Pilot's Flask - a bar on LA

[Jane Hartman]

Lewis squirmed a little at the contact. A trickle of amusement registered on Hartman's face. Here was a man who had faced down the Chancellor's fleets and stood vigilant against the nomad incursion shying away from a hug. There was something irrationally comical about it. Her smile froze on her lips as her own encounters with the creatures came flooding back. Compulsions. Emotions that weren't hers driven into her psyche, tearing as they went, as surely as a round through flesh. At least the Rheinlanders fought in terms she could understand. Plasma and warships were human creations, complex in design but ultimately brutally simple in purpose. She could fight them. The aliens were different. How did you fight an invader that weaponised your mind?

Lewis was talking. Hartman dug her heels in and hauled herself back to the present. A series of cheers rang out from a pool table that looked old enough to have personally accompanied Liberty from Sol. Money exchanged hands and more than a few crestfallen faces returned to their drinks with lightened pockets, grimacing as their cash lined up for a second visit to the bar. One of the Universal pilots was among the winners, and returned to his table with a full tray of drinks. A second round of cheers went out as he began distributing the amber fluid. Hartman had to take a step forward to hear Lewis over the din.

"Harder than they say. All those years in mess, I guess the choice of food in civie land overwhelmed me." She was only half joking. Lifestyle hadn't been the only factor in her decision, but the Flask was hardly the place for that discussion. Normandie could wait until a saner hour. She doubted the rogue warship would vanish any further in the interim. "But I'm sure you know all about that. As I recall, you were in longer than me."

"It's mighty strange, you know. Looking up at the flight roster and not seeing your name on it. There was a bet on that your details were bolted to the screen." She sighed in mock exasperation. "Five bets, actually. Two of them sayin' you hadn't really left, that you'd been grabbed for special operations or some similar nonsense. I'm not rightly convinced the rookies didn't spend the entirety of their leave working on it." Gambling was, of course, forbidden while on duty. That did absolutely nothing to stop it from happening, much to Hartman's chagrin.

"How have you been filling the days? Can't say I found running tours down in the memorial a bundle of fun." An old friend from the Corps had offered her the job of guiding groups through the Houston's war memorial a few days after she finalized her release paperwork. She'd lasted a day before she crumpled and took work out in the country.

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