“The maintenance hatch?” Runstom said.
“Can’t be locked remotely.”
“A safety feature,” Jax guessed. He could feel his muscles tensing in anticipation of bursting for this one known exit.
Runstom gave them both a look. “Then that’s where they’ll be coming in.”
Sylvia stood. “Then we hide Jax. And the body. Quickly.”
“Where?” Jax said.
“This is an expensive ship,” she said. “There must be safe-rooms. Something well hidden.”
“No,” Runstom said quietly. His face grew taut.
Jax wanted to shake him. “No, there are no safe-rooms?”
“No, we’re not hiding.”
There was a pause, the space of a breath, and Jax couldn’t stand the silence. “I’ll give up.” He heard his voice crack as he spoke. “You don’t need to go down for this. I can tell them I stowed away on your ship during the raid.”
“No, goddammit!” Runstom’s eyes narrowed with a ferocity Jax had not seen before in the man. “This ship is not their jurisdiction. This dock is not their jurisdiction. This goddamn planet is not their jurisdiction. Maybe it will be someday, but not today.”
He stood there for a moment and Jax didn’t know how to react. He felt frozen in place, his skin running cold from the open storage unit. Then Runstom moved, striding with such purpose that Jax and Sylvia were swept up behind him.
When he reached the maintenance hatch door, he cranked the wheel and opened it. The airlock was stained oddly, and Jax thought it was like some abstract art piece or something for a moment, before he realized it must be Basil Roy’s blood. What had Runstom said his real name was? Tim. Tim Cazos. That’s whose blood had sprayed into the airlock in zero-G, hanging there until the craft accelerated, at which point it drifted to one side and splashed against the inside of the outer hatch door.
“What are you going to do, Stanley?” Sylvia asked carefully.
“Stan, it’s not worth it,” Jax said, lightly touching Runstom’s arm. “If you have to turn me over, just do it.”
He couldn’t believe he was even saying it. Only moments ago, he was arguing for his freedom, fighting to get back to Terroneous and as far away from this mess as possible. But hearing that ModPol was here now, coming after Runstom, with his mother in the room, Jax felt something he hadn’t felt since his last day on Terroneous. They were after him, and he was going to drag the people who meant most to him in the galaxy down with him. He couldn’t let that happen, as terrified as he was of being taken into ModPol custody.
Runstom turned and gave him a shove, hard, his strong hand into Jax’s chest. Jax stumbled back, almost falling, bracing himself against the corridor wall outside of the airlock.
The flat fingers curled into a point. “You stay back.”
He glanced at Sylvia who took a step back herself, not from a place of fear, but something else. Jax tried to read her face and the best he could come up with was that she was showing respect. This ship belonged to Runstom. It was his house. His rules.
The wheel on the outer hatch turned and the door swung slowly inward.
“McManus,” Runstom said through gritted teeth. “What are you doing on my ship?”
Jax felt the energy draining from his body and his spirit. “This motherfucker,” he mumbled. There was no giving up with these people. They wouldn’t rest until they dragged him in. They were never going to forgive him for his part in the giant fuck-up that ModPol created when they wrongfully arrested him and forced him to become a fugitive.
“It’s Sergeant McManus,” he said. “Remember, Stanley? I’m a Sergeant now.”
“ModPol has no jurisdiction here,” Runstom said evenly.
McManus huffed. “ModPol is everywhere. Haven’t you heard? Or have you not been watching yourself on the holovid broadcasts?”
Runstom’s stance got even more tense. “Jared. I want you off this ship.”
“Of course, Stanley.” He pointed at Jax. “Give me Jackson and I’ll be on my way.”
Runstom was quiet for a moment, and Jax could practically hear the wheels turning in his head. “You came alone.”
McManus’s face contorted and he stiffened. “I have a pilot with me.”
Runstom took a step forward. “The premises of this ship are private property. You are an intruder. I’m going to give you ten seconds.”
This caused McManus to flinch and cock his head slightly. “What’s supposed to happen in ten seconds?” When Runstom didn’t answer, he waved dismissively. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. I’m not leaving here without Jacks—”
“Ten.”
Runstom launched himself at McManus, slamming him into the wall on the left side of the hatchway. Jax felt himself tense, but he couldn’t get his body to move. They grappled for a second and then their bodies collided to the floor, though through which man’s force, Jax couldn’t tell. They were both solidly built, but by Runstom’s own admission, he’d not kept up his cop physique since leaving Justice for his public relations position in Defense.
Sylvia took a step forward, as though she might do something or say something, but her mouth went tight. Runstom freed an arm from the tangle and slammed a fist into McManus’s cheek with an audible pop. He reached back for another punch, but McManus shook off the first hit and managed to block the second.
Runstom grabbed the blocking arm and hooked an elbow up and under it in some kind of locking move. McManus responded by lowering his body and heaving his shoulder into Runstom’s midsection, whose back bounced against the wall, forcing out a grunt. His hold loosened slightly, just enough for the muscle-bound McManus to wrench his arm free.
The two straightened up then and traded blows, jabs and hooks crossing between them. Jax had only ever been in a fight once in his life, back in the domes on B-4, and he had been too drunk to remember exactly what happened, only that the following day his hand hurt and his eye was black. The way Runstom and McManus moved – ducking, punching, swaying – suggested they knew much more about what they were doing. Jax felt like he should step in, use the numbers advantage against McManus, but hesitated. Would he just be in the way? More likely to hurt than to help? To get hurt? He glanced at Sylvia, who seemed to be going through the same deliberations; though her flexing hands suggested a different thought process than Jax’s raw fear.
Runstom took advantage of an overzealous swing from McManus, hooking the arm and spinning him around. He grappled McManus from behind, placing him in some other kind of hold that bound up his arms. For a moment Jax thought it was over, perhaps because the action had come to a standstill and Runstom had the upper hand. But then suddenly their combined forms compressed as McManus bent down, and Runstom’s legs swung out. They sprung upward in a swinging motion and Runstom flipped over the top of McManus, slamming down onto the floor on his back with a yelp of pain.
Jax’s fear evaporated in a puff and he lunged forward, reaching his long arms for McManus’s throat. The cop spun, whipping a gun from his holster and aiming it at Jax’s face in one motion. Jax froze, some part of his brain locking in fear for its life, another part lost in studying the sudden but intricate details of the weapon’s design. Tiny valleys carved into a mixture of metal and plastic. A tunnel that quickly blurred into darkness. The gleam of the overhead lights against the sheen of the surface.
Distant movement jarred his paralysis. Runstom was flipping himself over, lunging for McManus. He tackled him through the gut, and both men hit the floor beneath Jax’s feet. The gun hung loosely in McManus’s hand, his arm extended to one side. Jax reached for it, but it moved quickly, the butt slamming into the back of Runstom’s head. It drew back and Jax flinched, then tried to grab it a full second too late. It slammed down in the same spot again.
They rolled over, Runstom dazed, McManus in control. The gun swung around in Jax’s direction again, and though it didn’t fire, he flinched again and slid back onto his ass. McManus pressed his advantage by standing to his full height and aiming the weapon down at Jax.
Runstom groaned and rolled over, putting one knee against the floor to prepare to stand. McManus’s gun swung to meet him.
“Have you ever been shot by a stungun?” he said. “Do you know how much it fucking hurts?”
Jax scrambled to his feet, but not before a bolt of white shot forth and struck Runstom, his body jolting against the wall in a fit of shaking. Jax grabbed McManus by the wrist that held the gun, but the cop’s elbow shot out sharply, landing in Jax’s midsection with a painful and staggering shock unlike any he’d felt before. He fought to draw breath and fell to one knee.
McManus swung the gun around the room with narrowed eyes, seeking out other targets. Jax managed to turn his head and though his vision wavered, he could see Sylvia was gone.
The cop grunted in apparent satisfaction and holstered his weapon. He came up behind Jax and grabbed his shoulder. Jax tried weakly to resist, but the ground came suddenly up to meet his face with a painful smack. He felt his arms get pulled out from under his body and yanked behind, then felt some kind of binding slide over his wrists.
“Don’t worry, they aren’t shock cuffs,” McManus said. He hooked his hands under Jax’s armpits and with a grunt, hoisted him to his feet. “I decided to go back to the old-fashioned style. Strict-cuffs. The more you pull against them, the tighter they get. They’re not standard issue anymore. Too many broken bones.”
Without resisting, but just through the shifting because of the unnatural position his arms were in, Jax felt the oddly-warm straps constricting. He tried to breathe, to relax his muscles, but he was still having trouble from the blow that landed just below his chest. The walls blurred by as he felt himself pushed and pulled through the outer airlock hatch and into the space beyond.
*
Runstom bathed in pain for eternity. Every nerve screaming electric. His vision stuttered like a video on a short loop. His ears were full of a swirling buzz, a living, organic noise.
