Under Shadows

Her smile faded and she put a hand on his shoulder. “Useful people get used, Stanley.” She squeezed him briefly, then turned quickly and headed for the door to the main hatch. “I know I don’t show it, but you’re everything to me, Stanley.” She spoke without turning back to look at him. “So be careful out there.”

He mumbled assent, and then she was gone. He watched one of the terminal screens that showed the hatch opening and then closing. The dock’s magnetic locks had released.

He flexed his fingers trying to worry away the numbing residual effects of the stunner. A hollow emptiness burned through his stomach.

He could only do what he needed to do.

*

Jax had tried to reason with the cop on the shuttle ride up, but even when using the autopilot, he was so skittish that Jax figured he’d better not distract him or they’d be smashed to pieces on their way to the main ModPol ship. He remembered hearing McManus say that he had a pilot with him, but that pilot was busy keeping the ship in orbit, leaving McManus to handle the shuttle himself. Finally, they managed to dock with only minor bumps accompanied by a groaning crack, and then Jax was being hauled out of the shuttle with dizzying alacrity. As always, the transition to a nearly null gravity environment disoriented the hell out of him. He’d never get used to it.

“I don’t know why you people just can’t let me be,” he said finally as his captor closed up the shuttle and jabbed at a console. “You know I’m not a criminal.”

“Oh, I know.” The response came with a mirthless chuckle. “I’ve heard this song before.”

“Sergeant McManus, right?” Jax said as the cop came back from his bout with the wall-mounted computer system. “What is this, like some kind of career move for you? To be the cop that brings in a wrongfully accused citizen? For the crime of being afraid and running for his life?”

McManus grabbed Jax by the arm and tugged him across the tiny shuttle hangar. “I wish.”

“What does that mean?”

He ignored Jax and slid open a door that led to a narrow chamber. Jax could see sleeping tubes beyond it, similar to the one he’d been locked inside the first time McManus captured him.

“What does that mean?” he repeated, doing his best to pull back. The small resistance was equaled by a small tightening of the bonds around his wrists.

McManus shot him a glare and then pulled him toward the door. “Just shut up so I can get you into a stasis pod.”

“What’s going to happen?” Jax said. “They’re going to give me a trial and find me innocent. They’re going to just let me go, right?”

“If you believe that, then why do you keep running?”

“Because I shouldn’t have to go on trial. I’m innocent and everyone knows it!”

An unseen audio unit sparked to life. “Sergeant, there’s a contact.”

McManus sighed. He floated to a nearby wall and found a comm unit. “There’s a planet, Ayliff. There’s gonna be some contacts.”

“This one’s got an intercept trajectory.”

“What the fuck,” McManus muttered to himself, before speaking directly into the comm again. “No. What is it?”

“Civilian ship, Sarge. Hold on. OrbitBurner 4200 LX.”

Jax felt a twinge in his chest. Simultaneously he felt hope and fear.

“Goddammit,” McManus said. “That lunkhead Runstom just doesn’t know when to quit.” He spoke into the comm. “Ayliff, is it powering up any weapons?”

“Uh, no, Sarge. I don’t think it has any weapons.”

“No, of course not.”

“He’s coming in hot though, Sarge. Time to intercept, eight minutes.”

“Time to Xarp?”

“Eleven minutes, forty seconds.”

“Wait, whaddya mean, time to intercept?” McManus said after a moment of quiet thought. “He’s got no weapons.”

After a pause, the ship’s pilot came back on. “Current trajectory suggests a collision course.”

“No fucking way.” McManus shook his head and pointed a finger at Jax. “That crazy friend of yours is going to ram us.”

“He is crazy,” Jax said. Maybe he could convince these cops that it was better to just leave them be. Runstom was a wild card that no one wanted to deal with. Calling him crazy wasn’t really all that much of a stretch. “Just let me go, McManus. I told you, it’s not worth it. I’m innocent. Let me go before Stanford kills us all.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, his eyes narrowing.

McManus pulled his way toward the bridge, tugging Jax along by the elbow. It was awkward progress, but the cop seemed adept at yanking himself from one handhold to the next in the absence of gravity.

“Ayliff, where is he?” he said as they billowed through the hatch. “How close?”

“Six minutes, thirty.”

“He’s catching up to us,” McManus said. “Why is he catching up to us?”

“That little OrbitBurner is a mover.”

Jax felt helpless. He was useless when near weightless, even if the microgravity caused him to slowly sink. McManus’s grip on his elbow was like a winch, and if he resisted, the cuffs constricted. He could feel his breath growing short and sharp with the rising panic.

McManus directed his attention to a silver-haired, pale but solid-looking woman seated along the right side of the cabin. “Granny, heat up the auto-turrets.”

“Sergeant McManus, you know I can’t fire on a civilian vessel,” she said with a shake of her head. She motioned at her controls. “The auto-guns won’t do it.”

“Dammit.” McManus let go of Jax and floated to a wall terminal, mumbling as he tapped at it. “I thought we had override codes installed on this thing.”

“Five minutes,” the pilot said.

“Stop counting down and take evasive action, Ayliff!”

“You got it Sarge, but there’s no way we can outmaneuver that baby.”

“Just keep him off us long enough to break gravity so we can Xarp out.”

“Ah, shit.” The woman McManus had called Granny turned in her half-tightened restraints. “We’re not really gonna do a hot Xarp, are we?”

Jax felt the floor meet his feet with the smallest amount of pressure. Somehow the contact made him feel even less stable. His body, drained from long-gone adrenaline, wanted to collapse, but there wasn’t enough gravity for the act.

“Depends on whether you can keep this crazy bastard away from us,” McManus said. He stabbed the terminal a few more times, then leaned back with a grunt. “There. Auto-turret number six is unlocked. It’s manual now.”

“Manual?” she said, her head sliding back and her eyebrow crooking. “Like without the targeting computer? How the hell am I supposed to hit anything?”

“Granny, you’re the goddamn gunner!”

“I’m the defense system operator,” she said, her brow furrowing. “And I don’t shoot at civilian ships.”

“Well you don’t gotta kill him,” McManus said, propelling himself away from the wall and toward Jax. “Just keep him from killing us.”

“Tighten those straps, people,” Ayliff called out. “He’s getting close. And if we hot Xarp, you don’t wanna be caught loose in the cabin.”

McManus grunted as he shoved Jax against a cushioned wall at the back of the cabin. “Sorry, Jackson. I was going to put you in a sleep tube. Hell, was looking forward to a nice nap myself. But your buddy Stanley is complicating that plan.”

“It would get a lot simpler if you just let me go.” Jax grunted as McManus drew thick straps across his chest. “You could even tell ModPol I’m dead. Tell them you saw my body. I’ll go deep and never come up again. I’ll disappear.”

The cop looked up at him and for a moment Jax thought he was considering the option. Then he looked back down, reaching behind Jax to loosen the wrist restraints. “Ain’t taking you to ModPol.”

“Where are you taking me?” Jax said, his voice suddenly going weak.

McManus didn’t answer. He just pulled down a mask and strapped it to Jax’s face. Then he floated to an empty chair and began strapping himself in.

Jax tried to repeat the question, but he couldn’t get his mask-muffled voice to rise above the tension in the cabin. What was McManus hinting at? It couldn’t be good.

“Here he comes,” Ayliff said.

“Give him a few warning shots, Granny.”

“Alright, Sarge.”

The gunner – or rather, the defense system operator – tapped at a screen, then held a finger down, swirling it in a circle. Jax couldn’t make out the visual, but he imagined she was aiming the sights of the gun somewhere in the direction of Runstom’s OrbitBurner. She stopped the motion, and with the other hand she tapped once. A stream of distant high-pitched shrieks came from somewhere below the bridge.

After a few moments of tense silence, McManus barked, “Report!”

“No hits, no damage,” Granny said.

“Contact has taken evasive action,” Ayliff said. “I think that bought us some distance.”

“Good,” McManus said. “If he gets any closer, take another—”

“Shit,” Ayliff said, silencing the rest of the room.

There was a din of ambient noise throughout the cabin from engines, life support, and whatever else, but now Jax could hear a distinct sound off to the left side of the ship. It sounded sinusoidal, like a wave pulsing to a steady beat.

“That thing has some bad-ass afterburners on it,” the pilot finally said.

“Granny!” McManus shouted.

“I can’t find him!” The gunner’s hand swirled around her pad. “You gave me one of the turrets on the bottom of the patroller and I can’t get an angle up to him.”

“I’ll get ’im back,” Ayliff said.

As soon as the words came out, the ship lurched, and Jax imagined it spinning on the center axis, a line that drew from the rear to the front. Which meant that Jax was rotating along with it, being strapped to the middle of the wall perpendicular to the center axis. He coughed and sputtered, and something hot forced its way from his mouth and into the mask. He started to panic that his gastric ejection had blocked his airway, but there was a light sucking sound and with a sickening feeling that spread through his body, he suddenly understood the mask’s purpose.

The ship twisted again, then shuddered with a jolt. “Holy shit!” Ayliff called out. “The crazy bastard clipped our nose cone!”

The turret shrieked again. “Not even close to a hit,” Granny said. “But that gave him something to think about.”

“If you say so,” the pilot said. “Looks to me like he’s coming back around again.”

“Are we out of the gravity well yet?” McManus said through gritted teeth. Jax could see the pink skin on the cop’s hands going white from gripping his chair so hard.

“Hold on,” Ayliff said. “There. Yes. All hands ready for Xarp?”

“Just hit it,” McManus yelled.

The only thing Jax was thankful for in that moment was the mask that captured the contents of his entire stomach.

Chapter 5

The thick material of the guard uniform flexed tightly around Runstom’s stomach as he bent to lace up his boots. It had been made for someone who didn’t have the surplus that had been invading the territory around his midsection. The spendy, flashy nonsense in his wardrobe as of late had been better at hiding it than any official uniform could.

Not that he was going to allow such an intrusion to smother his fire. Gut or not, he was going to get back to Barnard’s Star and find Jax. Whatever it took. Before it was too late.

The image flashed in his mind whenever he allowed it to drift. Xarp wake. The trail was invisible to the naked eye but had lit up the scanners like a glowing highway. The OrbitBurner was speedy, but had no Xarp drive. Just a showy, useless hot rod for flitting between planets.

He needed a ride. McManus would have gone to Barnard. Runstom’s gut feeling, and the computer’s analysis of the Xarp wake confirmed it. Jax had been checking the launch schedules obsessively, so Runstom knew there was a transport leaving EE-3 for Barnard but it was a slow model, and worse, it wasn’t scheduled to set off for several weeks.

While Runstom had been trying to ram McManus’s intersystem patroller, the OrbitBurner comm network had traded data with it. Standard protocol for the ModPol mesh network. Every ship registered to ModPol was a node. Whenever nodes in the mesh got close enough for transmission, data passed between them. Any information was always going to be stale, but stale information was better than no information. Everything had been encrypted and Runstom didn’t have clearance for all of it of course, but he got the highlights.

No details for anything outside of the system, but there’d been plenty of chatter about recent events within Epsilon Eridani. Most of the activity revolved around the cleanup after the battle that ensued when Space Waste attempted to hijack an interstellar ModPol transport. The same transport Runstom had hitched a ride on, ferrying his OrbitBurner from Barnard to Eridani. Reports of massive casualties on both sides, though the numbers for ModPol losses were obscured. With uncomfortable pride, the report had stated that twenty-six Wasters were killed. Thirty-one had been taken into custody. A newly retrofitted prisoner transport barge had been dispatched to transport the prisoners back to a maximum-security facility in deep-space orbit around Barnard’s Star.

The prisoner transport barge had been fueling up at ModPol Outpost Epsilon, so Runstom had kicked the OrbitBurner into overdrive to catch it. When he’d reached the ModPol outpost, he sent his ship back to EE-3 on autopilot. He wished he could give it to Sylvia, but it was dangerous for them to be connected in any way. They’d already risked much by spending a small amount of time together while he was on her planet. So instead, he included a message that the ship was to be a gift to one of the other higher-level administrators. A thanks from ModPol Defense for their time.

But not before he’d ejected the stiff body of Tim Cazos. Unleashed the scrubbers on the rust-dry blood that adorned the walls around the maintenance hatch. It’d hurt, to purge evidence. But what would he do with it? Call Justice? Launch a criminal investigation against certain members of Space Waste?

It was last rounds before the ship went on lockdown in prep for Xarp speed. With a grunt, he adjusted the unwelcome gut inside the tight uniform, stretched his legs, and holstered a stun-stick. His quarters were made for two, but the transport had come over with a skeleton crew. He left the room alone.

The differences between ModPol Justice and ModPol Defense were less noticeable in the backwater space of Eridani. The presence of Justice on the outpost was minimal, but the Defenders didn’t seem to mind the slowly increasing invasion by would-be police forces. Runstom wondered if the cops that made it to Eridani were ambitious, looking forward to moving into EE-3 as soon as the door was opened with a contract, or if they were there for the complete and total lack of action.

He’d checked in and reported to the local marketing administrators about his progress with the E-threers and their mild interest in Defense services, then hurried to make contact with anyone who knew if there was room for him on the prisoner barge destined for Barnard’s Star. Endured several unfunny jokes about there being empty cells. And then finally someone had let him know there was an open spot if he didn’t mind putting on a guard uniform. Someone had gone absent. Something about an asshole sergeant who had landed guard duty as penance for incompetence. A patroller had shown up to give him a lift.

So Runstom got to take McManus’s place. It seemed the only option for getting back to Barnard in a timely manner.

He made his way down the lonely corridor, pulling at the ill-fitting uniform. The barge was the same one that Runstom was on when he was transporting Jax from Barnard-4 to ModPol Outpost Alpha, back when all of this started. It was there that he had confessed to Jax that he believed the operator was innocent of the murders he’d been charged with. The same barge that Space Waste attacked while they were in transit, in order to free some of their higher-ranking goons. The support systems on the barge had been severely damaged and many ModPol officers and guards lost their lives that day. Runstom had barely managed to escape by stealing a Waster ship, dragging Jax along with him.

And here it was again. All put back together, at least partially. According to gossip among the guards and staff, the cell blocks had been salvaged and retrofitted into another type of transport, originally designed for transporting raw materials mined from asteroids. Which made this version Xarp-capable, unlike the last.

The effect was that much of the interior was the same. The familiarity of it unnerved Runstom. Like walking through the memory of a bad dream. Every miniscule jounce the ship made as it maneuvered jolted through his nerves. Every shudder jarred loose memories, recalled fears of gravity in flux. Bodies bounding. Normal things like provisions and handypads becoming dangerous debris. And then the cutting. Knives through the metal skin of the hull. The projectile fire. The laserfire. The whole barge bleeding air, losing pressure, losing oxygen. Losing a partner, a fellow cop, the closest person Runstom had to a friend.

He gripped a handhold that ran along the narrow corridor. There was only a gray ambient light to see by, and it made him nauseous to stare down the length of the passage. An unnatural, shrinking point, like losing consciousness. The handrail felt sticky under his gloves.

His arm buzzed with a warning. Runstom had one shift to serve before the Xarp jump and he was going to be late. He pulled himself forward by the wall handle, bracing himself against it. The artificial gravity was only a half G, but his legs felt heavy. They’d turn it off completely soon. Not until after the shift. Not until everyone was secured.

If he lost Jax, it would all have been for nothing. All his efforts, all his justice. It would be meaningless if an innocent man was killed by an unchecked monster. Mark Xavier Phonson. X.

Runstom reported to his post.

The cell block was mostly empty. Thirty-one prisoners, and the capacity was several times that. Most of the guards were younger. Fit, strong-looking, but babies. He tried not to think about how short their lives would be if there was another attack. He dodged their small talk with nods and grunts and thousand-yard stares. Sometimes they called him McManus, and he couldn’t tell if it was some kind of lame joke or if they really were just confused. Runstom didn’t allow himself to spend the energy on anger in either case.

An attack seemed possible. If the Wasters would go after a prisoner barge once for just a couple of their mates, wouldn’t they do it again for thirty-one? But they’d been routed, sent home to lick their wounds. And the barge was going straight to the zero-G maximum-security prison, deep in Barnard space. Special delivery. Not like the predictable route it was on before. It would come out of Xarp in the vicinity of the highly-protected prison. Even if the Wasters knew its schedule, which was unlikely, they’d have no window for an attack.

Runstom reminded himself of these details as he walked his round. The prisoners were unsettlingly quiet. Each one he passed was either lying or sitting on their cot. Dejected. Tired. There was a difference, he realized, a difference in the violence he’d witnessed the first time on this barge and the violence he’d witnessed most recently. The first was ruthless, to be sure. A cold-blooded assault on a Justice ship. A purpose of breaking prisoners out of custody. But the most recent incident, it was an attack, met by an ambush. He’d been lulled into thinking the Wasters’ purpose was theft. They thought there were weapons to steal. But the attack and the ambush, these things felt more like war than crime. And perhaps he should assume that the Wasters didn’t just want to steal from ModPol, they wanted to cripple ModPol. A move driven not by greed, but by strategy.

The main difference of the cells in this version of the barge was the addition of a sleep tube in each. It was part of Runstom’s job to ask each prisoner if he or she understood the directions for operating the tube. They were required to get in themselves when the signal was given. There was a timer. And then the tubes would close. Anyone not in a tube was going to ride Xarp in real time. Runstom had done it before. A slow, sick, painless torture. The human brain didn’t know what to do with it.

“Ain’tchu got any D?” A voice calling out from the level below Runstom. “I don’t wanna get in the tube, I just wanna ride with some D.”

He heard the young guard respond with practiced patience. “Do you understand the instructions?”

“Fuck the instructions, lady. I want some D. It’s inhumane to Xarp without D.”

“Please answer the question,” she tried firmly.

“How about you answer my question?”

“Listen, Waster – if you don’t get in the tube, you’re going to have to ride raw.”

Runstom looked into the cell in front of him, ready to recite his own questions. The man in the dark corner spoke first. “Waster. Always found that distasteful.”

“Aren’t you with Space Waste?” Runstom asked, then cursed himself for engaging.

“Aye, I know we’re prone to wastin’ stuff.” His voice was deep, and though it was soft, there was a strength to it. “Laying waste. But that’s what we do, not who we are.”

Runstom stood quiet. Watched the man step forward. He was tall, as tall as a B-fourean, but not nearly as skinny. And his skin was a rich, dark brown. An Earth-born. The lines in his face were obscured by scars, but the eyes showed age. Runstom glanced at his pad to read the name. Moses Down.

“What we are is waste,” he said. “The waste discarded by domes. And domes – domes are built for creating and discarding waste. They are systems of perpetual hunger and consumption. You weren’t raised on a dome.”

“No,” Runstom said, though it hadn’t sounded like a question.

“But your job has taken you to domes. Many times, I’ll bet. You ever approach the domes in a shuttle with windows?”

Runstom had. Shuttles rarely had windows or even screens that anyone but the pilot could view. But on occasion he’d seen the domes from an approach. Such as the time he was called to work on a case on Barnard-4. A multiple homicide. He’d watched the entire time, the way the storms swirled around the stacks that rose from the processors.

“Pollution,” Moses Down said, as though he were looking at the picture in Runstom’s mind. “Sometimes it looks natural, like clouds, like rain. But it’s unnatural. Corrosive. Toxic. Domes burn everything. Burn it down to molecules and blow it into space.”

“Those planets have no atmosphere,” Runstom said. His voice was weak. Making someone else’s argument.

“No, of course not,” Down said with a half grin and a shake of his head. “Don’t let my old Earth skin fool you. I could give a shit about what domers pump into the void outside of their domes. I just wanted to make the point. See there – the domes – there, the polluters win. There’s no environment to save, not like the doddering, fragile Earth. Domes sit on dead rock. That’s what allowed them to establish these systems.”

Runstom’s hand moved toward his handypad, trying to do the job that his mind and mouth wouldn’t. Trying to move him on to the next prisoner. “Systems,” he heard himself say.

“Intake and excretion.” Down made a motion with his hands, one waving in, one pushing out. Then he dropped them to his side. “Me, my family, we are not wasters. We are waste. Human waste. The unwanted byproduct of dome life.”

Runstom stared up at the dark man in silence. There was something about him, about those burning brown eyes. He swallowed and blinked. Flashes of the things he’d seen Space Waste do. The people that died. He felt his forehead crease when he reopened his eyes. “You’re murderers.”

Down’s smile faded and he nodded solemnly. “Ain’t nobody perfect.”

Runstom looked down at his handypad, staring through it. “Do you understand the instructions?” he mumbled.