Chapter 31: Chapter 15: Pub Brawl

“You know, you might be the most ungrateful sack I’ve ever known,” Rosalie said. She tipped back the shot glass of luminous purple liquid, then chased it with a glass of beer. 

“Why’s that?” Henrik asked, unfazed, while the rest of the ops crew gaped at Rosalie. He shared their admiration, but refused to let it show.

Draug eyed its still-full shot glass and beer. “I give up. How do you do it?”

“Practice and genetics, honey,” Rosalie answered Draug with a wink. 

The Cranky Crate pub was boisterous and crowded. Sparse lighting, randomly placed sustenance kiosks, and a makeshift dance floor made its ad-hoc origins apparent. But the ragtag origin gave an air of authenticity that appealed to its most frequent clientele—the hauler crews rotating through Praxum Depot.

Henrik found the music unexpectedly refreshing, with songs of real instruments and vocals instead of computer-generated noise. One of the few things that brought a smile to his face nowadays.

Orbiting Praxum, the lone moon of Praxa, the station served as a distribution hub for three intersecting trade routes. Merchant guilds held a lucrative monopoly on ferrying cargo destined for Praxa Prime. The massive ring-shaped orbital habitat had seen an influx of wealthier residents since the loss of Auturia, and as such, this led to an increase in demand for goods and services.

The ops crew had been saving up for leave on Praxa Prime, then they arrived to find the ring under a temporary visitation restriction. Only residents and cleared personnel were allowed to dock. Henrik repeatedly pointed out that if the Stardancer hadn’t been forced to detour to Terminus, they would’ve made it back in time.

“You going to answer my question?” Henrik said to Rosalie, his bottled-up anger seeping into his voice.

“Listen, I know you’ve had a few, but don’t get snippy with me,” Rosalie said, then smiled at the chief engineer. “Dash isn’t our favorite, and you blame him for Terminus. We get it. But it’s not Dash’s fault Praxa Prime has temporarily limited visitors. We’re at a pub now, and soon Dash will have us more work. This system is relatively stable, and still growing. In general, our life isn’t terrible. Why can’t you enjoy the night like the rest of us?”

“You just admitted Dash is subpar. Why do you keep defending him?” Brock said, much to Henrik’s delight.

“If both of you are so unhappy, then cancel your contract and find another ship,” Rosalie said. Henrik wanted to reply, but decided against it. Brock’s jaws flexed, and he remained silent as well. “That’s what I thought. A subpar captain is better than no work at all.”

“Speaking of our glorious leader,” Brock said, and nodded toward the entrance.

The ops crew followed the big engineer’s gaze to the flight crew standing by the door. A bot host led them to a booth. Dash and Gaius sat while Wesley scanned the crowd.

Henrik sank in the booth. “Please don’t see us,” he said as the medtech met his eyes and waved excitedly. Wesley navigated through the tables and booths, ducking between a rowdy cluster of cantankerous station techs, and came to a stop in front of the ops crew.

“Greetings, fellow crewmembers,” he said with a broad smile and glazed eyes. “This place is quite lively. Are we enjoying ourselves tonight?”

The temps all eyeballed the medtech like he was an escaped mental patient. “Have you been drinking?” Rosalie said.

“I had a glass of wine during the interview, nothing more. It was actually quite good, considering it was from a vendor,” he answered, and received a unanimous barrage of eye rolls.

“How’d the interview go?” Henrik prodded. He exchanged a knowing glance with Brock.

Wesley’s eyes lowered to the scuffed floor. “Um, well about that—”

Brock met Henrik’s gaze with arched eyebrows. “How’d Dash screw it up now?”

“It was Gaius, actually. The conversation was friendly until the candidate determined she’d had a prior encounter with him.”

“Good Lords, don’t tell me they bunked,” Rosalie said.

“No, nothing like that. She was serving on another ship when it had an incident with the Stardancer while docking at a station.”

“Let me guess,” Henrik said. He could picture Dash and Gaius scrambling on the bridge as the disaster unfolded. “Gaius clipped her ship, and once she found out, she wanted to throttle him.”

“Technically, he didn’t hit her, but she did clip the station in avoiding him.”

The ops crew let out a collective sigh of frustration. Henrik looked at each of the others, held his tongue, and turned back to the medtech. “Are there any other candidates lined up?”

“No,” Wesley said. He shifted on his feet, his cheer all but gone. “But we’ll keep looking. I promise we’ll find someone.”

“We’ll hold you to that,” Brock said, and gave the medtech a hard stare.

“If you’ll excuse me.” Wesley left the table before anyone could stop him.

No one spoke. After a minute, Henrik turned to Rosalie. “Still think I’m an ungrateful sack?”

“I do,” Rosalie said, and ordered another drink. “But one with a valid point about the captain.”

---

“What’d they say?” Dash asked once Wesley stumbled back to their booth.

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Wesley caught his foot as he went to sit in his seat and fell atop the cushion instead.

“I told you he’s a lightweight,” Gaius said to Dash as Wesley righted himself.

“I’m perfectly fine,” Wesley said, adjusting his shirt and smoothing his hair. “The ops crew said it was good to see the flight crew out enjoying themselves.”

“You’re a horrible liar,” Gaius chided the medtech. “They’re clearly annoyed we’re here.”

“They can go back to the ship if they don’t like it,” Dash said. He wasn’t leaving. “I want to know what they said about the interview.”

“They were disappointed,” Wesley said, and paused. “As we all are.” He slumped into his seat, letting his head fall back to rest against the cushion. “This evening did not turn out as I imagined.”

“On the bright side, that’s not the worst interview we’ve had,” Gaius said. “All she did was curse us out and throw her drink on you.”

“It’s close,” Dash said. “She didn’t try to stab us with a fork.”

“Look at it this way. It’s better she found out now, before we hired her and she flipped out in the middle of a run. At least we avoided dealing with the consequences of that.”

A retrofitted maintenance droid stopped at their booth and placed a drink order on the table. Dash distributed the drinks, placing a glass of clear liquid in front of Wesley. He sat up and eyed the glass in front of him. “I will continue to search for candidates. I know we can make this work,” he said, and drank from the glass. “Is this water?”

“Trust me, you need it. I don’t need you with a hangover, unable to treat my hangover,” Dash said. He noticed a commotion across the pub behind Wesley. A crowd gathered. “Looks like somebody’s causing problems.”

Gaius stood on the booth seat for a better view. “I think there’s a fight.”

“Don’t go over there,” Dash said, but Gaius had already left the booth.

Wesley stood as well. “Captain, I will accompany him.”

“That makes me feel so much better.”

“Someone may need medical attention—”

“Just go. I’ll be right there,” Dash said, and watched the medtech leave. He enjoyed one last swallow from his drink before following them. On the far side of the pub, he pushed through the growing congregation of onlookers to find two people wrestling on the ground. One of them, red-faced and angry, was his forever-irritable chief engineer. The other was a dark-haired woman, clinging to Henrik’s back, her arms wrapped around his neck in a choke hold. They grunted as they struggled against one another.

“Captain, we must help him!” Wesley said.

“No way, let them roll,” Gaius said over the growing chorus of cheers.

Dash surveyed the crowd surrounding the ruckus. “Where’s the rest of the ops crew? They know they need to babysit him.”

Gaius nodded toward the pub entrance. “Bouncers incoming.”

Dash spotted the thick-necked heads of two men approaching. He barged through the front row of onlookers, in no mood for this nonsense after the disastrous interview. He ignored the complaints of those he’d jostled and bent down next to the combating forms.

“Any reason you’re trying to pop the head off my chief engineer?” he said to the woman. “The bouncers are on their way over, so why don’t you two knock it off.”

Henrik and the woman paused their tussle, eyes scanning the myriad of strangers standing around them. Self-awareness dawned on their faces, and she released him. Henrik rolled away, coughing and cursing, while she stood up with the slow stretch of someone who’d drank too much.

“Show’s over,” Dash said to the crowd, who grumbled in collective disappointment.

“Toss off, freighter jockey,” said a short man with a comically high-pitched voice. His overalls were covered in the dirty metal specks of a salvage crew. His rudeness also befit the salvager reputation.

“Somebody’s been breathing in too many fumes. Go back to scraping a waste tank,” Dash said. The squeaky little runt and his equally rough-looking crew froze in stunned silence at the insult. When he recovered, he spit on Dash, regretting it immediately when Dash smacked him upside the head. Dash suffered a retaliatory punch from one of the runt’s crewmembers before the respective crews pulled the combatants apart.

“Captain, please, this is the last thing we need!” Wesley pleaded as he clung to one of Dash’s arms.

“He started it!” Dash said, knowing it sounded ridiculous as it came out. He noticed an unfamiliar set of sturdy arms wrapped around him. The woman had joined with Gaius and Wesley. He shook them off, and stumbled back into a thick body. He spun around and came face-to-chest with the walking tower of muscle that were the hulking bouncers. Their bad-tempered stares locked onto him like point defense turrets.

“Listen, I came here to break up the fight,” he said, and pointed over his shoulder at the salvage crew. “They wanted more.”

“You touch the staff, then the staff touches you,” one of the bouncers said. The other jabbed a stunner into Dash, who went rigid as burning pain rocked his body. The room tipped, and he fell into blackness.

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