No Shelter Among the Stars

Chapter 10 - Alban's Tavern

Tasla sauntered towards a hatch built into the floor one side of the street. Alban's Tavern was scrawled across the dull metal panels around it in black silica paint. The letters were messy, stylized graffiti, barely legible. He knelt, twisted the door open and climbed down the corroded steel ladder. It creaked as it took his weight. The hatch closed above him by itself.

Smells, a strange blend of alcohol based engine cleaners and burnt sugar supplements, drifted up from below. He stepped off the ladder and into the tavern.

Flickering yellow lights revealed a handful of snoring patrons slumped over an assortment of black chairs and tables. Tasla looked from them to the paper thin vidscreens peeling off the walls. He stepped around a mass of frayed cables where the tavern siphoned electricity from Black Mary's main power grid. Stepping around a coughing drunk, he made his way to the bar. Clarity had returned since his fight. His breaths were longer and easier; his hands didn't twitch for his twin pistols. Reality was sharper, but without the bright, manic excitement of chemical stimulants. Instead, colors were dull, the music beating from ceiling mounted speakers barely registered above the sound from the air vents. He pulled himself onto a rickety barstool.

Had reality simply been boring, he could have coped with it. But without intoxicants he felt things, things he didn't want to feel. Old grief that he had pushed deep down into his chest was threatening to burst free.

Alban stepped up, his stained Syndicate uniform was a size too big, a glint of the body armor he always wore beneath his clothes was just visible above his collar. He looked up at Tasla.

"Heard you had a fight an hour ago," he said. He was completely hairless and his bald head caught the light.

"Word travels fast," said Tasla. Memories were stirring behind his eyes. Things, people he had cared about. When reality, hard gray reality, asserted itself he sometimes felt his losses feeding inside him like parasites.

Alban leaned forward and said, "I need you to not be here for the next couple hours." His eyes were hidden behind dark screenlenses. Rumor had it he was missing an eye but Tasla had never been able to confirm it.

"Why?" asked Tasla, genuinely surprised.

"Because you're a wildcard," said Alban. His teeth had been encased in some kind of black resin that gleamed like obsidian.

"I'm just here for a drink," said Tasla, placing a couple of silver coins on the scratched up bar.

"Get a drink somewhere else," said Alban.

Tasla smiled. "Alban, Alban, Alban," he said, "You know nobody else can make a drink that gets me drunk."

"Not my problem," said Alban.

"How much?" asked Tasla, laying down a couple more silver coins.

Alban sighed and said in a low voice, "Some powerful people have paid me very well to have a completely undisturbed meeting here in the next few minutes."

"Give me my drink," said Tasla, laying down another couple coins. "And I will sit in that corner." He pointed. "And drink it in utter silence. You'll forget I'm even here, just like..." He waved towards the handful of patrons passed out across an array of tables and chairs.

Alban frowned and looked at the small stack of coins. "Double that," he whispered. "And you sit in that corner and say nothing to anyone."

"Silent as Grim Death," said Tasla, pulling out the money. "Oh, you don't happen to know any pilots looking for work, do you?

Alban snorted. "Lost Haris already? How many is that now?" he asked.