by A. B. Keuser
ENEMIES OF A SORT
A FLYNN MONROE NOVELLA
By A. B. Keuser
Dedication
For Dad
At an early age, you gave me an appreciation of Country Western music, Star Trek, John Wayne, and the joy that comes from a day of honest work in the deepness of a silent forest. I’ve never been the same, and I can’t thank you enough.
1337 P.D
Chapter One –
There are three sides to every coin.
Flynn Monroe absentmindedly flipped the small, round piece of defunct currency between his fingers. He studied it as he waited for the lights above his seat to turn from amber to green.
Interplanetary travel laws were the most asinine series of hoops ever invented. Commercial space travel was more of a headache than dealing with a caffeine-deprived window jockey at the Department of Fusion-Engine Vehicles. If you ignored the DFV, it was the biggest irritation in the universe.
Flynn dropped the coin to the palm of his hand… three sides, not two, like most people errantly thought.
On the face of it, a king’s portrait immortalized in tarnished metal, chubby cheeks under an ornate crown.
On the face of it, Flynn’s nervous aggravation could easily be explained. The seat’s restraints cut into his neck and he wanted nothing more than to tear them from their bolts and throw them away like poisonous vipers. If it wouldn’t have incurred a massive fine – and brought questioning Colarium marshals too close for comfort – he might have. Beneath the white collar of fabric fashioned as bandage and concealment, pain clawed its way down from the fresh wound that encircled his neck. He shifted his leather lapels to hide the painful reminder of what he’d left behind a mere week before.
Nose inches from a tablet’s glowing screen, the man seated next to him was too ensconced in a novel to notice anything about the too-young war veteran at his left. For that, Flynn was grateful. Forged documents from a black-toothed brothel owner had allowed him to slip through the clotted veins of the public transport system unnoticed. No AWOL soldier wanted to be noticed. He was too close to home to get arrested because some random civie paid him too close attention.
He clenched his fist around the metal coin and then spread his hand flat, stretching out his fingers. On the flip side, the face was replaced by an ancient, mast-riddled sailing ship.
On the flip side, Flynn could attribute the nauseous roil in his gut to the fact that his return journey home came after far too many years away. This sort of a reunion could be awkward – or worse, deadly. He’d pissed off friend and foe alike when he left. But the events and choices of four years past coming back to bite him wasn’t what worried him.
He’d grown up on Soocilla. The rural farming planet visible through the shuttle’s tiny window was nothing special to the Colarium. They were the typical bureaucratic government, concerned most with that which prospered and therefore profited and produced tax revenue. No one would call Soocilla profitable, and so they held little interest for the Colarium.
Flynn loved every cranberry bog that dotted the edges of his home town and the forests further off where he’d run his brother ragged in myriad games of hide and seek as they tried to lose their sister. He’d been happy here. Looking out the window of the shuttlecraft, he cursed the day he’d been foolish enough to take up a cause. Even more foolish was finding a cause willing to take him at the meager age of sixteen.
He had been young and naïve and he thought he could simply leave when he wanted to. But the Lazarai “freedom fighters” turned out to have a different idea about freedom than Flynn had. He did leave, and he’d paid a heavy price for it. But while leaving the Lazarai had nearly cost him his life, coming home to face the family he left behind was an infinitely more daunting task.
And then there was the third side of a coin, the one no one thought about. Flynn rubbed his finger along the edge, rippled and softened with time. Flynn knew it could be honed sharp enough to slice a man open and see his entrails spill out before him. He shook his head, gritting his teeth at the pain tearing through his neck. He was done thinking about gore and death. He’d seen enough of both in the war he’d left home to fight – the war “his side” had lost.
Although he’d only been gone four years, he’d given up his youth when he’d signed on to fight with the Lazarai on Ludo.
He’d relinquished far more than his youth. That was the edge that dug into him the most. It was the reason he knew he had to leave, and the reason he knew he should have stayed.
Exhaling a breath that burned in his much abused esophagus, he turned again to the small porthole beside him, looking out on the space field and the quiet farmland beyond. When your side loses a war, you should be upset, shouldn’t you? But he wasn’t upset; he was furious – just about the wrong things.
Dwelling on it for far too long, he’d finally found his answer. One he should have known from the start. He’d tried to deal with thieves honorably. That was his biggest mistake.
He he could have run in the middle of the night. He could have saved himself a hundred times over. But that sharp edge, the one that cut into his very soul, had nothing to do with coming home. The nauseous guilt threatening to tear him in half was reserved solely for the one person he couldn’t save.
His mother was undoubtedly going to do what the Lazarai or any Colarium soldier had yet to accomplish. His death would be painful and it would come at the end of a frying pan, not a government-issued pistol. At least he’d be buried at home.
The light above his head flickered to green, signifying the end of his eighteen-hour flight. Flynn gingerly removed the four point harness and tried to keep a pained expression from his face. Gritting his teeth, he slid forward on the faux leather seat and pulled in a deep, searing breath as he prepared himself.
Twenty year old men did not wince at the pressure of pushing themselves from a shuttle seat. They were not riddled with aches and bruises – not without a bar fight the night before to show for it. But Flynn was never going to be the average twenty-year-old man. He’d given up that right years ago when he enlisted.
A cheerful message popped up on the large display at the front of the shuttle. The cartoon-like spaceline mascot apprised disembarking passengers of everything from the weather to local sports scores. And then the screen turned to black, displaying the date and time in glowing numerals.
1337 PD. Post Destruction... Flynn hated that they called it that. Bad enough he had to live in a galaxy mourning a single planet’s passing, they threw it at him with every date marker and communiqué. Not that it helped, he couldn't even remember what Earth looked like any more. Pathetic.
Beside him, the reader groped blindly for the bag by his feet. Flynn pushed it closer with his boot. The man grasped the handles tightly, heaving it with him as he stood. He departed without a backward glance, leaving Flynn alone in the row for the first time in eighteen long hours. He shoved the coin in his pocket. Out of sight, out of mind; that’s how he got by these days.
Flynn waited calmly, steeling himself to the impending pain. The passengers who’d endured the full extent of the seven-stop itinerary struggled through the aisle. He cast a quick glance around the cabin.
No one on the ship would cause him trouble – if they were going to, it would have started already. These people were travel weary and dead eyed. He turned his focus to the bag holding all he presently owned. The collection of possessions was pitiful, but Flynn refused to feel sorry for himself. As long as he had his life, he wouldn’t complain. Others had far less.
Ten minutes later, the only ones left on board were the flight crew and himself. He hoisted the bag into the seat the reader had vacated and gritted his teeth. This pain would be nothing compared to what
he’d endure when he finally made it home. One searing bout of agony, a half-hearted grunt, and he was back on his feet.
He stepped to the top of the disembarking ramp and paused. The world he’d left hadn’t changed. He closed his eyes, smelling salt and green as the cool spring air blew across his face.
In the last four years he’d tried to explain what green smelled like to half a dozen people he’d met in his travels. It never worked. It was too fresh, too alive to describe to someone who’d never experienced it.
He opened his eyes and let out a long sigh. If someone were here to kill him, he’d given them more than enough time for a clean shot. He searched the tarmac for any familiar faces—family or the men who were sure to be chasing him.
It was a risk coming home, but he’d trained half the jerks dogging his tail and he knew their methods— their limitations. It wasn’t as if they couldn’t figure it out, but they wouldn’t easily guess where he was going. He’d given them a bogus story about his home planet long ago, too embarrassed by the farming community to admit his origin. And he’d gone a round-about enough way home; no one should have been able to keep up.
No one waited on the tarmac for him with a hug or a hand blaster. It was a blessing the rag-tag army of rebels he’d deserted didn’t know where to find him and his family didn’t know he was coming. It was a lonely return. But it was safer that way – for all of them.