by Jason LaPier
CHAPTER 22
Officer Stanford Runstom trained his gun back and forth between Mark Xavier Phonson and the unannounced Space Waste assassin as they both slowly knelt down to the ground, their hands in the air. He tried to survey the room with his peripheral vision, not daring to take his eyes off the loose-cannon cop or the deadly warrior-woman.
The place was a mess. The chairs were bullet ridden, the small drink tables were smashed, and the vid-screen was shot right through the center. Jenna Zarconi was face down on the ground but still moving, inching toward the front door, and Jax was feebly trying to pull himself to his feet, using a chair for leverage. Two of X’s escorts lay motionless in different parts of the room, both surrounded by pools of red.
Without taking his eyes off X and the gangbanger, Runstom bent down near one of the downed cops and cautiously unhooked the circular restrainers from his belt with his free hand. He stood back up and tried to get a look at how Jax was doing.
“Jax,” he said, when he saw the operator able to stand on his own. “Take these,” he started, then changed his mind. “No, take this gun. Keep it pointed at these two. If they do anything funny, just waste ’em.” He didn’t want to risk sending Jax anywhere near that assassin. She’d already proven she could be fast and ruthless.
“No problem,” Jax said in a raspy voice. “Give the gun to Psycho Jack,” he added with a wide grin. Runstom gave him the pistol and he happily pointed it at the ModPol cop and the Space Waster. “Don’t make a move,” he said mockingly.
Runstom slipped a restraint over the wrists of the gangbanger first, fixing her hands behind her back. She regarded him with mild interest that bordered on boredom. Her calm made him nervous. He proceeded to cuff X, who looked frazzled and desperate. The corrupt cop tried to lean away from the woman as far as he could, periodically looking at the other motionless bodies, then quickly looking away. After he had them both cuffed, Runstom scooped up the strange blade the woman had dropped.
“Be careful with that, officer,” the brown-skinned woman cooed.
“Mm-hmm. Dangerous, I’m sure,” Runstom muttered, sticking the knife into his belt.
“I said, be careful with it,” she repeated, a little more sternly. “It has sentimental value.”
Runstom gave the woman a sideways look, not really sure if she meant what she said or if she was just being coy. He tried to ignore her.
“You,” he said, walking back over to Jax. “Give me that gun, and take these,” he said, handing Jax the two small detachments that came from each of the restrainer rings. “Just squeeze the button on these to send a signal to the cuffs and it will shock the hell outta ’em. That ought to keep them from trying anything funny.” He looked back over at the arrestees. X still looked like he wanted to get out of the room as quickly as possible. The woman just gave him a look that seemed to express resignation, if temporary.
He looked back at Jax to see if he had the situation under control. The operator held the switches, one in each hand, and grinned. Runstom went out the front doorway.
The canister was in the middle of the yard, spouting dark smoke into the air. Without four walls and a ceiling to contain it, it was no smokier than a campfire, and it was beginning to sputter out. The crumpled form of the other ModPol cop lay off to the side of the doorway. Runstom bent down and felt his pulse. The man was still alive, but unconscious. Whoever blasted him was apparently long gone. He unhooked the restrainers from the cop’s belt and flipped him over onto his belly. Then he used one of the rings to cuff the unconscious man, just in case he woke up. He didn’t waste time binding his legs – hopefully, the guy was in bad enough shape that if he did wake up, getting to his feet and making a run for it was a little out of the question. He did, however, take a second to grab the cop’s squawkbox.
Jenna Zarconi must have gotten the worst of the smoke when the canister first hit the room. She was a little ways down the street, on her feet, but bent over and still coughing heavily. She picked her head up and tried to move at a slow jog, not bothering to look behind her.
In ModPol boot camp, they made new recruits learn how to deal with smokers and other gas bombs the hard way: by sticking them in a closed room and tossing the stuff in. Runstom and some of the other cops knew enough to get low and cover up as soon as the smoker hit the floor. Of course, in the boot camp test, no one was shooting or running around stabbing people.
He began walking down the street after her. He switched the squawkbox over to the central line and pushed the call button.
“Dispatch,” the box crackled after a few seconds. “What can I do for you, Officer Pontiac?”
“Officer Pontiac is down. This is ModPol Officer Stanford Runstom, Barnard System, Gamma Precinct.”
A few more seconds of silence. Runstom quickened his pace to close the gap between himself and Zarconi.
“Um, okay,” the box said. “What the hell are you doing on Sirius-5?”
“Look, I’ll explain that to your team when you send them in,” Runstom said, impatiently. “We’ve got one officer down, badly wounded, and two others that are dead. I’ve apprehended three suspects. Now send someone the hell down here!”
After a second, the box replied. “Okay, Officer Runstom. We’ve got a ModPol team on the way and we’re contacting the locals for Emergency Med support.” It paused for a second, then added, “Have your credentials ready, Officer.”
“Right.” Runstom slid the squawkbox into his pocket and reached out to grab Jenna Zarconi. She offered little resistance and he proceeded to restrain her.
“Can’t you just let me go?” she said between huffs. “X is the real bad guy here. You see that, don’t you Stanford? He pushed me!”
“I do see that, Jenna,” he said. “And I’m sorry. But it’s not up to me now. It’s up to a court of law.”
Tears began to form in the corners of her eyes. “They’ll never believe my side of it,” she said softly, shaking her head. She turned and looked him straight in the face. “Please, Stanford. You have to let me go. I only wanted what you want. I only wanted justice.”
He looked into those light-brown eyes and that forest-green face. A small part of him wanted to believe her, to help her even. He quickly smothered it. “Your quest for justice resulted in the deaths of a lot of innocent people, Jenna.” He pulled her by the arm. “Come on. It’s time to go.”
“So this is the famous Psycho Jack,” the brown-skinned woman said. “Johnny Eyeball told us all about you.”
Jax lost half of his grin. “By ‘us’ I presume you mean Space Waste?”
“Said you were in the lock-up for mass murder. That true, Jack? You kill thirty-some people?”
“Yeah, he did,” X chimed in. “But he didn’t even know he did it. Like a blind pilot in the cockpit of a passenger ship, flying her right into the sun.”
“Hmm, that’s disappointing,” she said, looking Jax up and down. She shrugged – more naturally that she should have, considering the fact that her hands were bound behind her back.
“Credit where credit is due, I suppose.” Jax raised his hands in mock defeat. “I was set up. Mr. Phonson here had much more culpability in the deaths of those thirty-two people than me.” He grinned again. “I mean, that’s what you’re under arrest for. You know that, right, Phonson?”
X laughed shortly. “Yeah, well. Good luck making it stick, operator.”
Jax regarded him silently for a moment. “Now that we have some time to chat,” he said. “There’s something I’ve been struggling with. Brandon Milton.”
“What about him?”
“Did you know him?”
Phonson laughed that short laugh again. “Yeah, sure. I knew him.”
“Which means what? He was under your thumb?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Well, I’ll just be honest, because I don’t know where the line is drawn in this course of events – when it stops being you and becomes Jenna Zarconi pretending to be you,” Jax said
. “Brandon Milton was my supervisor. As far as I can tell, he was the one who stole my voiceprint, fingerprint, and login credentials and sent them to Markus Stallworth, so they could be used to encrypt the package.”
X considered this for a moment. “Interesting,” he said, finally. “If I remember right, Milton – in Blue Haven, right? Yeah – he was a John.”
“What?” Jax said, unable to make sense of the statement.
“We hit the Blue Haven underground one night a couple months back. Busted a whole lotta hookers. I worked that case for a long time, made sure we got as many as we could when we made our move. Any one of their customers who had a reputation to protect got to go free.”
“Free, as in they owed you a favor,” Jax said. X said nothing. “I never would have figured Milton for the type to do that.”
“You’d be surprised, pal,” Phonson said, looking away as if bored with the conversation.
“But he was married.” To Priscilla Jonnes. Sure, Jax and Priscilla had a falling out, but he still felt a small amount of indignity on her behalf for her husband’s infidelity.
“All the more reason to make sure he never got caught.” He looked back at Jax. “Milton is just another name on my list. A soul in my pocket. If Milton stole your creds, then he did it for Jenna, thinking he was paying back the favor he owed to me.”
“Was,” Jax said. “Was a name on your list.”
“Ooh,” purred the woman. “Did you kill ’im Psycho Jack? For what he done to you?”
“No.” Jax was spending a significant amount of effort trying to forget that Milton married a woman that Jax was never good enough for, trying not to think about how while with such a woman, Milton paid for companionship on the side. “Well, yeah. Actually. I did kill him, but not on purpose. He was one of the people in block 23-D.” He looked back at X and pointed. “So again – you killed him. And now you’re going down for it. No one is going to owe you any more favors.”
“I don’t know what you’re not getting about this, op,” Phonson said. “You got nothing on me, and I’ve got way more friends in ModPol than you or that idiot Runstom.”
“Mmm?” Jax walked over to the vid-screen and pushed a button on the front. “I’m sorry, were you saying something?” He turned and looked at the cop. “Did I tell you to hit the round red button to stop this vid unit earlier? Damn, I get so confused about those buttons. That was the record button.” He ejected the memory card and held it up. “Pity someone put a hole through the screen. We could watch you bury yourself while we’re waiting for Officer Runstom to come back.”
The woman started laughing. “Goddamn, I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but sounds like you’re cooked, pollie.” She nudged him, and X flinched with a spasm. “So anyway, Jack. I don’t mean to be rude, but you’ll have time to chat with this asshole later, I’m sure. I just want to ask you a few questions. While I have the chance.”
“Um, okay,” Jax said warily.
“How did you manage to make off with a Space Waste transport?”
“Well.” He thought of Johnny Eyeball and his story about the trial raids they did on their test barge. “You guys knew what you were doing, right? You had it all planned out. Practiced it.”
“Yeah,” she said nodding. “We tried a few different attack points. Played out what the defense would look like.”
Jax thought for a quiet second. “I suppose that’s what it comes down to. All your strategies, they’re all attack and defend.”
“And?”
He shrugged. “Not everyone had defense in mind, I guess.”
She cocked her head. “You mean, you didn’t.”
“I mean, it was clear the ship was dead in the black. Officer Runstom and his partner weren’t thinking about defense, they were thinking about survival. They made for the supply bay because it was the only part of the ship that they could get to that could be closed off if whole barge came apart.” He made a motion with his hands to demonstrate pieces of the craft coming off. “Other than the bridge, the supply bay was the safest bet. I’m just lucky they dragged me along.”
“Hmm. Well, that’s something to chew on, Jack,” she said. “I appreciate your candor. Space Waste as an organization takes pride in learning from mistakes.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Jax said. “You can call me Jax, by the way. I don’t generally go by Jack.”
“Of course,” she said, extending her hand. “You can call me Dava.” Jax took her hand and shook it. Then he froze.
“I’m supposed to bring you in for questioning,” Dava noted, handing the restraining ring to Jax. “Or kill you, if I can’t. But since I already got your story, I suppose I don’t need to bring you in.” She looked over at X and then back at Jax. “I guess I could kill you now, but I’d hate for this whole thing you’ve got going on here to go unfinished,” she said, making a circular motion with her hand. “You know, the only people I hate more than cops are corrupt cops.”
“Um,” Jax said. “It was a pleasure to meet you. And thanks for not killing me.” That was all he could manage.
“My partner has set charges by now,” she continued, ignoring him. “He won’t trigger them until I give the word.” She looked from Jax to Phonson and then back to Jax. “I’ll give you five minutes.”
“So what are you, like, an assassin with a heart of gold?” Jax said, then wished he’d picked another time to try to be witty.
“Three minutes,” Dava replied with a momentary scowl. “You’ll probably see me again sometime,” she said idly and the frown curled upward. “And tell your buddy that my knife really does have sentimental value. I’ll be back for it, some day.”
Dava flitted out of the room and into the kitchen. Jax tried to watch her, but she was gone before he could get a look. So instead, he looked at X.
Jax sighed. “Well, at least I know you’re not that good,” he muttered.
Phonson’s face showed that he took offense at the comment and he started wriggling around, as if trying to work the cuffs free. Jax shook his head and hit the button on the restrainer switch. The cop shuddered and spasmed from the electrical shock he suddenly received and then keeled over, face planted against the floor, panting and drooling.
Runstom was walking up to the house with a restrained Jenna Zarconi in tow as Jax was dragging Phonson out by his feet. “They’re going to blow it up!” Jax yelled, huffing and backpedaling as fast as he could. “They’re going to blow the house! We only have a few minutes!”
The officer seemed to understand immediately, and he ran up to the unconscious ModPol cop still lying just outside the front door. Runstom hooked his elbows under the man’s armpits and half-hoisted him up. He began backpedaling as well, quickly out-pacing Jax. “Over here,” he shouted. “Follow me.”
Dava watched Bashful Dan as he shifted his gaze from the house to his RadMess and back. He chewed his lip and narrowed his eyes from his position behind a vacant hover-car. He checked his RadMess again and began to tap his fingers nervously on the side of the car.
She was still a few yards behind him, hidden from view by a column of metal painted with an obnoxious fake bark texture. She checked the time on her own RadMess. One more minute, then she would appear and scare the living daylights out of Dan, yet again.
Sometimes she thought they hated her. The other Space Wasters. Sure, she was a cold-blooded assassin, but they were all killers. She just had a different method. They preferred to be loud and theatrical. She did her work quickly and quietly. But that wasn’t the problem. They didn’t trust her.
And why should they? After all, when it came time to pay the piper, she was often the one who came collecting. A few weeks ago it was Three-Hairs Benson. They all knew he’d crossed Moses and he got what was coming to him. But they were also reminded of what they’d get if they ever slipped up. Benson was another reminder that once you became a Waster, you were a Waster ’til death, and there was no hiding from the hand of Moses when it came to strike you do
wn. And Dava was that hand.
But they knew Benson deserved it. He’d stolen not just from Moses, but from all of Space Waste. Their distrust of Dava – there was more to it than that. It was because she was Earth-born. She was different. Her brown skin. Her past. It made her different than most of the others. Except for Moses. Moses was a leader, and they embraced his different skin color, his Earth past. Then Dava came along and Moses instantly favored her. They resented that, and they never trusted her.
Everyone had a past. No one joined Space Waste if life had been good to them. And these gangbangers wanted to talk about their pasts. They needed to air out. Get things off their chests. But Dava wasn’t like that. So because she never opened up, they all made up stories about her. Like rumors going around a sewing circle. A gangbanger sewing circle.
Sure, they were cordial to her. Everyone got along. It was the whispering, the muttering she heard when they thought she was out of earshot. And Moses was chiding her for being distant. She could never complain to him about the others not trusting her. But what was the truth? Did they mistrust her any more than she mistrusted them? Than she mistrusted anyone who wasn’t Moses?
Dava frowned and looked at the back of Bashful Dan’s head. Her muscles tensed as she prepared to creep up on him, but then she relaxed. How many years had she taken off this poor tracker’s life by scaring his wits out? She coughed lightly and hissed in his direction. “Dan,” she whispered.
Dan’s head jerked up and almost spun all the way around on his neck as he looked around for a few seconds before spotting her, half-behind the metal tree. She waved at him and bounced lightly up to the hover-car.
“Hey,” he said. He seemed a little confused. Probably because she hadn’t followed form by trying to give him a heart attack. “Dava. What happened?”
“You set the charges, right?” she asked. They both looked out at the house, a good hundred meters or so in the distance.
“Yeah, they’re the directional ones that 2-Bit brought. Should be a nice and controlled demo of the house, leave nothing but a little mess on the rest of the street.” He turned to face Dava. “Are they all dead?”