by Jason LaPier
“Right, that’s what I prefer.” His eyes rotated to meet hers. “You’re Capo Dava, right?”
“What’s the story, Roy?” she said. “Got left behind?”
“No. I mean, yes. Rando – I mean, Underboss Jansen – he wanted me to stay behind and um.” His right hand twisted through the air. “To collect up the BatCaps. You know, the Battle Capture camera drones.”
“We know what BatCaps are,” Lucky said.
Dava withdrew the blade. It was a good story, and she thought she might play along. He wouldn’t be going anywhere. “So you’ve seen the recordings?”
“What? Um, no. No, I haven’t, uh.” He seemed uncertain as to what to do with his hands with the knife no longer at his throat. If there’d been gravity, he might have let that take over and lower them for him, but instead they drifted in front of him limply. “I was supposed to play dead. Just sit in the ship with the systems powered down until it was all clear, then I could go grab the BatCaps.”
“Play dead,” Dava said. A new level of discomfort crossed Roy’s face as his brain struggled to determine whether that’d been a question, statement, or command.
“They left you in a dropship, by yourself?” Thompson said. “To collect up BatCaps?”
“Well, it was the only ship on the Longhorn that has a Xarp drive. And I need to get back home after …” He trailed off, then attempted to puff out his chest a little. “After my mission.”
Dava turned her head. If she had to look him in the face while he spouted lies any longer, she would cut his throat too soon.
Thompson picked up the conversation. “Basil, do you have any idea what kind of clusterfuck happened here?”
“Well, I don’t – I’m just a computer guy, here,” he said. “I mean, I know we lost the fight. But what else would I know about it?”
“Lost the fight?” Thompson said. “We got slaughtered out there!”
“I’m just a computer guy,” he repeated, his voice going small and weak. Then it turned curious. “Hey, how did you all get this OrbitBurner?”
Dava turned back to him. “No. No questions from you.”
“What? I,” he started, then swallowed as he looked at her eyes. “Dava – Capo – we’re on the same team. We’re all Space Waste here.”
At this she closed her eyes. She buried deep the rant about what Space Waste was, and why someone like Basil Roy would never be a part of it. She pushed it down and out of the way, because there was no time to explain these things to a dead man floating. Her family was scattered, and she and two companions were stuck in the wrong fucking system. She needed to push forward.
“Basil, I know the detector was a fake,” she said quietly, opening her eyes.
“What?” Lucky said. “What the fuck does that mean, Dava?”
“Shut the fuck up, Lucky,” Thompson said. Then she leaned in close to Dava. “What does that mean, Capo?”
Roy’s mouth went open and closed a few times before any words came out. “Why would you think that?”
“I don’t think it, I know it.”
His hands went palms up again. “Why, though? Why would anyone fake the detector? And why would you think that? We found the ModPol trans—”
“Because we found the ModPol transport,” she said evenly. “We found it so easily, we didn’t need a goddamn detector. We found the transport and walked right into an ambush.”
This statement stunned the room into silence. She brought the knife back up, not pointing it at Roy, just bringing it to her eye-line so that she could inspect the edge. She’d been sharpening it to pass the time while they drifted about the battlefield in the OrbitBurner. When she sharpened a blade long enough, she wondered how thin that edge could get. Was it possible to get it down to a single layer of molecules? Would that make it so that the blade could cut through anything, any material in the universe?
“It was Jansen!” Roy blurted. “It was his plan, it wasn’t mine. I had nothing to do with any of this! I was a tool, a pawn – don’t you see that? I’m nobody!”
“So Jansen knew about the ambush,” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Honestly, I really didn’t know what was going to happen. All he told me was to make it look like the detector was working.”
“And he gave you the location of the ship?” Lucky said. “The ModPol transport?”
“Yes! Exactly. He told me where it was going to come out of Xarp. All I had to do was make it look like the detector software saw it there. Right place, right time.”
“You’re not really out here collecting BatCaps,” Thompson said.
Roy swallowed. “No. I’m sorry I lied about that. I didn’t – I don’t know who to trust. But I did my job for him. And now I want out.”
“For Jansen,” Thompson said.
He hesitated a moment. “Yeah. For Jansen,” he said. Then he added quietly, “Now I just want out.”
“What a clusterfuck,” Thompson said with a sigh.
“People are dead,” Dava said. “Because of some fucking game that these pricks are playing. People are dead. And people are locked up.”
“I’m sorry,” Roy said. “I really – I didn’t know. I just did what he rRRRKK—”
The blade went swiftly across, slicing clean through his throat. The momentum caused him to spin slowly, the blood streaming like a fan in the lack of gravity.
“People are dead,” she repeated quietly.
*
“We need to get Moses back,” Dava said. “And the rest. We need to get them back.”
Thompson was trying to wrap some kind of plastic cloth around the oozing neck of Basil Roy. “I know, Dava. We will.”
Dava shook her head and reached out to steady the stiffening body so that Thompson could accomplish her task. “And we need to get Jansen. I never trusted that guy.”
“Yeah, but you don’t trust anyone.”
Dava tried to aim a scowl at Thompson, but her soldier was focused on tying the plastic tight. “I trust people,” she muttered.
Lucky Jerk floated past them carrying a box. “Well, you were right about this guy anyway. He was lying about that stupid detector.”
“And if he was lying,” Thompson said with a huff as she tugged on the corpse, “then that means Jansen was lying.”
Dava drifted silently for a moment, watching them work. Thompson was stuffing the body of Basil Roy into the perishable cold-storage freezer and Lucky was transporting anything of strategic value from the OrbitBurner to the dropship.
She’d been too quick. Too quick to kill. She should have slowly bled him dry, bled as much information out of him as she could’ve. Jansen, that snake. She wanted to paint him as the ultimate villain in her mind, but she didn’t know what the hell he was up to. And she’d slit the throat of the only man who might’ve had a clue.
She tried to process the situation. ModPol had taken a bunch of Wasters into custody. What they would do with them, she didn’t exactly know. And then there was Jansen. He’d fled the scene along with Captain 2-Bit and the rest of the Wasters onboard the carrier – the Longhorn – that had brought them to Epsilon Eridani. Who else was in on Jansen’s plan? If she had him pegged right, very few. He was playing a role, and that role was as a Space Waste underboss.
What she needed to do was get back to Barnard’s Star – that’s where the Longhorn would’ve fled – and get to their base in that system. Jansen would be there, but he wouldn’t suspect Dava knew anything. He didn’t expect Dava to be alive, but then again, he probably wouldn’t flinch at her survival instincts. She could let Lucky spin a yarn about their daring escape; he’d already built a reputation for mythical fortune. And they’d say nothing about their encounter with Basil Roy. That missing person would be on Jansen’s conscience and no one else’s.
She watched the spherical drops of blood quiver and pulse in the air before her. While her mind churned through paranoia and conspiracy, her two companions were focused on the present.
“Okay, body is s
ecure,” Thompson said.
Lucky drifted in. “I pre-programmed the autopilot to head back to EE-3 with its emergency beacon on. Someone will pick up the signal near the planet and the docks can override the guidance systems and bring it home.”
“Good,” Dava said. She thought about leaving Jax a note, but then she wasn’t sure what she would say. She could thank him for the tip about Roy, but it was a battle too late. The body would have to be message enough. “Let’s go home.”
Chapter 3
Almost a full week of going through the motions. Playing the part of the public relations officer. Runstom had been supplied with well-edited footage of the battle, composed in some distant marketing cube. Everyone he talked to seemed to be impressed by it, though he suspected some were more impressed by the production quality than the content. He was making progress as far as the job went: administrators were at least willing to schedule further meetings with ModPol Defense. Still, he couldn’t shake the sense that they looked at him warily. A salesman. Or worse. Something dangerous, to be kept at a safe distance.
He considered going downstairs to the recreation room to occupy his mind with a game or something to drink, but decided against it. The OrbitBurner had just come back that morning. The Wasters had taken it out, then sent it back on autopilot. He was looking forward to doing something – what, he wasn’t sure. It’s not like he could arrest them. ModPol didn’t even have jurisdiction yet on EE-3, and aside from that, he wasn’t a cop any more. He could turn them over to the local constable, but they would be more trouble than the locals could handle. So when the OrbitBurner came back with no one aboard, he admitted to feeling a little relief. They got away with taking his ship for a joyride, but it was better for everyone that they’d gone on their way.
The comm unit blipped and he stepped over to it and looked at the screen. Though the face had become more commonplace in the past week, he was still unused to seeing it. “Sylvia,” Runstom said into the mic. “I’ll open the main hatch.”
Part of him didn’t want his mother here. And part of him did. Maintaining a distance had become necessity for them. A physical distance as well as an emotional one. Not that Runstom was much for emotions. Yet seeing her again threatened to open wounds, feelings of shame and abandonment. As he grew older, he learned to understand the reasons why she did what she did: it was the only way to keep them both safe. Her gift to him was that he had a normal life.
Well, a life without a mother, but normal otherwise.
Jax was making good progress with the sketchup application. Runstom tried not to look over his shoulder for too long; the pressure seemed to slow him down. They were on the small bridge of the OrbitBurner. While he waited, Runstom didn’t have anything else to do but sit at a terminal himself and peruse flight log files. The Wasters had taken the ship out to the site of the battle. Bounced around for a few hours there. Then a new contact was registered. A military dropship, similar to the model that Runstom and Jax had commandeered back when this whole mess had started. Back when they were on a prison barge, when Jax was being transported off Barnard-4, where’d he been accused of murder, out to a deep ModPol outpost. The barge had been attacked by Space Waste, intent on rescuing one of their own who’d also been arrested on Barnard-4.
Runstom and Jax had barely escaped with their lives, and only because they stole a Space Waste ship. An old military model, retrofitted for modern crime. The thing was a flying box of nothing. It’d been originally built for a single purpose: hurtle soldiers across space quickly and drop them onto a surface. Its most welcomed feature was a Xarp drive, necessary for making the long interstellar distances in a somewhat reasonable amount of time.
The same type of ship had appeared on the site of the battle, according to the OrbitBurner’s logs. Stood to reason that it belonged to the Wasters. The two ships had docked together. The other departed. The OrbitBurner was set with an automated course back to EE-3, where it had switched control over to a station that had guided it down to the dock. No passengers.
Why the Wasters had bothered with the courtesy of returning his ship, Runstom didn’t know. He suspected Jax had gotten close to them. Not friendly, but close enough to earn their respect.
“Hello, boys,” Sylvia said as she stepped onto the bridge.
Runstom stood. “Jax is just working on a sketch of someone he met while he was with Space Waste.”
“Basil Roy,” Jax said. “A programmer. I’m just about done.”
She smiled faintly and nodded. “And this Basil Roy?” she said. “He didn’t fit in?”
Jax laughed. “No, not so much.”
“He wrote some code that was supposed to scan for the ModPol transport ship,” Runstom said.
“But he faked the interface,” Jax added.
“So it led them to the right spot, just as the ModPol ship came out of Xarp.”
She looked from one to the other. “Ah, so the software didn’t need to work. This Basil Roy knew the expected coordinates that the ship would drop into all along.”
Runstom’s hands didn’t know what to do with themselves. He wished Jax would finish already. “Can I get you something to drink?” he said to Sylvia.
“Oh no, Stanley dear, I’m fine.”
“Uh,” Jax said. “I think I got it.”
He stood up and stepped back to admire his work. Sylvia strode toward the screen. The movement created a buffer that kept Runstom from leaning in to have a look for himself.
“I noticed that you were connected to the local network through the dock,” she said, sitting down at the console. “I’m going to route you through to—” she started, then paused and looked from side to side. It was a small amount of movement, and a small pause, but Runstom took the gesture for what it was.
“Now I see where Stan gets his paranoia from,” Jax said with a grin. Runstom shot a glare at him.
Sylvia chuckled. “I’m going to route you through to a more secure network. Once I establish an encrypted tunnel, we’ll have access to a few databases that might have the info we’re looking for.”
Jax’s smile faded as he leaned closer. Runstom wasn’t sure if the other man was growing more fearful, more curious, or both. He knew there would be questions later on. Questions Runstom sure the hell couldn’t answer. Like what databases his mother was talking about. How she got them. Who else had access to this so-called secure network.
Now that Sylvia was planted in front of the terminal, Runstom and Jax had no choice but to let her work. Runstom pulled the B-fourean back so they could talk without disrupting her. He didn’t have a solid plan, but he was working through some possibilities in his mind.
“When she figures out who this guy is,” Runstom said. “We might know why he’s inside. What his mission is.”
“When she figures out who he is?” Jax said, whispering so as not to offend Sylvia, though she probably heard anyway. “He could be nobody.”
Runstom’s brain wasn’t ready for that. “He’s somebody. He’s undercover. It’s the only explanation.”
“Maybe.” Jax shook his head, then his posture slumped in submission. “You’re right. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.”
Runstom reached up to put a hand on the taller man’s shoulder. “Listen, Jax. I need you to go back in.”
He pulled back, glaring. “Back into what?”
“Into Space Waste.”
“You’re fucking insane.” Jax no longer made any attempt to quiet his voice. “No way. No, no, no.”
“Listen, Jax. This guy could be one of us. If he’s undercover, he’s there on a ModPol mission and he may need our help.”
“Forget him, Stan. You promised me I could go back to Terroneous—”
“I know,” Runstom said, his voice stern. He worked to soften it. “I know. And you will. But something is really wrong with this whole thing and I think this Basil Roy might be the only clue we have. He led Space Waste into a slaughter. They could be hunting for a mole right no
w, and it means he doesn’t have much time. And I know he knows a helluva lot more than—”
Jax took a step back, shaking his head. “What is it with you? If this guy is undercover, then that’s his choice. There’s no way I’m going back in that den of psychopaths to find out if he needs a hand!”
“They’re not psychopaths,” Runstom said. The statement shocked himself as it came out of his mouth. “They let you live. They even sent back the OrbitBurner. They trust you.”
“Dava let me live,” he said firmly. “Dava might trust me – well, to be honest, I don’t think she trusts anyone. And even if she did, don’t you get what’s going on here? Space Waste is falling apart. They’re going to be at each other’s throats trying to find out why they were ambushed.”
“All the more reason to get in there now and—”
“Why do you even care?” Jax said, extending his arms to their full wingspan, nearly banging them on the low ceiling of the OrbitBurner’s bridge. “Seriously, Stanford! Tell me why it matters to you.”
“Because I’m sick of not knowing what the fuck is going on!”
They stared at each other in silence. Runstom hadn’t shouted, but when he replayed the words in his head, he could hear the frayed edges.
Jax’s mouth opened and closed. His eyes narrowed at Runstom, then he simply shook his head. He left the bridge through the stairwell that led to the recreation room below.
And there it was. What was it that Runstom was really after? He stood alone at the back of the bridge, his mother Sylvia working quietly through her databases on the other side. She heard all, there was no doubt. What would she say? He suspected she might be the only one that could understand his motivations. His desire to put the pieces together. His inability to cope when they didn’t fit.
Then again, she had a mind for the gray, and Runstom’s mind sought black and white. He frowned at himself, his stubbornness rising from within. So what if he just had to know what was going on? So what if he was looking for an explanation? For a case to solve?
So what if that wasn’t his job?
*