Shattered Truth

by Michael Anderle

  Erik chuckled. “I got some news for you there, O Glorious Supreme Leader of the Evolved Six.”

  Jeanne’s breath caught. He could imagine her pained expression. “You don’t know anything, Detective. Don’t presume to think you do.”

  “No, I think it’s more that you don’t know anything. I’m not leaving until I find you. You tried to kill me, my partner, and a lot of innocent people, so I owe you, and I’m not the one hiding now, am I? Don’t poke a bear in the nose then cry when he mauls you to death.”

  “You’re not running? How interesting.” Jeanne muttered something Erik couldn’t make out. “I’ll grant you some small measure of respect for not being a coward, then, but that means you won’t leave this place alive. Keep in mind, I’m well aware you’re hiding in a heavily guarded police station, and that’s fine. I’ll get to you eventually and make you pay for killing my brothers, but before that, I have a mission to accomplish.”

  Jia nodded to him from her desk with a look of triumph. Erik nodded back and stood. He grabbed his duster from his chair and threw it on before heading toward the door. His partner rose and followed him.

  “What’s your mission?” Erik asked, stepping out of the office.

  The bullpen had turned into a busy hive of activity. Uniformed officers and detectives shouted and scrambled out of the room. Antonio nodded to Erik from a distance and mimed holding a rifle.

  Erik shook his head and mouthed, “I’ve got my own, remember?”

  Antonio patted his chest and pointed toward the hallway. Erik vaguely remembered passing the armory. He nodded back.

  “You’ll understand soon enough, Detective,” Jeanne replied, oblivious to all the activity going on around Blackwell. She might be watching him closely enough to know where he was, but she obviously didn’t have eyes inside the department. That confirmation killed the final concerns Erik had about any local police helping the terrorists. “But you’ll never be able to stop me. Perhaps if you’re willing to offer yourself to me, no one else will have to suffer. You will die regardless, and your fame will show how pointless it is to cling to the old ways.”

  “I’m going to have to go with a big no on that offer.” Erik chuckled. “All we have to do is find you before you—”

  Jeanne terminated the call.

  “Touchy,” Erik muttered before jogging to Antonio. “You have an exact location, right?”

  “We’ve got drones on it now. Top floor of an apartment tower. We don’t have visual contact, but we do have thermal confirmation of multiple people inside on that level. We’re going to surround the building, then breach.”

  Erik looked at Jia. “Good job on pushing for the trace, but I think Jeanne might have figured it out.”

  “All the more reason for us to go.” She gestured toward him. “If she sees you’re there, she’s less likely to run.”

  “True enough. Let’s go grab some vests and head to the party.” Erik shook out his hands. “We need to finish this and get back to decent beignets.”

  Jia shook her head. “Your infatuation with beignets never ceases to amaze me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  People streamed out of the bottom of the tower. Police surrounded the entire area, both on the ground and hovering in flitters. Erik and Jia waited near a door along with several other officers, including Antonio and his partner. All wore thin tactical vests, their weapons at the ready. Jia had returned to using a stun pistol, but Erik held his TR-7, ready to deliver a deadly stream of bullets.

  The local police had electronically sealed the floor and issued an evacuation order for the rest of the building. Internal cameras had died about thirty seconds after the announcement, but drone thermals indicated at least four dozen distinct people on the sealed floor. Quick analysis and records comparison suggested most, if not all people, on the floor were likely terrorists, given among other things the timing of their rentals, but the police couldn’t be sure. The police hoped any civilians present would be smart enough to stay secure in their apartments as directed until the raid was over.

  The raid would be short and brutal. TPST would break in from flitters outside while the other police teams would enter from inside, two teams approaching from different doors. The raid countdown proceeded, each police officer’s smart lenses informing them of how much time remained.

  “So much for complete surprise,” Erik muttered, waiting for the countdown to end. He flipped his TR-7 to quad mode. “We should have busted in here right away.”

  “If we had raided immediately, they might have taken more hostages,” Antonio insisted. His partner nodded in agreement.

  Erik patted his duster to make sure he hadn’t dropped any of his extra magazines. “The important thing is to get Caron. This time we can stick her in a deeper hole, but if we take her and hold her, this is all over. You guys can be the cops who helped bring down the Evolved Six.”

  Jia’s fingers flexed on the grip of her weapon. “It’s in a terrorist’s nature to destroy themselves. Antisocials can’t build anything. Their demise is inevitable. It’s just a matter of protecting other people in the meantime.”

  The detectives fell silent, along with the uniformed officers near them as the countdown reached twenty seconds. They held their breaths and flipped off the safeties on their weapons.

  “Ten,” Antonio counted. “Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…. Breach breach breach.”

  The door slid open, the main building systems already under the control of the CFMPD. Four men in normal clothes and holding rifles stood several meters behind the door in the wide hallway. Erik fired before the door finished opening. The detective’s heavy bullets ripped through them and they fell, their blood painting the floor and walls around them. One terrorist got a shot off, but the bullet flattened against Erik’s vest.

  He charged forward, sweeping the hallway and looking for more targets. Gunfire echoed from the halls on either side, along with the shouts and screams of men and women. Thunderous explosions shook the floor, the sound echoing in the distance.

  “Some of the terrorists are armed with plasma grenades,” reported an officer over the PNIU. “All units, exercise extreme caution.”

  Jia and Antonio moved in behind Erik, followed by the uniformed officers. He continued jogging forward, allowing the uniformed officers to sweep and clear each apartment behind him. Antonio and his partner stayed back with their fellow officers while the NSCPD detectives continued moving forward.

  The buzz of stun pistols and the crack of rifles overlapped behind Erik as the officers entered different apartments. Groans and whimpers followed, but not the dreaded “Officer down.” The growing roar of heavy rifle fire from the exoskeletons outside the building joined the local cacophony.

  Two more terrorists, a man and a woman, rushed around a corner at a nearby intersection. Both held rifles.

  “NSCPD!” Erik bellowed.

  The man snapped up his weapon to fire. Erik’s quad burst shredded the chest of the man, and Jia downed the woman with two blue bolts from her pistol.

  Erik paused at the intersection and threw up a hand. Jia stopped and flattened herself against the opposite side, her pistol pointed up, her breathing ragged. There was no fear in her eyes, only determination.

  He peeked around the corner as the sound of gunfire died in the distance for a moment. The distant clank of exoskeletons sounded before the gunfire, stun and lethal, started up again. Another explosion shook the floor.

  “I’m detecting unusual activity four apartments down on the left before the next intersection,” Emma reported. “Someone there is attempting to override the building systems and gain access to the local floor controls. I’m doing my part to surreptitiously prevent it without making it too obvious to the CFMPD. There’s no internal camera transmitting in the apartment that I can hack.”

  “I’m assuming you don’t want to wait for TPST?” Jia asked, a smirk on her face and her eyebrow raised in question.


  Erik looked over his shoulder. Antonio and the other officers were still clearing the first row of apartments. In the distance, officers from the other team were halfway up the hall. A few dead and bound terrorists lay in the hallway.

  He rubbed his nose and grinned. “They didn’t nearly get blown up by missiles. If it’s Caron, that psycho is ours.” He rushed forward, lowering his weapon to chest level. Jia ran after him.

  An apartment door on the right opened, and a man came out with his hands up. He had no visible weapons.

  “Please,” he whimpered. “I don’t know what’s going on. You have to help me.”

  “Get down on the ground, sir,” Jia ordered.

  The man’s lip shook. “W-what? I’m not a terrorist. I just moved here the other day, and I… What’s going on?”

  “Place your hands on your head,” Jia barked. “We need to bind you until we finish taking the floor back from the terrorists. I’m sorry for any inconvenience, but this for your own safety.”

  Emma scoffed. “Shoot the Grayhead playing you, or you are highly likely to die.”

  Jia and Erik both fired at the same time. No hesitation. The stun bolt struck first, but it didn’t matter as Erik’s bullets ripped through his neck. The man spun and fell on his face, gurgling. Something clattered out of his back pocket.

  Erik approached the man slowly, his weapon trained on the dying man. Jia kept her gun pointed at the open apartment door. As Erik approached, he saw that the fallen object was a small black rectangular metal device with two notches on either side—a plasma grenade. He gestured to the blinking red dot. “We’re lucky it wasn’t primed. The bastard probably wanted us to get close, and then he was going to take us out with him. Good call, Emma.”

  “I have to admit, I’m surprised you fired on my word. Neither of you even seemed to consider the possibility I might be wrong.”

  Erik shrugged. He knelt and pressed one side of the grenade until the dot flashed blue. “You might be rude and superior, but you aren’t interested in getting innocent people killed, and you’d be embarrassed to make a stupid mistake.”

  “I suppose that’s one way to look at it. Not that you’re wrong.”

  More shouts sounded from behind and ahead, along with gunfire. The other officers had found some additional hidden terrorists and resistance inside the apartments.

  The thunderous steps of the exoskeletons drew closer.

  “Let’s wrap up Caron so we can help the others,” Erik suggested. “Any more thermal traces in the nearby apartments, Emma? We can keep doing this one by one, but I don’t think our friends are moving that much anymore.”

  “Just the one with our hacker,” Emma responded. “There’s only one thermal trace inside.”

  “Good enough for me.” Erik sprinted toward the apartment, and Jia kept pace.

  “Can you open the door for us, Emma?” Erik called. “If she’s good enough to try to hack the local systems, she can probably delay us a few more seconds than I would like.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “Some measures specific to the door have been taken, but I now have access. I should also warn you, I no longer can get decent positioning on the terrorist inside. Massive thermal and general EM interference has started.”

  “She knows we’re here,” Jia warned.

  “Probably, but the plan’s the same.” The duo arrived at the apartment in question. “Open on three. I’ll take point.” Erik moved in front of the door and flipped his quad to single-fire mode. He waited for Jia to move to his flank and raise her pistol before whispering, “One, two, three.”

  The door slid open and Erik rushed in, pointing his weapon both ways as he sought a target. A high-pitched whine filled the air—a jammer— and a wave of heat suffused the air. Several bright spheres floated in the living room, thermal cloaks. He scoffed but couldn’t see much because of the position of the wall.

  The terrorist had a lot of expensive toys. He looked for heatwaves in the air, expecting optical camouflage.

  Erik crept toward the thermal cloaks, not saying a word. Jia needed no instruction; she kept her weapon pointed the opposite way.

  They approached the living room, the whine growing louder as they closed on the source. A human shadow darkened the far wall.

  Erik halted and nodded to Jia. She frowned and returned the nod. Something thudded down the hall from a bedroom. He gritted his teeth. Emma had said there was only one thermal trace, but the terrorists had access to jammers and thermal cloaks. They might have a few other surprises.

  Jia tilted her head toward the bedroom door.

  Erik hesitated before nodding. He waited a few seconds, then sprinted into the living room.

  Jeanne Caron stood near an open window, her face twisted in rage. She held a plasma grenade in each hand, her fingers tight around the weapons. “These are pressure-primed. If I drop them, they’ll go off. But you’re a former soldier. You understand that, right, Detective?”

  “You lost, Caron,” Erik intoned. “Disarm the grenades and surrender. You don’t have to die here. Live to fight another day and all that.” Something flitted through his mind about less is more before he added, “Or at least you can spew your Grayhead garbage to someone in prison.”

  Her expression turned serene. “Oh, it doesn’t matter if I die here today. Our actions will resonate. The cause will still be advanced, even if certain miscalculations were made. I know something you don’t.”

  “And that is?” Erik asked, gun rock-steady.

  “Someone wants you dead,” Jeanne replied, a hint of mirth in her tone.

  “A lot of people want me dead.” Erik’s fingers twitched.

  “But are they are willing to pay for your death?” Jeanne clucked her tongue. “I wonder. They say most of your unit died on a moon on the frontier, but you survived. You weren’t supposed to, were you? They obviously care. I could tell they cared about you surviving when I asked them, even if they denied it.” Her eyes cut to the side. “Ah, this will do very nicely.”

  Erik didn’t turn his head, although he could make out Jia on the edge of his vision.

  “It was just a falling clock,” Jia reported, her voice tight.

  “Disarm, Caron,” Erik ordered.

  “You know we’re all three going to die now?” Jeanne asked. “At the end, I will still take down those who are against unification and deification.”

  “No one else has to die, including you,” Erik growled. “I’d like to kill you, sure, but my buddy Antonio and his CID friends have a lot of questions. I’m sure you can bargain with your answers.”

  Her voice dropped, turning introspective. “I should have stayed true to my beliefs and not money, Detective.” Her eyes shot open, anger rushing to fill them. “Glory to those who would sacrifice themselves for the future!” Jeanne whipped up her arms.

  Erik put a round through her head before she could complete her throw. She fell back, her hands still gripping the grenades. He pivoted, dropped his TR-7, and leapt, tackling Jia into the hallway. The grenades exploded in a cloud of blue-white flame, consuming Jeanne Caron. The fire licked hungrily at the walls and floor.

  Erik hissed as the edge of the explosion incinerated most of his duster and seared his back. His body thudded to the floor, arms tight around his partner.

  “Erik!” Jia shouted, her voice a distant sound reverberating in his brain.

  He released his partner, his back throbbing in agony.

  Jia holstered her pistol and grabbed his arm. “You irritatingly amazing fool!” she griped as she pulled him farther into the hallway. Antonio and several other officers were only a few meters away.

  “Officer down!” Antonio shouted over his shoulder. He ran forward, his partner and another officer on either side.

  Erik gritted his teeth, still on his knees. He swayed. There was a hiss and a buzz in the other room as the fire suppression system activated. “Get my gun,” he coughed out.

  Jia blinked several times. “That’s what you’re
worried about? Seriously? Your back is melted!”

  “I’m not dead,” Erik spat through gritted teeth. “And I really like that gun, Jia. It’s a classic.”

  “Fine.” Jia shook her head, disbelief on her face. She jogged into the smoldering apartment, looking at the mess as the flame suppression system wound down. A moment later, she came back with the TR-7. It was scorched, but not seriously damaged. “I found your lover. She’s a little dark around the edges and smells, though. You might need to bathe her.”

  He coughed. “Please, don’t make me laugh.” He grimaced. “Not the best medicine at the moment.”

  Antonio pulled a medpatch out of his jacket and let his hand hover near Erik’s back. “Ready?”

  “Just do it,” Erik muttered.

  The other detective took a deep breath and slapped the patch on. Another bolt of pain blasted Erik’s back and he growled.

  Antonio looked at Jia. “What the hell happened in there?”

  “Jeanne Caron blew herself up.” She shrugged.

  “Of course, she did.” Antonio gritted his teeth. “I guess that’s a kind of justice, but now we’ll never know their plan.”

  Erik took a few deep breaths as the medpatch’s anesthetic began to numb the fiery agony in his back. “She said it was about killing me.” He waited to see if Jia added anything else. He wasn’t sure if she’d overheard the rest of what Caron had said.

  When she didn’t speak, Erik elaborated. “She didn’t make it clear why.”

  If someone had co-opted a terrorist organization to assassinate him over Mu Arae, he didn’t want them to realize he had figured that out. The CFMPD might not be corrupt, but they would leak the information. No, whoever was behind the Mu Arae massacre had made their countermove, and they had screwed up.

  It was almost like they were mocking him. They had used the cover of fake terrorists on Molino to kill his soldiers, and now they were using real terrorists to try to finish the job on Earth.

  Antonio peeked into the apartment. “The price of fame? I’m never going to be jealous of you getting all that media attention, ever.”