Slow Burn Dark

by A. B. Keuser

  “Strange,” Chadrick smiled at his beer. “I thought that was your exact job description—Stevens’ errand boy.”

  Putty threw a peanut and the hard shell thwacked off the doctor’s forehead.

  After an uncomfortable laugh, they lapsed into silence, and Flynn looked around the bar, no one seemed nervous. No one looked sick. As far as he could tell, no one in the room cared that a man had died.

  If one of them had killed him, Flynn was scared for the rest of the population. That kind of cold blooded killer wasn’t the sort that stopped at one body, unless he had a more worrisome plan.

  He filled Putty’s glass when the amber liquid was gone, and convinced Chad to take a glass as well.

  An hour later, the bottle was on its side, Chad couldn't stop yawning, and Patrick had that look in his eyes again. The one directed at the northeast wall, but focused miles beyond.

  “When’s she coming back?” Flynn asked, and Putty turned back with a slight weave.

  “I don’t know.” The smile that briefly altered his face was rueful. “Phee just said she had work to do and she’d see me around.”

  “And you’re sitting here pining while she’s… Great Mother knows where?” Chad stifled another yawn. “That’s not like you.”

  “I’ve got work to do too.”

  “She worked for the terrafarms, right?” Flynn was pretty sure that was what Putty had said.

  “ACOOR. I fixed their radial plow and she was…” the sigh that ended Putty’s sentence was filled with a finality Flynn hadn’t expected.

  “What does she do for them?”

  Silence met the question, and when he looked up, Putty’s face had crumpled in confusion. “I don’t know.”

  Chad no longer looked tired. “You don’t know?”

  “We were busy with other things. It never came up.”

  “So… all you have is a first name. You don’t know who she is, what she does, or even where she is?” Chad’s incredulousness was tempered with disapproval.

  Putty’s jaw tightened. “What’s your point?”

  “Well, I’m starting to think I was right, she doesn’t exist.” Chad turned to Flynn. “Remember that time he tried to make Angela Walters jealous by saying he had a girlfriend from the other side of the province?”

  Flynn laughed, “Yeah, how well did that work out for you?” As soon as he looked back at his brother, he knew the words had been a mistake.

  There was murder in his brother’s eyes, and a reminder that Putty had dealt with years of harassment… and a pair of broken bones when Flynn had outed him.

  Clearly, he hadn’t gotten over it.

  Putty lunged from his chair and decked him.

  The sound of knuckles connecting with his cheekbone was one Flynn had never gotten used to—though he’d had ample opportunity.

  Nor had he grown accustomed to the immediate dull throb, or the iron taste.

  He hit the floor.

  Hard.

  Knew getting up wouldn’t be easy. And not just because the planet was spinning faster than he remembered.

  Spitting out a glob of blood, Flynn wiped his mouth and looked up. “I deserved that.”

  Putty shook his hand, cursing. “I knew you had a hard head, but…”

  Touching the skin that would soon hold a black bruise, he checked his teeth with his tongue. “I broke my cheekbone a few years back. Fractured it a few times before that, so it cracked all the way up to the eye socket. The sister who patched me up put in a metal plate to hold me together… so she wouldn’t have to deal with me anymore.

  “It looks amazing in an x-ray.” Chad said, though no one cared.

  Flynn accepted Chad’s hand up and turned back to his brother, but Putty wasn’t done with him.

  “I’ll just have to remember not to hit your face.”

  Catching another fist in his ribs, Flynn managed to block the next, but the blow that hit his arm wasn’t soft.

  Distantly, Flynn registered shouted commands to stop. He didn’t have time to determine who was trying to help him.

  A moment later, Putty forgot his warning. The punch hit his jaw—no metal there—and twisted his head around, sending a new flash of searing pain through his neck.

  He dropped to the floor, his knees connecting with hard wood was nothing compared to the sharp black spots flooding his vision.

  Cursing like it was a whole other language, he didn’t see the boot coming until Putty had kicked him in the gut, hard enough he rolled onto his back and stared up at the dark bubbles floating near the ceiling.

  It took him another minute to get his bearings, to understand any of the noises floating around him. Chadrick stared down at him and whatever he said, it wasn’t good. Not if the line creasing his friend’s forehead was any indication.

  But the first thing he heard when the world came back to him in a rush, was Putty, arguing with Susan and someone else.

  “Don’t.” Flynn said it loudly enough everyone stopped talking—and his head started to spin again. “I deserved it.”

  Chadrick helped him up and he used the chair he’d been sitting in to stay vertical. Winding up back on the floor wouldn’t do any of them any good. And he was determined to maintain a little dignity.

  When the spinning finally stopped, Flynn looked over to where his brother was being corralled—unnecessarily at this point—at the other end of the bar. “We’ve done worse to each other. I’m sure we’ll do worse yet.”

  Putty hadn’t seen men beaten to a literal pulp, with bone and muscle and teeth showing where flesh should have been. The memories were the only thing that kept Flynn’s temper in check anymore. When they’d been kids, he’d given as good as he’d got.

  Flynn tested his balance and then moved to the counter beside Putty. His guards had gone back to their table, but everyone had an eye peeled… just in case.

  “Maybe you should take that brotherly love elsewhere tonight.” Susan, unlike her patrons, looked more likely to physically remove them than let them linger.

  “I was just leaving.” Putty muttered something about putting the drinks on his tab, and left, throwing the saloon doors wide.

  Flynn followed him out—less steadily than he’d entered—and caught up in the middle of the street.

  Hands stuffed in his pockets, Putty looked up at the jade night sky. Flynn followed his gaze to the too bright heavens. Too many moons marring the dark beyond.

  “She’s real.” Putty’s fists were tight balls at his side. “And I love her.”

  Flynn didn’t know how he could love someone he didn’t really know, but….

  “I forget sometimes, that my particular brand of humor isn’t funny at all.”

  Shaking his head, Putty fiddled with the hammer he’d had slung in his pocket throughout their fight... a true reminder of what Putty could have swung at him. “I shouldn’t have hit you. It’s going to get me into trouble one day.”

  Hand moving involuntarily to his throat, Flynn pulled away the makeshift bandage that had come loose while he was taking his beating. The ugly wound was sore, but hadn’t torn open again, and he readjusted the covering almost on autopilot.

  “You always did have a temper.” Flynn saw the trace of annoyance in Putty’s eyes, but didn’t stop. “How is it, you’ve managed to be the one in the family who’s kept on the right side of the Colarium without supervision?”

  “You think you could have helped with that?”

  Shrugging, Flynn watched his brother’s fist clench. For two seconds he thought Putty might hit him again. Not a full on brawl, but a love tap. Just enough to break his nose.

  Putty turned toward Nika’s junk yard. “It’s not usually this bad. You bring out the best in me.”

  His brother never asked for entry into his grounded ship, just like he’d never asked to come into Flynn’s room when they were kids. Flynn’s space was his space, and Flynn had long ago given up hope of convincing him otherwise.

  So it didn’t surprise
Flynn that his brother was walking him home.

  “This place is going to drive me demented. Everything is broken, everyone wants it fixed, but they seem to think a miracle is going to descend from the sky and do it for them. Great Mother knows the captains think I’m trying to gouge them—well, most of them do.”

  And Flynn had no doubt Phee’s disappearance--the way it kept Putty on edge--wasn’t helping.

  The town around them was old, weather worn boards ate up Putty’s voice as he continued complaining about the people who were working against their own best interests.

  Leaving the city behind, they cut into the scrap canyons and followed the shadows to his ship. If Putty noticed their lingering slag observers, he gave no indication on how he felt about them.

  “How’s the Saguas kid holding up?” Putty asked as they climbed through the ship and came out on top.

  Flynn shrugged. “They’re young and confused, and they’re pissed off. They need something to do.”

  “I’m sure between the two of us, we could find something.”

  Flynn didn’t like the sound of that.

  “It’s not our job to babysit the kid.”

  “Maybe not, but they remind me of you when you were about that age.”

  Flynn shot him a skeptical look, but Putty wasn’t paying attention. He’d laid down on the ship’s roof near the pyramid of empty bottles he’d been slowly constructing, and was staring up at the night.

  “We both know where boredom led you.” Putty’s tone wasn’t an accusation.

  The hatch opened again, and Chadrick—another of the “never knock” club—crawled out with them.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Chad handed them both a beer. “I want to know more about Phee.”

  “That topic sent us down a painful—for me at least—road last time.” Flynn took the bottle, but set it aside. “Should I leave?”

  Putty snorted a laugh, didn’t accept Chad’s beer, didn’t get up. “No. I promise I’ll keep my fists to myself this time.”

  “So, tell me about the love of your life.” Chad’s words were more command than request as he popped the cap off the beer Putty had ignored.

  With a long sigh, Putty lay back on the warm metal. “She’s the perfect woman.”

  “Doesn’t exist.” Flynn couldn’t stop himself. He turned to Chad and added, “Just like there’s no perfect man in this world.”

  But his friend didn’t agree. Chad was looking at Putty with that strange expression he got sometimes… only when Putty wasn’t looking.

  And Putty’s eyes were closed, his face still pointed skyward. “Can I finish?”

  As Putty forged ahead in his description of the woman of his dreams, Flynn’s ill ease deepened. Even if she wasn’t too good to be true, she was going to tear Putty’s heart to shreds.

  If she felt anywhere near as strongly as his brother did… how hard was it to schedule a call?

  Ten - Kathrynn

  Kathrynn saw her new peace officer friend three more times before she finished her work within the Caireaux temple.

  Aside from the delightful distraction, it gave the others attempting to surveil her the impression Nandy was the only thing she was looking for outside the temple walls. An easy assumption to fuel.

  One more task, then she’d leave Caireaux and Nandy behind.

  The chip she’d been given wasn’t as untraceable as the people who’d given it to Nandy had let her believe, but that was the trouble with second hand lies.

  Kat had stripped it out. She didn’t need the money, but her searches into the man who wanted to meet with her had been disappointingly unfruitful. So she had to do it the old fashioned way. Reversing the tracing protocol would unlock a few doors for her.

  That was why she was on the roof of the fourth highest building in the administration sector of the city, watching as two techs and a guard locked up for the night across the small gap between it and the third highest.

  When the lights dimmed, and all movement ceased, she crept across the hard cable connecting both buildings, and slipped in through a window she’d convinced the cleaning crew to leave open.

  The devout in need of blessings were among her greatest allies.

  It took fifteen minutes to set up the data mine and get into the on-site information. Glaring down at the computer screen, she read the six available paragraph blocks about Senior Colari Harris and wondered how he would fit in with the Great Mother’s plan.

  He was a political ghost… if that was even possible.

  She’d have to drop in on him the next time she visited Capo.

  A sound made her spin on her heel, and the familiar face that met her wasn’t one her visions had warned her of.

  “What are you doing in here?” Nandy glanced at the door to the hall as though she expected someone else to join them.

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  Nandy’s expression was almost patronizing. “I’m following you.

  She’d braced for the cut of a lie and her tension broke when it didn’t arrive. Relief, a visceral release, washed over her like a drug more heady than mad milk. “For business, or pleasure?”

  “Both.” Nandy swallowed and looked at the terminal. At the data mine resting on top of it. “Your turn. What’s going on?”

  Kathrynn ran through a dozen lies, looking for the one that would hurt the least.

  “I need information that isn’t available on the public forum.” Not a lie at all.

  “You should have made an appointment.”

  Smiling at the matter-of-factness in Nandy’s tone, she dipped her head in a nod. “We both know they’d have drowned me in red tape the moment I asked.”

  The data mine chirped behind her. It had found what she was looking for and started the final stages of the download.

  The sound made Nandy flinch. Had her reaching for her gun.

  “Just a search ping,” Kathrynn assured her. “You don’t have to shoot the computer. Promise.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Evidence.” Broad enough it wasn’t a lie.

  “Here?” Her eyes narrowed, getting that distracted, unfocused look, momentarily as she considered. “Is someone on Ludo worried they’ve succeeded in synthesizing madmilk??”

  Kathrynn shifted, loosening her shoulders in case Nandy decided to actually do her job. “What makes you think I have anything to do with production on Ludo?”

  “I can put two and two together. Even if my bosses didn’t tell me why they wanted you watched—and we both know you knew about that—you’re a top priority shadow. You talk about, well, you skirt Colarium politics like you live on Capo… and you’re a close personal friend of Archimedes holzen.

  “You knew all that, and you still slept with me?” She let a smile flicker across her lips, one that didn’t reflect the ruefulness in her heart. “I imagine others would be terrified.”

  “You’re just a woman. Those things don’t change what I felt—what I still feel—for you.”

  “They might.” Kat managed to keep the bitterness out of her tone.

  “You have to leave. If you go now, I can say I thought you were here, but inspection showed it was empty and I must have lost you.”

  “And if they find out you lied?” Kathrynn knew the lesser of the Colarium’s punishments for negligence was still a heavy sentence. “Right now, you’re adding two and two, and getting three. There’s more you should know before you make anything resembling a career ending decision.”

  “A decision like letting you finish that and walk out of here without a word to anyone else?” Nandy’s eyes didn’t wander back to the data mine.

  Shrugging, she watched the blinking light in the dark window’s reflection. “Calculated risks only work if you have the whole equation.”

  Vibration signaled the completion of the data mine’s task, and Kathrynn moved to retrieve it, certain Nandy wouldn’t stop her.

  The woman still had time
to confiscate the data. Not that Kathrynn would let her, but people always felt safer than they actually were when they had a gun, and Nandy had drawn hers.

  “Kat.” Her voice was distracted, censorious.

  Kathrynn looked to the side, too quickly and felt the hard contact slide in her eye, knew the instant Nandy had seen the true red of her iris beneath.

  The wide eyed fear wasn’t something a person got used to.

  Knowing someone who’d shared themselves with you now thought you were a monster was never pleasant. But with Nandy, at least, there had never been a chance for more than bedplay.

  “You’re…

  It was always interesting how people finished that sentence.

  “The plague ender.”

  Kathrynn wasn’t surprised she’d settled on that particular name. Caireaux was an advanced planet. One not usually subject to myth. But Nandy had been to services, she believed in Serbal’s teachings to some extent. And those teachings worked best when serving Serbal’s true purpose.

  Keeping Kathrynn—any red sister—as something of a boogeyman, certainly worked to her advantage. And what was evil in this universe if not a plague?

  “You… I….”

  Nandy looked as though she might throw up.

  The distraction made it too easy for Kathrynn to leave. She didn’t want to be around when Nandy’s backup arrived… or when they told her there was no proof anyone had broken in.

  She only hoped the woman was smart enough to say as little as possible. If she kept enough to herself, it might save her from a full psych evaluation.

  As she swung through the window, she caught sight of Nandy’s face one more time. Of the gun still in her hand, and the conflict warring in her eyes.

  Kathrynn tried not to let the blow of that understanding hit her. It didn’t cut as brightly as a lie, but it still stung like a hot blade.

  Maybe Pasmin was an oddity she’d never find the likes of again.

  Maybe she was destined to live her life like Trey and Sister Jenine, separated by the vast void from the one who could love her unconditionally.