The human-friendly bar Elaine chose was more of a club, really.
Electrode was located on the 02 deck, near the docks, where an impaired sailor could easily stumble back to their ship to sleep it off. Station Security also liked to lurk around here because non-humans got antsy about places where date rape could happen. Sexual violence wasn't common among space-faring species who mated for pleasure in addition to procreation and, while it wasn't just us humans who had a bad reputation in that area, we were the easiest to police in public spaces. Rylocks did theirs via ritualized combat and Flitte didn't mate while away from their homeworld.
Anyway, if you were two human women who wanted to go drinking, then this was the best kind of place to do it. We passed three station security agents as we entered the club and I got pings in the feed as they tagged my likeness. It wasn't personal, they just recognized me as a tempting target for a specific variety of predator.
Some people hate this kind of surveillance. Some people have never woken up in the aid station after getting rolled, too concussed to remember where you were before you got mugged. There are cameras everywhere on a space station, especially this close to the hull. You get used to it. Privacy means something different when you're a spacer. Very few captains will miss their departure window for an absent spacer and if station security can get you back to your ship without help then you stand a much better chance of not being left stranded at the dock on half pay (or no pay) in the event of an emergency.
Inside, the club was nice. The music was loud and thumpy, but didn't hurt my inner ear. The walls were painted with bioluminescent aquatic life forms like coral reefs and exotic types of fish that glowed under blacklight spots.
Elaine led me to the bar and ordered for the both of us. "Two Nebula Tides!"
"This is from the secret menu," she told me, whispering into my ear. "Trust me. You're gonna love it."
The bartender produced two blended drinks which had a gradient of alcohol and mixers that shaded from deep violet to soft pink with a ribbon of glittered swirled through it. It certainly was pretty and delicious, once I'd tasted it. I could tell the drink was low ABV, which told me something about the quality of this establishment and I relaxed. I could have a couple of these in short order and not worry about getting more that a light buzz.
Elaine and I proceeded to do exactly that. She wanted to share everything on the secret menu and I was inclined to agree. We weren't going to be back at Elladan any time soon and I'd barely put a dent in my pay. There was no reason to miss out on this experience and the drinks were pretty. I took pictures of them for my long-defunct social media accounts—after scrubbing the location data out of the images and my posts. The accounts were private so the only people who could follow me were my kids, but there was no sense in being stupid.
We were halfway through a pair of pitch black 'Event Horizon's when Elaine spotted someone over my shoulder and her expression went blank—no, not just blank. She looked annoyed and then wiped the emotion from her face. She smoothly turned towards the bar and angled her face away from—ah, from the entrance.
Following a hunch, I pretended to get up to look at a kiosk where you could request certain songs. I stuck close and kept half an eye on her as I did so. She looked tense until I returned to the bar and took the seat on her other side so we could keep facing each other.
She gave me a weak smile. "Smooth."
"How annoying is it?" I asked, discreetly looking over her shoulder to see if I could spot anyone paying her too much attention.
I found him right away. There was a guy who'd just entered the bar and he was looking around like he was trying to find someone. He was on the tall side for a human and had probably grown up at normal Earth gravity. He had his orange hair shaved on the sides and long in the middle. He'd braided his remaining hair away from his face and down the back his head. There was a sulkiness around his mouth that looked habitual and something about the set of his shoulders started a little klaxon in the back of my head that said 'bar fight incoming.'
"I had some unwelcome attention the last time I was here," Elaine explained, shielding her face. "I went on a date with him a year ago while we were here on a port stay, like now. We didn't click so I declined another invite and he took it personally. I ran into him again a few times during other port stays he kept showing up at the lock. Brando and Taj had to intervene after a while." She mustered up a reassuring smile. "It's probably a coincidence. This is, uh, not a place where he would know to look for me. If he doesn't see me, there won't be a problem."
In retrospect, Elaine had kept us in well-lit, populated areas with a strong security presence and lots of exits or controlled entrances. I'd thought she was just showing a spacer's common sense, but apparently she'd been worried about a specific hazard.
I watched the man with the orange braid start hunting among the tables, paying close attention to groups with women who were roughly Elaine's size and shape.
Yeah, I wasn't going to put money on him being here by coincidence.
I felt my pulse start to pick up and echo in my sternum. I forced myself to exhale slowly through my mouth and calm down. This didn't have to get violent. We just had to move carefully and quickly. Once we hit the corridor, we could ask station security for an escort to the dock.
"Let's go," I said, once his back ended up turned towards us.
Elaine replied with a subvocal sound that just conveyed anxiety. I threaded our fingers together and held her hand so that we wouldn't get separated. She had warm palms and I felt kind of bad when she sucked in air at the touch of my cold fingertips.
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"Sin, you're freezing!" she hissed as I hustled us through the loose throngs of customers. "Why didn't you say something?"
"I'm always cold," I commented, without thinking about it. "It's my normal."
We had almost made it when I felt someone jerk Elaine backwards. She'd been half a step behind me and it felt like they'd gotten her by the other arm. Her hand tightened in mine and I ended up hauled backwards with her.
Orange Braid had Elaine by the wrist when I turned and had dragged her back. He'd pulled her wrist up over her head so she had to struggle to maintain her balance and I lost the silent struggled I'd been having with my temper. A kernel of heat ignited in my sternum and the world took on an all too familiar red tint.
"Let go of me!" Elaine didn't bother with trying to reason with him and pitched her voice to carry.
Heads turned all around us and a bouncer I hadn't spotted before started making his way over.
"You think you can just ignore me?" Orange Braid started to shake her, but drew up short when I inserted myself into the small space between them. "Beat it, bitch. I'm talking to her." He punctuated his growl with a shove, which was what I'd been hoping for.
I shoved his hand out and away from me with one hand and bought my other clenched fist down onto his exposed shoulder in a brachial strike. He had a little height on me so I couldn't get enough force into the hit to drop him entirely, but he staggered and released Elaine. I swept an arm in front of her and herded her behind my back.
Orange Braid tried to charge me from his kneeling position and I was able to plant a foot in his chest to shove him back. A part of me started thinking about how to press my advantage; kick him in the jaw, aim for ST-8 acupressure point, rake his eyes if he tries to rally, get his arm extended, place a hand bend the elbow and push forward until it…
"SECURITY!" Elaine shouted over the anxious hubbub surrounding us and cutting through my haze. "THIS WAY!"
I shook my head to clear it and kept herding Elaine away from her assailant. Two security officers charged in from the corridor and the bouncer closed in from the other side. Orange Braid tried to get up again, but this time the Bouncer kicked him behind the knee and staggered him. The officers looked our way briefly, registered that we were trying to stay clear and focused their energy on subduing Orange Braid.
Elaine was holding onto me by the back of the shoulders and it felt grounding. Slowly, the pounding in my ears began to slack off and I felt my fingers relax out of fists. "Are you alright?" I asked, over my shoulder.
"Am I alright?" she replied, sounding kind of soggy.
"Well, he didn't manage to touch me," I replied. That seemed a little obvious to me, but she had just had a fright.
"No," she mused and her voice was conveying something I didn't know how to interpret. She sounds a little shaky and had dropped her forehead onto the back of my shoulder. "He sure didn't."
Orange Braid ended up having to be tranqed by security before he quit trying to fight people and we accompanied the security officers as they took him to lockup.
Ending the night in the security station was probably not what either Elaine or I had planned. I don't think she'd had plans to invite me back to her bunk or anything, but if she had I could tell those plans were canceled, which was just as well since I had only just now realized that she'd been sending me some signals.
It had been a while since my last relationship and I needed a minute to remember how flirting worked.
Still, I didn't mind the way she held onto my arm as we followed the officers to give a statement.
We squeaked in just under the wire when getting back from liberty. Station Security must have called ahead because our captain was waiting at the lock for us. Brando made a bulky shape at his side and I was pretty sure I saw Taj lurking down the corridor. He wasn't as big as Brando, but he was muscular and moved like he knew how to use it.
"I just had a call from Station Security letting us know you might have been delayed in returning to the ship," Grace greeted us. He looked us over. "Are you alright?"
"It turns out Piotr didn't move down to the planet," Elaine said, shakily. "He's in lockup now for assault and possession of a forged identity chip."
Grace grimaced and gently took her by the shoulders. "Do you need to see Doc?"
Elaine shook her head. "No, xe is off duty right now and Sin took care of it before he could do more than grab my arm. I'm ok, they scanned me at the station."
"Sin did?" Brando echoed, looking at me up and down.
"Security was all over him within seconds," I demurred. "I didn't have to do much." …which was probably for the best. Only I knew how close a call we'd just had. I had trouble, sometimes, with stopping once I got started fighting. I'd probably have to tell Grace about that before long. I was a good fighter, but a lousy security presence.
I thought back to another time, in another place where there'd been a small, wet body laying too still on a bathroom floor surrounded by Wasp and his shitheel friends as they laughed and jeered. There'd been no one to stop me that time and I still woke up at nights in a cold sweat remembering just how far I'd gone. Nobody had died, but sometimes I thought that was only because I'd been so outnumbered at the time.
We wouldn't have gotten away with just giving a statement if Elaine hadn't snapped me out of my haze.
Grace shot me a sideways glance.
"Skill counts a lot in a fight, Brando," he commented and then turned my way. "I'm sorry this happened on your first outing, Sin. Were you both able to get all your errands taken care of? We can probably carve out a few more hours of liberty for you tomorrow if you need it."
I shook my head. "We took care of business first. He didn't find us until we'd gone for a drink before heading back to the ship."
Elaine stuck close until we got to her cabin door. "I had a good time, aside from Piotr," she said. "Would you like to do something similar on our next port stay?"
I nodded. "I'd like that."
I absolutely did not miss the little blush that touched her ears and the happy smile that burst across her face. "It's a date, then," she said and shyly let herself into her cabin.
My cabin was dark, but warm when I reached it. Even then, the heater turned on as soon as I'd closed the door. I breathed out a sigh of relief as the heat soaked into my chilly body. Coro had promised he'd look at the environmental settings in my cabin and he must have taken me seriously when I asked for maximum heat in my room.
I really had met a good crew.
Fortunately, all my shopping fit into my grav trunk so there was nothing on my mattress to prevent me from falling face first into bed. I rolled over after a second and unzipped my jumpsuit. When I looked down, I saw the thing I'd half-expected and half-feared to find.
The round core in the middle of my spot was raised and paler than it had been when I'd showered this morning. The skin hadn't lightened there at all, no—it was glowing from within.
I put my hand over it to feel the residual heat it gave off.
It had glowed like that after they blew me out the airlock on Mimir, only much, much brighter; so bright that I'd been able to use the glow to navigate Mimir's hull and find a place to wedge my body inside as I waited for them to dock somewhere where I could make the jump to safety.
For a second, I was back there; a small spark in the vast darkness between stars. My lungs were quiet in my chest, which only made my heart beat feel louder as I tried to comprehend what had just happened to me—what was still happening.
I wondered if it had glowed like this when I fought Wasp that day.