Desperate Measures Chapter 12

Chapter Ten

July 14, 2230, Neo Southern California Metroplex, En Route to the Apartment of Erik Blackwell

“It’s just weird,” Jia finished after a lengthy recap of her dinner the night before with her sister. Her last statement reflected her concern about her sister’s new life manifesto.

Erik suspected she was feeling him out for the restaurant, but he’d tried to make it clear he wasn’t interested in going by noting he liked being able to choose what he ate. Ironically, that made him pickier than Mei Lin. He was comfortable with that.

Jia had steered the conversation back to her sister’s conversion to a new outlook on life, and it was hard for Erik not to think of his own recently repaired relationship with his brother. Even in the best of circumstances, family could be difficult, and Jia and Erik weren’t living normal lives by any means.

“Weird isn’t the same thing as bad,” he offered. “From what you said, you seem to like the direction she’s heading. Are you saying you want her to be like she used to be?”

“No, I’m not suggesting that.” Jia laid her head back. “It’s not a bad thing, but all these changes have got me confused. To be honest, I think it’s about me being selfish.”

“How are you selfish?” Erik loosened his grip on the control yoke of the MX 60.

Of all the flaws one might attribute to Jia, he had a hard time thinking of her as selfish. He understood why her family had perceived her that way, but dedicating one’s life to a higher cause could not be considered selfish.

In his view, they’d been the selfish ones, and it sounded like Mei now understood that.

“I think I got too used to being the family rebel,” Jia replied, “and now that everyone’s on board, it’s like I have all this pent-up energy to fight and nowhere to direct it. I developed all these instincts to deal with them, and now I’m frustrated I can’t trust those instincts.” She put her hands in her lap. “It’s petty. I admit it.”

“I believe I understand. I still have an urge to punch my brother when he’s being a smart-ass. It’s all about redirection.”

She looked over. “Redirection?”

“Yeah.” Erik grinned ferally. “Your job involves hunting an evil conspiracy. That’s a nice target to aim all that frustration at.”

“True.” Jia smiled. “And not to knock the restaurant. The food was interesting, good even. I don’t think it’s a bad place.”

He’d obviously not been clear enough.

“I think I’ll stick to the places where I get to pick my meal,” Erik replied. “I’m not ready for an avant-garde food experience, and I think you’d get bitchy waiters if I went. I’m not saying a place like that shouldn’t exist, but not every man is made for every restaurant.”

Jia looked disappointed. “I’ll drag you there someday, but I get it. You might not be uptight like Mei, but you’ve got your own things you prefer. I’m always surprised by that.”

Erik raised a brow. “You are?”

“Yes.” Jia pointed at the roof. “It’s not like you lived in the same small city your entire life. You’ve traveled the width and breadth of the UTC.”

“Sure, and most of that involved being on Fleet ships, in newer domes, or in the field eating rations. The frontier is a place about survival, and with limited supplies, the printers aren’t as versatile as you might think.” Erik shrugged. “Or I might be wired to like what I like.”

Jia sighed. “Not an avant-garde dynamic restaurant experience?”

Erik nodded. “Probably.”

“As lovely as this discussion about shoving nutrients into your face is,” Emma interrupted, “you need to change course immediately. Something’s come up. Unless you want me to take over?”

“No,” Erik answered. “I’ll keep flying.”

A new nav beacon showed up on his console display. The most immediate change required was a significant decrease in altitude, big enough to let him know their general destination.

Erik frowned. “Why do we need to go to the Shadow Zone? If it’s a cop incident, we can let the locals handle it.”

“It has nothing to do with the local police,” Emma replied. “We need to go because I received a coded message from Agent Koval requesting your immediate presence there. She sent the meeting request and the coordinates, but nothing else. Given the terse nature of the message and her explicit request for immediate arrival, there might be some sort of danger.”

Jia looked at her feet. “I suppose it’s not like we need to stop off to arm up. We should head there and go in immediately. If she’s in the middle of a fight, it might come down to seconds.”

“If she got her ass captured or killed, that’d be inconvenient,” Erik muttered. “She might be strange with her mythology obsession, but she’s a damned good ghost.”

“Do you think that’s even possible?” Jia asked. “Her being captured or killed? She’s been a ghost for longer than I’ve been alive.”

“Why not?” Erik dropped the MX 60, passing through several vertical lanes in rapid succession. “I know better than anyone that you can always have a shit day in the field, and she does fieldwork.” A car screamed past them. He could see the driver cursing up a storm. “Which means she could end up with a bullet in the brain or captured. If the conspiracy was smart, they wouldn’t kill her. It doesn’t matter how tough someone is, you can always break them, especially if you don’t care how you do it. But I also have the feeling that if it came down to it, Alina would make sure she wasn’t taken alive.”

Jia frowned. “Let’s hurry up and make sure it doesn’t come to that.”

Erik slowed his MX six minutes later as he closed on a sprawling abandoned commercial complex in the Shadow Zone. It encompassed different large buildings. They might be small compared to the massive towers of Neo SoCal, but there was something about buildings closer to the ground to give them a greater sense of scale.

Emma’s scans suggested nothing out of the ordinary, and her drones patrolled the area. On the edge of the complex, she uncovered a small group of indigents gathering for a meal, but there was no one with decent firepower or any unusual readings that suggested a battle.

“I’m not liking this,” Jia admitted. “We might be too late.”

“It’s not like they could jump out of here,” Erik insisted. “If we’re too late to help her, we’re not too late to avenge her.” He sucked in a breath. “Emma, any more messages?”

“No,” Emma replied. “The coordinates place the meeting point inside one of the buildings. None of my drones are detecting any fleeing vehicles in the area. There don’t appear to be any local cameras I can access.”

Jia reached under her feet to grab the TR-7. After Erik landed the Taxútnta, she handed the weapon to him along with some magazines before grabbing a rifle and magazines from a hidden compartment in the back, her face set like granite.

Erik stepped out of the flitter. “No such thing as being too careful. She might have decided to be dramatic.”

“No such thing as paranoia in our line of work.” Jia closed her door and raised her rifle. “It might be that she’s being dramatic, or it might be that the conspiracy is hoping to take down several troublemakers today.”

Erik selected four-barrel mode. “Then I hope they brought an entire army with them. If they took down Alina, she would have made them pay. I know that.”

They proceeded through the open door, following Emma’s nav marker, a couple of her smaller drones flanking them. Vast emptiness filled the large initial room, broken up by occasional piles of debris from the collapsing ceiling and the scuttle of rats and roaches in darkened corners. There were no bodies or fresh blood, though dark stains near a hall connecting to another large room pointed to a past tragedy.

“Multiple contacts up ahead,” Emma noted. “I see Agent Koval, and she doesn’t appear to be in distress.”

They picked up their pace. A quarter of the way down the corridor, they could make out a distant human form with a cyan tinge on the top: Alina in her uncommon non-disguised form. A dark-skinned man stood next to her. They didn’t move or adjust their positions. Quick magnification confirmed the familiar face of Colonel Adeyemi.

If this was a trap, it was a good one.

Erik slung his TR-7 over his back, no longer concerned about an ambush, and quickened his pace. A minute later, he arrived in the next large room.

Jia looked around as if still expecting an ambush, but no Tin Men dropped from the ceiling. No

yaoguai

boiled out of the walls. No half-Leem agents cackled in the distance.

It wasn’t an ambush. It was nothing more than an unusual place to meet. Erik was annoyed by Alina’s lack of clarity, but he wasn’t going to show it.

“Where’s your posse, Colonel?” Erik asked, looking around. “It’s not like you to travel alone, especially to the Shadow Zone.”

“It was necessary,” Colonel Adeyemi replied. “They’re handling something else for me, but they’ll be available soon enough, and that’s a good thing since we’re going to need them.”

Jia frowned. “What’s going on?”

Alina stepped forward, her ponytail swaying. “We’ve gotten so used to hurting the conspiracy that we might have gotten sloppy. They took advantage of it, and they punched us in the eye. It’s a nice lesson in humility, but we need to pay them back with a kick to the balls.”

“Or two, and a third for good measure,” Adeyemi added.

Jia grimaced.

“How screwed are we?” Erik asked.

“Not that screwed yet,” Alina offered, though she didn’t sound confident. “But it could get worse in the coming weeks, depending on what the ID and you can do to deal with the conspiracy’s counterattack. I’ll cut to the chase. An important ID informant looking into conspiracy matters has gone missing, and his handler was killed. That’s bad enough, but the potential reason is a lot worse, and that’s what has really got me worried.”

Erik could only think of one possibility that would get under Alina’s skin. His jaw tightened.

“You’ve got a mole?”

“We don’t know yet, and that annoys me more than you know.” Alina gritted her teeth. “At a minimum, we’ve got a serious leak. My people are currently following that up since, depending on who it is, it might mean we have serious and debilitating operational security problems. Compartmentalization helps, but we’ve had to pull back on a lot of operations until we plug the leak. Otherwise, unfortunate consequences might occur.”

Jia nodded. “That’s an understatement, but what does this have to do with us? You want us to follow up on the leak as an external option? We’re both ready for a mission.”

“This is one time your position works against you.” Alina shook her head. “You can’t dig efficiently into the ID. We have people who are experts at this sort of thing, but my main issue right now is that without knowing how badly we’re leaking, it’s hard to know who and what we can trust. We also can’t sit around doing absolutely nothing, even with the leak. The conspiracy will take advantage of our lack of operations.” She folded her arms. “I have individual agents I’d trust my life to, but they heavily rely on ID channels that might be compromised. We need someone from outside the ID who can operate independently, who we know has the ability to penetrate conspiracy operations.”

“Okay,” Erik replied. “And we’re sure it was them? I know they’re powerful, but they can’t be responsible for everything bad in the UTC. I’m willing to do you favors, but I’m mostly interested in kicking conspiracy ass.”

“We can’t be sure, but the informant was focused on investigations concerning some of the people taking over assets and companies controlled by Sophia Vand. That raises the chance.” Alina tapped her PNIU.

A data window displayed a bloodied man being shoved into the back of the flitter by two large men with pistols. The man attempted to kick one of them, but a thug knocked him out by slamming the butt of the pistol into his head twice. The video stopped shortly after the flitter flew away. A new window appeared, featuring a smiling image of the man.

Alina pointed to him. “This is Nazeer Ahmed. The agent responsible for handling him was found in a restaurant bathroom with three bullets in the back of her head. Because of the agent’s foresight, combined with other intel and the arrogance of his captors to fail to disable a tracker he had implanted for a couple of hours, we know where he is, or at least his body. That means we might be able to salvage this part of the debacle.”

Erik patted his TR-7. “You want us to play fetch?”

“Yes, since he might still be alive,” Alina replied. “Not only will having two outsiders help with this, but there are also some potential political ramifications where using you will help.”

“You’re saying you need someone you can throw under the bus if this blows up?” Erik asked in a matter-of-fact tone. “I’m not saying I won’t do it, but I want to know what I’m getting into. I’m not a fan of surprises.”

“I won’t be done with you, Perseus and Atalante, until you’ve slain all of my monsters.” Alina frowned. “But it helps to have someone less directly connected to the ID when managing the situation. It’s more about making this less of a headache than having sacrificial lambs.”

“What’s the political situation

exactly

?” Jia asked.

Alina summoned an image of a massive mansion surrounded by a dense forest. It was taken from some distance away, emphasizing the size of the home.

“This is where Nazeer was taken. It is the home of a high-ranking Ceres Galactic corporate officer in France, one who conveniently died in an accident a month ago. He had extensive ties to Sophia Vand before her death. There are too many coincidences for this not to be the conspiracy.”

“I don’t get it.” Erik nodded at the image. “If the guy’s dead, what’s the political consideration?”

“There are some in Parliament who are concerned that the ID is out of control,” Alina explained in a weary tone. “Especially on Earth. Some feel the ID should be letting the CID handle this kind of thing, and there are general concerns that we’re overly aggressive. We can’t brief Parliament on the operational details of everything we do, and that makes them question us even more.”

“You’re saying some bought conspiracy tools are trying to weaken you?” Jia growled.

Alina shook her head. “Some are, perhaps, and some are not. You know how this goes, Jia. Some people, even members of Parliament, don’t want to know how much darkness there is in the UTC, let alone on Earth, but that doesn’t mean we should destroy everything that makes the UTC good just to take out the bad guys. That would be a Greek tragedy.” She dismissed the image with the flick of her wrist. “It doesn’t matter. Until we have the leak fully plugged in the ID, we need to be careful about who we send on missions. Blind trust gets people killed. At least you two are a known quantity.”

Emma materialized, this time in an Army uniform. “You want Erik and Jia to assault a mansion that is probably a conspiracy base and heavily defended. Because it’s a recovery mission and political in nature, you can’t simply level it, but at the same time, they have to show restraint until they rescue Mr. Ahmed. Is that it?”

“That’s an accurate summary,” Alina replied. “Nice and succinct.”

“It’s also a recipe for suicide.” Emma narrowed her eyes. “I’m well aware of their relative combat ability against the average gun goblin and terrible troll, but they are only two people, and if they can’t soften the target with bombardment beforehand, they run the risk of being overwhelmed. Skill and willpower can only do so much to overcome sheer numbers. If they took the informant there, they have reason to expect they can defend the location.”

Erik raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t wrong, but he was surprised Emma would show such direct concern about them. He’d gotten used to her begrudgingly showing her concern.

Virtual mother-in-law strikes again.

Colonel Adeyemi raised his fist to his mouth and coughed to get their attention. “You’re right, Emma, and that’s where I come in. No one expects Erik and Jia to go in there alone, and there’s no way I’d let anyone send them in there alone.”

“How are you supposed to do this?” Emma folded her arms with a dismissive sneer on her face. “Aren’t politics involved? Won’t involving the DD cause trouble?”

“Yes, but this is one time, I’m willing to take the risk,” the colonel replied. “I have enough handpicked men and women who are willing to volunteer for a totally off-the-books black op to put together a decent squad. I can gear them up for a major assault, including exos.”

Erik frowned. “And if things go badly?”

“Then a rogue colonel goes to prison or to the frontier, and the ID doesn’t take the hit.” Colonel Adeyemi shrugged, no fear on his face. “We all need to help each other because we all have the same goal.”

“Do we have to be quiet this time?” Erik asked. “Emma’s got a point. We can’t just blow up half the place without risking killing the informant, but there’s no way we’re going to sneak a squad of exos in without shooting someone. I doubt they’ve got that house filled with stun-only security bots.”

Eagerness removed the discomfort on Alina’s face. “You can be as noisy as you want, but you’ll need to do it quickly. If you agree, I want you on a transport tomorrow morning, heading to France. I’m only not sending you tonight because I want you rested, and that gives me time to set up one potential feint operation in another part of the country. You should leave Malcolm behind on this operation. It’s not going to be that subtle, and the reality is because he’s dating Camila, he’s tied into the ID even more directly than you two. And yes, I’m also checking into both of them as leaks.”

Erik nodded, surprised at her suspicion. He decided to opt for levity.

“Since his girlfriend’s in town, he wouldn’t want to go risk his life anyway.” He looked at his partner. “I’m in, but I can’t speak for Jia.”

She nodded. “I’m in, too. Let’s go rescue your informant.”

“Good.” Alina rubbed her hands together. “Let’s talk logistics.”