by A. B. Keuser
Without waiting for a response, she swept from the room, her skirt slithering over the airlock hatch after her.
“She’s not wrong, you know.” Chad said, testing another tissue sample, for Mother knew what. “How long has it been?”
“I’ll go when I’m ready.” When Chad gave him a long look, he added, “You’re not my mother stop acting like it.”
He’d go soon. The Great Mother guided others to prod him back to the temple when that was where she needed him to be.
“Have you eaten lunch yet? You’re not usually this grumpy.”
Flynn threw a gesture before leaving through the morgue airlock. He needed to find someone who knew who the man was, and he needed to learn what he was doing in the mines. What he might have left behind.
And if he had any connection at all to the Lazarai.
The bite mark gave him a clue and having seen the digital cast of those teeth….. But a legitimate reason to visit the ACOOR farm again wasn’t going to be easy to come by.
And faking authorization from Henri was a gambit he’d only get to use once. This wasn’t the time.
It was early afternoon, but he followed the familiar path to the bar anyway.
Putty was at their usual table, scowling at a half empty glass of amber.
Waving away Susan’s offer for a drink, Flynn pulled out a chair, gritting his teeth against the noisy movement, and sat across from his brother.
“How was the latest viewing? Putty asked, not looking up.
“Better than some of the bodies I’ve had the unfortunate opportunity to see.”
“I bet.” Putty took a long drink.
Flynn was getting used to his brother’s unvoiced opinions on his previous career.
“How was the machinery today?”
“Falling apart. I’m beginning to think Captain North wants his tunnels to disintegrate.” Shaking his head, Putty looked to the ceiling and ran a hand over his face. “Then again, he probably just resents the outside opinion. It’s not like either of us have been welcomed with open arms.”
Susan dropped a pair of burgers on the table, fries bouncing in their basket. “The doctor called. Told me to make you eat something.”
“What would we do without our best friend turned mother?” Flynn asked as he bit into one of the sweet, crunchy fries.
“By the looks of you?” Susan pulled out a seat and resting her crossed arms on the back. “Dead in a gulch somewhere.”
Putty looked up at the bartender. “Sure, but now, tell us something we don’t know…. Like why you’re out here slinging drinks instead of… anywhere else.”
With a sharp glance at the door, Susan leaned closer, “Bruce, my brother…. He’d be about your age, but he signed up for the Colrium fleet right out of school. Said it was moving on. Moving up.”
Flynn had heard too many stories like this. He knew how it ended.
“He was smart enough, I never thought he’d be in any real danger, never thought he’d push for assignment on the front lines.”
“But he died out there.” Flynn had seen that grimace before.
“That’s the truly fucked up part.” A sad sort of smile passed over Susan’s face. “He never made it to the front. His troop transport’s folder blinked out red.
See red and you’re dead.
“When you lose someone you love… you don’t leave the others.”
Flynn knew from the way she said it that Susan hoped the theories were true, that those who flashed out in red didn’t die, but were transported to a different dimension. In his experience, death might be better than the things he’d seen inside bent space.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Flynn had gotten too used to saying those words.
Susan looked at him for too long… “Sorry for the part you played in it?”
Of course, if Henri knew something, her lover would too….
“If I had done, I would be. But nothing that occurred in that story was my fault. I didn’t start the Conflict, I didn’t extend it, and I sure as hell couldn’t stop it.”
“Are you saying you tried.” Putty watched him, puzzled.
“I may be stupid… but even I’m smart enough to know I couldn’t.”
“You could have killed that bastard Holzen dead.” Susan glared at the table top, but her eyes moved to Flynn with the same contempt.
Flynn tapped his collarbone instead of the raw flesh at his neck. “He’s not that easy to kill.
“And neither are you, it would seem” For half a moment, the bartender looked like she wanted to try….
Then she stood, shouted at one of the other patrons, and went back to her bar.
Putty—having finished his own—stole four fries. “I’m pretty sure you’re not welcome here.”
The accent he threw on those words probably would have started a fight if anyone else had heard.
His brother was right. He wasn’t welcome here—wasn’t sure he was welcome anywhere.
Burger half eaten, Flynn looked at his brother and shrugged. “Then I’ll leave.”
And he did.
As Flynn stepped onto the street with the bar at his back, he ignored the empty pit boring a hole in his sternum. Susan’s story was too common.
Whatever the Lazarai had planned for this planet, it wouldn’t be clean, and it wouldn’t be easy. If he was right, it would start another damned war, and more people like Susan would lose their lives as the Colarium pushed unprepared folders into service.
The sun still hung in the sky, high enough he could justify what he was about to do.
As long as his brother was occupied and Chad was working….
But he didn’t get past the hostelry before a small shadow unfolded from the alley between it and the grocer.
Hat hanging on their back, Seamus didn’t seem bothered by the string pulled tight around their neck. Flynn on the other hand, couldn’t look at the kid without wanting to rub at his wound.
“Where are you going?” Seamus kept by his side when Flynn stepped into the road, heading for Putty’s buggy.
It wasn’t stealing if his brother had given him thumbprint access.
“I need to go out to the ACOOR farm.” He probably should have waited until morning, but an evening visit would throw Bosco off.
“I wanna help.” Seamus looked up at him with a stony determination. Something told Flynn there was a specificity to their statement.
“How?”
If the kid could come up with a good reason, he’d be more than happy to give them the chance.
Seamus licked their lips and glanced around as though they were about to impart state secrets. “I can get you into the farm, no questions asked.”
Flynn stopped, ignoring the fact they were in the middle of the road.” Can you?”
They nodded—hard enough the hat bobbed on their back. “Maya lives there. She comes into town for school, but her parents work there. I might have a school project I need to work on with her.”
“Do you actually have a project?”
“Yeah.” They stuffed their hands in their pockets. “I mean, I could do a vidcomm for it, but no one at the gates is going to know that.”
Flynn considered it. The kid could solve one problem… but how many others might they provide? It was a risk.
Flynn had never shied away from those.
“Alright, let’s go.”
Seamus did a little jig.
“You want to drive?” Flynn asked.
“Heck yeah!” Seamus held up their hands, as though Flynn was going to toss them the keys.
Flynn had only been half serious, and he knew what waited for him if Putty found out he’d let the kid behind the wheel….
He tossed the kid the keys anyway.
If they’d hesitated, he would have taken them right back, but Seamus snatched them out of the air like a pro pingball player and hustled to the driver’s seat.
“I’m not going to wind up in a gulch for this, am I?”
&
nbsp; Seamus shot him a glare. “Have a little faith.”
“Faith has gotten me into some pretty hairy situations before….” He pulled the goggles out of the compartment behind the driver's seat and handed one pair to Seamus.
Anything was better than sitting behind that wheel again.
Seamus rubbed their hands together and looked at the dash as if memorizing the readouts before they stabbed the ignition button. “Don’t worry, Putty’s not here, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t find out.”
“If you put us in a ditch, he’ll know.” Sliding into the buggy’s seat he added. “But I think we can safely convince him that you don’t reach the pedals yet. Just don’t prove me wrong when he’s around.”
Seamus looked at where their boots rested on the pedals. They glared at him and depressed the clutch. “I wonder who he’d be more mad at… you, or me?”
The buggy was too loud to talk as they drove across the dead expanse of dirt between the ACOOR farm and town. They were halfway there before Flynn glanced at the speedo and saw that—while there was no speed limit in the wastes outside of town—there was nothing safe about the numbers on the dash.
The ACOOR main gate was in front of them before the sun settled on the horizon, and Flynn waited as the man in the red jumpsuit ambled out of his box-like station. Seamus jiggled in their seat, not bothering to hide their excitement behind the wheel.
He wasn’t armed, but the guard on top of the wall was.
“It’s after business hours, what do you want?” If he found anything odd in Seamus sitting in the driver’s seat, Flynn couldn’t tell.
“The kid has a school project. They’re supposed to work with Maya on it.”
“It couldn’t wait til morning?”
Seamus leaned forward, “Do you want to tell her mom she needs to come to my house?”
The guard’s mouth twisted in a gnarled frown and he circled his hand in the air near his head. The gate slid apart… just far enough Seamus would be able to squeeze the buggy through.
The guard looked at him askance, but waved them on. Maybe having a kid around wasn’t such a bad idea.
“I don’t think I want to know how you learned to drive.”
“You definitely don’t.” Seamus jumped out of the buggy, shouting a little over the noise that no longer existed anywhere but in their ears.
Their face held a dirty tan where the goggles and their bandana hadn’t protected them. And their hair…. Well, it was a good thing the kid had a hat.
“What’s so scary about Maya?”
“Her mom owns the place, so… we can basically get away with just about anything once we get her.”
“I didn’t realize this was going to be a chaperoned date.”
“Dude.” Seamus rolled their eyes before turning away down the hall. “She’s my best friend.”
And Flynn had a feeling from their tone that that was all either of them ever expected to be.
Maya and her mother’s apartments were near the top of the squat solar collection tower, and when Seamus rang the bell, the girl who came to the door looked like she’d been sleeping.
Blinking at them with heavy eyes, she yawned… and then, she recognized him and her gaze turned sharp.
“What do you want?” She was a head taller than Seamus, and when she turned her attention from him, she looked down at them with quirked brows. “I thought we agreed the project could wait until we were at the library.”
“It can. We need to find Bosco.” Seamus said it with an authority they definitely didn’t have.
She groaned. “That guy?”
“Yep.”
“Fine, come in while I find my socks.”
The apartment took up half of the floor, and utilized the entirety of its exterior walls for windows. It looked like a tornado had hit the place… and they were only halfway through cleaning it up.
“Mom!” Maya yelled out. “Seamus is here and we’re going to go do the thing I told you about for school.”
A woman who looked startlingly like her daughter poked her head out, a phone held to her ear by her shoulder. She nodded, and her hands moved in a flicker of signed words.
Maya’s did the same and, after a sharp glance at him, her mother went back into her room and shut the door with a snap.
“She doesn’t like you.” Maya said with a small chuckle.
“Don’t take it too hard.” Seamus threw a soft punch into his arm. “She doesn’t like me either.”
Flynn held his tongue.
“So why do we need to talk to Bosco?” Maya’s voice was muffled as she pulled a sweater over her head.
“He might know something about that dead guy we found.”
Flynn couldn’t stop himself from looking at Seamus with pinched brows. “Might he?”
“What other reason would you have for talking to him?”
“Fair enough.”
Groaning once more, Maya stamped her shoe—the one she hadn’t bothered to untie before cramming her foot into—and said, “Let’s get this over with so I can go back to pretending like he doesn’t exist.”
“Okay, but why don’t you like him?”
“He talks to me like I’m a toddler.” She led the way out the door. “Which makes me want to talk to him like my mom’s about to fire him.”
She didn’t stop walking and he let her and Seamus get ahead of him. Let them talk as he catalogued the terrafarm tower around him.
The whole building was modular, dropped in and assembled by skycrane, no doubt. It was clean—a feat for something in this dust bowl for so long—but uninspiring.
Only small acts of rebellion marred the surfaces.
A pen-mark insult. A carved….
Flynn’s boots scuffed as he stopped, looking at the crudely carved back-to-back Rs with a single dot beneath each of the legs—the last detail hadn’t made its way onto their dead man’s body.
“What’s this?”
Maya turned from the door she’d almost gone through and came back to squint at the symbol.
“My mom says they’re some sort of ecomentalist group that think the mines are killing the planet and that we’re not much better, making it into something that humans can more easily use.”
Seamus scowled. “My mom says they’re working with the Lazarai to mess with the Colarium supply.”
“Why haven’t I heard about it?”
Wincing, Seamus shrugged a single shoulder. “The captains don’t want anyone to know until they’ve figured it out?”
Flynn made a mental note to dig into that. Drea Saguas was going to answer some very pointed questions.
“I’m not even supposed to know about it,” Seamus jiggled their head, dislodging a feather they’d tied to a strand of their hair. “I just heard mom and Captain Stevens arguing about it last month.
If Drea Saguas thought they were connected to the Lazarai, he believed her.
And if this was connected….
“I need to talk to Bosco so we can get back to town.”
“Come on.” Maya said it with all the irritation of a ninety year-old woman headed for a diagnostic exam.
He hoped it was paranoia making him connect dots that weren’t actually there. His knee-jerk reaction was one of a soldier. But this wasn’t a war. Not in the way he was used to. He was going to have to start thinking of it as something else.
If he was going to get out of this alive—if he was going to get everyone else out alive—he’d have to learn Archie’s new game. Because there was no way he’d win if he didn’t know the rules. And winning was their only option.
The door Maya led them to was nondescript, its number half scratched away.
She knocked before Flynn could even think to raise his hand. Then, she slipped behind him.
Not hiding, but putting him ahead of her in the line of fire. She wouldn’t be the first to use him as a shield. He doubted she’d be the last.
Bosco opened the door and his smile dropped from his face like sli
me mold dripping down a wall.
“Who is it?” The voice from deeper inside the apartment was muffled, and Bosco ignored it, stepping out, to shut the door behind him.
He weaved a little before reaching a hand out to the wall to steady himself. “What do you want?”
“He’s high,” Maya rolled her eyes, an action that moved her entire head. “You’re not going to get anything out of him tonight.”
“Oh, hey kiddo.”
Maya rolled her eyes and turned to Flynn. “Now that my job’s done, I’m going home.”
With a glance at Bosco, she gave Seamus one last beleaguered look, and left.
Bosco followed Maya’s gaze with a four second lag, and blinked a dozen times. “Your dad just died, right?”
Face screwed up in disapproval, Seamus looked at Flynn before they turned back to Bosco. “Fifteen years ago.”
“Right. You’re the man of the family now,” he squatted down to the kid’s height. “You’ve got to take on the responsibility that comes with that.”
Seamus looked at Bosco with more weight than their four-foot four stature should have allowed. “My mom is managing just fine asshole. If you think I’m better qualified to take over those so-called responsibilities, you’re an idiot.”
And then, Seamus turned on their heel and left scuff marks on the tiles as they stomped away.
“You’re amazing at making friends.” Flynn watched Seamus go, remembering the door he’d eventually have to take.
“He’s just broke up about his dad.”
“First, they’re not a boy. Making that mistake again, might be more painful than you expect.”
Scrubbing at his face Bosco leaned on the door jamb. “I doubt this is a social call.”
Glassy eyes under heavy lids. Maya was right, Bosco definitely was on something.
“You’re coming into town tomorrow.”
“I am?”
“Yes, or I can come get you. I assure you, getting there on your own will be more comfortable.”
A scowl tugged one corner of Bosco’s mouth down, and Flynn could see the desire to decline the invitation warring in his mind. But he didn’t.
“Where do I meet you?”