Might Makes Right

by Michael Anderle

  Would she volunteer, or did she just want to continue this lonely existence and maybe learn another trade—one that didn’t require her to kill.

  Pearl nodded at her when she saw who had come into the bar. The place was smaller, with a long row of seats on the left. The backs of the seats "could cover John Grimes’s head" Tabitha had told her one time.

  Gyada smiled at the memory. The feisty Ranger had been introduced to her at a meeting with Bethany Anne over a year ago. It had taken Tabitha about three sentences to place who Gyada was and what she was suffering from, and then the two of them left by a side door.

  “Won’t the Empress be upset?” Gyada had asked.

  “She’s cool with it,” Tabitha answered as the two passed the Guards in the back hallway.

  “How would you know?” Gyada had looked behind them, trying to remember if she had noticed the two of them talking.

  “Mental communication,” Tabitha admitted, tapping her head. “I asked her if I could take you to Pearl’s and she told me Pearl’s was more important than the meeting.”

  “What is Pearl’s?”

  “It’s a bar,” Tabitha answered. The two of them took a right down another hall, heading towards the tram. “We need to go inward about a kilometer and up three levels.”

  Gyada murmured, “That’s not close.”

  Tabitha turned to look at her. “Did you think it would be?”

  Gyada stepped onto the tram with Tabitha. Wearing her official Ranger outfit, which was, Gyada thought, whatever made her happy, Tabitha cut a dashing figure. “I thought it would be back on the outer docks.”

  “Oh, no.” Tabitha shook her head, “This place is strictly for Inner Etheric citizens. Basically, you have to be able to get inside the Meredith Reynolds to get there.”

  Memories aside, Pearl was waiting for an order as Gyada slid into her customary table at the back. “One on tap,” she told Pearl. “Who’s on the grill?”

  “Sean,” Pearl answered, reaching under the bar. “I got an order in from Yelena’s brewery, you want pale or dark?”

  Gyada eyed Pearl, who chuckled and put the pale ale back. Coming around the bar, she placed a cold glass and the bottled dark beer on the table. Gyada appreciated that the bottles were recyclable. No extra trash up in space.

  “Why does Yelena sell to you if her guy owns All Guns Blazing?” Gyada wondered.

  Pearl waved a hand. “Distribution and production is higher than even Bobcat’s group can handle. Plus,” Pearl smiled, “Bobcat is always out to make a buck. I understand from Yelena that the two of them are betting William and Marcus that they can sell more beer than the other two for a year."

  “Couldn’t you cheat?” Gyada asked, pouring a bit of the beer into the cold glass. Most dark-beer drinkers would give Gyada grief for drinking it cold. “Thanks for allowing my beer weirdness into NS.”

  Pearl shrugged, “If you want to drink a beer extra-cold, that is your prerogative. You don’t have to abide by the rules of a planet so far away I can’t even put enough zeros at the end of a number to represent the distance.”

  “Still.” Gyada relaxed. Being around Pearl was, she imagined, the closest she would get to having a friend who accepted her for who she was. Celebrating the good things, and helping her through the bad.

  Gyada heard the door chime a moment before Pearl’s eyes flicked up to see who was coming in. The look on Pearl’s face let Gyada know that she wasn’t expecting whoever it was. Whether it was due to not knowing the person…

  Gyada had to slide out of her seat and turn to look. The suspense was killing her.

  “Peter?” Gyada’s question was left in the air as Peter turned towards her voice to see his quarry’s face peeking around the corner of the booth’s partition.

  “Ah.” He smiled, walking towards her.

  “My, oh my.” Pearl whistled under her breath. “Mr. Hot Stuff is looking for you.”

  Gyada whipped her face back to Pearl. “I’m old enough to be his umpteenth grandmother!”

  Pearl winked at her. “And your point?” she asked as she slid out of the booth.

  “What are you having, son?” Gyada heard her ask Peter.

  “Not sure I’m staying. I need to speak with Gyada,” he answered. Gyada watched as Peter came into view, and was surprised.

  He was in casual clothes.

  “I’d say fancy meeting you here,” Peter smiled at Gyada, “but since I had Meredith track you down, it would be kinda pointless.” He pursed his lips. “And inaccurate.”

  Gyada ignored Pearl’s motion from behind the bar as she focused on the Empress’ top Guardian. The captain.

  She kept her mouth shut.

  “Ok,” Peter announced as he laid both hands on the table, “I will make this quick and to the point.” He looked her in the eye.

  “Gyada, I need you.”

  There was a snort from the bar, and Gyada almost turned to give Pearl an evil glare.

  Instead, she picked up her glass and before taking a sip, asked, “Would you care to clarify that?”

  Peter’s eyes narrowed before they rolled as he realized how she might have taken the comment. “If I was going to come on to you, be very assured I would offer a certain amount of wining and dining.” He looked at her drink. “Or perhaps a little beer and fear.” He shrugged, “You can never tell the needs of a lady.”

  Gyada almost snorted the drink out of her nose, and she started coughing as she choked a bit. Too bad she’d taken that sip. Peter chuckled but handed her the rag Pearl had tossed him. Gyada wheezed a few more times into the towel.

  “Wow,” she rasped, “You know how to really choke a woman up.”

  “It’s a gift,” he shrugged, his mischievous eyes sparkling, “or a curse.

  Gyada set the towel down on the bench next to her. “Ok, since we aren’t talking wine and dine or beer and fear in the service of Venus…” When she looked up she could tell she had lost Peter with her comment about Venus.

  “Give someone a green gown?” she asked. Peter shook his head. “Horizontal refreshment?”

  Peter smiled broadly and pointed at her. “Horizontal mambo, got it!” His smile disappeared as he asked, “Service of Venus?”

  “Back in the thirteen hundreds people talked about Venus as the Goddess of Love.”

  “And green gown?” he asked. “I could have figured out Venus, given enough time. However, I got nothing for green gown.”

  Gyada nodded her understanding. “That is one activity that can’t be accomplished in outer space. When you laid with a woman on a green patch of ground—grass or clover or something— you got green stains on her clothing.”

  “Which were dresses back then, got it.” He nodded. “And I apologize. I wasn’t proposing a romp with Willy the One-eyed Wonder Worm.”

  Gyada snickered.

  Peter smirked. “It really is a gift.”

  Pearl set a beer on the table, “Bullshit. I’ve seen the company you keep. Hell, I remember a challenge about all the ways you could say sex without using fuck. You were in the top three spots.”

  Gyada looked at Pearl. “Who won?”

  “Well, about that,” Peter answered, “it was Bethany Anne.”

  “The Empress?” she asked, looking at the two of them.

  “Oh, yeah.” Pearl nodded. She turned to Peter, “Move over, Scrumptious, and give a very slightly older lady some room to park it.”

  “Don’t let her tease you!” a male voice called from one of the front booths.

  Pearl leaned into the aisle to yell back. “J.D., if you don’t keep your yap shut, I won’t be cooking for you when we get home.”

  There was a squeak beside Pearl, then Peter asked, “That was your husband?”

  Pearl looked at Peter. “Yes, of course. We are married. Don’t you fret, I’m harmless.”

  There was more cackling and hands-slapping-on-wood noises coming from the front of the bar.

  Pearl leaned back into the aisle. “Keep
it up and I’ll put cilantro in the food.” She waited a second to confirm the lack of commotion from up front.

  Pearl turned back to Gyada and Peter, then inclined toward them over the table and eyed them both as she whispered, “Can’t get cilantro any more, but he doesn’t know that.”

  “Uh,” Peter told her, “if you really, really need it, I can get you a pinch.”

  “Oh?” She leaned back and looked Peter up and down. “How?”

  “I have…sources,” Peter admitted. “It’s a special project, but if you wanted a very small amount, just enough to spice something,” Peter nodded up the aisle, “I’m pretty sure I could make it happen.”

  “Hmmm. I can’t stand the stuff either, but it always works to keep J.D. quiet. I think you might be a good contact.” She tilted her head toward the beer he was drinking. “Consider that a freebie.”

  “Well,” Peter shrugged and took a sip, “if you insist. My teacher always said to be polite to ladies.”

  “Who was that, your mom or your dad?” Pearl asked.

  Peter put the bottle on the table. “Neither,” he told her. “My teacher was John Grimes.”

  Pearl gave him a pat on the arm. “My sympathies. That had to hurt.”

  “All the damn time,” Peter admitted. “And that was before I started mouthing off. Then life became miserable.”

  “How often did you get in trouble?” Gyada asked.

  Peter looked at her. “Pretty much constantly. I was a spoiled rich kid with no sense and very little idea just how close to death I was.”

  “Death?” she pressed him.

  “Yeah,” Peter’s eyes unfocused as he remembered. “I had done some stupid things back on Earth. Had some regular girls take pictures. It was a massive breach of the rules, and Bethany Anne stepped in when the Alpha of the Weres in the US was about to kill me for stupidity beyond the pale.” Peter stopped a moment, thinking. “Or something like that. Anyway, I was really stupid.”

  “John put a stop to it?”

  Peter reached up to touch his mouth, then moved his jaw left and right. “You might say he knocked the smartass right out me. Along with a tooth or two. My own father told me to get my shit together or they could and would be willing to kill me. I kept my mouth shut that trip on the airplane, but from time to time stuff slipped out and John was there. One time we were in the garage of this house they had renovated to have weights and a place to spar. I said something stupid, and John tossed the barbell he was using for curls to Eric.”

  Peter told Gyada. “It took Eric two hands to catch it at that time.”

  Leaning back and grabbing the bottle, he continued, “Anyway, he tossed the barbell and weights, backhanded me and caught the barbell Eric tossed back to him. I end up with my feet above me against the far wall wondering what fucking day it was.” He took a swallow of his beer.

  He smiled, thinking back to the memories. “God, those guys would work out to AC/DC all of the time. Their favorite song was Big Balls, but they changed a line to ‘Bethany Anne’s got the biggest balls of them all.’”

  “You accepted this treatment?” Gyada asked.

  Peter looked at her, eyes serious. “If John hadn’t cleaned me up I wouldn’t be the man you see here. I owe him more than I can ever repay.”

  “No, that wasn’t a judgment, Peter,” she told him. “Rather, I come from…let’s say a long time ago, where rough and ready treatment taught little warriors to grow up fast.”

  “Oh?” Pearl turned to Gyada, “You’ve never told me you just how old you really are.”

  “Well,” Gyada smiled, “perhaps age is the last wall to fall between friends?”

  “Well, for women,” Peter agreed. “Not such a big deal for men.”

  “Don’t you know everything about women is for women?” Pearl asked him.

  “That isn’t true,” Gyada protested.

  Pearl turned to Gyada. “Of course it isn’t true, sweetie,” she answered. “but Big-and-Strong-and-Not-Necessarily-Bright-about-Dating-Women here doesn’t need to know that right now.”

  “Who says I’m not bright when it comes to dating women?” Peter protested.

  Pearl just shook her head. “Boy, I’ve seen how you dress.”

  “Hey!” He pulled the shirt up a little. “Flannel is comfortable.”

  “And ugly.” Pearl patted him on the shoulder and slid out of the seat to allow Peter more room. “There is no woman in history who has ever looked at a man in flannel and said, ‘I want a hunk of that flannel-wearing man-candy.’ In fact,” she pointed at Peter, “I’m going to make him show up wearing flannel only.”

  Pearl turned and stepped across the small aisle to lift the board and slide behind the bar. “Nothing but flannel, head to toe. Just to test the theory.”

  Peter looked at Gyada, who was just as flummoxed as Peter. “In a very, very odd way, I think she is right,” she admitted. “But wow, very odd.”

  Peter shrugged his shoulders, “After being around Gabrielle and Bethany Anne, Pearl is tame.”

  Both of them heard Pearl snort. “Tame?” she called. “I will have to up my game.”

  Gyada watched Peter stare at Pearl. He commented in a whisper, “Wow, Bethany Anne exerts a hell of an influence.”

  “Why do you say that?” Gyada asked, pulling his attention back to her.

  “It’s just…” He shrugged. “It seems I don’t understand women well enough to know the answer. But it doesn’t matter if she is kicking ass or making up smart-ass comments, Bethany Anne causes others to want to stretch themselves. Well,” he smiled, “learning how to fight better so you can stop the ass-kicking I understand. The whole one…” Peter stopped for a moment, looking up and thinking. “Never mind, it’s just people.”

  Gyada nodded, “That is how it has been through the ages.”

  “Really?” Peter asked, “How many?”

  Gyada shook her head, “I’m sorry, youngling, you don’t have enough game to get that answer out of me.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  QBBS Meredith Reynolds

  Cheryl Lynn was sitting on one of the couches in Bethany Anne’s suite, waiting for the Empress to arrive.

  Bethany Anne eyed the PR lady as if she were a bug as she walked past her.

  “You forgot,” Cheryl Lynn observed, her head tracking Bethany Anne as she left the meeting room and went into her bedroom.

  “Did not!” Bethany Anne responded a moment later. “I remember I’m meeting with Giannini just fine.”

  Cheryl Lynn raised an eyebrow as she heard her changing clothes. “Uh huh, and by remember, you mean someone told you?”

  “That would be me,” ADAM’s voice announced over the loudspeakers.

  “You rat fink!” Bethany Anne groused from inside her bedroom. “I was about to tell you to keep that to yourself.”

  “But you didn’t”

  “But I was!”

  “I can’t read your mind, Bethany Anne,” ADAM continued over the loudspeaker. As far as Cheryl Lynn knew, they could keep up another conversation in her mind at the same time. However, Bethany Anne was normally considerate enough to include others.

  Well, when it was convenient for her. Cheryl Lynn didn’t want to give her friend too much credit.

  Bethany Anne walked out of her suite wearing a dark red pantsuit with a formfitting, black, long-sleeve shirt under the jacket and a gold chain around her neck. “Well, that is probably to my benefit,” she admitted. “Wouldn’t want you to know all the good things I think about.”

  Cheryl Lynn noticed ADAM was quiet, leaving the last word to the Empress.

  Bethany Anne thought for a moment, then scrunched up her face. “Where are we meeting them?”

  “If your head wasn’t screwed onto your shoulders—” Cheryl Lynn started to say as Bethany Anne’s arm jetted out and grabbed her shoulder. The two of them disappeared.

  QBBS Meredith Reynolds, Mark Billingsley Park

  “When do you think they are going to be h
ere?” Giannini asked Sia.

  “Soon,” a male voice answered, and the two women turned to see Scott nodding to Samuel and Richard, who were walking around the park to keep an eye out for trouble.

  Scott turned to speak to them as he walked closer. “She doesn’t want to sweep in here with an entourage, so we are trying to keep it low-key.”

  “Low-key?” Sia asked. Scott noticed she was already looking at her HUD, and the drones had started flying. She had three of them about fifteen feet from Giannini, and two circling at about forty feet to provide images from above.

  “Sure. It can become a bit of a circus anytime she goes somewhere,” Scott admitted. “Plus, this is supposed to be a rather quick interview, right?” He looked at Giannini, who nodded. He continued, “She figured she could pop in here, answer your questions, and then pop out. The guys will watch for any issues outside. I’ll take care of anyone coming too close.”

  Scott looked around as he spoke to Giannini. “You don’t get scared easily, right?”

  “I’ve been baptized in fire twice,” she answered. “Three times, if you include the riot on Yoll a few years back.”

  “Yeah, that was nasty,” Scott admitted. “Sorry it took so long to pull you, Sia, Samuel, and Richard out of J’loong.”

  “Well,” Giannini looked down a moment, “it’s not like we had asked permission or for protection. We went there on our own and got stuck in the middle.”

  “Good footage, though,” Sia commented. “Any reason we can’t use it, Scott?”

  Scott could hear ADAM answer in his implant. >> Nothing was said that would be a problem.<<

  “Sure, go ahead,” he replied. “It’s not like you don’t already have permission from Bethany Anne to run around and interview everyone.”

  This time it was a female who interrupted the conversation. “Did someone call my name?” Bethany Anne asked.

  Inside her HUD, Sia already started editing the footage from when Bethany Anne appeared with Cheryl Lynn next to her. She caught Scott’s reaction to her appearance and compared it with Giannini’s. She kept the surprise off her face and made sure to follow the Empress with Drone Two, keeping Drone One on Giannini and Drone Three on Scott.