The doorman was in his late thirties, ten years older than Abbado. He wore a dove-gray rear echelon fatigue uniform that was so clean he must have changed into it after he entered the club. Nothing could exist in the open on Stalleybrass without getting a coating of dust.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant,” Abbado said. He was a Sgt3 himself, and the one-step difference in rank made no matter off-duty. “What’s the beer like on Stalleybrass?”
He pulled at the doorhandle. The door didn’t open.
“You’re barbs from the fleet, right?” the garrison soldier called through the panel. “Anyway, you’re out of uniform for this club. Better get your asses gone before the Shore Police show up to ask what you’re doing out of your compound.”
“Hey, look, Sarge,” Abbado said. He licked his lips. His mouth had a dangerous adrenaline dryness. He didn’t like being called a barbarian, especially not through a locked door. “We’re Strike Force, yeah, but we just come here for a drink. Our base element got screwed up or something and there’s no beer in our assigned compound. We’re all the same army, right?”
“I don’t know what army you’re in, buddy,” the older sergeant said. “I just know you’re not wearing rank tabs, you’re not wearing a uniform prescribed for military personnel on Stalleybrass, and you’re not getting into this club.”
His hand moved. A buzzer sounded somewhere behind him.
“What is this shit?” Horgen demanded. She tweaked the mandarin collar of her field-service fatigues. “These are the only fucking uniforms we got!”
The fabric blurred like a chameleon’s skin, suggesting the color and patterning of its surroundings. For the moment, that meant it was dull, dusty red.
“Then you’re in the wrong place, barb, just like I told you before,” the doorman said. “Beat it!”
Abbado nodded. He was starting to tremble. “Let’s go in, Flea,” he said quietly.
Glasebrook put his massive right boot on the doorjamb and gripped the handle with both hands. He pulled. The mortise split and the latchplate pulled completely out of the panel.
“Let’s not have a problem, Sarge,” Abbado said as he strode past the doorman. “We’re just after a—”
Music, a ballad wailed a cappella by a trio of androgynes, continued on a holographic stage against the wall opposite the bar. The garrison soldiers inside had formed a rank. They shifted forward. None of the locals was Glasebrook’s size, but there were more than a hundred of them in the cavernous hall.
“Three-three!” Abbado shouted as he kicked an oncoming garritrooper in the nuts.
He knew it was all over before it started. The only reason it took nearly two minutes before Glasebrook flew out into the dust with the rest of them was that the locals were packed too tightly together to use their numbers to full advantage.
The Sgt4 stood in the doorway, panting and livid. The doorpanel had been demolished at some point in the proceedings. The front of the doorman’s neat tunic was ripped down to his waistband.
“Go back to the reservation, barbs!” he shouted.
Abbado picked himself up. “Everybody all right?” he murmured. He could feel his cheek swelling. A chair had hit him in the face.
“I’m better than somebody’s going to be right soon,” Flea Glasebrook said. He started forward again. Abbado caught his arm.
“Go away and stay away!” the doorman said.
“We’ll be back,” said Guilio Abbado. His throat was as dry as a grindstone. “But we’ll be in uniform when we come.”
Interlude: Earth
“After all, Miss Chun,” I said, “a grenade isn’t trying to get rich either.”
I smiled.
Interlude: Stalleybrass
“Shit!” Horgen shouted when she realized they were coming in too fast. She goosed both lift fans but the armored personnel carrier still hit like a ton of old iron. They pogoed in the dust cloud before Horgen could chop the throttles, but Abbado and four strikers were already out.
The regular land-force driver had been willing to look the other way while his APC disappeared, but he’d refused to drive 3-3 on the operation. All the strikers knew the basics of an aircar, but they didn’t have the trained reflexes. The APC’s mass made it react deceptively slowly to control inputs.