Jason LaPier - Under Shadows

The comm unit blipped and he stepped over to it and looked at the screen. Though the face had become more commonplace in the past week, he was still unused to seeing it. “Sylvia,” Runstom said into the mic. “I’ll open the main hatch.”

Part of him didn’t want his mother here. And part of him did. Maintaining a distance had become necessity for them. A physical distance as well as an emotional one. Not that Runstom was much for emotions. Yet seeing her again threatened to open wounds, feelings of shame and abandonment. As he grew older, he learned to understand the reasons why she did what she did: it was the only way to keep them both safe. Her gift to him was that he had a normal life.

Well, a life without a mother, but normal otherwise.

Jax was making good progress with the sketchup application. Runstom tried not to look over his shoulder for too long; the pressure seemed to slow him down. They were on the small bridge of the OrbitBurner. While he waited, Runstom didn’t have anything else to do but sit at a terminal himself and peruse flight log files. The Wasters had taken the ship out to the site of the battle. Bounced around for a few hours there. Then a new contact was registered. A military dropship, similar to the model that Runstom and Jax had commandeered back when this whole mess had started. Back when they were on a prison barge, when Jax was being transported off Barnard-4, where’d he been accused of murder, out to a deep ModPol outpost. The barge had been attacked by Space Waste, intent on rescuing one of their own who’d also been arrested on Barnard-4.

Runstom and Jax had barely escaped with their lives, and only because they stole a Space Waste ship. An old military model, retrofitted for modern crime. The thing was a flying box of nothing. It’d been originally built for a single purpose: hurtle soldiers across space quickly and drop them onto a surface. Its most welcomed feature was a Xarp drive, necessary for making the long interstellar distances in a somewhat reasonable amount of time.

The same type of ship had appeared on the site of the battle, according to the OrbitBurner’s logs. Stood to reason that it belonged to the Wasters. The two ships had docked together. The other departed. The OrbitBurner was set with an automated course back to EE-3, where it had switched control over to a station that had guided it down to the dock. No passengers.

Why the Wasters had bothered with the courtesy of returning his ship, Runstom didn’t know. He suspected Jax had gotten close to them. Not friendly, but close enough to earn their respect.

“Hello, boys,” Sylvia said as she stepped onto the bridge.

Runstom stood. “Jax is just working on a sketch of someone he met while he was with Space Waste.”

“Basil Roy,” Jax said. “A programmer. I’m just about done.”

She smiled faintly and nodded. “And this Basil Roy?” she said. “He didn’t fit in?”

Jax laughed. “No, not so much.”

“He wrote some code that was supposed to scan for the ModPol transport ship,” Runstom said.

“But he faked the interface,” Jax added.

“So it led them to the right spot, just as the ModPol ship came out of Xarp.”

She looked from one to the other. “Ah, so the software didn’t need to work. This Basil Roy knew the expected coordinates that the ship would drop into all along.”

Runstom’s hands didn’t know what to do with themselves. He wished Jax would finish already. “Can I get you something to drink?” he said to Sylvia.

“Oh no, Stanley dear, I’m fine.”

“Uh,” Jax said. “I think I got it.”

He stood up and stepped back to admire his work. Sylvia strode toward the screen. The movement created a buffer that kept Runstom from leaning in to have a look for himself.

“I noticed that you were connected to the local network through the dock,” she said, sitting down at the console. “I’m going to route you through to—” she started, then paused and looked from side to side. It was a small amount of movement, and a small pause, but Runstom took the gesture for what it was.

“Now I see where Stan gets his paranoia from,” Jax said with a grin. Runstom shot a glare at him.

Sylvia chuckled. “I’m going to route you through to a more secure network. Once I establish an encrypted tunnel, we’ll have access to a few databases that might have the info we’re looking for.”

Jax’s smile faded as he leaned closer. Runstom wasn’t sure if the other man was growing more fearful, more curious, or both. He knew there would be questions later on. Questions Runstom sure the hell couldn’t answer. Like what databases his mother was talking about. How she got them. Who else had access to this so-called secure network.

Now that Sylvia was planted in front of the terminal, Runstom and Jax had no choice but to let her work. Runstom pulled the B-fourean back so they could talk without disrupting her. He didn’t have a solid plan, but he was working through some possibilities in his mind.

“When she figures out who this guy is,” Runstom said. “We might know why he’s inside. What his mission is.”

“ When she figures out who he is?” Jax said, whispering so as not to offend Sylvia, though she probably heard anyway. “He could be nobody.”

Runstom’s brain wasn’t ready for that. “He’s somebody. He’s undercover. It’s the only explanation.”

“Maybe.” Jax shook his head, then his posture slumped in submission. “You’re right. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.”

Runstom reached up to put a hand on the taller man’s shoulder. “Listen, Jax. I need you to go back in.”

He pulled back, glaring. “Back into what?”

“Into Space Waste.”

“You’re fucking insane.” Jax no longer made any attempt to quiet his voice. “No way. No, no, no.”

“Listen, Jax. This guy could be one of us. If he’s undercover, he’s there on a ModPol mission and he may need our help.”

“Forget him, Stan. You promised me I could go back to Terroneous—”

“I know,” Runstom said, his voice stern. He worked to soften it. “I know. And you will. But something is really wrong with this whole thing and I think this Basil Roy might be the only clue we have. He led Space Waste into a slaughter. They could be hunting for a mole right now, and it means he doesn’t have much time. And I know he knows a helluva lot more than—”

Jax took a step back, shaking his head. “What is it with you? If this guy is undercover, then that’s his choice. There’s no way I’m going back in that den of psychopaths to find out if he needs a hand!”

“They’re not psychopaths,” Runstom said. The statement shocked himself as it came out of his mouth. “They let you live. They even sent back the OrbitBurner. They trust you.”

“Dava let me live,” he said firmly. “Dava might trust me – well, to be honest, I don’t think she trusts anyone. And even if she did, don’t you get what’s going on here? Space Waste is falling apart. They’re going to be at each other’s throats trying to find out why they were ambushed.”

“All the more reason to get in there now and—”

“Why do you even care?” Jax said, extending his arms to their full wingspan, nearly banging them on the low ceiling of the OrbitBurner’s bridge. “Seriously, Stanford! Tell me why it matters to you.”

“Because I’m sick of not knowing what the fuck is going on!”

They stared at each other in silence. Runstom hadn’t shouted, but when he replayed the words in his head, he could hear the frayed edges.

Jax’s mouth opened and closed. His eyes narrowed at Runstom, then he simply shook his head. He left the bridge through the stairwell that led to the recreation room below.