Under Shadows. Jason LaPier

In between each hop, the crew would sit around grumpily, taking the downtime to suck food from tubes and use the vacuum-powered lavatory. McManus would periodically punch unenthusiastically at one of the consoles in the corner.

      A communication unit of some kind. Jax figured the cop was getting coordinates for the next hop. Wherever they were headed, someone was sufficiently paranoid to keep it well hidden. And that paranoid someone was X.

      They came out of the last Xarp and they all slowly picked at their straps.

      Jax had been trying to gauge how loyal McManus’s crew was. It was hard to tell. They seemed to take every order, and though they complained a lot, they never disobeyed. Maybe they weren’t smart enough to be suspicious, or maybe they just didn’t care.

      While poking around the system during the interstellar trek, he’d found a way to send Ayliff and Granny a message, but it hadn’t panned out. He must have found an unused part of the operating system, something that was long ago deprecated. So in between every short jump, he debated on whether or not to express his fears. Fears he thought the crew should share, if they weren’t so blatantly ignorant. They couldn’t know anything about X; they were too by-the-book in their operations to be part of that ring of corruption. Jax suspected that the pilot and the gunner were only along for the mission because they thought it was official, and they were told not to question. With each jump, they grew more restless. Was it time to play his hand, to blurt out all the information he knew about X? Would they listen, or would they ignore him? And what would McManus do to him if he involved the others? Would he simply drag Jax out of the cabin and stow him in another part of the ship?

      These questions burbled to the top of his muddy mind whenever they came out of Xarp. It was just a matter of making something come out of his mouth. Easier thought than said.

      Granny was the first to exercise her voice. “How many more of these damn jumps do we have to make, Sarge?”

      “We’re close,” McManus said quietly.

      “X keeps himself well hidden,” Jax said. His brain was still mush, and he didn’t have a plan, but he needed to say something.

      “Shut the fuck up, Jackson,” McManus shot, fire in his eyes.

      “What does he mean?” Granny said, scrunching her face at Jax. “Who or what is X?”

      Jax tried to stare as sharply at McManus as the cop stared at him, but he felt his will sapping. McManus had long ago shut off the part of his brain that was open to reason – no, that wasn’t it exactly; he’d shut off the part of his brain that was open to options. He was like a train on a track and was not going anywhere it didn’t want him to go.

      “Contact!” Ayliff shouted, breaking the silence.

      The world jolted and Jax was slammed in the guts by the straps still half harnessing his body. The ship lurched and twisted, all of them gasping and cursing.

      “What is it?” McManus blurted.

      With a series of grunts, the pilot recovered enough to respond. “We’re hacked. Remote control.”

      “God dammit, McManus,” Granny shouted. “What the hell did you get us into?”

      “Just calm down,” he spat back.

      “X.” She pointed at Jax. “You said X. Who is X? I’ve heard of him. I know I have. What kind of shit did you get us into?”

      “Tell them,” Jax gasped through another lurch. “Tell them who he is. He’s going to kill us, dammit! He’s going to kill us!”

      “Shut up, Jackson! Shut the fuck up!”

      “Ayliff, reboot it,” Granny shouted. “Break the connection. Break the goddamn connection!”

      “Sarge?” was all the pilot could manage.

      “Just fucking relax,” McManus said. He was half strapped to his console, and half reaching out with a hand as if to calm the room. “Just trust—”

      He was cut off with a wheeze when the ship pivoted and began accelerating.

      “Alright, fuck this,” Ayliff said. “Granny, reboot sequence. It takes two consoles to do it.”

      “Hit it,” she said.

      And the lights went out for the space of a silent breath.

      Then came back on, only red instead of white. The hum of electronics came too, normally background noise, now seeming louder as they powered back up.

      “It’s coming up now,” Ayliff said. “I’m going to try to kill the remote access virtual ports before they try to reconnect.”

      “Wait, what is this?” Granny said. “Ayliff, are you seeing this? What’s OS MOTD mean?”

      Ayliff’s head cocked side to side in thought. “Um. Operating system. Uh. Message? Of … of the day?”

      Jax felt his breath catch in his throat and lodge there like a lump of rock. He glanced at McManus, whose eyes were glued to the communications console in front of him. Reading.

      This is Jackson. I’ve done no harm to the system, I only overwrote the OS MOTD.

       The man we’re going to see is known to most as X. His real name is Mark Xavier Phonson. He is – or was, I don’t know any more – a cop with ModPol. He is a master manipulator and has used his skills to extort others for power and money, and where necessary, to end lives.

       Sergeant McManus is under orders to bring me to X. Maybe he thinks he’s just doing his job, but this operation is far outside the normal operating parameters of ModPol. X doesn’t want me arrested, he wants me gone. He wants me disappeared. And he’s very good at covering his tracks. So it’s not a stretch to think that he’ll want this whole ship to disappear.

       What you do next is up to you. All I’m asking is that you be officers of justice when you do it.

      There was a metallic scraping sound, and Jax realized after a cold second that McManus had drawn a weapon.

      “No one touch anything,” he said quietly.

      Granny pushed herself away from her console and drifted to the center of the cabin. “That’s enough, Jared,” she spat. “Enough of this bullshit. You’re not shooting anyone, you bastard. Kyl, shut down the remote access before they get a lock on us.”

      “Ayliff, don’t touch anything,” McManus said louder. His gun couldn’t decide whether to point at Granny or the pilot.

      “Just do it, Kyl,” she said. “This ends now. Jared McManus, you put that weapon away or I’m relieving you of duty.”

      He blinked and the gun went slack for just a moment. “You … you don’t know what we’re dealing with.”