Under Shadows

by Jason LaPier

  He beamed at Runstom, the only other occupant of the passenger bay. “Thank you, Stan,” he said for about the thousandth time.

  Runstom smiled back. “Of course.”

  The shuttle wasn’t civilian, but instead a special non-military vessel that apparently belonged to the marketing department of ModPol Defense. Runstom had explained that this was best for approaching Terroneous, and that the vessel had even been inspected by a third party on Ipo. It was enough to satisfy the Federated Security Committee, not only in terms of being non-threatening, but as a method of arriving at a meeting with them.

  “So, Stan – this meeting with the FSC.” Jax had limited dealings with them during the magnetic sensor catastrophe only months earlier. They seemed like an uptight bunch. After all, they were a committee with no funding and no power and tons of responsibility. He wanted to probe without probing. “Are you nervous?”

  Runstom looked at him like he hadn’t considered the possibility of being nervous until it was presented, and then it was all he could think about. “I’m glad to be bringing you back,” he said. His previous smile vanished so thoroughly, Jax wondered if he’d imagined it. “But there’s a lot more at stake now.”

  Jax allowed his own smile to die off momentarily. He suspected there was more to this generous shuttle ride than getting him home. “I guess ModPol is still trying to get their hooks – er, I mean services – into Terroneous.”

  Runstom nodded. “Sorry that we’re using your return as an in,” he said after a moment of hesitation.

  Jax waved it off. “No, no, I get it. I don’t care at all really. I’m just so glad it’s all over. Turning this into publicity means they’re making it official that ModPol doesn’t have an interest in me.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.”

  Well, it was mostly true, Jax knew. This was a gesture instigated by Runstom’s current department, Defense. As far as Terroneous – and the rest of the galaxy – was concerned, it would represent the will of the entire ModPol organization. However, there were probably still a number of hurt feelings in Runstom’s old department, Justice. But with the public display of Jax’s return to Terroneous, the angsty cops would have to get over it. From Runstom’s description of what happened at the zero-G prison, it sounded like they had bigger things to worry about.

  “How is this whole public relations job working for you?” Jax asked with genuine interest. He’d been curious ever since Runstom got transferred.

  The ex-cop’s face wrinkled slightly. “It’s not really my thing. But they keep telling me I’m doing a good job. I guess …” he started, then stared off into space.

  “Guess what?”

  “Oh,” he said. “I guess they think people think I’m honest.”

  “You are honest, Stan.” Jax laughed. “Like the most honest person I know.”

  This caused Runstom’s face to darken into a glare, a mix of anger and pain. “It’s not an honest job.”

  Jax felt goosebumps rise on his skin despite the perfectly regulated temperature of the high-tech passenger bay. He cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “Stan. You can always talk to me, you know.” There were so many things only between the two of them. He knew Runstom knew that.

  Runstom blew out a sigh. “Yeah, I know.” He went quiet and Jax waited, seeing him collect his thoughts together. Finally, he leaned in closer. “I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen.”

  This caused Jax to flush with electric fear. “Something is going to happen?” He looked around, then back at Runstom. “On Terroneous?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Runstom said. “What I know is that my bosses – they told me about Tim Cazos.”

  “Basil Roy,” Jax said to himself. He grimaced at the thought of the cold body of the Space Waste programmer, the horrific gash across his throat. “Wait, they told you what about him?”

  “That he was a mole,” he said. “Is a mole, according to them. Though to be honest, Jenna told me a lot more about Cazos than anyone else.”

  “So they think he’s still alive,” Jax whispered. He suddenly felt very paranoid about having this discussion on a ModPol shuttle, even if it was non-military.

  “I don’t know if they think that or not.” Runstom’s words made Jax believe the man had gotten better at taking nothing at face value. “They want me to think he’s alive. That he’s still operating under cover with Space Waste.”

  Jax frowned. “Why?” A second of silence passed, and he knew Runstom wouldn’t answer what he didn’t know. “What else is there?”

  Runstom looked to one side, seeing something invisible, thinking. “Well,” he said. “Ipo is a low-value customer. ModPol is obviously only interested because of the proximity to Terroneous. That’s the high-value customer.”

  “Also doesn’t really seem like anyone would attack Ipo, does it?” Jax said. “I’m sure there’s valuable stuff there, like mined metals and whatnot. But what good is it unless you have a factory to sell it to?”

  Runstom nodded. “You noticed how much firepower is hanging around the ports. The one we went into and the other port we flew out of.”

  “Yeah, both were full of those soldiers. Defenders?”

  “Yes. Officially, it’s only what they call a trial unit.”

  Jax huffed. “Some trial.”

  “Much bigger than the trial unit I saw at Vulca,” Runstom said. “They’re claiming that numbers are doubled right now because of a massive shift rollover. But even doubled.” He looked off again, then looked back at Jax. “There’s a goddamn army there.”

  The conversations Jax was forced to have with Phonson ate at the edges of his mind. He’d been blocking them out, pushing aside the terror and the pain so that he could face his future with some kind of hope. So that he could face Lealina without breaking down into a blubbering mess.

  “All that stuff Phonson was talking about,” Jax said softly. “About Defense and Justice working together. About Jansen. How Jansen is in control of Space Waste now.”

  Runstom looked ill, his face pale. “Yeah,” he said wearily. The revelation wasn’t coming to him, it had been with him. He was only just accepting it in that moment. “I should have questioned them about that. My boss. My boss’s boss. They gave me a taste of trust by telling me about Cazos. But it’s …” he trailed off, shaking his head.

  “Stale data,” Jax said.

  He looked up. “Yes,” Runstom said, cracking a mirthless smile. “Stale data. But it’s still a message.”

  “Right.” Jax turned it over in his head. They wanted Runstom to know that they had an insider. If they wanted him to know, it was because they wanted him to be ready. But ready for what? “Would they use Space Waste to attack Ipo?”

  “It’s possible,” Runstom said. “If they’ve had this Jansen inside, they must have used him to encourage the attack on Vulca. An attack on Ipo would probably scare people on Terroneous. And if ModPol repelled the attack …”

  “Then it’s like free advertising,” Jax said. “Well, not really free, but … you know what I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  Jax was about to open his mouth to ask more questions when the cabin was peppered with soft flashing lights. An evenly-toned robotic voice told them to secure their restraints. They were on their final approach to the orbital dock. They had arrived at Terroneous.

  Jax was home.

  Chapter 17

  The Wasters had hastily gutted the ModPol ships taken from the zero-G prison. No, not Wasters, Dava reminded herself. They were no longer Space Waste.

  Their entire fleet was seven ships. Two black marias, prisoner tubes yanked out and replaced by jury-rigged harnesses and weapon racks. A personnel transport that needed some modifications. A cargo transport that they loaded up with a few hands plus their largest guns, including a heavy shell-throwing beast with a hover-base under it; which Dava couldn’t see a use for except in a ground engagement, but Johnny Eyeball insisted on bringing it anyway. And finally, t
hree fighter ships, two of which were abandoned Space Waste fighters – repurposed, heavily customized military tech – and one ModPol patroller that was small and light enough to maneuver well, on which one of the weapons experts dialed up the laser modulators well past the safe levels that were standard for ModPol.

  Three fighters weren’t enough to take on the Longhorn with its defensive batteries keeping anyone from getting close and a handful of fighters docked in its combat bays, but they were something to protect the four transports. Still, Dava didn’t have much of a plan. She talked to a number of her people, and no one had anything intelligent to contribute. Strategies ranged from “ramming speed” to “flying circles around them until they run out of ammo”. Her personal preference would be to use the fighters to distract long enough to breach-and-board with a couple of the transports. She was certain that if she could step foot on the Longhorn, she could murder her way to Jansen.

  As it was, their best and only real hope was Captain 2-Bit.

  This was the reason for sitting so far back. They were within striking distance if they went full-throttle on all warp engines, but not close enough to be identified. If detected, the Longhorn crew would only see them as just a bunch of random ships. In the space between Barnard-5 and Barnard-7, they wouldn’t be anything to worry about.

  Though if Jansen had any tactical sense, he’d order his crew to take a closer look at anyone coming within a light-hour of his command ship. The best way to do that would be to send a pair of fighters out if anyone got too close. But Jansen wasn’t military. Dava could guess that from the missions she’d seen him take part in. He was a sneaky bastard, and smart as hell, but he didn’t know shit about real war. He’d be leaning on 2-Bit for tactics. And she knew 2-Bit was going to be less help than normal.

  All forty-two that watched Moses jettison from the dock at the Space Waste base were onboard one of the seven ships. How many loyalists did Jansen have? How many Misters had he recruited? According to Toom-Toom, the loyalists numbered less than two dozen. The Misters however were harder to pin down. There’d been about ten of them that showed up to board the Longhorn, but everyone knew there were more of them out there, scattered around the system, hiding in the corners.

  They’d reached a point inside a light-hour away. Dava had Lucky try the rogue training channel.

  “Message sent,” Lucky said. “If he responds right away, it’ll be … one-hundred and twelve minutes for the round trip. Give or take.”

  So they waited. The initial message was only a greeting. Something safe, something to let 2-Bit know they were out there. She knew he was risking his life. She knew he was willing to do what it took to stop Jansen. But he couldn’t do it alone. And he had to know he was doing it for something.

  They were in one of the black marias. Dava would have preferred to sit in a Space Waste ship, as it would increase her chances of getting closer, but they only had the two old fighters. Of course, Lucky Jerk would have preferred a fighter too, but she’d brought him long because she wanted her best pilot with her. And just for the hell of it, she brought the young Toom-Toom to be his co-pilot.

  Maybe it was better this way. She would have to face Jansen straight on. United together with her crew.

  “Captain 2-Bit’s reply is coming through,” Lucky said, breaking a long silence.

  “Play it,” she said.

  The recording came through as a robotic voice. He must have typed it out rather than risk speaking out loud.

  Hey everyone. 2-Bit here. Backchannel working beautifully. So glad to hear you’re out there. Don’t have a lot of friends here. My boys will follow my orders, but they’ll follow RJ’s too. Waiting for your call. Squadron Whiskey out.

  “Now what?” Toom-Toom said after the uncomfortable silence that followed.

  “We have to tell him everything,” Dava said. “About Moses. About Basil Roy. About Jansen.”

  She had already drafted a message in the waiting hours and minutes since they sent the first greeting. She had laid it all out. Wanted 2-Bit to have all the information. And then she wanted to know what he could do.

  “It came through clean?” she said to Lucky as she re-read his message, then re-read her planned response.

  “Yeah, the encryption is good,” the pilot said. His voice had a question in it.

  “We have to be sure, Lucky.”

  He turned suddenly to face her. “Wait, wait. He said ‘Squadron Whiskey’.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Yeah!” Toom-Toom broke in. “In training, Whiskey is for the good guys. For Waster.”

  “And the rogue team is Squadron Romeo,” Lucky said.

  She rolled the names around in her head. “So we used the Romeo channel and encryption,” she said. “But he signed it Whiskey.”

  They both nodded silently at her. It was suddenly clear what it meant: 2-Bit was compromised. What wasn’t clear was how. The message wasn’t his voice, so there was no way to verify he even wrote it. But the mention of Squadron Whiskey wasn’t something that Jansen would say. Only 2-Bit and his pilots would use those words. That left the other possibility: that 2-Bit wrote the message, but knew it was being read. Which meant he was playing along, but left them a clue so they would know it wasn’t a secure channel.

  She looked at her message. How badly she wanted to let him know that Moses was lost. That Space Waste was lost. But she had to assume the message would be read.

  The words came out of her before she could thoroughly think it through. “Send this,” she said, flashing the message over to Lucky.

  Captain 2-Bit: we lost Moses. We want to rejoin the ranks, but are afraid RJ will fire on us. Dava feels a duty to be there to greet the Earth kin. Can you convince RJ to let us board?

  Lucky sent it without question. “What’s next, Boss?”

  There was no way Jansen would let them dock with the Longhorn. Her request was only made to force some kind of response. “Do you have the projected trajectory of the ark?”

  “Of course. It’s all over the public traffic channels. Right now, they’re in the first stage of deceleration around B-7. Then there’s a planned trajectory to head for B-5 at subwarp.”

  “I want to get closer to the Longhorn, but I want to approach between it and the ark.”

  “Well that’s no problem,” Lucky said, pulling up a map. “The Longhorn is already well past B-7, on a course for B-5. We’re not far from B-7 now.”

  “Can’t we just intercept the ark now?”

  Lucky shook his head. “Nah, these old arks – they don’t have the grav-manifolders that modern ships have. It’s dangerous to get near them until they slow down the long way. Even when they get down to subwarp; sure, we could match their speed, but then what? Trying to board at that speed is suicide. Even the smallest speck of space dust is like a nuclear-powered bullet.”

  She frowned at the map. “So what’s his plan?” she thought aloud.

  “Well, the ark is going to orbit B-5,” Toom-Toom said. She looked at him and he shrugged. “Like Lucky said, it’s all in the public traffic channels. I guess they wanted to let people know because it’s such an old ship, and they don’t want anyone interfering with it.”

  “Okay,” she said. “It’s supposed to hit B-5’s orbit. Then what will it do?”

  “A few passes of B-5, then it peels off to orbit Terroneous. Eventually, it will match orbit with one of the orbital docks.”

  Dava could remember it. That moment some fifteen years ago. Was it more? She’d stopped counting. The sleep-sickness was terrible. Pain through her whole body as the nervous system woke up. Nausea that seemed to run through her bones, and nothing in the stomach to evacuate, no matter how hard it tried. Calling out for her mother and father despite how her throat felt like a fire had raged through it.

  And then they told her: her parents had been ejected. They’d brought old-world sickness with them, and they were not fit for the new world. They’d have died anyway – that’s what she was
told. She’d gone to sleep rescued, awakened an orphan.

  If the last ark was decelerating, then in that moment the sleep tubes were cycling. By the time the vessel reached the orbital dock at Terroneous, everyone would be awake. They probably wouldn’t be able to dock – Dava remembered that. The Earth ship’s tech was incompatible with colonial tech. So they’d have to hold orbit and ferry the passengers back and forth in shuttles.

  Is that where Jansen would strike? Try to intercept the ferries? The Terroneous orbital docks had minimal defensive capabilities; and even so, they wouldn’t risk using them if innocent lives could be caught in the crossfire. But he wouldn’t be able to get to them all that way. There would only be a few ferries in flight at a time. He’d be able to grab one, then the rest would flee. No, the only attack that made sense was to board the ark directly. But the only flight-worthy raiders that Space Waste had were lost in the Eridani mission. Dava’s team had done a full inventory and checked the logs at the base, and the only ships that left were the Longhorn and half a dozen fightercraft. The fighters could board the ark; there wouldn’t be much in terms of security forces on board. They wouldn’t be able to grab more than a few people, as the fighters had very little hold space. They could hijack the whole vessel, but then what? The thing would have exhausted its main tanks making the six-light-year trek from Earth.

  Dava sighed in frustration. She needed more information from 2-Bit. She felt helpless, but she needed to give him another chance to respond.

  *

  Lealina met Jax at the orbital dock and they embraced for a very long time, eventually interrupted by Runstom.

  “We need to catch the elevator to the surface.” He pointed to the signs, which indicated a direction along with a countdown timer to the next drop.

  “Okay,” Jax said, pulling away from her warmth and gazing into bright-blue eyes. She had a smell, something floral and grassy, a thing he hadn’t realized until it was missing. He drew a slow breath, then finally nodded to Runstom.