Under Shadows

by Jason LaPier

  As always, she was eager and they moved quickly. They took a left turn, and then another back to the right, and then finally a turn downward. All of these directions were relative without gravity. It was even harder to keep track with tunnel vision.

  She held up a hand to stop their progress. Traced a rectangle along one side of the tube. Detached the laser torch from a hook on her hip. She watched him in silence for a moment, until he realized she was waiting. He readied his stun pistol and took aim.

  Zarconi began cutting, and Runstom knew it was going to draw their attention. How could it not? But what would they do, that was the question. And how many were in there?

  After several long minutes, she stopped. She’d made cuts in a square, but left just enough metal in place to keep the piece from coming loose.

  They paused. In the silence, Runstom’s suit increased the speaker volume. Voices from below became clear, muffled at first then filtered.

  “Who’s up there?”

  “It must be someone trying to fix the corridors.”

  “Mackie, is that you up there?”

  There were two distinct voices, one male, one female. Runstom flexed the grip on his gun. He positioned himself opposite the cut and braced himself against the tube, using his free hand to hold a bundle of cables. Nodded to Zarconi.

  She leaned back and away, stretching her arm out to make the final cut. The piece drifted slowly, and at first it still obstructed his view.

  “Hello?” The male voice. “Mackie, everything okay?”

  A full minute of silence. Then a hand brushed aside the square of metal. A man hovered, squinting up into the darkness. He wore no armor, but instead was dressed in some kind of exercise suit.

  “Mackie?” he whispered. Looking directly at Runstom’s form in the darkness.

  Runstom took aim and blue light crackled from the pistol. The man shook and went limp. Runstom let go of the cabling and pulled himself through the narrow opening, leading with his outstretched gun.

  Halfway through, his hip hitched on the jagged edge of the opening. With his free hand he tried to push off against the ceiling of the room, but he didn’t have the leverage. He waved the pistol around, seeing nothing but banks of monitors and controls. He twisted around as far as he could. Someone grabbed his arm.

  The large woman wrenched his arm into a hold and Runstom yelled out with the pain. If it weren’t for the reinforced strength of the snug-suit, he was sure she would have broken a bone. She pulled his fingers from the pistol one by one. He could feel Zarconi’s fingers at his waist, working to free the snag.

  Just as the woman pulled away the pistol, Zarconi got him loose. She grabbed him by the crotch and shoved him through the hole. He flailed, causing the woman in the control room to flinch and swing wildly away from him. His reflexes braced for an incoming stun, but when his brain caught up, he spotted the pistol drifting peacefully away from them.

  Zarconi pulled herself through, and the three of them formed a triangle. Neither Runstom nor the woman were holding anything. Adrift.

  She brought her wrist to her mouth. “All hands! We’ve got intruders in the control room!”

  Zarconi curled her body in on itself, one hand firmly around the edge of the hole she’d made. “Mira, please.” A mirthless smile. “Intruders. Far too formal for an old friend stopping by.”

  The woman named Mira raised her wrist again. “Boss, you should know. It’s—”

  She was cut off when Zarconi sprang at her. Collision, then the momentum carried them to the floor. Runstom saw the tool in Zarconi’s hand. Coming down around the back of the other woman. She howled with pain and fear.

  “Jenna, no!” He twisted desperately, the small amount of momentum from the previous struggle causing him to drift by millimeters toward the surface of the ceiling. “Don’t kill her! Stop!”

  After a few seconds, Zarconi turned back to him. A globe of gray goo oozed from the tool in her hand.

  “Nanoglue,” she said. “Did you think I was using the laser torch?”

  He looked past her to see the panicking Mira flailing her arms and legs. Pinned by her back to the floor. Zarconi turned back and aimed the glue gun at the wrist-pad.

  She grinned to herself and looked up again. Kicked off and glided into him, sliding one hand around his waist. In any other situation, the move would have been intimate. Her momentum carried them to the ceiling. Then she kicked off again, this time aiming for the console bank.

  *

  Phonson forced out a strained half-grunt, half-howl. Jax felt a cold rock forming in his stomach as he watched the man produce a thin blade from a fold of his clothing, struggling against McManus’s petrified arms. He drew it upward and slid it up into flesh and muscle, severing enough fibers to cause one arm to flap loose. The spray of blood looked like water against the crimson skin of Phonson’s face.

  As he shook himself loose, he roared, flinging the weakened limbs away. With a flash, he jabbed the blade into McManus’s stomach, yanked it back out, then kicked him away. In the low gravity, the cop’s body soared into the far wall, a trail of dark plasma in its wake.

  Phonson turned on Jax. “What did you do?” His voice was commanding but low. The scrunched, blood-sodden face, heaving chest, and dripping blade were enough to make up for lack of volume.

  Jax swallowed. “I ran a purge on all the corridors.” He tried to straighten himself up. “You’re not getting any reinforcements until it finishes.”

  “Reinforcements.” Half his mouth smiled. “I’m going to skin you alive, you piece-of-shit domer.”

  The plan, such as it was, didn’t involve Phonson having a knife. Jax took a step back. He was drained, he knew that. He couldn’t fight the ex-cop, and he had no weapon. His only choice was to run, and he’d effectively locked the only exit.

  “There’s more,” he said without thinking. “I – I figured I was going to … going to die here.”

  Phonson had taken a step toward him, but at this he stopped and lifted his head slightly. “You are.”

  “So I sabotaged the life-support system.”

  He pointed with the wet, maroon tip of the knife. “How so?”

  “I assume you remember that I am – I was – a life-support operator back on Barnard-4.”

  Phonson’s eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

  “Right, of course you do,” Jax said, trying to take on a relaxed tone. “Being that it was your contacts that Jenna Zarconi abused to hack my system. You know, to murder all those people.”

  He pointed the blade again, not at Jax this time, but at the console behind him. “What did you do?”

  Jax threw up his hands. “I can’t tell you, unless you’re going to let me live.”

  Phonson’s knife-hand dropped slightly, though Jax didn’t get the sense that it meant he was suddenly safe. “So what, you think—”

  “Boss, you there?” The unseen speaker interrupted him and caused him to glance upward. “We got a problem.”

  “What problem?” he said. “Where’s Carr?”

  After a moment, the speaker came back. “We lost contact with the control room.”

  Phonson looked at Jax, who put his hands out defensively. “I didn’t do that.”

  “Abberis, what’s going on with life support?” he asked the ceiling.

  Jax tried to breathe slowly as they waited for the reply. Other than the corridor purge, he’d done nothing. The trick was to make them believe he’d done something that they couldn’t yet detect.

  “All corridors will be accessible in seven minutes,” the voice of Abberis reported back.

  “See,” Jax said, pointing up. “They can’t detect the little bomb I left in the system.”

  Phonson scowled, white ridges forming across his red forehead. He closed his eyes and appeared to suck in a deep breath, then opened them, tipped his head back, and exhaled. After blinking a few times, he looked at Jax. The blade disappeared back into the invisible folds from whence it came. His hands came
together, one clasped over the other. “Fine, Jackson,” he said quietly. “You’re smart. We all know that. And you’ve got nothing to lose, right?” His hands unfolded and he pointed. “Wrong. We both know you have something back on Terroneous.”

  The confidence he’d mustered drained away, bringing back the weariness in his muscles, the emptiness in his stomach. “No,” he said, meant as a counter, a denial, but instead it came out as a plea.

  “You’re nobody, Jackson.” Phonson began a slow pace, not coming any closer to Jax, but making a back-and-forth circle that made him feel hunted. “You’re not my problem. I could snuff you out right now and no one in the universe would care. Those hillfolk on Terroneous can bitch and moan all they want at ModPol, but they can’t touch me.”

  “So what do you want?” Jax said weakly.

  “Runstom,” he growled. The pacing stopped and he stepped closer. “I want you to tell me about Epsilon Eridani-3. We got so close, thanks to your dying friend over there.” He gestured, and Jax felt cold at the sight of the crimson lake slowly growing around the twitching McManus. “There was a name,” Phonson continued quietly. “Sylvia.”

  “What will you do if I tell you?” Jax’s voice sounded like it came from some other person, some other place.

  Phonson drew a wicked smile. “What I always do. Move people around. Make deals, bargains. Keep the peace.” He waved a finger. “And you, Jackson, you don’t have to worry about shit. You go on your way. Unmarked. Free.”

  For a moment Jax wondered if Phonson believed his own words. Was this the main goal of his manipulations? To make some deals, come out ahead when he could but otherwise keep things peaceful whenever possible? He probably wasn’t a killer at heart. The dead were a lot harder to keep in the pocket to be called upon later.

  All of that could be true, but it was a seduction to think that Phonson would prefer not to kill. Jax knew when it came down to it, there were only a few ways to truly silence people.

  “You’re running out of time,” Jax said. “Another ModPol ship is here.”

  Phonson tried to laugh but his heart wasn’t in it. “You think they’re here to rescue you?” he snarled. “Don’t count on it. You’re nobody.”

  Deep in the emptiness that pervaded his body, a fire sparked to life. “We’re all nobody. Specks of dust to the universe.” He spoke the next words as the thought occurred to him. “Isn’t this station supposed to be hard to find?”

  “It’s very hard to find,” Phonson bragged.

  “So if another ship came out here, then it must be someone that knows the location.” Jax remembered how McManus’s ship gave up its controls, some kind of remote hack across the ModPol mesh network. “And it’s not someone you were expecting, because you told your people to ‘snag it’. To take control of it. One of your loyal friends turned on you.”

  “Sergeant McManus is dying,” Phonson shouted with a broad gesture to the groaning form behind him. “And you’re next, Jackson.”

  Jax allowed himself a smile. “I hope not before we find out who infiltrated your ship and took over your control room.”

  The blade appeared again and Phonson took a few lunging steps forward. Jax flinched and stepped back, bumping into a wall console.

  The hidden speaker system hummed to life. “Whose woods these are, I think I know.”

  Phonson stopped, his threatening advance deflating as his eyes turned up. “No,” he whispered. He looked at Jax. “Well, we’re all fucked now.”

  “His house is in the village though.”

  “Oh come on,” Phonson said. “Enough with the poetry, Jenna! What the fuck do you want?”

  “He will not see me stopping here to watch his woods fill up with snow.”

  “God damn it.” He stalked toward the consoles. “Get the hell out of the way, Jackson.”

  Jax obliged, circling along the perimeter of the room. The poetry recital continued, but he couldn’t make out the words as Phonson attempted to smother it with a ranting stream of insults. On the other side, he bent down to look at McManus. The suppression-system effect had worn off, but he was in bad shape. Groaning softly, he held his stomach with the hand of his good arm.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Jax said in a low voice as he knelt down next to the bloody mess of a cop.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” he said, grimacing as the words came out. “It hurts like hell, but I’m still alive. For now.”

  But not forever, Jax knew. In the distance, Phonson’s insults to Jenna Zarconi mixed with an argument he was having with his own console. Something about locks and the locations of his crew members. Jax knew the console in this slapdash brig had no real control; it was by the fortune of oversight that the emergency controls over the life-support system were accessible.

  “You’ll make it,” Jax said to McManus. “We just have to get you to Medical.”

  “Sorry about kicking your ass,” he mumbled.

  Jax nodded. “You were just trying to get a jump on him. And it worked.” After a moment, he added, “I’m sorry I said my ass was a better cop than you.”

  McManus almost laughed, then groaned, eyelids pinched in pain. Jax felt an awkward mixture of pity and pleasure. He still thought they wouldn’t be in this situation if McManus hadn’t been such a shitty person and a worse cop. But the truth was, Phonson would have just used someone else.

  “But I have promises to keep,” the voice above was saying. “And miles to go before I sleep.”

  A series of clicks and beeps drew their attention to the only door in the room. The door slid away.

  “And miles to go before I sleep,” Jenna Zarconi said as she stepped through.

  “Jax, are you okay?” Runstom edged into the room from behind her.

  “Oh fuck me,” Phonson said. He pointed up. “That was a recording? I thought you were taunting me from the control room! That’s just low, Jenna.”

  Zarconi and Runstom stepped fully into the room and Phonson reacted by bolting across it. Jax tried to straighten back up quickly, but lost his balance trying not to trip over McManus or slip in his blood. Phonson managed to grab him by the wrist. With little effort, he pulled Jax’s weakened body to a position in front of him. He looped an arm around Jax’s neck and brought the small blade around to rest heavy and cold against his chest.

  “Let him go,” Runstom said. He was bracing a hand against the wall, favoring one leg in the light gravity. Whenever it touched the floor as he moved, he winced and shifted his weight back to the other foot.

  “Be careful, Stan,” Jax said. “I think he’s after you. More than me.”

  “It’s true, I don’t mind if I have to kill Jackson.” Jax could feel Phonson’s hot breath on the back of his neck as he spoke. “But I don’t want to kill you, Stanford Runstom.”

  “He wants to own you,” Zarconi said. She sounded bored.

  “He knew about the ambush in Eridani,” Jax said. He felt Phonson’s grip tighten, but the reaction was restrained, so Jax tested it further. “He confirmed that it’s Rando Jansen on the inside. Jansen is the mole in Space Waste.”

  “Doesn’t it feel better to know?” Phonson said. “That’s what I love about what I do. I know every little bit of who’s fucking with who. Shit, half the time I’m helping them fuck each other over. But we’re at a new level of cooperation right now in ModPol. And that’s thanks to a balance.”

  “This might go on for a while,” Zarconi said.

  “Just let go of Jackson,” Runstom said.

  “Single-minded,” the voice in Jax’s ear went on, the blade taking respite from pointing at his chest to momentarily point across the room. “That’s why you fit in so well with Defense. Defense is a single-minded organization. More. That’s all they think about. More. More sales, bigger contracts.

  “Justice, on the other hand, has been actually trying to control the criminal threat in our little corner of the galaxy. We’ve been putting people inside Space Waste for years. But it’s hard to mak
e traction. Once you’re on the inside, it’s just a matter of time before you’re made. Or you’re converted. But now, we got Jansen. We finally have some control over the most dangerous criminal outfit in the known universe.

  “And so along comes Defense. To Defense, this is another weapon. Space Waste is a gun to be aimed. A threat that furthers their agenda. Space Waste is like an ion storm or a solar flare – they strike without warning. That shit is why high-tech hull shielding makes money. This is the same thing: Space Waste attacks are why Defense makes money. Sometimes you just have to remind people of that threat.”

  “So they use the man on the inside to tell the Wasters who to attack,” Runstom said. He was carrying a pistol of some kind, but it hung low in his hand, the other hand unable to stray far from the wall. Jax hoped the weapon was of the non-lethal variety, in case Runstom had to take a wild shot.

  “That stunner won’t do you any good, Public Relations Officer Runstom,” Phonson taunted. “Didn’t the lovely psycho tell you about my special anti-aggression defense system?”

  Zarconi half-turned to Runstom. “It’s an electromagnetic matrix,” she said, tipping her head as if to nod at the invisible energy in the air. “Some tech that was being tested for lock-ups. Ultimately deemed too dangerous and controversial to use. This small-minded man found himself in possession of one of the prototypes, supposed to have been recycled.”

  “I’m not small-minded,” Phonson growled in a measured voice.

  She rolled her eyes. “I had to install it for him. Otherwise he would have fried everyone in his little playhouse.”

  “Anti-aggression?” Runstom said.

  “It’s tuned to exclude the vitastats of the crew.” She pointed. “So it won’t stop him from slicing open Jackson there. But if you try to draw down on him right now, you’ll get a nasty shock.”

  “Hurts like fuck,” McManus murmured before lapsing back into his soft, painful groaning.