Shattered Truth

by Michael Anderle

  Jia’s stomach twisted as a force pressed her against the back of her seat, the pressure mild overall despite the tremendous acceleration. Despite that, the failure of the emitters to completely counteract the local gravity was another source of confusion for her inner ears.

  The pressure began to ease after a minute, and her stomach recovered.

  “Primary acceleration and launch are complete,” the captain announced. “Flight arc is clear. We anticipate arriving at the Central Florida Metroplex in about twenty-five minutes.”

  An odd expression settled over Erik’s face as he pulled the MX 60 away from the CFM transportation center. Unlike in Neo SoCal, it didn’t rest on a platform on top of the tower. It was on the ground. There were no legal vertical lanes near the airport, so several more minutes of moving along at ground level followed before they could climb into the air.

  In the distant past, the ancestor cities forming Neo SoCal had been thick with the same kinds of palm trees lining the streets of the CFM, but those cities, while not completely dry, lacked the plentiful clear lakes and ponds dotting their current location.

  Unlike in Neo SoCal, the ground level wasn’t a sad, forgotten place with dilapidated buildings and Tin Men looking for trouble.

  While tall buildings and towers defined the downtown area, as they did in every metroplex, the bulk of the area and the lawful population remained at ground level. That made sense, since the population of the CFM was barely one-tenth that of Neo SoCal.

  There wasn’t even a noticeable layer in the air separating the ground from above.

  Erik chuckled and shook his head. “I’ve already gone native.”

  “What do you mean?” Jia turned from looking out her window to him.

  “Most of humanity lives like this.” Erik gestured toward a nearby ground-level building. “Even if they’re in some God-forsaken dome on a moon somewhere, they still live mostly on the ground. But in Neo SoCal, most people live in the towers and platforms like they’re angels who are too good to mix with the mortals below. I’ve only been there for a few months, and even with the trips to the Shadow Zone, I let myself forget.”

  “Neo SoCal has a lot of people in a very small area,” Jia protested. “It’s logical to build up.”

  He nodded. “I wonder how much it’s about logic versus trying to prove something. People have always tried to build things bigger and taller to show their power and wealth, and Neo SoCal is the most powerful and wealthy concentration of humanity in the entire UTC.”

  Jia sighed. “I don’t know. To be honest, being near the ground makes me a little uncomfortable, but it’s not because I think I’m an angel. It just feels so…sprawling.” She rubbed her shoulders. “I understand I’m a product of my upbringing.”

  “No judgment.” Erik grinned. “Everyone gets used to their environment. That’s human nature, but it does make me wonder. I’ve lived all over the UTC and on a lot of newer colonies. When you get out to the frontier, it’s not unusual to have a population as low as the tens of thousands, or even a few thousand. You could probably fit the population of a lot of colonies in a single tower in the Hexagon.”

  Jia eyed a thick line of palm trees as they passed. “It’s hard for me to imagine so few people on an entire world. It also seems wasteful.”

  “Sometimes it can feel less crowded than a place like Neo SoCal, and sometimes more.” Erik maneuvered into a new vertical lane. They were on their way to the police station, so she presumed he was using an AR mapping overlay on his smart lenses to fly.

  “How does that work?” Jia asked. “How can a place with only a few thousand people feel more crowded than the greatest metroplex in the entire UTC?”

  Something approaching a wistful smile appeared on Erik’s face. “When there are only a few thousand people on an entire colony, you get to know most of them, and everywhere you go, you’ll bump into them. There’s no such thing as true anonymity.” He glanced at Jia. “It’s what you want in your perfect vision of a world: communities watching out for themselves and engaged in making everything better and antisocial types kept in check through peer pressure. In a lot of ways, people care more about their neighbors than they do in a place like Neo SoCal, where it’s easy to disappear among the towers and platforms.”

  “But the colonies are less stable,” Jia countered. “That was why you spent thirty years fighting out there.”

  “They’re unstable because the government’s been taking the kind of people who like to cause trouble and sending them to places like that.” Erik shook his head, a thin smile on his lips. “If they stopped doing that and just waited a few generations, maybe people would calm down. Exporting trouble doesn’t eliminate trouble. It just sends the trouble somewhere else.”

  Jia frowned. “Are you saying you sympathize with the insurgents? Some of what you’re saying sounds like their rhetoric.”

  “Sympathize?” Erik’s wistful expression turned more thoughtful. “Not really. From what I’ve seen, replacing the guy telling you what to do from far away with a local guy just ends up with the same problems, with fewer excuses and resources. I can respect them for having a cause they believe enough to fight for, but at the end of the day, whenever you have wars, a lot of people just trying to live their lives get caught up in the trouble through no fault of their own. It’s one of the reasons I hate terrorists so much. They drag innocent people into their crap. If they slapped on a uniform and took on the Army directly, it’d be different. I could sympathize with them more, soldier to soldier.”

  Jia continuing looking out her window as they passed a tranquil lake with only a few small boats and flitters above the water. “Do you respect the Cosmic Universalists, terrorist or otherwise?”

  “Nope. Very, very few people have personally met any aliens, and they don’t even have proof of the alleged superiority of the other races. It’s just a bunch of whack jobs wanting to worship aliens. I don’t claim to know the nature of God, but I doubt God needs a hyperspace transfer point to get around or crashed into old New Mexico because of an accident.”

  Jia laughed, some of the residual tension draining from her face. “Maybe you can ask Caron about that.”

  He dropped the nose of the flitter as they approached the police station. “Maybe I will.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  October 3, 2228, Central Florida Metroplex, Police Enforcement Zone 78 Station, Office of Detectives Antonio Perez and Casey Alvarez

  Detective Antonio Perez pushed two coffee mugs forward on his desk toward Jia and Erik, both sitting in chairs hastily gathered from another room by his quiet partner, Casey Alvarez.

  The handsome Perez had an easy, welcoming smile, despite the concerning situation. In other circumstances, he might be a good man to share a beer with.

  His partner appeared uncomfortable with the outside detectives and had long since departed to go check on some reports, or so he claimed. Erik wasn’t offended.

  The fewer people he had to deal with, the better.

  “I’m sorry you had to come all the way across the country, Detectives.” Antonio gave them an apologetic smile. “To be honest, it’s mostly CID pushing us about you joining. They’re letting us have primary jurisdiction and offering logistical support since our people caught the Queen Grayhead, but they’re convinced you might be able to get her to talk. No offense to you, Detective Blackwell, but I’m not sure. I’m also not sure it won’t work.” He shrugged. “What the hell, you know?”

  “That makes two of us.” Erik picked up the mug and took a sip. Decent enough, but not the kind of brew that made a person want to move to Florida.

  They had a nice view of a lake outside the ground-level office. The ribbon of color painting the sky from the setting sun reflected off the lake and framed the trees.

  He thought he saw a log floating lazily in the water before realizing it was an alligator. At least the creature was an honest monster.

  There wasn’t much to look at compared to the 1-2-2 b
ack home.

  A not-so-glorious view of traffic and the few towers on the horizon were less than stellar. Although, he had to give it to Florida; even with the organic moat smell, it was considerably better than the trash smell on the street level in NSC.

  Decades off Earth left Erik less enamored of the allegedly self-evident impressiveness of humanity. Jia was right in a way, but not the way she thought. The residents of Neo SoCal weren’t trying to be angels; they were trying to be God.

  It was a joke.

  Humans hadn’t discovered hyperspace travel nor any of the precious Local Neighborhood races worshipped by the Cosmic Universalists. The colonization of the galaxy rested on picking apart the scraps of a race long turned to dust.

  Even the Navigators weren’t gods in the end. Technology was just a way of temporarily staving off the oblivion that came for all living things.

  “I don’t know this Jeanne Caron or have any idea why she wants to talk to me,” Erik admitted. “Just to make that clear. My captain wanted me here, so I’m here, and because I’m here, my partner is here. We want to help, but I’m not sure we can.”

  Antonio sighed and nodded. “We suspected that before we even contacted your department, and Captain Ragnar passed that along, too, but I’ll be honest—as hard as CID pushed this, the truth is we’re running out of ideas. The best-case scenario is we get her to give up the leader of the Evolved Six.”

  Jia spoke up. “Who is that? Nothing in the files mentioned him.” At least, Emma’s summary hadn’t mentioned him, and nothing she had read as she skimmed the files during the short flight had said anything about him.

  “Who knows?” He looked at her. “These guys are crazy-good at limiting damage to their little cult. CID suspects the leader recently changed, but they also have no idea who it might be.” Antonio leaned back in his chair and let out a frustrated hiss. “Since Caron seems to be a higher-up in the organization and CID has IDed her as present at several previous operations, she might know who the boss is, but that’ll come second. First, we need to figure out why they are here in Florida, and I don’t think it’s for sightseeing.” He frowned. “Let me be honest with you. It was only dumb luck that we caught her. I’m not going to pretend otherwise, but where there’s a queen bee, there are workers, and we need to find them. This isn’t exactly Neo SoCal. If they’re here, they’re here for a reason. Something specific.”

  “Dumb luck?” Erik asked. “Can you explain that?”

  “Illegal traffic maneuver. Almost caused a wreck.” Antonio demonstrated Jeanne’s abrupt angled U-turn with his hand. “When the traffic cops pulled her down, she gave a fake ID, and the system tagged it. We didn’t know who we really had until we got her to the station and did a DNA ID. CID agents contacted us right away to set up a joint investigation.”

  Jia tapped her PNIU and brought up several data windows, including one with the image of Jeanne. “And you have no other leads?”

  “Leads?” Antonio scoffed. “We’ve got tons of leads. But useful and actionable leads that are netting us terrorists?” He shook his head. “Them, not so much. All those drones, cameras, and satellites, and the terrorists can still hide. Not that terrorists are something we have a lot of experience with here.” His mouth twitched. “We believe Caron holds the key to the entire operation.”

  “From the briefing materials we perused, there are no particular VIPs coming to or already in town who would merit unusual attention from terrorists,” Jia observed, her tone polite. “But we don’t understand the local situation as well as you and might have easily missed something.”

  Antonio let out a bitter laugh. “No, that’s about the size of it. If the UTC Prime Minister were showing up, or even the President, that might be something. I take a lot of local pride as a native, but we don’t have much of the corporate power you have in Neo SoCal. If terrorists want to make a splash, it’d make more sense to go after companies based somewhere else.”

  Erik looked at one of Jia’s data windows. It contained a list of Evolved Six’s terrorism targets. He wondered how much the media had discussed the group’s successes in the past, though even Jia had believed in terrorists before she’d accepted the truth about Earth.

  Like Antonio said, most of the targets were in larger metroplexes—Beijing, Delhi, and Paris, among others, although there were no operations listed for Neo SoCal.

  “A softer target,” he suggested, gesturing at the target list. “Sometimes it’s better to not go where all the most important people and things are.”

  Jia frowned. “That makes a sick sort of sense.”

  Antonio glanced at the two out-of-town detectives. “You think they picked this place because it isn’t as big?”

  Jia pointed to the terrorist incident list again. “One pattern I do notice is the Evolved Six have failed more often than they’ve succeeded, and most of their incidents were limited in scope, even when they weren’t stopped by the local cops or CID.”

  “What good does it do that they’re incompetent?” Antonio asked, his tone dubious. “They’ve got good organizational security, and unfortunately, they only have to get it right once. You’re from Neo SoCal. The Summer of Sorrow proves what terrorists can do on just one good day.”

  Erik shook his head. “I don’t think the Evolved Six are incompetent. They’re just doing the one thing no one will tolerate, including criminals.” He looked at Jia. “I might have complaints about a lot of things on Earth, but even a corrupt cop isn’t going to look the other way when it comes to a terrorist, and the average department in a huge metroplex does have the resources to stop trouble if they’re using them.” He turned back to Antonio, his face grim. “You said it yourself. You don’t have a lot of experience with this kind of thing. I used to see this all the time fighting insurgents on the frontier. You would think they would go after a military base or a police station, but a lot of the time, they didn’t. Depending on the ideology, they would pick a softer target and go there, and these Evolved Six don’t want freedom from the UTC government, so it’s even less important that they pick the commonly expected terrorist targets. They’re nuts who want us to be alien pets. That means a body count might help more than taking down a few soldiers or corporate buildings. After being stopped several times, they might believe that even more.”

  Jia took a sip of her coffee. “Does it matter? Why don’t we just talk to her and see if she’ll admit anything?”

  “I want to wait on that until tomorrow morning,” Antonio explained.

  “Seriously?” Irritation filtered into Erik’s tone. “We were told to come here right away, and we did, and now you don’t want us to talk to her?”

  “I know, I know.” Antonio held up his palm. “But we spent all day working on her, and she’s too locked up. I’ve told her we have someone ‘special’ coming to try to work her nerves a little, and I figure we should let her sleep on it, wondering what we mean by that. We’ve got the entire department on high alert and supplemented by people from CID and other agencies. I figure we hit her early morning, wake her ass up, and then bring you in. She’ll be off-balance, and that’ll be our best bet.”

  “Fine.” Erik set his mug down and stood. “Then let’s not waste a lot of time chatting about it now. If you send us any files you want us to look over, we’ll read them tonight.”

  “I’m sorry.” He shrugged. “And thank you again for coming.”

  Erik offered him a slight nod and turned toward the door. Jia set her mug down and offered her own nod.

  Erik didn’t speak until they had left both the office and passed through the bullpen. “We can spend tonight sifting for any clues. They might have CID and some algorithms, but we have Emma.”

  “I appreciate your confidence,” the AI responded. “But I can’t find a link if there’s no link there. Keep that in mind. An insane terrorist might not present a logical path for me to follow.”

  “I just want to do something to get forward movement.” Erik looked over his sh
oulder at the CFM police and detectives disappearing into the distance as he moved farther down the hallway. “I don’t know much about the CFM police. They might all be good cops, or they might be lazy like a lot of the cops in 1-2-2. Caron invited me to the dance, so I might as well make sure I’m at least a decent partner.” His forehead creased. “Something just feels off about all this.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that myself,” Jia admitted. “The mention of luck by Detective Perez got me considering it even more.”

  Erik stopped in his tracks. “Luck in a place where they aren’t used to terrorism?”

  She nodded, sticking her arms out to push him along. “Exactly. But let’s talk about it in the flitter.”

  “Okay.” Erik continued walking. “Emma, find a good seafood place that’s close. We might as well get some dinner before we head to the hotel.”

  Erik’s thoughts were swimming with possibilities as the MX 60 lifted off the ground. He wasn’t sure if Jia’s suspicions were a result of overzealous pattern-matching following what had happened in Neo SoCal or his paranoia infecting her. He also wasn’t sure he was wrong to be suspicious.

  “How long until we get to the restaurant, Emma?” Erik asked.

  “About ten minutes,” she replied.

  “Go ahead and fly us there. Not feeling in the mood myself.”

  “Very well.”

  “Tell me.” Erik released the yoke and turned to face Jia. “What are you thinking?”

  Jia sighed. “I find it hard to believe a group that’s so careful that CID doesn’t even know their leader would let one of their leaders got caught in such a sloppy manner. She makes a dangerous illegal turn and then just calmly lets a traffic cop bring her in? She had a gun with her, and they found explosives in her trunk, not enough to take down a building, but definitely enough to destroy a flitter.”

  “You’re thinking she wanted to get caught?”

  “It’s one possibility. The only thing I don’t understand is what this has to do with you. At first, I thought it was some sort of attempt to force us to focus here and distract the police away from some other scheme, but it’s only riled the locals up. Whatever plan the Evolved Six have will be harder to carry-off if it involves anywhere remotely public.” Erik could hear the tap-tap-tap of her fingers on her leg as she thought. “There’s something we’re missing. I feel like someone’s screaming at me from outside, but when I open the door, they’re gone.”