"Kalashnikov's", Zvezdny Gorodok

[arvg]

Sub-Lieutenant Katz poured himself a cup of coffee from the end of the bar, sighing as he glanced up at the tall windows, out over the Omega-52 system. It had taken quite a bit, from the moment he'd been recruited through Kusari space, all the way down through Bretonia, just to reach that place.

No one appeared up yet, which wasn't surprising, pre-dawn patrols for the next month. His reward for being 'late' for muster. Not exactly his finest hour, but at least he'd managed to get his hands on some Kusari food supplies on the way. That had saved him from spending time in the stockade... or worse, the other side of an airlock.

The woman working the bar smiled at him as she fiddled with the jukebox, her choice surprised him a little. Watching her unscrew a bottle of Irish Cream she produced from a safe hiding space behind a hundred and ten different varieties of vodka that composed much of the bar's liquor selection.

"Do you need something to keep you warm before you head off to patrol Siberia?" she offered, a little too suggestively.

Katz sighed as he sipped his coffee, fumbling through his pockets for his cigarettes "Nyet," he murmured, shaking his head. "Spaciba."

"Your Russian is improving," she observed. "how many more days of Dawn patrols now?"

"A lot more if I take that drink," Katz said, nodding to the bottle she was waggling at him. "Any chance of breakfast before I go?"

She nodded, placing the order for rice pudding, which was the second part of Katz's punishment. That he had to eat rice with every meal until he completed his dawn patrols and learned not to P*ss the Commissar off.

He took his mug and made his way over to a table under the windows, sinking into it and thumbing through a warn copy of Trotsky he carried with him to breakfast each morning.

---