Jason LaPier - Under Shadows

“Well, I don’t – I’m just a computer guy, here,” he said. “I mean, I know we lost the fight. But what else would I know about it?”

“Lost the fight?” Thompson said. “We got slaughtered out there!”

“I’m just a computer guy,” he repeated, his voice going small and weak. Then it turned curious. “Hey, how did you all get this OrbitBurner?”

Dava turned back to him. “No. No questions from you.”

“What? I,” he started, then swallowed as he looked at her eyes. “Dava – Capo – we’re on the same team. We’re all Space Waste here.”

At this she closed her eyes. She buried deep the rant about what Space Waste was, and why someone like Basil Roy would never be a part of it. She pushed it down and out of the way, because there was no time to explain these things to a dead man floating. Her family was scattered, and she and two companions were stuck in the wrong fucking system. She needed to push forward.

“Basil, I know the detector was a fake,” she said quietly, opening her eyes.

“What?” Lucky said. “What the fuck does that mean, Dava?”

“Shut the fuck up, Lucky,” Thompson said. Then she leaned in close to Dava. “What does that mean, Capo?”

Roy’s mouth went open and closed a few times before any words came out. “Why would you think that?”

“I don’t think it, I know it.”

His hands went palms up again. “Why, though? Why would anyone fake the detector? And why would you think that? We found the ModPol trans—”

“Because we found the ModPol transport,” she said evenly. “We found it so easily, we didn’t need a goddamn detector. We found the transport and walked right into an ambush.”

This statement stunned the room into silence. She brought the knife back up, not pointing it at Roy, just bringing it to her eye-line so that she could inspect the edge. She’d been sharpening it to pass the time while they drifted about the battlefield in the OrbitBurner. When she sharpened a blade long enough, she wondered how thin that edge could get. Was it possible to get it down to a single layer of molecules? Would that make it so that the blade could cut through anything, any material in the universe?

“It was Jansen!” Roy blurted. “It was his plan, it wasn’t mine. I had nothing to do with any of this! I was a tool, a pawn – don’t you see that? I’m nobody!”

“So Jansen knew about the ambush,” she said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Honestly, I really didn’t know what was going to happen. All he told me was to make it look like the detector was working.”

“And he gave you the location of the ship?” Lucky said. “The ModPol transport?”

“Yes! Exactly. He told me where it was going to come out of Xarp. All I had to do was make it look like the detector software saw it there. Right place, right time.”

“You’re not really out here collecting BatCaps,” Thompson said.

Roy swallowed. “No. I’m sorry I lied about that. I didn’t – I don’t know who to trust. But I did my job for him. And now I want out.”

“For Jansen,” Thompson said.

He hesitated a moment. “Yeah. For Jansen,” he said. Then he added quietly, “Now I just want out.”

“What a clusterfuck,” Thompson said with a sigh.

“People are dead,” Dava said. “Because of some fucking game that these pricks are playing. People are dead. And people are locked up.”

“I’m sorry,” Roy said. “I really – I didn’t know. I just did what he rRRRKK—”

The blade went swiftly across, slicing clean through his throat. The momentum caused him to spin slowly, the blood streaming like a fan in the lack of gravity.

“People are dead,” she repeated quietly.

*

“We need to get Moses back,” Dava said. “And the rest. We need to get them back.”

Thompson was trying to wrap some kind of plastic cloth around the oozing neck of Basil Roy. “I know, Dava. We will.”

Dava shook her head and reached out to steady the stiffening body so that Thompson could accomplish her task. “And we need to get Jansen. I never trusted that guy.”

“Yeah, but you don’t trust anyone.”

Dava tried to aim a scowl at Thompson, but her soldier was focused on tying the plastic tight. “I trust people,” she muttered.

Lucky Jerk floated past them carrying a box. “Well, you were right about this guy anyway. He was lying about that stupid detector.”

“And if he was lying,” Thompson said with a huff as she tugged on the corpse, “then that means Jansen was lying.”

Dava drifted silently for a moment, watching them work. Thompson was stuffing the body of Basil Roy into the perishable cold-storage freezer and Lucky was transporting anything of strategic value from the OrbitBurner to the dropship.

She’d been too quick. Too quick to kill. She should have slowly bled him dry, bled as much information out of him as she could’ve. Jansen, that snake. She wanted to paint him as the ultimate villain in her mind, but she didn’t know what the hell he was up to. And she’d slit the throat of the only man who might’ve had a clue.

She tried to process the situation. ModPol had taken a bunch of Wasters into custody. What they would do with them, she didn’t exactly know. And then there was Jansen. He’d fled the scene along with Captain 2-Bit and the rest of the Wasters onboard the carrier – the Longhorn – that had brought them to Epsilon Eridani. Who else was in on Jansen’s plan? If she had him pegged right, very few. He was playing a role, and that role was as a Space Waste underboss.

What she needed to do was get back to Barnard’s Star – that’s where the Longhorn would’ve fled – and get to their base in that system. Jansen would be there, but he wouldn’t suspect Dava knew anything. He didn’t expect Dava to be alive, but then again, he probably wouldn’t flinch at her survival instincts. She could let Lucky spin a yarn about their daring escape; he’d already built a reputation for mythical fortune. And they’d say nothing about their encounter with Basil Roy. That missing person would be on Jansen’s conscience and no one else’s.

She watched the spherical drops of blood quiver and pulse in the air before her. While her mind churned through paranoia and conspiracy, her two companions were focused on the present.

“Okay, body is secure,” Thompson said.

Lucky drifted in. “I pre-programmed the autopilot to head back to EE-3 with its emergency beacon on. Someone will pick up the signal near the planet and the docks can override the guidance systems and bring it home.”

“Good,” Dava said. She thought about leaving Jax a note, but then she wasn’t sure what she would say. She could thank him for the tip about Roy, but it was a battle too late. The body would have to be message enough. “Let’s go home.”

Almost a full week of going through the motions. Playing the part of the public relations officer. Runstom had been supplied with well-edited footage of the battle, composed in some distant marketing cube. Everyone he talked to seemed to be impressed by it, though he suspected some were more impressed by the production quality than the content. He was making progress as far as the job went: administrators were at least willing to schedule further meetings with ModPol Defense. Still, he couldn’t shake the sense that they looked at him warily. A salesman. Or worse. Something dangerous, to be kept at a safe distance.

He considered going downstairs to the recreation room to occupy his mind with a game or something to drink, but decided against it. The OrbitBurner had just come back that morning. The Wasters had taken it out, then sent it back on autopilot. He was looking forward to doing something – what, he wasn’t sure. It’s not like he could arrest them. ModPol didn’t even have jurisdiction yet on EE-3, and aside from that, he wasn’t a cop any more. He could turn them over to the local constable, but they would be more trouble than the locals could handle. So when the OrbitBurner came back with no one aboard, he admitted to feeling a little relief. They got away with taking his ship for a joyride, but it was better for everyone that they’d gone on their way.