Under Shadows

by Jason LaPier

  “If I try to draw on him,” Runstom said. He lifted the gun, barrel still pointed down, and motioned it toward Zarconi. “I could give it to you, couldn’t I?”

  She smiled at him in a way that made Jax extremely uncomfortable, even after dozens of hours of torture, starvation, and the more recent position he was in. “Smart, Stan. You’re right: I am protected from the system as one of the crew.”

  “I removed you,” Phonson said quickly. Even without seeing his face, Jax could hear the desperation in his voice.

  “Maybe,” she said, one finger lingering on the grip of the proffered pistol. “And maybe when I set it up, I made sure I was always hardcoded in there.”

  Phonson sucked in the air behind Jax’s ear, his next reply taking some effort to think out. “Okay, right,” he said finally. “But I bet your ex-cop buddy encoded that pistol. It will only work with his fingerprint.”

  As stone-faced as Runstom tried to remain, even Jax could tell it was true. He felt relieved in that moment; Runstom had been desperate enough to recruit Zarconi’s help, but at least he hadn’t trusted her completely. He’d taken measures. Not that it helped so much in the current situation.

  She pulled her finger back and brought the hand harmlessly to her hip. Runstom drew the gun away from her. “I’m sorry, Jenna.”

  “It’s okay, Stanford,” she said gently without looking at him. Her eyes were affixed to Phonson. “I didn’t expect you to trust me that far. And I actually owe you an apology. For taking my own measures.”

  A small, dull cylinder appeared in her hand. It flashed, and Jax staggered.

  *

  “She shot me! She fucking shot me!”

  Runstom ignored X’s panicked tirade. He didn’t much care that Zarconi had shot him in cold blood. He cared a lot more that she almost hit Jax.

  He looked down at the spent coilgun in her hand. He’d seen her pull it out during their escape from the prison. In the chaos, some part of him had blocked that from his memory. She’d been armed the whole time.

  “Okay, you psycho,” Jax said. He’d picked up the knife that X had dropped. Waved it in Zarconi’s direction. “How about you drop that gun before someone else gets shot.”

  She smirked mirthlessly and tossed the spent weapon aside. “It only had one shot. And it only had one target. Were you afraid I’d waste it?”

  “Stan,” he said. “McManus needs medical attention.”

  Runstom could read the cross of anger and concern on Jax’s face. It felt good to have someone sane in the room. Even if McManus was a terrible piece of shit, letting him die while they watched was not something either of them was willing to do.

  “Where’s the med bay, Jenna?”

  “You don’t want to stick around here, Stanford.” She walked sideways, circling X. The red-skinned ex-cop watched her warily, on his knees, hand at his side where she’d put a hole in his ribcage. “Mark and I are staying,” she said.

  “We should arrest you both,” Runstom said weakly. It was hard to put any feeling behind the empty threat.

  “Of course you should,” she said. “But you can’t. The anti-aggression system won’t let you take either of us by force.”

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  She took her eyes off X for a moment to gaze at Runstom. “You did it. You helped me, and I helped you. We’re rare, Stanford. We share the mark of outcasts. And we helped each other.” She paused, her eyes dropping slightly. “I hate to say this, Stan, but we don’t need each other anymore.”

  A churn passed through Runstom’s stomach. He didn’t want to be kin to Zarconi, but there was a certain truth to her words. There was no denying the rarity of their green-tinged skin bound them in some way. And yet, his reasons for bringing her along were not of some kind of twisted tribalism. He used her. It was only appropriate to find she was using him as well. His goal was to get Jax. Hers was to get X.

  She could have used the coilgun on Runstom. Taken control of the ship. Gone her own way, whether it led to X or not. She could have had her freedom. But she didn’t. In her mind, they had worked together. As friends, maybe.

  “Jax,” he said. “Let’s get McManus out of here.”

  He hobbled to the slumped form that Jax hovered over. Then he locked eyes with the B-fourean.

  “I hope this is the last time I have to thank you like this,” Jax said.

  Runstom felt his face betray a smile, despite the levity. “ModPol isn’t after you.” He nodded at the pacified X. “Only he was.”

  “Good,” Jax said. “Because I’m pretty sure he was after you more than me.”

  He looked at his friend in silence, his smile fading. “Jax,” he said.

  “I tried to hold out,” Jax said, his face dropping. “I tried so hard.”

  “It’s okay,” he said quickly. Whatever Jax had given up could wait for later. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  Jax looked at Zarconi, his face tightening. “No, I suppose it doesn’t.”

  She watched them with a calm patience as they hoisted the groaning McManus upright and slowly carried him from the room. Jax was beaten and weakened and Runstom’s foot couldn’t allow weight, but the gravity was only about a quarter G, so they managed. Either X had resigned to his fate, or he intended to sweet-talk Zarconi once they were gone. Runstom knew there was no possibility of changing her mind. A very small part of him wanted to stay to watch X fail to plead for his life. But suddenly, with Jax safe, there were more important problems in the universe waiting for attention.

  “You won’t see me again,” she said as they drew close to the door. He looked back at her. A normal human being might be subject to a tearful parting. Regret. But he saw nothing of the sort on her face. Another kind of pain rippled there. “You understand, don’t you Stan?” she asked softly.

  “Good,” Runstom said, growing colder. “I’m done with your games.” He briefly looked down at the glowering face of X. “Both of you. And I’ve got—”

  “Miles to go before you sleep.”

  He looked at her for the last time. Tried again to rewind everything back to the day he’d met her. If she hadn’t been who she was, and he hadn’t been who he was, what would that day have been like? A man walks into a bar. A woman’s voice teases him about the green tint of his skin. He flares up, only to see she’s even greener than he. She buys his next round. They talk about their mothers and fathers, about what they know and what they don’t. She is lovely, dark and deep, and her eyes gleam with intelligence and mischief. He lets down a life-long guard.

  A stupid dream. Runstom swallowed away the bliss-stained drama. Turned from her, dragging the sack-of-shit cop through the hatch, before the idiot bled out completely. Hesitated before the door closed her off forever.

  A final look back.

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  Chapter 15

  No one came to greet them when they got home. The ship Dava was on docked a few hours after the first couple of arrivals.

  Half-Shot helped her bring in Moses’s body. She knew he wouldn’t have wanted her to take the trouble; the old man would have preferred to drift where he passed. But she wasn’t ready to let go of him. Not until he was home.

  Once there, they brought him in and Half-Shot went off in search of a shower. She thought about telling him to turn down the gravity in the center while he was at it. She drifted through the dock, but once she got further she knew it would be painful to feel the weight of her broken body.

  Truth was, the fancy ModPol med bay had done a pretty good job. Her broken ribs were mended, any loose shrapnel had been extracted, and her lacerations were finely sealed. The bruising was left for her body to heal naturally. It hurt.

  She stared at Moses’s face, the rest of his body wrapped tightly in black plastic. Eyes closed. Somehow he’d managed to die with a goddamn smile. A frozen, unbreakable bliss.

  Dava wanted to hit things, but her body wanted to sleep. She secured Moses in a cold-storage unit in
the dock – they could have a ceremony later – and pulled herself through the hatch. The deeper in she went, the more she regretted bringing him here. Even coming back here. The halls were joylessly silent. Normally someone was on music duty, but the speakers spoke only a fine hiss of quiet static. Even the familiar scent of humans living in an enclosed space had faded into a stale, lifeless scent of memories passed.

  It was no longer home.

  She reached the hub and began the climb up to her quarters. As the gravity increased, it magnified her weariness. She slumped down the hall. Slowed to brush a hand against Thompson’s door, then fell to one knee. She panted, and squeezed her eyes tight, grit her teeth. The tears came anyway, all at once in a short fury and then were gone. In seconds, she was empty. She stood and reached her door.

  Was it ever home?

  She sank into the bed and slept.

  *

  A few hours of sleep seemed to make the pain of healing worse, but she soon realized it just meant the drugs had worn off. Grimacing as she fought gravity to get out of her bunk, she decided the pharmacy would be her first destination. Then to the bar, where she could get a drink that was as caffeinated as it was alcoholic.

  Only when she got to the rec level, the bars were all closed up. A couple of the lounges were open, but empty. Finally she came to a large one where about two dozen Wasters had gathered.

  “Dava.” Lucky Jerk approached her and held up a can. “You want this? I just opened it. The vendamatics are the only way to get grub around here.”

  “The shift schedule,” she started, then decided she didn’t even know what to ask. She took the can and slurped the sugary liquid.

  “RJ and 2-Bit left a skeleton crew behind.” Lucky turned to the small crowd and scanned for a moment, then spotted someone. “Toom-Toom, come ’ere a sec!”

  A tall, athletic olive-skinned young man barely out of his teens strode to them. “Capo Dava,” he said with a nod. “Good to have you back home, sir.”

  “Toom-Toom is 2-Bit’s favorite cadet,” Lucky said. That was why Dava recognized the young man: she’s seen him with the captain. She gave Lucky a short nod and he turned back to the kid. “Tell the capo about the mission.”

  “They took the Longhorn to Barnard-5,” Toom-Toom said, his eyes squinting serious as he recalled the details. “Loaded up with what fighters we had left after the Eridani mission. Took everyone he could. Left behind only enough of us to keep this place humming.”

  “That’s not a large force,” she said. After losing a couple dozen lives at Eridani, and a couple dozen more arrested. Then again, what force did he need?

  “More new guys showed up,” Toom-Toom said, interrupting her thoughts. “From that new alliance Boss Jansen made.”

  “The fucking Misters,” Lucky Jerk said. Dava never had occasion to see true anger on the pilot’s face except when the subject of the Misters came up. “I still can’t believe RJ made a deal with the fucking Misters.”

  It was low, Dava agreed, but maybe worse than that, it was desperate. Or maybe it was opportunistic. Two gangs, one stronger but currently weakened, and their rival, a poorly-led upstart. Jansen could play them together or against each other as he needed to fill his agenda. Whatever that was.

  “What did he offer the Misters?” she said.

  “Control of trade on Terroneous,” Toom-Toom said. By trade, meaning the buying and selling of anything off-market, which for the Misters was mostly drugs. The market they tried to break into on their own, only to be disrupted by Space Waste. A disruption that Dava herself had a fairly large part in when she and a small team had smoked them out of their nest on the moon.

  “You said they went to Barnard-5,” she said. “To go after the Doomed ark?”

  “Yep. Boss Jansen said it was critical to replenish our ranks, and the Earthlings would join us.”

  “How does he know?”

  “Pressgang tactics,” Lucky muttered. “That’s how I ended up in the Misters back in the day. Ain’t no way to raise a crew.”

  “No,” Dava said. Space Waste was a criminal organization, a gang, all that was true. But it was also a family. Moses Down recruited, but never forced.

  “Boss Jansen says they’ll be vulnerable,” Toom-Toom continued. “That they won’t have jobs or money – except Earth money, which ain’t no good – and they’ll be homeless on Terroneous. Boss Jansen says—”

  “Stop calling him that,” Dava said.

  Toom-Toom’s face hung. He glanced at Lucky, who gave him a short nod. He continued in a quieter voice. “I’m sorry, Capo,” he said. “It’s just that – well, RJ is in charge, cuz of Moses getting arrested. And now Moses …”

  “Toom-Toom, get the capo something to eat,” Lucky said gently.

  “Aye.” Toom-Toom turned to leave, then paused and looked back. “Before I forget, Captain 2-Bit had a message for you, Capo Dava. He said to tell you he would be on the Longhorn’s bridge, right there a’side RJ. He said to tell you he’s there for Space Waste, just like always, from training to mission.”

  After this cryptic message, the young cadet strode off. “Not very bright, but not bad to look at,” Dava said as he left. She looked at Lucky. “I think we can trust 2-Bit, but I don’t get that message.”

  “From training to mission,” Lucky said. After a moment of thought, he looked at her. “In training exercises, we always used an extra channel for anyone that was playing the other side. You know, so we could practice against each other. The other channel was encrypted with a different code so you couldn’t hear each other.”

  “Could 2-Bit pick up this channel on the Longhorn?”

  “Of course,” Lucky said. “He’d have to decrypt it, but he’s got all the keys.”

  “Any chance Jansen would pick it up?”

  Lucky tilted his head in thought. “RJ never took part in trainings. Around Barnard-5 you’re going to have lots of encrypted chatter on different frequencies. One more is just noise in the soup.”

  After a moment of quiet, she nodded in the direction of Toom-Toom. “He’s really 2-Bit’s favorite?”

  Lucky’s face dropped a little, and at first Dava took it to be envy. Then she realized it was a different kind of sadness. “His mother was one of the original Wasters. Rei Toomi. No father. Rei was already pregnant when she came to Space Waste. Everyone says 2-Bit had a thing for her, but she didn’t for him. She was lost in a raid when Toom-Toom was a couple years old. 2-Bit took care of him after that.”

  “I’ve seen him around.” Dava knew 2-Bit saw himself as a father to all his pilots, so she hadn’t picked up on a favorite. But 2-Bit had no children himself. It made sense to her that he would care extra for this orphaned boy of a woman he loved.

  “Yep, since he learned to fly about two years ago, he’s gone on every run with the Captain.”

  “Every run except this one,” Dava said, realizing the significance as she said it. Which meant two things: that 2-Bit needed to leave this message for her, and picked the pilot he trusted the most to leave it with. And that he saw this as a bad mission, one that he did not expect to come back from. The risk was too great to bring along his favorite flyboy. To bring along the closest thing to his own son.

  She took inventory of the room. She needed someone to talk to, someone she could trust. Someone who knew what to do. Lucky Jerk. Half-Shot. Seven-Pack. Johnny Eyeball. Freezer. People she trusted, but couldn’t talk to. They’d listen, but they wouldn’t lead.

  They’d lost a few coming out of the prison. Polar Gary wouldn’t leave the turret he’d commandeered and forced ModPol to take the whole thing out with a guided rocket. Thompson she saw shredded before her eyes. Jerrard and Moses cut to pieces mere meters before the safety of the getaway ship. A few others that didn’t make it out. Adding to the losses from Eridani.

  And of those that Jansen left behind, who was there? The older warriors, damaged and bitter. The young and inexperienced. Only enough hands to keep the lights on.

  �
��Spread the word, Lucky,” she said. “We’re having a ceremony at the docks. One hour. I want everyone there.”

  *

  As they gathered, she gave some time to ensure everyone was there. She saw Freezer and Johnny Eyeball and approached them.

  “Still waiting on that payment, Johnny?” she said.

  He grunted, and gave her his trademark angry wink, the effect of one damaged eye unable to close. “Lost the taste for it.”

  Freezer cleared his throat and leaned in to Dava. “He’s been sober too long.”

  “There wasn’t anything on the inside?”

  The skinny hacker shrugged. “Homebrew drugs, but not alcohol. He only likes alcohol. And now, nothing.”

  She gave Eyeball a sideways glance. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “I woke up,” Eyeball grunted.

  The three words landed hard. “Freezer,” she said, though she had her eyes on Eyeball. “Get me a headcount.”

  With a nod, he went off to circle the room. She and Eyeball stared at each other. He was one of her oldest mates; even fooled around a few times, though never got serious. She trusted him, but as she looked into his eyes, she could see something missing. Alcohol was an escape for him. He treated it like a purpose. Now he had none.

  “Are you still with me?” she asked softly.

  He looked away, then looked back. “Depends, I guess.”

  She nodded. It was the only answer she was looking for. She wanted to have to earn his hand. She didn’t want to order anyone to come with her. She wanted them to volunteer.

  She walked to the front where Half-Shot had pulled Moses back out of cold storage. His wraps were connected to a thin cable to keep him from drifting. She looked out across the dock. Wasters gripped poles and handholds all around the prep space. Conversing in low murmurs. Watching her.

  Freezer floated to her. “Forty-two,” he said. “That’s every soul on the station. They’re all here.”

  She held up a hand and waited for the murmuring to die down. “This is the body of Moses Down. We send it adrift today, not just to say goodbye to the man we loved and trusted, but to say goodbye to all the brothers and sisters whose bodies didn’t make it back.”