Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [105]
She shrugged. “Got me. Math was never my strength.”
“You don’t seem to have much of a problem counting your credits.”
She smiled. Okay, so he was a bad boy, but he did make her laugh. That was worth a lot, these days.
“Speaking of the worthy sergeant,” he said, looking at his chrono, “I’d better take off. Stihl’s duty shift is over in a few minutes and if he drops ’round to have a brew with Rodo, I want to be elsewhere.”
“Good idea.”
“Dinner, when you get off? My place?”
“As long as you promise not to cook.”
“You wound me, woman.”
“Better than poisoning you, like you nearly did me.”
“How was I to know your kind can’t eat sweetweed?”
“You could have looked it up. You plan to date outside your species, it’s on you to know what’s poison and what’s not.”
“You’re never going to let me forget it, are you?”
“Not a chance, Green-Eyes. I’ll pick up something on the way. Seafood, shellfish, like that.”
They smiled at each other. He put out his hand, she took it in her own, and they exchanged gentle squeezes. She could have done worse, Memah knew. She had done worse, more than once.
After he was gone, she sighed and stretched, feeling tense muscles loosen. There were only a handful of customers in the place—it was just before shift change, and people were either on their way to work or about to get off, so it would be another hour or so before the cantina started to fill up. Time to take a break. Business had generally been very good, better than she’d expected. As the station grew, new sections being added and pressurized, there had been new cantinas added regularly as well. There were at least half a dozen of them in this sector alone, and scores of watering holes throughout the other completed portions, but she hadn’t noticed that the competition had hurt her any. True, she was getting only a small percentage of the profits, but even so, at the current rate, when her hitch was up she’d have enough saved to start a new place of her own.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to do that, however. Chances were good they’d offer her an extension on her contract, and she needed to think seriously about that when it happened. True, it was the military, so there were some rules that were a little stiffer than on a civilian planet, but even so it was clean, the patrons were generally well behaved, and she was making money like a jewel thief on a luxury spaceliner. She didn’t miss the great outdoors—she’d never been much of a nature girl dirtside, and she’d only ventured out of the Southern Underground a few times. Not that there was much “outside” there, all of Imperial Center being essentially one large urban area, save for a few parks here and there.
A cantina on an impregnable battle station, or one next to the spacedocks in the slums of Imperial Center? Put that way, it didn’t seem too hard a choice. Certainly this one was a lot safer than any she’d ever run before. Nobody was going to set it on fire by “accident,” and from what she’d heard no Rebel ship could scratch the paint, much less really damage it.
Staying on was definitely something to consider. She was having a pretty good time, all things considered, and Green-Eyes being around didn’t hurt much, either.
Memah smiled and hummed a tune as she began to mix more drinks.
49
TWO HUNDRED KILOMETERS OFF SECTOR N-FOUR, EQUATOR, DEATH STAR
Vil slewed into a drifting turn to port, engine and pressors working hard to compensate for the “slide,” and his pursuer, one of the newbies in Beta Two, wasn’t quick enough to stay on his tail.
He jinked again, this time to starboard, and again the newbie was a hair slow to react. Understandable; this wasn’t a move they taught in basic flight school, it was one you learned from somebody with a lot