Cabal of Lies

by Michael Anderle

  “Detective Lin, I’m sure we can accommodate those requests.” Idrin smiled warmly, offering his hand again. “Let me welcome you to training at Copez.”

  The old woman kept her hands folded in her lap as she listened to Erik speak.

  He’d gone for a jog to clear his head when he hit a circle of benches nestled in a tiny clearing. He’d not spotted anyone except the old woman for the last fifteen minutes. When he settled down, a simple greeting turned into him mentioning woman trouble and an abbreviated admission of his situation with Jia, with a few key details left out, such as that they were detectives.

  “Erik, was it?” the old woman asked him, a squeak in her voice.

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  She lifted her head to smile at the sun hidden behind the trees, a serene look on her face. “All our technology and planets, even aliens, and everything’s always about the same problems in the end.” She sighed. “It’s funny when you think about it.”

  Erik let out a pained chuckle. “That is the truth.”

  He was glad he had stopped to talk to her. Sometimes all you needed was a good grandma type to give advice, and it was difficult to find someone who didn’t recognize him as the Obsidian Detective, let alone someone with wisdom.

  She might not be that much older than him chronologically speaking, but his decades out on the frontier had made him weaker in social skills than he was willing to admit.

  The old woman slowly turned away from her admiration of nature to focus on Erik. “This isn’t that hard, though. You just have to think about the real issue.”

  “It’s complicated since we both have a lot going on.”

  She took a sly look around the clearing before leaning closer. “I’m going to ask you the same thing I asked my second grandson when he called yesterday with a similar problem.”

  “Sure, whatever will help.”

  “Are you banging her yet?”

  Erik stared at her in disbelief. “What?”

  “Are you banging this woman yet?” the old woman whispered as if they weren’t the only humans for hundreds of paces around them. “If you are, and you already feel this way, you’re overthinking it. You’re obviously into her. You should go for it.”

  “I, uh…”

  The old woman laughed quietly, patting his arm. “That’s how he reacted, too. When he stopped sputtering, he admitted he was already sleeping with her.” She pinned him with her gaze. “What about you, Erik?”

  “No, not yet.” Erik shook his head. “We’re not even really dating, remember?”

  “Real dating? Fake-dating?” The woman scoffed, waving her hand. “Labels don’t mean anything. Feelings do. And chemistry.” She pointed a finger up. “You need the heat between the sheets. Is that the problem? Is she not hot enough for you?”

  Erik couldn’t believe this sweet old lady was talking that way, although as his shock faded, he appreciated her candor. “No, that’s not it.” He sighed. “She’s damned hot. The first time I met her, you should have seen the dress she was in. It should be illegal. But that’s not everything, right? Circumstances matter.”

  “Why? If you work with her and you don’t have a problem, that’s a sign of compatibility. If you’re physically attracted to her, that’s another sign of compatibility. Just need that final chemistry test.”

  For once, it was Erik who blushed. “Heat between the sheets?”

  “Exactly.” The old woman winked and stood. “Don’t fight it, Erik. We’re not machines. This kind of thing isn’t about careful thinking.” She waved and headed toward the path. “Good luck.”

  Erik watched her until she disappeared from the clearing. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Heat between the sheets, indeed.” Emma snickered.

  “You shut up, and not a word of this to Jia, or I’m ejecting your matrix into the asteroid belt,” he muttered.

  Emma only laughed harder, even if she did calculate the probability at just under ten percent he would do exactly that.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  September 7, 2229, Neo Southern California Metroplex, Police Enforcement Zone 122 Station, Office of Captain Alexander Ragnar

  Erik stepped into Captain Ragnar’s office with a smile, Jia right behind him.

  It’d been an easy but boring morning, dominated by a Kandarian report follow-up. Erik suspected that was about to change. Being summoned to the captain’s office meant one of two things.

  Either Captain Ragnar was going to tear them a new one, or he had a high-profile case for them—something with potential political sensitivity. Doing real policework would be nice, especially since the Malcolm situation wasn’t a distraction anymore.

  The smile slipped off Erik’s face as soon as he spotted his superior.

  Captain Ragnar sat behind his desk, his massive frame imposing and a concerned look on his face. That didn’t scream someone who wanted to yell at his two top detectives, but it wasn’t the look of a man who wanted to discuss the best beignet recipes. There was one possibility that might be far more annoying than a politically sensitive new case.

  “Don’t tell me Kandarian’s walking,” Jia spat, beating Erik. “If they’re letting him walk, they better be trailing him with so many drones, he won’t be able to take a dump without them knowing.”

  Erik eyed the red-faced Jia after her regrettable outburst but said nothing. Perhaps she had been spending too much time at the sports bars with him during games? It wasn’t that he minded, but would she realize what she had just said and be embarrassed?

  “No,” the captain replied. “He’s not even trying to get out of the charges. This has nothing to do with Kandarian or any of your recent cases. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “What is it, then?” Erik asked.

  The captain’s brow furrowed even deeper. “We’ve received a message from David Esposito’s prison. He wants to talk to you two. He claims he has additional information he wants to give up on Ceres Galactic. He claims he can implicate a number of highly placed people both within the company and without.”

  “If he had that kind of information, why didn’t he give it up before? It might have shaved a few decades off his sentence.”

  Jia nodded in quick agreement. “And why us? It’s not like we can do anything for him at this point. We weren’t the arresting officers.”

  Captain Ragnar tapped a virtual keyboard projected over his desk. An image of a beautiful dark-haired young woman in an elegant black gown appeared. She looked familiar to Erik, but he couldn’t quite place her.

  Jia rubbed her chin. “That’s Maria Esposito, right? His wife?”

  Erik gazed at the picture for a moment before remembering. De-aging had treated him well, but he still had a little stubborn gray in his hair that didn’t want to go away. He wondered if it ever would.

  “Yes, that’s Maria Esposito,” Captain Ragnar confirmed. “And I think she might be the reason her husband suddenly is feeling talkative. The CID recently froze what few accounts she had left, and it’s put financial pressure on the family. Those weren’t working-class people even before his arrest.”

  Erik snorted. “They probably told David she’d be fine if he took the fall. Or maybe she didn’t realize she needed to cut back on new yachts.”

  The captain gave Erik an appraising look. “This case was before my time, and it was your first big case, even if the CID took the glory in the end. With everything else under your belt, can you be sure there’s something more there? Esposito wasn’t a low-level peon. It’s not impossible that he was responsible for everything and is now just spewing lies in desperation.”

  “No way.” Jia’s expression twisted in anger. “This goes a lot deeper than David Esposito. There’s no way it stopped with him.”

  “But the CID couldn’t figure that out?”

  She shook her head. “A corrupt CID agent was exposed not long after that incident. The whole thing was timed a little too perfectly.” Jia motioned at the imag
e of Maria. “I’m not saying we can’t trust anyone, but the whole reason David Esposito was thrown to the CID was to stop us from pressing deeper into things. There are other people at Ceres Galactic, highly placed people, who are dirty. I’m sure of it. If Esposito’s desperate enough to want to give them up, we need to move before they or their friends figure out what he’s doing and take him out.”

  “That might be why he wants to talk to us,” Erik suggested. “Has he only contacted the station? No one else?”

  Captain Ragnar nodded. “To the best of my knowledge, the prison passed his message directly to me, per his request. He had wanted it sent to you two, but the prison officials weren’t sure that was wise. They didn’t know if it was some sort of veiled threat.”

  “He has to realize if he’s contacting us, we might not be able to help him cut a deal,” Jia commented. “Did his message mention a deal?”

  “It wasn’t a direct message,” Captain Ragnar explained. “The prison officials just passed along that he wants to speak with you two, that it has to do with Ceres Galactic, and that he won’t talk to anyone but you two, and only in person.”

  Jia thought for a moment before answering. “It’s possible he might think we’re the only ones who can be trusted, or that we’ll be able to push the prosecutors because of our reputations. If we go in person, he’ll be sure he’s talking to us. It’d be far too easy for Ceres Galactic and anyone else they’re working with to fake messages from us, or even a call, especially with the delay.”

  “’Anyone else they’re working with?’” Captain Ragnar looked past Jia at the closed door. “Please have Emma make this safe to talk.”

  Emma appeared beside Erik. “You could have just asked me directly. But it’s done.”

  “When you say anyone else, you’re talking about Talos or a group like them, aren’t you?” Captain Ragnar stared at Jia.

  “Yes,” Jia responded confidently. “While we don’t have enough direct evidence to prove it in court, there’s no way Ceres is just a normal corrupt company.”

  Captain Ragnar leaned back in his chair and looked down, a troubled expression overtaking his face. “If that’s true, David Esposito could give you something that would expose something far more important than a corrupt councilman.” He lifted his head. “I’m sure you both know much more than you’ve told me, and I doubt I’d know about Talos if ID hadn’t thought they were forced to tell me.”

  “Captain,” Jia began. “It’s—” She fell silent at the lift of his hand.

  “It’s fine. I’m a cop, but I also know there’s a reason friends of mine in the military pushed to get me appointed here. I’d gone my entire career without dealing with the Intelligence Directorate until they showed up here.” Captain Ragnar shook his head. “If you’ve kept something from me, it’s because it’s too dangerous for me to know, or because some ghost has told you they’ll disappear you if you tell me. But that circles us back to Esposito and the problem at hand.”

  Erik frowned. “What problem?”

  The captain eyed him. “If Esposito’s in danger from some conspiracy beyond Ceres Galactic, we need to do what we can to have fewer official channels involved with this. If I okay paying for a flight out to the prison and make it official, people are going to find out sooner.” Captain Ragnar grunted in frustration. “If they haven’t already.”

  “Won’t be a problem,” Erik replied, a grin building. “We’ve got connections that can get us there without using departmental resources. We just need official approval to go to the prison, so they don’t try to gun us down when we get there.”

  “I don’t want to authorize this as part of an official case yet,” Captain Ragnar replied. “But the prison officials have already made it clear they’re willing to receive you, as long as we all keep quiet about it. We’ll have you flagged under normal visitation. That should keep you off certain people’s radars for a little longer. For all we know, this might all be bullshit, and Esposito just wants to spit in your faces after wasting your day.”

  Jia snorted. “No. He fell on his sword for the company, but he’s gone from being a VP at one of the most important companies in the UTC to being stuck in prison. The prospect of rotting in space while his family is being squeezed has to have put things into perspective and made him desperate.”

  “But like you said, we can’t offer him any deals,” Erik noted.

  “If he’s got something worthwhile, I’m sure we can work with the captain and CID to figure out how to handle it. If he’s truly willing to give up important players, that’s got to shave at least a few years off his sentence.”

  Captain Ragnar looked at his detectives. “These connections you mentioned. Can they get you there quickly, or is it going to take a few days to set up?”

  Erik shook his head. “Nope. We could leave whenever.”

  The captain tapped his fingers on the desk a few times. “Then I’d suggest you call your friends and get going. If he’s not full of shit, who knows how long it is before he ends up dead?”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Sitting in a cockpit seat, Jia stared out the window as Earth dropped behind them.

  Despite what Emma had suggested, she didn’t feel any special wonder at the massive blue marble just because they were in their own ship. Her previous trip to the moon might have taken away the joy of spaceflight, or the reason for their trip was dampening her enthusiasm. The residual tension stiffening her neck didn’t help.

  As with their trip to the moon, this wasn’t a sightseeing expedition, and unlike that trip, there wouldn’t be any interesting landmarks or local culture to observe at the prison.

  Virtual displays lit up the control panel. Various tones sounded occasionally. Jia recognized a few from her pre-study for flight training, including a slow pulsing proximity warning indicating nearby material not on a collision course.

  Radar and lidar displays depicted the jungle of objects in the nearby area.

  Space was large and mostly empty. Most people could not wrap their minds around that, given centuries of stories showing otherwise.

  The average asteroid in the belt was nearly a million kilometers away from the next. So, even in a part of the Solar System more crammed with objects than most, the threats were farther apart than the average distance between the Earth and the Moon.

  Not hard to miss.

  Because of the emptiness, accidents during space travel were mostly constrained to three moments during any trip: liftoff, docking, and landing. Liftoff from Earth presented the additional risk of intercepting the stations and satellites crowding Earth orbit. Most of space was empty, but the area near Earth was in desperate need of thinning.

  Cutter leaned back in the foremost seat, his hands behind his head. “This is the easiest job I’ve ever had. I just have to sit here.”

  Emma’s holographic form reclined in the third seat. “It’s far safer for me to fly it.”

  “That’s technically illegal,” Jia muttered.

  “My existence probably is, too. However, the law doesn’t change that it’s safer for me to fly this ship.”

  “You say that, Holochick, but you don’t have my human instincts.” Cutter gave her a toothy grin. “The kind of instincts that only come from fearing death.”

  “’Holochick?’” Emma scoffed. “Instincts and fear aren’t necessary when you have superior data processing ability.” She sneered at him. “Remember, you’re only here because it’d raise too many questions if they flew in without a licensed pilot. I don’t acknowledge you as the pilot of the craft, even if I will obey Detective Blackwell’s request that you fly it for whatever unlikely reasons.”

  “Hey, Koval’s paying me either way, so I don’t care.” Cutter shrugged. “I get you don’t always need a pilot. Once we dock, I’ll double-check everything. I’m not as good as a dedicated engineer, but you don’t fly as long as I have without learning your way around the systems.”

  Jia leaned over to watch the various f
lashing dots on the primary lidar display. “You raise a good point.”

  He turned, eyes on her. “I do?”

  “He does?” Emma asked, sounding astounded.

  Jia pointed to a small data window listing reactor output and magnetic containment. “This isn’t a flitter, it’s a spaceship. If we’re going to be using it regularly, it’s not good enough to have a pilot. We’re going to need someone to maintain it.”

  Cutter gave her a breezy smile. “Have Koval handle it. She’s already got them paying for the other stuff.”

  “Alina’s not always going to be with us, or even in a place we can contact her. She could be off fighting a cyborg somewhere in the arctic while we’re under the sea.” Jia sighed and shook her head. “Like now. Even if we stick to the Solar System in the immediate future, there are a lot of places we’ll be on our own. That means we need to be able to maintain and operate things. Erik and I get shot at.” She looked at Emma. “A lot, which means this ship might get damaged, and I don’t want to be sitting on some Jovian moon, hoping Koval can stop by.”

  “So hire an engineer,” he told her. “What’s the big deal?”

  “We can’t just hire someone off the street. It has to be someone who can be trusted and won’t panic when someone launches a missile at them,” Emma answered.

  “Someone’s fired a missile at you?” Cutter sounded more curious than surprised.

  Jia nodded. “More than once.”

  He shook his head. “No wonder Koval likes you two.”

  Jia’s gaze shifted to a distance and projected arrival readout. Between acceleration, deceleration, and docking, the trip to the prison station would take about twelve hours. There wasn’t much to see on the way, other than the occasional space station that looked like nothing but a distant speck of light.

  Jia stood. “I’ll be right back. Just want to stretch my legs and talk to Erik.”

  Cutter nodded. “I’ll just be here wasting space for good pay.”