Unclear Skies

by Jason LaPier

  “You’ve got to be kidding. Your friend must be quite the actor.”

  “Yeah, Stanford.” Jax’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling for a moment. “What an actor.”

  “So they were just eating it up?”

  “Yes, exactly. Now – here comes the best part. He’s divulging all his secret theories on this undercover case to this woman. She’s a gorgeous B-threer with long flowing blond hair and a long blue-and-green dress – I mean, it’s just super long and flowy. She’s obviously not dressing the period, which means she’s in that upper-upper who’s there to be entertained by someone like Stanford.”

  “That’s kind of sad.”

  Jax shook his head. “Anyway, Stanford really has her locked down. He’s really getting into it, and it’s like she’s trapped, she can’t get away from the intensity of his story. I mean, there’s dead bodies, there’s gunfights, there’s clues that lead to this very cruise ship. It’s amazing. But – but I’m the only one who notices that she can’t pull away from him because he’s standing on her dress.”

  She laughed out loud, “What?”

  “Oh, it’s glorious. Her friends are calling to her from across the room, and she can only gesture to them, because she can’t interrupt Stanford’s flow to get him off her dress. It’s impossible, he’s on such a roll.”

  “Oh my god, that’s hilarious. Serves a poor rich girl right.”

  “Finally, I take pity on her, and I know I have to do something. So I go and get Stanford a new drink. He takes it and in the two seconds that he’s distracted by it, I lean over to the woman and whisper to her, to tell her that she should tell him she overheard someone on the other side of the room talking about a murder.

  “Now, this woman definitely does not want to stoop to the level of fantasy that we’re engaged in, even though it’s a freaking period costume party, but she’s desperate enough to take my advice. Stanford is so anxious to home in on his next target, that he spins around real fast, twisting his feet up in this super-long dress …” With this, Jax took a paper napkin from the bar and planted two fingers down on it to demonstrate the twisting of legs into extravagant cocktail dress.

  “Oh no …” Lealina whispered, putting her hands to her mouth.

  “Well, he goes down to the floor—”

  “And she goes down with him?”

  Jax shook his head. “This woman does not fall. She is the type of fancy that just does not fall to the ground. So instead …” Jax pulled the paper napkin in half.

  “What?” she laughed. “Really?”

  “Yep,” Jax said with a tight smile and a shake of his head. “The whole dress just rips in half. I think she nearly died of embarrassment.”

  “Oh, that is too funny,” she laughed. “I wish I had some adventures like that.”

  “You live on Terroneous,” Jax said. “I would think there are plenty of adventures living in the wilderness.”

  She laughed again and angled her head to give him a glare. “Give me a break. Wilderness. Just because it’s not under a dome?”

  “Hey, no offense. It’s all pretty wild to me. Have you ever been off-planet?”

  “Actually, yeah, I have. I went to school on B-4.”

  Jax stiffened. “Get out, really? Where did you go?”

  “South Haven Institute of Technology,” she said.

  He nearly choked on his drink. “That’s where I went! Back in ’93, to ’97.”

  “Super weird. I was there in ’94, ’95.”

  “We could have crossed paths there – gone to the same classes even.”

  “Yeah, I suppose,” she said with a shrug. “Not that I would remember. I was in a sea of tall, white-skinned people.”

  “Oh, I definitely would have remembered you,” he said, nodding deeply before taking a pull from his beer.

  She flinched and frowned. “Yeah, I guess I didn’t really belong there,” she said quietly.

  “No, uh – no, I uh,” Jax stuttered. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.” He wanted to tell her it wasn’t because she would have been an outcast among the B-foureans, that it was her bright-blue eyes, that if he’d seen them he would have jumped at a chance to meet her. But his tongue swelled up in his mouth and all he could do was sigh and take another pull of beer.

  They looked at each other in silence. “So,” she said uncomfortably.

  Jax nodded, then blurted, “You know what? They renamed it the Blue Haven Technical Institute a few years ago.”

  She grinned. “It’ll always be SHIT to us, won’t it?”

  “It will,” he said, returning her smile. “I really didn’t mean—”

  “It’s okay, Jack,” she said. “I guess we both know what it’s like to be a fish out of water, don’t we.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded, pulling from his beer again, which was becoming gravely light. He wanted her to call him Jax, but it didn’t work with his alias, Jack Fugere. He turned the phrase she just used around in his mind. “So, fish don’t like to run out of water?”

  She laughed fully then. “What – wait, do you really not know what that expression means?”

  “I’m really bad with those animal metaphors,” he said sheepishly. “We didn’t have any live animals on B-4.”

  “Wow, you really are a fish out of water then.”

  “What does that mean? By not understanding the expression, I’m somehow strengthening it?”

  She laughed again. “Yep, I’m afraid so.”

  He grinned happily. “This is so unfair.”

  Her laughter settled and she smiled at him with those bright-blue eyes. She put a hand on the bar, close to his, and touched his finger with hers. “I’m having a good time.”

  “Me too,” he said. “I’m glad you got over the intense hatred you had for me when we first met.”

  She pursed her lips. “Yeah, me too. You know I was under a lot of stress—”

  “Oh, I know,” he said. “It was fun, really. Trying to win you over.”

  She dipped her head shyly. “You really saved our butts.” She brought her head up to take a drink, then chuckled. “I still can’t believe I almost had the whole moon evacuated because of a stupid misconfiguration.”

  “That shit happens more often than you think. Engineering mistakes keep people like me employed.” He raised his glass. “To engineers and all their fuckups.”

  She laughed and clinked her glass to his. “I’ll drink to that.”

  They tipped their glasses back, swallowed, and smiled at each other. “Tell me how you ended up at the Bureau,” he said.

  Her eyes went upward for a moment in thought. “Hmm, okay. So my mom is a custodian, and my aunt is an assistant nurse. They both wanted me to have a better opportunity, and they have this Terroneous pride about the kids being the future and all that, so they spent their combined life savings to get me to B-4 to go to SHIT school.”

  He stifled a chuckle at the name, not wanting to laugh at the sacrifice her family made. “So you did a two-year program?”

  “Yes. I got accepted into the four-year, but when it came down to it, two was all we could afford. I took lots of general operations classes. Out here, we need people who can do a little of everything.”

  “Who can adapt,” he added. “Improvise.”

  “Pretty much. When I got back after two years, there were openings at the Bureau for operators, and it was a perfect first job. I mean, it’s mostly watching numbers come in all day long, but I was good at it. I’m kind of an organization freak.”

  “Not a bad thing.”

  “Not bad when it’s needed. And TEOB needed it badly. So after my first year, I was promoted to senior operator, and then a few years after that, there was an opening for operations manager at the headquarters, and I landed that position.”

  “And now you’re director?”

  “Well, no, not really. I’m still technically the operations manager. The director, Esan – Esan Phololous – took a leave of absence about six months ago. I t
ook over as acting director.” She frowned a little, her nose twitching. “It seems like a big deal, but there are only twelve full-time employees at the Bureau.”

  “Still seems like a big responsibility to me,” Jax said.

  “Yeah, I suppose it is.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I,” she started, then shrugged. “Yes and no. I don’t know.”

  He nodded slowly. “I know the feeling.”

  “You don’t even have a job,” she said with a mischievous smile.

  He couldn’t help but grin back. “Hey, I work! I’m a freelancer.”

  “Yeah, but why don’t you have a job?” she said. “You’re obviously qualified for something.”

  He hid behind his mug for a moment. He was getting a reputation around Stockton as a go-to fixer for anything that came with a manual (no one read manuals) and made enough in cash and in trade to feel comfortable financially. Or at least, more comfortable than he was when he was on the move and homeless. But the truth was, he wanted something real; he wanted a solid job, because a job was a place, a belonging. Responsibility. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t put his name on any piece of paper, he couldn’t be traceable, he couldn’t do anything that might get back to ModPol. Even as untouched by ModPol as Terroneous was, it was too much risk. No one there even knew his real name was Jackson, and he needed to keep it that way.

  “I’m still looking,” he said weakly.

  She frowned and leaned close. “Please tell me you’re not leaving the planet anytime soon. You’re one of a kind, Jack, and I’d be very sad to see you go.”

  As those bright blues gleamed moist at him, he felt a hole tear open in his stomach. He swallowed to find his voice. “I want to make Terroneous my home.”

  She stared into his eyes. “You want to?”

  He nodded shortly and she leaned back. They both turned to the bar and ordered another round. It came quickly, and they stared into their glasses.

  “Lealina, listen,” Jax started, still looking down.

  “Hey!” She grabbed his arm. “Look – that’s HQ on the holo.”

  He looked up and followed her pointing finger to the end of the bar where a holovid was playing. There was TEOB headquarters, just like he remembered it on the day he met her. Three-dimensional words danced into view:

  David Granderson presents …

  … a docuvid you can’t afford to miss …

  TERROR ON TERRONEOUS

  the Disaster that Almost Was

  … starts this Friday at a holo-theater near you!

  Cuts of various shots faded in and out and Jax felt his stomach begin to turn. His guts dropped completely when Lealina’s face appeared.

  Lealina Warpshire, Acting Director of TEOB

  “Hey, that’s me!” she exclaimed. “We’re going to be on holovid! Did you know we were going to be on this?”

  The understanding he had with Granderson … if his face came on screen, it would be blurred. And how would he explain that to Lealina?

  He’d used that arrangement with Granderson to let his guard down. To forget about his fear, so he could focus on magnetic field sensors. So he could focus his energies on stopping the evacuation. All he was thinking about was helping others. All he was thinking about was helping her. All he was thinking about was fixing the problem that was right in front of him at that moment.

  Now that the problem was solved, he felt a cold rock in the center of his chest. What had he done? Even with his face blurred, would he be exposed?

  “Look, there’s you!”

  Fugere, The Fixer

  The holovid went blurry and he turned to face her, but she was blurry too. The whole world had gone blurry.

  “Jack?”

  He’d gotten too comfortable, entertaining the notion of finding home on this moon. Made too many friends. Attracted too much attention. Lost his invisibility. Now he was going to lose it all because all he wanted to do was fix someone else’s problem.

  “I am so fucking stupid.”

  * * *

  With the action over, Dava had Lucky Jerk hop them over to the other side of Terroneous to a little township called Nuzwick. Since they weren’t planning on causing any more trouble than a few rambunctious nights of drinking, they parked the dropship at the local port.

  “What did RJ say?”

  She knew Thompson was only asking the question because they hadn’t stuck around Sunderville very long.

  “I told him we killed three, wounded one, two got away,” Dava said. When Thompson had shown up, she managed to scatter the Misters pretty quickly. Two of them made a break for it while the rest dove back into the burning hotel for cover. Dan had zapped one of the runners – Pellinarri, from the bar – but at a distance the stungun lost some of its charge and though the target went down, he’d gotten back up soon enough. Once Dava made it off the roof, Thompson gave her a pistol and together they peppered the four Misters who were smoked out of the hotel and into a storm of bullets. That included Hill, the apparent ringleader, who caught a bullet in the neck, as well as Guy, who survived the barrage. “He said we should let the others live, send a message.”

  “That guy loves to send a message,” Thompson said with a short laugh and shake of her head.

  “Tell me about it,” Dava said in a low voice. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Jansen was chaining her missions together without a break to keep her busy. Out of the way. “Anyways, he told us to get out of Sunderville, just in case we stirred up the local law enforcement.”

  Thompson laughed again. “Yeah, you bet your ass we did. ’Course, we did them a favor by cleaning out their Mister problem.”

  Dava nodded. “S’true. We move on and they can call it a wash.”

  The bartender came around and set down a massive pitcher of amber beer and four mugs. The place was some kind of brewery, and the smell was somehow bad and good at the same time. Bad because it was wet, funky, and sweetly bitter, but good because it was like beer. Aside from that, it was dark and had a kitchen, so it suited their needs just fine.

  Dava took a pull at her beer and finished her thought as the bartender left with instructions to bring back a few plates of whatever their specialty was. “So I told RJ, that’s fine about the two that got away, but the one we wounded is locked in the hold of the dropship. I said, what do you want me to do with him?”

  Thompson frowned. “Probably wants to let him go too.”

  “Actually, he thought about it for a minute, then said we might turn him into the authorities for causing the fire. I was about to tell him he’s crazy, but then he just sighs.” Long-range communications that took several minutes to go from the Space Waste base in deep Barnard down to Terroneous, and the man actually sighed into the transmission. “Says, ‘You know what, Dava? I leave it to your discretion.’”

  “No shit.”

  “S’what I said.” She drained her mug and motioned for Dan to refill it. Something about talking to Jansen always made her want to drink.

  “So,” Lucky said carefully, testing the waters. “What are we going to do with him?”

  She chewed on this thought for a moment, and it was sour. Why did she have to decide? Her plan was to kill him, but that was before. Somehow it was simpler before. Mr. Sandiego and the Misters stole from Space Waste. So she came here to enact justice. But they were ready for her. Why were they ready for her?

  Maybe the Misters had been trying to a send a message of their own.

  The ale swirled around sweetly through the spaces between her ears and eyes. It wasn’t the time to solve that little mystery. It was the time to be glad she wasn’t burned alive.

  “I’m just going to hold onto him for a while,” she said.

  Instantly, the rest of them relaxed. “Good,” Thompson said. “One less thing to think about. Let’s drink!”

  “We are drinking,” Lucky said, then laughed at his own joke as he tipped back in his chair, flinching and grabbing the table when he almost went all
the way over.

  “You tell RJ about your little spill?” Thompson said, then hid her shit-eating grin behind her glass.

  Dava tried to glare and found herself unable keep a straight face. “No, I didn’t tell him.” The pool at the other side of the hotel. She hadn’t known it was there, which was her fault for not getting a full perimeter before moving in. She shook her head as she thought about that fact: she had no idea why they were telling her to jump. Were they going to catch her? What was their plan? She hadn’t known. And yet she jumped. She took a long pull of her beer. Why had she jumped?

  “Yeah, I wouldn’t have told him either,” Thompson said. “Pretty embarrassing dive if you ask me. Looked like a cork popping out of a bottle. You landed ass-first into that shit.”

  “Fuck you, Thompson,” she said with a grin and the others laughed, even Dan.

  “I think she was on fire too,” Lucky added.

  “I know, right? Smoke comin’ off her as she cannonballs through the air—”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  They all went quiet and looked at Bashful Dan.

  Dava huffed, still grinning, then quickly frowned as she read his face. “What is it?”

  He pointed and they looked. There was a holovid in the corner of the bar. It was showing some advertisement for a film. There, in the three-dimensional image that swirled with the smoke of a nearby cigar, was a face she did not expect to see.

  “No fucking way.” Dava slapped her hands on the table and stood up. “We have to see that movie.”