Deception

by M. R. Forbes

  “I understand your caution, Sheriff,” he said. “I would be cautious too if I were you. Please, give me five minutes with your Governor, and we can straighten everything out.”

  Sheriff Dante locked eyes with him, keeping her hand on the butt of her revolver. Finally, she nodded. “Alright. But you aren’t coming any closer to Metro than you are right now.” She tilted her head, tapping her star with her chin. A green light came on in the center of it. “Klahanie, it’s Dante. Patch me through to Governor Stone, will you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” a young male voice replied. “Standby.”

  They waited for nearly a minute, standing together in silence while the Deliverance continued hurtling toward the system’s star. Caleb struggled to stay patient. He was trying to save the city, and the Governor was wasting their time with this show of authority?

  “This is Stone,” a gravelly voice said through the star at last. “What’s the situation, Sheriff?”

  “Governor, I was responding to a code blue near the aft seal. Sensors picked up a breach, so I took a squad of deputies and Chief Engineer King up to take a peek. I came across four strangers in the corridor leading through engineering to the area. They claim to be United States Space Force Marines.”

  “Marines? You said they came through the aft hatch?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ve got them detained in the access corridor. I was concerned they might be scavengers or looters, who maybe stumbled on the bunker from outside.”

  Stone didn’t respond right away. They waited in silence again for him to consider the news.

  “Bring them into the city, Sheriff,” Stone said, his voice suddenly hard. “To your office. If they’re armed, take their weapons. If they resist, shoot them. Put them in lockup until I arrive.”

  “What?” Flores said. “Alpha, we can’t go in lockup. The ship is—“

  “Enough, Private,” Caleb snapped. Flores stopped speaking immediately. “Governor Stone, my name is Sergeant Caleb Card, United States Space Force Marine Corps. I’m also one of the Guardians assigned to protect Metro. Sir, I understand that you’re wary of us and our intentions, but I have to insist that we not be detained. The entire city is under serious threat, and we don’t have time to delay.”

  “I see,” Governor Stone replied. “And what kind of threat are you talking about, Sergeant?”

  The tone of his voice suggested the Governor was running with Sheriff Dante’s theory that they were looters or thieves from outside. How could he believe something so irrational?

  “I’d prefer to discuss it with you in person, Governor,” Caleb replied. “The information I have is sensitive.”

  “I see,” Stone said again. “Well then Sergeant, I suggest you stop wasting time questioning my authority and get busy turning your weapons over to Sheriff Dante and her deputies. I’ll be down to the sheriff’s office to meet with you as my schedule allows.”

  “With all due respect, Governor. We don’t have time to wait on your schedule. Whatever you had planned, I guarantee it isn’t as important as what I have to say.”

  “You have an awfully high opinion of yourself, don’t you Sergeant? We’ve done quite well here, you know. On our own for the last two hundred years. Hell, the only trouble we’ve had came in the last couple of days when our systems shut down for no identifiable reason. I would venture to guess that disruption occurred with your arrival.”

  “Is this guy for real?” Flores said.

  “Private Flores shut it,” Caleb said.

  She closed her mouth, struggling to keep it that way.

  “Governor, my name is Doctor Riley Valentine,” Riley said. “I’m not a Marine. I’m a scientist. But I’m here with Sergeant Card because we desperately need your help. I know this is all a little sudden and probably frightening, but we’re all going to be in bad shape if we don’t take action right now.”

  “You sound like my wife,” Stone said. “I’ll tell you what, Doctor. I’ll consider your requests once I have you under control. Try to see things from my perspective. I have twenty-six thousand people I’m responsible for in here. You show up out of nowhere claiming to be Marines and whatnot and that all of a sudden we’re in some kind of danger? I don’t know a damn thing about you. For all I do know, you intend to lure us outside so you can gain control of the city or worse.”

  “Twenty-six thousand?” Caleb said. “What happened to the rest of you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Metro was designed for around forty-thousand occupants. Population levels were supposed to remain flat.”

  “What do you know about that? How?”

  “We’ve been here since you entered the city and the hatches were sealed,” Riley said.

  “That isn’t possible,” Stone replied.

  “Sheriff Dante, do you have an ID scanner?”

  The Sheriff nodded. “Of course.” She used her other hand to lift the small device from her belt.

  Riley held out her wrist. “Would you mind scanning me?”

  “Governor?” Dante said, asking for permission.

  “Go ahead, Sheriff.”

  “Come to me,” Dante said. “No funny moves.”

  Riley approached the Sheriff. “I need to pull off the top of the armor to get my wrist free.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Sheriff Dante kept her revolver trained on Riley while she unclasped her SOS and pulled her arms out of it, letting the heavy material gather around her waist. She turned her bare wrist over and held it out. Dante scanned it, her eyes widening in surprise.

  “This can’t be.”

  “Identification codes are stored on the mainframe’s blockchain,” Riley replied. “It’s tamper-proof and verifiable.”

  “Sheriff?” Stone said.

  “Sir, according to the scan, not only is Doctor Valentine who she said she is, but she’s also listed as the acting Governor of Metro.”

  “What?” Flores said behind Caleb.

  “What?” Caleb said a moment later.

  Riley turned her head back toward him, smiling. “How do you think I convinced Governor Lyle to seal the city in the first place? Command gave me final authority over the colony. I know it hasn’t seemed like it, but don’t forget, Sergeant. This is still a civilian operation.”

  “Sheriff Dante, bring our guests to your office immediately,” Governor Stone said. “They can keep their weapons. I’ll meet you there at once.”

  “Are you sure, Governor?”

  “Hell yes, I’m sure. Just do it, Lasandra.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The light on her star blinked red, signaling that the Governor had disconnected.

  “You heard the Governor,” Sheriff Dante said. “If you’ll follow me.”

  Caleb kept staring at Riley. “You’re the new Governor of Metro?” he asked, trying to get his mind around the idea.

  “Pretty much.”

  Her smug smirk said it all. She had known what was going to happen when they met with the people of Metro, while Caleb had been focused only on completing the task at hand. It took every ounce of his focus to keep his posture normal, his reaction buried. He had made a huge mistake bringing Riley with them instead of confronting her straight away.

  How many more people were going to pay with their lives because of her?

  Chapter 42

  Metro didn’t look the same as Caleb remembered it.

  The beautiful park lined with green grass, trees, and flowers was gone. In its place was a brown mess of hardened decay lined with the stumps of long-dead trees. It appeared as if the trees had been cut down at some point, used for something the designers of the Deliverance had never intended.

  The city beyond the park was just as bad. Caleb recalled the brand new cubes with the glass storefronts at their base, and sparkling streets laid atop the porous membrane of the massive hold’s surface. He could still picture them as if he had seen them the day before, which was only slightly off from the truth. The shine was gone. Th
e windows were broken and patched, the exterior walls scored near ground level with what appeared to be bullet holes. The streets were filthy and coated in debris. The storefronts were empty.

  There were people in the streets. Their clothes were ragged and torn, their faces sullen and sad. They wandered between the blocks, picking at the trash, searching for anything that might have any value.

  ‘What the hell happened here?” he said, his heart clenching at the sight of Metro. None of these visuals were new to him, but he had thought they had left the post-apocalyptic destruction of Earth behind.

  Clearly, he had thought wrong.

  “Problems,” Sheriff Dante replied. “All kinds of problems. Technical failures for one. From what I’ve heard, the blocks were built up in a hurry, and the equipment wasn’t always made to spec. It was the simple things that started breaking down first. The motors for the doors. The drives for the lifts. Then the more complex things. Medical equipment. The atmospherics. Burst water pipes. Electrical fires.”

  “We’ve done our best to keep things patched,” Joe said, glancing over at his wife. “I feel like the whole damn place is held together with duct tape and solder.”

  “I’m sure you’ve done an incredible job,” Caleb said.

  “It was all put together so fast,” Riley said. “To get as many people to safety as we could.”

  “You should know,” Dante said. “How is it you’re almost two hundred seventy years old anyway? Last time I checked, people don’t live that long.”

  “Stasis,” Riley replied. “Hibernation. Not just me. Sergeant Card and Privates Flores and Washington too. We stayed behind to watch over the colony.”

  Dante’s left eyebrow went up. “You did? How long were you sleeping, Doc? Because we didn’t have anything good going on in here, and we never heard a peep from you or Sergeant Card or anybody.”

  “What else happened, besides the mechanical breakdowns?” Caleb asked.

  “I don’t want to speak to that,” Sheriff Dante replied. “I’ll leave Governor Stone to give you the whole history lesson. Needless to say, as you can see it hasn’t been the utopia the idjit who wrote the protocols was hoping it would be. All I can say is, if you were supposed to be looking out for us, you did a lousy job.”

  Caleb pressed his teeth together to keep from saying anything in response. He also glared back at Flores to make sure she remained silent. At least he never had to worry about Washington speaking out of turn. There was a time and place for both sides to sync up on everything that had happened to them, but this wasn’t it. He wasn’t sure the meeting with Governor Stone was it, either. They had four hours. Three and a half now, to fix the Deliverance before all of them died. The details and the history lessons could wait.

  Dealing with Riley’s treachery would have to wait too.

  They reached the Sheriff’s Office. Like the rest of the city, it had fallen into complete disrepair. The sliding glass doors at the front were completely gone. There were bins spread across the floor to catch the generated rain that leaked through a sagging ceiling, the terminals and displays on the rows of desks were dark, and it looked like the entirety of law enforcement was being run through notes on scraps of paper.

  “I know it looks like hell,” Dante said. “We do the best we can with what we’ve got. Fortunately, things are more settled these days. We don’t have to work as hard to keep the population in line.”

  Caleb felt Washington’s hand tap his shoulder. He glanced back, recognizing the other Marine’s expression. “Agreed.” They both had a bad feeling that whatever happened to the city that had cost it fourteen thousand of its inhabitants, it had been violent.

  They had just entered the office when Caleb heard footsteps approaching quickly behind them. Sheriff Dante and her entourage turned back, so he did the same, watching as a tall, thin, bearded man in a long, dark coat and dark pants hurried toward them. He was flanked by a squad of what appeared to be Marines on either side. They wore makeshift uniforms that had been fashioned from the original law uniforms, modified with bits of plastic repurposed as armor plating. They carried wooden bows in their hands and had quivers of arrows on their backs.

  At least now Caleb knew what had happened to all the trees.

  “Governor Stone, I presume?” Riley said as the man came to a stop in front of the group. Caleb had been so busy staring at the nearly medieval Marines he hadn’t noticed how Dante, her deputies, and the engineers had all dropped to one knee and bowed their heads.

  He was damn sure that wasn’t in the protocols.

  The Governor motioned for the others to rise. “I’m Governor Jackson Stone,” he said, holding his hand out to her. He kept it palm down at first, lifting his wrist slightly as though he wanted her to kiss it. He caught himself a moment later, turning his hand over and offering to shake. She took his hand.

  “Doctor Riley Valentine,” she said. “Or should I say, Governor Riley Valentine?”

  Governor Stone chuckled. “Let’s not be too hasty in disrupting a century of effort,” he replied. “You haven’t even been here five minutes.”

  “Of course,” Riley said, her eyes narrowing. It was interesting to Caleb to see how a snake confronted another apparent snake. “We have more important issues to discuss, anyway.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Stone said, pleased by her response. “How public do you want to make these important issues?”

  “Right now, I’d like to keep things as quiet as possible. Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  Stone nodded. “Dante, you’re with me. You too, Joe. The rest of you wait here. We can talk in the back.” He pointed toward one of the offices at the rear of the office.

  “Sergeant?” Riley said, beckoning Caleb to join her. As if she had a choice. Governor by order of Command or not, he had no intention of trusting anything she said or did.

  “Wash, keep an eye on the garbage knights,” Caleb said. “Flores, stay alert.”

  “Roger, Alpha,” Flores said.

  Caleb followed Riley, Governor Stone, and Sheriff Dante to the back of the law office, into what appeared to be Sheriff Dante’s personal space. Her desk was a mess of torn pieces of paper scattered around the only functional terminal in the building, her chair was rusted, cracked, and fading, and her walls were decorated with ancient photos so weathered they looked like they had been hanging there since the launch of the Deliverance.

  It only took Caleb a moment to realize they probably had. He momentarily forgot about the meeting as he walked over to one of the framed photos, mesmerized by the subject. Sheriff Lily Aveline was older in the picture, but he would have recognized her anywhere.

  “Sergeant?” Sheriff Dante said.

  Caleb turned back, suddenly embarrassed. “Sorry.” He pointed to the picture. “I knew her. Lily Aveline. We were friends.”

  “That’s her with her daughter,” Sheriff Dante replied. “My great-great something grandmother. The Aveline women have been running Metro’s Law Office for a long time.”

  Caleb smiled. “You’re related to Lily?”

  “I am.” She smiled. “It’s pretty weird to know I’m standing here with somebody who knew her personally.”

  “This whole thing is odd,” Governor Stone said. “Especially the results of Sheriff Dante’s scan. I’m sorry, Doctor Valentine, Sergeant Card, but I don’t understand everything that you’re selling here.”

  “That makes two of us,” Caleb said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Stone asked.

  “You’re missing an awful lot of colonists, Governor. The place is falling apart. You have guards walking with you carrying bows and arrows, and your Sheriff bends a knee when you appear. Not to mention, I noticed the bullet marks on the walls of the blocks. There’s been an awful lot of gunfire in the city. In fact…”

  Caleb’s hand darted out from his side, grabbing Sheriff Dante’s revolver and yanking it from its holster. He pointed it at Governor Stone.

  �
�Sergeant!” Riley snapped.

  Caleb pulled the trigger.

  The hammer dropped. The chamber turned. The gun clicked. Empty.

  “You’re out of bullets, aren’t you Governor?” he asked.

  Stone barely reacted to the show. He already knew the status of his Sheriff’s firearms. “You’re very astute, Sergeant,” he said. “We have been for a long time. But you know what? We don’t need bullets. We just need people to think we have bullets. Threats are what keep people in line.”

  Caleb flipped the revolver over in his hand and held it out to Sheriff Dante. “If I had to guess, Metro had a civil war.”

  “That’s right,” Stone said. “But don’t put it on me, Sergeant. It was before my time. It was before the time of anyone in the city.”

  “What happened?” Riley asked.

  “To put it simply? A good number of people were sick of the living conditions and wanted out, and they were willing to do anything to do it. An equally large number of people didn’t want them opening the seals and letting the trife in. So instead of staying unified against the real threat, we went to war with each other. It’s obvious which side won.

  “My grandfather was in charge of the defense. A war hero. He was elected Governor after all was said and done. He was a pragmatic man. He realized this sort of thing would happen again if measures weren’t taken. He was big on history, and he drew on the monarchies of the middle ages in rearranging the composition of the city. He took away the people’s choices, formed a powerful militia, abolished the elections, and ruled with an iron fist. My father did the same, and now it’s my turn. If you don’t like what you see, it’s not there because we’re savages or because we’re unreasonable. We made it this way because it works.”

  Something about the way Governor Stone made his speech made Caleb think he had practiced it before. He questioned the truth of it. Had the nature of Metro changed to help it survive, or had it altered to satisfy the needs of one man or one family? He couldn’t be sure.

  “Is that why the people don’t know the truth about what’s outside of Metro?” Caleb asked. “To keep them in line?”