by Jason LaPier
“Anyway, we’ll find the thing,” Runstom said. “If you guys could help us out, that would be – well, it would be very helpful.”
Jax watched their expressions carefully, wondering if they were buying any part of the story. The older man and the woman both narrowed their eyes and creased their brows. Jax took their expressions to mean they were actually paying attention, and he was glad enough for that.
“Of course,” Bob said anxiously. “We’d be happy to help!” He tried to pull his excitement back a little. “I mean, we’ve all got family back on B-4, and we’d want to make sure they’re safe.” He looked around the room. “Like, from asteroids, and stuff.”
“I thought you joined this crew to get away from your parents,” Jainel said with a sly smile. She was done eating and was neatly folding up the plastic wrappings of her lunch.
Bob frowned. “Yeah, I did. They were always trying to tell me what to do,” he said, lost in thought for a moment. “But that doesn’t mean I want anything bad to happen to them.”
“We can keep an eye out for your thing,” Karr said, finishing off his sandwich. With a mouthful of bread and something gooey, he said, “Whaff it wook wike?”
“Um, well.” Jax suddenly realized he wouldn’t be able to describe the portable sat-transmitter because he’d never actually seen one. “You’ll know it when you see it. It’s small enough to be portable, but not real small.” He gestured vaguely, hands going in and out indicating a variety of possible sizes. “And it’s heavy. With buttons on the outside.”
Karr huffed a half-laugh and crumpled up the wrappings of his lunch. “You got it, pal. And maybe if we find it, you can buy us a drink, eh?”
“Of course,” Runstom said.
“Hell yeah,” Jax said. “Thanks guys.”
Karr stood up and Jainel followed suit. “Come on, Bob,” she said as she and the older man walked out of the break room. Bob started to clean up his lunch slowly, still deep in thought.
After a moment, Jax said, “I took this job to get away from my parents too.” Bob looked up at him but didn’t speak. “They’re both engineers. They wanted me to be an engineer. I just wanted to do my own thing, you know?” He shook his head, thinking about his father and step-mother. Did they care what had happened to their son, or had they pretty much given up on him? As far as he knew, the last message they got was from Foster, his lawyer on B-4; a message that said Jax was going to be taken out to a ModPol outpost for trial. He knew Runstom wouldn’t want him to try to contact them. At the moment he didn’t feel much like checking in with them, even if he could without revealing his location. “I never see them anymore. I talk to them maybe once or twice a year.”
“Yeah,” Bob said, nodding. “My mom and dad wanted me to be a doctor. I can’t deal with it though. The blood and guts – that stuff just creeps me out.” He visibly shuddered. “Besides, I wanted to get out of the domes, you know? Get out and see the stars. The real stars.” He looked Runstom up and down. Like Jax, the officer was wearing a very nondescript outfit: brown pants and a white, long-sleeved shirt. The shirt made his olive hands and face seem even greener than usual. He looked like a smooth-barked tree sprouting a couple of large green leaves. “How about you? You’re not from B-4, are you?”
Runstom started to sigh, but tried to bite it back. “Nope,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Born on a space station. A way-point for asteroid miners.”
“And your parents?”
“My mother was killed in the line of—” he started. “Um, in her line of work. Which was asteroid mining. She was killed in a mining accident. It was a long time ago.” His lips pursed together as Bob looked at him expectantly. Finally he swallowed and said, “I never knew my father.”
“So, Bob, let me give you the number for the room we’re staying in,” Jax said, drawing the maintenance man’s attention away from Runstom. “That way you can reach us if you come across anything.”
“Okay,” Bob said as Jax wrote the number on a scrap of paper. “Hey, there’s a bombball-cast tonight. You guys want to come down to the lounge and watch with us? Have a few drinks? I can introduce you to some other people – other maintenance and cleaning staff and whatnot. Other folks that might be able to help you find your asteroid detector.”
“Sure, Bob,” Jax said, smiling. “That would be great. Stan here loves bombball.”
“Sirius Series!” Runstom said, his mood lifting suddenly.
“Hell yeah,” Bob said and the two men slapped hands. “Okay, see you tonight,” he said cheerfully and jogged out of the break room.
Alone, Jax and Runstom stood in silence for a moment. Then Jax couldn’t take it any more. “I have admit, I thought you’d be better at this undercover stuff.”
“Better?” Runstom shot him a glare. “What’s that suppose to mean?”
“Well, I mean, you just need to act a little more natural, that’s all. Didn’t they ever teach you how to go undercover?”
He frowned and dropped his shoulders. “No. I mean, I tried. I volunteered for the training. But I’m not qualified.”
Jax wasn’t sure what he meant by that and decided not to probe. “Well, don’t sweat it too hard. I don’t think these people care all that much.”
“I think they have no reason to be suspicious.”
Jax laughed. “Yeah, I guess living on a ship like this, you’d have to be more naïve than domers.”
Runstom’s mouth opened and closed awkwardly. “Look, Jax, I didn’t mean that—”
“No, it’s okay,” Jax said, putting his hands up. “You don’t have to tell me how sheltered life is in a dome. Gotta be even more sheltered on a giant cruise ship.”
Runstom nodded slowly as though digesting that statement, perhaps along with the rest of the situation. “Right. It’s good that people won’t be on guard. We’re going to need to talk to a lot of people if we’re going to find that transmitter. If there’s a transmitter to find.”
Runstom couldn’t get the question of undercover training out of his head. He’d done what he could independently, but when it came to getting more advanced training, he was shut down. It wasn’t because of his abilities or anything. Anyone with a relative who’d done undercover work at ModPol was automatically disqualified.
These were the thoughts that were distracting him as they tried out their asteroid-detector story on a few more souls around the cruise liner. They were in one of the common dining rooms that were designated for the least expensive ticket-holders; not that these people were lower or even middle class, of course; they were just at the bottom of the extreme-upper-class population that could afford a cruise of any kind. They didn’t seem to mind the presence of a couple of government employees in their dining hall, and Runstom suspected it was out of a built-in humility they felt at being the bottom of the economic barrel for once.
“It’s the Rogue Celestial Object Detection Center,” Jax was saying to a couple of men who were at the silver-topped bar that ran along one side of the dining hall. They were pink-skinned B-threers and wore matching blue slacks and shirts. They weren’t as dressed up as some, which made starting a conversation with them easier.
“Where is that?” one asked.
Jax looked at Runstom, who jumped in. “We’re with the Barnard-4 Planetary Government. Of course, our center is jointly funded by the B-3 and B-4 governments.” Every time he had to describe their fictitious employment, his skin prickled. The center they were talking about was real – Runstom remembered seeing a news story about it once and looked it up so he could remember the name – and so his biggest fear was that they would run into someone who actually knew something about rogue celestial objects.
“Oh right,” the man said. “That would make sense.”
“What makes sense about that?” the other said, taking his drink from the bartender. “Rogue Object Whatdjacallit?”
“Celestial objects, Tommy,” the first said, giving his partner a nudge. “You know, like meteors and asteroid
s and shit.”
“Oh, oh, like that flick Meteor Hailstorm,” Tommy said.
“Right, like that,” Jax said.
“Ugh, that was terrible,” the first man groaned. “So far from reality.”
“You know something about asteroid detection?” Runstom asked in what he hoped was a casual manner.
“Kender loves all that space shit,” Tommy said with a wave of his hand. “That’s why we’re on this cruise. They got all kinds of beaches and nightclubs and he keeps dragging me to the observatory.”
“It’s a beautiful universe,” Kender said wistfully before taking a pull of his cocktail. He swallowed and his face perked momentarily. “Hey, can I take a look at you guys’ setup?”
Jax and Runstom looked at each other. The drinking story was fine for telling workers on the superliner, but probably wouldn’t go off as well with passengers.
“Sure,” Jax said.
“We’re going to be setting it up on various parts of the deck,” Runstom said, trying to think on his feet. “Wherever there is a clear line of sight into space.” He handed the one called Kender a card. “If you see it, just pop us a call and we’ll come by and let you take a look.”
“Great,” Tommy said. “Now you’ll have him looking on every deck for some kind of space-detector equipment. Fellas, it was a pleasure, but Kender owes me a dance.”
They said goodbye and once the men were out of earshot, Jax leaned in to Runstom. “I feel like we need a better story.”
“Yeah, I think so too.”
“We’re getting a little better though.”
“We just have to try a few different angles and see what sticks best,” Runstom said. Then he smiled and shook his head. “I don’t even know how you’re managing this.”
Jax laughed. “Yeah, me neither. I think I’m just so thankful for not being in prison. Or shot. Or blown up. Or sucked into space.”
Runstom joined in with a laugh of his own. “Seeing the glass half-full. That’s so B-fourean of you.”
“Oh sure,” Jax said. “Well, keeping me out of prison and from getting shot and all that stuff is every uh – what do you like to be called?”
Runstom’s laugh turned into a sigh. “Space-born, I suppose. My mother was from Sirius-5, if that helps.”
Jax peered at him thoughtfully. “You were telling the truth to those workers earlier. About not knowing your father?”
“It helps to sprinkle the truth into these conversations,” he said. “While undercover, I mean. Makes it easier to get into the flow if it’s not one hundred percent false.”
“I see. So, your mother?”
“That part I made up.” Runstom looked down for a moment and then back at Jax. “I’m sorry. I know you lost your mother when you were young.”
Jax shook his head. “It’s okay.” After a moment of silence during which they nursed a pair of drinks, Jax changed the subject. “Do you think we’ll find it? I mean, is it even here?”
Runstom blew the air out of his cheeks. “There’s a chance. And we better take it. We were lucky to make it out of that attack alive.”
He stopped suddenly, his voice catching in his throat. They had been lucky, and many others had not. Fellow ModPol employees. Convicts who weren’t innocent but didn’t all deserve to die. And people like his friend George Halsey. He had to take another sip of his drink just to swallow. It was weak and cheap, as they had been at it all night and needed to stay sharp so they could talk to as many people as possible. But in that moment, he wanted the strongest drink they made. It was as though he hadn’t even realized that George was his friend. His only friend. And now he had none. He had an association with an alleged murderer. Maybe he believed Jack Jackson was innocent simply because the only other option would be for Runstom to be completely alone.
“I believe it’s here,” Jax said. “Because if it’s not, I’m fucked.”
Runstom smiled and slapped the tall, thin man on the shoulder. “Yeah, you are. Probably me too, when my bosses find out I’m helping you. So come on. Let’s get deeper into trouble while we still can.”
Day after day rolled by. They interviewed hundreds of people. The floor of their room was piled high with notebooks, the walls covered with the profiles of suspects. Runstom had declared that someone had to fit into one of three categories to be worth considering. First: a crew-member, either greedy or desperate for cash. Second: a passenger that looked out of place, like someone else had footed the bill. And third: someone who could afford a cruise, but had a past. Someone who got to where they were by stepping on others. Someone in a position to be extorted.
Jax thought the last category was pretty far-fetched, but the ModPol officer was always reminding him that anything was possible, and they had to consider all potential scenarios, even those that seemed only remotely likely.
As the days rolled by, Jax’s life as a LifSup operator began to feel farther and farther away. It was like being on a vacation that he knew would never end – or at least, it wouldn’t end with a Monday back at the office. Day and night they talked to people, made notes, compiled them, and debated. Their lives became nothing but eating, sleeping, and trying to find anyone who might own or who might have seen a transmitter.
Somewhere around the fifth day, they got word of their own deaths. ModPol had managed to keep the attack on the prisoner barge quiet for a couple of days, but eventually the press had their way. Space Waste wasn’t named specifically, but they learned that the barge had been decimated by space-to-space torpedoes. Life on the cruise ship seemed to be a world of its own, and Jax and Runstom might have even been alone in watching the news report, for all they knew. Certainly none of the other passengers or crew talked about it. The only two survivors of the attack refrained from the subject as well.
It was that closed-world feel of the cruise that allowed the two to so easily talk to as many people as possible. Everyone there was overly comfortable with everyone else – as long as they dressed the part, they fit right in. The stack of Alliance Credits they found stashed in the Space Waste-stolen personnel transport helped out. They acquired a few fancy outfits at some of the many shopping malls on the superliner. They bartered with wait staff, ship operators, cleaners, and other workers about the ship for various uniforms.
For weeks, they pretended to be other people. Once Runstom loosened up, his old dreams of going undercover seemed to take over. He was able to role-play more naturally, hamming it up with everyone they met. It was amusing to see him in action, this rigid, awkward man fitting in so easily – as long as he was pretending to be someone else. After a while, the undercover stuff started to rub off on Jax, and he came to terms with the fact that at the present he should be either locked up and awaiting a fixed trial for charges of mass homicide or alternatively slaughtered at the hands of a bloodthirsty space-gang. Instead, he had to play-act to hundreds upon hundreds of people for the next few weeks, and if that stoic, hard-nosed ModPol officer could enjoy it, then Jax might as well enjoy it too.
The working class on the ship were generally pretty friendly, and the two men, while undercover, felt like they could come right out and ask most people if they’d seen anything strange – like a large electronic device with an antenna or dish sticking out of it – and they’d get an honest answer. Most people didn’t even want an explanation, and those that did earned an earful of Jax’s half-nonsense techno-babble. One day they might be looking for some device used to measure background radiation in space, and the next, like they told Bob the maintenance guy, it was a rogue asteroid-detector. Whenever anyone did ask too many questions, Runstom would manage to deflect suspicion – more often than not with bombball talk. The galactic pastime was a big hit with people who had spent years of their lives working on a floating island of isolation.
The paying passengers – most of whom were B-threers – were all too eager to socialize, being heavy subscribers to the it’s-not-who-you-are-but-who-you-know philosophy. Names dropped out of their mouth
s like water from a faucet, and they carried around pictures of off-ship material possessions, presenting them like badges of honor. Runstom and Jax decided it was better to lose the work talk and to pretend to be rich and on vacation when talking to passengers. They didn’t have any photographic evidence to back up their fabricated existences, but that didn’t inhibit anyone from believing them. If anything, it seemed to make folk more enamored, reveling in the mystery of the two newcomers, closing their eyes tightly and letting their imaginations run wild as the two men described their worldly riches in great detail. Runstom’s exotic skin color helped with the fiction, and after a while Jax learned to take advantage of his own skin color, inventing stories that took him from B-4 rags to B-3 riches.
The cruise patrons weren’t bad people; Jax had to keep telling himself that. Some of them were just unfortunate enough to be born into more money than anyone could spend in a lifetime, and victims of the shallowness that comes so naturally to that lifestyle. One thing they loved more than anything was gossip, and Runstom and Jax learned to trade rumors and hearsay on the superliner like cigarettes in prison. They had established a system for determining the value of each tidbit of information they came home with; how likely it was to be true or false. Jax had them calculating numbers based on corroboration between a number of people and whether each person had more falsehoods or more truths in their gossip-wallet. Boiling things down to logic and numbers was the only way the operator could get his head around the mountainous task of getting to know the motivations and secrets of as many passengers as possible. Besides, it felt so odd to be away from a console for so long that he felt like he had to do something with formulas and variables or he’d forget his own name. To these mathematical determinations, Runstom added his natural cop gut-feeling intuition, which Jax had to admit, was generally pretty accurate.
Roughly three weeks after the day they boarded the superliner, they decided to take a more focused approach.
“We’ve only got a few more weeks before we get in shuttle range of Barnard-3,” Runstom said while doing push-ups on the floor of their tiny room. “And then we’ll lose some passengers and take on new ones. We need to start playing the odds. How many of the employees have we talked to now?”
