Chapter Five –
Flynn’s stomach settled as the shuttle’s landing gear hit the lunar soil.
Refuti had a base on Sukiyaki’s only moon. That had never occurred to him. It was a perfect hiding place from which to launch a guerilla campaign against the unsuspecting town below.
An oversized hangar sat beside them, its front split open.
Swallowing hard, Chadrick turned to Flynn with a worried wrinkle to his brow. “Does that look like some sort of beast’s maw to you?”
The ship lurched as they were towed into the bay and the hangar door closed behind them. Flynn watched the ground crew through the squat view ports as they scurried around the ship, connecting hoses and clearing a path in the disorganized chaos.
The moon itself was as boring a lump of rock as Flynn had ever come across. Barren and pockmarked, with fissures running into the crust and sharp crags overlooking deep craters. There was nothing on its surface that gave even a hope for survival, save for the ugly, squat metal compound in which they were now ostensibly trapped.
Chadrick whistled lowly. “Who would have thought a big time corp would set up shop in a deserted lunar colony just to drive away the population of a dustbowl planet.”
“Putty might have.” Flynn’s words were too low for anyone else to hear.
Their nameless escorts herded them out the hatch, and Flynn swallowed convulsively as sucked in a breath and the stale atmosphere in the airlock hit his tongue. Artificially generated and perpetually recycled air always took a little getting used to… a prospect he never found appealing.
A sea of eyes fell on them as men with scarred hands and faces turned toward them, tired eyes filled with disdain, mouths twisted into scowls. The gazes fell on them only briefly as they were ushered into the mazelike corridors. These men didn’t need to know who they were, and they didn’t care. Flynn had learned the same blank look. Observe and move on.
During their decent, Flynn had seen the modular base and barely given it a second thought. The cluster of buildings was utilitarian and ugly. The technology around him was decades old, save for pieces here and there retrofitted into the old systems.
Flynn would have made a hefty bet no one had touched the air scrubbers, even for routine maintenance and cleaning, in years. He had half a mind to ask Chadrick if he could borrow a mask.
“That shouldn’t be here.” Putty craned his neck to see a metal glob Flynn couldn’t begin to guess the purpose of, but he was sure Putty would wax technical about if given the chance.
Corridors snaked around each other in an unconventional maze. They should have been walking through a series of connecting rooms, transferring from hatch to hatch. But someone had made this compound as curvy as a man’s intestinal tract. Flynn was sure Refuti was using it to his advantage.
Unfortunately for the would-be land grabber, Flynn had a knack for keeping his bearings. He remembered the exact route they’d trod, no proverbial crumbs needed.
“What is this place?” Flynn asked, more to himself than for an answer.
Chadrick gave him one anyway. “It’s a remnant from when the Colarium terraformed Sukiyaki. Most of the base looks like it was modular… like they added when they needed something. There’s probably dozens of stations like these on moons throughout the systems. They’d need someplace to monitor the progress. When Sukiyaki didn’t turn out how they wanted it to, I’d guess they abandoned it. Giuseppe probably claimed it without anyone noticing, and by the time they did… he was entrenched.”
“I’d bet he bought it outright.” Putty said to no one in particular as he studied another piece of slapped on tech.
“Well, it’s certainly the ugliest piece of dross I’ve seen in a while… and I’ve seen some shit holes.” Flynn shivered as they passed by a cold air return duct.
“Perhaps that’s why it was so easy for me to appropriate.”
Flynn turned abruptly at the new voice and was entirely underwhelmed.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” the scrawny man said with a bow that listed to the left. “I am your host, Giuseppe Refuti.”
The man’s mousy face was pinched into a sinister smile, his beady brown eyes surveying each of them. Flynn’s expression didn’t hide his own appraisal.
Giuseppe wore a neatly pressed business suit that was the height of fashion on any world within the financial ring of planets. Red with a grey pinstripe. It made Flynn want to vomit. The impracticality of it only made Flynn certain their “host” was a few degrees closer to insane than he’d expected; his attempt to drive out an entire planet’s population had already dropped an irrevocable black mark on the corporate louse.
Refuti tapped his long cane on the ground and leaned into it, drawing Flynn’s attention to the handle. The man’s walking stick had a pistol grip.
“I’d hoped to meet you under better circumstances, Patrick.” Giuseppe held out his hand, motioning them through the door beside him. He followed them into what Flynn could only surmise was his office. “Sadly, you’ve arrived at the worst time possible. I have to deal with a serious breach of protocol, but I will be right back. Have a seat.” As he turned to walk out the door they’d just entered, he added, “Men’s lives hang in the balance, you know.”
As the shrew of a man left the room, Flynn looked up surreptitiously to the ventilation ducts. He wondered if the Mafioso would simply gas them and be done with it.
Flynn waited until the door shut between them and the hall before he sat in the plush chair behind Giuseppe’s desk and turned a suspicious frown on Putty. “I think I need a little background here, Putty. You know this guy? How the hell did you fall into bed with a galactic mining corporation?”
Putty blushed. “I don’t know him. I know his sister, Sophia. I met her on Soocilla.” Putty shrugged and flopped into the chair across from Flynn. “I didn’t know who her family was until I was already in love with her. It wasn’t like we planned it. It just happened.”
Chadrick nodded, examining the purple fern in the corner. “Sophia Refuti is supposed to be quite a stunning girl, if the rumors are right. I’ve never had the chance to meet her. She tends to keep to her own social circles. Which makes her meeting you quite a puzzle.”
Flynn shifted, suddenly uncomfortable with the vulnerability he’d heard in Putty’s voice.
Chadrick cleared his throat. “Maybe you should start at the beginning, Putty. How did you two meet?”
“I work freelance jobs for a bunch of the shops near the port. Her ship came in with a wobbly pin-splice junction and it was throwing the ship’s systems into a complete tizzy. Really though, anything will do that to a Mercanoid Seven-Two, even with the upgrades that one had. You gotta give her constant love to keep her purring.”
A clatter echoed in the hallway, and Flynn stood, tensed for a fight. “Try to stay focused, Putty, I don’t know how much time we have.”
“I stumbled into her on accident and she was just the most sincere person I’d ever met… one thing led to another and suddenly other things were breaking on the ship and they had to stay longer.”
“She broke her own ship to stay on Soocilla with you?” Chad laughed. “Not that you aren’t worth it, I’m sure.”
Putty shrugged, examining the carpet. “I don’t know if it was her, I didn’t care enough to ask… well, that’s not exactly right. I hoped she wanted to stay. I didn’t want to ask and be wrong.”
Flynn could think of a hundred things his brother should have cared to ask. Instead, he took a verbal jab at his brother. “It’s a regular fairy tale: The Princess and the Grease Monkey.”
“Don’t even joke with me right now.” Putty’s fingers pressed into the leather arms of his chair.
“How long ago did all this happen?” Flynn asked, shaking his head.
Chadrick had moved to the corner and pulled a piece of the fern off its stem and was twirling it between his fingers, staring at Putty.
“Oh, I knew I wanted to marry her that f
irst day,” Putty mused, “But I didn’t ask until I’d known her a bit longer.”
“How long?” Flynn asked again.
“Two weeks.”
“So you knew her two weeks before you decided to marry her?” Flynn asked. “I don’t know what I find more surprising, that she managed to break enough of her ship to keep her there for two weeks… or that you honestly want to marry a girl you’ve only known for two weeks.” Flynn felt like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. What happened to his sensible older brother?
“No. Her ship was in port two weeks ago,” Putty said, looking down at his feet. Then, looking up at his brother defiantly, he added, “I love her, Flynn. Kathrynn would understand.”
Flynn swallowed hard. Putty was right about that at least. “I’m sure she would.”
“So what now?” Chadrick asked quietly from his post in the corner.
“I think it’s safe to say that unlike you, she has already told her brother about you. And he doesn’t look terribly happy about it.” Flynn opened the door, and looked out into the deserted hallway. It wasn’t like they were being forced to stay put, but he didn’t trust these people.
“Sophia always called him Peppy.” Putty clearly was not paying attention to him or the doctor anymore. “She talked about him as if he were some sort of saint. I never expected this. When Bruce told us what was going on, I didn’t want to believe it at first. I still don’t, but I’m not dumb enough to ignore what’s obviously going on here.”
“Okay, so why did her brother want you up here?” Flynn leaned against the wall, trying to sort it all out. “Unless maybe he wanted to keep you out of the way so you wouldn’t get killed and send his sister into a fit.”
“Or maybe he’s just anxious to meet his new brother-in-law,” Chadrick suggested with a hopeful shrug.
Putty looked away from them both. “I don’t know, maybe. Would that be so hard to believe?”
“Sadly, he didn’t seem that friendly.” Chadrick said to no one in particular.
Though Flynn had a feeling the doctor-in-training wasn’t really speaking to either of them, he answered, “Well, it’s not like we were shy about telling people who we are or what we’re about. And I’m sure Giuseppe has spies all over the planet. He probably wanted us out of his hair.”
The quiet hum of the station’s ventilators was drowned out as a woman’s scream filled the air.
“That’s Sophia!”
Putty bolted from the room, and Flynn was right behind him. Not because the scream was one of terror, but because it wasn’t.
“Putty, stop!” Flynn heard Chadrick echo his own warning a second later, but they were too late.
At the end of the hall, Putty flung open a hatchway and stood staring, in shock. Flynn had seen his brother boiling with rage once before, this was ten times worse. He lunged for his brother… and missed as Putty crossed into the room in two steps. The amorous couple hadn’t yet noticed their audience.
Putty grabbed a handful of the man’s hair, dragging him backward off the woman, throwing him toward the doorway where Flynn hadn’t yet made it off the floor.
“Get the hell out!” Putty’s voice broke as he screamed at the man.
Flynn tried not to look at the man who wore nothing but a double R brand, as Refuti’s goon scrambled past him and ran away through the corridor. His clothes lay crumpled in the corner.
“What the hell is going on, Sophia?” Putty stared at the ground, not sparing a glance for the woman on the make-shift cot.
She held a sheet tightly around her. Milky brown eyes darted between the three of them as her mouth opened but no words fell from her dark, stained lips.
Putty let out a strangled sound, looked at her with clenched fists and left.
Sophia Refuti slumped to the floor as tears laced trails down her face.
Flynn took off after his brother. Chadrick did not follow.
“Putty! Where are you going?” Flynn grabbed Putty’s arm as he caught up to him in the corridor, but his brother shook it loose.
“I’m going back to Sukiyaki. There’s nothing here worth staying for.”
The clucking of a tongue pulled Flynn around to see Giuseppe leaning on his cane, shaking his head at them. “Oh, dear, it seems my sister has upset you.”
A fiendish smile pulled up the corners of his lips as he snapped for one of his goons. “Unfortunately, I have no intention of allowing you to leave here… not, at least, until after I’ve accomplished what I set out to do.”
“You kidnapped us?” Putty’s hands were balled to fists, but they stayed at his sides as two guns were trained on his skull.
“I wouldn’t put it that way, Patrick. I’d say I’ve brought you here to enlighten you. It looks like Sophia has moved on, which is good, I think. It’s clear to me you do not have what it takes to be a member of the Refuti family.”
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; Putty would never relinquish his opinion. And in this case, Flynn understood.
“Take them to a holding cell… I’ll decide what to do with them when this is over. Perhaps we’ll put them to work in the emerald column on Tersus.” Giuseppe laughed as he walked away, a smile on his rat-like face.