AMANA REFRIGERATORS FRENCH DOORS

Warning: Mature Content

XVII
THE CREW

Without having propagated so much as a single syllable, Pike felt it was fare to reason by his body posture alone, that Art Flanigan was furious. Rumors of his encounter with Bean’s and Remy at the Crate Steam pub, had assuredly trickled through the cracks, and at some point worked their way back to his nephews doorstep and Art’s ears sometime earlier in the day. Bean’s busted up face, coupled with Remy’s crudely bandaged hand would be all the evidence he’d need to confirm the litigious reports. Or at least that was what Pike was expecting as they approached the front door of their temporary bastion. When they’d finally reach the front door of his nephews domicile, Pike had taken care to first peek over his shoulder, insuring Beans was well out of arms reach, before progressing any further. Satisfied with the reasonable breath, he then gingerly leaning over the hedgerow of dead foliage that littered the breast of the unkempt shanty. A respectable glimpse through the living room window, and a view of the living room beyond, confirmed what he’d expected. Art was waiting for them.
“Waiting?” Pike thought to himself. “Like a perpetually fresh steaming pile of shit, he’s just sitting there, waiting to dry out, go cold, and turn hard. Isn’t there something he’s suppose to be taking care of right now?”
It made little difference, at least for now. The cat was out of the bag in more ways then Pike could have ever imagined, and that was the reason Art was running the show. Art took to considerations, and worried over details. The sort of considerations and details Pike would normally over look. It had never been a well guarded secrete that Pike could have, and in a few cases had, kick Art’s ass across the hull of three or four of the derelict’s they’d taken passage on to reach Mars, while in argument over who it was that would ultimately put tooth to nail as head taskmaster. The end conclusion had been unarguably settled during a layover on the over cropped and enervated acetylene harvesting moon of Rutshuru sixteen, after Art had taken notice of a particularly familiar and heavily modified Yakie 180, adorned with the large crimson three headed dragon insignia of the Trident cartel, soft docked to the particular frigate they were scheduled to board. Art had not wondered whom it might have been. He’d been a part of the syndicate long enough to know who was who, and who rolled in what rig. Reluctantly Pike had not noticed the Yakie, nor had he noticed the buxom black leather clad assassin Hex, digging adamantly through the commercial freighters digital manifest, as they approached the embarkment. He’d not noticed Hex’ back up crew either. Cheeko and Rudy, playing the role of neighborly past due protection fee collectors, as they bickered facetiously over what physical possession of the vessels captain to break next, having long since run out of fingers.
It had all been white noise to Pike, he’d had his eye’s and mind focused on a other objectives. The round ass candy attached to a young hot line foreman in a jump suit, arguing over the continuity of a top fed load of crude acetylene, with a freighter captain that boasted more eye balls then teeth, and apparently had a vessel that swaggered fewer workable parts then an abandon soft tail Helix. While Art was taking in such noticeably open observations as the Yakie, forcibly docked to the stern of the vessel parked in Rutshuru Sixteen’s forward most berth four, Hex, Cheeko, Rudy, and the soon to be bereaved captain, Pike had been engrossed in a mental discussion with himself about a pair of udders that could have easily toppled mountains, and just what words he would need to properly articulate in order to get his dick between them.
Even after Art had slammed his arm across Pike’s chest, forcing the both of them into a shadowed companionway, he still had his diluted mind on ass. It had taken the rattling realization of Art whispering “Ball busters.” to finally gut his attention away from repressed desires, and attend his attention to other unusually unnoticed abnormalities taking place less then a few meters away. It had for lack of better reasoning been a miracle that Hex had not spotted them on the fly. Mustering through the manifest, they’d been less then a hearts beat away from the vessels lead hatch, and all that had saved them was the very thing that might have killed them. The manifest. To deeply engrossed in the contents of the ships hull, Hex had no interest in the local transients seeking passage out of Rutshuru Sixteen, in hopes of settling a better life for themselves at the next shit hole they could afford to voyage too. His aim was to find something valuable. If Art had not taken notice, and they had attempted to board, something valuable Hex would have found.
Despite there painstakingly steadfast alias’s, topside bio scans would have detected the trace elements coded into every Trident monkey’s DNA the moment the

Warning: Mature content

VI
THE DINGUS

“It’s broken.”
Or at least it seemed to be, though at the moment, Art was not entirely sure just what “it” was he was looking at, resting idly atop the scared coffee table. How it had become broken in the first place, if in fact it was actually broken at all, was still yet an enigma. It had not escaped the slowly turning cogs of his half awake mind that he was not fully clear on how he‘d come into possession of it to begin with, though there had been some speculation. The fact that “it” must have been terribly valuable had settled into his mind quite early. He’d figured it’s worth must have ranged in the high six or seven zero figure digits, even before Pike had mentioned that he‘d have to cut Art‘s balls off and feed them to him threw a straw, if anything were to happen to it.
Whatever the case was, “it” and everything mysterious and unknown revolving around it had been the primary focus of most if not all of Art’s heavier gray matter burning for the better part of the last two and a half hours.
He’d awoken in a foggy haze, on a couch unfamiliar to him, in the living room of a strangers home, with no real recollection of where he’d been the night before, or whom he’d spent that time with. It was a fare beat judging by the stink of cigarette smoke on his favorite “Billabong“ shirt, the throbbing headache, and the urge to vomit the moment Pike had offered him a cold breakfast sandwich, that he had more then likely been out bar hopping in more then just a few of the more questionable speak easies around town, assuming he was in fact in a town at all. An answer to that question was still an easy hour off, as he’d had absolutely no interest in attempting to draw back the bed sheet that was hanging over the living room window, until such a time as the sun was no longer hitting it directly.
Pike had offered little aid in piecing the puzzle together. No sooner had Art awoken with the stale smell of dry biscuit and cold ham shoved in his face, then he had been riddled with a rudimentary series of questions from the lanky mutt. Questions as to why “it” was still sitting out on the coffee table in plane sight for any jack off passing by to take for his own, or how far exactly he’d had his head up his ass the night before, when he’d brushed off the bitch that had started rubbing his dick.
Refusing the stale sandwich with a polite “Fuck off”, Pike had eaten it for himself, saying only “Suit yourself”. Then he’d made a hasty bee line for the front door, mumbling through a mouthful of crusty biscuit about a call from “The Suit“, and a parlay with the other six losers they were going to be getting in to bed with, sometime later on in the after noon. He’d planned the hook up to take place in an old pub on the West side of Olympus Mons, and the Crate Steam mines, as near as Art could figure, which was odd as Pike informed him, it had been he who had laid out the details of the gathering in the first place. None of it was sinking in.
Two and half hours later, and Art was still polished off the twelve cups of stout coffee he’d brewed up for himself shortly after Pike had departed. As near as he could figure there really didn’t seem be any rush in the department of getting himself sorted out, regardless of how irritated Pike had seemed by his inability to rise with the day. The fact that it was usually he pressing Pike to rise, had not escaped him, and in a way he’d found it rather pleasing to get under his new companions skin in such a fashion.
While the mound of pornographic paraphernalia stacked clumsily atop the recliner adjacent to the couch had not at the time drawn his interest, nor the living room window for that matter, clarity had in a fashion returned to him in the form of hunger, and the desire to feed. After pounding three aspirin, dry, he’d flexuously made his way into the kitchen. A quick search, and he’d located a box of packaged oatmeal at the back of a baron cupboard, along with a small stack of discarded coffee filters, and a small can of freeze dried gut rot. The refrigerator had yielded a half gallon of expired milk, and little else. While expired according to the label, as near as Art could figure the milk still seemed to smell alright, and with that he‘d had a good chug, before poring a portion into the package of oatmeal.
With the soggy, cold, milk soaked oatmeal in one hand, he then pored out the last of the coffee into a dirty cup, and returned to the living room.
Sinking back onto the couch, Art slurped down the watery oatmeal substance with four healthy gulps, before tossing the empty package aside. He wasn’t sure who’s home it was he was occupying, but considering the state of the place, he figure one more discarded oatmeal package would make little difference.
Then their was a deep sigh from Art, before a sip of very black coffee, by way of a dirty cup, that had more then likely been used to catch a money shot. It was time to get down to business, and