Unclear Skies

by Jason LaPier

  “I know.” Jax took a deep breath and sighed it back out. “Sometimes they seem normal. As normal as anything else outside of the domes, anyway. I thought they might understand.” His limp hands scrunched into fists and relaxed again. “It was the only hope I had.”

  They jumped in unison at the muted rumbling from somewhere outside the room. Runstom’s ears pricked and he listened hard. The walls were thick, but he could hear a distinct popping, unidentifiable except for its unmistakable rhythm. Gunfire.

  “Jax, it gets worse,” Runstom said, putting a hand out to steady the other man. “There are ModPol Defenders on board. Multiple squads. I don’t even know how many.”

  “What? It was supposed to be a skeleton—”

  “It’s not. It’s a goddamn army.”

  He took a step back. “Is that why you’re here?”

  “No,” Runstom said with a vigorous shake of his head. “I was just hitching a ride. To EE-3. Public relations work. It’s what I do now.”

  “I know.”

  Runstom was about to explain himself, but the response caught him off guard. “You do?”

  “I guess you could say I’ve kept tabs on you. In the news and stuff.” He paused, then added, “You know, just to see what was going on with the case.”

  Runstom wanted to say more, but the insistent popping of gunfire brought him back to the situation at hand. “When I found one of the assault squads, they decided to put me into ‘active duty’. Which apparently meant coming to this hold to guard the excess ordnance.”

  “To make you stay out of the way.” Jax failed to hide his smirk. It vanished quickly. “It’s going to be a slaughter.”

  “How well equipped are the Wasters?”

  “Armed to the goddamn teeth,” he said, indicating the short-barreled shotgun slung across his shoulder.

  Despite the light artificial gravity, Runstom felt a weight he’d been fighting off ever since that hold door came open and he laid eyes on the full-armored Defenders. It was going to be a bloodbath on both sides. And they could do nothing to stop it.

  He started to pace, and his feet felt like they were moving through mud. “Stupid bastards are going to kill each other to death.”

  “Shit, Stanford. We need to get out of here.”

  “Yeah.” He stopped pacing. Something was happening outside of his control. Well outside. Was he going to die for two bloodthirsty armies who wanted to duke it out in the middle of nowhere for a shipful of – what – food? It made no sense. “You’re right. We need to get out of here. First, you need a change of clothes.”

  “Wait, where are you going?” Jax said as Runstom stalked toward the door.

  “I have a small ship. Non-military, and fast. If we get you a uniform, I can get you on it. We can stroll away from here.”

  “Okay.” There was hesitation, then he repeated his consent more quickly. “Okay, let’s do it.”

  Runstom put a hand on Jax’s chest. “You gotta wait here. I’ll be right back. Here, take a look at the panel by the door. On this side you can see through the camera. You can lock from here and only you can open it. They taught me how to do that so no one could come in and go for their ammo.”

  He looked uncertain. “You’ll be right back?”

  “Don’t open that door for anyone but me.”

  * * *

  Bodies swirled, muzzles flashed. The air filled with smoke and the tearing sound of automatic gunfire. She could smell it, the burn of propellant mixing with the plastic-melting odor of hot projectiles trying to bore their way through the material in bullet-resistant armor on one side, alloy-mesh-lined leather on the other side.

  Dava broke for the wall opposite the corner, the one that had the door, as soon as the shooting started. Despite being unprepared, Barndoor had fired first, after scrambling to unsling his scattergun from his shoulder. It was hard to say how many he’d hit with the series of short blasts, but the screams suggested more than a few. He’d backed his way up the corridor when the return fire started.

  She flattened herself to the wall. Pollies – no, Fenders, by their armor and firepower – were bunched into the doorway, but the momentary confusion was melting and their training was kicking in. They were coming through the door in alternating pairs, covering and exiting, covering and exiting. How many there were in that cargo hold, she couldn’t tell, but it was quickly becoming obvious her small raid team was outnumbered.

  One of the Fenders came around in front of her, focused on the Wasters who were unloading clips at the door and slowly backing down the hall from where they came. There was no time for any thought but fight and flight. She plunged her blade into the distracted Defender’s back and he instantly went rigid.

  She’d been skeptical of the lizard-stomach-paralytic, but this was a good test. The knife was slower than a bullet, enough so that the high-impact-resistant armor split like bread, delivering the poison directly to the bloodstream. A few quick heartbeats and the nervous system rolled over, locking up the Fender faster than he could turn around. As he tumbled against the wall, she yanked a flashbang away from his belt and tossed it at the door.

  They were all wearing helmets with visors, so she knew it wouldn’t buy much time, but it did afford another second of confusion. Down the corridor, the Wasters were moving as fast as they could. There was a trail of at least four strewn between her and the rest. Closest to her, long black hair spread like spilled ink, a growing pool of dark maroon ballooning to one side. She knew there was no time, but she rolled him over anyway. Barndoor’s sightless eyes turned up to stare through her.

  “Shit.” He was a terrible shot but she’d grown to like the long-haired grunt.

  In his hands was a small rod with a button on the top.

  She glanced back at the door. Several Defenders were shaking their heads and getting to their feet, using their hands to collectively steady one another and guide themselves through the door.

  Among their boots, the charge lay like a gray lump, a red light on top blinking its own business.

  She snatched up the detonator and ran for the nearby passageway. She didn’t look back, but when she heard the first high-pitched shot from a military-issue semi-automatic pulse rifle, she pushed the button and dove for the corner.

  The light gravity kept her in the air too long and the force of the explosion kicked her into the wall just inside the passage. She never wore a helmet, and she took the blow to the head hard. Staggering to her feet, bracing herself against the wall, she dropped her head, then picked it up far enough to look back at the hold. The explosion had done some damage, she could see that with just a glance: at the very least, a handful of missing limbs. It would slow them down but she’d come to realize that there was a very large unit inside that hold.

  She needed to move. She shook the haze from her head and looked down the narrow passage. It was dangerous to use it – if they got there before she got to the end, she’d be easy target practice – but she had no choice. She needed to regroup with Thompson, who should be just at the other end of the passageway.

  “Move,” she growled at herself and took a dizzy step forward. “Move!”

  CHAPTER 24

  The longer Jax sat alone in the hold, surrounded by nothing but what his only friend had described as ammunition crates, the louder the distant popping sounds got. Were they were really getting louder or was he just becoming more in tune with them? His wandering mind wanted to turn them into a pattern, to decode their rhythmic tapping into a message. But for every second he spent chasing pleasant mathematical thoughts, he spent two more trying not to let loose his bladder.

  He paced around the room, gripping the shotgun with both hands. Not that he could point it and fire at someone. If his life were threatened? He wasn’t sure. And if he wasn’t sure, he probably couldn’t. But at least he was armed. It was a deterrent, wasn’t it? If he thought too long about it, he feared he might conclude the opposite.

  Then the noise was right outside the do
or. It was thick and nearly soundproof, but there was no denying the direction of the shooting had moved to the hallway just outside the hold. His heart climbed up his throat. He looked around the room for a hiding place. Stacks of boxes. Boxes of ammunition.

  “Shit,” he whispered.

  They would come in – if ModPol was outside the door, surely they would come in. This was their ammo supply. Would the door hold? Runstom said not to open it for anyone but himself. Maybe he’d rigged it to only open from the inside. If that were possible.

  Jax sprinted to the door mechanism. There was a tiny screen with a video, and he remembered the camera. He found the controls and panned it around. It was hard to follow the action on such a small screen. Bodies swirling, bright-white spots appearing as gunfire erupted. Who was out there? He hoped Runstom wasn’t, even though he knew his friend could handle himself in a fight. But the fact remained: Runstom was his only way out of this mess, slim as their chances were. If something happened to him, there would be no chance.

  Then a figure stepped back toward the camera. The lithe body and its reflexive, agile stance were unmistakable. He panned up and saw the back of Dava’s head, her long braids of dark hair tied together in a tail. She stepped down and to the side, striking out with one hand, and Jax knew she was using a blade. She had insisted everyone bring one, even though no one would use one but her. The blue-coated figure in front of her stiffened unnaturally and keeled backward.

  The ModPol uniforms showed brightly on the tiny screen. There was no reinforced leather out there. Only Dava and at least six opponents.

  He felt time stop. It refused to budge, giving him an eternity to make a decision. He would have to let her die out there. He would have to consciously decide to let her die. He might as well pull the trigger himself.

  “Fuck,” he said aloud. None of this was his choice.

  He stalked back to the crates. They were metal and secured with some kind of electronic locks, but there wasn’t anything he could see in the way of authentication. Just a giant red button, the size of a fist.

  So he punched one.

  And it opened with the hiss of hydraulic hinges. It dawned on him: the room was secured, but the crates were meant to be opened fast. No one wants to tap in a lengthy secret code when they’re under enemy fire.

  Whatever he was looking at wasn’t going to help him. Dozens of rectangular metal boxes, full of bullets. Magazines, he thought, remembering the short introduction to firearms that Barndoor had insisted on giving him a few days ago.

  But the crates were all different sizes. He realized they must have contained different things. He sprinted around the room hitting red button after red button. And then he saw something useful: smokebombs.

  Barndoor had given him a rundown of handheld explosives, which made Jax even less comfortable than the guns. The gist of operation was simple enough: pull the pin and throw. He thought back to that day on Sirius-5 when his introduction to Dava had been preceded by a room filling with smoke.

  He grabbed one of the canisters and stopped thinking about how it might blow up in his hands and ran to the door. On the tiny screen he could see that four of the blue-uniforms were still upright, one of them having Dava’s arm pinned while the others tried to aim their guns at her. She was twisting desperately to spoil their shot.

  Jax hit the release and the door slid upward. He pulled the pin and rolled the canister into the hall. On reflex alone, he found the trigger of his shotgun and fired into the ceiling as the thick black smoke began pouring out in a rush like water spilling upward.

  “Dava!”

  As he squinted into the encroaching darkness, a ball of a figure rolled into the room, a trail of smoke billowing around it.

  “Door!” she yelled as she extended her arms and aimed a pistol at the hallway.

  He hit the mechanism and the door slid back down with a sigh, as though unconcerned about the chaos happening around it.

  She remained in a crouch, eyes and gun aimed at the closed door, panting, for several seconds. Then she stood. “We’re fucked,” she said without looking at him.

  “I gathered that.”

  “How did you get in here? Hacked the door?”

  “Uh. Yes.”

  “You alone?”

  “Yeah, unfortunately. I don’t know what happened to Thompson and the others.”

  Dava lowered her gun and looked around the hold. “They were routed. Headed fore. Those that are still alive, anyway.” Her face bunched up. “I saw Tommy on the ground out there.”

  “Shit,” Jax breathed. Should he tell her that Thompson was only stunned? “Dava, I’m sorry—”

  “When that smoke clears, they’re going to get that door open.” She started making her way along the edge of the long room.

  He followed her cautiously. “What are you doing?”

  She reached a corner and looked up. “There.”

  He followed her eyes to an inconspicuous grate. “You’re going up there? We have no idea where it goes!”

  “I know where it goes.” She went to a nearby crate. “Help me move this over.”

  He did as she asked and with a grunt, they slid the crate a few meters to the wall. “Do you always make it your business to know where air ducts go?”

  She stepped up onto the crate with her normal catlike grace, then winced and grabbed her leg at the top. “I make it my business to know where hiding places are.”

  He could see the blood welling through her fingers, and remembered that they’d given him a pack of all kinds of gear, most of which he didn’t know what to do with. He unhooked the pack from his waist and opened it up on top of the crate. “Here,” he said, finding a flat white package with a red cross on it. “This is a bandage, I think.”

  She sighed through closed teeth, and he felt pain on her behalf. She wiped blood from her blade and cut away her pant leg. She pulled the packet open and slapped the bandage on. It smelled terrible, like a combination of chlorine and sulfur, and it hissed against her leg.

  “Get up here and hold it while the adhesive sets.”

  He pulled himself onto the top of the crate. As he moved to hold the bandage in place, she stood and reached for the grate with her blade. While he held her leg uncomfortably, she stretched up and unscrewed the four corners.

  “That’s good,” she said, pulling his hand away and handing him the grate. “Come on.” With a short hop, she pulled herself up into the vent.

  Jax looked back at the door. Any second it could open and some very pissed-off ModPols would come streaming through it. These guys weren’t cops either; Runstom had called them Defenders. They were soldiers. They wouldn’t stop to read him his rights. They might accept surrender, but then again, they might not.

  He sighed and looked up at the open duct. He was tall enough to reach it just by stretching his arms up. With a kick, he pulled himself up.

  And got half his body through.

  He struggled to find purchase with his boots against the wall but he couldn’t get the leverage on his lengthy body that he needed to get all the way into the vent. Then he was yanked forward and looked up to see Dava there. She pulled him all the way in and then backed up a few meters to a place where she could turn around, at a circular hub where four ducts came together.

  There they were able to sit up, almost, and stared at each other for a few panting moments.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “I need to find Moses.”

  “Oh.” Moses Down. Jax hadn’t spoken to the man since his first day in the mess hall. But he knew the leader of Space Waste was supposed to have been leading the breach-and-board mission. He would have come in on the other raider. “Where do you think he is?”

  “His team was supposed to secure the bridge.” She glanced around and he could picture the maps in her head.

  “So you want to go to the bridge. That seems like a bad idea.”

  “I can’t leave him.”

  The words made Jax think of
Runstom. This was his chance to reunite with someone he knew he could trust more than anyone in the universe. He couldn’t run off with Dava and go rescuing Space Waste bosses. He needed to stay and wait for Runstom to get back. He needed to know that Runstom would come back for him. That his friend wouldn’t leave him behind.

  “I’ve got someone on the inside,” he said bluntly. “I have a ticket out of this mess and I’m going to take it.”

  She scowled fiercely and he stiffened, reading an attack on her face. Then she pulled it down into a frown and looked away. “Okay, Psycho Jack.”

  “You should call me Jax,” he dared, now that the impending attack had vanished.

  She looked at him, her eyes softer. “Jax. It wasn’t right of me to bring you into this. I had selfish motives.” She gestured at the room below. “You could have let me die out there.”

  Jax felt his face grow warm and he looked down. “Well, I mean, I owed you.” He cracked a smile. “You know, for all the times you didn’t kill me.”

  He looked up to see her return the smile. “Well, we’re all gonna die now anyway. So get the fuck outta here.”

  With that she spun for one of the ducts and disappeared with no more than a swish. He blinked. She let him go, just like that, and he knew she was unaccustomed to letting things go. He felt like he should have said more to her. It was over.

  After a week, he was no longer a gangbanger.

  He turned back the way he came and slowly inched his way to the opening. He could hear the Defenders below, barking orders at each other. Then the barking faded. He dared to poke his head into the room. Empty. They’d searched and moved on.

  Lying in the air vent, he deflated with a sigh of relief.

  * * *

  The network of vents gave Dava access throughout the ship, as long as she could remember which direction she was facing. She had the schematics on her pocket-sized handypad and she pulled them up in the small window, adjusting the brightness as low as possible. It was a bit of a maze, but it probably made sense to the engineers that designed it. She had to backtrack occasionally because there would be an unexpected fan that she couldn’t bypass or residue that leaked from pipes and formed a sticky kind of mud. On her first attempt to crawl through the stuff she stuck to it like a rodent in a glue trap and had to leave behind a glove. She didn’t know how much more she could stay in those ducts; their primary function was circulating oxygen throughout the ship, but they also provided heat, and she was sweating enough to feel a dryness in her mouth and throat. She swallowed away the tickle. Any kind of coughing, she could do without.