He makes a small attempt to free his arm to test how badly I want to hold on to him. “Look, I’m just a guy trying to buy a girl a drink. So why don’t you let me do that, and then we can go our separate ways and dream about what might’ve been?”
I clench my jaw. “Listen, Romeo.” My fingers tighten—I can feel the tense muscle beneath my hand. He’s no weakling, but I’m better trained. “How about instead, we go to HQ and chat there?”
The muscle in his forearm under my palm twitches, and I glance at his hand. It’s empty—but then he shifts his weight, and suddenly there’s something digging into my ribs, held in his other hand. He had a gun tucked inside his shirt. Goddammit. It’s ancient, a tarnished ballistics weapon, not one of the sleek Gleidels I’m used to. No wonder he’s wearing a jacket despite the heat inside the bar. The long sleeves are concealing his genetag tattoo, the spiral design on the forearm that all the locals get at birth.
“Sorry.” He leans close to me to conceal the gun between us. “I really did just want to pay for your drink and get out of here.”
Beyond him I can see my guys, heads together, laughing and occasionally peeking our way. Though half of them are well into their twenties, they still act like a bunch of gossips. Mori, one of my oldest soldiers, meets my eyes for a moment—but she looks away before I can convey anything through my gaze. Alexi’s there too, his pink hair gelled up, looking way too interested in the wall. From their perspective, I’m letting this guy drape himself all over me. Stone-faced Chase, getting a little action for once. Troops cycle in and out of Avon so often that all of those here have only known the past few months’ ceasefire—their senses aren’t battle-sharpened. They’re not suspicious enough.
“Are you kidding me?” My own weapon is on my hip, but we’re close enough that he could easily shoot me before I reach it. “You can’t actually think this is going to work.”
“You haven’t really given me much choice, have you?” He glances down at the holster on my hip. “You seem a little overdressed, Captain. Leave the gun on the stool there. Slowly.”
I roll my eyes toward Molly, but he’s leaning back drying glasses and watching the holovid over the end of the bar. I try to catch someone’s eye—anyone’s eye—but they’re all carefully ignoring me, all too eager to tell stories later about how they saw Captain Chase get picked up at Molly’s. My abductor shields me with his body as I reach for my Gleidel and set it down where he indicates. He wraps a hand around my waist, turning me toward the door. “Shall we?”
“You’re an idiot.” I clench my hands, the pink cocktail skewer digging into my palm. Then I turn a little, making a token struggle to test his grip and the distribution of his weight. There—he’s leaning a little too far forward. I tense my muscles and jerk, leaning back and giving my arm a twist. It hurts like hell, but—
He grunts, and the barrel of the gun digs more sharply into my rib cage. But he doesn’t let me go. He’s good. Damn, damn, DAMN.
“You’re not the first person to say so,” he says, breathing a little faster.
“Fine—ow, I’m going, okay?” I let him steer me toward the door. I could call his bluff, but if he’s stupid enough to bring a gun onto a military base, he might be stupid enough to fire it. And if this blows up into a firefight, my people could get hurt.
Besides, someone will stop us. Alexi, surely—he knows me too well to let this happen. Someone will see the gun—someone will remember that Captain Chase doesn’t leave the bar with strange guys. She doesn’t leave the bar with anyone. Someone will realize something’s wrong.
But no one does. As the door swings closed behind us, I hear a low sound of whistles and catcalls in the bar as my entire platoon starts jeering and gossiping like a bunch of old hens. Bastards, I think furiously. I’m going to make you run so many laps in the morning, you’ll wish YOU had been carried off by a rebel.
Because that’s who this is. I don’t know how he knows Shakespeare, or where he got his training, but he’s got to be one of the swamp rats. They call themselves the Fianna—warriors—but they’re all just bloodthirsty lawbreakers. Who else would dare infiltrate the base with nothing but a pistol that looks like it’s from the dawn of time? At least that means there’s no danger of him snapping into mindless violence, since Avon’s deadly Fury only affects off-worlders. I only have to worry about the average, everyday violence that comes so easily to these swamp-dwellers.
He tugs me off the main path and into the shadows between the bar and the supply shed next door. Then it hits me: I’m not going to be making anyone run laps in the morning. I’m a military officer, being captured by a rebel. I’m probably never going to see my troops again, because I’ll be dead by morning.
With a snarl, I jam my hand back and down, sending the blade of the pink plastic cocktail sword deep into the guy’s thigh. Before he has time to react, I give it a savage twist and snap off the hilt, leaving the hot-pink plastic embedded in the muscle.
At least I won’t go without a fight.
The boys are playing with firecrackers in the alley, stolen from the strings in the temple. The girl watches through a hole in the wall, her face pressed against the crumbling brick. Yesterday it was the Lutheran priest’s turn in the temple, but tomorrow is a wedding, and it’s her mother’s turn to convert the tiny box of a building at the end of the street to match too-distant memories of traditional ceremonies on Earth.