Skeeter clenched his fists. “Yes, it’s true! He was beating the shit out of her—“
“I don’t pay you to rescue your down-timer pals, Jackson! I looked the other way when it was Ianira Cassondra, but this by God tears it! And I sure as hell don’t pay you to put hard-working construction professionals in the brig!”
Rachel tried to intervene. “Charlie, everyone on station’s had trouble with those guys and you know it.”
“Stay out of this, Rachel! Jackson, I pay you to mop bathrooms. Right now, there’s a bathroom in Little Agora that’s not getting mopped.”
“I’ll clean the stinking bathroom!” Skeeter growled.
Charlie Ryan look him up and down. “No, you won’t. You’re fired, Jackson.”
“Charlie—“ Rachel protested.
“Let it go, Rachel,” Skeeter bit out. “If I’d known I was working for a stinking bigot, I’d’ve quit weeks ago.”
He stalked out of the infirmary and let the crowds on Commons swallow him up.
What he was going to do now, he honestly did not know.
He walked aimlessly for ages, hands thrust deep into his pockets, watching the tourists practice walking in their rented costumes and laughing at one another’s antics and buying each other expensive lunches and souvenirs, and wondered if any of them had the slightest notion what it was like for the down-time populations stranded on these stations?
He was sitting on the marble edging of a fountain in Victoria Station, head literally in hands, when Kynan Rhys Gower appeared from out of the crowd, expression grim. “Skeeter, we have trouble.”
He glanced up, startled to hear the Welshman’s voice. “Trouble? Oh, man, now what?”