by A. B. Keuser
Flynn wasn’t fool enough to play. Chad wasn’t fool enough to ask.
Shrugging, and immediately regretting it, Flynn bit back a wince. “Fuck if I know, haven’t seen her all day.”
“Last I heard, you were headed to deal with a tricky feeder.” Chad glared at Flynn’s neck. “Where’s your better-looking brother?”
“Right here.” Putty flopped into the chair Seamus had vacated. “What do you need my pretty face for this time?”
“Nothing, I just like to keep track of you so I know you’re not killing one another… or yourselves.” Mouth thinning, he nodded at Flynn’s neck. “Or do something like that.”
Flynn could feel the drying blood. “I’ll deal with it when I get home.”
“Not well enough.” Chad said, heading for the back.
Chadrick VanHeslinbergenstone—a man with a mouthful of a last name, a medical degree worth more than half the town, and eyes Flynn had heard more than one person complain were wasted on him—stood at the bar, talking to Susan like they were discussing a tab, not the medical supplies on hand.
They’d been friends longer than Flynn knew and the older woman handed across a kit no doubt reserved for bar brawls--no doubt curated by Chad himself.
A man in the far corner shouted something, the beginning clatter of a fight fizzle, died. And when he looked back, Chad was already in his seat going through a mess of gauze and creams.
The doctor had a face that should have had him staring in holo-ads. But the boy Flynn had known since he was twelve had never liked the spotlight. The man hadn't grown out of that shyness.
Most men with Chad’s pay grade would have spent their leave partying on Oblivion. But, if what Putty said was true, this wasn’t the first outpost he’d gotten back to Colarium medical code standards on his mandatory month-long sabbaticals. Few others would loathe the glitz of his current position in the Colarium medical complex on Caireaux.
Chad scooted his chair closer and snipped through the cloth around Flynn’s neck, a grimace marring that pretty face as he peeled it away.
“It’s fine.” Flynn grabbed his friend’s wrist to keep him from touching the wound. Clean hands or not….
Sliding a pair of over-magnified glasses up his nose, Chadrick squinted at Flynn’s neck. “Actually, it looks like infection is setting in. Again.”
“It’s fine.” Flynn clenched his teeth, knowing the doctor wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“How’d it happen this time?”
Flynn glared, wondering how he could get out from under his friend’s ministrations and still manage to get lunch. “One of Putty’s toys tried to get up and walk away.”
Objecting loudly, Putty told the story while Chadrick did something painful with swabs and a black liquid that smelled like rotten whiskey.
Somehow, Flynn got through the ordeal without grinding his teeth to dust.
“And then I paid a visit to the Captain’s office to let them know why their problem wasn’t getting fixed today.”
“It’s the Colarium trying to drive us out again.” Someone, somewhere behind him—Chad wouldn’t let him turn—called out. “They say they’re happy to have us do the work and pay us for the oopeedee, but they want to cut out us middle men.”
Flynn smiled at the overly slurred version of UPD that had been stuffed in the middle of that sentence, and Chad gave him a warning look.
“I’m not going to call for a revolution when you’ve got a scalpel and my throat at your disposal.” Flynn kept his words quiet.
“If it was anyone else saying that, I’d be seriously offended.” Chad pulled out a roll of gauze and began twisting it around Flynn’s neck. “From you? I don't know what my upper limit is anymore.”
Before Flynn could ask what that meant, another patron started grumbling about power fluctuations and breakdowns. “Used to be a time when we could count on our equipment. Count on the people who kept it up, but now…. I’d swear someone is sabotaging us.”
Another patron muttered something under his breath, then said. “I’d put money on it.”
Susan dropped a tray of drinks on the table. “Ignore that fossil. His ‘good old days’ weren’t as idyllic as he thinks.”
She passed around their usual drinks and Flynn took his with a quiet thanks.
Susan didn’t look like she could control an entire bar of drunk and rowdy miners. But he’d seen the woman drive out a man twice her size without having to raise a finger, much less her voice.
Thick around the middle with a ruddy face and dark blonde hair that might have been permanently trapped in her bun, the barkeeper looked perfectly at home as she slipped behind her ten-foot long wooden countertop.
But as the other patrons continued to speak of conspiracy, Flynn looked out the window toward the rickety solar tower and pulley system that still serviced a large portion of the town. Perhaps the captains should post guards.
“The Colarium definitely isn’t causing your machinery breakdowns.” Putty twisted his glass on the table. “It would cost them more in downtime if they tried to take control than it does to pay the prices you post.”
“But those shakes we’ve been having? They’ve got scientists working up all sorts of messed up experiments in their labs on those planets where no one has to follow any kind of regulations.”
“They’re not causing ground flux.” Susan swapped out the man’s empty glass.
“You’re sure it’s not just old, faulty systems breaking down after so many years of use?” Putty’s eyes were closed, the movement beneath his lids told Flynn serious calculations were taking place. “From what I’ve seen most of your problems are age related.”
“The last explosion came from an extruder that was less than three months old.” Susan’s lip twitched upward in an impression of a snarl.
Odd for someone who’d just been arguing in Putty’s favor.
The bartender was one of the more skeptical of the residents Flynn had met in his brief time on the planet, but Flynn wasn’t willing to assume the woman had her head screwed on any straighter than the rest of the people who chose to live there.
“I suppose there’s a possibility someone’s getting in.” Susan looked toward the windows and scowled.
Flynn thought of the person he’d seen before the machine had gone into overload, but he wasn’t stupid enough to bring it up. No one was looking to him for comment anyway.
To the people of the Redlands, he was just Putty’s dumb kid brother, here to play muscle when it was needed. And he was happy to let everyone believe it.
“What about that ground shift though?” One of the men asked.
“The ground is a veritable honeycomb of mine shafts. Even when you fill the dead ones back up, you’re destabilizing the soil.” Chadrick packed away his kit as he spoke. “I’d be suspicious if things weren’t settling every now and then.”
“We’ve been here long enough to know what to avoid.” Drea Saguas stood in the door to the street, light spilling in from behind her. “Our focus charges are specially calibrated for this planet, for these mines. None of the fluctuations have been strong enough to be suspicious. The good doctor’s right, you’re looking for ghosts where none exist.”
Flynn shared a glance with Drea, but said nothing.
“You know what I think?” A man in the corner asked, continuing before anyone could answer him one way or another. “I think it’s the Refuti.”
“Of course you do, your boyfriend works for ACOOR.” Chad chuckled into his beer.
A few laughed, but others nodded, and Flynn forced himself to focus on his food instead of looking north.
The RTF Terrafarm was the largest on the planet. Flynn knew enough about the company to understand why some might suggest their involvement.
“The RTF do hostile takeovers, but that’s corporate mergers. Boardroom stuff.” Chadrick leaned back in his chair, stretching out his neck. “And they’ve had two decades to try to get in on the mining business here.
Why wait until now?”
Grumbles met his question from the far end of the room and Flynn took his finished glass up to the bar.
“Can I talk to you outside, Mr. Monroe?” Drea was at his left, her expression inscrutable.
She’d said the “mister” a little too sharply, but he followed her out and away from the speculations of sabotage.
“Your brother said there were problems. What happened?”
“I don’t know. The thing went into overload. Why don’t you ask him?” Flynn glanced down the long drag and gingerly tested his neck.
“Because he can spew technical data all day long, but you’re an expert in… security and the men in there aren’t as far from the mark as they might sound.”
“Someone actually is messing with the mines?”
She nodded. “It’s not the RTF. Sophia’s not exactly a friend, but she’s never been anything but supportive of our efforts. And if she wanted to get in on our operation, she’d buy her way in. She’s not going to create a mess she’ll just have to clean up later.”
“Okay, then who?” Flynn had his own theory, but he wasn’t about to voice it.
“That’s the problem. I don’t know. I can’t discount the Colarium. Regardless of anything else, they do like to control things.” She swallowed, glanced at the peace officer’s station a block away. “Do you think the Lazarai might have something to do with it?”
Flynn set his jaw, trying to decide what to tell her, trying to decide what she could possibly know about his past.
“Maybe? They have to fuel their ships too, and I doubt the tithe the Sisters smuggle off planet is enough to satisfy their needs.” And it would never be enough to satisfy Archimedes. “What do the other captains think?”
“They don’t trust you if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It wasn’t.”
“They don’t know what I’ve already guessed. And it’s better for everyone here if it stays that way.” She smiled at him but there was a threat behind her bared teeth. “For now, I’ve gotten Henri’s permission to use you anyway I see fit... within my jurisdiction.”
He considered making a joke about his uses, but Drea hadn’t appreciated his humor yet. He didn’t expect her to fake a laugh just because she needed his help. And he certainly didn’t want her to take him up on an offer he hadn’t meant.
She went to leave. “Find an answer for me and I’ll make sure your stay here is worthwhile.”
From another woman, it might have sounded like a sexual advance. Another man might have taken it as such, regardless.
“Oh, and by the way?” Drea didn’t turn back to him, but there was enough menace in her tone to know she’d do more than just scold him next time. “Don’t ever lie to my kid.”
She left him alone in the street and he glanced at the bright interior of Susan’s, but had no desire to go back to the pooling suspicions.
Explosions, implosions, cave-ins. It was all bound to happen in the course of normal mine operations. He’d seen workers carting around bags of focus charges and det cord. They might have been locked up when not in use, but a single misplaced mini bomb could spell disaster.
The days were short on Sukiyaki, and even though he’d be underground where natural light levels didn’t matter, searching the mines in the dead of night wasn’t going to win him any friends. But what no one knew….
Hitching a ride on the back of an automated crew transport still running its trips despite the suspension of the mine’s operations. The trundling vehicle’s straight line path gave him an unimpeded view of the flats that spread from the spires, to the town and the horizons in both of the other directions. If he hadn’t just left town, he could have believed there was nothing, and no one else on the planet.
Putty had given him the passlock code, but Flynn still felt as though he was breaking in as he headed down the dark slope.
A dozen meters down, Flynn paused in the clay scented shaft where he’d been when Putty had called for help.
The shallow mine had been among the first bored and its walls were still rough. The lights had been ripped out of the cross tunnel the figure had disappeared down, but Flynn grabbed a phosphor stick from the cabinet of supplies bolted to the wall a meter into the tunnel.
Cracking it, he studied the floor. A depression in the thick dust—a trail of snakelike void.
He knew the signs of a tunnel that had run its course and was slated for infill. The rail cart track was one of the first things to be removed, repurposed.
Without the noise of Putty and his machinery, he heard, more than felt a draft from the far end of the tunnel. He followed it, and the depression, keeping his boots in the same line.
The wind whistled, louder with each step, with each ventilation shaft he passed.
Flynn dodged small piles of dislodged rocks, and took care to not trip in the rubble in the slowly vanishing dust at his feet.
This part of the mine had been bled dry. Nothing on the rock walls gave clue to any remaining UPD-5.
They were scarred, useless.
He could relate.
The footprints—and they were footprints now the dust had given way to bare clay—followed a path down the tunnel for twenty minutes before he found anything worth commenting on aside from the likelihood the walker had a limp.
What should have been a dead end sloped upward, and Flynn dropped the phosphor stick behind a pile of tumbled rocks.
Enough light seeped down, even here, that he didn’t need it anymore. As he climbed, he wanted free hands—and not because of the steepness of the slope.
The shaft opened out in the middle of a stand of rocky red spires, a rise over the flat of the desert.
To the north, he could see the spindle of the RTF tower and to the south, the darkening silhouette of the town.
Twilight descended over the Redlands, green and orange painted the sky a ghastly hue. And muddy gray-brown moons appeared as the sky darkened overhead, joining the already unfortunate palette.
Jagged lines cut into the dirt at his feet leading down and away.
Tire tracks.
And boot prints he could now distinguish—with tread that matched those he wore. A Lazarai favorite.
In the distance, Flynn heard the echoing buzz and cough of two stroke motors.
Drea’s suspicions weren’t baseless.
Archimedes Holzen wanted something with this planet. What he was willing to do to get it…. Flynn’s skin crawled at the thought.
Four - Kathrynn
Twisting the sickle in her hand, letting the crescent blade scrape one palm as the hilt spun in her other, Kathrynn Monroe watched her best friend argue with one of his lieutenants across the room.
She’d ditched her robes—as she always did when not within the temple walls—but the man arguing with Archie knew what she was.
He glanced at her every seventh word, as though at word eight, she’d spring from her seat and remove his head for the lies he stabbed through her like burning needles.
Those lies were why she’d remained on this side of the room. Proximity was as much a factor as the breadth of his falsehoods.
The room was round. Three doors. Light filtered down through the algae covered glass of the domed ceiling thirty feet above her head. A lot of space for his words to diffuse and escape.
When Archie turned to her, the other man flinched. His Adam’s apple bobbed. Despite the cold that had forced her to wrap her jacket more tightly around her, perspiration slicked his forehead.
She twisted the blade once more and then set it on the table, resting the handle on the decoratively beveled edge, easily in reach, just in case.
Silence stretched on and she held Archie’s stare. No matter their differences, this was a myth she was happy to help him perpetuate.
She couldn’t speak to him through their thoughts, but the man wracked with worry beside their not-so-fearless leader didn’t need to know that. The longer Archie’s men thought she was one step away
from a goddess, the more control she had over them—the more control she had over him.
Not a weapon she’d needed to wield five months ago.
Archie broke contact sharply and glared at the man. Terse words echoed too quietly for her to hear, and the man turned on his heel and scurried from the room.
And then, she was alone with the man whose name was known in every corner of civilized space.
Archimedes Holzen.
A man despised by most, feared by many, and loved by a very few—fewer now.
Last remaining leader of the Lazarai rebellion. Her best friend. The man who’d almost killed her brother, and destroyed four lives in his failure.
He stalked toward her, jaw twitching in his scowl and gripped the chair back across from her as though it was the only thing keeping him upright. He glanced back at the closed door and then down at the rotund belly under his ostentatious robe.
“You look menacing either way.”
The glare he shot her was half-hearted.
Physical deceptions didn’t sting.
He watched her warily a moment longer, then pulled the garment over his head, taking the flab with it.
Divested and in a shirt that showed the truth of what he was—a soldier, ready and able to fight anyone who attempted to stand in his way—he slumped in his chair and dragged a hand over his face.
But he didn’t close his eyes.
Archie hadn’t learned if he could trust her again. Not yet. And she had no intention of letting him off easy.
Flynn had only escaped his noose four months earlier and she could easily reach the weapon that had removed twenty-six heads by her hand, to date.
Twenty-seven wouldn’t be hard, but the Great Mother hadn’t shown her Archie’s end. So… not today.
These uncomfortable silences had become too normal. She’d taken to spending her free time in the jungles, breathing in the damp, reading the patterns of the universe in the bleeding veins of the uampan leaves. A practice that had, no doubt, caused their rift to widen.
Few of his futures were bright.
A pile of those deep green leaves rested on the seat perpendicular to her. Their viscous humors dripped to the floor with an uneven patter to stain the stone grooves black.