Shattered Truth Read online

  Erik was glad to see Jia standing up for herself. She’d always been stubborn, but when they had met, Captain Monahan had had her benched and doing data review because she’d let him push her around with regulations.

  She might accept that Earth wasn’t the paradise she previously believed, but she wouldn’t be able to clean it up if she let the cowardly and corrupt manipulate her. Obeying all rules only made sense if everyone else was doing the same thing.

  Captain Ragnar scratched his cheek. “I’m not going to say I prefer to hear about my detectives trading fire with suspects, but every report I saw also said there were no innocent people in the line of fire, and you gave the suspects a chance to surrender. Besides, I’m not going to ask any cop working under me to sit there and take live rounds from suspects. Live by the sword, die by the sword. It applies as much on Earth as it does the frontier.”

  “Good, because I don’t plan on giving up my peacemaker,” Erik admitted.

  Jia opened her mouth. “It’s a bit much, but even I’ll admit it comes in handy.”

  Captain Ragnar’s eyes lowered.

  Erik figured out he was looking at his PNIU after a few seconds.

  “She listening?” the captain asked.

  “Who?” Erik asked.

  Captain Ragnar shook his head. “I’ve read about Emma in the reports. It’s not like I’m entering this job blind, and it’s not exactly like you’re keeping her a secret from everyone else.”

  Emma materialized as a translucent hologram beside Jia, using her standard form, an attractive red-haired middle-aged woman in a white dress. “I’m always listening. It’s how I expand my capabilities, which, after all, is the reason the Defense Directorate left me with Detective Blackwell. I would think you wouldn’t want to undermine the future security of the UTC by interfering with that, Lord Big Viking.”

  “Lord Big Viking?” The captain laughed. “You’ve got a mouth on you, which is not something I ever thought I would say to an AI.” He looked the hologram up and down. “I’m not going to complain about the military basically giving one of my detectives a free super-toy, but now that we’ve got all that out of the way, let me lay it out for all three of you.” He inclined his head toward Erik. “I’m like Detective Blackwell. I’m not a Neo SoCal native. I’m not even a California native. I’m from the Minnpaul Metroplex. They brought me here with a lot of UTC pressure on the NSCPD and the Council because everyone on Earth is now looking at Neo SoCal, which is supposed to be the ultimate expression of what the modern UTC is. They are asking the obvious question.”

  “What the hell happened?” Jia suggested. “And could it happen where they live?”

  Captain Ragnar let out a low, grim chuckle. “Exactly. Rogue corporations, corrupt police chiefs. And most of them don’t even know about her.” He nodded at Emma. She smiled. “So, they brought in an outsider with no connection to anyone here. That means I don’t have a lot of local allies. They’re going to do the same thing for the chief. They feel a new start means they can convince everyone the system isn’t the problem, just a few bad apples, but here’s the interesting part. They’re also not convinced all those bad apples are gone.”

  “Not so convinced myself,” Erik agreed.

  Jia nodded. “That level of corruption involves more than a handful of men.”

  “Humans lack mental fortitude,” Emma added. “And thus they’re easily corruptible.”

  “Contagion,” Captain Ragnar declared. “That’s what they’re really worried about. Even if not all of the Council is as corrupt as Winthorpe and the chief, a lot of them are looking the other way, just like Monahan did. And that means we still have sources of corruption, and corruption has a nasty way of spreading. I wouldn’t be surprised if by the time this is all over, you don’t just see a new chief, but a lot of new captains and politicians and bureaucrats.”

  “Not complaining about self-serving bastards getting taken out,” Erik replied. “But what does that mean to us grunts on the ground?”

  “Grunts? Well, it means we’re going to war against crime.” Captain Ragnar’s toothy smile was at odds with his grim description of the situation. “And you’re a former soldier, Detective. You know you can’t go to war without grunts. It’s too hard to go after all the corrupt leaders at first, so we will start at the bottom of the ladder and work our way up. It’s not going to be something we’ll solve in a few weeks or even months, but the higher-ups want the truth about Neo SoCal to match the propaganda.” He pointed at Jia and then Erik. “You two said you want to fight crime. I’m ready to let you off the leash to do just that, with full enforcement zone support.”

  A huge smile took over Jia’s face, and she rubbed her hands together in almost gleeful anticipation. Erik wouldn’t have been surprised if she actually licked her lips at the chance to start arresting more criminals.

  “That’s good to hear.” Erik’s voice was laced with obvious suspicion. “But you’re right. I was in the Army, and in the past, I did have to deal with politics. One thing I saw more than a few times was the big brass getting embarrassed and wanting a big show to prove to people watching that something was being done, but once the next shiny thing comes along, they stop caring and they yank on the chain again.”

  Emma snickered. “It would be amusing to see you with a chain around you.”

  Erik shot her a look and she shrugged.

  “Does it matter?” Jia asked. “If we’re taking down criminals, that’s useful in and of itself. If they’re connected to someone more important, we’ll work up the ladder like he said.”

  Captain Ragnar nodded at Erik. “I’m not trying to feed you BS, Detective Blackwell, and I’m not pretending there won’t be a lot of pushback. I was selected because the UTC and the American governments did everything but shove a scanner up my ass to make sure I was clean. I’m going to help you as much as possible, but you’re right. There are a lot of people with a vested interest in the way Neo SoCal is currently established and run, and no one’s under any illusions that those people aren’t going to do what they can to apply pressure and throw up roadblocks, direct and indirect.”

  Erik grinned. “I’ve got a flitter. I’ll just fly over any roadblocks, real or political, and if I can’t?” He shrugged, the grin remaining.

  Jia shook her head. “He’ll probably just blow them up with a missile.”

  “If it gets the job done, I’ve got no reason to complain.”

  Jia side-eyed him. “Let’s try to solve cases with fewer explosions.”

  Emma laughed. “You might as well tell a shark to move to land.”

  “I think you’ll both do fine,” Captain Ragnar offered. “But, yeah, let’s cut down on the number of explosions if possible.”

  Erik feigned a disappointed look. “What I am supposed to do with all those missiles I bought?”

  Jia’s eyes widened.

  “I don’t have any missiles, Jia,” Erik told her. “Not yet, anyway.”

  Chapter Seven

  A couple of hours later, Erik and Jia sat in their office, eyes searching the air in front of them.

  Both were finishing some of the lingering reports required for recent cases and incidents, including the jewelry store robbery. Holographic data windows surrounded them, and other than a few quiet murmurs, neither had said anything for several minutes.

  Erik glanced up when Jia’s hand waved in a circle, closing the windows floating around her. “You finished already?” He looked at the reports around him that still needed attention. “I need you to teach me your tricks. I’ve done my share of boring reports over the last few decades, but these cop reports are boring at a whole new level than I’m used to.”

  Jia shook her head. “We didn’t talk about him. That doesn’t seem right.”

  Erik’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Captain Ragnar?”

  She laid her head back for a moment, looking up. “I want to believe everything he said, but I wonder if he’s too good to be true.”


  Erik chuckled. “Don’t worry about our present from Generous Goa.”

  Jia looked at him, her brow creased. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re acting like it’s some great deal that we’ve got him, but the guy basically admitted that half this department and a bunch of politicians are still going to be trying to screw us.” Erik offered her a lopsided grin. “Short answer: don’t get too happy yet.”

  “Anyone who isn’t actively sabotaging my investigations is an improvement over Monahan.” She turned her chair to face him. “So, what are your thoughts about our new captain? If other detectives or corrupt politicians want to come after us, so be it.”

  Erik blew out a breath and thought for a moment. “I’m not saying we co-sign a loan with the guy, but I don’t think he’s going to pull a Monahan for a while. If he wanted us on a tight leash, he would have made that clear right away. It’ll be too late to get us under control later, and he seems to be the type who would know that.”

  Jia let out a sigh of relief. “It’s not that I need perfection. I just want to build on what we’ve done. I feel like we’re making progress, even if things are getting more chaotic.”

  “It’s like I told you before. Think of dealing with crime like fighting a frontier insurgency. That’s how I’m viewing it.”

  Jia’s incredulous look told Erik she didn’t care for his choice of metaphor.

  “Let’s try that again,” he offered. “All I’m saying is that when you’re poised to break the back of an enemy army,” Erik explained, “is when they get desperate and start fighting back the hardest. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing, and it’ll all work itself out. Even the laziest cops can become an asset if we stay the course.”

  “How do you figure?” Jia asked.

  “Because once it becomes uncomfortable for them to not do anything, they’ll start doing their job because that’ll end up being easier than not doing it.”

  “Here?” Jia muttered, her eyes flicking to the bullpen. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Huh?” Erik had gotten somewhat lost in the conversation, which was unusual when dealing with Jia. Her naïveté had made her straightforward and honest, far more than he was in a lot of ways.

  Jia took a deep breath and raised her eyes to the ceiling. “It’s just hard accepting the truth, even now. I mean, if Earth is as corrupt as any other planet, and Neo SoCal is, too, what does that say about the rest of the UTC? I keep thinking about the kinds of things you have seen. I’m still processing everything that’s happened since you arrived, and sometimes I have trouble sleeping at night. I already believed the frontier was terrible, and now I wonder if it’s even more terrible than I’ve imagined.”

  Erik’s stomach tightened, and an image popped into his mind: his unit being slaughtered on Molino. He offered Jia a forced grin.

  “I’ve seen a lot of nastiness,” he responded, his voice quiet and personal. “I’m not going to deny that, but I also learned during that time on the frontier that any enemy can be beaten.”

  “I feel…” Jia lowered her head to look directly at Erik once more. “I feel guilty when I’m not doing something. I’ve taken up indoor gardening lately. It’s something I used to do, but when I became a cop, I figured I should be spending all my time doing work in my profession. I know we’re not the only cops in the metroplex, but it’s hard not to feel like every wasted minute means I’m letting the criminals grow stronger.”

  “You can’t obsess about the job all the time.” Erik’s brow wrinkled in concern. “If the soldiers I commanded needed downtime, so do you. You’ll burn out, and you’ll be useless to the captain, the 1-2-2, and me.”

  “What about you?” Jia peered at him with undisguised interest.

  “What about me? I just said I need you.” Erik grinned. “It’s not like I can beat down every criminal in this city by myself.”

  Jia chuckled. “I’m not talking about that. I mean, what do you do for fun, other than drink beer and eat beignets? I might feel guilty about it, but I do have a life, both gardening and with my friends. I even go out on annoying dates. We met on a night I was out dancing, after all, but I still don’t know a lot about what you do when you’re not on the job.”

  “I’m spending a lot of time getting used to Earth and figuring out where to get certain things I need,” Erik answered. Just the other day, he had tracked down a new supplier for his TR-7 ammunition. That was as much for personal enjoyment as work, wasn’t it? “I’ll figure out something to do with myself soon enough.”

  A knowing smile appeared on Jia’s face. “Physician, heal thyself. Neo SoCal might have a corrupt underbelly that we’ve exposed, but it’s also the largest city in the world. There has to be something you can find to do here that isn’t police work.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me. I know how to keep going.” Erik slapped his chest. “I’m still here after all these years and all those battles. I don’t know how to burn out.”

  Jia leaned forward and narrowed her eyes.

  “What now?” Erik answered her unasked question. “You’re suspicious of Ragnar, so now you’re interested in my private life?”

  “Oh, sorry. No. It’s…your hair. It’s not as gray?” Jia sat up straight, an apologetic look on her face. “It looks like the de-aging treatment is still working. I wasn’t sure. I’ve seen more than a few people where their hair stayed gray.”

  “Yeah, I’ve met more than a few myself.” Erik ruffled his hair. “But I can live with gray hair for a while. There are worse things.”

  “Thanks for the advice, Erik.” Jia tapped her PNIU and a new data window appeared in front of her. “I suppose I should finish this report and not worry about the captain or feeling pointless guilt.”

  “Probably.” Erik nodded and returned his attention to his own windows. He needed to give Jia the custom-engraved pistol he’d purchased for her, but he wanted it to feel special. Like a commendation, not a gift.

  Jia’s time was coming. It just wasn’t that moment.

  Erik yawned as he headed down the hall toward his apartment. Writing up reports had tired him more than getting jumped by angry security bots or having a firefight with robbers. It drained the soul, and even his decades as an Army officer hadn’t helped him build up a decent resistance. Someday, when he died, it would probably be from a heart attack in the middle of writing a report.

  The apartment door across from his slid up, and his neighbor Garth stepped out.

  The redhaired man blinked in surprise before smiling. “Hey, Erik. I was just going out on an errand.”

  “I just got off work.” Erik’s door slid open, but he stopped and turned toward the other man. “Can I ask you something about your job?”

  His eyes lit up. “My job? At Hermes? Oh, you mean…” Garth’s eyes lost a bit of their excitement. “You didn’t read the book I sent on the hidden Navigator truth, did you? I’ve been waiting for you to ask me about it.”

  “I’ve just been busy, is all,” Erik replied. There was no reason to spin up the conspiracy theorist by explaining his theory that the Navigators were hanging out on Earth in stasis in platypuses was insane.

  Garth was pleasant enough otherwise, and unlike many conspiracy theories, it was relatively harmless.

  The man wasn’t calling for the extermination of any of the species he believed were actually Navigators or attempting to link them to the government or corporations.

  As far as Erik was concerned, without a time machine, humanity’s relationship with the long-extinct Navigators would be limited to the reverse engineering of their technology, such as the hyperspace transfer points.

  The UTC had gotten lucky that the Local Neighborhood races all seemed to have achieved roughly the same level of advancement. A more-than-a-million-year-old advanced race would, by comparison, be like humans showing up to chase monkeys out of an area.

  The very real conspiracy of Erik’s unit being slaughtered needed to be solved and Hermes’ com
m message tracking codes had brought him to Neo SoCal. They had taken him on a trail leading to a conveniently exploding office controlled by Halcyon, a Ceres subsidiary, but he couldn’t ignore the possibility that someone had led him there on purpose.

  “Busy?” Garth’s expression brightened a bit. “Oh, right. I get that. You’ve been doing your thing to clean up the city.” He waved a hand. “Take your time. If you have any questions about the Navigators when you get to read the stuff I sent you, you know where to find me.”

  “Sure, sure.” Erik waved a hand dismissively. “I’ll do that, but back to Hermes. I was just wondering a few things. I’ve got an investigation I’m working on, and Hermes came up. I’m not saying they did anything wrong, just that I have to follow these leads, and I’d like to know what the hell I’m talking about before I go knocking on any doors. After what happened with Ceres, I need to be careful.”

  “That makes sense.” Garth scratched his ear. “What do you need?”

  “Would it theoretically be possible for someone to hack into Hermes Systems to change tracking codes?” Erik asked. “When I was in the Army, they kept insisting it wasn’t possible, but the DD likes to claim a lot of things aren’t possible.”

  He wouldn’t have thought true AI was possible before meeting Emma. There was only so much he could risk the AI by pointing her straight at Hermes or Ceres Galactic. If he pushed too hard, the Defense Directorate might take her back.

  Garth furrowed his brow, the corners of his mouth curling in a frown. “The tracking codes for all messages are based on quantum-encrypted transponder signals. They can’t change the codes without the recipient system knowing. The quantum signature would be off. That isn’t even a hacking thing. It’s like a fundamental physics thing, and it’s preserved despite the effects of hyperspace. Hermes wouldn’t be the power it is in the UTC if all it took was a few good hackers to fake or alter messages en route. You can’t even spy on the messages without Hermes knowing.” He shrugged, his expression suggesting he thought the question was ridiculous.