Slow Burn Dark

by A. B. Keuser

“Which one is that again?”

  “Hideous shirt.” She waved a hand in front of her chest, and when he snorted, she knew he’d convince Putty to leave the others and brave a confrontation. Knew she didn't have time to compose herself.

  When her temporary lover stepped into her office, he studied her with something akin to disgust.

  “Who are you… really?”

  “I didn’t intend to deceive you when we met,” she leaned forward on her desk, clasping her hands so she wouldn’t fidget. “But I was in the middle of helping the ACOOR farm with a problem, and when I help other farms—it doesn’t happen often—it’s easier for me to do it as a random private contractor.

  “When my name gets thrown into the mix people get weird. So, only three people knew I was on the planet. Everyone else knew Phee. Not even my own people knew I was here.”

  “Sophia Refuti” Putty shook his head and looked away. “you’re what, the fifteenth richest person in the Colarium?”

  “Sixth.”

  He shot her a look, as if there wasn’t a difference. “I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that you lied. Maybe I should ask for back payment. Usually when people like you take on play things, they’re paid handsomely for it.”

  He might as well have stabbed her, so she stabbed right back. “Do you want me to treat you like a whore?”

  “You already have.”

  “Putty…”

  “No. You left. You didn’t tell me you were never coming back, you just left. And you let me believe….”

  “I never made you any promises.”

  “No, but you also knew I thought you’d be back, and you let me think it. Let me imagine I could wait here and go on like we had. Did that week mean nothing to you?”

  “Of course it meant something. I don’t sleep with any man that crosses my path, and I certainly don’t spend that much time with someone if I don’t like them.”

  “That explains your lap dog.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The muscle bound jerk who practically threw himself between us.”

  Sophia didn’t mention that Putty was almost exactly the same size. “He’s my bodyguard, he’s paid to be concerned over my welfare.”

  “Then you’ve never slept with him?”

  She didn’t answer. Didn’t want to admit that he was right. She also didn’t want to lie to him.

  Mouth pressed to a flat line, he rolled his eyes and turned toward the door. “I don’t need anything more from you.”

  “Not even an explanation?”

  He tensed and she wondered if he’d turn back and rage at her. But his fist unclenched, the movement forced.

  “Not even that.”

  One of Banks’ men stepped up beside him as soon as he’d opened the door and without looking back, Putty disappeared.

  Banks looked in, a wary glance at her face, before he moved into the room fully.

  He let her fume for a few minutes, and that was more than she’d expected.

  Banks leaned on the wall, glaring out the empty doorway. “How do you know that one?”

  “It’s not important.”

  “You sure? Because I’m pretty sure he’s in love with you, and he has the look of someone willing to do… scary things for the people he loves.”

  “I knew him for a week. It wasn’t anything serious. And then, I left. He didn’t even know my real name.”

  “Did you perhaps give him a reason to think there was something more to the encounter than giving yourself a birthday present?”

  “I didn’t make him any promises. Didn’t say any of the words people ascribe to relationships. Hell, I told him I was leaving and made no mention of a timeline for coming back. There was nothing in the way of commitment between us. Any conclusions he leapt to, he did so on his own.”

  Banks shrugged and looked down the long corridor. “So what are we going to do with them?”

  “Leave them where they are for now. They’ll be safer here. If Flynn is who we think he is—and at this point there’s little doubt—the other two won’t be able to accuse us of abducting them without implicating themselves in harboring a fugitive.” She turned to look down over the planet. “We have more important things to deal with….”

  Things she dearly hoped her brother hadn’t destroyed.

  Pushing herself to standing, she knocked a roll of schematic film from where it had been rolled up on the desk. The glimpse of its contents confused her.

  “What is this?” Sophia turned the plans every which way and still couldn’t make sense of them.

  Couldn’t decide if what she was looking at was insanity or genius. Decided the two were too often confused.

  Banks glared at the sheet with her, and then moved to her desk, tapping in a long, seemingly random string of numbers.

  Random until she noticed the same line on the bottom of her sheet.

  “Colarium patent office part coding.” He looked up at her with something resembling concern… but angrier. “The only thing I can find on it is that it’s Colarium tech, a prototype… stolen by the Lazarai.”

  “What does it do?”

  “The information isn’t available. This is an indictment of the company that made it. There was speculation they handed it over.”

  “Lovely, but what are the plans for… whatever this is, doing in my office?”

  Banks looked toward the empty doorway and she knew what he was thinking.

  “He can’t be that foolish.”

  “Can’t he?”

  Sophia swore and swallowed that ugly doubt that wriggled up her throat like bile. “We need to deal with this. Fast.”

  Thirty-Five - Flynn

  After Putty’s return, they sat in silence for what seemed like hours. Flynn didn’t move until the hatch door’s release wheel screeched and spun.

  The grinding of the lock had Flynn instinctively reaching for the gun that wasn’t at his hip.

  With an agonizing slowness, it opened but no guard came in.

  Flynn tensed, holding Chadrick back from the open portal.

  “Wait.” His whisper was too loud in his own ears.

  Only the hush of the ventilation system proved his ears still worked.

  He wasn’t going to play their game.

  Leaning back as casually as he could in the stiffly molded plastic, he stretched out his legs, crossing his arms. And waited.

  Moving beside him, and squatting down so he could whisper, chad asked, “What’s going on?”

  Flynn didn’t bother to whisper. Whoever they were, whatever game they were playing, he didn’t want any part of it. “We have to wait for an invitation.”

  From the other side of the door, a beleaguered sigh echoed through the hatch, and a red cowboy hat peeked around it.

  Seamus smiled—weakly—up at them. “You guys want out of here, or what?”

  “How the hell did you get up here?” Flynn couldn’t decide whether he should clap the kid on the back or upside the head.

  “It’s not that difficult to go unnoticed when people are worried whether the ex-Lazarai they're trying to coerce has a gun.

  “Most people don’t pay any attention to me anyways. So I snuck onto the transport ship before they closed the door. I would have found you sooner, but I got a little turned around. All of these hallways look the same and I didn’t exactly want anyone to see me. But you’ve got a friend up here. He told me the way.”

  “You stowed away?” Putty asked, staring at the kid as though they were some strange fungal growth in a steamy engine compartment.

  “You shouldn’t be complaining. I’m saving your butts, aren’t I? Seamus looked too pleased with themself, but now was not the time to give them a throttling.

  They held out Flynn’s gun with a big smile, “The place is pretty empty. We shouldn’t have any problems getting out.

  As soon as Flynn took the gun, Seamus tore off down the corridor.

  When Flynn caught up to them, Seamus stood in front of a hatch th
at looked identical to all the others save for the keypad to the left of the locking mechanism.

  “I don’t suppose you saw the key-code?”

  “Nope.”

  The door wasn’t going to open on its own….

  “Putty, we need you.”

  His brother was already scowling before he got close.

  “This lock is top of the line. I couldn’t decode it if I had days.” He squinted at the housing. “But I don’t need to bypass the lock. All I have to do is break the door.”

  Flynn looked from Putty to the solid steel door. “That doesn’t sound like it’s going to be any easier.”

  Putty rifled through his empty pockets and acted as though it was some sort of saving grace when he found a scrap of paper in a small back pocket. He held it aloft as though it was a gift from the Great Mother herself.

  It looked like a gum wrapper. Flynn would have thrown it away, so when Putty tore it in half, licking each piece and affixed the wet paper to the hatch hinges, Flynn was concerned some part of Putty’s brain might have been left on the planet’s surface.

  “Get around the corner, quick!” Putty insisted, shooing them like sheep.

  They did as they were told, though Seamus only came because they were dragged.

  Flynn opened his mouth to ask when a fizzling pop echoed behind them, and a metallic thunk echoed through the corridors.

  Seamus stood when his grip loosened, and Putty grabbed them, yanking them back just before the ear-splitting boom.

  Flynn didn’t hear it as much as he felt it. The concussion trapped his lungs and shoved him forward. And then it was over.

  When he finally looked back around the corner, the short connecting hall was full of metal splinters—the smoke had been sucked away by the quick-working ventilation system.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Seamus shot around him to survey the destruction.

  “That is amazing!” The kid sifted through the shrapnel, picking up random pieces and shoving the interesting ones in their pocket. “What is it and where do I get some?”

  Flynn looked at the mess rather than his brother. “Honestly, I thought you were crazy for a minute there.”

  Putty handed Seamus the charred scrap of the paper’s remains. “It’s unstick tape. You’re only supposed to use a teensy bit at a time. It's meant to blow out bolts you can’t get loose.

  “Kat introduced me to it, years ago.”

  Of course she did.

  Flynn picked his way to the door.

  “Seems like overkill to me.” Chad examined the melted metal, his nose wrinkled.

  “It was initially used for demolition, but as you can see, it gets a bit messy.”

  Seamus tugged at one side of the door, letting out a small grunt of irritation when it didn’t budge. “Too bad it didn’t work. I couldn’t even fit through that.”

  Putty patted the kid on the head and took hold of one of the half-melted, half cracked holes in the hinge side of the door. “A little help? We’re going to be bending the lock cable on the other side.

  They heaved in three good goes before the remains of the door slid far enough away from the wall to get a grip for pushing.

  In the end, they only managed to get it half way open. But it was enough for all of them to slip through.

  The door had separated the administration section of the complex from the one where actual work was done.

  Seamus led the way, never once getting lost, and Flynn only stopped him when they reached the hangar access. It had gone too easy up to this point, and if someone was going to stop them… it would be here.

  They stepped into a deserted hangar. The lights were on, but no one was home.

  Almost.

  Two men guarded the ship’s airlock entrance. They chatted away until it was too late. One would wake up with a headache and a lump on his head, the other… he’d probably have a headache too… and a bruised trachea for his pains.

  Flynn studied their faces—knew for sure that they were Lazarai. He was only happy to note they weren’t men he’d trained. Despite their ineptitude making his life easier, their lack of observational skills was a disgusting oversight on their commander’s part.

  It was sloppy.

  “We’ll count it a blessing and hope our luck holds.” Flynn herded everyone into an empty transport, dragging the unconscious Lazarai in as well.

  They could cool their heels in Henri’s lock--up.

  Flynn pulled himself up to the cockpit, leaving the others to find their own seats in the back. Flicking the controls, he hurried through preflight. The sooner they were back on the planet, the better.

  By the time they were ready to take off, Putty had joined him in the copilot’s chair. “Let’s go. I don’t want to set foot on this moon ever again.”

  Flynn slipped from the hangar before the doors had a chance to fully open.

  The instrument panel chirped warnings at him, and he ignored them. He knew the sound of dire alarms when he heard them, and these weren’t

  When he’d cleared the doors and set them on course for the planet below, he read what the ship was freaking out about.

  “We’re overweight.”

  “How bad?” Putty unsnapped the straps and scooted to the front edge of the copilot’s seat.

  “Well…. Our chances of making it to the surface are dropping. The atmosphere is going to be hell.”

  “I could drop your friends out?”

  Flynn shot him a look, and went back to navigating the magnetic fluctuations of the moon’s lesser gravity.

  “Alright, fine, I’ll off load some of the crates… maybe a few of them are full of fertilizer, fertilizer and I’ll get to drop some stink bombs on them.”

  Putty disappeared into the back, and Flynn heard him exchange a few words with Chadrick and Seamus.

  Then it was silent until his screens showed him the cargo door opening, and an emergency purge initiating.

  He counted the seconds until the hatch started to close again, and looked at the screen that showed him the falling cargo.

  A trio of crates falling straight into a crevasse…

  Showed him the bright spark of an explosion.

  He flipped through the screens, pulling up the manifest, and swore as he threw the thrusters into full burn.

  A heavy crash echoed from behind him, and Putty threw himself into the copilot’s seat, wrestling with the belts.

  “What the hell?”

  “We need to go, NOW!”

  Flynn flipped the shuttle into a barrel roll it wasn’t rated for and pulled the controls sharply up, steering them toward Sukiyaki’s surface at too steep of an angle. Hoping the descent didn’t tear them in half. There was no time to give a warning back to the others. He could only hope they’d strapped in.

  His instrument panel lit up and the bomb’s shockwave threw them into the thermosphere.

  A hundred bogies shot after them

  Random trajectories sent his radar into a fuzzy scramble. He dodged and wove as best he could, but he didn’t have any good options.

  They hit Sukiyaki’s mesosphere and lurched, bouncing on the heat and pressure changes like a dog’s ball thrown in the middle of a hail storm. Every adjustment Flynn made only worsened the turbulence. Something hit them from behind and a moment later, their port engine stalled, cut out.

  The next threw them into an uncontrolled spin.

  At least they’d die with style.

  Putty cursed and threw off his restraints. He hit every surface as he scrambled through the spinning cockpit and disappeared back toward the engine panels.

  “What are you doing? Get those straps back on!”

  “If I don’t get the engine going, straps aren’t going to matter. We’ll be fertilizer when we finally hit the surface.”

  Another impact and the ship careened sideways.

  Sukiyaki was a giant, solid rock. It was more likely they’d end up like a bug splattered on a buggy’s windscreen t
han he’d be able to safely glide them down.

  Flynn blinked, trying to see through the dizzy revolutions of the craft.

  A massive chunk of rock hit the port wing, shearing off more than it left behind.

  The force jerked them in the opposite direction. Flynn flared the remaining engine, quickly stabilizing them, just enough to…

  He pulled up, hard. The bottom of the ship scraped against one of the sandstone spires as a tearing metallic sound screached through the ship.

  They bumped and banged and Flynn grit his teeth as he fought with the controls. Behind him, he heard Chadrick praying to the Great Mother. The words came quickly… and loud. Flynn hoped she could hear the doctor over the sound of tearing metal, because there was no chance they’d pull up.

  Each impact on the spires slowed them, sending up chunks of stone and clay as they literally bounced off.

  The panel in front of him flickered out and the steering column locked.

  The dust and debris covering the front viewport meant he had no idea how close the ground was until they hit it. Their impact pushed them into the hard, dusty soil as rocks and sand strafed the viewport. Flynn closed his eyes and tried to force himself to breath normally.

  There was nothing else he could do to change the outcome.

  He lurched forward, the restraints holding him tight to the pilot’s chair as the viewscreen finally shattered and he was pelted with debris—the shards of safety glass didn’t cut, but they didn’t feel good either.

  The ship screeched to a dusty halt as the last rocks rained in on him.

  Flynn squinted through the brown haze and pulled his shirt sleeve over his mouth, breathing shallowly, choking on the sand in the air while trying to get his pulse back to normal.

  Half buried, he shoved the loose rocks away. None of them were larger than a chicken’s egg. Most of what covered him was sand.

  “Are we all alive?” Seamus asked from somewhere behind him.

  Chad’s response was immediate. His brother’s following right after, though muffled and angry.

  Flynn laughed in spite of himself. Something snapped and he couldn’t stop.

  He laughed so hard, his sides hurt, and by the time he managed to see straight again, the others stared at him in varying degrees of concern.