by Jason LaPier
“Mostly.” She kept her eyes on the house. They were facing the back of the structure, where she had cut her way through the kitchen window. She couldn’t see if Psycho Jack and the others got clear from the front. She didn’t know why she cared. She didn’t want to know why she cared. “Okay, Dan,” she said quietly. “Hit it, and let’s go home.”
There was a series of snapping sounds so loud that Jax could feel them in his chest. His muscles tightened up instantly and he grabbed his ears to keep them from popping off his head. Just as soon as it started, it was over.
He opened his eyes and saw a light haze of dust and smoke come around the edges of the small utility shed they were crouched behind. Runstom was taking the helmet off the ModPol officer he’d been dragging. He put the helmet on and lowered the clear, plastic eye-shield and peered up over the shed.
Jax looked over at Jenna Zarconi and almost said, sorry about your house, but then swallowed his words. The woman sat a few feet away from the shed and stared at nothing as the haze dissipated into the air above them. He wondered if she felt regret. Or remorse.
Runstom turned back around and quickly checked on Phonson and the other ModPol officer. They were both conscious now, but both in a bit of a daze and had nothing to say. They each moaned slightly as Runstom grabbed them by the head and peered into their eyes.
“So.” He let go of X and turned to Jax. “They gave you a little trouble?” There was just a hint of amusement in his voice.
“Well, Dava,” Jax said. “The Space Waster, I mean. She got out of her cuffs. I don’t really know how. One minute she was cuffed, and the next …” He trailed off.
“Okay,” Runstom said. He seemed to be in a good mood. “Don’t worry about it. She would just complicate things anyway, right now.”
“Yeah. Well, when Phonson here saw that she got loose, he tried wriggling out of his own ring.” Jax grinned. “So I zapped him.”
“Jax,” Runstom said, cutting the other man off. “More ModPol cops are on the way. Now most of this stuff is going to be my word against his,” he said, nodding at X. “I don’t think you should stick around.”
“Ah. Before I forget, I better give you this.” He handed the officer the PMD card. “There ought to be enough on there to send X up the river for good.”
“I don’t …” Runstom started, looking at Jax quizzically.
“The vid unit recorded most of the conversation. I mean, starting with the point at which X hit the record button.”
Runstom grinned. “Ah, no shit. You are a goddamn bastard, you know that?” He took the memory card and stuffed it in his inside pocket, then looked at Jax. “Still, though. I think you should split, all the same. Even with this evidence, it will be a long process for them to exonerate you. No sense in you spending the next couple of months in lock-up on account of red tape.”
Jax sighed. “No, I suppose not.” He was quiet for a moment. “Stanford,” he said. “I can’t believe this is finally over.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Runstom said, his eyes drifting for a moment. Then they snapped back to Jax. “Listen. You have to get out of here. Get back to Grovenham. Give me a few hours. Where can we meet?”
Jax thought about how thirsty he was. “The White Angle Saloon.”
Jax had the lonely mag-rail trip back to Grovenham to think about his options. There weren’t many of them. By the time he’d arrived, he knew.
He sat in the White Angle for a few hours, pacing himself on the beer. He was thirsty and wanted to drink the whole bar up, but he also wanted to keep enough of his wits to get his ass off-planet.
He flinched every time the door opened and the crack of sunlight would blaze into the dark bar. He’d be stuck staring at the silhouette until it stepped through and resolved into a patron, repeatedly not Runstom, but thankfully not another ModPol officer.
Going back to Barnard-4 was definitely not an option. But what if it were? This was the question he kept asking himself. What was there for him? Was it time to do something different?
But he was afraid. Of course he was afraid. The universe outside the domes was a dangerous place. People who lived without domes, they lived rough lives. He’d grown up so sheltered. Could he handle a life outside the domes?
He’d ordered his fifth beer before the next silhouette to grace the doorway resolved into Stanford Runstom.
“Glad to see you,” he managed as the officer took a seat next to him at the bar. His voice wavered, and he wasn’t sure if he was fighting tears or alcohol or grav-lag or all three.
“Yeah, you too,” Runstom said. “I don’t have long. Got some very terse orders to report to the ModPol headquarters here on Sirius-5 and wait for further instructions.”
“That can’t be good.”
Runstom’s beer arrived and he took a long pull of it. “I’m pretty sure they’re downright pissed at me.”
“But the – the others?”
“Oh, all arrested.” He reached over and grasped Jax’s shoulder. “We got them, Jax. We did good.”
“Good,” Jax said with a sigh of relief. He pondered the word, which seemed to sound funny in his mouth, like it had a different meaning than it used to. “Good. Good.” After a moment of silence, he remembered something. “Stan, before I forget, I need to ask you for a favor.”
“Anything.”
“Can you get a message to my father – and my stepmother – on B-3? Just to – just to let them know I’m alive.”
“Of course.” The officer seemed lost in thought, bobbing his head up and down. “I suppose I’m overdue for a letter to my mother too.”
Jax looked at him. “Oh yeah? I thought your mother was – I mean, I thought you said—”
Runstom smiled faintly and cut him off with a short wave of the hand. “No, no. She’s around. Somewhere.”
“I see.” Jax figured if Runstom wanted to be more forthcoming, he would. He got the sense that he didn’t know where his mother was, not exactly. Jax decided not to push it.
They sat quietly working through their beers for a moment. “Where are you going to go?” Runstom said finally. “I know you’ve thought about it.”
Jax exhaled. “Yeah. I’ve thought about it. I suppose I’ll go to Terroneous. At least for a little while.”
Runstom nodded. “That’s good. You’ll be safe there. ModPol won’t bother coming around that moon. Not that I approve of Terroneous abstaining from ModPol services, but I guess in this case it’s a good place to go if you need to lay low. They might put out some bulletins, but that’ll be it. Find a mid-sized town where it’s easy to blend in.”
Jax’s thoughts were distracted for a moment by that division: the ModPol subscribers and those that go it alone. He’d never considered it, having lived his whole life in a dome where the outsourcing of police and defense services was a given. But on Terroneous people seemed to get along just fine without ModPol. It was something he was curious to explore further, once he started his new life on the independent moon.
“Stanford,” Jax said, his mind coming back to the present moment. “What are you going to do?”
The officer smiled faintly, perhaps even a little sadly. “Well, I’ll stay on until this case runs its course, and I’m sure they’ve cleared your name. Then,” he started, but just stopped. He shook his head. “Hell, I dunno. Maybe they’ll finally make me detective. Or maybe they’ll bust me down to shipping-lane patrol duty. Who knows?” He paused, then added quietly, “I might even take a little break from ModPol.”
They finished their beers. Jax closed his bar tab and they left the White Angle and made their way through the crowds to the spaceport. The same interstellar ship that had made the trip from Terroneous a few days before was heading back later that evening, and boarding was about to begin. They went inside the terminal and Jax bought a ticket with the last of the money they had.
“Listen, Stan,” Jax said as they walked away from the kiosk and approached the security scanners. He stopped and turned to
face the space-born ModPol officer. “I don’t know how to do this, how to thank someone like you. I mean, you stuck your neck out for me over and over again. Risked your life, your career. I am forever in—”
“Stop,” Runstom said. “I know. I know. But I need you to understand something, Jax. I know how much it all meant to you, but I have to tell you: I did it for me as much as I did it for you. There was an opportunity to do something I’ve never done before. To set something right that I knew was wrong. If I had walked away from it all at any point, I – well, I don’t know—”
“You wouldn’t be you,” Jax said.
“I suppose,” Runstom said. “And anyway, I have to thank you. I couldn’t have solved this without you, there’s no way around it. All of it landed on you without you asking for it. I’m glad you never gave up, that you never rolled over.”
Jax smiled, and even though it wasn’t something either man was accustomed to, he hugged Runstom.
“I’ll see you around,” Runstom said when they released their embrace. “Someday. Somewhere.”
“Yeah,” Jax said. “See you around.”
And he boarded the ship and flew off to start a new life.
Acknowledgments
First off, let me give a huge thank you to the folks over at HarperVoyager for their mission to bring sci-fi and fantasy literature to the world. It has been a real pleasure working with you all.
I’d like to thank all the people who have supported my writing in one way or another over the years. National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) helped me take a big leap forward, and I thank the NaNoWriMo organizers and community. We have so many great writer communities and organizations in Oregon and I want to thank all of them for their writing workshops, lectures, panels, networking functions, and other opportunities, especially the Northwest Independent Writers Association (NIWA), Willamette Writers, the Wordstock Festival, Literary Arts of Oregon, and OryCon (which is a sci-fi convention but I include it for its obvious dedication and support of the written word and authors).
I also want to thank the dedicated folks at Indigo Editing, not only for the editing support they have provided me, but also for the wide variety of workshops they offer and the always fun Sledgehammer Writing Contest they hold annually.
I participated in many critique groups over the years and I’d like to thank all the participants, including the LitReactor community, Writers Determined to Finish, the People’s Ink, and last but never least, Writers with No Name: Wes and Brian, thank you so much for the support, the teachings, and the beatings over the years. You guys are the best.
Cynthia: thank you for always keeping my doors and my mind open, throughout my whole life. You believed I could do anything as I jumped from one creative endeavour to the next. Thank you for everything, mom - including valuable feedback on this very book!
Jennifer: I know that I found the best possible life partner, because your support never comes as an obligation, it always comes as pure enthusiasm. I can’t believe all the ways you have kept me going: pull-no-punches critiques, design and marketing work, planning and management, and all the trillions of moments of nothing but love, like the time you built me a trophy for completing NaNoWriMo for the first time. Our partnership has enabled me to pursue my dreams without hindrance, and the best part is that I know I don’t need to thank you, because we dream together. But I thank you anyway, because this book is as much yours as it is mine. I am so lucky.
About the Author
Born and raised in Upstate New York, Jason LaPier lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and a couple of dachshunds. In past lives he has been a guitar player for a metal band, a drum-n-bass DJ, a record store owner, a game developer, and an IT consultant. These days he divides his time between writing fiction and developing software, and doing Oregonian things like gardening, hiking, and drinking microbrew. He can be found online on Twitter @JasonWLaPier and via his website: jasonwlapier.com.
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
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Canada
HarperCollins Canada
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New Zealand
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United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
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http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
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