“Three of them and two of us,” Runstom said. “If you hadn’t made a deal, they’d have taken it by force.”
“Probably,” Jax said after a burning swallow. He decided not to remark that two of us was an exaggeration, given his uselessness in any such altercation. None of the various custodian, technician, and operator positions he’d held in the domes required anything remotely resembling combat training, and even during his short time on Terroneous, he’d stayed as far away from trouble as possible. Or had tried to, anyway.
“And they were supposed to disappear once we landed.”
Jax frowned and nodded. “Well, that was the deal.”
“What makes you think they’ll be back?”
He shrugged. “That OrbitBurner doesn’t have a Xarp drive, so no FTL. Space Waste has zero presence out here in Eridani, and these three are on the run. So they’ll need another way back to Barnard or Sirius.”
Runstom seemed to turn that over in his mind, then he took a pull of his dark beer. “That won’t be easy.”
“No, I don’t suppose so.”
“What’s the other reason?”
Jax hadn’t alluded to a second reason, but Runstom wasn’t going to let him get off that easily. “I gave them something.”
“You gave them—” Runstom started, then stopped and his eyes narrowed. “You mean information.”
“Yes,” Jax said. “On our way to the docks, you were telling me about something your mom said. About someone going into Space Waste, someone who was undercover.”
Runstom flinched slightly at the mention of his mother. They’d only talked to her a few hours ago, and it had definitely changed the man. Jax was pretty sure they hadn’t seen each other in several years, at least in person. And with her being in some kind of witness protection relocation deal, the communication between them had been poor to say the least. Her name was Sylvia Runstom, though she was now going by Sylvia Rankworth, and she was Assistant Director of Agricultural Systems on Epsilon Eridani-3. Jax got the impression that she still kept up with some of the networks she’d acquired while she did undercover work herself, back before her son Stanford was born, well over three decades ago.
“Yes,” Runstom said, glancing over his shoulder. “You said you might be able to identify one or two Wasters that didn’t fit in.”
“There was definitely one guy who was up to something,” Jax said. “His name was Basil Roy. He was a programmer – not an operator like me, but a real engineer.”
“Doesn’t sound the gangbanger type.”
“No, he wasn’t.” Jax took another sip, hoping the brandy would lubricate his memory. “They were having him write software to interface with this special detection equipment. Stuff they lifted from somewhere.”
“Vulca.”
“What? Yeah, that sounds familiar. What’s Vulca?”
Runstom sighed. “One of the moons around Sirius-5. There’s a big research base there. And I was there when Space Waste attacked it.”
“What, really? You – were there? Doing what?”
He nodded. “Same thing I’m doing here. Selling ModPol Defense services.” Before Jax could ask more, Runstom waved dismissively. “I know, Sirius-5 is already a ModPol subscriber. But ModPol wanted to force the moon – Vulca – to get a separate contract. Figured they had money to spend with all the research funds pouring into their facility.”
“And did they?”
Runstom looked at Jax in silence for a moment. “Well, yeah. After Space Waste attacked them, they realized the value of having ModPol around. We had a trial unit of Defenders there. Not a large one, but enough to rout the Wasters.”
“I see,” Jax said. “But not before they made off with some equipment.”
Runstom laughed for the first time all day, though it was more of a short huff than anything. “All this new equipment. The techs just installed it. They put the old gear in the empty boxes so they could ship it out for resale.”
Jax thought about it. “So the Wasters stole what they thought was brand-new equipment, and what they got were new boxes with old stuff in it?”
“Yep.”
“So it was never going to work,” Jax said. “Which didn’t matter, since Basil Roy spoofed the detection software. It led them right where he wanted it to.”
Runstom took another quiet pull. “There’s still a question of why.”
Now it was Jax’s turn to huff a laugh. “To make them think they could get the jump on the ModPol transport. They thought the stolen tech helped them zero in on it when it Xarped into Eridani space. The Wasters thought they had the easy score, but they were walking into a trap.”
Runstom’s brow furrowed. “I should feel good about that. That gang has taken a lot of lives. Civilian and ModPol. People I worked with. Friends of mine. I should be saying, lock them all up, whatever it takes.”
“But you don’t feel good about it?”
Runstom sighed. “Something doesn’t sit right. I’m glad we made so many arrests, of course. But it was …”
“It was bloody,” Jax said. “A lot of people died.”
Runstom nodded. “On both sides.”
He went quiet and Jax tried to figure out what was going through his head. He had no love for Space Waste, there was no doubt about that. So what if someone went in undercover and tricked them into walking into an ambush? Even as vile as those gangbangers were, it was still a crude trick. Dishonorable even. Did that matter to Runstom?
“It wasn’t justice,” Jax said.
Runstom’s head picked up and he met Jax’s eyes. “No. It wasn’t justice. It was closer to … to war.”
And there it was. Stanford Runstom worked in the Defense division of Modern Policing and Peacekeeping, but his heart was where he started, in Justice. Jax knew his friend would always have the mind of a cop. And part of that meant that he wanted things done by a certain code of conduct, by a procedure. That there was a fair way and an unfair way, and even the lowliest of criminals deserved the fair way. If they were guilty, it should be determined by a trial.
But if this had been an act of war, hadn’t Space Waste charged into battle willingly? And there was the big question: would they have made that kind of attack if they hadn’t been led into it by deception? Their intention hadn’t been so warlike, they just wanted to steal stuff.
Of course, the stuff they thought they were going to steal was a weapons cache.
Runstom sighed and glanced at the WrappiMate around his forearm. “So when do you think we’ll get the OrbitBurner back?”
Jax fidgeted. How the hell could he know? Dava probably flew it out to the site of the battle; it was the only place of interest in the whole system, aside from EE-3 and a ModPol outpost in some secret location. What she might be doing out there, he couldn’t guess, but then again, he never could work out what motivated that assassin.
“Soon,” he answered quietly.
Tim Cazos was fucking sick of Space Waste.
Everywhere he looked, that goddamn