Tales of a Liberated Earth #1: Hidden in Plain Lies

Updated: Oct 23, 2022

Detective David Ferguson is given a missing persons case. A comfort girl went off the grid. It should have been simple. But his best lead is a lowlife drug pusher who’s pushing something more dangerous: truth.

Maybe the Empire is all smoke and mirrors. Maybe its hiding something much simpler - and more sinister as a result. As Ferguson falls deeper into the web of suspicion and lies, he learns that the truth hiding in lies is always the most volatile...

Credits and Copyrights

Chapter One

29th of July, 101 AL (After Liberation) – Indianapolis

I could smell the dampness in my office. Much as I disliked the smell, it wasn’t bad enough for me to do something productive about it. The drip-drip from three weeks prior had been patched up. There must have been a new leak in the pipes from the second floor. ‘Not that maintenance would do anything about it.’ I thought, looking up at the discolored ceiling above me.

There would have to be an actual hole in the ceiling all the way through the second floor and into the sky before it got fixed. But that was the way of the world. Everything was made fifty years ago, and none of it to last. That didn’t matter, though. The weapons were upgraded every year. Those tended to work when I needed them. The little things like office amenities and drinkable public water were not the concern of lowly Detectives. Or at least that’s that’s what my boss told me when I grumbled.

He was a real bastard. But you had to be to make it to the top of the Indianapolis Colonial Police Force. Too many career criminals after your head. Terrorist thugs that wanted to convert you to the cause. Junior officers looking to settle a grudge. Didn’t matter the particulars. Always someone looking to settle a score, and men in power tended to be a scapegoat for other people’s failings. A noose to hang all their self-hatred on, as the last couple of seconds faded away before the neck snapped. No, I didn’t want to make Chief.

He was decent enough to me, when no one was around. Got me the desk job that kept me out of trouble for the last seven months. The constant slow drip-drip of the pipes kept me company as the world turned deeper shades of grey over the radio. The screams of the dying as policemen killed wanna-be terrorists made me smile. Human garbage like that deserved what they got.

Police Chief Teagarden walked over and dropped a file folder on my desk, shaking me out of my dreary reverie. “Listen,” he said, tone bristling with unease. “I know you hate being the three legged dog around here, so I’m gonna throw you a bone. Got a missing person’s case you might wanna look into.”

I looked up at him from behind my desk, my eyes straying to the cane I’d been issued by the doc. Then I smirked and said, “Sure thing, Chief. I’ll see what I can do for ya.”

He smiled back before turning away. As he left I flipped open the folder and began thumbing through the files inside. The POI’s name was Veronica Danvers, a comfort girl who’d recently relocated from the colonial frontier, and who had gone missing two weeks before after a suspected incident with one of her customers. I paused on the picture that showed her face. She was attractive, especially by frontier standards, but there was something about her that really caught my attention. Maybe it was her eyes—cold, icy blue, defiant, alive with a kind of distant, haunting energy. The kind of eyes that got guys like me into trouble.

I pursed my lips, then flipped back to the page labeled “Known Associates” and scanned over the short list of profiles. One stood out: a small-time dealer named Nico Galbraith. Lower caste, about five foot-seven inches, brown hair and eyes, no known aliases—he could have been any lowlife who crossed my desk.

Most of the time, life in the Colonial Police Force was simple—criminals broke the law, we arrested them, and they were processed by Imperial agents. The lucky ones spent a few months in the slam northeast of the city, well away from the Upper Cast and their downtown playground. The unlucky ones were sentenced to relocation offworld, where they would work in low-gravity penal factories. In the end, everyone served the Empire. Nothing wasted, no fodder spared from the great grinding machine of expansion.

For someone like Nico Galbraith, this meant being in and out of holding cells year after year, an endless cycle of arrest, processing, release. Drugs, dealing, and death. Rinse and repeat. Didn’t make a damn bit of sense. But the order to find Ms. Danvers came from Imperial Command. Apparently the Upper Caste thought letting the Lower Caste kill themselves with narcotics was “humane prison policy.” Not that a one of them set foot outside the downtown playground district to see for themselves.

Nico was the best candidate to identify where Veronica Danvers went to ground, especially if she had a misunderstanding with one of her customers. Sometimes all it took was a conversation to resolve that sort of thing. Sometimes it took a bullet. Luckily for me, a patrol squad picked him up just north of the city for vagrancy and public drunkenness in an Upper Caste Zone. Every so often the universe drops one in your lap.

Chapter Two

I hobbled into the main squad room on my way to the holding cells, leaning on my cane, and was met by Chief Teagarden. He was biting his lip as he walked up to me. “This Galbraith guy? Yeah, he’s cracked, totally off his rocker.” he said, meeting my eyes. I raised an eyebrow at him and he went on. “We’ve got him in a lockdown cell so he can’t ruffle any more feathers, but if you want to talk to him, I’m gonna warn you now… Be careful. I think he’s got some… strange ideas about him.”

The Chief was ice and stone on the outside, but in his eyes, I could see fear. That set my alarm bells off. I limped back to the holding area of the office, eyes wide. I flashed my credentials to the man guarding the door and he nodded. “Stay on your toes in there Detective,” he said as he slid his ID card to unlock the door. “This guy is somethin’ else. We had to tie him up just to get him calmed down.”

The squeak that spoke from the door begged for grease. A lone table sitting in the center, dirty and disgusting with red smears that were half lit by a flickering bulb. Last I heard they were still cleaning up the blood from the more aggressive interrogation sessions. Maybe not. Twin matching silver chairs sat almost symmetrically on either side. But Nico Galbraith had been tied up, with plasticuffs around his wrists, and was sitting in the corner of the cell with his head down in defeat.

That mood changed when he heard me enter. Nico raised his head and stared at me with fearful eyes, one of which was ringed with a nasty bruise that I assumed was well justified by the questioning officer. He raised his hands and showed me his palms. “Hey man,” he stammered, “stay back, ya hear me? Stay back!”

I stared back at him, leaning heavily on my cane. “Don’t worry,” I said after a moment of silently gauging his reaction, appearance and other factors against my own preexisting mental image. He was scrawnier than I had assumed. I walked over to the chair that looked cleanest and said, “I’m not here to question you. Looks like you earned that already.” Wincing, I slowly lowered myself onto the chair and leaned by cane against the side. “I’m just going to ask you a few questions if that’s all right. Want some water?”

He stared back at me, dark eyes wide with something that went beyond fear. He slowly shook his head. “No, man. Nah. You don’t get it,” he said. “I ain’t talking to you, not until you get me out of this place.”

I paused, curious as to the shift in his outlook on life. Garbage like him tended to push their luck to see how weak you were. “I heard you were pretty talkative when they hauled you in here Mr. Galbraith,” I said, silently pondering what he’d said that had the Chief so spooked. “Any reason for the change in attitude?”

He just shook his head again, more vigorously this time. “I’m telling you man, I’m not saying a damn thing until you get me out of this holding tank and out of this goddamned office.” He lowered his voice and said, “If you think it’s safe around here to have the conversation you want to have with me, then you aren’t ready.” His eyes widened again, and one of them twitched. “They’re watching us, man, they’re always watching.”

As he said these words his eyes drifted up to the closed-circuit camera in the corner of the room behind me. I glanced up at it, too, as if noticing it for the first time. Of course we were being watched. That was the whole point of reasonable surveillance. But when I looked back at my POI, the fear smeared across his intensely average face told me he wouldn’t budge until I gave him what he wanted.

“All right,” I said, standing back up slowly, reaching out for my cane with my left hand. This used to be so much easier. “All right,” I repeated, slightly strained, “We’ll do this your way. I’ve got a missing person to find and you’re my best and so far only lead on the case. I’m not going to let her die, even if she is just a comfort girl. Let’s go, we’ll talk while we start searching for your friend Veronica.”

As I hobbled toward him and he looked up at me with a new emotion painted on his face. Was it curiosity? His voice was calmer and quieter when he spoke.

“You’re looking for V?” he said.

I nodded as I painfully bent low to unclasp the bonds on his wrists with my police-issued hex key. “That’s right,” I said. “I was put on her trail earlier today. It turns out you may be one of the last people to see her before she went into the wind.” I stood him up and grabbed my cane from where I had propped it against the back wall of the cell. “That means you’re gonna help me find where she’s gone.”

He said nothing, and simply nodded, looking relieved. I led him back to the door out of the holding cells and knocked on the inside of the door. One of the patrol officers opened it and gave me a puzzled look when he saw my left hand hooked around Nico’s elbow. “What?” I said. “You think I’m taking him on a date or something? You want next, is that it? He’s a person of interest in a case I’m working, gonna take him on a ride along.”

The guard looked nervous, but at the same time seemed very eager to get rid of his guest. As I passed him, I could feel his eyes piercing the back of my neck, almost hear the thoughts of warning pinging off the back of my head. Chickenshit was terrified. Maybe he was just smarter than me. Maybe I’m just a damned fool.

Chapter Three

Once we made our way out to my ground car in the parking lot, I shoved him in the rear passenger seat. Then I hobbled around to the driver’s side door and climbed inside. We were almost ten minutes down the road before either of us broke the silence. Noticing that Galbraith kept stealing glances at me through the rearview mirror, I said, “Well, I don’t think they can see us out here. You feel like talking yet?”

He stretched his neck to shoot a glance at a passing patrol car before he answered. “You know, this really wasn’t what I had in mind. These fucking police-issued cars could all be bugged, for all I know. How am I supposed to be sure they’re not listening in on us right now?” I grinned, wondering who had done what to earn this sudden outburst of paranoia. It wasn’t the questioning officer. This wouldn’t have been Nico’s first time in cuffs. “Hey man, you think this is a goddamn joke?” Nico asked, his temper rising.

I slowly shook my head, placatingly. “Calm down, Mr. Galbraith. Here,” I said, then turned on the car radio and cranked the volume. It began to blare a typically sanitized and overly cheerful Imperial-approved pop song, something that dripped with the sort of bubblegum lyrics that were an argument for instrumental music. “There, is that better?” I said. “If they are listening, they’ll have a harder time now, right? Now let’s have it, what’s got you in such a twist? Your profile didn’t mention anything about paranoid schizophrenia.”

He actually laughed at that. At least, it sounded like it was meant to be a laugh. In truth it came out more like a single harsh, staccato scoffing noise, strangled by the cynicism of someone who had seen too much to be capable of finding real humor in anything. “You don’t know nothin’, do you?” he said. “This is a lot bigger than anything you can imagine. Bigger than your pay grade, anyway.”

“How do you mean?” I said, eyeing him in the rearview as I took a left turn to nowhere in particular.

His smile slowly left his face as he leaned toward me. “The eyes, everywhere, always watching. Ears, always listening. The Empire has many hands, and every one of them can strangle you.”

I eyed him gravely. This was the kind of talk that must have gotten my fellow officers so on edge. It was the kind of talk that got people dragged in on suspicion of disloyalty to the Empire. The kind that got you degloved on the evening newsfeed, and your name stripped from the register.

It was terrorist talk, frankly. The knowledge of this had me on edge. It wouldn’t take much for me to get caught up in whatever Galbraith was dealing. I eyed him again through the rearview and said, “That’s dangerous talk, you know. People can get into trouble for talking like that, Mr. Galbraith.”

He let out another, longer one of his cold and mirthless laughs. “It’s too late for that…” He trailed off and his mood seemed to darken, lost in thoughts that he hadn’t wanted to cross his burdened mind.

We drove along like that in silence for another few minutes. I was headed somewhere, but where it was I couldn’t tell you or anyone else. I was just waiting to hear what my suspect had to tell me.

After a while I tried to coax him back into conversation, changing the radio station as I did so. There were only a dozen or so stations on the dial, most of them blasting vapid feelgood music while the balance shared bland news updates on the rollout of the new water purification infrastructure in Houston. I let the dial fall on one of these uninspired news broadcasts and said, “If you wanna tell me anything, I suggest you get to it.”

He was leaning forward in the back seat, wringing his hands and hanging his head. He looked up and met my eyes in the rearview mirror before he began to speak again. “I, uh… V came to see me about two weeks back. She was worried, some bit of information that she’d picked up during one of her little business rendezvouses. Usually she comes to see me after to help her unwind, but she was even more pent up than usual. At first I thought she’d just had some kind of weirdo customer, y’know? She’s had some freaks in the past couple of years, lemme tell you. But that wasn’t it. No, she knew something and she didn’t wanna tell me, at least not at first…” He trailed off, his eyes darting this way and that, anxiety written on his features in thick ink.

He went on. “When I finally calmed her down, she started to explain what happened before she came to see me. She said she had seen a john, but that wasn’t what was bothering her. No, this john, this guy she met, he told her things, stuff that he said when she gave him some of the stash of product she kept to help her guys unwind. What he told her had her really freaked out, and when she told me I could tell why.”

I raised an eyebrow at him in the rearview. “And why is that?”

He scoffed once, not a laugh like before, just a single, nervous snort that spoke volumes. Then he leaned toward me again and lowered his voice as if expecting to be eavesdropped upon. What he