by Dan Thompson
He bit through it, and it crumbled into his mouth. Texture and flavors swirled around his tongue. There was something crunchy, something gooey and liquid, and even something fluffy and cakelike. It was overwhelming. He looked over at Lena just as she put the other half into her own mouth and licked the chocolate syrup off her thumb and finger.
“It’s incredible,” he said.
“Indeed,” she said after swallowing. “Now it’s your turn.”
Michael picked up the next piece with his free hand. Lena opened her mouth and closed her eyes. Her invitation was clear. He placed the chocolate treat between her teeth, and she bit through it. He pulled away, nearly spilling the gooey center and put the remaining half in his own mouth. She reached for his hand and pulled it to her mouth and started licking the syrup off his finger.
“Leo, I mean …” He lost himself in the sensation of her sucking his index finger into her mouth to get the last of the chocolate syrup. “That is, Captain Bradley said he was going to send a record, I mean, a recommendation to the office. Tomorrow. The S&W office. That office.”
She finished up with his thumb and licked the remnants off her lips. “I figured he would.”
“Yeah, that sounded like a good idea to me.”
She reached for the next piece but paused. “You know, Michael, I’m not going to sleep with you to get a job at Schneider & Williams.”
“Oh, of course not, and I”—he paused to clear his throat—“and I would never offer such a thing in order to sleep with someone.”
“Ok,” she said. “Just so we’re clear on that.”
“Absolutely,” he replied. “Crystal clear.”
“Good, because I’ve got thirty-nine hours of liberty left, you’re cute, and I’m horny. That’s why I’m going to sleep with you.”
“Oh!” he nearly shouted. “That’s … that’s good to know.” He looked back at the chocolates. “Should we maybe get these to go?”
“To go?” she asked, her smile as alluring as any he could ever remember.
“I mean, they might be even better … after.”
She released his hand and ran hers along his leg. “Or during.”
Pain ripped through Winner’s side as she struggled to gain leverage against her opponent. He outweighed her by easily fifty kilos, but she had already twisted his left knee early in the fight. She was trapped now with his massive arms wrapped around her from behind and her right arm pinned against her chest. He had her bent over, trying to push her down to the floor as she fought to stay standing. She flailed her left arm pointlessly, trying to reach back around to get at his head, but she could not reach it. At least, she could not do it with two bruised ribs on that side.
He started squeezing, and her breath ran ragged as his grip tightened with every exhale. She wanted to sweep her right leg back to go after his good knee, but she could not afford to lift either foot without going down to the deck. Even if she had, he had kept his legs too far back, leaning forward at his waist and using his weight to press down on her. From the outside, the match looked like it was over. She was outweighed, overpowered, and running out of air. There was no hope of victory.
She had been here, years before, when she had lost the only fight that had ever mattered to her. The man had pressed down on her, pinned her arms to her sides, while the woman she had tried to protect called in the authorities. She had been too small, too weak. There had been no chance to keep fighting, no hope even for escape. She had been helpless. “Give up, Winnie,” her opponent had said to her, and she had.
But that was in the past.
Today, she stared down at the deck and saw her victory staring back at her.
With one last grunt, she stopped resisting and went limp. Suddenly, all the force she had been pushing back with was gone, and her opponent found himself overbalanced. He almost fell forward onto her, but his instinct interceded. He automatically brought his left knee forward to catch himself, and when he did, Winner’s foot found it.
She kicked hard, landing her heel solidly on the inside of his knee at the moment his weight was coming down on it the hardest. He screamed in agony and released her. She landed low, spun around and swept his right leg out from under him. He went down, planting his bad knee on the deck before he even knew he was going down. He rolled forward as he fell, getting one hand out to brace his fall, but he did not have time to angle it right. The wrist bent badly, and the rest of him went down onto the deck, chin first.
She was on him before he had a chance to react, pounding the back of his head with both fists, driving his bloodied face into the deck repetitively. He lost consciousness after the first strike, but she kept going, eventually grabbing at his hair and raising his head only to smack it down onto the deck again. She pulled her hand back to deliver one more blow, but another hand caught her arm. Then another, and another.
Winner pushed forward, kicking at the limp form on the deck, but two men were finally able to pull her off.
As she looked around at the cheering crowd, she remembered where she was. The referee raised her hand in victory while a medical team came forward to look at the man on the floor. She looked down at him in all the noise and celebration. This man had been just as big and even stronger than the one in the past.
She would have her rematch someday, and now she knew she was ready.
“That’s not my man,” Collins repeated, pointing through the glass at the man they had hauled into the station. “I don’t know how to say it any more plainly.”
The local officer shrugged. “I can assure you, Commander, this is the man we hauled out of Victor Trent’s hotel room. The photo isn’t an exact match, but it’s close.”
“You’re sure you didn’t somehow tip your hand earlier in the day? You passed on two other chances.”
“Yes, because you made him out to be a dangerous killer, and there were too many bystanders. But I’ve looked at the security footage. This is the same guy we’ve been watching since you got here.”
Collins turned back to face the glass. “Well, if he’s not Robert Bishop, I’m going to find out who he is.” He stepped toward the door, but the officer raised a hand.
“Remember, sir, while we might have made certain allowances in how you question the man you came looking for, we have no idea who this fellow is. If you cannot restrain yourself, we will be forced to step in.”
Collins grumbled but went through the door without comment.
The man looked up from his cuffed hands.
Collins sat opposite him. “Victor Trent?”
The man shrugged. “I suppose. It’s what’s on my ID, ain’t it?”
Collins reached into a folder and pulled out his three-page summary on Robert Bishop. “Victor Trent is a known alias of Robert Bishop, though I suspect that that itself is also an alias. Regardless, Robert Bishop violated his bail agreement and escaped charges of kidnapping, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to commit piracy, various smuggling charges, and so on. Once he is found, he will also be charged with conspiracy to commit fraud for his involvement in a dummy bail bond. The minimum sentencing on such charges comes to seventeen years. So, I ask you again, are you Victor Trent?”
“Well um, I suppose I’m not that Victor Trent. I’m much more the boring kind of Victor Trent. Drinking, gambling, time with some friendly ladies. No conspiracy to conspire or anything like that.”
Collins shook his head and sighed. He had been had. There was no denying it. Robert Bishop had outsmarted him. “He hired you, didn’t he?”
The man creased his brow. “Hired me? No, sir. I haven’t had a proper job in a good long spell.”
If he did not know he was in a soundproofed room, he would have sworn he heard laughing outside. “Let me see if I can put this in simpler terms. A man came to you.” He paused to turn Bishop’s photo around to face the prisoner. “This man. He offered you money, a place to stay, access to a fat bank account. All you had to do was be Victor Trent for a while.”
&nbs
p; The man shrugged. “Don’t see nothing wrong with that. Being Victor Trent has been mighty fine. Apart from your boys rousting me out of my room, it’s been the best bloody thing to happen to me in a dozen years.”
Collins held his anger in check. “And it was this man who came to you?” he asked, pointing to the photo.
“Indeed it was. A bit freakish at first, looking at my own doppelganger as it were, but he seemed quite intent on helping me out. A fine gentleman he was, at least a far cry better than you lot.”
“And I don’t suppose he told you why he could no longer be Victor Trent?”
“No, but I don’t see that it’s such a trouble. You said that wasn’t his real name anyway, right?”
Collins gathered the papers and stood.
“Do I ... I mean ...” the man stammered.
Collins held up his hand and shook his head. He turned and left the room.
Outside, the shift commander was there with a gaggle of officers. “So, what do you want us to do with him?” he asked.
Collins gave one glance back through the glass as the man started to pick at his teeth with his fingernails. “If it were up to me, I would empty out what remains of Victor Trent’s bank account, cover any overtime you incurred on this man’s arrest, and then give the rest to this poor fellow to drink his way through it. I’ll make a few more inquiries, but one thing is clear. Robert Bishop is long gone from here.”
Dieter tucked the bills into his pocket and carried his mandolin case out of the manager’s office and back into the club. It had been a good night. With the tips on top of his fee, he had made just shy of five hundred playing a single set. The club mostly catered to locals instead of spacers, so it was actually on the station’s standard cycle instead of the continuous cycle of the clubs closer to the docks. Dieter’s set had actually been the last one of the local evening, so while the club was not deserted, it was definitely clearing out.
One of the ladies behind the bar had been not-so-discreetly checking him out all night, so he made for the bar to see if her interest might continue somewhere more private. It usually did, and he was looking forward to it. It was not the reason he played, but he appreciated the benefits. The bar had a long stretch and a more secluded short section in the corner. He walked past the long stretch, pulled up to the bar in that corner, tucked his mandolin case under the bar, and prepared to spend some quality flirtatious time with the bartender.
“Dieter?”
He glanced around a bit before he recognized the source. It was Winner, sipping at a glass mug a few seats down the long section. He must have walked right past her. “Hey, Winner. I didn’t realize you were here. I must not have seen you in the audience.”
She shook her head. “Sorry, I’ve only been here for a few minutes. I didn’t even know you were playing here tonight.”
Dieter was about to reply, but just then the bartender came down the length of the bar with a nice sway to her hips. “So, music man, what can I do for you tonight?”
Dieter looked her up and down, from those stunning green eyes, luscious lips, open collar, all the way past her cleavage to a hint of midriff showing above her low-cut pants. It left him with a vivid sense of what he was about to pass up, but he had learned an important lesson long ago: crewmates before bedmates. With a nod toward Winner, he replied, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
The bartender hid most of her frown but not all of it. “Sure thing. One Irish coffee coming right up.”
Winner gave a snort, and after the bartender retreated, she picked up her mug and came down to sit closer. She did not sit directly next to him, but she took the barstool facing him just around the turn. He thought about shifting over one more seat to close the gap but figured that if she had wanted to be that close, she would have come all the way around.
The bartender returned with Dieter’s mug with the whipped cream still piled up in a recognizable swirl. He put down a twenty. If he was going to snub her, he could at least tip well. Once she returned to the far end of the bar, Dieter turned to Winner. “So, Irish coffee. Unwinding or winding up?”
“Unwinding,” she replied.
“From?”
She shrugged. “The usual.”
Dieter looked her over. Her hair was a wet mess, and at this range, he could smell the sweat. More than anything, she looked like she did on the odd occasion when he ran into her after her gym time. “Okay, the usual. Are you heading back to the ship after?”
“Eventually. I like to walk it off a bit first. How about you?” She nodded back toward the bartender. “Did I interrupt something there?”
Dieter covered his frown with a grin. “There are plenty of other clubs for me to play at with plenty of other ladies as lovely as she.”
“You do that a lot?”
This time his grin was genuine. “Yeah. It’s definitely a nice benefit, but it’s not the reason I play.”
She glanced back at the bartender. “All right, I’ll bite. What’s a better reason than that?”
He was about to give the answer he used on the interested ladies after a performance, namely that he had inherited his sister’s mandolin when she had died and that he played in her honor. Ladies love a musician with a tortured soul. But while he had, in fact, inherited the mandolin from his eldest of four sisters, he had already started playing the banjo before then. In the end, he sighed and simply said, “It’s hard to say, but music has always been part of my life. I can’t imagine my life without it.”
“Always?” she asked. “When did you start?”
He smiled. “My uncle Tibalt gave me a ukulele when I was four. He was probably the reason most of us started.” He saw the question on her face. “I have four older sisters, and most of us played something at one time or another.” He reached down to pat the mandolin case. “This used to belong to my eldest sister, Ilsa. Margret took up the trumpet. Annalise bounced through a few single reeds before ending up on drums, and Erika fell in love with the cello before she was even big enough to play it.”
“Did any of them turn pro like you?”
“Erika,” he replied and took a sip of coffee. It was good. He would have to remember this place the next time he came through. “She’s in the Stonefall Pops on Latera, but I’m not really a pro.”
She glanced back toward the stage. “You’re not?”
“I earn enough for drinks and a decent wardrobe but not enough to pay rent. Engineering pays better, and I’m good at it, but it’s never been my passion.”
She nodded. “I get that. So what made Uncle Tibalt push the music so much? Was he a pro like … was it Erika?”
“Yeah, Erika, but no, he wasn’t. He was a dirt farmer, just like my dad.”
Winner snorted. “A dirt farmer?”
Dieter laughed. “You’re not from a newer world, are you?”
She shook her head. “Pinot’s Hammer.”
“Katora,” Dieter replied, “on the rimward side of the Weldren Sector. I was third-generation, and it takes a good century before the necessary soil biomass spreads well on its own. In the meantime …”
“Dirt farming. Okay, I get it. Did he play at all?”
“When he was younger. He played the piano—not a keyboard, mind you, a genuine piano with mechanical hammers and strings and such. He was a purist that way. He said that while the electronic versions could match the sound, they never matched the feel of the real thing.”
“And that’s important because?”
Dieter stretched out his left hand and curled his fingers around as though they were on the neck of his mandolin. “He said it’s not enough to simply play the music. You have to become part of it, and in his way of thinking, that meant you had to have a physical connection to it.”
Winner nodded. “I suppose I could see that, the physicality of it. You said he played when he was younger. What made him stop? It doesn’t sound like he ever lost interest.”
Dieter sighed. “He lost most of his left hand in an accident
with one of the dirt aerators.” He straightened out his fingers again and traced a line across three of the fingers and down the outside of the hand all the way to the wrist.
“Couldn’t they regrow it? Or was he too old?”
“No, they regrew it. It took almost a year before it was complete, but he said it was never the same. The nerves worked and all that, but he said he just couldn’t connect with the music anymore. By the time I was 8, he sold his piano and never played again.”
Silence stretched out only to be broken by a waiter dropping a dessert plate on the far side of the club. Dieter looked up to see Winner looking at him intently. “Too bad,” she said at last.
Dieter forced a smile. “It is what it is.” He drained the last of his coffee and noticed hers was empty. “Well, I didn’t mean to end on such a sour note. How about I buy us another round?”
“Thanks,” she said, “but I’ll buy.” And with that she pulled out a fat roll of cash. She peeled back several hundreds before pulling out a fifty. “In honor of Uncle Tibalt.”
Dieter’s eyes went wide at the sight of the cash. “Sure, but where in the deep did you get that kind of cash?”
She coughed and slipped it back into her pocket. “Not so loud, Dieter.”
“Sorry,” he said, lowering his voice. “But seriously, where? I had a good night, and I didn’t even get five hundred.”
“They don’t call me Winner for nothing,” she said.
“Oh,” Dieter replied. “So, gambling?”
She grinned and shook her head. “Not exactly.” She waved the fifty at the bartender. “But if we’re talking about that, I’m going to need something stiffer than an Irish coffee.”
Hector grabbed the remote and propped his feet up on the low table in the crew lounge. It was going to be a long twelve hours, and he intended to enjoy them. The entire five-film saga of Martin Kotha’s Lost Fury lay before him.
Carlos stuck his head in from the corridor. “Hey man, I’m headed out. Vivian’s got tonight, right?”