Ginger Gears

Chips Down

Tarc lifted her glass and clinked it against Rose's. "To the lousiest Sabacc player on the Finalizer!"

"Hey!"

She shrugged. "What? It's true, isn't it?"

"Give her a break," said Sarith. "At least she had the guts to play against you."

Tarc laughed. "You're right."

Rose sighed and sipped her beer. All things considered it had been pretty silly to play Sabacc again. But after yesterday's experiences on the bridge she needed something to take her mind off the mess of her own doing.

Everybody had looked at her – gone was her anonymity. Why had Hux bothered to talk to a low-level worker at all! And why in the galaxy had he remembered her? If she showed her face again on the bridge at least one of the senior officers would probably recognize her. She had to wait for weeks if not months before she could attempt any kind of slicing.

And the worst of it was that Hux seemed to be distrustful of her presence on the bridge. At least to him she wasn't invisible anymore. Well, she just had to keep out of his way.

She took another gulp of beer. Of course she had no idea how she could pull that off. After all she didn't know his daily routines. But luckily the Finalizer was a huge ship with hundreds of people ... it shouldn't be too hard to avoid Hux.

She relaxed a little. Yes, that's it. There were quite a few repairs necessary in the hangars, no chance that he would ever turn up down there. Problem solved, low profile and all that.

She looked at the beer bottle and started to peel off the stick-on label. She suppressed a yawn. To think that she had to lay low for weeks if not months ... it sucked. Perhaps she should go to sleep early – either that or she would drink another beer.

Tarc found another opponent and left them to join another table. Sarith lifted his beer bottle. "Another?"

Rose nodded. He got up and she started to massage her temples. The label said that it was some beer from Hutt space, probably cheap stuff ... she could already feel the headache coming on.

Sarith put the new bottle in front of her. "You feeling alright?"

She really had to work on her Sabacc face, some spy she turned out to be ... "Nope." She took a gulp. "I think I'm homesick."

"And here I thought it had something to do with the fact that General Hux himself dressed you down – silly me."

Rose jerked her head up. "What?"

"Heard it a couple of hours ago."

She groaned. This was terrible! It would take even longer for people to forget if there were rumours going around about her. "It's not true. He just remarked about the fact that he wasn't aware that here had been maintenance planned on the bridge."

He grinned. "Thought so, otherwise you wouldn't sit here."

"My shitty day just got worse." She took a big gulp.

"Take it easy, we're all bored. Nobody thinks twice about rumours anyway."

"Well, it sucks. If Chitundu even gets so much as a whiff of this rumour she'll send me into sanitation for good. She already thinks that I'm trying to sabotage her career."

"You could just own it, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"Just go with it – tell everybody that it's true. That Hux yelled at you for doing your work. That will get you pity points and everybody will believe it." He winked at her.