Under Shadows

by Jason LaPier

  But not before he’d ejected the stiff body of Tim Cazos. Unleashed the scrubbers on the rust-dry blood that adorned the walls around the maintenance hatch. It’d hurt, to purge evidence. But what would he do with it? Call Justice? Launch a criminal investigation against certain members of Space Waste?

  It was last rounds before the ship went on lockdown in prep for Xarp speed. With a grunt, he adjusted the unwelcome gut inside the tight uniform, stretched his legs, and holstered a stun-stick. His quarters were made for two, but the transport had come over with a skeleton crew. He left the room alone.

  The differences between ModPol Justice and ModPol Defense were less noticeable in the backwater space of Eridani. The presence of Justice on the outpost was minimal, but the Defenders didn’t seem to mind the slowly increasing invasion by would-be police forces. Runstom wondered if the cops that made it to Eridani were ambitious, looking forward to moving into EE-3 as soon as the door was opened with a contract, or if they were there for the complete and total lack of action.

  He’d checked in and reported to the local marketing administrators about his progress with the E-threers and their mild interest in Defense services, then hurried to make contact with anyone who knew if there was room for him on the prisoner barge destined for Barnard’s Star. Endured several unfunny jokes about there being empty cells. And then finally someone had let him know there was an open spot if he didn’t mind putting on a guard uniform. Someone had gone absent. Something about an asshole sergeant who had landed guard duty as penance for incompetence. A patroller had shown up to give him a lift.

  So Runstom got to take McManus’s place. It seemed the only option for getting back to Barnard in a timely manner.

  He made his way down the lonely corridor, pulling at the ill-fitting uniform. The barge was the same one that Runstom was on when he was transporting Jax from Barnard-4 to ModPol Outpost Alpha, back when all of this started. It was there that he had confessed to Jax that he believed the operator was innocent of the murders he’d been charged with. The same barge that Space Waste attacked while they were in transit, in order to free some of their higher-ranking goons. The support systems on the barge had been severely damaged and many ModPol officers and guards lost their lives that day. Runstom had barely managed to escape by stealing a Waster ship, dragging Jax along with him.

  And here it was again. All put back together, at least partially. According to gossip among the guards and staff, the cell blocks had been salvaged and retrofitted into another type of transport, originally designed for transporting raw materials mined from asteroids. Which made this version Xarp-capable, unlike the last.

  The effect was that much of the interior was the same. The familiarity of it unnerved Runstom. Like walking through the memory of a bad dream. Every miniscule jounce the ship made as it maneuvered jolted through his nerves. Every shudder jarred loose memories, recalled fears of gravity in flux. Bodies bounding. Normal things like provisions and handypads becoming dangerous debris. And then the cutting. Knives through the metal skin of the hull. The projectile fire. The laserfire. The whole barge bleeding air, losing pressure, losing oxygen. Losing a partner, a fellow cop, the closest person Runstom had to a friend.

  He gripped a handhold that ran along the narrow corridor. There was only a gray ambient light to see by, and it made him nauseous to stare down the length of the passage. An unnatural, shrinking point, like losing consciousness. The handrail felt sticky under his gloves.

  His arm buzzed with a warning. Runstom had one shift to serve before the Xarp jump and he was going to be late. He pulled himself forward by the wall handle, bracing himself against it. The artificial gravity was only a half G, but his legs felt heavy. They’d turn it off completely soon. Not until after the shift. Not until everyone was secured.

  If he lost Jax, it would all have been for nothing. All his efforts, all his justice. It would be meaningless if an innocent man was killed by an unchecked monster. Mark Xavier Phonson. X.

  Runstom reported to his post.

  The cell block was mostly empty. Thirty-one prisoners, and the capacity was several times that. Most of the guards were younger. Fit, strong-looking, but babies. He tried not to think about how short their lives would be if there was another attack. He dodged their small talk with nods and grunts and thousand-yard stares. Sometimes they called him McManus, and he couldn’t tell if it was some kind of lame joke or if they really were just confused. Runstom didn’t allow himself to spend the energy on anger in either case.

  An attack seemed possible. If the Wasters would go after a prisoner barge once for just a couple of their mates, wouldn’t they do it again for thirty-one? But they’d been routed, sent home to lick their wounds. And the barge was going straight to the zero-G maximum-security prison, deep in Barnard space. Special delivery. Not like the predictable route it was on before. It would come out of Xarp in the vicinity of the highly-protected prison. Even if the Wasters knew its schedule, which was unlikely, they’d have no window for an attack.

  Runstom reminded himself of these details as he walked his round. The prisoners were unsettlingly quiet. Each one he passed was either lying or sitting on their cot. Dejected. Tired. There was a difference, he realized, a difference in the violence he’d witnessed the first time on this barge and the violence he’d witnessed most recently. The first was ruthless, to be sure. A cold-blooded assault on a Justice ship. A purpose of breaking prisoners out of custody. But the most recent incident, it was an attack, met by an ambush. He’d been lulled into thinking the Wasters’ purpose was theft. They thought there were weapons to steal. But the attack and the ambush, these things felt more like war than crime. And perhaps he should assume that the Wasters didn’t just want to steal from ModPol, they wanted to cripple ModPol. A move driven not by greed, but by strategy.

  The main difference of the cells in this version of the barge was the addition of a sleep tube in each. It was part of Runstom’s job to ask each prisoner if he or she understood the directions for operating the tube. They were required to get in themselves when the signal was given. There was a timer. And then the tubes would close. Anyone not in a tube was going to ride Xarp in real time. Runstom had done it before. A slow, sick, painless torture. The human brain didn’t know what to do with it.

  “Ain’tchu got any D?” A voice calling out from the level below Runstom. “I don’t wanna get in the tube, I just wanna ride with some D.”

  He heard the young guard respond with practiced patience. “Do you understand the instructions?”

  “Fuck the instructions, lady. I want some D. It’s inhumane to Xarp without D.”

  “Please answer the question,” she tried firmly.

  “How about you answer my question?”

  “Listen, Waster – if you don’t get in the tube, you’re going to have to ride raw.”

  Runstom looked into the cell in front of him, ready to recite his own questions. The man in the dark corner spoke first. “Waster. Always found that distasteful.”

  “Aren’t you with Space Waste?” Runstom asked, then cursed himself for engaging.

  “Aye, I know we’re prone to wastin’ stuff.” His voice was deep, and though it was soft, there was a strength to it. “Laying waste. But that’s what we do, not who we are.”

  Runstom stood quiet. Watched the man step forward. He was tall, as tall as a B-fourean, but not nearly as skinny. And his skin was a rich, dark brown. An Earth-born. The lines in his face were obscured by scars, but the eyes showed age. Runstom glanced at his pad to read the name. Moses Down.

  “What we are is waste,” he said. “The waste discarded by domes. And domes – domes are built for creating and discarding waste. They are systems of perpetual hunger and consumption. You weren’t raised on a dome.”

  “No,” Runstom said, though it hadn’t sounded like a question.

  “But your job has taken you to domes. Many times, I’ll bet. You ever approach the domes in a shuttle with windows?”

 
Runstom had. Shuttles rarely had windows or even screens that anyone but the pilot could view. But on occasion he’d seen the domes from an approach. Such as the time he was called to work on a case on Barnard-4. A multiple homicide. He’d watched the entire time, the way the storms swirled around the stacks that rose from the processors.

  “Pollution,” Moses Down said, as though he were looking at the picture in Runstom’s mind. “Sometimes it looks natural, like clouds, like rain. But it’s unnatural. Corrosive. Toxic. Domes burn everything. Burn it down to molecules and blow it into space.”

  “Those planets have no atmosphere,” Runstom said. His voice was weak. Making someone else’s argument.

  “No, of course not,” Down said with a half grin and a shake of his head. “Don’t let my old Earth skin fool you. I could give a shit about what domers pump into the void outside of their domes. I just wanted to make the point. See there – the domes – there, the polluters win. There’s no environment to save, not like the doddering, fragile Earth. Domes sit on dead rock. That’s what allowed them to establish these systems.”

  Runstom’s hand moved toward his handypad, trying to do the job that his mind and mouth wouldn’t. Trying to move him on to the next prisoner. “Systems,” he heard himself say.

  “Intake and excretion.” Down made a motion with his hands, one waving in, one pushing out. Then he dropped them to his side. “Me, my family, we are not wasters. We are waste. Human waste. The unwanted byproduct of dome life.”

  Runstom stared up at the dark man in silence. There was something about him, about those burning brown eyes. He swallowed and blinked. Flashes of the things he’d seen Space Waste do. The people that died. He felt his forehead crease when he reopened his eyes. “You’re murderers.”

  Down’s smile faded and he nodded solemnly. “Ain’t nobody perfect.”

  Runstom looked down at his handypad, staring through it. “Do you understand the instructions?” he mumbled.

  “I ain’t trying to antagonize you, boy,” Down said. “I just wanted you to know where we came from.”

  Without looking at him, Runstom felt a gesture in his direction. “What do you mean, we?”

  The prisoner stared at him for a long, cold moment before turning away. “You’ve been shit out of the bottom of the system,” he said idly as he drifted to the back of the cell. “Just like the rest of us, Mr. Runstom.”

  *

  He finished his assignment and went to the center of the block to wait with the other guards. Most of them had gotten the point that the sour, green-skinned man wasn’t worth talking to. And only mildly worth talking about, in hushes.

  The chief came around eventually, asking each to check-in with a report. “McManus,” she said about halfway down her list.

  Runstom’s face grew hot. “With all due respect sir, would you please not call me that?”

  The chief was as young as the rest of them, a tall B-fourean with short-cropped pale hair. She crooked an eyebrow at him. “Um. Well. What do you want to be called?”

  “My name is Stanford Runstom,” he said through gritted teeth, tapping at the name badge just left of his sternum. “The chief of the watch should know that.”

  “Oh.” She flicked at her pad for a moment, then looked back at him. Pointed a finger in the general direction of his chest. “Sorry, Runstom. Your badge says McManus.”

  Runstom frowned down at the name affixed to his left breast. He hadn’t noticed it when he put the uniform on. A simple detail. Did he even care that he got stuck with McManus’s uniform? No. The disappointment came from missing the detail. He was drifting away from the goal of becoming a detective, both in title and in spirit.

  “All prisoners checked in,” he said softly.

  As soon as she dismissed them, he strode toward the door as fast as his legs could work in the half gravity. He could hear the voices behind him, a traditional pre-Xarp celebration being planned. The guards would be required to tube-up, but the sleep would be in shifts; a fraction of them would be in a semi-stasis, half-sleep, ready to be jolted awake if necessary. Whatever the shift, most of them would get as many drinks into their system as possible in the next hour. Xarping sober was reserved for the highly disciplined or the self-torturous. Runstom was one of those; which didn’t matter.

  Back in his room he went through his own pre-Xarp ritual: programming his entertainment module to scoop up any transmissions of bombball games as they came within range of sportscasting relays. There were always a few hours of post-Xarp downtime and he liked to use that time to catch up on the season. It was something to look forward to. Something trivial. But one of the few rewards he gave himself.

  As he prepped his tube, exhaustion pulled at his bones. He shrugged off the oppressive uniform and frowned one last time at McManus’s name staring him in the face as he tossed it aside. Missing details. Amateur. Like a rookie. What else had he missed?

  *

  Accelerate. Accelerate.

  The human mind wasn’t meant to travel this fast. So fast, light can’t keep up. How can a brain that spends most of its day trying to decode visual signals into something meaningful cope when it’s moving faster than light?

  The human mind wasn’t meant for a lot of things it’s been subjected to.

  Speaking – or thinking – of which, Jax pined for Delirium. D-G, the little vacation he’d taken a few times before. The Wasters had a new kind called D-K that was supposed to be more potent. He knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help but be curious. Not that it mattered; no drugs were available to him in this damned ship.

  It was his fourth and final trip between stars, and his eighth time experiencing faster-than-light speed. Each time it happened, his mind rewound to the beginning, replaying each memory in slow motion. As though he were traveling so fast that he lapped himself in a loop of time, and now watched only the moments where he broke laws – natural laws – not meant to be broken.

  The first was his escape; from a prison barge, and from certain death. Some military dropship that Space Waste had repurposed, and Jax and Runstom had commandeered. Runstom piloted, Xarping in one direction, stopping to turn, Xarping again, and again and again. Multi-routed hops, like a hacker covering tracks on a network. Not that Jax had ever known any actual hackers. Well, except the ones that hacked him and framed him for murder. Fortunately, the original gangbanger pilot that they restrained in the cargo hold had a cache of Delirium-G. He’d revealed it to Jax on the condition that they’d both get a dose. The drug made the jagged trip bearable as Runstom tracked down the superliner that they would dock with and board.

  The second was thankfully shorter, though drugless and sleepless. After weeks on the superliner investigating the murder that Jax had been accused of, they took the dropship for a hop across the Barnard system to the moon Terroneous. Runstom and Jax had survived the trip, but the ship had not, crash-landing into an empty field of grass. It was the first time Jax laid eyes on plant-life that had not been gardened or engineered.

  Then he took a third trip, a long haul out to the Sirius system to chase the last of their clues. It was an interstellar commercial flight, which included stasis pods. Sleep was inescapable in the warm dark tube that droned with a soft, enveloping pulse of white noise that obscured binaural beats designed to quiet the mind. A light hypnotic gas ensured the sleep would hold for the duration of the trip, slowing his breathing and heartbeat. Most people wouldn’t dream, he’d been told, but some did. Jax dreamt of his flight from justice, replayed over and over and over, an inescapable loop.

  And then only a few days since he’d arrived on Sirius-5, they’d found their killer, Runstom had made his arrest, and Jax needed to go. They’d solved the crime, but were under no illusion that Jax would be immediately exonerated. So he was back on one of those same commercial flights, returning to Barnard, in another sensory-depriving stasis tube. Upon boarding, his last and final companion was fear. He was alone, more so than he’d ever been in his life. His only ally go
ne off to make things right, with Jax’s remaining responsibility to stay out of the light.

  Trip number five was a hitchhike, a soulless ride from the interstellar port back to Terroneous, but Jax drew few memories from those days. A shell arrived on that moon – a destination that some distant part of his mind desired, but once his body arrived, such desire was difficult to rekindle. Nevertheless, he trusted his inertia and slowly began piecing together a new life.

  The sixth Xarp flight was when he was stolen away from that freshly planted home by this same sonova bitch, Jared McManus. They’d tubed him so again he’d gone into sensory-deprived sleep. Thinking back, he knew it’d been a short trip, but in those endless moments his frightful dreams of fugitivity slammed into fresh nightmares over the loss of his new home and his new friends. Lealina. She was not some true love, some mindless magical romance. She was real. She had made him feel real in a time when he’d forgotten what that was. She was what his life could be.

  He’d been thrown into the tube by ModPol – by McManus – and when it opened, he’d been in the hands of Space Waste. Maybe it would happen again. When it happened before, he’d been given no choice but to join the gang’s ranks. They were planning an attack, and they needed his so-called hacker skills. And so the seventh Xarp trip Jax had taken was another leap between star systems, from Barnard’s Star to Epsilon Eridani, for the purposes of assaulting a lonely ModPol transport. He’d expected the Wasters to distribute Delirium-G or even the harder D-K for such a brutal trip, but their leaders were strict about limiting narcotics use before a fight. Instead, the Space Waste carrier had Xarp lounges: virtual rooms where passengers could congregate and take in limited forms of entertainment, such as storytelling or gambling. Breaking the laws of physics the way Xarp does, the mind can’t handle much input, so the data that flowed through those lounges was limited in bandwidth. It was the equivalent of a text-based chatroom, similar to the kind that Jax and his fellow operators frequented to pass time during long shifts at the life-support terminals back on Barnard-4. Although in the case of the Xarp lounge, the signal was a bit different, spiked into the brain through a helmet, in a way that made input and output seem like a spoken or typed conversation.