by Jason LaPier
Runstom glowered. “I may be just an officer, but I saved—”
“Sure, sure,” Jax said. “Saved my ass, I don’t even know how many times now. But the whole reason I’m in this mess is because of your fucking incompetent organization. Mod-fucking-Pol. Great police work, ModPol.”
“Oh, big loss. Big loss, Jax. What an important life you were living in some cookie-cutter dome on Barnard-4. Pushing buttons all day and then going home to your family and friends.”
“I didn’t have any friends,” Jax said before his slow brain processed the sarcasm. “Goddammit,” he muttered.
“I wonder why,” Runstom said. “You’re such a charmer. A real pleasure to be around.”
“Oh, excuse me for not being happy-go-lucky about being wrongfully accused of mass murder.” Jax threw up his hands. “An injustice that you’re supposed to trying to fix, Mr. ModPol.”
“I’m trying to fix it.” Runstom stabbed the table with a finger. “I’m trying Jax. But I can’t do everything. I thought you had a plan for once. Isn’t that why we came to this planet?”
“Dammit, yes,” Jax said. He rubbed his blurring eyes. He tried to fight through it. Was it the cryo? Was it gravity-lag? Or was he finally cracking? If he wasn’t so tired and heavy, he might be reaching the breaking point anyway. They’d come so far, but for what? To prove his innocence, something he shouldn’t have to do in the first place. So far. Too far to just give up, but he couldn’t think. “The original code came from here,” he said, forcing the words to come. “We just have to find it.”
“Just search the planet?” Runstom grabbed him by the arm and started speaking with a hushed intensity. “Jax, listen to me. We are back in ModPol jurisdiction. How long do you think we have to do this? We’re on the clock. Get … your … shit … together,” he said, shaking Jax’s arm with each word.
“Okay, you know what?” Jax stood up and yanked his arm away. The weight of his own body made him instantly tired and he closed his eyes for a moment, rubbing them with the palms of his hands. “I can’t think with you yelling at me. And I can’t take any more this fucking hot coffee. You want my help?” He opened his eyes and pointed out the window to a bar across the street. “I’ll be having a real drink. Otherwise, you can fuck off.”
Jax took one more reluctant gulp of the coffee (for the sake of the caffeine) and slammed the cup down on the counter. He turned and shoved his way past the crowd in the coffee shop and out into the street. He didn’t bother to look back to see if Runstom was anywhere behind him. He headed for the bar – a narrow structure stuffed in between office buildings – and pushed through the swinging doors and into the darkness inside.
Stanford Runstom fumed for a good hour or so, walking the streets of Grovenham. The gravity-lag was starting to get to him a little, despite his adamant attempts to ignore it. They kept the gravity on ModPol outposts relatively high so everyone would be in their best shape no matter where they went, but in the last couple weeks he’d spent time on Barnard-4, a prisoner barge, a cruise ship, a large moon, and had done a whole lot of space flight in between. As much as he hated to admit it, Jackson was right about one thing: it was time for a drink.
He went into the next bar he passed as he was walking down some-number-or-letter street. The place smelled sweet and spicy, of candles burning. The lighting was low, and there were plenty of unoccupied tables. There were maybe twenty people in the large room where a few hundred could comfortably congregate.
Runstom took a seat at the bar and asked for the darkest beer they had on tap. The tend-o-bot complied, bringing him a glass and registering a tab for his seat with a series of clicks and whirs. About two and a half minutes later, he ordered another.
“Hey, Greensleeves,” said a woman’s voice. “Got troubles?”
The hairs on the back of Runstom’s neck stood on end. He was looking into his glass, and found himself clenching it tightly. McManus had used that slur once, and Runstom had cold-cocked him so hard the other officer spent three days in the infirmary. Of course, Runstom earned a month on asteroid watch as well as several demerits for “starting” the fight.
He turned slowly toward the woman. “What?” he said through gritted teeth.
When he got a look at her, he blinked. Runstom’s skin was a deep olive, but this woman’s skin was greener, almost a forest green. Dark-brown hair fell around her face in waves, and she half-smiled at him, one corner of her mouth curling up fiendishly. Her light-brown, almond-shaped eyes glittered in the low light.
“I asked if you’ve got troubles,” she said. “But I suppose that’s a bit of a rhetorical question, because I can see that you do.” She turned to the tend-o-bot. “Gimme what he’s having.”
They sat in silence as the bartender brought the woman her drink. “I’m Jenna,” she said, offering her hand.
He took it lightly. “I’m, uh, Stanford.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Stanford. We don’t see a lot of space-borns in Grovenham.”
Stanford nodded. “No, I suppose not. I’ve been to a few domes in my day, and I don’t see many—” He was cautious with the word. “Space-borns. In domes. In general.” It was probably more politically correct to refer to green-skinned people as space-born, but the distinction felt just as segregating to him.
“Ah, so you get around a bit, do you?” she said, with a playful smile. She tasted the beer and her eyes widened. “Mmm. Dark and sweet. Not usually my style, but I could get used to this.” She took another sip, keeping her eyes fixed on his while she tipped the glass to her mouth. “Tell me, Stanford. What is it that you do?”
“Uh,” he started, unsure of what to say. He felt a sudden shame about telling someone his profession. He wasn’t sure where it came from. Was he ashamed of Modern Policing and Peacekeeping in general? Or just ashamed of his own failures?
“Wait,” she said, putting up a small hand. “Don’t tell me. I like the mystery. It’s more fun.” Her index finger traced around the top of her glass. “I’m an engineer. Don’t tell anyone though, it’s dreadfully boring. I’ve been in Grovenham for a couple years now.” Her voice seemed to pitch up and down lightly, as if it were bouncing along her words. “My parents were both cops though, that’s how I got the green skin. I was born in a ModPol outpost and grew up living there for my first couple of years.” She looked at him, as if trying to read his reaction.
“Oh,” Runstom said. “My mother was a cop. She was a ModPol lieutenant. My father,” he started, but then paused. “I mean, she wasn’t always a lieu. Lieutenant,” he said, trying to cover the cop-lingo slip. “She had me when she was an un— … um, an investigator. I spent my first couple of years between or on ModPol outposts.” His childhood story came to an abrupt and unsatisfying end. “So that’s, um. That’s why I’ve got the green. Skin. Too.”
“Well, I suppose there really are only a few kinds of greensleeves in this galaxy,” she said, taking a sip of her beer. “Navy-brats and ModPol-brats. Unless of course, you want to count space gangs.”
“I’d prefer not to,” Runstom said in a low voice.
“Yeah,” she said and smiled. “Me neither, I suppose.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, until Runstom finished his beer and she ordered him another.
“So what brings you to Grovenham, Stanford?” Jenna asked. “Business? Or pleasure?”
Runstom stared at his glass. He watched his reflection come and go as brown clusters of foam floated just on top of the beer, as if his head was a moon in a cloudy, brown sky over a world that smelled wet and malty, with hints of coffee and chocolate. “Business. I guess.”
“Hmm, that’s no fun,” she demurred. “How long are you in town? Or should I be asking, on-world?”
Runstom thought for a moment. “Until my client gets what he wants,” he said finally.
“Oh,” she started to say, but he interrupted her.
“You see, I’ve taken on a – client – who has a – case.” He picked his word
s carefully, like picking the best footing while climbing a rocky slope. “And sometimes, you take a case that takes much longer than you thought it was going to. But you have to keep remembering why you took it.”
“Because it pays well, I hope,” she said with a short laugh.
He huffed a half-laugh. “Yeah. I suppose that it does pay well, if you broaden the definition of pay beyond monetary reward.”
“Ooh,” she said, her lips curling into a tight circle. “Perhaps Stanford’s client is a lady.”
“No, he’s not,” Runstom said reflexively, then wished he hadn’t. He wished he hadn’t said anything at all for the last few minutes, in fact.
“I see,” she said. She slid off the barstool and he turned to face her. She looked him up and down, her head cocked to one side. “I have to use the little girl’s room. Order me another beer, would you please?”
“Sure,” he said, although it wasn’t necessary. The tend-o-bot heard her request and filled her order without Runstom’s help. He watched her walk away. She wore some kind of white jumpsuit with lots of small pockets all over it. Something an engineer would wear.
He sat there quietly for a minute, wondering if he should pay his tab and extricate himself from any further conversation with this space-born stranger. The beers were stacking up and the alcohol, along with the gravity-lag, conspired to dull his wits. He almost jumped when he heard her voice again.
“Justice,” she said. He turned to face her. “That’s it.” She pointed at him, poking him lightly in the chest. “If it’s not money, and it’s not a girl. Then it’s justice, you’re after. That’s you, Green Man. It’s in your blood, your dad was a cop.”
“My mom was a cop,” he corrected her in a dark voice.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “Mom was a cop.”
He turned away from her. “You got justice in your blood too? From your cop parents?”
She didn’t respond. He turned again to look at her after a few seconds of silence. She had her head tipped back, draining her beer. With her eyes closed, she set the glass down lightly and smiled. “Mmm. I don’t usually drink the dark stuff. But I can see why you like it.”
Jenna produced a card from her purse and cleared her tab with a swipe. The she leaned over, close enough for Runstom to smell her. A mix of light perfume and the sweet scent of alcohol. She cleared his tab with a swipe, then put the bank card back in her purse and drew forth another card, clear and small.
“Now you owe me a drink,” she said, handing him the translucent square of plastic. “See you around, Stanford. The Green Man out for Justice.” With a blur of long brown hair, she twirled around and walked out the door.
The White Angle Saloon was about as close to dank as you could get in a dome bar. Which is to say, it was dark, mostly devoid of patrons, and had a lot of watered-down beer on tap. Jax was learning that last part the hard way. He was on his sixth glass and still on edge.
What made things worse was the bartender seemed to be avoiding him. Although, Jax had to admit, he was probably being just a tad too talkative. So he had a few things to get off his chest. What do they pay these bartenders for, anyway? This guy was lucky not to be replaced by a tend-bot.
Jax looked around the bar. No women, all men. He was the only one at the bar; everyone else was seated at tables. Three greasy-looking guys sat together, talking in hushed voices, occasionally bursting into raucous laughter. Two other men sipped cocktails out of straws in tall glasses and pushed papers back and forth across their table. A man sitting alone kept nodding his head, as if he were about to fall asleep in his half-full glass of flat beer. Another man had a small bottle of liquor on his table and a shot glass. He poured himself a shot and winked angrily at Jax. And one other loner was slowly drinking a beer and involved in some kind of card game with himself.
“Wait a sec—” Jax said, facing a full beer. The bartender had managed to pour him a new glass and scoot away before Jax could talk to him. So he talked to himself. “Did that one guy just wink at me?” He looked at his glass as if addressing his beer. “Wink angrily?”
He turned back around and saw a vaguely familiar face. “I think I know that guy,” he said. “Maybe I should go talk to him.” He hopped off the barstool and took a few seconds to regain his balance. The alcohol in the last several beers had finally gathered enough strength to have an effect. It joined forces with the high gravity and threatened to pull Jax to the floor. He put a hand on the bar and took a deep breath, then picked up his beer and sauntered over to the winking man’s table.
“What the fuck do you want?” the man said as Jax loomed in front of the table, looking him over.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“Beats the shit outta me.” The yellow-skinned man poured himself a shot, dropped it into his mouth, then slapped the shot glass back on the table hard, causing the glass and the table to voice a small protest. The man stared at Jax, then winked.
Jax shrugged and sat down, a passive act that was more about succumbing to gravity than intentional motion. He looked at the man, thinking about his yellow skin. He looked around the room again briefly, and it occurred to him that he was the only white-skinned person in the bar. Outside, this being a domed city, there were plenty of pales. Jax wondered why they called this place the White Angle Saloon when white-skins seemed to avoid it. Maybe it was for the irony. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it was just a terrible name for a bar. It sounded like someone couldn’t decide between Wide Angle and White Angel and just took something in between.
“I like your tattoos,” Jax said. The yellow man was covered in tattoos, but one on his arm in particular struck Jax as interesting. “Hey,” he said. “Is that a smart-tat?” He was struck with a strong feeling of deja-vu.
“I hate these domes,” the other man said. “Fuckin’ domes. Fuckin’ shit-ass fake air. That’s why I gotta drink, you know. They always yell at me.” The man put on a mocking, sour face. “Johnny, why you gotta drink so much? Don’t drink so much, Johnny! Stop shooting people, Johnny!” He poured himself another shot. “It’s the fuckin’ domes, man. They don’t fuckin’ get it!” He tossed back the shot and set the glass down slowly and deliberately and winked at Jax.
“You were born in a real atmosphere,” Jax decided. “I can see why the domes upset you. I lived my whole life in a dome. Only recently did I get a chance to experience real atmosphere.” He stared into the distance, remembering the blue-green grass of Terroneous. “I was only there a couple days, but still, I miss it.” He took a slow pull of his beer.
“Fuckin’ domes,” the other man muttered.
“Did you say your name was Johnny?” Jax sat up straight suddenly. “Johnny Eyeball?”
The man gave him a fiery, glaring wink.
“Yeah!” Jax slapped the muscled man on the shoulder. “We were cell-mates, man! A couple weeks ago. You remember?”
Johnny Eyeball stared at him long and hard, frowning with thought. His mouth slowly churned and curled upward. “Yeeaaaah,” he said. “You’re the fuckin’ mass-murderer!” he shouted, overjoyed in that way that only a drunk who has remembered something from more than a fortnight ago can be.
“That’s right! Jax, the mass-murderer!” Jax whooped as Eyeball slapped him on the shoulder, nearly knocking him out of his chair.
Eyeball poured himself a shot and raised the glass. Jax met the little shot glass with his beer glass and they both drained their respective drinks. The White Angle Saloon was eerily quiet.
“Hey,” Eyeball said after Jax called over to the bartender to bring him another beer. “Hey. Hey. Wait a sec. Wasn’t you my cell-mate on the prisoner barge?”
“Huh?” Jax said, turning away from the bar and back to Eyeball.
“I mean, how’d you get here? We took some recruits from the barge – and you ain’t one of them. Rest of the cons, we dropped at the asteroid colony.”
Jax’s brain tried to kick into high gear, but it was back to rusty gears churnin
g through mud again. The alcohol had undone all the work that the caffeine had accomplished. “Uh,” he tried. “What, uh. What barge?”
“You know, the prisoner barge. The one we – DOOSH”, Eyeball said, making an explosion sound. “The one we blew up.”
“Oooh,” Jax said. “That was you? Yeah, no. We were cell-mates on Barnard-4. In Blue Haven. We were in the little jail they have there.”
“Oh,” the yellow man said. He thought quietly as the bartender brought Jax his drink.
Jax’s dulled brain didn’t want to give the other man a chance to remember that they actually were on the barge together. “Hey,” he said. “Why did you drop prisoners at the asteroid colony?”
Eyeball grunted. “They always need workers in the mines. It’s a shit job, but better than rottin’ in a cell. Plus we get a finder’s fee.”
Jax stared at the other man for a moment, not really processing his words, but trying to keep him talking. “So, uh … why do they call you Johnny Eyeball, anyway?”
Eyeball glared at him. “You probably didn’t notice,” he said in a low voice. “But one of my eyes doesn’t close.”
“Oh.” Jax thought about that for a second. “You mean, not ever?”
“Not in a very long time. War wound.”
“Oh,” Jax said again. He was about to ask What war?, but was suddenly sidetracked by another slow-moving thought process. “Hey wait a sec. Did you say ‘we blew up the barge’? That was you? Who is ‘we’?”
“Yeah,” Johnny Eyeball said, grinning widely. “Space Waste!” he shouted suddenly, flexing his arm. The smart tattoo morphed from a vague cluster of lines into the triangle of out-turned arrows.
“Wait a sec,” Jax said to himself, but out loud, the gears churning through more mud, this time actually making progress. “That symbol is for Space Waste? Fuck me, I didn’t know that.”
“Space Waste!” Eyeball shouted again. “You wanna know how we did it, Psycho Jack?”
“Uh.” Jax lost his tongue for a moment. He really hoped that nickname wasn’t going to stick. “Yeah,” he said tentatively. Then he realized he really did want to know how they pulled that raid off. “Yeah. How did you guys do that?”
