Life on B-4 was easy-peasy, and so the crime rate was low. And because of the low crime rate, the governments of the planet did not dedicate a lot of resources to law enforcement. It was easier for them to subscribe to the services of Modern Policing and Peacekeeping, as it was for many of the governments of the inhabited planets and moons of the known galaxy. ModPol was like an organization of security guards and mercenaries, packaged up along with prosecutors, lawyers, judges, and juries. If you wanted to buy ModPol’s protection, you bought ModPol’s version of the law as well.

The ModPol grunts – including the detectives that first questioned Jax, and the officers who came later – probably didn’t know the crime rate was so low on B-4. They’d seen crimes of passion that were unimaginable to the mind of a B-fourean, but commonplace elsewhere. But a crime like this – over thirty people killed by one person – was unimaginable anywhere. It was as if the only way they could deal with facing such a slaughter was to put a face to the criminal as fast as possible. Jax could imagine them telling each other, Let’s get the sick sonova bitch that did this and make him hang. And Jax happened to be the sonova bitch in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Which is probably why they jumped at a chance for a revenge angle. Angry ex-boyfriend and disgruntled employee. Jax actually never took it personally when his company passed him over for promotion, time and time again. That part the ModPol detectives could not be more wrong about. He really just did not care. He only kept the LifSup job to pay the bills.

They wanted to know why he wasn’t an engineer, as if not becoming one was the source of his pain and a catalyst for vengeance. He couldn’t care less about that. Not to mention he couldn’t stand engineers. His father was an engineer. His father married another engineer when his mother passed away. Jax couldn’t explain it, but he just had the feeling that if he became an engineer too, he’d feel like he would somehow lose the memory of his mother. He and his father and step-mother would become one happy family of engineers, forgetting all about the late Irene Jackson.

Jax’s mother had worked in pre-construction air processor assembly. When there’s little or no atmosphere, it’s difficult to make headway building domes and sub-domes, so there’s a whole pre-construction phase that has to happen initially. Irene Jackson worked with a crew that put together temporary air processors to provide atmosphere for the workers and equipment under the massive tents that enveloped a construction site. During construction, Irene and her crew worked tirelessly to maintain the proper levels of various gases inside the tents, checking for leaks or contamination. When a job was done, they tore the processors back down and moved on to a new site.

On her final job, Irene Jackson and several of her crew were investigating an anomaly in the gas mixture in an isolated section of a construction grid. The source of the contamination was an unseen fissure in the surface of the planet. Due to the pressure of a methane gas bubble just beneath the surface, the initial ground density survey had cleared the area for construction. When Irene and her crew-mates brought their equipment in on trucks to the section where the oxygen alarms were buzzing, they unwittingly placed an excessive amount of weight over a fragile square of the planet’s surface. Before they could react, they were in the middle of a massive sinkhole. They were suited up, but their suits were designed to withstand the harsh atmosphere of Barnard-4, and the jagged, gray, ugly rocks inside the cavern that opened up beneath their feet tore their suits open like the claws of a predator slicing into prey. Trapped in a newly formed canyon, the air processor techs could only lie on their backs and admire the stars while the oxygen slowly bled from their suits.

Jax thought he was lucky the detectives focused on his so-called career failures. He was lucky they didn’t ask him why he was even still on B-4. Because that question he could not answer, even when he asked himself. He was a few years away from turning thirty, and he knew he couldn’t stay on this planet. But he had nowhere else to go. Moving in with his parents on B-3 was not an option he could accept. He shuddered when he saw the irony of this whole situation. He was finally going to get to go off-planet; and in a way, he was looking forward to it. Even if it was to be put on trial and probably executed, at least he’d be out of the domes for once. It was as if he had to become a prisoner to break free.

So was this whole thing really just happenstance? That was the question burning in the back of his mind for the last couple of days. Was it just wrong place, wrong time? Or was there more to it? Obviously, he’d been set up, but why him? Was he targeted for something he’d done in the past? Did he piss off the wrong person? Or was he just picked because someone had to take the fall, and he just happened to be the mark?

The cops in the off-world crime dramas (the only holo-vision Jax could stomach was foreign) would always ask that question. Do you know anyone that might want to hurt you? Yeah, sure. There were people in Jax’s life that didn’t like him. Maybe even wanted to hurt him. And they probably tried to hurt him, in their own B-fourean way: by denying him constant offers of assistance and shovel-loads of gratitude. But no one Jax ever met could have possibly devised a scheme to set someone up to take the fall for a mass homicide.

He daydreamed about crime drama holo-vids to keep his mind off the alarming and unexpected weight of the thrust of the barge as it lifted off, and the even more alarming shudder and shake that quickly followed as they tore through the sky.

Once they broke away from the planet’s gravitational pull and the ship’s acceleration dropped, Jax’s restraints loosened and he was allowed to move about his tiny room. It was pretty much a standard jail cell; a bunk-bed, a toilet, a sink, and a small table with a chair. The sparse holding cell in the Blue Haven Police Department was plush by comparison. A stack of papers and a handful of pencils on the table reminded him that he was allowed to write by hand, but would not be permitted access to electronic devices of any kind.

After he pulled himself out of the wall-mount, he found himself face-to-face with his cell-mate. The guy had been out cold when they first boarded, and Jax had only heard his case number when it was read off by the security detail. Jax suspected the guards had drugged the large, muscle-bound, yellow-skinned, multi-tattooed man who now stood before him, cracking his neck from side to side and rolling his shoulders. Jax was used to being taller than the handful of off-worlders he’d met, but this man was tall enough to look him in the eyes, and almost twice as wide.

“Hello,” Jax said. “I’m Jax.”

The man smiled at Jax, showing off an almost-perfect set of teeth. “Hey, roomie. I’m Johnny Eyeball.” He winked.

“Oh.” Jax was about to ask if that was a nickname, but then realized he himself hadn’t exactly given his real name either. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Eyeball.”

Johnny Eyeball winked again. It was a mildly angry wink.

“So, uh,” Jax started nervously. He began to think about all those off-world crime dramas, and all the psychotic criminals that roamed the galaxy outside the sanctuary of Barnard-4. “What, uh. Whaterya in for?”

This question seemed to put the other man in a good mood. “Ah, now that’s a great drinking story. We got a couple days together, so I’ll leave that ’til another day.” He winked again. “In one part, I get an eighteen-minute laser shoot-out with an unarmed maitre d-bot.” He winked a couple of times, rather wildly and gleefully. “Tell me, Mr. Jax. What’s a pale-skin like you gotta do to land on a con-barge like this?”