hand to the access panel. After a nod, Jia and a handful of officers spread out on either side, raising their weapons. He slapped the panel, and the door hissed open.

  “Detective, there is an issue,” Emma reported. “Someone has taken active measures to harden the systems’ security. Some of the signatures suggest exogenous efforts, rather than inherent systems features.”

  “External hacking?”

  “I’m not sure. System takeover will be delayed.”

  Erik crept through the doorway. Row after row of empty desks filled the room. Windowless offices lined the back wall, and two other halls connected to the room. “Ghost town” wasn’t right. A cup of sweet-smelling tea rested on a desk near the entrance. He walked over to the cup and stuck his finger in it.

  The liquid was still warm.

  “Someone was here recently,” he muttered, flinging the residue off his finger. “Where did they all disappear to in such a hurry? Gamma Team, check the trailer of the cargo flitter.”

  Erik swept back and forth with his rifle. Jia frowned, wondering if they were using optical camouflage technology.

  If the company was connected with an organization like Talos, it wasn’t impossible, but it didn’t make sense. Hiding an entire building full of people wouldn’t be worth the effort. Not every suit working at the company was knee-deep in whatever bizarre scheme the rest of the company was caught up in.

  Emma hadn’t been monitoring the company for more than a couple of hours, but the police had. Morning vehicle and employee traffic had been within expected parameters.

  “No one’s inside the cab or the trailer, Detective,” reported the officer leading Gamma Team.

  “Emma?” Erik pressed.

  “Still working. Active countermeasures are being deployed.”

  “Well, we know someone doesn’t want us here.” Erik moved forward, pointing down one of the hallways. “Someone’s stalling for time. They must know we’ve got this place covered. Keep working at it— Everyone back!” he shouted as he jumped.

  Jia didn’t question Erik. She jumped at his command. The other officers did as well. Less than a second later, a rocket roared from one of the hallways and exploded against a desk.

  A heavy clanking thud followed, echoing from the hallway. Jia’s stomach knotted. “Dammit!” She holstered her stun pistol and drew her slug-thrower, slapping in the AP rounds she’d gotten from Erik.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Jia asked.

  The thudding continued, now louder and closer. A large shadow grew near the entrance to the corridor. An exoskeleton marched into the room, a rotary rocket launcher and a heavy machine gun on one side. A clear ballistic shield rested in the other arm. A helmet with a dark visor concealed the operator’s face.

  “Back it up!” Erik ordered. “Jia and I will hold him here.” He spat bullets from the TR-7. The exoskeleton lifted its shield. The bullets dented the shield and sparked against it, falling to the ground in a clattering waterfall of spent metal.

  The officers rushed toward the open door, firing. A cloud of stun bolts and bullets struck the shield, but the smaller, slower rounds didn’t do any more damage than Erik’s efforts.

  The exoskeleton’s machine gun came to life. The operator swept the weapon back and forth, ripping desks to splinters. Erik and Jia stayed low. Their tactical vests almost assuredly would not be enough against that level of firepower, and the exoskeleton had taken a full blast from Erik’s gun without much damage.

  The other officers continued their retreat out the main door.

  “This is Detective Blackwell,” Erik reported. “Military-grade exoskeleton is on-site and firing on officers. All teams retreat to the exits but make sure no one gets out of this building. Dispatch, requesting TPST support at this time.”

  “Acknowledged, Detective,” replied a dispatcher. “Relaying request.”

  “Emma, take over talking to dispatch for me,” Erik ordered. “I need to concentrate on this.”

  “If they have access to military gear, no wonder they’ve been able to hold her off,” Jia muttered. She fired a few quick shots at the exoskeleton before ducking again, then, “HEY!” Her opponent’s counterattack sheared the top of her covering desk off. “Not good, not good.” She scurried to another desk before a follow-up rocket blew the last one into a cloud of burning confetti.

  “At least it isn’t damned mutants or yaoguai this time,” Erik called to her. “I know what to expect from exoskeletons.” He reached into the pocket of his duster and pulled out a small rectangular piece of metal. “I’ll distract him.” He fake pumped it to get her attention. “You know how to turn this on?” She nodded as he tossed the device to her.

  She snatched it out of the air and crawled to a new desk. Another rocket attack blew away two more desks.

  Thick gray and black smoke choked the room now.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Jia stared at the device, then turned it over to look at the reverse side. “I guess you took Captain Ragnar’s recommendation to keep it small to heart.”

  “He had a point, but I wish I had the laser rifle.” Erik grinned. He popped up and fired a burst before ducking and crawling to avoid machine-gun fire. The exoskeleton’s bullet stream gouged the wall and disintegrated the desk Erik had been using for cover.

  Jia’s voice was almost conversational as she adjusted her hold. “You don’t think using a plasma grenade will raise too many questions?”

  “If a guy with rockets blows up, no one’s going to question it too much, and if this guy’s here, this is about a lot more than just stalling us and purging records. We need to take him out.”

  “Understood.” Jia primed the grenade. “The tentacled corruption monster strikes.”

  “Yeah.” Erik crawled under the smoke, coughing a bit. “Tastes terrible. I’m going to distract him. He might survive if that thing goes off with his shield in the right position, so wait until he’s focused on me, then blow him all the way to the edge of the damned UTC with the grenade.”

  “Dispatch reports TPST squad in-bound,” Emma told them. “ETA ten minutes.”

  Jia wasn’t surprised.

  Everyone had anticipated the heavier fighting to take place in the Shadow Zone against the gangs and syndicates. Corporations might be dirty, but they didn’t usually bring in mercenaries in exoskeletons to fight the police.

  They had to be close to taking down some major players. She didn’t want to leave. Her fingers tightened around the pla
sma grenade, and she took a deep breath. If criminals wanted to go over the top with their violence, then so would she.

  “Let’s take this trash down,” she hissed.

  Nothing either said was able to be heard as the exoskeleton spat a thousand rounds both down the hallway and into the room the detectives were hiding in. It finally stopped for a moment.

  “These guys might have great toys, but they’re using bad tactics,” Erik stated. “Exoskeletons are nice, but they aren’t very maneuverable in close quarters. We’d never run solo in the Army in a situation like this.”

  The dark form of the exoskeleton stomped through the smoke, riddling the walls and desks with more bullets. If the officers hadn’t retreated, one of them would have certainly taken a stray round.

  “Okay.” Erik shifted his rifle to his left hand and yanked a stun grenade out of his pocket. “Ready?”

  Jia gave him a curt nod.

  Erik switched his gun to four-barrel mode, hopped up, and threw the stun grenade toward the shrouded exoskeleton. The target turned toward the grenade and brought up his shield. The exoskeleton’s gun came alive after the white flash of the grenade. Erik held down his own trigger, sprinting to avoid the return fire.

  Jia crawled behind the tattered remains of a few desks, doing her best to obtain a rear attack angle on the exoskeleton.

  Erik continued running and gunning. He dropped his rifle after it went dry but managed to fling another grenade, this time a frag. It exploded against the shield, leaving it impregnated with shrapnel, but not slowing the enemy.

  The exoskeleton turned farther to aim at the dodging Erik.

  The obscuring smoke made it difficult to be sure, but the bright flash of his machine gun suggested his back was turned.

  Jia primed the plasma grenade and licked her lips, remembering a very similar scenario in one of their tactical training sessions. That one had involved a vehicle rather than an exoskeleton, but it provided a comforting familiarity for the otherwise insane encounter.

  “This is becoming routine,” she muttered, standing up.

  Jia threw the grenade, and the explosive plaque tumbled through the air in a near-perfect arc. She might not have a cybernetic arm or thirty years of experience, but she could master anything she practiced given enough time. The white-blue explosion consumed the exoskeleton, the force knocking the operator and his machine to the ground with a resounding CLANG.

  Erik didn’t hesitate. He leapt toward his TR-7, snagged it off the ground, and yanked a new magazine out of a pocket. Jamming the magazine in, he opened fire on the smoldering exoskeleton.

  He didn’t stop firing until he ran out of bullets.

  Jia jogged through the smoke once Erik had finished getting his annoyance out, her pistol pointed at the exoskeleton. Erik ejected his magazine and slapped another one in with a satisfied look on his face.

  Half the shield was missing, melted, along with some of the back and legs of the exoskeleton. The helmet was cracked and filled with holes. Blood covered the blackened burn holes in the tactical suit of the operator.

  “I’ve gained access to some low-level systems and cameras,” Emma announced. “There is an unusual power surge in the office of the CEO, but there are no internal cameras in that office I can access. I should note I’ve located most of the missing employees. They are jammed in several large locking offices distributed throughout the building.”

  “Hostages?” Erik wondered.

  “Perhaps,” Jia replied. “At least we know where they all went.”

  “Cameras in the halls leading to the CEO’s office reveal nothing of note, but the closer cameras are offline. Given some of the error messages, I believe they’ve been destroyed. I can direct you to the office unless you want to wait for TPST?”

  “We don’t have time,” Jia insisted. She looked at Erik. “Especially if those people are hostages. They might order their mercenaries to start shooting people.”

  Erik nodded back. “You’re right. We don’t have time, and I don’t think we’ll need TPST now. If they had other exoskeletons, they wouldn’t have run this one solo.” He tapped his PNIU. “All teams, exoskeleton neutralized. Move in and converge on the central executive office.”

  “This is Dispatch, Detective Blackwell. Say again. Exoskeleton neutralized? Please verify.”

  “Operator dead and exoskeleton heavily damaged,” Erik reported. “We’re moving on, but we wouldn’t mind the TPST backup, just in case.”

  “Roger that, Detective.”

  “I thought you said they wouldn’t have run solo if they had more,” Jia noted.

  Erik shrugged. “Just because I’m not usually careful doesn’t mean I can’t be careful.”

  An indicator arrow appeared in Jia’s smart lenses. “If it’s this annoying at the minor corp job, I wonder how bad it is in the Zone.”

  “We can’t worry about that right now,” Erik replied. “We need to go figure out what that power surge was about and make sure whoever is behind this doesn’t kill all the people they have locked up” His gaze cut to the exoskeleton.

  “Someone is running scared.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A squad of exoskeletons advanced in a tight wedge, shields expanded nearly to full, their heavy rifles pointed straight ahead.

  One was operated by Intelligence Directorate agent Alina Koval.

  The exoskeletons marched in unison as they entered the tall, wide warehouse, their combined heavy steps echoing like the angry stomp of a metal giant. The sound drowned out anything else, making it hard to tell if anyone was inside. Dim lighting only exacerbated the problem. Outside drone surveillance suggested multiple suspects might be inside the building.

  “Launch targeting drones,” commanded Agent Rael, the CID agent leading the squad.

  Small drones buzzed away from the backs of the exoskeletons, spiraling into the air. They spread out over the warehouse.

  Alina hadn’t used an exoskeleton in a while, but her movement and weapons-handling skills remained intact.

  She was performing well enough that no one had any reason to question the credentials identifying her as CID Agent Yves, but each ponderous movement reminded her that extra armor and weapons weren’t always worth being a larger target.

  During an average mission for the Intelligence Directorate, stealth and quick entry-to-egress were far more important than having access to a massive amount of firepower. Today, though, she wasn’t Agent Alina Koval of the ID, at least not officially.

  Her fake transfer files marked her as being temporarily assigned to the CID High-Threat Response Team now in the bowels of Neo Southern California in the Shadow Zone. The HTR team was one of many participating in the massive joint raid on the organizations involved with the attempted assassination of Chief Warden.

  They’d already transmitted several commands to surrender.

  Minor gun battles had broken out at different entry points, but Alina’s team was supposed to be taking care of the largest concentration of suspects.

  Alina didn’t enjoy lying to law enforcement, and she had no intention of undermining their efforts. Even if there was no larger conspiracy, the criminal organizations involved in the assassination attempt represented a dangerous threat to the peace of Neo Southern California, and she hoped they wiped out or arrested every last one. She couldn’t only worry about Neo Southern California.

  Bigger prey awaited her efforts.

  When her ID superiors became aware of the raid, they’d taken measures to get her assigned to a team with the greatest potential to yield useful information for their purposes.

  Given the scale of the assassination attempt and all the organizations involved, it was hard not to believe someone far worse than criminal syndicates might be behind it.

  The exoskeletons continued their advance, stopping for a moment to await the continued deployment of the targeting drones. The towers of cargo inside the warehouse provided so many hiding spots that the criminals might eve
n be hiding their own exoskeletons. There had been contact with at least one exoskeleton at another raid site according to Agent Rael, a location being hit by the NSCPD.

  Time wasn’t always on the side of those who sought to protect the UTC and its citizens from the dark conspiracies swirling under the surface.

  Her current investigation into Talos and a number of other dangerous threats couldn’t be bogged down by too many official requests through the CID.

  Things had picked up in the last year, even more so in the last few months. Dangerous organizations were making riskier, bolder moves that exposed them to the ID but also put innocent people at risk. Talos’ participation in the genetic engineering experiments uncovered by Detectives Blackwell and Lin was proof of that.

  Alina suspected the uptick in activity had to do with Blackwell’s efforts.

  He was a catalyst, both because of his current activities and his status as the sole survivor of Molino. The massacre had started something, and she didn’t know where it would end. That meant she needed to be more proactive before the people she sought escaped her net.

  Only an arrogant person depended on luck. Finding and stopping the enemies of the UTC might come down to finding a single slender strand of evidence and following it to the bitter end.

  That was why she was there.

  Previous investigations suggested she could obtain useful data from the warehouse. On the surface, the owners were nothing more than a minor criminal organization used mostly as hired muscle. That wasn’t a total lie. The average member was just that, but the group had links to darker, more troublesome groups, including insurrectionists.

  The criminals seemed to be motivated more by money than ideology, but it wasn’t impossible that they were under the control of someone interested in both.

  The real problem was how careful they had been. People liked to assume criminals were lazy and stupid, but that wasn’t true. Many were just sociopaths who eschewed rules. Intelligent criminals understood what they were up against and used every false face and cat’s paw to avoid the attention of the police, CID, and ID.