by John Ringo
"Well," Thor said, "if you want to observe human interaction, this would be the time."
"I'm aware of that, and the idea is intriguing," Tirdal replied. "But other considerations take priority. I hope, however, that everyone has a good time on your 'bar crawl.' "
"Thanks, then," Thor said a bit awkwardly. "I hope your meditation goes well." It seemed the polite thing to say.
He knocked on Ferret's door and found the specialist leaning back in his bunk with his fingers interlaced behind his head.
"Bar crawl time," Thor said.
"I'm on it," Ferret said, rolling to his feet and slipping his feet into ship-boots.
"Glad to hear it," Thor said, with feeling. There was nothing lonelier than a single-handed bar crawl. "The sarge can't make it, we don't want the captain along, Dagger's being himself and Tirdal doesn't seem to understand the concept."
"Just as well," Ferret had told him. "Either of them would scare chicks away, and we don't need a fight tonight, either."
Thus it was that Gorilla, Ferret, Thor and Gun Doll went looking for distraction before their appointment to spend two months in space and muck. They met right outside the base gate, where everything a homesick young troop could yearn for was available.
There was the branch of "Feelings, Inc," a company which had staked out space near every base on three planets, to sell cheap trinkets to soldiers as "fine jewelry" for their loved ones back home, wherever home might be. The prices were not cheap.
A vid arcade clattered and dinged, lights flashing through the door. Every machine in the place was cranked to maximum difficulty. Entertainment equipment could be rented at stiff fees, the purveyors sure of their income because troops' ID numbers could be called in to the base if funds were tardy, to be forcibly secured from said troops while their commanders wrote them up for failing to be responsible and for disgracing the service. Only the former mattered to the business in question.
An old electronics storefront had been converted, the sign out front proclaiming "Bambi's Lingerie." It had once added "private showings available" until some wiseass had changed the marquee lettering to read "Ass and head," which had likely been true, Bambi's having been shut down weeks before by the local mayor and police, concerned about the morals of their town. That emphasis on old Solarian "morals" was quaint and hickish on a planet like Islendia.
However, that concern for morals didn't extend to the rest of the strip of small establishments determined to find some way, any way, to liberate all the cash soldiers and spacers might have. Everyone loved the military, as long as the military had cash to burn. After that, they were free to piss off, or go back on base and quit whining, or spend a complimentary night in the town lockup. The screwing of soldiers wasn't a moral concern, as long as that screwing involved their time and money but not sex. Unless, of course, that sex followed a spending spree in the "Short Time Saloon," the area's only real bar.
Not being homesick young troops, and far more savvy and sophisticated than anyone might think at their ripe ages of twenty or so, they walked right past Soldier Row and paid no attention.
"Dancing," Gun Doll insisted. She was made up in electric blue, including a dye for her bobbed hair. She wore a long overtunic to hide her shoulders and hips. It wasn't that she was unattractive, but her proportions were unusual, with her height and solid skeleton. Men were intimidated, and even more so when they found out she was a DRT. It was exasperating, and she tried to play it down. Instead she played other things up—the garment was slit down to below her navel.
"Drinking," said Gorilla. It was a long-standing argument between them. He wore a jacket and tie over his shorts, trying to look casual from his lofty height. Gorilla never wore makeup, because he felt it looked stupid on his craggy face.
"Drinking and dancing, and lots of chicks," Thor said. Thor had strange styles of fashion, wearing a synthleather jacket at least ten years out of date over striped tights. His bulging thighs and broad shoulders were obvious, he hoped.
Gun Doll said, "Drinking and dancing, hold the chicks."
"Oh, I will," Thor agreed, grinning.
Ferret, wearing jeans and cutaway tunic to show off his pecs, made up lightly and relaxed as always, asked, "Same place as last time, or someplace new?"
"Who got laid last time?" Gorilla asked.
"I did," Gun Doll admitted, "but I had to pimp myself to do it. How about somewhere less snooty?"
"Yeah," Thor agreed, "somewhere where we'll be recognized for the cold, calculating killers and human sex machines we really are."
"So, Thor wants to go to Fantasyland." Ferret grinned, elbowing him.
"Yeah, whatever, there's a bus," Thor said, pointing. "We can get sweaty after we find the chicks."
They boarded the bus just in time to be hanging at the door as it sought cruising altitude of ten meters. The driver gave them a dirty look, because they were violating the law and it would be his ass if anything happened to them. It was obvious from the clash of styles they were military. Their casual attitude about the height said they were some kind of commandos, as did the cropped hair and thick necks and shoulders. Already they were getting looks, and that suited this group fine.
They didn't care about ugly looks or amused glances. All they cared about was attention from other young people, preferably attractive, though "attractive" was a slippery term when alcohol or other intoxicants, their other desire, entered the picture. And all of it would make for great stories later.
As their profession required utter secrecy and low profiles, they made up for the lack of attention when not working. They were loud and brash on the trip, and though they gave no details, that being a prudent standard, there were enough varied commandos stationed there that no one had any doubt they were some of them. That, and the heavier than usual sidearms they carried.
While having guns didn't of itself attract favorable attention, competence combined with them did. When a feral Posleen might trot down any street, suddenly charging to the attack if the urge and voracious appetite tickled its semisentient fancy, the presence of professional killers was a welcome thing. The troops were therefore popular, no matter their young, smartass attitudes. None of the passengers complained about the noise, and a few kept close. Islendia might be urban and modern, but Islendia was also raw and savage. It had been wrested from the Posleen at great cost, and scars across the landscape and crashed Posleen landing craft attested to a generous use of antimatter weapons, when the human settlement had been reinforced.
Being fecund egg layers, the Posleen had been defeated but not wiped out. They came in two classes. "Normals" were semisentient, just bright enough to swing a rock, or, if so equipped, pointshoot a weapon. "God Kings" were larger, sentient and scary. Each God King could control up to fifty or sixty normals, running them around like tabletop gaming counters through a handful of Superior Normals. Posleen were parthenogenetic carnivores that looked like a cross between centaurs, crocodiles and ponies. Their defining attribute was their voracious appetite. Their enemies and prey became sushi and jerky in short order.
When they'd arrived in the sector, armed with star drive and advanced weapons, they'd proceeded to wipe out every planet they came to, like locusts in a field. Then they'd met humanity. Most of the human race had not survived, but, on the other hand, most of the Posleen advance hadn't either. And as the old joke said about "the unstoppable force hitting the immovable object" there had been a lot of side effects. One was "tamed" Darhel. Another was the Tular Posleen.
The Tular Posleen were a settled, trustworthy race who only rarely ate sentient creatures, and even then only other Posleen, and kept to their own planets. The ferals left behind on a hundred planets were simply ravening beasts to be exterminated. And anyone on such a planet who didn't carry a weapon stayed close to those who did.
That had been part of what pushed Islendia, her thirty-odd republic planets and similar number of colonies over the edge to rebellion. Earth had wanted to resume the str
ict weapon controls and environmental standards it had been working on before the Posleen invasion. At which the blighted and struggling worlds of the Fringe had screamed bloody murder. Not drain a swamp because it might "damage the natural balance," when such balance was already screwed by the presence of Posleen in the bog? Not bloody likely. And suggesting one seek permission for an AI guided autocannon with antimatter shells to deal with said Posleen, just because some Earth bureaucrat thought they were "inappropriate" for civilians wasn't a concept to win the hearts and minds of the Fringers.
Which was why there was now an Islendian Republic. And a rump group of worlds, old, sophisticated and highly developed, seething in the background.
The bus trip wasn't long, only about two hundred kilometers, through the light of a falling sun and then into the domed warren of the city proper. Islendia was actually an Earth-like moon of a monstrous gas giant, debatably a brown dwarf, that had been christened Juliana. Juliana was coming into full phase as Isel, the system's star, set, the planet a fluffy wash of colors on the horizon, seeming to stretch endlessly. Juliana would rise to show dun and ochre bands punctuated by bright red roils of reacting hydrogen. Its ring formation and myriad satellites made it a rare sight for those tourists who could afford the steep transit fees, and the complex rotation of it and Islendia around Isel led to very strange day cycles.
The troops paid little attention. Not only had they grown up with that tangerine monster hanging over them, they'd seen far more exciting things, from their viewpoint, on other planets. Dagger was from far out on the Fringe, and would likely find it interesting, if he were along and if he were disposed to admitting to a human esthetic weakness. They, who had traveled far, kept their attention focused down at the seething fleshpots below.
The fleshpots were another of Islendia's appeals for the prudish but wealthy residents of the SSA. The lax laws and taxes of Islendia had permitted the relatively poor former colony to build a hefty trade surplus with the more settled inner worlds. Tourists, however, were becoming less common as Earth and its leechlike dependents became more insular.
Something was happening to the inner worlds, something that was rarely spoken of and poorly understood. The visitors, generation by generation, were becoming less and less interested in "Fringer" delights and more and more introspective and studious. On the other hand, that was also easing the political tensions.
The bus kept its altitude all the way in, coasting between ever taller buildings lit in varying colors. The older ones had plain illumination. The newer ones were lit with panels of color and images, turning them into three-dimensional artwork that rose for dozens of meters above the traffic. The advertisements rose higher than the buildings. Despite the domes and a state-of-the-art defense grid, large meteors were a common occurrence on Islendia, because of the nature of the Juliana system, and a twenty-five-megaton blast in the stratosphere instead of on the surface was still bad for structural integrity. None of the buildings rose above thirty stories. It wasn't common for domes to crack, but if they did, the same shockwave would tear the edifices apart. Hence, most activity was indoors and underground, despite the complications of building down instead of up.
The driver landed them atop a platform in front of a complex, still a good ten meters up. The four were already crowding the door before it opened, and erupted as they would from an assault pod under fire, swarming out and toward the broad, anachronistic stairs descending into the Sector A club, its lights dim red to match the décor.
Thor was first, flashing an ID and waving his card at the sensor. He slowed just enough for the dye marker to slap coldly against his hand, and was already reconning the place as he passed inside. It was fortunate they were sober, as the flashing lights and shifting holograms made visibility an iffy proposition, and it was hard to tell substance from image. That was part of Sector A's appeal. He decided on an empty corner booth, and arrived there at a run, beating another man who looked annoyance at him but didn't dispute his claim. The booth was one of many set high on the wall, approachable from below only by a ladder, but low enough for "vertical envelopment" of the floor below. Thor scrambled up the ladder with the rest of the team following.
"Here we go!" Ferret called as he arrived behind Thor, taking the side seat. "A good, clear field of fire."
"For you to puke?" asked Gorilla, whose height gave him an even greater view from the booth's position high on the wall. His back was to that wall, too. The others couldn't see past his imposing bulk.
Thor said, "Ferret, don't get us thrown out by tossing beers, okay? Even if it's a charitable thing to do, it's messy and pisses off the goons."
"Back soon!" Gun Doll yelled cheerfully, as she swung over the railing and dropped. One of the security goons started yelling at her as she bounced across the floor to join a man who was dancing by himself. She made a hand gesture in the goon's direction that was at least as old as starfaring mankind and grabbed the dancing man by the elbow. At first surprised, he smiled shortly and they melted into the growing crowd.
Gorilla said, "Score one, Gun Doll. Are we going to hit on chicks? Or drink first?"
"Drink first," Thor said. "That way when Ferret gets us thrown out it will hurt less."
The place hadn't filled to capacity before they grew bored and left. There was no time to develop an image or a relationship. Their needs were immediate, and constant movement the chosen means of finding company. That it was neither efficient nor cost effective didn't enter into the picture. They'd hit club after club until luck, boredom or morning did them in. Any of them could have explained the folly in their approach, had they stopped to think, but thinking was to be avoided for the moment.
From Sector A they went to Eden, a club lit only by UV lights. Couples and small groups made out in the near-black corners and nooks built in for that purpose. The building was a converted police command post from the early days of Islendian colonization, and had numerous closets, lockers and offices, most now converted into open space, some left as lockable cubbies for trysts.
"Hey, look at the diplopukes!" Ferret said, a bit too loudly. "They're wearing suits!"
Gun Doll played off it. "Hush, it's not polite to stare."
The diplomats appeared to be from somewhere in the Solarian Systems Alliance. It was always amusing to see staid, conservative representatives staring in awed embarrassment at painted men and women sweating off their lusts. They arrived expecting yokels. Everyone from their planets knew the Islendian Republic was populated by gun-toting, backwards farmers. Yet those farmers had a deep understanding of sexuality, and a devil-may-care attitude. Tomorrow might bring a meteor too large for the defense net, a feral Posleen to rip one's leg off, or worse, a sport God King leading an oolt of fifty of the damned things to eat a school. So why not eat, drink and screw today, if the work was done and the bills paid?
There was a vivid liveliness to the confederation that was missing in the inner worlds. Although the inner worlds were far more technologically adept, it was the Fringe that produced the poets, artists and actors who created the entertainment the inner worlds craved. The daily drama of survival, the life-and-death nature of life on the Fringe seemed to bring out far more artistry than the placid, safe, lives of the Core.
Whatever the case, the "hicks" were both more alive and more sophisticated than the Core worlders and that life and sophistication was always hard for the Core worlders to fully grasp. Often they saw only a barbaric spectacle, but that spectacle held far more beauty than could be found from Earth to Antares.
Eden led to Mac's Place, to four or five others they wouldn't remember, but would track by the stamps on their arms. On the street somewhere between Sudsy Capone's Laundromat and Bistro, which rated highly for its original theme, and The Orbital Room with its drunken young women and screaming music, Thor was struck by philosophy.
"Isn't it odd," he said, "how we, young, strapping, desirable hunks of flesh, Gorilla excepted, of course, on the prowl and itching to get blo
wn, laid or whatever, have some of the poorest luck?"
"Speak for yourself," Gun Doll snickered. She twirled a man's underwear around her finger. "I had a quickie at Eden while you were busy being hosed by that blonde. And I think that was a guy in trans, anyway—"
Thor interrupted with, "I assure you she was female. Very female, and—"
"Yeah? So where's her panties?" Gorilla asked. "You know the rules. No souvenir, no score for the board."
Sighing, Thor continued, "No, we didn't get that far. My point is, we seem to manage less action than the soft businessmen."
"They've got more money than you ever will," Gun Doll said. "Besides, where's Ferret?" she asked rhetorically.
"Still at Sudsy's," Gorilla chuckled. "Last time I saw him, which is while Thor was taking that tumble in the air dryer, he was sneaking behind the machines with something that was very probably female."
"Yep, saw that," she agreed. "So there goes your profound theory, Thor." Her tongue tripped over the phrase. She'd had a few drinks, too. "The score is one, Ferret and me, half point for you for style because we're being generous, and Gorilla has none yet but the night is young."
Thor pointed out, "It's three ayem and we've got an oh seven hundred formation."
"Yep, young," she agreed. "I think I can score two tonight." She was eyeing a man outside a bar, holding a drink and leaning casually against the wall. "Target acquired, fire for effect," she said. Her voice was sultry and seductive and so out of place with her normal personae and the comment.
Thor and Gorilla chuckled. "Goodnight, Doll. See you in four hours."
She waved her fingers behind her back as she sidled up to the stranger and smiled a smile that promised him a lot of intense, if brief, fun.
Chapter 3
Gorilla huffed as he rose and ran. Oh seven hundred had come too early. His oh six hundred alarm call even earlier. He wasn't hung over, but he was cranky and fatigued even after a shot of drugs to wake him and stabilize his metabolism. He'd known better than to go drinking before an early call, and he'd done it anyway. He promised himself he'd never do it again, and knew he was lying. It was a character flaw in an otherwise very strong personality. He hadn't found a woman, though he did just often enough that he'd keep abusing himself like that for the unlikely chance of doing so.