Jason LaPier - Under Shadows

Of all the things they needed to figure out, the most important for Jax was getting back to Terroneous. How strange that such a place had become home to him. But he couldn’t have known it until they’d taken him from it. Had ModPol done him a favor by illegally extraditing him from the independent moon? Forcing him to realize his connection to that place? Maybe so. He didn’t care how it had become his home, just that it was. And he needed to get back there.

Back to her.

“Ale,” Runstom said. “The brown one.”

“Mucksucker Brown, comin’ up. And you, sir?”

Jax looked at Runstom, then at the bartender. The man could’ve been the brother of the hostess, he looked so similar. Perhaps it was a family-owned place; or maybe it was just the identical glinting blue suit. Jax had no idea what to order, just that he needed something with alcohol in it.

“Brandy?” he said, then added, “If you have it?”

The bartender cracked half a grin, then glanced at the rounded wall behind him. There were shelves reaching as high as the bookshelves around the outer wall, but these were populated by bottles of all shapes and colors. Jax flinched as he watched the man turn his head upward. They must’ve had a ladder to reach those upper rows.

“We’ve got some,” he said, still looking up. “Not easy to get out here, but we have some fine brandy imported from Poligart.”

“Oh, uh,” Jax started. He felt like an idiot when it came to money anymore, never having any for one, and never knowing what anything cost anyhow.

“Go for it,” Runstom said, laying out a card. “Someone told me I need to get better at spending the company money.”

The bartender let the rest of the smile appear. “Comin’ right up,” he said, then left them.

Jax could only imagine what they looked like to these people: a tall, lanky man from the domes of Barnard-4 with skin as pale as the foam head on the beers they were drinking, and his companion: the broad-chested, oddly well-dressed Runstom, whose skin was dark olive in color. No one here was from “around here”, because they’d all arrived within the last decade or so to begin construction and pick up other necessary jobs to support the development of a new civilization on the once primordial planet. But Jax had learned that he would be an outcast among outcasts anywhere he went that wasn’t Barnard-4. The domers on the planet of his birth never left home, and there was little chance of encountering one in his travels. Likewise, Runstom never really fit in anywhere he went. He was just too weird.

Plus he had the green skin.

“Alright.” Runstom’s tone pulled Jax’s attention away from the deliciously information-dense pad. “So where the hell is my ship?”

Runstom’s company-issued ship, a luxury thing called an OrbitBurner-something-or-other, hadn’t been at the docks. The issuing company being the same Modern Policing and Peacekeeping that had wrongfully extradited Jax from Terroneous. Though technically Runstom worked for the Defense division, his ties with Justice strained.

Jax blew out a long sigh, trying to determine the best way to break the news about Runstom’s ship, then just decided to blurt it out. “Dava took it.”

“Dava?”

“Space Waster.”

“Sonova—”

“But she’ll bring it back.” Jax leaned in a little closer. “Look, Stan, I know you’re going to be pissed about this. But I promise you, they’ll bring the ship back.”

“They?” Runstom’s eyes burned and his lips drew taut. “How many are there?”

“Just three,” Jax said quickly. “They stowed away. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. Please understand – I just didn’t want any more violence. They promised me they’d keep to themselves.”

Runstom looked down and away. “Violence.”

The drinks arrived and Jax knew he’d have to sit in silence for a few moments while Runstom processed this. He always had a way in his head, a way that things should be done, and when they weren’t done that way, he had to reason out why. In this case, he probably felt that Jax should have alerted him right away that there were stowaways on board, so that he could summarily arrest them. But that’s not what happened. Jax knew that Runstom would have to ponder why things didn’t go the way they were supposed to, and that it meant he would have to take a moment to see it from Jax’s perspective. But he would, eventually. Or at least he’d try.

Jax took a sip of his brandy. It was like sweet fire in his throat. It reminded him of the last conversation he had with Dava, stowed away and pilfering Runstom’s liquor supply. Threats had been exchanged, but they were all just trying to survive. Despite Space Waste being a pack of bloodthirsty gangbangers, he owed them. Sort of. When ModPol had picked him up on Terroneous, it was Dava and her crew that had intercepted him. Rescued him from wrongful imprisonment, but not to grant him his freedom; instead to recruit him for their own purposes. A harrowing experience, if temporary.

“Three of them and two of us,” Runstom said. “If you hadn’t made a deal, they’d have taken it by force.”

“Probably,” Jax said after a burning swallow. He decided not to remark that two of us was an exaggeration, given his uselessness in any such altercation. None of the various custodian, technician, and operator positions he’d held in the domes required anything remotely resembling combat training, and even during his short time on Terroneous, he’d stayed as far away from trouble as possible. Or had tried to, anyway.

“And they were supposed to disappear once we landed.”

Jax frowned and nodded. “Well, that was the deal.”

“What makes you think they’ll be back?”

He shrugged. “That OrbitBurner doesn’t have a Xarp drive, so no FTL. Space Waste has zero presence out here in Eridani, and these three are on the run. So they’ll need another way back to Barnard or Sirius.”

Runstom seemed to turn that over in his mind, then he took a pull of his dark beer. “That won’t be easy.”

“No, I don’t suppose so.”

“What’s the other reason?”

Jax hadn’t alluded to a second reason, but Runstom wasn’t going to let him get off that easily. “I gave them something.”

“You gave them—” Runstom started, then stopped and his eyes narrowed. “You mean information.”

“Yes,” Jax said. “On our way to the docks, you were telling me about something your mom said. About someone going into Space Waste, someone who was undercover.”

Runstom flinched slightly at the mention of his mother. They’d only talked to her a few hours ago, and it had definitely changed the man. Jax was pretty sure they hadn’t seen each other in several years, at least in person. And with her being in some kind of witness protection relocation deal, the communication between them had been poor to say the least. Her name was Sylvia Runstom, though she was now going by Sylvia Rankworth, and she was Assistant Director of Agricultural Systems on Epsilon Eridani-3. Jax got the impression that she still kept up with some of the networks she’d acquired while she did undercover work herself, back before her son Stanford was born, well over three decades ago.

“Yes,” Runstom said, glancing over his shoulder. “You said you might be able to identify one or two Wasters that didn’t fit in.”

“There was definitely one guy who was up to something,” Jax said. “His name was Basil Roy. He was a programmer – not an operator like me, but a real engineer.”

“Doesn’t sound the gangbanger type.”

“No, he wasn’t.” Jax took another sip, hoping the brandy would lubricate his memory. “They were having him write software to interface with this special detection equipment. Stuff they lifted from somewhere.”