“Not going out?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “I got duty in the morning and I’ve already had one late night and hangover here. I’ll wait until tomorrow for another. Looks like you’re going.”
“Yup. Someplace down on the oh-two deck.”
“Well, have fun and leave some booze for us.”
“I’m not much of a drinker.”
“In that case, be careful. If the tip of your nose starts getting numb, shift to ginger ale with a cherry in it.”
“Does the cherry help?”
“Yeah, it makes it look like you’re drinking so people stop bugging ya.”
I made a mental note of that one. The implication of what she had said as well as the tip. “Thanks. I’ll remember.”
I like to have a good time as much as the next guy, but on my sixteenth birthday, Mom got me really drunk and I was sick as a dog. When I came to on the bathroom floor, lying in a puddle of my own making, she was sitting on the floor of the hallway outside. She said just one word, “Remember.” Then she left me to clean up the mess. Rebecca had just given me a good warning and I intended to heed it.
I took my jeans and briefs with me into the san and started to get ready. I took my time preening. It was not like I had a lot of beard yet. My hair was just too fine, but I had seen guys with wispy hair trying to look older by letting it grow out and I did not want to be one of those guys. While I was at it, I trimmed my nose hairs and clipped my nails for luck. The shower felt good and I let it finish what I had started in the gym. When I got out I dried off, slipped into my briefs and jeans, and bundled up my shipsuit and skivvies. I stowed them in the bottom of my locker and then faced the decision of which shirt to wear. The pink looked good, but I had just worn it and I wanted to spread the wear out a bit. The turtleneck was likely to be too hot in a crowded club, and the crewneck just did not feel dressy enough. I was standing there in my jeans, shirtless and barefoot when I realized Rebecca had moved to the berthing area table. I glanced over at her and caught her staring at me.
“What?” I asked. “Is something wrong?” I checked my buttons and made sure they were done up.
“Oh, no,” she purred in that voice that would melt titanium. “But if you’re gonna put on a show like that, I wanted a front row seat.”
I laughed and threw my wet towel at her. She caught it, threw it back, and pretended to go back to her reading. I pulled the white oxford shirt out of the locker, slipped it on, and slowly buttoned it up, taking care to get the tails tucked in just right. I picked the green stone and tied the leather around my neck so that it lay just below my collar bone in the hollow of my throat. I took my socks and boots over to the table and sat there to slip them on.
Rebecca moaned. “You’re a tease.”
“Thanks,” I said, and she slugged me in the arm with a laugh.
When I got the boots on, I pulled the coat out of my locker and slipped into it, leaving it unbuttoned before turning to the big mirror outside the san. I thought I looked good and, judging from Rebecca’s blush, she thought so too.
“Okay, well, I think I’m ready,” I told her. “Don’t wait up.”
“Take care, Ish. Have fun.”
Bev, Diane, and Brill were all waiting at the lock. Bev in leathers, of course, but wearing a man’s cut dress shirt with the top three buttons undone. With her smaller bust, the effect was devastating without being trashy. Funny the effect a shirt could have. Diane wore her painted-on sized jeans, a green scoop necked pullover, and a brown leather jacket. She walked that line between somebody you wanted to hug and somebody you wanted protection from. Brill stopped my heart, though. She wore a pair of low slung slacks in black leather and a cropped sweater in baby-blue mohair under a suede jacket. Her midriff was bare from the top of her hip bones to the bottom of her rib cage. She had a stylized tattoo of a sun around her navel, and the effect was smashing.
“Well,” I said when I could catch my breath, “I never knew you had a tattoo, Big B.”
“I have a couple of them,” she purred mockingly. “Play your cards right, spacer, and you might see another one.”
We all laughed and headed out for the lift, Brill leading the way. I laughed out loud when she briefly lifted the back of her jacket and I saw the blue butterfly tattooed at the base of her spine, just above the waistband of her pants. Yes, it was gonna be one of those nights.
Orbitals are arranged like a layer cake with the dock levels near the middle. Everything above the dock is generally designated office, retail, restaurant, and residential. Everything below the dock is industrial. That’s where all the cargo canisters are processed and stored, among other things. Docks were the designated main deck and everything above that was numbered in increasing order while everything below was prefixed with a zero and numbered in increasing order. So level five was the fifth level above the docks, and level oh-two was the second level below the docks. We had the same set up on the Lois with the main deck being the spine level and the main lock, the gym was technically the oh-one deck and berthing was the first deck.
The place we were heading to was in the commercial zone, below the docks on the oh-two deck. A lot of the rowdier spots were below the docks to put a buffer between the residential quiet zones and the louder entertainments available. Put another way, everything above the docks was nice and everything below the docks was not nice. Tonight, we were going to not nice and this was terra incognita to me.
The lift doors opened and we could hear competing music coming from a variety of places in both directions up and down the corridor. There was a lot of heavy bass, most of it syncopated. The air felt as moist and heavy as it did in environmental, and the crush of people after so long aboard nearly overwhelmed me. I did not know where to look first but I followed Bev out of the lift like I knew what I was doing. Diane fell in step beside me and I could feel the heat of Brill’s body behind me as she strode along as rear guard. The natural bubble that opened for Beverly expanded around Diane and me and did not close immediately behind Brill so we moved quickly. Bev obviously knew where we were going and she arrowed right for it. We carved through the crowds and into a gaping hole in the bulkhead that did not appear to have any doors at all. Above the hole a laser sign painted the word: Jump! on the bulkhead.
Just inside the door, Bev paused and leaned back for a short confab. “We’re meeting them here, right?”
Brill nodded. “Usual spot or as near to it as we can get.”
“Who are we meeting?” I asked Diane.
“Some people we know from other ships. A few from the Duchamp, and maybe some of Brill’s old shipmates from the Soyokaze. Beyond that, we’ll see what happens.”
Bev led the way and before long we had found a group of people who had chairs saved for us and pitchers of beer already on the table. Introductions went by in such a blur that none of them stuck. Several guys in leather, a couple of women in tailored suits, and at least one woman who made Beverly look like a girl scout. Her head was shaved and tattooed, the pierced breasts were bare under a spiked leather vest, and the muscle-builder bulk tipped the scales in her direction. Ironically, she had the most welcoming smile. I guess when you are built like that, you can afford to be friendly. Her name was Al. She was the astrogator from the Hedley and had the most amazing repertoire of dirty jokes.