“Johnny!” said the older of the two men, slamming a fist down on the table. “What the hell are you doing? You’re not supposed to be drinking, goddammit!”
“Sorry, Cap’n,” Eyeball said, hanging his head. “You know how I hate these fuckin’ domes.”
Johnny’s captain sighed wearily. “Yeah, Johnny. I know.” He bent down on one knee and put a hand on Eyeball’s shoulder. “We all hate ’em. But we got a job to do, ma boy, right? We brought you here for a reason. Dan is trying to track down that ModPol motherfucker that stole that transport ship from us, right? And we need your help, Johnny, because you seen most of the cops on that barge with your own eyes.”
The captain stood back up, which took a little effort. His skin wasn’t quite yellow like Eyeball’s, but more of an orangish color. He was older, maybe by a decade or so. “Now come on, Johnny. Hell, drinkin’ in domes is what landed ya in jail in the first place. The sooner we can find these cops, the sooner we can get the hell outta here.”
Johnny Eyeball sighed heavily, leaving his lips pouted outward. He hefted himself out of the chair, making a bit of a production of it. He slid the bottle closer to Jax. “You better take this, Psycho Jack.”
“Thanks, Johnny,” Jax said. “Good luck with the hunt,” he added.
“Yeah, thanks,” the gangbanger mumbled. He turned to the other man that came in with the captain, the one who hadn’t spoken yet. “Tell me you got a trail, Dan.”
“We had one,” came the quiet but sour reply. “Until we had to come back for you.”
“Ooh, whee,” Eyeball said mockingly. He swayed slightly; either trying to taunt the other man or simply the result of intoxication. “Bashful Dan ain’t so bashful today, issy?”
Bashful Dan ignored him and instead looked at Jax. “Who is this you’re drinking with, Johnny?”
“Huh?” Eyeball waved a dismissive hand in the direction of the operator. “Oh, that’s just Psycho Jack. We met on Barnard-4. In jail. He killed like, thirty people.” He held out his hands in front of him, looking at each of his companions to make sure he had their attention, before profoundly uttering, “With a program.”
“Right,” the captain said, taking hold of Eyeball’s massive arm. “Well, you can tell us all about that when we’re Xarping the hell outta here, Johnny. After we track down this piece-of-shit ship-thief.”
He practically dragged Johnny Eyeball out the door, as the drunk man winked angrily at no one in particular.
Jax realized the man called Bashful Dan was still staring at him. It wasn’t an attempt to intimidate or dominate or anything chest-pounding like that. It was with a genuine interest; one that made Jax very nervous. He looked at Jax like he was checking off notes in his head. Finally the man turned and followed the other two out the door.
Jax suddenly wished he knew where Runstom was.
Five minutes later, Runstom walked into the White Angle Saloon.
“Hey, Stan!” Jax said, waving an arm. “Over here.”
Stanford walked up to the table. Jax was clearly inebriated. “Jax. I just saw some Space Wasters. We gotta be careful. They might be after us.”
“Oh-ho.” Jax nodded heavily. “They’re after us, alright. After you, ’specially.” He aimed a weighty index finger at the officer.
Runstom sighed. “Yeah, me especially.” He looked around the dark bar. “You had your fill of this place yet?”
The operator gave him a funny look, as if he were wary.
“Look, Jax. I’m sorry I yelled at you. I got a little frustrated. Grav-lag, and cryo-hangover, and all that.”
Jax looked down for a moment, then looked back up at Runstom. “Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry too. For the whole Markus Stallworth thing. I shouldn’t have done that without telling you what I was gonna do.”
“Thanks,” Runstom said.
“And I’m sorry about all that stuff I said. About you being just an officer. And about ModPol being worthless and all that shit,” Jax continued.
“Right, okay,” Runstom sighed. “Thanks.”
“And I’m sorry for the other stuff too. You know, when I said you’re all just a bunch of repressed assholes and ModPol is just a company that makes money off the suffering of others and stuff.”
Runstom’s face contorted. His eyebrows dipped and creased and his jaw slid back and forth. His nostrils flexed and flared.
“You said that to me, pal,” the bartender said from behind Runstom. “Hey, buddy. You wanna drink or what?”
“Oh,” Jax said. “Oh. Ohhh. Well then I apologize to you, Mister Bartender.” He looked at Runstom. “Err, and you, too, of course. For all that stuff I said just now. Totally wrong.”
Runstom turned around. “No, I don’t want a drink. I’m leaving.”
“Wait,” Jax said. Runstom could hear the chair squeak as he struggled to his feet. The operator came around the front of him and blocked his way out. “Really, Stanford. I’m really sorry. But I have good news!”
“What?” Runstom said with a sigh.
“I know what we need to do next!” he said, grinning widely. “I know how we can get a lead on the programmer.”
Runstom mulled over a few dozen ways he could end the operator’s life right then and there. It afforded him a small amount of satisfaction and it allowed him to move on. “Okay, Jackson. What do we do next?”
“We need a hotel with a terminal. Not just a cheapo public terminal. An advanced terminal with privacy.”
CHAPTER 18
They got a room at Hotel Destino. It was a little upscale, but it was the cheapest place they could find where they could get an advanced private terminal in their room. Since they only had cash, they had to put it all up front, and now their stack of Alliance Credits was dwindling down to nearly nothing.
Jax had insisted on the terminal access. He said they couldn’t be certain what was in the unencrypted version of the program he had made a copy of when they were at Markus Stallworth’s apartment. He didn’t trust a public terminal. And he needed to be able to step through the program with debugging tools, which, he explained laboriously, meant that your run-of-the-mill standard terminal wouldn’t do.
The operator was alternately hammering away at the terminal, scribbling in a notebook, and taking slugs from a large bottle of Drunk-B-Gone they’d picked up at a corner store. The stuff was chock full of vitamins, electrolytes, caffeine, proteins, bacteria, enzymes, and god knows what else. It was designed to make the body process alcohol through its system faster. It was highly recommended that one drank excessive amounts of water alongside Drunk-B-Gone, and it was even more highly recommended that one had free access to a lavatory when consuming Drunk-B-Gone.
Jax hopped up and ran to the bathroom. Runstom strolled over to the terminal. The screen read:
230 IF X3 = 100 THEN GOTO 410
240 LET FG8 = X3
245 INPUT R9
… and so forth. Runstom’s eyes watered at the sight. He picked up the notebook. Jax had drawn a table, and in one column, there were things like A, B, C, FG6, FG8, R1, R9, X1, X2, and X3. Most of the column next to these strange codes was empty, although there was an occasional number or word.
“Scuse me,” Jax said, edging his way past Runstom and sitting back down at the terminal. He took the notebook from the officer’s hands. “See, this code is all obfuscated.”
“Right,” Runstom said. “What, uh. What exactly do you mean by that?”
“Well, for example: usually when a programmer writes code, they use meaningful variable names.” Jax flipped the notebook to an empty page. “Like if I wanted a variable to represent my block name, I might use block name,” he said, writing the phrase out to look like BLOCK_NAME. “But if I wanted to obfuscate the code – if I wanted to make it harder to read – I would name this variable something unrelated. Something random.” He crossed out BLOCK_NAME and wrote X2.