Jason LaPier - Under Shadows

He looked at her, his voice cool skepticism. “He disappeared.”

Damn 2-Bit. He was going to make her spell it out. “So we go on this mission, Basil Roy giving us directions. We run into an ambush. Then he disappears.”

2-Bit cocked his head slightly. “Ambush?”

“Did you really think we just lost a fair fight?” She drained her whiskey and stood up. “I have to show you something.”

She found a quiet corner of the station and recounted the details of the breach-and-board to Captain 2-Bit. The army of ModPol Defenders camped out in the cargo bays. Anyone they didn’t slaughter, they’d captured. She watched the concern spread slowly across his face, but he was only going on her word. Then she showed him some of the BatCap footage that she and Thompson-Gun and Lucky Jerk had retrieved. As he saw with his own eyes the clearly prepared ModPol fighter ships disguised as asteroids reveal themselves and pinch into the Space Waste ships, his concern turned to fear. Eyes widening, breath catching.

2-Bit was no idiot, and although he wanted to trust Jansen, the evidence was stacking up. Basil Roy was Jansen’s man, and Roy had clearly deceived them. The hacker’s disappearance fed 2-Bit’s distrust. And yet she couldn’t bring him around to fully distrusting Jansen. 2-Bit wanted to believe that Roy had deceived all of them, Jansen included.

In the end, Dava got 2-Bit to agree to stay on his toes and keep a watchful eye on things. And to look the other way while she went about her own business. He’d let slip that the next attack was going to be on Ipo; apparently the miners there had struck a vein of some material ideal for packing into torpedoes and hurling at other ships, exploding spectacularly whether they made a direct hit or not. Whatever kept him busy, she didn’t really care.

Thompson came around to find her eventually, once 2-Bit had stumbled away, half-drunk, half-confused, all useless. They walked around the outer corridor toward their old barracks to see who or what might have moved in during their absence.

“These Misters,” Thompson was groaning. “Place is crawling with them. Flighty bastards. Not much good except for fodder.”

“Something tells me Jansen sees us all that way.”

The old hallways felt like home, but not like home at the same time. Everything had changed, and now it was like she was walking through a memory, a twisted museum commemorating something that once was, now no longer.

Thompson was carrying a case, and Dava nodded at it. “Got yourself a replacement Tommy-Gun?”

She frowned down at it. “Yeah. It’s my only spare. Not as good as the one ModPol lifted off me.”

Dava knew how much Thompson-Gun’s namesake meant to her. She’d watched her friend customize the piece over the years. It had been a work of art as much as a weapon. “Better hold onto this one,” she said in a mirthless attempt at teasing her.

Thompson shook it off, changing the subject. “I heard a rumor,” she said in a low voice. She must have held her tongue until she felt they were out of earshot of anyone important. “About where they took the prisoners.”

“Heard from who?”

“It’s a rumor, Dava. There is no who.”

“Then what?” She tried to keep her voice low, but it wanted to leap out of her chest. She clutched the handholds tighter as they drifted in the low gravity. “Where?”

“The Pollies have that new lockup. The zero-G place. In the outer belt.”

She took this in. It made sense, except for the fact that there weren’t Pollies on the ModPol transport, they were all Fenders. Military, not police. “Must be the Fenders didn’t want to deal with the prisoners.”

“Or they had a deal, made a trade or something.”

“Aren’t they all ModPol?”

Thompson laughed. “Yeah, but they’re like factions, you know?”

Dava couldn’t draw those boundaries in her mind, couldn’t fathom what the cops and the soldiers would trade for. “This rumor – it’s making its way around the base?”

“Of course.”

“Anyone asking why we’re not hitting the prison?”

They stopped, and Dava realized they’d reached the hatch of Thompson’s chamber. “Of course,” she said again. “But RJ is saying they might be expecting that.”

“RJ,” Dava muttered. He was probably right about that. Or he was right in the words he was feeding to the grunts. Spinning the rumors to tell the story his way. Was he capable of that level of manipulation? He’d fooled Moses.

She could kill him. He was probably well guarded and plenty paranoid at this point, but she was the best. She could find a way.

It was strange to admit, but she’d never killed without being on the job. She’d never taken it on her own volition to assassinate. Although Basil Roy might count. No one had ordered to spill his blood.

What would Moses want her to do? She was so certain of Jansen’s deceit. She didn’t need hard evidence. She didn’t need a confession from the late Basil Roy. She just knew it. If Moses knew something as strongly as she did, would he order the hit?

He would weigh it out. He would lay all the cards on the table, flip them over into proper piles, see all the players, the moves, the outcomes. She couldn’t see any of that. She couldn’t see the consequences. She never had to before, but now that she had the option to take things into her own hands, she was stuck. How was she supposed to predict the consequences of assassinating the underboss of Space Waste?

Every one of those empty faces she’d passed drifting through the empty base. They burned her. They fled, those that lived, those that were uncaptured – they were all guilty of leaving the rest behind. But in the end, Dava had fled as well. Those faces, she hated them for being so stupid, for being used, but then Dava had been used as well. Those faces were mirrors. Reflecting what she hated about herself.

“Who can we get to go with us?” Dava said, barely in control of the words as they came out.

“Go where?”

“I don’t know yet.” She just knew she needed a crew. That was the first step. Mutiny against Jansen wasn’t going to pay off, and she had no idea what might happen if she managed to kill him. Who was loyal to him? It was a sure bet the newly arrived Misters were. No, before she could do anything, she needed to find out who could stand with her. “It doesn’t matter where we’re going or what we’re doing. Who can we trust to join us?”

“How many do we need?”

Dava bit her lip. “A small crew. They have to be solid. If you’re not sure, they don’t make the cut. I only want ringers.”

Thompson nodded and pulled open her hatch. “Give me a couple of hours. I’ll send you a message and we’ll meet.”

*

By the time they gathered together in the dark shadows behind the tanks in the recycling pod, the seed in Dava’s mind had grown into a full-blown plan. She looked around at her posse.

“Alright, Tommy. Who are these piece-of-shit bastards?”

Thompson-Gun’s face twisted into a snarling smile. She slapped a lean, muscular woman on the arm and nodded. “This here’s Seven-Pack. Close-combat specialist. She and I used to run under Professor One-Shot.” She frowned. “Until Poligart.”

Dava had heard the story about Poligart, though she hadn’t paid much attention. The one habitable moon of Sirius-7 and location of a small but strong colony. The incident was one of the first encounters with some Misters. A small crew of Wasters, lead by One-Shot, got into some kind of shootout. They’d been outnumbered and came out on top, but One-Shot didn’t make it. “Yeah, Seven-Pack,” Dava said, looking the woman up and down, recognizing her from around the base. She had blood-red skin and matching red hair and had probably been born on Poligart. “I heard you took out a bunch of those bastards yourself.”