Tiny’s Place was packed with spacers, civilian and mercenary. Ky flinched from the noise level, but it dropped noticeably when her crew came in. She wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad sign. Two tables in the left back corner were empty and she headed for them. When the crew had settled in, Ky looked at the order display. Prices were listed in Sabine centas and universal credits—no longer one hundred centas to the credit; the Sabine currency was shaky, she realized. She’d been paid in credits; they could afford to eat just about anything they wanted.
“Get what you want,” she said. “It’s on me.” They nodded. Ky pressed the display to indicate all charges on one check, and added the table number of the other table as well. She looked at the menu, mostly shellfish or fish and vegetables in various combinations. Sabine’s brackish swamps produced tons of bayhopper and jitterlegs, genetically modified crayfish, the cheapest protein source on the planet. Ky chose a bayhopper goulash and hoped for the best. Her crew followed suit; nobody ventured to order the outrageously expensive cattlope grill.
It still felt odd to be here, in a place like Tiny’s—so obviously a spaceport dive. How many times in her life had she been in a dive? Only the once, tagging along with older cousins and scared she’d be reported to her parents. She looked around, and saw no other captains; she was glad she had folded her captain’s cape into its carrying pouch. There were men and women in shipsuits, casual station clothes, and—in the far corner—uniforms. Mackensee uniforms. She looked away. She wasn’t going to think about the Colonel’s offer, not now.
Their orders had been delivered, and she was just tasting her bayhopper goulash—quite good—when someone bumped hard into her chair. “You! What you doin’ in our place?”
Ky swallowed the lump of bayhopper and twisted her neck to look at the person behind her. “What—?” she started to ask when he grabbed her arm.
“Yer in our place—them’s our tables—dint they tell yer?” A group of large, rough-looking individuals now stood around her end of the table. Behind them, Ky saw the furtive movement of others slipping away, toward the door.
“No one mentioned,” Ky said. “But there are other empty tables.”
“Don’t want other tables. This’s ours, and that’n, too.”
The anger she’d been suppressing edged up her throat and into her voice. “Too bad,” she heard herself say. “We’re here for a funeral dinner, and that’s what we’re going to have. Sit someplace else.”
“You stupid bitch!” The man behind her yanked her chair back with her in it, and grabbed the front of her uniform, lifting her upright. She could smell the liquor on his breath; this wasn’t the first bar he’d visited that shift. “You think because you’re a damned officer you can come in and give orders to people who aren’t even your own crew—” His huge fist was drawn back, ready to pulp her face.
The anger surged through her, banishing any fear. Before he finished the speech she had slammed one hand into his throat, ducked away from the possible blow, and in the same movement put a knee where it could do the most good. He gasped, lost his grip, and she hit the floor, balanced and ready to spring back into action. She had wanted to hit someone for so long—a second man tried to grab her from behind; she rolled with the pull, cracking his shin with a heel and breaking another’s nose on the way past, just on spec.
“Ky, be care—” Quincy’s voice, now chopped off as the men tried to keep her crew from helping her. Ky reached over someone’s shoulder for a bowl of hot bayhopper goulash and flung it in the face of the man who had just pulled a knife, parrying his suddenly blind stab with the dish itself. She heard and felt her crew scrambling to get out of their chairs, heard the gasps and grunts and curses as the fight spread. As she’d discovered in contact games, she could be aware of the whole tangle of motion and for once she didn’t have to stick to any rules… She punched, rolled, kicked, spun, each time enjoying the solid thwack as her strike hit home. Some of her crew—Beeah not surprisingly, and Lee, and Quincy—turned out to be good at this, too. The others dove beneath the table.
The man who’d first grabbed her was back in play now, swinging one of the chairs—steel and plastic, not a storycube prop. Ky grabbed one for herself, and they clashed the legs, glaring at each other. If only she had a spear or something—no that was fictional. Then he pulled out something that looked like a cleaver on steroids. Where had he hidden that from station security? It whined through the air, and a leg of her chair hung from a ragged edge. Whatever it was would cut steel… He grinned.
“You’ll pay for that,” he said.
“I doubt it,” Ky said. She had no idea what to do to counter his attack, but she wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
At that moment, six bodies in military uniform entered the fray as a unit, just in Ky’s peripheral vision on the right.
“Advance,” said a dry voice that Ky almost recognized.
The man lunged at her again, his weapon slashing at another of the chair legs. Ky squatted quickly, trying to come up inside its arc, but his weight overthrew her; she was flat on the floor, the legs of his chair caging her head for an instant, until he lost his balance and fell sideways, weapon arm outstretched.
Ky rolled toward him and got a hand on his wrist, but he was taller and heavier. She tried to tuck and kick him in the gut, but the chair got in the way. He leered at her, and started to roll up… when a booted foot landed hard on his hand.
“Let go,” said the voice.
“Go—” the man said, an anatomically impossible suggestion.
The tip of a very sharp blade came into view, beside the boot, resting on the skin of his hand. “You can let go, or I can cut your hand off your blade finger by finger,” the voice said. “Your choice.”
His hand loosened; someone reached down and removed the weapon, but the blade menacing his fingers never quivered.
“Captain Vatta,” the voice said. Ky looked up. She knew that face. Master Sergeant Pitt.
“Need a hand up?” Pitt asked.
“No, thanks,” Ky said. She scrambled up, put the damaged chair back where it had come from, and looked around for her crew. The fight was over. Six men lay or sat on the floor, some unconscious and some merely stunned; some of her crew were up, breathing hard, and two were still under the table.
“Sorry to interrupt your meal,” Pitt said, “but the dinner conversation seemed to be turning general.” Her eyes twinkled. Ky could not help grinning back.
“It wasn’t our plan,” she said. “We’d just had a funeral…”
“I heard,” Pitt said. “I’d have come if I could. We missed it by fifteen minutes. He was a good man.”
“He was indeed,” Ky said. Suddenly her bruises hurt, her head ached, and she wanted very much to sit down and go to sleep. Not much was left of their meal; the table looked as if someone had wallowed on it and maybe someone had.
Pitt looked down at the man who had attackedKy.“You’re off Marie, aren’t you?” she said. He spat in the direction of her boot but didn’t answer. “Not a good choice,” Pitt said. “ Marie crew are supposed to be aboard, waiting for interrogation… I think we’ll do a little interrogation on my ship.” She looked at one of the other soldiers. “Jem—call the ship and get them to send a squad.”
More quickly than Ky would have imagined, a squad showed up to shackle the attackers and take them away. Pitt shook her head at the departing brawlers. “Not very good at it, that bunch. Nasty for someone with no training, but you, at least, knew what you were doing. Come on, let’s finish that funeral dinner. Charge the damage to Marie—I’ll back you on the damage report.”
Ky wasn’t sure she could eat anything but the bayhopper goulash was just as good the second time around, and the raw whiskey Pitt encouraged her to sip took the ache out of her body.