Shattered Truth

by Michael Anderle

  Jia shook her head, her smile lingering.

  The wounded flitter continued to lose altitude. The thug banged on the side, screaming in frustration.

  “Are those words fineable if spoken in public?” Emma quipped.

  The Tin Man leapt off the vehicle before it struck the ground. It fell to its side and skidded, leaving a trail of sparks and debris. The thug hit the ground with a loud grunt and rolled several times before getting to his feet, his face a mask of anger and hatred.

  Erik and Jia dropped down on either side of the thug, hovering just off the ground on their borrowed mini-flitters. Both pulled out weapons, this time the stun pistol for Jia.

  The thug extended his blades, their arrival announced by the schwep and then snick as they locked into place.

  “Ready to give up?” Erik asked, a huge smile on his face, his pistol rock solid. “Because I don’t know how you’re used to things working out, but I’ve found that the guys who bring guns to a knife fight are the winners.” He eyed the knives. “Even when you have fancy knives.”

  The thug snarled. “I’m mostly metal now, cop. You think you can take me down with a few bullets? I’ll make sure I gut you so bad by the time the other cops show up, it’ll be too late. It doesn’t even matter if I die, as long as I know I took you with me.”

  Jia narrowed her eyes. “Threatening a police officer after committing an assault and resisting an arrest isn’t the wisest course of actions. You’re under arrest. All Article 7 rights apply. Do you need these explained to you?”

  “Pretty sure that was the first thing he learned in Elementary school.” Erik quipped.

  “The only right I’ll need I’ll take,” the thug replied, his teeth gritted as he eyed both of them, waiting for one to make a move. All it would take would be to get one in front of the other for a moment, and he could still get out of this.

  Erik tilted his head toward Jia. “If I kill him, it’ll cause trouble, but I am curious how many stun bolts it’ll take with all that hardware. He’s probably got a few dampeners, too.”

  The thug growled. “I’ll kill you both.” He tapped his metal chest, the clink-clink-clink audible. “You have no idea who you’re messing with.”

  “No, I don’t,” Erik replied with a shrug. “Really don’t care, either.”

  “Surrender immediately,” Jia demanded. “Or I’ll stun you until you forget your own name.”

  Erik chuckled, surprised by her vehemence but not disapproving of it. With a little additional tactical training, she would be great in a fight.

  The thug crouched, the gravel under his feet grinding as he dug in first one foot, then the other. “I don’t think you two cops can take me down. I shouldn’t have run to begin with. I’m going to enjoy slicing you up.”

  “You don’t know who we are?” Erik asked, surprise tainting his voice. “So much for my fifteen minutes of fame.” He sighed. “Ah, who cares? Fame’s annoying anyway.”

  “Famous?” The Tin Man’s smirk annoyed Jia. “You’re nothing more than two cops who are going to be dead so—” The thug jolted and fell as Jia shot him square in the chest with a stun bolt, his limbs spasming. He growled, “So help me, I’m going to ram a knife through just the skin on your head.” He climbed back to his feet, turning to face her. “I’ll wear your face like a mask.”

  “He does have a dampener,” Jia observed, her eyes narrowed.

  Three quick trigger pulls sent more bolts to drop him to his knees.

  “Bitch!” He tried to stand, so she shot him twice more.

  A final shot directly to his head ended with him face-first on the ground, his eyes rolling up in the back of his head.

  “You should have said something like, ‘That’s Officer Bitch to you, Antisocial Scum.’”

  She ignored him. “Some people just don’t know when they’ve lost.”

  “That’s true,” Erik agreed. “And some people are just stubborn idiots.”

  Jia looked at him and grinned. “Which are you?”

  “Both, depending on the situation,” he admitted.

  They parked the flitters and hopped off, approaching the suspect with weapons drawn. He might be feigning defeat.

  Jia prodded the drooling man with her foot. “He’s not very smart, is he? Not to mention, he’s lucky he didn’t kill himself on the mini-flitter.”

  Erik laughed. “Nope, he isn’t very smart. Or maybe he’s smart but unlucky. Same difference in the end.”

  Jia holstered her pistol and pulled out some binding ties.

  They might not last against a suspect with two cybernetic arms, but they would at least slow him down. “If we are going to spend a lot of time dealing with Tin Men, we might need to carry some additional gear in the Taxútnta.”

  “I have room,” Emma piped in from Erik’s PCIA, “but don’t overcrowd me here.”

  “Not planning on it,” Jia agreed. Her face turned an interesting shade of green for a second. Erik raised an eyebrow. A moment later, she got her stomach back under control.

  “Good job,” Erik offered. “You did what you needed to, and we caught him. Now we’ll just wait for the locals to show up and cart him off. I’m not that worried about getting all the credit for some street punk, even one with a ridiculous amount of hardware.”

  Jia tucked a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear. “You,” she waved a hand at the prone figure on the ground, “didn’t have this in mind when you suggested we come today, did you?”

  “Taking down a Tin Man?” Erik shook his head. “Not likely.”

  “Not necessarily this kind of criminal, just…any criminal,” she countered, double-wrapping his wrists.

  “No. Like I said, I just wanted to get a feeling.”

  Jia frowned at the stunned thug. “And what feeling did you get?”

  He looked around. “The same one I got last time we came here. The Shadow Zone’s a very interesting place, more interesting than Uptown in a lot of ways. It’s a dangerous place, but an interesting one.”

  Jia stood as she nodded, her brow furrowed. “I don’t know if I can really disagree with that.”

  A crowd of curious onlookers emerged from a nearby building, eyeing the scene with trepidation. They murmured among themselves, but no one looked eager to confront Jia and Erik.

  Jia pulled out her badge and held it up. “NSCPD. Please return to whatever you were doing. This situation is now under control. We’re sorry for any disturbance or discomfort this might have caused.”

  Sirens sounded in the distance.

  “The two patrol flitters will arrive in under a minute,” Emma reported. “I took the liberty of informing them you’ve already secured the prisoners via your PNIU, Erik.”

  “I didn’t hear any of that,” Erik replied.

  “I filtered some of the transmissions. You seemed like you were busy and didn’t need to be distracted.”

  “True enough.” Erik shook out his hands. He’d been gripping the yoke too tightly. “Nice flying, by the way.”

  Jia’s face twitched. “I think that’s a matter of opinion.”

  “What are you complaining about?” Emma asked. “You’re not dead, and you caught your suspect.”

  Chapter Twelve

  September 20, 2228, Neo Southern California Metroplex, Pacific Breeze Restaurant

  Jia smiled as her date, Bolin, sat down across from her. The table had room for eight, but the triple date had the three men across from Jia and her two friends.

  Her friend Chinara sat across from her date Conrad, and Imogen paired off with the handsome, dark-haired Michael.

  Now that they were all together, Jia hoped she wouldn’t regret agreeing to the triple date, but she doubted there would be much trouble with her two best friends around.

  They hadn’t spent much time together in recent weeks because of work, especially on Jia’s part, so the date was as much about seeing her friends as finding a guy.

  The restaurant lay deep in the interior of a commerce
tower, but semi-translucent holographic projections of long beaches covered the walls. A refreshing simulated breeze carrying the salty scent of sea air created a pleasant marine atmosphere for the diners at the restaurant.

  No one would be fooled into thinking they were at the beach, but it served as a pleasant enough reminder there was the Pacific Ocean to the west.

  A light din filled the room. Smiling customers filled every booth and table in the restaurant. The Pacific breeze felt alive, and the sensation heralded the relaxation which suffused through Jia’s stiff shoulders and back.

  She knew little about the man her friends had set her up with, and that made her wonder if the night would end in embarrassment.

  Bolin returned Jia’s smile. “It’s nice to meet you.” He rubbed the back of his neck, a slight dimple showing as he offered her an apologetic look. “I didn’t know what to expect after hearing I’d be going out on a date with a celebrity.”

  Jia tried not to wince.

  Imogen laughed as she glanced at Jia. “Don’t tell her that. It’ll go to her head.”

  “I’m not a celebrity,” Jia replied. “We were only doing our jobs. It just turned out that some of the people caught up in the case were a little more high-profile than other criminals we’ve dealt with. There were plenty of other police officers and CID agents involved in all those incidents.”

  Bolin furrowed his brow. “You say you’re not a celebrity, but I don’t think I’ve ever been out on a date with someone who was on the news.” He let out a soft chuckle. “And I know I’ve never been out on a date with someone as attractive as you.”

  Michael coughed into his hand, obviously trying to hide a smirk. Conrad gave his friend an impressed look.

  Jia’s cheeks heated. She wasn’t sure if Bolin was smooth or ridiculous, but she accepted that there was nothing wrong with a compliment while out on a date.

  She tried to take in Bolin without staring. He had a handsome face and a lithe, athletic build, but she found herself wishing he had more bulk on him.

  She blinked at the realization, confusion settling into her mind.

  She had always believed she didn’t have any strong preferences concerning the physique of her dates, but it was now hard to avoid such concerns intruding into her thoughts. There had to be a reason for the sudden clarity of preference, but she decided not to dwell on it.

  Not now, not here! she chastised herself.

  Bolin was across from her, and she wanted to give him a chance. Her friends wouldn’t have set her up with someone they thought she would dislike.

  Chinara offered a bright smile to her date. Jia felt a little underdressed when she compared her simple black number to the flowing lavender gown and elaborate braids her friend wore, but Chinara always could hold a room with her fashion sense and beautiful smooth, dark skin.

  “You all work together, right?” Chinara asked. She gestured at Conrad. “That’s what you told me before. I didn’t know if you meant the same company or you worked in the same office.”

  Conrad nodded. The brown-haired man was as handsome as Bolin and Michael, although there was a slight swagger about him the other two lacked.

  It bordered on arrogant, but he wasn’t Jia’s date, so it wasn’t her concern.

  “Same team and company. We’re all engineers.” Conrad waved a hand at his friends. “But I won’t bore you with our project. It’s nothing that impressive. It’s not like being a cop and taking down gangsters.”

  “It’s not all gun battles and mini-flitter chases through the Shadow Zone,” Jia replied. “Most of what I do is just simple investigation, data review, and interviewing witnesses—that sort of thing.”

  Bolin stared at her. “Mini-flitter chase through the Shadow Zone? That’s something that happens sometimes?”

  “It’s only happened once. The mini-flitter chase. I’ve been involved in a few regular flitter chases.” Jia let out a nervous chuckle. “The mini-flitter situation was unusual. That’s not something I’ve had to do before in my career.”

  Bolin nodded, his eyes wide. “Okay, that sounds dangerous. Don’t you ever worry about getting hurt? I read all about how gangsters tried to kill your partner and you in some warehouse, and how you had to fight your way out.”

  Information about all the incidents had been well-managed, although the government had kept Emma’s existence and presence at the warehouse from becoming a matter of public knowledge.

  “Not every criminal surrenders when you ask.” Jia shrugged. “That’s part of the job. If I’m doing my job, then other people have less risk of getting hurt. A police officer who is afraid of danger shouldn’t be a police officer.”

  Had she gone too far? When she resaid the sentence in her head, she detected unintended arrogance.

  “I suppose that’s true,” Bolin replied with surprise on his face. “It’ll just be hard when you try to start a family, wouldn’t it? I can’t imagine it would be easy to put children through that kind of worry.”

  “That’s a problem for the future.” Jia needed to move the conversation away from her career. “But enough about me. Chinara didn’t tell me much about you.” She looked at the guys on the other side of the table. “Any of you. What kind of work do you do? You’re engineers, but there has to be something specific you’re working on. If you can talk about it. If you’re under NDA, I understand, but I’d love to hear about it.”

  Imogen let out a weary sigh. Jia didn’t bother acknowledging it.

  She wasn’t trying to be a downer; she was just trying to steer the conversation away from something other than her performing dangerous stunts in the Shadow Zone or fighting gangsters, especially since that would lead to her needing to talk about Erik.

  Probably the last thing Bolin wanted to hear about was her ex-Special Forces partner.

  “We’re working on grav field emitter designs, mostly,” Bolin explained, some excitement returning to his expression as he started speaking with his hands. “We’re trying to improve efficiency and field shape and strength, that sort of thing. It’s a lot of iterative design work, not the sexiest area of research.”

  “That sounds like it could be very useful.” Jia leaned forward, working to feign interest. “Faster vehicles that don’t need thrusters, right? Protective fields. I’m sure there are plenty of other things you could do with that kind of technology that I haven’t even thought about.”

  And how would you shoot one?

  Bolin’s eyes widened. “Exactly.” There went his hands again. Thank God he didn’t have a knife. “Everyone thinks we’re fine because we’ve got the tech we have and we’ve been establishing colonies all over in recent years, but we can always improve it, and we don’t want to end up like the Leems and stagnate. Humanity might be united now, but we’ve got all those aliens around, and they might not always stay friendly. I mean, we almost went to war with the Zitarks last year.” He shrugged. “The future of the human race will come down to our tech against theirs.”

  Imogen shivered. “I don’t even want to think about that. This is why I’ll never leave Earth. I don’t want to run into any aliens. It’s just too weird to think about.” She looked at her friends. “I’m not saying I want to go to war with them, but humans have gone for this long with only the occasional contact. I think the aliens and we will all be fine if we just stay away from one another, and I would be quite freaked out if I met one.”

  Jia wasn’t sure how she felt about other intelligent species. Her focus had always been on Neo SoCal, not even all of Earth, let alone the entirety of UTC space.

  Given the uneasy relationship between humanity and the Local Neighborhood races, she doubted there would be any new aliens setting foot on Earth in her lifetime, despite some incidents in the distant past.

  “You would have to go to the farthest frontier planets to even have a chance of meeting any,” Jia commented.

  Conrad nodded his agreement.

  She continued, “You are not going to find them on a
ny core world, and if they were present, they would be all guarded in an embassy or on a military base or something like that.”

  An excited expression spread across Bolin’s face. “I don’t care so much about the aliens, but I would love to get a chance to examine their tech. Even if it’s not more powerful, it has to be different, even just in little ways like their interfaces. If we can reverse-engineer Navigator tech, we can do the same for the younger races.”

  Michael and Conrad nodded their agreement.

  The intergalactic conversation came to a halt as the waiter arrived and took their drink orders. Jia decided on green tea, not trusting herself with alcohol on a first date.

  Her tolerance had been increasing of late from going out to Remembrance with Erik, but she remained a lightweight, and even if nothing happened with Bolin, she didn’t want to embarrass herself. Especially if she decided she liked him.

  More light chatter followed for a few minutes before the waiter delivered their drinks, her friends adding to the conversation in almost a round-robin effort. It wasn’t like any of them worked on field emitters.

  Chinara should have provided a whitepaper on the engineering they did so she would have a bit of background. Then again, if she hadn’t tried to get the conversation onto someone else, they might not be going down this road.

  Jia took a sip of her green tea as Bolin finished explaining the difficulties of maintaining grav field strength, depending on the shape and density of the actual emitter. She tried not to chuckle as she thought about all the attention and engineering that went into the device, and how she and Erik had been shooting them so frequently.

  It was always easier to destroy than to create.

  “That’s very interesting,” she replied. “I didn’t know a lot about that, but materials engineering isn’t something I’ve studied much.”

  “Come on, Bolin,” Conrad chided. “We talk about this all day at work. We shouldn’t be talking about work on a date, especially with someone like her. You’re going to bore her.”

  Chinara raised an eyebrow and folded her arms across her chest, but Conrad didn’t notice.