Under Shadows

by Jason LaPier

“Probably,” she said. “Nothing is ever certain, especially not … well, you know.”

  Not for someone in witness protection. “Well, in any case. Maybe I can make it back here sometime. And maybe you’ll still be here.”

  She took away her hand and his arm felt cold from its absence. “Listen, Stanley. We don’t have long, so I’m going to talk to you about something.”

  “Are you sure—”

  “Just listen.” She stood, partially turning away from him. “You’re being used.”

  “Mother,” he said weakly.

  “To some, there are many pieces on the board, and you are just one of them. You’re not a person, you’re a piece. You’re useful, but you’re disposable.”

  “What do you mean by that? Disposable?”

  “I don’t mean they’ll kill you. They aren’t killers. They’re always working the long game. Always the long game. And their game never stops changing, never stops evolving.”

  “Are you talking about ModPol? Defense?”

  “Defense, Justice, all of ModPol, all the rest,” she said. “Anyone who is securing their position in this galaxy. Because it’s not as safe a place as the domers would like to believe.”

  “Yeah, no shit.” Runstom’s head was still thick, but it had lightened enough for him to stand, using the wall to brace himself.

  She turned to him. “X is different.”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut tight. “X. I don’t want to hear about X. He should be in prison for life.”

  “Mark Xavier Phonson is good at the game, but only out of necessity. He runs on survival instinct. Through raw coldness and manipulation – and pure luck – he is still out there. Doing what it takes to stay alive.”

  “He’s a real scumbag,” Runstom said, feeling his lip curl up as he said it.

  “He’s probably afraid of you.”

  “That’s good.”

  “No, it’s not good.” He opened his eyes as he felt her touch again on his arm. She drew close. “Fear breeds desperation. And when men like X become desperate, blood spills. That cop – McManus? You knew him?”

  “Jared McManus. We used to work together. He was on B-4 with me. First day on the murder scene.”

  She nodded. “He was probably supposed to kill you both. That’s how X would want it done. But he’s still a cop, that McManus. He’s no killer.”

  “So he’ll drag Jax to some ModPol outpost.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head and looking down. Like she was disappointed something wasn’t getting through to Runstom. “He’s under X’s thumb, that’s why he came all the way out here. He’ll take Jax directly to X, most likely. Someplace secret.”

  “Damn it.” With a groan, he pushed himself away from the wall. “I need to move.”

  She walked him to the bridge, which was an arduous journey since they had to go up the stairs. He cursed the over-fashionable ship for the millionth time. They could have put a lift down the middle of the thing, but no doubt the designers thought a lift would have sullied their vision or some goddamn thing. The twisting stairwell wound around an open space through the middle large enough to float through easily when there was no gravity. But when there was gravity, the winding of the stairs made the trip up them four times longer than it needed to be.

  After she’d deposited him into a chair in front of terminal, she reached over him and tapped at the interface. “This is the tracking protocol. The drone is small and low power, but the radio waves will travel through space easily. But only at the speed of light, mind you. It won’t do you much good until you get close enough.”

  “And he won’t notice his ship is sending out a beacon?”

  “It’ll blend in with engine noise. The beacon is randomized to further obscure it. It’ll pulse only once every few minutes.”

  He frowned. “That doesn’t sound easy.”

  “Just use the protocol and your sensors will pick it up.” She reached over again and tapped some more. “Here, I’m making you a copy of it in case you need it.”

  She ejected a tiny disk from some unseen port when she was done and gave it to him. “Alright,” he said. “If he’s got an intersystem ship, he’s going to Xarp off as soon as he breaks gravity.”

  “I suppose that means you want me off your ship.”

  He looked up at her to see a wry smile. He tried to return it, but her words from earlier resurfaced. He was being used. A disposable piece in a game.

  “I don’t want to be used,” he said.

  “And what do you want?”

  He turned the question around in his head. “I guess I want to be useful.”

  Her smile faded and she put a hand on his shoulder. “Useful people get used, Stanley.” She squeezed him briefly, then turned quickly and headed for the door to the main hatch. “I know I don’t show it, but you’re everything to me, Stanley.” She spoke without turning back to look at him. “So be careful out there.”

  He mumbled assent, and then she was gone. He watched one of the terminal screens that showed the hatch opening and then closing. The dock’s magnetic locks had released.

  He flexed his fingers trying to worry away the numbing residual effects of the stunner. A hollow emptiness burned through his stomach.

  He could only do what he needed to do.

  *

  Jax had tried to reason with the cop on the shuttle ride up, but even when using the autopilot, he was so skittish that Jax figured he’d better not distract him or they’d be smashed to pieces on their way to the main ModPol ship. He remembered hearing McManus say that he had a pilot with him, but that pilot was busy keeping the ship in orbit, leaving McManus to handle the shuttle himself. Finally, they managed to dock with only minor bumps accompanied by a groaning crack, and then Jax was being hauled out of the shuttle with dizzying alacrity. As always, the transition to a nearly null gravity environment disoriented the hell out of him. He’d never get used to it.

  “I don’t know why you people just can’t let me be,” he said finally as his captor closed up the shuttle and jabbed at a console. “You know I’m not a criminal.”

  “Oh, I know.” The response came with a mirthless chuckle. “I’ve heard this song before.”

  “Sergeant McManus, right?” Jax said as the cop came back from his bout with the wall-mounted computer system. “What is this, like some kind of career move for you? To be the cop that brings in a wrongfully accused citizen? For the crime of being afraid and running for his life?”

  McManus grabbed Jax by the arm and tugged him across the tiny shuttle hangar. “I wish.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He ignored Jax and slid open a door that led to a narrow chamber. Jax could see sleeping tubes beyond it, similar to the one he’d been locked inside the first time McManus captured him.

  “What does that mean?” he repeated, doing his best to pull back. The small resistance was equaled by a small tightening of the bonds around his wrists.

  McManus shot him a glare and then pulled him toward the door. “Just shut up so I can get you into a stasis pod.”

  “What’s going to happen?” Jax said. “They’re going to give me a trial and find me innocent. They’re going to just let me go, right?”

  “If you believe that, then why do you keep running?”

  “Because I shouldn’t have to go on trial. I’m innocent and everyone knows it!”

  An unseen audio unit sparked to life. “Sergeant, there’s a contact.”

  McManus sighed. He floated to a nearby wall and found a comm unit. “There’s a planet, Ayliff. There’s gonna be some contacts.”

  “This one’s got an intercept trajectory.”

  “What the fuck,” McManus muttered to himself, before speaking directly into the comm again. “No. What is it?”

  “Civilian ship, Sarge. Hold on. OrbitBurner 4200 LX.”

  Jax felt a twinge in his chest. Simultaneously he felt hope and fear.

  “Goddammi
t,” McManus said. “That lunkhead Runstom just doesn’t know when to quit.” He spoke into the comm. “Ayliff, is it powering up any weapons?”

  “Uh, no, Sarge. I don’t think it has any weapons.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “He’s coming in hot though, Sarge. Time to intercept, eight minutes.”

  “Time to Xarp?”

  “Eleven minutes, forty seconds.”

  “Wait, whaddya mean, time to intercept?” McManus said after a moment of quiet thought. “He’s got no weapons.”

  After a pause, the ship’s pilot came back on. “Current trajectory suggests a collision course.”

  “No fucking way.” McManus shook his head and pointed a finger at Jax. “That crazy friend of yours is going to ram us.”

  “He is crazy,” Jax said. Maybe he could convince these cops that it was better to just leave them be. Runstom was a wild card that no one wanted to deal with. Calling him crazy wasn’t really all that much of a stretch. “Just let me go, McManus. I told you, it’s not worth it. I’m innocent. Let me go before Stanford kills us all.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, his eyes narrowing.

  McManus pulled his way toward the bridge, tugging Jax along by the elbow. It was awkward progress, but the cop seemed adept at yanking himself from one handhold to the next in the absence of gravity.

  “Ayliff, where is he?” he said as they billowed through the hatch. “How close?”

  “Six minutes, thirty.”

  “He’s catching up to us,” McManus said. “Why is he catching up to us?”

  “That little OrbitBurner is a mover.”

  Jax felt helpless. He was useless when near weightless, even if the microgravity caused him to slowly sink. McManus’s grip on his elbow was like a winch, and if he resisted, the cuffs constricted. He could feel his breath growing short and sharp with the rising panic.

  McManus directed his attention to a silver-haired, pale but solid-looking woman seated along the right side of the cabin. “Granny, heat up the auto-turrets.”

  “Sergeant McManus, you know I can’t fire on a civilian vessel,” she said with a shake of her head. She motioned at her controls. “The auto-guns won’t do it.”

  “Dammit.” McManus let go of Jax and floated to a wall terminal, mumbling as he tapped at it. “I thought we had override codes installed on this thing.”

  “Five minutes,” the pilot said.

  “Stop counting down and take evasive action, Ayliff!”

  “You got it Sarge, but there’s no way we can outmaneuver that baby.”

  “Just keep him off us long enough to break gravity so we can Xarp out.”

  “Ah, shit.” The woman McManus had called Granny turned in her half-tightened restraints. “We’re not really gonna do a hot Xarp, are we?”

  Jax felt the floor meet his feet with the smallest amount of pressure. Somehow the contact made him feel even less stable. His body, drained from long-gone adrenaline, wanted to collapse, but there wasn’t enough gravity for the act.

  “Depends on whether you can keep this crazy bastard away from us,” McManus said. He stabbed the terminal a few more times, then leaned back with a grunt. “There. Auto-turret number six is unlocked. It’s manual now.”

  “Manual?” she said, her head sliding back and her eyebrow crooking. “Like without the targeting computer? How the hell am I supposed to hit anything?”

  “Granny, you’re the goddamn gunner!”

  “I’m the defense system operator,” she said, her brow furrowing. “And I don’t shoot at civilian ships.”

  “Well you don’t gotta kill him,” McManus said, propelling himself away from the wall and toward Jax. “Just keep him from killing us.”

  “Tighten those straps, people,” Ayliff called out. “He’s getting close. And if we hot Xarp, you don’t wanna be caught loose in the cabin.”

  McManus grunted as he shoved Jax against a cushioned wall at the back of the cabin. “Sorry, Jackson. I was going to put you in a sleep tube. Hell, was looking forward to a nice nap myself. But your buddy Stanley is complicating that plan.”

  “It would get a lot simpler if you just let me go.” Jax grunted as McManus drew thick straps across his chest. “You could even tell ModPol I’m dead. Tell them you saw my body. I’ll go deep and never come up again. I’ll disappear.”

  The cop looked up at him and for a moment Jax thought he was considering the option. Then he looked back down, reaching behind Jax to loosen the wrist restraints. “Ain’t taking you to ModPol.”

  “Where are you taking me?” Jax said, his voice suddenly going weak.

  McManus didn’t answer. He just pulled down a mask and strapped it to Jax’s face. Then he floated to an empty chair and began strapping himself in.

  Jax tried to repeat the question, but he couldn’t get his mask-muffled voice to rise above the tension in the cabin. What was McManus hinting at? It couldn’t be good.

  “Here he comes,” Ayliff said.

  “Give him a few warning shots, Granny.”

  “Alright, Sarge.”

  The gunner – or rather, the defense system operator – tapped at a screen, then held a finger down, swirling it in a circle. Jax couldn’t make out the visual, but he imagined she was aiming the sights of the gun somewhere in the direction of Runstom’s OrbitBurner. She stopped the motion, and with the other hand she tapped once. A stream of distant high-pitched shrieks came from somewhere below the bridge.

  After a few moments of tense silence, McManus barked, “Report!”

  “No hits, no damage,” Granny said.

  “Contact has taken evasive action,” Ayliff said. “I think that bought us some distance.”

  “Good,” McManus said. “If he gets any closer, take another—”

  “Shit,” Ayliff said, silencing the rest of the room.

  There was a din of ambient noise throughout the cabin from engines, life support, and whatever else, but now Jax could hear a distinct sound off to the left side of the ship. It sounded sinusoidal, like a wave pulsing to a steady beat.

  “That thing has some bad-ass afterburners on it,” the pilot finally said.

  “Granny!” McManus shouted.

  “I can’t find him!” The gunner’s hand swirled around her pad. “You gave me one of the turrets on the bottom of the patroller and I can’t get an angle up to him.”

  “I’ll get ’im back,” Ayliff said.

  As soon as the words came out, the ship lurched, and Jax imagined it spinning on the center axis, a line that drew from the rear to the front. Which meant that Jax was rotating along with it, being strapped to the middle of the wall perpendicular to the center axis. He coughed and sputtered, and something hot forced its way from his mouth and into the mask. He started to panic that his gastric ejection had blocked his airway, but there was a light sucking sound and with a sickening feeling that spread through his body, he suddenly understood the mask’s purpose.

  The ship twisted again, then shuddered with a jolt. “Holy shit!” Ayliff called out. “The crazy bastard clipped our nose cone!”

  The turret shrieked again. “Not even close to a hit,” Granny said. “But that gave him something to think about.”

  “If you say so,” the pilot said. “Looks to me like he’s coming back around again.”

  “Are we out of the gravity well yet?” McManus said through gritted teeth. Jax could see the pink skin on the cop’s hands going white from gripping his chair so hard.

  “Hold on,” Ayliff said. “There. Yes. All hands ready for Xarp?”

  “Just hit it,” McManus yelled.

  The only thing Jax was thankful for in that moment was the mask that captured the contents of his entire stomach.

  Chapter 5

  The thick material of the guard uniform flexed tightly around Runstom’s stomach as he bent to lace up his boots. It had been made for someone who didn’t have the surplus that had been invading the territory around his midsection. The spendy
, flashy nonsense in his wardrobe as of late had been better at hiding it than any official uniform could.

  Not that he was going to allow such an intrusion to smother his fire. Gut or not, he was going to get back to Barnard’s Star and find Jax. Whatever it took. Before it was too late.

  The image flashed in his mind whenever he allowed it to drift. Xarp wake. The trail was invisible to the naked eye but had lit up the scanners like a glowing highway. The OrbitBurner was speedy, but had no Xarp drive. Just a showy, useless hot rod for flitting between planets.

  He needed a ride. McManus would have gone to Barnard. Runstom’s gut feeling, and the computer’s analysis of the Xarp wake confirmed it. Jax had been checking the launch schedules obsessively, so Runstom knew there was a transport leaving EE-3 for Barnard but it was a slow model, and worse, it wasn’t scheduled to set off for several weeks.

  While Runstom had been trying to ram McManus’s intersystem patroller, the OrbitBurner comm network had traded data with it. Standard protocol for the ModPol mesh network. Every ship registered to ModPol was a node. Whenever nodes in the mesh got close enough for transmission, data passed between them. Any information was always going to be stale, but stale information was better than no information. Everything had been encrypted and Runstom didn’t have clearance for all of it of course, but he got the highlights.

  No details for anything outside of the system, but there’d been plenty of chatter about recent events within Epsilon Eridani. Most of the activity revolved around the cleanup after the battle that ensued when Space Waste attempted to hijack an interstellar ModPol transport. The same transport Runstom had hitched a ride on, ferrying his OrbitBurner from Barnard to Eridani. Reports of massive casualties on both sides, though the numbers for ModPol losses were obscured. With uncomfortable pride, the report had stated that twenty-six Wasters were killed. Thirty-one had been taken into custody. A newly retrofitted prisoner transport barge had been dispatched to transport the prisoners back to a maximum-security facility in deep-space orbit around Barnard’s Star.

  The prisoner transport barge had been fueling up at ModPol Outpost Epsilon, so Runstom had kicked the OrbitBurner into overdrive to catch it. When he’d reached the ModPol outpost, he sent his ship back to EE-3 on autopilot. He wished he could give it to Sylvia, but it was dangerous for them to be connected in any way. They’d already risked much by spending a small amount of time together while he was on her planet. So instead, he included a message that the ship was to be a gift to one of the other higher-level administrators. A thanks from ModPol Defense for their time.