Enlightened Ignorance

by Michael Anderle

  He reached into his pocket. It was strange to think the crystal-like device was the most advanced AI in human space. He’d gotten so used to thinking of Emma as the MX 60 that it felt unnatural for her to be outside it.

  Erik frowned. She probably felt the same way. That same advanced AI had been unusually quiet since he removed her from the flitter, but that made it surprisingly easy to get her through security, even without putting her in Alina’s case.

  She didn’t register as a weapon, and from outward appearances, she looked like an overly complicated datarod. Emma had kept quiet the entire time in the spaceport and takeoff.

  Erik wondered if she was pouting.

  It wasn’t as if she’d never been disconnected from the MX 60, given that he’d needed to remove her during vehicle upgrades, but she’d been glum and hostile on the way to the spaceport.

  Perhaps she didn’t enjoy the idea of going to the Moon.

  Erik’s hand moved from his pocket to underneath his duster on instinct to feel for his holster. Their police status allowed them to bring along their slug-throwers in their luggage, but not on the transport.

  There was too high a risk of errant bullets leading to a nasty depressurization scenario for everyone involved.

  The last time he’d performed a ship-based raid in the Army, they’d gone in suited up because of that risk. He fingered the grip of his stun pistol. It wasn’t much, but if they were ambushed at the spaceport, it would at least be something.

  He trusted Jia more than Alina, but that didn’t mean the agent was never wrong. If she were omniscient, she wouldn’t be one step behind Talos.

  Alina, not Agent Koval. He was still getting used to thinking of her that way. Insisting on first names was probably just another manipulation technique, but he didn’t care as long as she kept providing him information.

  He was finally moving forward again, with justice for the Knights Errant back in sight.

  Stop being a cop, huh? Erik thought.

  Nothing she’d suggested was out of line. He’d known for a long time that being a detective would only carry him so far. It wasn’t like a random police detective could march into a twisted conspiracy’s headquarters and demand they all surrender.

  Those kinds of people didn’t care about Article Seven rights.

  Erik liked being a cop, but it had been a means to an end from the very beginning. The only aspect of the idea that worried him was that if he left the department, it might mean leaving Jia behind.

  She’d agreed to keep his secret and help him, but getting revenge for his unit was his goal, not hers.

  He had no right to expect she would throw away her career to follow him across the galaxy on a quixotic quest for vengeance. He couldn’t ask that of her, even if his stomach twisted at the idea of losing her.

  He glanced her way.

  Jia stared out the window, her eyes wide and her lips parted. Heavy bags occupied the space under her eyes. She’d looked exhausted since he picked her up, but he’d not asked about it. If something was bothering her, he needed to be there for her, though.

  “Are you feeling okay?” he asked. “You look like you were up all night on patrol duty in hostile territory.”

  “Feeling okay?” Jia blushed. “No, I’m just tired, and…it’s stupid. It’s really stupid, especially if I say it to someone like you.”

  Erik shrugged. “Hey, we’ve got eleven more hours on this flight. I’m willing to talk about anything, stupid or not stupid.” He grinned. “Actually, I just remembered. We can only talk for an hour.”

  “Huh? What’s so special that happens in an hour?”

  “They’re getting a feed from the sphere ball Earth League Championships. It’s not the same as being there, but it’s something.”

  Jia snorted derisively. “The Dragons are out, so anyone can win for all I care.”

  “You do put the fanatic in fan,” Erik suggested.

  “Shouldn’t that be the other way around?”

  “Not in your case.” Erik nodded at the window. “Is that what you were talking about?”

  Earth, the blue marble, birthplace of humanity, hung outside the window in all its glory. From above, with its greens, browns, yellows, and dominating blue, it didn’t look like the seat of interstellar civilization. It looked like some sort of colorful lifeform swimming through the darkness of space.

  “And now we go back to why I’m being stupid.” Jia rested her head on her seatback. “I’ve never left the planet before. I’ve seen plenty of pictures and experienced it in VR, but it’s just…” She stared out the window again and smiled. “It’s breathtaking. Seeing it with my own eyes makes such a difference. I know logically that doesn’t make sense, but it does.”

  Erik smiled. “It makes perfect sense. Even if it’s perfect visual-fidelity VR, on some level, in the back of your brain, you know it’s a lie. That’s why it’ll never inspire the kind of awe the real thing does.”

  “You’ve traveled all over,” Jia murmured. “You’ve seen probably dozens of planets and moons. Seen things I’ve never thought about going to see in person.”

  “Sure.” Erik inclined his head toward the window. “But I don’t know if there’s any planet in the entire UTC that’s as beautiful as Earth, and sometimes I didn't see those beautiful planets and moons in the nicest of ways. There are no windows in drop pods.”

  Jia yawned and put her hand over her mouth. “Now I regret how I prepared for this trip.”

  Erik leaned toward her, focusing on the bags. “Are you one of those people who stays up all night so you can sleep on a long trip?”

  “I’ve never been on this long a trip before,” Jia complained. “When I’ve traveled on Earth, I’ve always taken ballistic transports. I thought it’d help things go smoother.”

  “Just go to sleep, then,” Erik suggested. “I’m sure it’ll be a smooth trip. After all, we’re flying between Earth and the moon. This is the interplanetary route with the most history.”

  Jia yawned again and turned into her seat. “Wake me if anything interesting happens.”

  “I’m sure you won’t miss anything.” Erik laughed. “What could possibly happen on a standard transport run to the moon?”

  And what should he do if her head fell onto his shoulder?

  Would that be such a bad thing? he wondered.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Erik’s words were soft, urgent, and whispered right into his partner’s ear. “Jia, I need you.”

  She had been drifting between consciousness and unconsciousness. She couldn’t be sure she was dreaming. The words could be nothing but a playful or desperate fragment of her mind.

  Erik’s jokes about being her fake boyfriend must have wormed their way into her subconscious.

  Sleep was supposed to be a time of relaxation, not a recapitulation of her daytime concerns. It was time to apply a lesson her mother had taught her long ago:

  Sometimes it is best to ignore an insistent but inconvenient man.

  “Jia, wake up,” Erik murmured a bit more aggressively. “I need you.”

  Some insistent men were harder to ignore than others. She was able to ignore him until his hot breath tickled her ear.

  Jia’s eyes snapped open, and her heart galloped. “W-w-what?”

  She turned to face him, licking her lips and suddenly concerned if her hair looked messy. There was nothing sexy about waking up from a nap on an interplanetary transport. She nodded quickly. “I’m awake.” She said the words more for her benefit than his. “Definitely. One hundred percent. Okay, maybe not that, but at least ninety.”

  Erik leaned close to her, but there was no amorous desire in his eyes, only concern and tension lining his face as he continued in a quiet voice, “I think we’ve run into some trouble. It might be nothing,” his eyes shifted past her, “but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  Jia shook her head to clear the final strands of the web of sleep in her mind. Her heart began to slow. She wasn’t in her ap
artment waiting for her partner to admit he wanted her as a woman. She was in a transport on the way to the moon, doing some spy’s dirty work as part of a test.

  Her breath caught as she ran through the possibilities of what might be wrong. Ending up with a fear of spaceflight because of an engine accident or something would make her future more complicated.

  She suspected her future wouldn’t be restricted to Earth, regardless of what happened with Erik’s personal mission.

  “Trouble?” Jia whispered. “What kind of trouble? Is the ship okay?” She surveyed the closest passengers. No one seemed to be in any distress.

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” Jia kept her voice down. “We’ve got life support, right?” She frowned. If there were a major mechanical problem, the flight crew would be taking measures and explaining things, or even preparing people to board the escape pods.

  Erik nodded. “That’s not the kind of trouble I’m talking about. This might be trouble that you and I can do something about. That’s why I’m having Emma check.” He inclined his head to an IO port in the armrest of the seat. Emma’s core had been inserted. She didn’t technically need to be in the IO port, but it would give her an easier time communicating, and she could avoid having to go through Erik’s PNIU that way.

  Jia pinched the bridge of her nose. “Please catch me up. I was asleep. Nothing is smoking or making a loud noise. What’s going on?”

  Another check confirmed her initial impressions.

  The cabin lighting was normal. The rest of the passengers chatted happily or stared at their inflight entertainment: movies, shows, and sporting events. Several people slumbered peacefully, including one man who was snoring loudly. No one was unfortunate enough to sit near him.

  The universe offered its small graces at times.

  Jia tilted her head and stared at the man. She could have sworn there were more people in those seats earlier, but the man’s loud snoring might have forced them to beg a flight attendant for another empty seat. She suddenly wondered if she’d been snoring but shoved the thought away.

  “Detective Blackwell felt an unexpected course change a few minutes ago,” Emma explained. “He asked me to investigate after waiting for the crew to acknowledge it, but no such action occurred.” Traces of boredom infected her voice.

  Jia sighed. She wasn’t comfortable with Emma accessing the transport’s systems without a clear and present emergency, but Erik wasn’t the kind of man who would ask for something on a whim. She’d yet to see a situation where his instincts couldn’t be trusted, but she still needed to offer other possibilities to ensure he was on the right track.

  “Maybe they needed to make the course change because of unexpected debris on the flight path,” she suggested. “There’s only so much a grav shield can do. Why chance it?”

  Erik shook his head. “They would have announced it, or at least made us aware of it. I did see a flight attendant hurry forward shortly before the course change.” He sat up and glanced over his shoulder with a frown. “But the flight path is straightforward, so there’s no reason for them to have shifted as much as they did. There’s no way we’re still on the correct course. Trust me, you spend enough years on Fleet ships getting ferried to and from different colonies, and you get a feel for this thing. I might have been a ground-pounder, but I’ve earned my Fleet instincts.”

  “Was it that much of a shift?” Jia reached under her jacket and patted her holster to make sure her weapon was still there.

  A stun pistol might not be able to do much if the transport was attacked by another ship, but it comforted her to know she wasn’t defenseless. She just happened to be sitting in a thin shell of metal in deep space, where a few holes would expose her and everyone else to a harsh environment that few organisms had any hope of surviving.

  But not defenseless.

  Jia almost laughed at herself. The idea of being attacked on the Earth-Moon Corridor was absurd. Pirates might prowl the frontier, but there was no way they could get near a ship in the Solar System and launch an attack, let alone near Earth.

  The idea went beyond ridiculous, even by the standards of Erik’s and Jia’s highly questionable luck. A pirate who raided a ship would be picked off by the Fleet with ease. Besides, if pirates had attacked them, everyone would be less calm.

  Erik tapped his PNIU, and a small data window appeared with a two-dimensional display of Earth and the moon. A bright, curving line marked the transport’s expected flight path. He ran his finger along the line and explained, “There’s a mild steady burn until the halfway point, then slow deceleration, and only very small active course changes. They account for everything else during the initial takeoff and burn. What I felt earlier was a much harder burn than that. This might not be a luxury transport, but they are trying to make it as comfortable as possible for passengers.” He gestured at the window. “This is something you’re not used to because you haven’t been on a lot of ships.”

  “If by a lot of ships, you mean absolutely none, then sure.” Jia shrugged. “I can’t compete with a thirty-year vet.”

  Erik pointed at the floor. “The internal grav field emitters are designed to keep things consistent for people. It helps a lot of ways mentally and physically, including keeping people from throwing up. Most ships are designed with the idea that there’s a definite floor and a ceiling, especially civilian transports. That’s the principle underlying how they set up the internal emitters. They can adjust the gravity compensation somewhat on the fly, but there are limits. You start doing funky maneuvers outside what the engineers anticipated, and people are going to feel it, just like we felt it when they began the initial acceleration. Maybe the Navigators didn’t have to deal with that, or one of the other races has a better handle, but that’s how it works for humans.”

  Jia was slightly annoyed by the lecture, but even though she had read everything Erik had told her to, she had to admit the technical details hadn’t been the first thing that popped into her head when he’d mentioned the course change.

  When it came to training instincts, there was no substitute for experience.

  She nodded at Emma’s core. “And have you found something, Emma? I’m hoping Erik’s wrong and they just forgot to tell us, but I’ve learned to not bet against him, and I don’t like the implications.”

  “Yeah, never bet against me.” Erik gave her a disarming grin. “I need about six drinks in me before that’s a good idea.”

  “Detective Blackwell asked me to look without causing undue alarm,” Emma explained. “That necessitated a little more finesse, but, yes, I have found something disturbing that suggests this course change was not purposeful.”

  Erik let out a grim chuckle. “Sometimes I hate being right all the time.”

  “You noticed it,” Jia observed. “That means we can start preparing for whatever is going on. Speaking of that, what is going on, Emma?”

  “This ship is no longer on course for the Moon. It’s unclear, given the speed, where else they might be going. Since I don’t have access to the primary navigation system, I’m only aware of that information through secondary thrust and directional readings and a backup nav beacon. There are possible intercepts with stations and other inner Solar System locations, but the most likely destinations would take an excessive amount of time. If this course change was purposeful, it’s unlikely they are targeting any of those locations.”

  “Are there mechanical problems?” Jia asked. “I can’t be the only person who hasn’t traveled in space before. Erik mentioned seeing a flight attendant going forward in a hurry.” She shrugged. “They might want to avoid panic among the passengers, so they haven’t announced anything. It’s not like we’re halfway to an HTP in some frontier system. We’re in the Earth-Moon Corridor. They can get a rescue ship here in hours with a hard burn.”

  Erik frowned and didn’t look convinced. “That’s a possibility, but something feels off about it. It smells like…”

  “Smells
like what?”

  “Just that feeling I always used to get before a big battle, one I knew was coming but couldn’t predict exactly when.”

  Emma made a tongue-clucking sound despite not being in her holographic form. “Detective Lin could be correct. If I access the lower-level systems, I’ll be able to better determine if there is a maintenance emergency, but there’s a high probability they will become aware of a systems intrusion.”

  “Go ahead,” Erik ordered. “I’ll take the heat if it comes to that. I’d rather get yelled at than do nothing and regret it later.”

  “Very well. Please wait.”

  The lights dimmed in the cabin. Several people mumbled angrily under their breath. One man cursed loudly, earning a glare from a mother sitting next to her son in a nearby seat.

  He quickly stopped. “I have a major bet on the game!” the guy offered with a sheepish grin.

  Another man a few rows up flagged down a flight attendant and pointed to his empty data window. “I lost the entertainment feed. What’s going on? I was in the middle of a great scene.”

  “My entertainment feed stopped, too,” complained an elderly woman in a different seat. She jabbed at her PNIU. “Nothing I do changes anything. I paid extra for more options. I want a refund.”

  The flight attendant offered the passengers a practiced smile. “One moment, please. Let me go check on that for you all. I’m sure it’s just a minor issue, and it will be corrected momentarily. This sort of thing happens at times.” She turned and walked up the aisle to a small alcove with a chair near the door to the first-class passenger section. She stepped inside, and curving walls sealed for privacy, probably so she could complain about the whining passengers.

  “Were you responsible for that, Emma?” Jia asked.