Libertonian Servicemember's Bar & Grill

[Jane Hartman]

If you wanted something done properly you had best do it yourself.

Damn old wisdom, that was. The wisdom of a thousand old officers whose bones had long since rotted to dust; scattered across dozens of worlds the Navy had fought over, before settlement and and long centuries after it. Words from the throats of long-dead men, their bodies baked into rock at the base of some canyon that used to be a sea back on old Earth, from a time when navies had sailed between continents instead of stars. Words from her sergeants, now gray haired and drooping in their carefully-starched uniforms. Damn old words.

Elbowing her way through the crowd outside the Serviceman's Bar and Grill, Jane Hartman couldn't deny that they were good ones. It was an exaggeration to call it a crowd. A section would have been accurate, six men and one bulkier, sharper individual wearing an old marine-issue service cap and a grim expression that must have been their sergeant. Most were navy now, particularly here, but a few old troopers had been around long enough that they picked up pieces of other service's uniform. If they were good at their job, and they were off duty when they wore them, most officers let it go.

Good thing for the sergeant he was off duty. Less good that one of his men wasn't. Six was a good number for combat. Two for the machine gun, a section commander and his second in charge, and a few to hump comms gear, and rifles, and bodies, if it came to it – which it always did. It was combat. Dead men were the point of the exercise. You just had to cross your fingers and hope to God that when the smoke cleared they weren't yours. Yes, she could just about see it, the six of them sprinting through some breach in a battlecruiser somewhere, fire dancing off the hull. Shame there were seven in this little group. One extra man.

They saw her, eyes that were too unfocused to be completely sober flickering from her razor-sharp uniform, rough brown hair slung back in a bun, to the scowl on her face, to the four gold bars on her epaulettes that marked her as a full captain of the Liberty Navy's Primary Fleet. Oh, a captain in the fleet reserve, certainly, but a senior officer nonetheless. Someone managed to pull together enough brainpower to suggest that this looked to be a displeased officer, made the further breakthrough that he didn't want to be around displaced officers and took a pace backward, retreating toward the entrance to the bar, as if to take shelter there. Another drink, Serviceman Kant? And here I thought you had a transport waiting for you. She surged forward after the errant sailor -

And a knife-flat hand jumped up to stop her.

Who on God's green- It took her a moment to realise that the hand was connected to the sergeant, and that he was not stopping her, but saluting her.

“Ma'am.” He inclined his shaved head slightly beneath the cap. Behind him, Hartman saw Serviceman Kent dart back into the bar – a trapped animal delaying the inevitable. And the Sergeant's buying time for him! Useless. Doesn't he think I've got better things to do than play games?
“Thank you Sergeant.” She returned the salute and dropped it just as quickly, keen to get back to the chase. She could make a note of this man and deal with his failure to notice an extra man in his section later. For now, there was a transport just two hours out from scheduled launch and still short a man. “Who's your CO?”

The sergeant's face fell a couple of inches. No-one ever asked for your commanding officer unless they had a commendation or a complaint, and this scowling captain didn't seem the sort to give commendations. Even if she had seen him drink an entire bottle himself. He coughed, the night's euphoria quickly fading.

“Lieutenant Commander Brigslow, ma'am.” Better to pull the splinter quickly, and get it over with. He'd been doing this long enough to know the tricks. Last thing he needed was to embarrass himself in front of his men. Any more, that was. “Twelfth squadron.”
“Good.” Hartman gave a curt nod, committed it to memory. Something in the sergeant's own nod indicated that he didn't find it the least bit good. Nor should he. Hartman needed her NCOs helping hold things together, not putting more stress on a system already ripping itself apart at the seams. She'd write to Brigslow later. Yes, letters and forms, those were her weapons of choice now. Look upon me, warriors, and despair. Wielder of the deadly pen, commander-in-chief of the planet-crushing paperwork. It was ridiculous. Ludicrous. Paper didn't win wars. But it was her job, and Hartman had never been one to walk away from a job that needed doing.

Except when runaway sailors scheduled to man her transports gave her an excuse to.

The section parted before her like cane before a scythe as she stepped into the bar. One of the departing sailors moved too slow and copped a mirror-polished boot to the shin, leaped yelping out of the way. Watering eyes flickered to her for a moment, and than thought better of it, limping off with his friends and their crestfallen sergeant.

The Serviceman's Bar and Grill was much as it had been the last time she had visited – it felt like years ago. Tastefully dim, lights suspended from the ceiling, bar facing out onto a tremendous wraparound window that supposedly gave a remarkable view to the station's heavy docks. It just made Hartman feel like she needed to slap an alarm somewhere, to seal airlocks, to plug that giant damn breach. As always, she exhaled, waited for that horrible, twisting sensation of air being ripped away from her like cheap clothing, and finally, when it did not, allowed herself to relax a fraction. Further out along a station arm she could see one of her own transports at rest, a stark white '21' on the bison's rear cargo container marking it as a member of the Twenty First Combat Support Group. It was a breathtaking view, but it was not what she was here for.

Hartman raked her eyes over the bar's patrons, searching for the evasive, darting eyes of Serviceman Kent. Nothing. Surely he's not expecting me to drag him out of the latrines, is he? A second glance around the most definably Kent-free bar made it look increasingly likely that that was exactly what Serviceman Kent was expecting.

Wait a moment. Lurking by a table on the far right. That old leather jacket certainly didn't look standard issue. She shouldn't have been surprised. Some things never changed. Hartman angled for the table, shoes throwing up reflected stars on the window. The chase could wait a moment.

“Captain Remus Sius, I'll be damned. Thought you'd gone and died.” She knew that face. Not the man he was talking to, but that hardly mattered. Remus could make the introductions. He'd always been better at that. “You look like you've been sleeping under a chemical dump.” Hartman had seen Sius tired before, but not like this. Heavy rings locked around his eyes like chains, and his shoulders slumped as though he had the weight of an entire world slung atop them. Which, come to think of it, was more than likely. Liberty had plenty of worlds to care for. “Capital fleet been giving you problems?” She asked, a single eyebrow creeping up in enquiry – about as much a display of concern as one ever got out of Hartman.

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