A sound opposite her brought her back to the present - a chair being pulled back. Sura looked up to see a man in his late twenties, unshaven, with ragged hair, about to sit down.
"Go away," she snapped. The man grunted and sat down anyway, depositing a glass on the table with a heavy blow.
"I said go away," Sura repeated.
"This is the least busy table in here," he pointed out. "So I'll sit here. I'll sit where I like."
The bag Sura had brought with her was sitting under the table, by her feet. She carefully reached into it and felt around until she found the gun. The man didn't appear to notice.
"What's up with you, anyway?" he asked her.
"Mind your own business," she snarled.
"Charming, like the rest of this hell-hole of system," he grumbled. He picked up his glass, drained it, and stomped back to the bar.
The encounter left Sura in a worse mood than before. The intrusion of a lout was the last thing she wanted now, and she quickly set about finishing her drink. Before she reached the end, though, he was back with a new, full glass.
"Can't you take a hint and get lost?" she said.
"Probably not, otherwise I would have taken the hints not to come anywhere near this pathetic excuse of a world."
"My world, thank you," she said angrily. Her right hand was still holding onto the gun, and there was a bit of a temptation to pull the trigger and blast this nuisance out of the way. Such murder was not something she would really stoop to, but the thought that the man was easily removable was comforting and frightening. Frightening that she would even consider it. To her surprise the man drew back a little at the revelation she was native to Qudira. He drunk off half of his new glass.
Sura barked a sneering laugh at him. "What's your problem with that?"
Considering his reaction to her previous statement she didn't expect a reply, but perhaps the extra shot of alcohol had changed his mind.
"It's nearly killed me, and cost me most of what I had, so sorry if I don't think much of anyone who lives here," he stated. The glass went back down on the table, and the man was staring straight at Sura as he spoke.
She shook her head at him. "What are you talking about?" she replied.
"All those bastard pirates who live in places like this," he retorted. He spat on the table, towards Sura. She pulled a face and leaned back out of the way. It occurred to her that he was regarding everyone here as another potential pirate, and that for whatever reason he was either too annoyed or drunk to care about insulting them to their face. The implication itself was insulting to Sura.
"You've not a clue about Qudira," she snarled at him.
"You what?" he said scornfully. "I've a clue about the realities. I lost my ship, and nearly my life, here. That says all that needs to be said. Just enough credits left to get myself a second-hand wreck to get out of here as soon as possible, and I've no intention of coming back. This place and everyone in it can go to hell. You included."
Sura was staring past the man during his rant, her attention caught by a movement in the street outside. There was a group of half a dozen people, peering into every door of every building, working their way towards them. They reminded her of something seen in a casual glance earlier. The bang she had witnessed from the taxi. Suddenly she saw something she had missed earlier, that the explosion had taken place in the same road as Ardith's office. She started shaking, her hand gripping the gun tighter than before.
"You said you've got a ship?" she said nervously.
The man caught her change in mood. "A second hand wreck," he replied. His scornful expression seemed to have vanished, and he was watching her curiously. That lasted a brief second before being replaced by astonishment. Sura was resting a small gun on the table, pointing straight at him.
"Get up and take me to it. Out of here by the back door, and quiet," she ordered. She was shaking badly, and so was her voice, but the man with the ship was in no mood to call her bluff either.
"You're crazy!" he pointed out as he slowly stood up. "All right, follow me," he said, moving towards the back of the bar.
Sura slung her bag onto her shoulder with her spare hand, and hid her pistol between it and her body, still pointing outwards. Still no-one else in the bar appeared to be watching. The group outside were walking across the street, towards them.
There was a shout outside and two of the group barged in, yelling at everyone to stay put. A beam of laser light flashed across the room, scoring a deep mark in the wall at the back. There was little reaction from most of the occupants, but Sura and her prisoner were right by the back door. She pushed him towards it and stumbled through herself.
They were in a small storeroom, with crates of bottles and barrels stacked randomly around it. Sura's prisoner took one look at her, then shoved a pile of drinks over so they clattered down and blocked the door they had just entered through.
"Get a move on!" Sura screamed at him as the door moved then jammed against the debris piled in front of it. The man looked around the store. At its back there was another door with an electronic control panel embedded in the wall. He hit the panel and the exit slid open.
They were in the main port complex, thronging with people. The man tried to sprint away into the crowd, but Sura stayed with him. He glanced over his shoulder at her and swore.
"You're not losing me!" she yelled back to him.
"That's not your only problem. Your friends are back there!"
They both ran. The disorganised station allowed them into the ship berths without much of an effort to stop them - just a brief "Wait!" from a customs officer who shrugged and turned back to his job when they ignored him. Their was a distant commotion from some of the police in the area, but they were too far away to interfere.
The man led Sura through to a wall with dozens of lift shafts in it, heading up to the various docking levels. Both of them ran to the nearest. Inside the man paused.
"Hurry up!" Sura ordered him.
"Look, I've only just got this ship, I'm not even sure where it's berthed," he shouted back in her face. "You'll have to be patient!" He dug into his pocket and removed a card, glanced at it, then hammered the lift's panel. Seen through the glass-fronted lift car, six people shoved themselves clear of the crowd and sprinted towards them. A couple of laser shots flew out, one hitting the lift and melting a hole in its wall. Sura yelled at the pilot. He yelled back. The lift started to move.
More shots. The glass exploded, showing the two occupants with sparkling shards, but then the lift passed through an opening in the ceiling into temporary safety.
They came to a halt on a walkway that encircled a large, open hangar, criss-crossed with other walkways stretching throughout the void. In some of the gaps between these passages ships hung motionless in the space. Sura looked at them in fascination, but her hand was still holding her gun, and it was still pointed at her pilot. He looked scornfully at it.
"You could have tried firing back," he suggested. "It never even occurred to you, did it? You had me for an idiot." He turned his back on Sura and walked away, ignoring Sura as she followed him.
She knew he was right, and her chances of escape this way were vanishing as a result. She pointed the gun, but her natural self-control restrained her from pulling the trigger - she had not done that when there was immediate panic and danger, and she certainly couldn't now. The cold metal world around her, everything strange, and her stood in it, uncertain, unknowing, and useless.
"Bastard!" she screamed at the man, and shot him. He crashed to the floor with a yelp of surprise and pain, a smoking hole in his jacket.