The virgin & the bad boy (Gravity)

B2/Chapter 18/A smuggler called Han

Hal's Bar/Hendon crater space port/South Poll.

I walked in  Hal's bar part of the Hendon crater space port. It was midday. Technically it's always midday in Hendon. The ring of orbiting space mirrors hundreds of miles wide reflect light onto the poles. This deliberate global warming has been releasing carbon dioxide and water vapor into the skies for years. The plan was after a century or two air pressure would build up. Then you could leave the pressure dome in nothing but an oxygen mask. The tilted ring of orbiting mirrors formed the iris around Mars forming the famous 'Eye'. 

I walked through swing doors past a sign offering 3 for 2 on happy hour.  This place is so, up market I thought. It was underground which was dangerous. Undergound the robots can use leathal weapons. This was just the kind of place my mother warned me not to go to.  A guard robot on the door. stood checking IDs as I went in. I took a deep breath and held up my right arm. The machine put the scanner at it. What he didn't know was that under my sleeve I I had appendage with a poisonous bug currently sitting in a small bag of blood. This would give me about two hours before the bag of blood needed to be changed or it exploded. I had borrowed  the bug from the arm of ThirtyDegrees.  He in turn had removed it  or rather his dad/surgeon/dentist had done it. 

I walked down the length of the bar. It was long and thin and built from old disused rocket body and smelt of cheap disinfectant. There was a recycled metal sheet acting as a bar at one side and a row of booths at the other. 

I walked and could see Bennie and Marko. They had set up the meet with the quicksilver smuggler. FYI Quicksilver was an Eye slang word for Mercury, the planet not the liquid metal. 

The Southpole of Mars had a large stock of water ice. This was mined sent all over the planet. It was also converted into liquid oxygen and hydrogen and sold to freighters in orbit. While they had ion drives for deep space work they still used chemical engines to hit escape velocity quickly on occupied ships. Offworld pilots were common in Hendon crate .  So having a pilot having some gravity leave was common and would not raise notice. I myself was wearing a slip suit - a kind of light weight space suit which was really more protection against sudden decompression than a fully fledged space suit. It was light and flexible the kind of thing someone who was doing a little space travel might be wearing. I thought it helped me not stand out. Plus it was in one piece so looking at my bare arm would be difficult. 

 I walked down the length of the bar. Bennie, Marko and I were all pretending to ignore each other.  As I walked by Marko he held three fingers out. This was the sign that my contact was three booths down.

There was a large blonde woman in the booth number three. She was caucasian and very pale like Io had been from spending months in space. She was large, middle-aged a perfect disguise for a smuggler I thought. I sat down casually opposite her.

"That's a great disguise," I said.

She looked at her menu and pulled the face. Was she really going to go through the whole code word ritual Marko and Bennie had insisted on setting up?

"Thanks. I'll have the cheeseburger and double fries. What do you Martian's drink around here?" she said.

I must have looked a bit surprised that wasn't the secret meeting phrase. Perhaps she was getting into this whole secret identity thing. She looked at me again.

"Shouldn't you be writing all this down?" she said.

I looked at her strangely.

"What ? I'm your contact" I said.

"Really? We call them waitresses on my home." said the woman "Does the burger come with coleslaw?"

Just then the face of a young Asian man popped round the corner of the booth from the next booth along.