Slow Burn Dark

by A. B. Keuser

  “I can take you where they can’t get you, give you people who can protect you until we can get their mark off.”

  “Where would we go?”

  “To the temple here, first, then, off world… to wherever the Great Mother leads us. Wherever the universe needs us.”

  Hele shivered. “I’m not so sure the universe needs me at all.”

  “I do.”

  Something like sobriety crossed her face. Her eyes opened fully—wide enough Kat considered making a joke about them popping right out of her head.

  “The Great Mother led me here so I would realize how much I do.”

  Swallowing, she looked over her shoulder as though she could see the wall and when she turned back, her mouth was a grim line of determination. “Okay.”

  “Can you walk?”

  She nodded, and Kathrynn thanked the Mother. She didn’t think she’d be able to carry her and the bags.

  Getting out wasn’t going to be as easy as getting in—even if Hele was able to lead her through the maze inside in a quarter of the time it had taken her to find the storage room.

  Her only saving grace was that the madmilk had been left in the shipment containers inside the bags so her every step wasn’t a noisy question of whether or not a vial would break.

  The iridescent trail that would leave behind would do them no favors.

  Hele’s face had scrunched in confusion when Kathrynn had asked her to lead the way back to the tunnel, but she’d complied.

  Unfortunately, the time she’d spent inside the compound wasn’t long enough to have removed the suspicions her entrance had caused

  . Voices and footsteps echoed back to her, as the flashlamps bounced off the jagged cement board walls.

  “Is this the only other way out… besides the front door?”

  She shook her head in jerky nods. “They use it to take the oil to their launch site.”

  “They don’t have one inside the compound wall?”

  “Have you ever seen what happens when distilled sugar weed oil ignites?”

  “No, and I suspect I don’t want to.”

  Motioning toward a truck parked to her left, Kathrynn helped Hele to it. They would wait, and she would think, and if she was lucky, the Great Mother would provide her with an escape plan that saw everyone between her and that bike alive come morning.

  Thirty-Three - Flynn

  The ship lurched as they were towed into an oversized hangar and the hangar ceiling closed over them. In the newly repressurized space, the ground crew scurried around the ship, connecting hoses and clearing a path in the disorganized chaos.

  The moon itself was a boring lump of rock. Barren and pockmarked with fissures running into the crust and sharp crags overlooking deep craters. The base sat on squat stilts over one of the many crevasses.

  Their nameless escorts herded them out the hatch and Flynn swallowed convulsively as he sucked in a breath and the stale atmosphere pumped into the hangar hit his tongue. Artificially generated and perpetually recycled, it always took getting used to.

  A sea of eyes turned to them, men with scarred hands and faces turned toward them, tired eyes filled with disdain, mouths twisted into scowls.

  “Looks like we’re not the guests they were hoping for,” Chad said, quiet and close.

  There was no reason for smiles. Flynn had a feeling whatever they’d been up to, he’d been a thorn in their side. Especially for the two that tried to turn away… not quickly enough.

  If he’d had any doubts that the Refuti were in bed with the Lazarai, those men cleared them right up.

  The third… watched him from where he leaned against a stack of crates. Concern writ on the man’s face.

  Flynn would have loved to ask Trey a question or five.

  But any hesitation was met by a hard shove.

  Corridors snaked around each other in an unconventional flow. They should have moved through a series of connecting rooms, transfering hatch to hatch. But someone had made this compound as twisty as a man’s intestines.

  But memorizing unconventional routes was an old habit to him now--ships were void-bound mazes.

  The deeper they moved within the base, the fewer people they passed in the halls.

  And by the time they were ushered into an office, he hadn’t seen anyone outside their party for six turns.

  Abandoned in the cookie cutter cube, Flynn sat as Putty and Chad shifted, looking for all the worlds like trapped cats.

  They didn’t have to wait long.

  “I’ll be honest.” Giuseppe said from the doorway. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

  The man’s mousy face was pinched into a sinister smile, his tattooed eyes surveying each of them. “I didn’t think you’d be that stupid.”

  “He came because I made him.”

  As if noticing the other two for the first time, Giuseppe blinked and made a show of swinging to face Putty. “I assume you’re his brother. The unfortunate similarities give that away, and you must be the doctor I’m told dogs their heels.”

  Chad raised a single shoulder in a shrug. “Someone has to keep them alive.”

  “As I’m sure you already know, I am Giuseppe Refuti,” the scrawny man said with a showy bow that listed to the left.

  This time, he wore a neatly pressed business suit that was no doubt the height of fashion on any world within the financial ring of planets. Red with grey holographic pinstripes… projected from his shoes, if Flynn had to guess.

  “Now,” he said with a bright smile. “We should get down to business.”

  Putty stepped between them before he could say anything more. “I agree wholeheartedly. Tell me where Phee is and I won’t have to beat the information out of you.”

  The man’s composure dropped for a moment, and Flynn knew he had no idea who Phee was. When he regained it, it came with a touch of boredom.

  They’d made the trip for nothing.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know anyone by that name. If you’ve lost her… I believe that’s your problem.” Brushing past Putty, he sat in the chair behind the wide desk, and for the first time, Flynn realized how out of place he was—not just on Sukiyaki—but in the room as well.

  It was utilitarian… but he would also use a word that would never fit Giuseppe. It was… understated.

  “Now,” Giuseppe turned a slimy grin Flynn’s way. “We’re going to return you to your rightful owner. We can do it with you alive, unconscious, or… and this is my least favorite choice, dead.”

  Flynn didn’t say a thing.

  The moment stretched on and Giuseppe’s jaw hardened tick by tick. “Well…?”

  “Are you asking me to choose? Because I’ll take option D, none of the above.”

  With a look that might have been pity, Giuseppe said, “You think you’ve got a way out of this, but I assure you… no one is going anywhere.”

  A commotion in the hall behind drew Flynn’s attention. A man rushed in.

  He whispered something harried to Giuseppe, and then ran out again, as if dodging the man’s temper.

  “Damn.” Mouth twisting in a scowl, he glared at Flynn. “I’ll be right back, and we can continue this.”

  As the shrew of a man left the room. Flynn looked to the ceiling and counted to ten.

  He waited until the door between them and the hall shut before he moved to sit in the plush chair behind the desk, and tried the drawers.

  Nothing.

  “I have a feeling, even with your single minded focus on Phee, we’d have an easier time all around with his sister. And not simply because she’s the one who’s actually in charge of this operation.”

  “I’m not single minded.” Putty flopped into the chair across from Flynn.

  “Yeah, you are.” Chadrick said, examining the pale purple fern in the corner.

  He pulled a piece of the fern off its stem and twirled it between his fingers. “So what now?”

  “Well, that man clearly doesn’t know anything about anyth
ing, so we might as well go.” The door was unlocked, the hallway deserted. “It’s not like we’re being forced to stick around.”

  “No, but I don’t trust them to have just left us to our own devices.”

  “Never underestimate the hubris of a man like that, or the misguided belief that a facility like this is difficult to get off of simply because it exists in a vacuum.”

  He nodded down the corridor and led the way; only pausing to be sure they were both following him.

  But they’d only turned one corner before voices reached them, and Flynn moved to step them back, just in case those voices were headed in their direction.

  Putty had gone preternaturally still. His eyes were too wide, and he whispered Phee’s name.

  Then, he was gone.

  Cursing, Flynn went after him.

  Flynn grabbed Putty’s arm as he caught up in the corridor, but his brother shook it loose. “What the hell?”

  He stared into the room.

  The clucking of a tongue pulled Flynn’s attention and he turned to Giuseppe leaning on his cane, shaking his head at them. His sister sat at another desk, a wide window displaying Sukiyaki’s swirling landscape, her focus solely on Putty.

  Putty’s hands were balled to fists, but they stayed at his sides as he stared at the two guns leveled at his skull.

  Standing,Sophia raised a hand to the man’s wrist and he lowered the weapon.

  “It’s okay, Banks.” She tucked her hands in her coat pockets. “Hello Putty.”

  Putty’s face hardened into a mask of belligerence. Flynn had seen it time and again. It was the look his brother got when there was no chance of finding a middle ground. Stubbornness would prevail.

  “What is going on, Phee?”

  Giuseppe snorted and turned to his sister. “Oh, that’s rich. So-phee. Can you believe this idiot came up here thinking something had happened to you?”

  Flynn could have stopped it, but a vindictive part of him held back when Putty tensed beside him, when his jaw tightened just far enough Flynn knew there was no chance he’d let the comment pass.

  As Giuseppe chuckled under his breath, Flynn glanced at the only real threat in the room. But the man who was no doubt Sophia Refuti’s personal bodyguard, was good at his job. He might have met Flynn’s assessing gaze, but his attention was divided between all of them. And when—

  Putty lunged for Giuseppe.

  Banks—Sophia had called him—pulled her out of the way. The man made no attempt to stop Putty, and Sophia stared at them in disbelief as her brother threw a chair at his.

  Flynn moved to pull Putty back. Sophia and her man might not have moved to aid her brother, but he highly doubted they’d actually let Putty harm him. The reverse, could not be said.

  He grabbed Putty by the shoulders, hauling him back, in the same second he heard the charge wind up. The faint smell of ion burn fluttered past his nose, and he froze, staring at the gun in Giuseppe’s hand.

  Proving he did in fact, have a bone of self-preservation in his body, Putty cursed, and stumbled back.

  Giuseppe’s smile was slick, pompous. “We don’t need this one for the bounty.”

  Flynn glanced at Sophia. If her brother pulled the trigger at that distance, there wasn’t a chance Putty would survive… not even with Chadrick by his side.

  He hadn’t expected to see Banks’ gun drawn, focus on his employer’s brother.

  That was the scariest shit he’d seen all day.

  “I told you not to go after the bounty in the first place.” Sophia’s eyes were wide, gaze trained on the gun in Giuseppe’s hand. “Put that away and sit down before you do something that can’t be undone.”

  Shoulders stiffening, Giuseppe hesitated. With a theatrical sigh, he shoved the gun back into its place in his cane and dropped into a nearby chair. “Letting them go will be a mistake.”

  “Maybe.” Sophia said with a shrug before she turned back, all her focus on Putty.

  There was something like pain in the angle of her brows.

  “Take them to someplace secure… I’ll decide what to do with them when this is over.”

  “We could always put them to work in the emerald column on Tersus.” Giuseppe’s smile was sharp. His sister’s scowl severe.

  “Just get them out of here.”

  Banks nodded toward the door, and Flynn went. Not because he had any intention of sticking around to see what it was that Sophia considered ‘over’.

  He needed to get back to the surface, to let Henri know the Lazarai had infiltrated the Refuti farm… and figure out what they planned to do with it.

  Putty hurried to his side. “Okay,” he said low, but not low enough. “How do we ditch the big guy and get out of here.”

  “Not sure yet.”

  Putty flinched, and glanced back at Banks and the two guards who’d joined them.

  “What do you mean, you’re not sure?”

  “You got us into this mess, you can’t expect me to know how to get out of it just because you decide you don’t want to be in it anymore.”

  He cursed under his breath, and Banks, from too close behind them, said, “Don’t worry, you won’t be in the lap of luxury, but you’ll be comfortable for now.”

  Putty’s glare was sharp. “You’ll forgive me if I can’t believe a word she says—and therefore your words are even less convincing.”

  Banks ushered them into what seemed to be a pantry, though it was about the size of the living quarters on his ship, and nodded toward a table. “Some of the crew use this as an impromptu poker lounge. You’re welcome to anything on the shelves.”

  “How thoughtful.” Putty’s glare might have intimidated others.

  “I am… however, going to have to ask you to empty your pockets.”

  Flynn turned his out, all empty. He’d done this sort of thing one time too many to make the mistake of leaving something incriminating on his person.

  Putty on the other hand….

  He turned his pockets out one at a time. Flynn didn’t comment on the impossibility that anyone could need twelve on one pair of pants. Instead, he counted.

  Three wrenches, twelve bolts, a cold welder, a multi-tool, and a handful of trash.

  “How do you keep your pants up with all that in them?” Flynn tried to tell the difference now that they were empty.

  Shooting him a glare, Putty stepped away as one of the other guards stepped forward and confiscated the cold welder and the multi-tool.

  “Get comfortable. I don’t know how long it will be until we can move you.”

  The others left, but Banks paused at the door, and turned back to Putty. “I can tell this won’t matter to you right now, but I’ve known Sophia for a very long time. She didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  Putty stared at him, jaw tight, and then, “You’re right, it doesn’t matter.”

  The hatch closed, the lock slid into place. And Flynn sat at the table, happy to note the chairs didn’t wobble.

  Pulling the papers from the pile, his brother jerked a chair from its deck clips and promptly moved it to the far corner. He kicked his feet up onto a shelf and ignored them.

  Flynn could suffer through a little silent-treatment if that was what his brother needed.

  Sitting at the table, Flynn thrummed his fingers… and waited.

  Thirty-Four - Sophia

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Sophia had only paused long enough to make sure the door was closed before she turned on her brother. “Did you, for one second, consider why I told you not to go after that bounty?”

  “I didn’t go after him, Soph. He came to me.” Geo, for all that she was yelling at him, looked excited. Ecstatic even. “The Great Mother sent him to me!”

  “The Great Mother didn’t do anything but put you on the same planet. Whatever happened after that is your own doing, and now, I’ve got three men in lock up for no legal reason and you’re acting like this is the best thing that’s happened in years.”

 
“Soph, his bounty is ridi—”

  “His bounty is from the Lazarai. Collecting it is treason. Do you want to be put in a Colarium prison? Do you want them to seize all of our business holdings and revoke our travel permits?”

  Geo finally looked like she was getting through to him.

  Or maybe not.

  “But they wouldn’t have to find out, Soph. You’re so smart, you could figure out a way to get him to them, get the money, and never have anyone the wiser.”

  “No, I’m smart enough to not try. How am I going to explain the sudden deposit into my accounts? The Lazarai don’t give a shit about you or me. They’ll dump that money in with their tags attached and laugh their heads off when we’re arrested. Did you ever once think about that?”

  “They wouldn’t do that. We’re giving them what they want.”

  “What the Lazarai want is an end to the Colarium. That isn’t to our mutual benefit. They’ll have no problem destroying us. We’ll be in their way eventually.”

  “The war’s over, Soph.”

  “Not for them!” She hadn’t meant to shout again.

  Pressing a hand to her forehead, she let out a long breath and swallowed the impatient anger threatening to press through her teeth and lash out again. “Please tell me you weren’t stupid enough to let anyone know you have him.”

  Geo’s jaw hardened, his hands clenched, “I’m not stupid.”

  “You can be the smartest person in the universe and still do stupid things, Geo. Great Mother knows I’ve done my fair share.”

  “Everything I do,” his eyes shone, “is for you.”

  Geo left, throwing the door wide and letting it clatter against the corridor.

  She watched him go, and shook her head when Banks entered, a question written on his raised brow.

  “Let him cool off.”

  “What are we going to do about them?” Banks jerked his head toward the “holding cell”—more like a store room. “Let them cool off too?”

  “Maybe.” She let out a long breath and dropped her head to her hands, rubbing her temples. “Bring me Putty. I need to speak with him alone.”