Outrageous Fortune-Errant Freight Book One

Chapter 2

One year before taking the Dyar's Canyon job, John had been one of many crowding a pub in Nike's Lower Cadbury district, and if he hadn't quite been drinking himself into an early grave, he hadn't discounted the prospect, entirely.

He'd taken a perch on a rickety stool set before a plank bar made sticky with drinks past, and which caused various sleeves of various drinkers to adhere to the tackier sections of the wood.

The air in the pub had a similar texture, the perfume of bad booze and sour sweat laced with smoke, while the cracked plaster walls thrummed along with the murmuration of voices as they swelled, contracted, rose, and dropped in accordance to the level of enthusiasm of the current speakers.

The war, it seemed, had finally ended.

To his right, a happily drunk young woman in a Corps long coat with an empty right sleeve celebrated the new peace by offering lopsided hugs to everyone in reach.

To his left, a veteran lacking an eye warned anyone who'd listen it'd be a cold day in Morton before you could trust the Coal Farts—like most who'd served, he used the gutter term for Coalition Forces—to keep their word.

John could see merits in both points of view but, somehow, he couldn't get invested in either.

Instead, he sat and contemplated the shot glass he held up to the overhead pendant lamp. As he studied the glass, he let himself become entranced by the liquor, the way it absorbed the pub's scanty illumination before releasing it again in a seductive glow that promised more than the purported whiskey had any hope of delivering.

"You gonna drink that?"

John looked up to see Martin Soong, resigned proprietor of the aptly named A Fine Mess. "And destroy the illusion?" he asked.

"What?" Martin asked back.

"Never mind." John raised the glass in a mock toast before bringing it to his lips.

He was prevented drinking—or, depending on how one looked at it, saved from the ruined illusion—by a rough hand gripping his shoulder and a rougher voice proclaiming, "I know you."

In one sentence, John felt even the scant light of the tavern go dim. "And here we go," he murmured before setting the glass on the bar and turning to face his past.

In this case, the past was young —a youth no more than twenty—though the belligerent eyes added a solemnity to the past's sepia-toned features. "Can I help you?"

The question was mild, but still had the youth releasing his tight-knuckled grip on John's shoulder. "You are John Pitte, aren't you?"

John looked from the young man to the giant of a corpsman standing at his side, wearing an infantry long-coat that did little to conceal the ginger mammoth's muscular bulk.

John wondered if this young and furious past had been seeking him out, and brought this one-man regiment along for backup, or had the pair been slumming in Lower Cadbury and simply stumbled upon him?

Not that it mattered, beyond the level of bruising John could expect from the encounter.

He returned his attention to the youth. "Am I?"

The boy blinked, obviously confused. "What?"

"I mean," John explained, "you said you knew me, but now you're asking, which leads me to believe you might be suffering an existential crisis—and you haven't even had any of Martin's purported whiskey yet."

"Hey!" Martin looked up from the glass he was polishing.

"Sorry," John said.

"It is you," the kid said, or more growled. "Captain John Pitte, of the UCF Kodiak. Your picture was in the papers, after Nasa."