Under Shadows

by Jason LaPier

  She involuntarily clutched her stomach, then tried to surreptitiously brush her hand against her shirt. “It’s old tech. The stasis tubes. And the FTL tech. They were out there for a long time.”

  He looked at her sideways. “It was like this for you.” Not a question; an acknowledgement.

  “Why are you here?” she said. “Some kind of guilt from growing up lucky?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I may have grown up lucky, but the past couple of years have not been so generous,” he said evenly. Then he shook his head. “You’re right though. Life in the domes is very different. I had to be thrown out of that life and dropped to the bottom. When I first came to Terroneous, I was starving. Literally. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so empty. And cold.”

  She nodded. “I spent a few years in the domes. Even as an orphan, life is plush there.” Her eyes lost their focus and she thought of Moses. Thought about what his absence felt like. Thought about how empty her life would have been without him. “But when I left, I wasn’t alone.” She looked at Jax again, the small twitches of the head and hands at every sound, and at every silence. No, she decided; he had not become accustomed to living with fear, as she thought. He’d become accustomed to overcoming it. “It must have been hard for you.”

  His head slid back, her sudden sympathy hitting him unexpectedly. Then he shrugged. “Point is, when my life came back together, I saw how it was out here – outside of the domes. How people worked together, helped each other.” He looked at his feet. “Even in Space Waste. Bunch of thugs, and they care more about each other than anyone in any dome cares about anyone else.”

  She blinked at him. A domer, envious of the ragged lives of gangbangers cobbling together shelter in the depths of space. A small part of her mind nagged at her to grasp the meaning of it. Something about how she should be thankful for the wealth of the intangibles. But she was suddenly exhausted. She wanted to go home. And there was none. There never had been, really. There had been shelter. There had been family. But there had not been home.

  “What’s next?” Jax said, breaking the anxious silence that had grown between them. “This new group of yours – Shadowdown?”

  When he said the word, he looked into her eyes. He told her without any words that he knew what it meant. In the shadow of Moses Down. The galaxy had one less bloodthirsty gangster boss. And Dava had no keeper. Naming his shadow felt like a way of memorializing him, of promising to continue his mission. And yet, his mission was not her mission. His shadow was not for binding his will to hers; his shadow was for his passing. For moving on.

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly. The question opened her up. Confusion twisted her guts. But it wasn’t alone. Weightlessness. Warmth. Light. She was free. She was in control.

  “Life on Terroneous isn’t so bad,” Jax said idly, as though talking to himself more than her. “Can’t beat the food.”

  She smiled at him. The crack in her face was enough for what was building inside her to escape. She laughed, a ridiculous sound to her own ears. “No, you can’t,” she said.

  Had the seed been planted in that moment? Or was it already there, when Dava led Shadowdown into a one-way trip to the surface of Terroneous? She couldn’t have expected to pack everyone into the black marias and zip back to the Space Waste base, to claim it for their own. Maybe she’d been gambling that 2-Bit could help her out. But she didn’t think so. Something inside her wanted to bring her people to this place. She wanted to come to this place. A thousand Earthlings had just landed, and they too were lost. Without home. She could start it all over. She could step off the ark with them. A second chance at being a refugee; a capable adult instead of an orphaned child. A place without domes. A place that was hard, but free.

  Epilogue

  He hadn’t heard that his mother had come to Terroneous until she was already there. She’d made it all the way to Stockton without a word. Knocked on his apartment door.

  “Sylvia?”

  “Stanley!”

  She embraced him and after the shock of surprise, he returned it. Then a spike of fear. “What are you doing here?”

  She brushed past him with a wave. “Is this your place? Did you just move in?”

  “Huh? Uh, a few weeks ago,” he stammered.

  “Oh, Stanley, honey,” she said with a playful glare. “You have to get some furniture. Where is your mother supposed to sit?”

  Runstom pulled the only chair he owned away from the only table he owned and gestured at it. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m not in any danger,” she said as she waved off the chair. “Really. Not any more than I would be anywhere else.”

  “But Space Waste,” he started. The whole reason for the witness protection was to keep her hidden from the gang she’d infiltrated as an undercover detective. And they were all over the B-5 moon.

  She waved dismissively. “Space Waste is no more.”

  “They just formed a new gang,” he said, drawing the curtains on the only window.

  “Moses Down is dead,” she said. “The rest of them don’t even know who I am.”

  He peeked around the curtain he’d just pulled. From the third floor of the old stone building, he could see his street. A gravel-and-dirt affair, it saw little traffic. The densest cluster of buildings lay to the east, in the center of town.

  When he turned back, he saw her looking around the room. Saw it through her eyes. Drab gray-brown walls. An ancient holovid set in one corner. The table and the single chair, both made of local wood. A small door that led to a tiny bedroom. A couple of storage units, including a cold store for perishable food. A small cooking unit that had been pulled from an old starship and refurbished. Jax had asserted that it worked, but Runstom still hadn’t figured it out.

  The whole place was Jax’s idea. He lived in another apartment just down the street. It had been a place to sleep, but Runstom couldn’t bring himself to feel anything more. He had no idea how to make a home out of it.

  The thought of Jax brought him to another thought. “Any other word … in your network?”

  She looked at him, her eyes hardening for a moment. “You mean about Mark Phonson. X.” She looked around. There were no hidden bugs in a place like this. No tiny cameras or microphones. “I should be asking you.”

  He felt his face flush and he shook his head. “I think he’s gone.” Runstom had left Jenna Zarconi in full control of Comet-X. How long it would take her to kill the man, he didn’t want to know.

  “Well, so does everyone else, thanks to our favorite cop Jared McManus,” she said with a sigh. “After you dropped him at Outpost Gamma, he planted himself at the bar and has been telling the story to anyone who would listen.”

  He cringed. “The whole story?”

  She laughed. “Of course not. Not that I would know. But I do know that his version doesn’t include Stanford Runstom.”

  He exhaled, realizing that he’d been holding his breath. “It’s not the way I wanted it to end.”

  She touched him lightly on the arm. “Of course not, Stanley. You’re a good person. And you were a good cop.”

  He pulled away, his throat tightening. “Well. It’s done.”

  She broke the growing silence by tut-tutting at the book lying on his table. “The Art of War,” she said. “I hope you’re not too into that.”

  He swallowed, slightly embarrassed. “Just trying to figure some things out.”

  “A little advice,” she said, brushing past him. “Forget war. Art stands alone.”

  He picked the book up, intending to put it away. Grunted and dropped it back onto the table, given there was no other place to stow it.

  She walked to the kitchen side of the room. “Well, this is an affair,” she muttered at the cooker. She looked over her shoulder at him. “Do you have any tea? Coffee?”

  “Yeah, but I can’t get that damn thing to work.”

  She rifled through his cupboards, calling out to inanimate objects in the w
ay she’d always done when he was a child. “Come on out, tea bags. Mugs, I know you’re in there.”

  “In the back there,” he said, too late. She’d already pulled out what she needed and was going to work on the cooker.

  “Did you quit your job, Stanley?” she said, facing her work.

  He winced. “Public relations wasn’t for me,” he said.

  Victoria Horus had not been thrilled with his efforts on Terroneous. The Space Waste defectors laid down their arms as promised. By the time the Defenders had pushed their way to the ark, Dava and her gangbangers were helping Earthlings out of their sleep tubes. Nursing them back into consciousness. There was nothing left to defend. Runstom was certain the order from on high was to drive the gangbangers out, but Major Oliver called her unit off. She had the authority of the operation on the ground and made a call.

  Threat eliminated, the Defenders didn’t bother to stick around. Clearly not the plan that Horus and Newman had in mind. In fact, it had been the opposite. Dava and her new crew made themselves at home. Praised by the Earthlings for their generous assistance, a few Terronean cities offered them shelter along with the refugees. Word was, some of those in charge were fixing to offer Dava a seat on the Federated Security Committee. Why pay for defense services from ModPol when you have your own squad of rehabilitated gangbangers?

  After the ark was safe, Runstom had taken a shuttle back to Ipo. One last debrief. Horus had finally broken that happy demeanor of hers and showed teeth. He could tell her heart wasn’t in it. Runstom realized his boss really did like him. Her priorities were off, but somewhere in there was a good person.

  The chief operating officer on the other hand had been an asshole. The angrier Francois Newman got, the quieter his voice. He launched into platitudes about long-term conflicts and visionary goals. Goals that Runstom had fouled with his incompetence.

  Runstom had resigned the following day.

  The smell of actual tea woke him from his thoughts. Sylvia brought a pair of cups over to the table. She sat and took a sip. Then looked up at him.

  “I heard some of the reports second-hand,” she said. “Sounds like Terroneous won’t be subscribing to ModPol services any time soon.”

  “Like I said.” He felt a small grin grow across his face. “I’m just not that great at public relations.”

  She smiled and waved off his comment. “I heard Jansen came in from the cold.”

  Runstom grunted. He’d heard that too, but not from his bosses. “The gangbangers decided to let him go.”

  “Why is that?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t really know. I guess they just wanted it to be over.”

  She flicked at the book. “Something tells me there’s nothing in there about the art of peace.” She took a sip and breathed in, her face relaxing, content. “It’s not achievable through violence, no matter how just.”

  He looked at the book. Looked through it, into nothing. There had been a tiny itch in the back of his head. Since his promotion. He mistook it for self-consciousness. For the feeling of being an imposter, the wrong man for the job. But only recently did he understand that wasn’t it. It wasn’t the job, it was the division. When he was in Justice, he understood the purpose. Righting wrongs. But Defense was different.

  The itch was telling him he didn’t want to be part of a war machine.

  “I hate to be motherly about it,” Sylvia said, breaking the silence with a crooked grin. “But do you have … something else lined up?”

  Runstom huffed, giving himself a taste of tea for courage. “Yeah, I guess I do. Something with Jax.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “Really? Here on Terroneous?”

  “Yes.” He looked away from her, at the cooker on the counter that she’d managed to coax to life. “Actually, we could use some help.”

  “Oh?”

  He looked at her again, unable to control the small smile cracking between his lips. “Yeah. I mean, seeing as how you’re not in wit-pro anymore.”

  “That’s true, I’m not,” she said with her own sly smile, covering it with her mug.

  He took a breath. Allowed himself to feel the relief that she was there. That it wasn’t temporary. That he needed her. Accepting all of these things at once caused his vision to swim. He suddenly wished he owned more than one chair.

  But then all that acceptance hit a wall. It churned within him, ready to push forward, but the wall needed resolution before it would break.

  “Moses Down,” Runstom said quietly. “I met him.”

  She twitched, a small flinch, and set her mug down on the table. “You did?”

  “How do you know he’s dead?” he asked, remembering her earlier words.

  “Where did you meet him?” she said firmly.

  He felt his shoulders slump under her parental glare. “In the zero-G prison.”

  She looked at him quietly. “Did he know you?”

  He nodded. “Yes.” Thought about the exchange with Dava over a comm. Our people. She’d repeated it. And there was Horus’s comment. Tell them about how your father was an Earthling.

  “Sylvia,” he said. “Mom.” The question stuck in his throat. Just as it had his entire life.

  She swallowed, smoothing out the folds of her dusty dress. Lifted her head, a distant smile in her eyes. “His name was Bishop Down.”

  *

  Stockton was glad to have their Fixer back. As soon as Jax made his first appearance at the public library, the word spread and his schedule quickly filled up. The throw-away dome tech that the Terroneans considered a luxury never quite worked right, but everyone knew the Fixer’s magic touch could coax it into behaving. In fact, it seemed as though Jax’s news exposure had compounded his reputation, and now everyone in town – and in all the neighboring towns – had a job for him.

  It was good because it kept him busy; and keeping busy was the only way he got any sleep at night. Even when he slept, he often woke up elsewhere: in a dirty cot in a cramped Space Waste quarter, or on the cold floor of Phonson’s torture room. It was on those nights that he’d fall out of bed, pick himself up off the floor, turn on the lights, and then recite the poem that was stitched into a framed piece of cloth that hung on his wall.

  Though unexpected rain

  churns soil into mud,

  the harshest of storms

  births more green than blood.

  Some local farmer had given it to him, and it was apparently a popular bit of rhyme because he’d seen it around town and in other folk’s homes. To Terroneans, the lyrics were about sustaining life in a harsh environment. The color green, he’d come to understand, was the color of healthy plants full of good vitamins. Food in the domes had coloring, but it was artificial and bright, like candy. To Jax, the once-life-support operator, the color green was an indicator that systems were happy, as opposed to the color red, which signaled a time to panic.

  The only time Jax had seen more than one light go red while he was on duty was when the outer doors on block 23-D of a sub-dome called Gretel had opened, venting the life-sustaining artificial atmosphere and asphyxiating thirty-two people. The deaths that had fallen on his head, resulting in his arrest and later his fugitive status. That day so many lights had gone red, they created a streak like a wound cut through the middle of the panel.

  All of that was over now, and Jax would read that poem to remind himself of that fact. He’d come through the storm and made a new life on Terroneous. He was doing more than watching machines keep people alive; he was actually helping people directly.

  The previous night was sleepless, though for a completely different reason. Lealina was coming into town. She was still acting director of the Terroneous Environmental Observation Board, though a vote was expected any day now on whether to make that title permanent or to appoint another director. She’d seemed to make peace with the fact that the ultimate decision was out of her hands. Jax admired that about Lealina: she always gave her focus to her work and didn’t let the things
she couldn’t control eat her up.

  And she knew how to value her days off. This concept was a little easier for Jax to manage when he was on a schedule set by someone else, like it was in the domes. As a freelancer, he didn’t know how and when to give himself a break. Fortunately, Lealina’s schedule helped dictate Jax’s schedule, as she could only get away from the remote facilities for a few days about twice every month. Which meant Jax had to make sure to keep those days clear from the tasty jobs of fixing other people’s problems.

  Despite being exhausted from lack of sleep, Jax jittered with nervous energy as he paced around the small train station. Though he must have annoyed the hell out of everyone there, they all gave the lanky B-fourean a patiently wide berth. The locals had already gotten used to his new routine. They knew there was no point in talking to him when Lealina was coming to town, and there was also no getting him to sit down and stop drinking so much coffee.

  Other than Jax, the unassuming station was quiet and still. When the train finally arrived, the place transformed into a hive of quick activity. Other waiters greeted long-parted friends and relatives with warm smiles, but not much else. Reunions were efficiently conducted, and then life carried on. Jax didn’t know if he’d ever become so blasé about seeing Lealina after weeks of drought.

  The bright blues came through the door. He floated to her and embraced her.

  Sometime later his mind came back to the present when she pinched him.

  “Sorry,” she said with an impish grin. “I really need to pee.”

  He let her go and after she used the restroom, they continued on to what had become another new tradition, which was to visit the public house across the road from the train station. It wasn’t so much for the drink, though a little imbibing was welcomed by both of them, having finally got a break from work, but more that, they found before they attempted to do anything, they needed to sit together and share the intimate little moments of their lives since her last visit.

  They ordered drinks and found a small table near a window where the orange-tinged light of Barnard’s Star warmed their faces.