John Moralee: Future Imperfect: A Collection of Science Fiction Stories

Nothing in the bag. That meant the fake guards were probably still chasing the girl. But why? I studied the passenger manifest. Charlotte Dodgson boarded the Starcruiser on Nexus Prime. Her personal history was unspectacular. She had been born on Qer, a backwater planet on the edge of the densely-packed region of stars known as The Archipelago. Wait a second. Qer? There had been a big natural disaster on Qer. An earthquake killed a million inhabitants. Personal records had been lost. It was common for criminals to create false identities by claiming to have lost their birth records. Was Charlotte Dodgson a false identity?

My mind normally made connections quickly, but the beta I’d glanded had made my thoughts slower than usual. To clear my head, I glanded a neural stimulant, quickening my thought processes. Everything became ultra-clear.

The name Charlotte Dodgson had not been chosen at random. Charlotte was the feminised form of the male name Charles. And Charles Dodgson was the author Lewis Carroll’s real name. Charlotte Dodgson wasn’t a teenager. She was my mother in a surgically-altered body.

“She’s back,” I said out loud.

Radford heard me and assumed I’d been talking to her. “Who’s back?”

I could not tell Radford the truth, so I deflected. “Thanks for your help, Chief. We don’t need to keep the platform closed any longer. You can re-open it as soon as you like. Excuse me. Got to go.”

My head was pounding with thoughts as I hurried away. A group of armed men had tried to grab my mother at the station—but who were they? And why had my mother returned to Arcadia, where she was wanted for murder, when she could have avoided danger by staying away?

“Vito, where are you?”

“I’m at a filthy junction. The blood trail stops here. It leads to a dozen exits to the streets—but I’ve got no idea which way the girl went. By now she’s got to be out in the city somewhere. Hell! I lost her. I’m going to make my way out onto Tyler Street. Can you pick me up there, partner?”

“You got it,” I said. I didn’t tell Vito I had learnt the girl was my mother in disguise. That was information I wasn’t sharing yet. I knew I would be taken off the case if I reported a personal link to the suspect. I wanted to catch her myself. It was the least I could do after what she had done to my family. “Uh—I’ll bring the flier to you.”

I estimated it would take my partner thirty minutes to get out of the station on foot. That didn’t give me much time on my own, but it was just about long enough to fly to Rasha’s Emporium to collect the package left by my mother. It had to have something to do with her reason for returning to Arcadia and why an armed group of men pretending to be security guards had tried to arrest her.

I flew across the city and descended into the Scrawl, landing on the busy street outside the Grand Market. Rasha’s Emporium was on the ground floor. I went in and collected my gift. I carried the box back to my flier before opening it, collapsing the stasis field that prevented anyone else doing so.

There was a beautiful copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland inside, but it wasn’t an original. It had been printed in 2300. It was valuable—but not priceless.

“Mother, why did you send me this?”

I had no time to examine it because Vito was calling me. “I’m outside, waiting for you. Where are you, Chara?”

“Uh, on my way.”

I hid the book in the inside pocket of my jacket. Then I crossed the river to meet my partner. Tyler Street was in the shopping district in the shadow of the station. Vito was slurping a bowl of steaming takan noodles on the sunny street corner. He finished them as I arrived, wiping his greasy hands with a paper napkin.

“Chara, this case is a big waste of our time,” he said. “We should forget it and get back to our sector, where some real crimes are going on right now. The girl didn’t kill herself and I don’t think we should step on the toes of the guys looking for her–not if they’re Homeworld Defence. Finding her is not our problem. Let’s go do some real police work.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “We were sent to investigate a suicide. Since she’s alive, all we can charge her with is a misdemeanour anyway. We can file a report and move on.”

Vito looked pleased to hear that. I was relieved, too. Needlessly, I’d been figuring out a way of dissuading him from continuing the investigation when I had not needed to do anything. His reluctance solved my problem. We filed our report, then got reassigned to a domestic violence situation six klicks away. Normal police work.

At the end of my shift, I said goodbye to Vito and headed home. The sun was going down when I parked on the roof. I felt the chill of twilight as I left my flier. I intended to examine my mother’s gift more thoroughly once I was inside my apartment, but my plan was interrupted. Opening my door, I was struck by the silence. My sister always played loud music. Something was wrong. In a heartbeat, my Omni was in my hands, set to maximum stun power.

“Shada, are you in?” I called out.

My sister did not answer.

The silence made me uneasy. Closing the front door behind me, I crept into the main room, listening. Just in time, I glanded adrenaline to make my reactions faster. An armed man appeared in the bathroom doorway, holding an Omni pointed at my head. As he pulled the trigger, I ducked, avoiding the bullet. My Omni launched a stun bullet into his neck. He fell, writhing in pain, his nervous system overloaded with painful electrical impulses.

Was he alone? The bathroom was empty, but I glimpsed a moving shadow from the kitchen area. Another armed attacker behind the partition wall pointed his Omni around the corner. He fired a scattershot that tore apart half of the furniture. I dived to my right and switched my ammo to heat seeker bullets. On my knees, I fired through the wall, relying on the bullet’s in-built intelligence to locate the hidden target on the other side. I heard a very satisfying yelp and I ran into the kitchen , where second man was on the floor with a bloody chest wound. He saw me and reached for his dropped Omni—but I kicked it away and stomped on his fingers.

“Who are you?”

He grimaced—but didn’t speak. He coughed blood and groaned.

“WHERE IS MY SISTER?”

I wanted to shoot him again—but I could see he was in no condition to speak. My bullet had entered his chest and ripped into vital organs. I felt like letting him die—but the law officer in me made me tear open his shirt to check his wound.

There were animated tattoos on his chest of an exploding yellow sun, the symbol of the Yellow Star crime syndicate. They were a notorious gang from The Scrawl. He was hired muscle. I went to get a medkit to stabilise him. I attached a medi-patch to his wound and saw it knitting together the raw flesh. He wouldn’t die now—but he would need surgery later. The medi-patch put him into a protective coma while I searched both men. The injured thug had a key fob for a ground car. He also carried a burner cell. The burner cells were primitive tech—but useful for criminals wanting to avoid detection. The cell had only one number in the memory. I guessed he was supposed to call someone after killing me.

Just then, the burner cell rang. If I let it ring for too long, the caller would become suspicious. I answered it with a gruff voice, hoping the caller would think I was one of the thugs.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Is it done?”

“Yeah.”

“You have the book?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you capture the cop alive?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Bring the book and the cop back here. We can use her and the sister as leverage. You and Larick will get a bonus for this, Shorty.”