The debris of the earlier foe was a potent reminder of what could have been. Without Emma’s barriers and the earlier clearing of the room, Erik and Jia would be dead.
The King didn’t fire at either detective. It scuttled back and forth as it waited for a target. The damaged leg groaned as it was dragged across the floor.
“TPST is almost here,” Emma reported. “I’ve informed them that an A-215 King sentry bot was deployed.”
“’Almost here’ isn’t the same thing as here,” Erik muttered. “And I don’t want them taking all the credit for our hard work, especially after I got shot.”
“You got shot?” Jia hissed back at him, but this time she was too loud.
The bot fired at her and blew a hole through a barrier. Jia shouted in shock and rolled to a new spot.
“It’s okay,” Erik replied. “I’m fine. Let’s just finish this thing. It didn’t seriously injure me. I was already missing that arm anyway.”
“That’s one way to keep things positive.” Jia looked at her magazine. “I’ll keep distracting it. I’m almost out of ammo anyway. You ready for the coup de grace?”
Erik shook out his left arm. Now he was going to have another annoying conversation with the doctors about keeping it. He had suffered through that discussion several times since getting the cybernetic limb.
“Yeah,” Erik rumbled. “I owe this thing for getting a decent hit on me.”
Jia emerged at a full sprint, her movement erratic. She offered no dramatic twin-gun attacks. She squeezed off a few shots as she avoided the lurching King and its powerful but immobile cannon.
Erik hopped to his feet and ran from behind his barrier. He aimed his rifle at one of the wounded areas from the previous assaults.
He fired a burst and the King jerked, sparks and fluid flying.
He rushed closer as the bot tried to line up a shot. A powerful leap sent Erik on top of one of the forward barriers, and another jump sent him flying toward the side of the bot.
He grabbed one of the King’s back legs with his damaged cybernetic arm and clamped his hand tightly around it. As powerful as the bot was, in the end, it was nothing more than a machine, and it was time to turn it off.
The bot bucked and lurched, trying to divest itself of its new stowaway. Despite the cybernetic limb’s damage, Erik’s grip kept the bot from flinging him off. His body slammed against another leg. He grunted in pain and shoved the rifle muzzle into a small opening in the damaged armor, then held down the trigger.
It was hard to tell the difference between a giant machine trying to buck him off and one suffering massive damage in its death throes.
That thought passed through Erik’s head as the King writhed, smoke, sparks, and hydraulic fluid pouring from the body. The King staggered finally, its legs uncoordinated, and fell forward.
Erik let go and rolled out of the way as the metal beast crashed to the ground on its side, two of its legs twitching and its cannon smoking. He tossed his empty rifle down, pulled out his pistol, marched forward, and aimed at his earlier target.
“You aren’t secretly resenting me for killing your cousin here, are you, Emma?” he asked.
The AI laughed. “My cousin? That thing is about as close to me as you are to an insect. Please finish it off already.”
Jia jogged to Erik’s side and pointed her rifle. “We could have used some of the disruptor rounds.”
“Sorry?” He smiled. “Didn’t figure I’d have to kill any giant bots today. I’ll bring a mag of them next time just in case, although I don’t know if they would have worked before we got through the armor.” Erik managed a grin. “Want to join me?” He gestured with his gun.
“Might as well,” Jia replied.
The detectives emptied their weapons into the King until it ceased moving and the slight hum it produced stopped. A huge green puddle lay beneath the destroyed sentry bot.
Jia let out a sigh of relief and wiped the sweat off her brow. She grimaced as she looked at Erik’s blood-covered arm, complete with a clean hole through it. “That has to hurt.”
Erik looked at it. “I’ve had worse.”
She pursed her lips.
“What?” he asked.
“Will I need to knock you out to get you to go to the hospital?” she asked, then looked at the top of his head.
Is she thinking of hitting me? he wondered.
Chapter Forty-Seven
November 1st, 2228, Neo Southern California Metroplex, Police Enforcement Zone 122 Station, Office of Detectives Jia Lin and Erik Blackwell
Jia stared at Erik from her desk, her eyes narrowed and her arms folded across her chest.
She couldn’t believe how stubborn the man could be. While she admired his dedication, there was such a thing as working too hard. As his partner, it was her responsibility to get him to see reason.
He looked up with a mischievous smile. “What?”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Jia chided. “You got shot through the arm by a giant sentry bot.” She gestured at his arm. “If that was your other arm, it might have been blown clean in half. I’m surprised they let you out of the hospital, even with the special circumstances associated with your injury.”
He just kept his smile going.
She huffed. “You should have listened to your doctors.”
“I’m fine. This is enough for now.” Erik patted his left arm. Medpatches sealed the holes on either side. They took care of the pain, but it was going to take a couple of days for them to get the necessary parts to repair his older-model arm.
The damage was too extensive for a quick nanopatch job.
“The entire department will be working overtime for the next few days because of what happened.” Erik shrugged. “Not like I could just go home and cry. Then I’d have to deal with Thompson getting in my face and whining like a little girl about me sitting at home drinking beer and watching sphere ball.”
“You got shot by a giant robot!” Jia threw her hands up. “You deserve to go home, drink beer, and watch sports. No one would complain about you taking a few days off. When Thompson gets shot by anyone, let alone a King sentry bot, he can complain.” She looked at his left arm and cringed. “You have a hole in your arm.”
“Then I’d just have all these reports waiting for me.” Erik shrugged. “And paperwork’s a lot more annoying than a few holes in my arm. With the medpatches, I don’t even feel a thing. It’s not like I feel as much pain in that arm anyway. It’s convenient in many ways.”
Jia groaned and scrubbed a hand over her face. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to spin her up on purpose. “Sometimes, I don’t know whether to be impressed or terrified by you.”
“Both are good choices.” Erik leaned back in his chair and put his feet on his desk. “Or I can just lounge around here if it’ll make you feel better.” He looked toward their door. “Should I have some beer and beignets delivered? Have Emma bring up the sphere ball matches? It might be fun. I’d love to see the look on Thompson’s face.”
“I just think—” Jia stopped as the door slid open.
Captain Ragnar stepped in. He eyed Erik’s arm with obvious curiosity before shaking his head and chuckling.
“Sorry I could only chat with you on a call last night,” the captain began. “As you can imagine, there are a lot of scared and angry people in the food chain above all the captains who want answers about how something like last night could have even happened. We’ve got the Council, the governor, the president, and our ministers, to begin with. And the Prime Minister’s people are reaching out, too.” He clucked his tongue.
“Like it’s our fault? Do we need to do something?” Jia started.
“No, don’t you worry about any of that. I’ll handle it. I just wanted to touch base with you two. I told you last night, but I’ll tell you again—good job, both of you. You’re almost a TPST team by yourselves.” He smiled. “I’m the kind of man who appreciates that people don’t start trouble, but they finish it
when it finds them.”
Erik dropped his feet to the floor. “We did what we had to do.”
Captain Ragnar stared at Erik for a moment, something analytical in his gaze. “Perhaps, but because of you, we had only a small number of deaths. There could have been a lot more bodies. Last night was a tragedy, but thanks to you two, it wasn’t a massacre.”
“We did lose people, then?” Jia sighed. “I thought…I’d stabilized all of them. The ambulances were there. I thought that would be enough.”
“You did your best, but, unfortunately, a few victims didn’t make it.” Captain Ragnar shook his head. “It’s not your fault, Detective Lin. You had terrorists shooting people, and even if they were trying to control their shots, there are only so many bullets you can put into people and not end up killing someone. The reality is we could have ended up with many more dead people. Focus on that.”
“A grim victory,” Jia admitted.
“Is still a victory,” Erik suggested.
“Interrogation of the survivors is still in progress,” Captain Ragnar continued, “but you two drew the short straw on the main group. They were trying to do double-duty just like in Florida, spread a little terror and also take Erik down. The main good news we’ve been able to learn is, that was the bulk of their people. They apparently believed that most of them would be able to escape. CID’s taking point on tracking down the last few cells, and because of the high-profile embarrassment of the terrorist attack, they’re dumping a lot of resources into it. It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a team in the air right now to take down the rest of the E-Six.”
Jia cleared her throat. “Sir, that all might be true, but what you said about their operation having a dual purpose has disturbing implications.”
“Beyond psycho Grayheads trying to kill people?” Captain Ragnar furrowed his brow. “What implications, Detective Lin?”
“This was a carefully coordinated attack involving a lot of personnel, heavy weapons, and even a King sentry bot, something not just any random group of criminals can get their hands on.” Jia chewed her lip. “Which means, if they meant to draw Erik and me to them, they had to know where we’d be before they initiated their attacks. I refuse to believe we just happened to be the closest unit to the main force. I don’t believe in Erik’s…” she looked at him as he raised an eyebrow in question, “Lady.”
The captain let out a long, heavy sigh and nodded. “I thought the same thing, and so do IA and CID. We’ve talked.” He made a face of distaste. “We obviously still have some…unsavory elements in the NSCPD that IA and CID are going to have to smoke out.”
“Any thoughts?” she asked.
“Well,” he continued, “it was easy to find the high-profile targets like the chief, but a corrupt patrol officer or detective can hide a lot more effectively. Fortunately, we’ve got enough terrorists to wring useful evidence out of. That might help us find some of the corrupt cops we still have on the force.”
Erik frowned. “What’s with the terrorists, by the way? I thought we had these bastards controlled in Florida. Ok, it wasn’t their top-tier guys this time, but they had enough men to mount this operation and deploy that stupid bot. You mentioned CID taking down the last few cells. I was under the impression that there were only a few cells left after the last operation.”
“True enough, but the answer to that is above our pay grade at the moment. I’m leaving those questions to CID, but our initial interrogations suggest that most of the people were newer to the organization. I suspect it will take weeks, if not months, to sort through all the evidence and finish interrogating all the suspects.”
“There are more than a few Grayhead terrorist groups out there,” Jia added, “but I’ve never heard of one so well-equipped. Even their manpower is unusual. Has CID or the CFMPD made any progress on identifying who was funding them? That might be the key to explaining all this.”
“No,” Captain Ragnar replied, looking irritated. “But what you just said hasn’t been lost on CID. The current theory is some wealthy insurgent backers might be changing strategies and helping fund and recruit for Grayhead groups to sow chaos on the homeworld. I’m not convinced, but it’s the main working CID theory.”
He looked out the window in thought, the three of them quiet for a moment.
“If I were a terrorist group,” the captain went on, “I’d stay away from Neo SoCal for a while. Those idiots should have known we would be able to handle them.” He turned to Erik. “The people who don’t know what it’s like in the field are going to start complaining about escalation, including some on the Council. They’re going to want to place blame for that escalation, and they’re going to want a sacrificial lamb because no one’s prepared to admit we’ve gotten too complacent here and that we’ve shoved off a lot of problems into the Shadow Zone and ignored the rest. It’s all boiling up, and if the guys at the top had been doing their job, we wouldn’t be in this situation now.”
“Wait a minute!” Jia shot to her feet, trembling in anger and pointing at her partner “Are you saying Erik’s going to be their sacrificial lamb? After everything he’s done and gone through?”
Erik’s eyes opened wide. His normally controlled partner seemed to have a bit of mama mountain lion in her.
Captain Ragnar put out his hands and offered her an easy smile. “Calm down, Detective Lin. I said they’re looking for a sacrificial lamb, not that I’d give them one. I just want to be straight with you, so you know what’s happening. I’m willing to handle all the political garbage, but the more you know about what’s going on, the less you’ll be surprised by it. Their argument is that since Erik was partially a target, it’s ultimately his fault.”
“What garbage.” She stabbed her desk with her index finger. “We have no guarantee that if Erik and I hadn’t acted quickly, things wouldn’t have gotten worse. At a minimum, driving the terrorists off the platform allowed me to stabilize and save most of the immediate victims, and from what you told me, he was a secondary goal. It’s not like they were going to call off their attacks if Erik had never become a cop.”
“I agree with everything you just said,” the captain replied as Erik’s head swiveled between the two of them. “But you have to understand—people are gunning for Erik, and for that matter, you too. But you’re more connected through your family, and so you’re harder to take down without political implications. They don’t like what you represent.”
“Good.” Erik smirked. “Well, I think.” His eyes narrowed. “What is it that we represent?”
Jia pointed to Erik, adding her support to his question.
The captain pantomimed an explosion. “You’re a bomb destroying the status quo. It doesn’t matter that criminals and terrorists are targeting the metroplex, and that failures of leadership have led to us being a soft target.”
“Uh-huh.” Erik nodded.
Ragnar pointed to Erik and Jia in turn. “You two have made it clear you won’t stop pursuing justice, no matter who or what is behind something. I think that’s good, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a few corrupt politicians and businessmen see the value in pushing credits toward a terrorist or criminal group to get rid of you. We still don’t know why the Evolved Six wanted Erik dead either in Florida or here, and we might never know. There’s a good chance that information died with Jeanne Caron. It might be as boring as they wanted a propaganda victim who was a cop and a veteran. I doubt that, but not every case can be solved.”
Jia swallowed, and her eyes flicked at Erik.
She didn’t like concealing information from her captain, especially an honest captain, but there were still too many unknowns concerning the deadly Mu Arae conspiracy, including a leak in the department that might have given their position away to terrorists.
She wouldn’t risk Erik’s life until she knew who she could trust.
Captain Ragnar nodded to both detectives. “By the way, once you finish those initial reports, I want both of you out of this station.
”
“Excuse me?” Jia frowned.
His face softened. “Go home, Detectives. Especially you, Detective Blackwell. I just need the basics. The other reports can wait.” He pointed at one of the medpatches. “You have a hole in your arm. Get some rest. You two deserve it.” He shook his head, chuckled, and headed out the door.
Jia waited until the door slid closed to speak. “Your personal mission and our jobs are continuing to collide. I trust you understand what that means?” She nodded at the door, her eyebrows lifting.
“I know,” Erik replied softly. “And I’m not going to withhold anything helpful the department can follow up on, but right now, if I told Ragnar the truth,” he shrugged, “what would it accomplish? The CID, the NSCPD, and the CFMPD all know I was targeted, but they have no idea who is behind it, and it’s not like if I tell them about Mu Arae, they’ll suddenly figure it out. If it was Ceres Galactic, they’ve already covered their asses by sacrificing Esposito.”
His lips pressed together. “Someone in this department might have leaked our location to the terrorists. I know it’s not Ragnar, but there’s only so much info he can keep secret because of his position.” He locked eyes with Jia. “I need to know you’re with me on this. I’m not doing this to play games. I’m doing this because I can’t die before I finish this. I don’t mind dying to take them down with me, but not before.”
Jia stared at him with fire in her eyes. “You don’t have to die to get your revenge.”
“I know. I’m just saying—”
“Don’t,” Jia snapped, her hand slicing through the air. “Plan to live. Plan for them to die.”
Erik grinned. “That is the general plan.”
“So make it a specific plan,” she commanded him.
Where was this coming from? he wondered. “But back to you, me, and Ragnar.”
“I’m okay with it as long as we don’t withhold actionable information, and I want to bring the captain into the know sooner or later.” Jia sighed and looked away. “If terrorists and criminals are going to make you a secondary target during operations, your investigation could drag the entire department into it. The more people who understand why that is, the more resources we’ll have to prevent it.”
Shattered Truth Page 39