Chapter Eight –
Bruce took one look at the note and turned on his heels, storming away. “That bastard, I’m going to kill him!”
Flynn caught up to the enraged bartender at the lift. The crowd of panicked miners trying to get out of the shafts was its own entity, writhing and pushing toward the descending lift. Flynn caught hold of Seamus by the back of his shirt collar and dragged him along after them as he fought his way after Bruce.
When the empty lift gates opened, people shoved their way in until the cage was crammed full. The warning siren blared as the lift refused to budge with the excess weight, and Flynn pulled three men off before he shoved Seamus into the full lift just as the doors closed.
Flynn watched the boy head topside as the cage rose up, pulling frightened men to the surface.
Flynn held Bruce back, but it was clear the man was getting on the next lift, no matter what anyone else had to say about it. When Putty and Chadrick managed to fight their way up to the front, Flynn let himself breathe a little easier.
“Who are you going to kill?” Chadrick asked, as though death threats were not that uncommon coming from his friend.
And Flynn stopped for a moment, realizing that Chadrick had befriended a rather violent lot, himself and Putty included.
“Nika. That bastard.” Bruce pushed his way onto the next lift and Flynn shoved in with him as it quickly filled with panicked miners. He wasn’t about to let the angry man loose on the surface when it was clear he meant to follow up his threat. Chadrick and Putty would simply have to follow after.
The lift was uncomfortable with all the people stuffed inside, but Flynn was not going to complain. Not when Bruce’s beet red face was inches from his own. Not when the man looked like he wasn’t too particular about who he was going to kill in the next few minutes.
When they hit the surface, Flynn had to run to stay with the barkeeper. He pushed through crowds calling out apology after apology as he chased after Bruce.
“Mother loving…. He’ll pay for this,” Bruce cursed and muttered as he tore a dusty line toward the scrap yard.
Flynn caught up with him as the crowds dispersed. He heard men spreading word of the bomb’s message, and saw others already rushing toward the landing field with what they felt was valuable enough to salvage. Bruce didn’t seem to care that he should be doing the same.
Bruce kicked in the side door of Nika’s building. A stack of dirty, ornate metal disks clattered to the floor, rolling away in lopsided circles. Bruce hurried through the first floor of the cluttered building and ran up the rickety steps at the back.
Flynn paused as he looked at the odd house built into the rafters, but followed and tried to ignore the unsettling creak of the stair boards beneath his feet. He broke into the cluttered office as Bruce grabbed the scrapper by the lapels of his work shirt and lifted him from his seat.
“How can you just sit here and let a mad man destroy our home? You helped us build it, Nika. Refuti has put a gigantic bomb on top of a coring shaft. Wasn’t three weeks ago you told the whole lot of the people in my bar that was the quickest way to destroy us all. It might or might not be enough to put a hole in the side of this sphere, but it sure as hell is going to make all our mining efforts moot. It’ll take years to dig out the blast zone… and by then, no one here will have the money to bring in water purification tablets, much less worry about a dry spell.” Bruce shook the man like a rag doll and kicked away his chair.
“I can’t help it if one of the mine’s major vulnerabilities isn’t a secret,” Nika spat back, knocking Bruce’s hands off him.
Bruce hauled back and punched him. “You bastard! Are you enjoying this?”
Spitting blood to the dirty floor, Nika held up a hand to stop Ned from rushing the barkeeper. “As a matter of fact, I’m not. What use do I have for blowing up the planet? I built half of it, as you said, and it’s not like you can get insurance policies out here. If a bomb goes off I lose everything.”
“You’ve got to help us!” Bruce lurched forward, but Flynn held him back.
Nika crossed his arms over his chest, he didn’t appear to be worried. “Tell me what I can do for you. I don’t know Giuseppe, but if I were a malignant narcissist, I’d probably be nearby waiting for the evacuation to start. That way he can sneak down to the mine in the chaos and disarm his bomb. We know he doesn’t want to destroy the mine. That would make his life unnecessarily difficult. He’s going to wait for everyone to clear out so he can take the planet for his own.”
“Then we’ll be there waiting for him.” Flynn mentally catalogued the ammunition he’d brought with him.
Nika eyed him like he was a candidate for a mental institution. “He’ll expect that and most likely have a hoard of men with him.”
And then it all made sense to Flynn. “The base on the moon was cleared out. He’s brought them down here to hold the place once he’s got it…. why didn’t he just kill us when we were in his compound? Then he could have come down here and picked people off one-by-one with little or no resistance.”
“He couldn’t kill us all outright.” Nika looked at Flynn. “It’d be too suspicious. The Colarium wouldn’t do business with him if he had that cloud hanging over him. Why do you think I’ve lost out on their last twelve salvage contracts? As it is, the mine issues could all be made to look like accidents, and if the bomb goes off, the Colarium isn’t going to bother coming here to figure out if the evacuees are telling the truth. Everyone else will be dead. Do you really think the Colarium cares who inhabits this planet? All they care about is how this planet impacts their power. And, if the bomb doesn’t go off, all Giuseppe has to do is pull the thing out and send it away before complaints get to the Colarium. On a planet like this, salvage laws apply to everything, even the planet itself. If you leave it unattended and someone swoops in to snatch it up, that’s on you. The Colarium isn’t going to back you up, and the only lawyer foolish enough to set down roots here died in the first mine blast. No one is fighting for the little guy anymore.”
“We are.” Flynn’s stern words stopped even the scrap yard owner up short.
“I hope you’re not including me in that.” Nika was edging toward the door and looked like he was more than ready to pack for a long vacation.
“I am,” Flynn said.
“We are,” Bruce said firmly, his fists still clenched and ready to go. “You said it yourself, you’ve got just as much to lose as the rest of us.”
Nika looked past them to the town with a grimace of defeat. “Probably more.”
Flynn nodded, “You two know the terrain far better than I ever could. Where might Giuseppe be hiding?” He moved to a map tacked to the wall.
Nika poked at the brittle paper. “There are some caves on the far end of Horse Thief Gulch, he could be using those.”
“That’s a long ways away to get to the mine,” Bruce said, his eyes moving over the map as his mouth turned down in a scowl.
Nika followed the line of the gulch with his finger. “Sure, but the gulch provides perfect cover to move a large force. It’s deep enough you can’t see into it from further away… all you can get a glimpse of is those damned trees, and my scrapyard provides cover on this whole side here. The wall is meant to keep out thieves and critters looking to make dens in my scrap hulls.”
“There are other places… but you’re right, that is the likely option.” Flynn leaned back against Nika’s desk. As much as he hated to admit it, he was worried they were going to be on the losing end of this battle.
“We should tell everyone else to leave. Get them all to a safe distance unless they’re vital to stopping Giuseppe and his goons. It’ll save them if we foul this plan up, but it will also make Giuseppe think we’re all leaving. Hopefully that’ll make him complacent.”
Flynn left Bruce and Nika to work out the rest of the details. When he stepped back out into the brightness, he saw the first of the ships leaving. It was a bulky thing, probably c
ould have held the entirety of the Redlands’ inhabitants, but he knew it didn’t hold many of them at all. Someone had run to the minescule port and let the news spill. Until the evacuation ground lock could be initialized – if this dustbowl even had one – any ship that wanted to get out of dodge was going to lift off, without a care for shipping regulations or the number of lives that could be spared.
Townsfolk ran around like chickens who’d lost their heads while two more ships left the dock. Flynn hoped Giuseppe was watching. Hoped he thought the damn things were loaded full with passengers. Hoped they actually had a chance in all this.
Flynn was hoping for a lot.