Under Shadows

by Jason LaPier

  “Mm,” she said after she’d taken a sip of some kind of blue-hued bubbly cocktail. “They didn’t add a bar to your library yet?”

  He’d chosen a light beer that was crisp and cool in his throat. “Nah,” he said, smiling wide. He’d been telling anyone that would listen about the Bibliohouse back on Epsilon Eridani-3. “I’m not giving up yet, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” she said with a laugh. “You’d never leave the place!”

  “Ha, probably not.”

  “Actually.” She set down her drink and pointed at him. “You probably need to open your own place. Your own library-slash-bar.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  She cut off his laugh with a narrowing of her eyes. “It’s not that bad an idea. I mean, are you going to freelance forever?”

  He poked at his beer glass with the tip of a finger, feeling the wetness of the condensation that collected like a light fog. “Well. I don’t know.” He’d been trying not to think about it. The glut of work he had right now was not sustainable. It would dry up, and then he’d need to supplement it with something else.

  “I’m sorry, Jax.” She reached across the table and touched his hand. “I’m not trying to push you. I think you’re in a really good place right now, all things considered.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “It’s just that,” she started, then seemed to turn the words around in her head before continuing, her eyes looking into the sunshine coming through the window. “On Terroneous, we have to learn not to get too comfortable. When you’re in a good place – that’s the best time to prepare.”

  He read the concern on her face, slowly understanding what she meant: things were good now, but it was almost certain there were still bad times to come. The ups and downs of life. She was trying to train him. This should have offended him, but the reality was that his sheltered, domed upbringing had very few ups and downs. In fact, it had been almost completely flat, right up until that day he had to watch helplessly as nameless vita-stat readouts went from green to red.

  “I got a d-mail from my dad,” he said softly.

  “Oh.” Her face twisted through a few thoughts, and he could imagine she was trying to decide whether or not it was a good thing. “He finally answered your letters?”

  “Yeah.”

  The truth was that his father responded pretty quickly. It had been Jax who’d delayed in sending the initial letters, despite having written them months ago. Written before he was abducted from Terroneous, into a notebook that he had carried everywhere and left in Lealina’s care. He’d told her he was going to send them, and then one day told her he had sent them, hoping that the dishonesty would motivate him to carry forward the act and turn the lie into truth. It did, but it took him a while.

  Of course, his father immediately offered him a place in his home on Barnard-3. Back in the domes; though the B-3 domes were a bit nicer than those Jax lived in on B-4. This was the thing that perhaps Lealina feared, that Jax might be tempted to go home. Back to the safety of the domes, back to comfort, back to the place where survival was a given.

  “I wrote him back already,” Jax said. This time he wasn’t lying. “I told him he should come out and visit me on Terroneous sometime. I told him that’s the best way to see me, because I’m not going back to the domes any time soon.”

  Her face broke into smile, and she tipped it to hide it, either embarrassed by her relief or ashamed that she was happy for his rocky familial relationships. “You think he’d ever come out?” she said.

  Jax looked through the window at the dusty street. A young man was pulling a small, wheeled cart that contained some boxes and a small girl who sat atop the load. This was what passed for traffic in Stockton.

  “I don’t know, honestly,” he said. He looked at her. “I hope he does. But I’m not going to be disappointed if he doesn’t.”

  She met his eyes for a moment in silence, lips neither smiling nor frowning. He read pity on her face and it made him feel small. He was trying to stand on his own. Not many people understood how hard it was for him. As he looked at her, Lealina’s lips turned up slightly, small triangular wrinkles poking into her cheeks. It released a warmth inside his chest. She didn’t understand him, but she was starting to.

  “You’re still considering David’s offer?” she said before bending her neck to take a sip through the straw of her drink.

  “Yes,” Jax said. “I mean, I’m going to take it.”

  She read the tiny crack in his voice. “You’re safe now.” Her hand was still on his, and she gave him another squeeze.

  He smiled faintly and nodded. David Granderson wanted to re-cut the documentary he’d made. The film that had caught Jax on camera, outing the then-fugitive’s hiding place. Granderson hadn’t known then, of course, and still felt guilty for his part in Jax’s trials. But then again, guilt or not, Granderson never did a favor that wasn’t somehow also profitable to him. So he offered Jax a deal: they re-work the film to include Jax’s secret fugitive status. Now that it was no longer a secret, Granderson felt like he could tell a more complete story. Which Jax understood meant a more dramatic story.

  But this time Jax would get official credit in the film, and he would get a cut of the proceeds. It wasn’t going to be much – Granderson made sure he understood that – but there was a good chance that it would see syndication out to the other colonies, which meant what Granderson called “a bigger piece of pie”. Jax had only had pie for the first time in his life a few weeks ago, and it had been so overwhelming with its mélange of tart and sweet flavors and crispy and gooey textures that it had taken him a full hour to finish it.

  “I know,” he said, taking a pull of his beer. “You’re right. I’m okay. It’s a good deal.”

  She pulled her hand back and crooked a smile. “Well, it’s a shitty deal. But it means you’ll be able to eat for a while.”

  She’d meant the remark to be humorous, so Jax tried to respond with a smile. But something caught inside him – a nothing caught inside him. A sudden emptiness; a memory of emptiness. An unforgettable emptiness. He never wanted to go hungry again. “Yeah, yes. I’m definitely going to take it. I’ll call him tonight.”

  Her head slid back slightly at his sudden desperate eagerness. Then she cocked an eyebrow in that way that she did sometimes that made him want to pledge life-long servitude to her divinity. “Okay then,” she said. He died when she added the playful smile.

  “Oh,” he said, suddenly remembering something. “I got a message from Dava. She’s bringing in another group.”

  “Soon? While I’m in town?”

  “Yep, day after tomorrow.” He beamed at her knowingly. “I told her when you were going to be in town, and she timed it. She’s going to have a couple of geologists and environmental specialists.”

  Lealina’s face brightened. “Yes!” She vibrated in her chair. “Oh, I hope they’re looking for work.”

  “They’re refugees,” Jax said. “They’re all looking for work.”

  They ordered a second round and chatted about work. Lealina was desperately trying to find qualified people willing to work for very little money. The TEOB had managed to get a small increase in budget, but it came with a mandate to staff up. Jax filled her in on the random jobs he’d been doing. This was all part of their newly established ritual; it helped them enjoy their limited time together if they could unload all the work stuff right from the beginning and get it over with.

  “Hey, how’s Stanford doing?” she said once the work talk ran its course.

  “Good,” Jax said, holding out the word too long. “Settling in.”

  “He found anything yet?”

  “Um. Well.” Jax had a hard time meeting her probing eyes. “He’s … kind of starting a new … a new project. And he wants my help.”

  “What is it?” She set her drink so she could lean over it and draw him in. “What does he want you to do?”
r />   Jax drew a deep breath and blew it out. “I kind of already said yes.”

  *

  Dava found Captain 2-Bit staring at an empty field of turquoise-colored grass. He didn’t hear her approach, but he didn’t flinch when she spoke.

  “Captain. What ya lookin’ at?”

  Without turning to face her, he drew a deep breath through his nose. “Sorry, Dava. I still can’t get used to this place.” He threw a flat palm at the horizon. “I mean, look at it! So much land.”

  She crooked an eyebrow at him. “Weren’t you born here?”

  He huffed. “That was a long time ago, right? Spent too much of the last few decades in ships and in that rickety ol’ mess we called a home base.”

  “Well. This is home base now,” she said. “You spend as much time down here as you want.”

  He nodded slowly. “Sure. I will. I got some trustworthy pilots up there, right?”

  She grinned at him. The old captain was ever-loyal to his duty. She could see his guilt at leaving his post commanding the Longhorn, even if only for a few days out of each month. “Also, I like to see you,” she said. “Everyone likes to see you. But me especially.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I need your advice on stuff.”

  They began to walk down a lightly worn path that led to the compound. Whenever 2-Bit came down to visit, she saw the place through his eyes. She saw the slow but noticeable progression from month to month. It was an empty stretch of plainsland, with the edge of a thin forest visible a kilometer or so to the north and a rough bunching of gray hills rising a few dozen kilometers to the west. Unclaimed land, until she’d claimed it. No one had bothered to settle it mostly because of the predatory animals in their area. They weren’t much of a threat to well-armed humans, but they were hell on livestock. The aggressive grass grew thick and tall and made farming a pain as well.

  But it was a perfect spot for her crew. They could train without disturbing anyone – the nearest town was a good forty kilometers down the road – and there was a spot just at the edge where they could land a shuttlecraft. Some of them hunted or grew vegetables for pleasure, but most of their food was shipped in.

  Paying for it was a bit of a challenge. Most of them, Dava included, weren’t used to managing money. They were used to stealing what they needed, then distributing it amongst themselves. But in this new home, they had to actually buy stuff. Which meant they needed income. The FSC had made her a deal. Shadowdown would act as the moon’s militia, and she’d get a small stipend. They were mostly interested in getting her to keep the Longhorn in orbit as a deterrent. On the ground, theoretically they wanted her people to respond to any hostilities, but such a threat was mild at best. The stipend’s size reflected the lack of threat, and it wasn’t enough. She supplemented their income by hiring out crew to local townships as guards, deputies, marshals, whatever form of strong-arm they might be in need of.

  She and 2-Bit approached the main camp. Most of it was still tents, but there were a few new buildings coming in. Much of the material was recycled metal from the ark, dragged across the desert in pieces. No one on the moon minded when Shadowdown claimed what was left of the trucks and ATVs that the Misters had brought to the fight.

  Which was good, because they needed to get around. She spent a lot of time organizing multi-purpose caravans that headed into one of the towns to pick up food and drop off people. And sometimes pick up people.

  “Less tents than last time,” 2-Bit said. “Placement programs?”

  “Working pretty well so far,” she answered. They were still housing half the Earthling refugees at the compound. A couple dozen decided they owed her something and joined her crew. The rest of the thousand hadn’t traveled six light years in a tube to do security. They had unique, forgotten skills and educations, and were needed elsewhere. So she worked with local governments to arrange introductions.

  Meanwhile, word had spread quickly about their efforts. Some Terroneans loved seeing ModPol show up only to get turned away at the end of the day. They wanted to be a part of that rarely-needed defense force. So they joined the caravans on the return trips to the compound. Dava and her best people organized training camps. Their numbers grew, which was good, because they had a lot of area to cover.

  “Still getting new recruits trickling in,” she said as they walked past a strip of field where a few yellow-skinned Terroneans were doing calisthenics to the rhythmic bark of Johnny Eyeball.

  2-Bit smiled broadly. “I love to hear that commanding voice put to use. He’s good?”

  She joined his smile as they watched Eyeball standing tall like a pillar in the midday sun. “He’s literally the most sober person I know. The atmosphere has been good for him.”

  “All these new recruits,” 2-Bit said after a moment, giving her a look. “I’m kind of surprised.”

  She looked at him. “We need all the help we can get.”

  “You’re not worried about picking up another mole?”

  She sighed through her nose at the thought of Rando Jansen. His deceit had cost lives, and not only those of Space Waste. But when it came down to it, he was doing a job. He was a piece in a strategy. He infiltrated them because he was placed there by some ModPol intelligence agency. But also because Moses couldn’t resist the inside information he promised. Moses was working the same kind of strategy, just from the other side. It had blinded him.

  Some of the grunts aboard the Longhorn had tracked Jansen down during 2-Bit’s mutiny. They stunned him, bound him, and were ready to space him. But 2-Bit had waited for Dava to make the call. She went up to the Longhorn to look him in the face, one last time. To tell him that Space Waste was no more. He’d won, in that sense. His mission a success.

  And she put him on a lifeboat and sent him back to ModPol.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not worried about moles anymore.”

  They kept walking. Chatted about the weather, which 2-Bit was fascinated with. He yammered on about how he’d taken it for granted when he was a kid. When a light rain began to sprinkle them with tiny droplets of cold water, he whooped with delight.

  They came to the center of the compound. “This is what I wanted to show you,” she said.

  A black stone, some kind of volcanic rock, glossy and glass-like but entirely without light. Found by a hunter, hidden in a crevice nestled among the distant hills. Extracted by the sole constructor-bot on the compound, despite the delay it caused in the build schedule. Then carved by a group of four artistically-inclined materials workers who spent every waking minute of their personal time fighting with the stubborn matter, coaxing form out of the formless.

  2-Bit looked up at the resulting figure and whistled. “It’s like it’s him, but it’s not him.”

  “They captured his essence,” she said of the vaguely human-shaped statue; repeating a phrase she’d heard someone else use. Words she didn’t know the meaning of until they were used to describe the piece before her.

  “Down’s Shadow,” 2-Bit said, reading the plaque at the base. “Your idea?”

  “None of it was my idea,” she said, a tinge of pride in her voice. “Just a bunch of people that wanted to remember him.”

  He leaned in to her. “Do you realize what this means?”

  She squinted at him. “What?”

  “We have artists.”

  She coughed out a laugh, then felt delayed goosebumps run over her skin. Artists. They were the same people she lived with for years, fighting together, stealing together. Surviving together. And hidden beneath all that crime and violence and survival was something like this.

  “Well, I guess that’s what happens,” he added with a sigh.

  “What?”

  He looked at her and shrugged. “You gave ’em a real home, right?” He suddenly jerked his head to one side. “God damn, that smells good. I’m starving for some real food.”

  She waved for him to go on without her and he trundled off toward the mess tent, who
lly unaware that his words had rendered her unable to speak.

  She looked at the statue. Felt the essence. She missed Moses so badly, she thought she would evaporate whenever the memory of him flooded through her. And the others that had been lost. Thinking of Moses always made her think of all of them. Of the way she felt when Thompson was torn to pieces in front of her. Of how she tamped down the emotions in the moment, only to have them overwhelm her later. Of how it made her miss her mother and her father. All of those shadows buried as deep as they could go, but somehow keeping them deep only made them closer to her innermost, truest self.

  So she stared at the black stone and saw his face in its reflection. His toothy grin. The twinkle in his playful and scheming eyes. Remembered him. Remembered his cause. His sacrifice. His generosity. His love.

  And at the same time, reminded herself that those things were in the past. His drive, his needs. When they were alive and kicking, there was never a time for something like this to come out. There were battles to fight. Systems to break. There was no place for some kind of ridiculous creative expression, like the slab that stood before her.

  Would he like it? She wondered. She placed a hand against the smooth surface. Cool, and slightly wet from the light rain. Then she stepped back and looked around at the tents. At the new scrap-metal buildings taking shape. This life – this home – had been what he was fighting for. He just never understood that. He never knew how to stop the fighting and just make a home.

  She smiled up at him, her face wet from the rain. She’d made a home. And whether he liked it or not, he was in it.

  *

  Sylvia Runstom picked up her d-mail. It felt like a weird activity, to have to walk to a building to physically retrieve messages transported between the stars by FTL drones. The infrastructure of the small towns of Terroneous was weak on the telecommunications side, and no one could trust their mail to be delivered by any local network without being snooped on. She admired the healthy level of paranoia on the small moon.

  Not that there was anything interesting to read. Since she was no longer underground, most of her underground connections wanted nothing to do with her. Still, she had a few. Keeping in touch with the pulse was a habit she’d never be able to drop.