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“Okay, okay,” I say. And with one last glance at myself, I dash out of the door after him.
The hover bus is rammed full of battle-weary soldiers heading into town to drown their sorrows. We find Freck near the rear of the vehicle and squeeze into the seats next to him.
“I thought you’d got cold feet,” he yells in my ear over the hubbub of voices that surrounded us.
“No, he was preening himself in the mirror,” Linus says while leaning over me.
“She wouldn’t care if you turned up in a sack,” says Freck. “She just wants her ticket out of here.”
The comment earns him a punch in the arm. “That’s my mate you’re talking about there!” I tell him over his pained cursing.
“Fuck, you didn’t need to hit me that hard,” he complains, rubbing his dead arm.
I laugh at him. “Turning soft, Freck?” I reply, even though I’m having to resist shaking the pain from my injured knuckles.
When we get to the bar, it’s already heaving. Drunken soldiers are spilling out of the door, as are the music and the girls.
“Sophia’s behind the bar tonight,” calls her friend Tia when she sees me. She is tucked under the arm of an Odex officer who is already three sheets to the wind. “The boss said she didn’t have to entertain tonight, but he still expected her to work.”
We force our way through the crowd toward the bar. Big signs read ‘1+1=3 on all drinks’. The proprietor is evidently going to squeeze every credit he can from the departing squaddies before his payday runs out.
Two scantily clad women strut the length of the bar with shot bottles. Every time they bend over to pour some drinks, a loud cheer goes up from the crowd.
After a great deal of effort, I force my way through to the bar. Sophia can barely do more than glance at me and smile before she is called away to serve.
One of the bartop strutters picks her high-heeled way through the carnage of drinks, bottles, and shot glasses until she gets abreast of us. She bends and pours three shots to the applause of those around us.
“On the house,” she yells over the din. “You’d better look after our Sophia!”
“I plan to,” I shout back, saluting the sassy barmaid and downing my shot.
She gives me a saucy wink and picks her way further down the bar to serve a group of guys who have clearly had too many already.
Sophia is rushed off her feet. I can tell I’m going to have to keep buying drinks just to spend a few precious moments with her. “Hey, I’m dying of thirst over here,” I yell when she gets close enough.
She just laughs. “Wait your turn, soldier,” she calls back. “There’s no special treatment tonight!”
“There’d better be some later,” I reply, looking at her from beneath a raised eyebrow.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “I may be too tired.”
At last, it’s our turn to be served, and I take advantage of her proximity by pulling her across the bar and kissing her, hard and passionately. There are whoops and calls from all around us.
“Time for that later!” yells her boss, who has appeared behind her out of nowhere.
The crowd jeers at him.
“Let ‘em at it!”
“Got any girls for me back there?”
“I’m going to miss this bar, there’s always a good show!”
“We’ll have a real show in a bit,” the boss calls out. “All the girls are going to put on their best performance, just for you, gentlemen! A little extra, to show you how much they’re going to miss you!”
In spite of the party atmosphere, his words sober me. For days, soldiers have been pouring into the base here in Sintaca. They have arrived with variations of the same story of defeat and retreat. It’s as if the Alliance have just decided to rip through all the codes of conduct and are annihilating everything and everyone in their path. If they’re not careful, they will destroy Armstrong entirely and all the precious minerals that lie within.
As fast as the population has been expanding, the units have been departing just as quickly. One after another. No one is being told what’s going on, where they are being sent, or why. All that is abundantly clear is there are big shifts afoot.
