Clif wandered into the Buffalo bar, mostly deserted at this hour. With no one behind the bar, he reached over and grabbed the nearest bottle and cracked it. Looking around, he took in the broken down bar and smiled.
He moved to a table away from the rest and pulled up the nearest chair. Using a splinter a metal on the ground, probably a shiv, he popped open the bottle and took a long pull. Clif threw the makeshift knife into the far wall and smiled, "I wonder how many have died from a shard of metal?" Caressing a brownish stain on the table that could only be blood he answered, "At least this one."
But the words sounded too loud in his own ears, used to the cries of slaves and the rowdy jeers of crowded taverns. It shook him from his brooding and he looked around the decrepit place. Buffalo wasn't such a bad base, especially for one so deep in the Badlands, and this bar just wasn't doin' it for him.
Clif pulled out a personal link to the neural net and sent a message to Niverton. "I want a crew of slaves to be sent out to the Buffalo base bar. They're to completely refit the place. Not some shiny clean bathroom, but at least let's get some of these broken chairs replaced, and the bar restocked."
As an afterthought he replied, "And let's let them be the first to go through a fight in here. Tell them that the only one left alive after fixing the place would be let go. But make it through an airlock." He chuckled to himself, blood was always better than wasting a bottle of champagne. Who knows, maybe we could even bring back fight night. Clif grinned and looked to the shard stuck in the wall. "Friend, you might just have some life taking left in ya," he said as he pulled the metal from the wall and hefted it again. "Hmm... fight night. That might just be interesting," he thought as he polished off the beer, shattering it against a wall as he left.
