Val spun the story, skipping half of what they’d practiced. Roman rubbed his temples while the bartender rubbed an already clean glass with his rag.

  “And your company had cows, you say? Out here?” The man’s stare darted up and down the length of the bar, waiting for one of the other patrons to draw him away.

  “Cows?” Val glanced at Roman. “Did I say cows?”

  She remembered her accent a beat too late.

  “Plows! We’re not raising livestock, man,” she pressed on, “I said plows—for Nuv Tosamir. We’re traders, in from Dearth just last week.”

  “Ya huh,” the bartender’s bulging eyes matched his bulging waistline. He licked his lips nervously.

  Roman leaned in, letting his exhaustion bleed through, “so that’s why we’re strung up. My sister and I have been waiting for a transport to haul our carrier. We don’t mean to be harrying ya for anything much, just a drink after a long day of waiting.”

  Val opened her mouth and Roman kicked her shin. She crowed and scowled but shut up.

  Good nature hadn’t worked, and it looked like charity wasn’t taking either, so Roman tried something else.

  “You know, we’ve been trouble for you, I can see that now. We’ll just take some water then, and wait out the transport here. Water’s free, yeah? We can stay till we’re full up. Beats sitting on the bunker floor.”

  The man traded furtive glances with each of them in turn. Val smiled, catching on.

  “Lay around here all day with you? That’s rich, been around you my whole life, can’t even get away in space.”

  Roman’s retort was proportionately heated, “oh, and suppose it's my fault you overworked the gens, got us floating in space with nowhere to go.”

  “Me? You’ve been at the helm of our bad luck this whole time. “

  “And you’re the princess making fit to—”

  The bartender slammed the glass down, “you’re scaring the place,” a few heads turned their way. More quietly he said, “now I’ve got rules for ruckus, and you’re breaking ’em.”

  He set two metallic tiles on the bar.

  “Can’t just give you a drink, but these here are tokens. Can be used in the machines on one of the lower levels.”

  Val reached for them hungrily, but the bartender slapped a hand over them quick as a flyswatter.

  “Only if you leave this bar after, hm?”

  “Mighty kind of ya,” Val said, putting her hand on the bartender’s, who pulled it away as though Val’s touch would give him the stink.

  He nodded curtly and shuffled down the bar.

  Roman leaned forward, “hold, friend. One more thing, if you mind.”

  The man paused, annoyed, “what is it?”

  “We ran into a bit of an issue coming through the belt, drifted a month off-course before we got hauled here. Can’t say we’ve heard a lick of what’s happening round Mars since we left.”

  Roman let his words hang from a cliff. They found the bartender's backbone, and his eyes darted to Roman’s mouth searching for the black. Fear, hatred, or perhaps offspring of the two saw what he needed to see.

  “Rats in a tin can, who cares,” He scurried away, leaving Roman without any information on his people. He needed to find a way out of this mess he was in, preferably before Suraj found them a way off of Quay.

  “That was fun. Just like old times…” Val’s voice trailed off, then she scraped her tile off the bar and perked up, “you coming?”

  Roman wondered if she even heard the bartender just then. He grabbed his tile and rubbed it between thumb and forefinger thoughtfully, as he surveyed the room. Val stood out, worse than the rest of them. And that accent…

  “Reckon… mighty kind?” He chided. “Have you ever heard people actually talk like that?”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “All the time.”

  He walked toward the stairwell and she followed.

  “What about in real life? This is Quay, not an old western film.”

  “Potato, potato," she said calmly, “you said farmers, and you said accents.”

  “I told you we work for the farmers and to add a little accent. Not to become a renegade cowboy.”

  She paused halfway through the doorway to the lower level blocking his way, “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us.”

  Roman shoved through, laughter slipping despite his mood.

  The saloon was four stories, and a bit disheveled to say the least. The top bar, where they just left, was the quietest floor but as they descended, it got more rowdy.

  The bartenders had been hospitable despite the state of the patrons or buildings, but that cheer had evaporated once Val and Romand had tried scanning their ID prints to purchase a drink. Each time they were met with an error, and had to get creative on the fourth floor.

  Seeing those error alerts on the ID scanner made Roman think of the Martians who were alive to experience The Great Wipe—that fateful date in Martian History where the Asparian Empire deleted the wealth of all Martians, turning the entire planet into a labor camp to fuel the Everwar.

  Val cursed as she kicked the vending machine disapprovingly. “Looks like our options are porridge or beef stick.”

  “Beef?” Roman peered over her shoulder to inspect the packaging. “You wish. It’s a cram stick, nothing more than grain and spice pounded together.”

  Val grimaced, “who would eat that?”

  Roman swept the room in a glance. Two dozen people scattered at tables, gambling or nursing drinks. “Space folk. I’d guess most of them haven’t seen a meal by our standards their whole lives.”

  “Yeah? How would you know?”

  Val was bent over the machine again, scanning every label like it might change under the heat of her gaze. The question was rhetorical, but the answer was already on his tongue. He rubbed it along the scars on the inside of his mouth, where a lifetime of eating cram and worse had left its mark.

  “Just a guess.”

  Val grumbled, still reading, “beside the porridge and cram, we could use both our tiles and get a flapjack.”

  “You want to share a pancake?”

  “No, but I thought you’d be more willing to spend it on whisky if I told you all the options.”

  Roman continued to gauge the people in the saloon. Traders, miners, some locals—apparent by their permanently dusted attire. But there was a group in the back, on one of the tables that caught his eye. Small metal pieces danced on the table in front of them as it changed hands.

  They jeered and one took a long drink while the others picked up a share of the pieces.

  “So drinks then?” Val said, dragging him back to the present.

  “Why not.”

  A few minutes later—and after convincing the bartender to exchange their tokens for anything—each held a shot glass of a clear, viscous liquid. The smell alone could’ve stripped paint.

  “On second thought,” Val muttered, woozy from a sniff, “maybe we take the porridge.”

  They sat at a table a few parties away from the group Roman watched. Val kept bringing her nose closer to the rim of her shot glass, recoiling every time.

  “Don’t drink it yet,” Roman said, eyes never leaving the table in the back.

  “I’ve never felt more able to take that advice in my life... what are we waiting for?”

  Roman nodded toward the game.

  She peered over, “what about them?”

  “I say we join their game.”

  “How? We don’t have credits.”

  “They’re not using credits. Those are Martian bits.”

  Roman winced as Val looked suspiciously over to the table, “well, we don’t have those either. And why are we gambling? Weren’t we just trying to get information and get off this rock?”

  Roman leaned closer. “Who do you think knows more—some drunk belly-up at the bar, or locals who are clearly doing alright for themselves.”

  Val looked again at the group.

  “How do you know they’re locals?”

  The table is a bit separate from the others suggesting the patrons purposefully give them space; the bartender ran them a round just now while everyone else waits at the bar; and based on the other options for drinking and gambling in this squatting town I’d come here if I had money to gamble.

  Instead of relaying an analysis Keats would be proud of, he wore a crooked grin instead and said, “Looks a comfortable spot to be gambling, doesn’t it?”

  Val’s eyes narrowed.

  “Fine, but you still haven’t explained how you’re going to actually joint he game? Got a stash of bits tucked away?”

  “Something just as good in this case. May I?” Roman plucked her shot glass before she could protest. “These’ll bargain fine, I reckon.”

  Despite trashing the liquor moments ago, Val looked remiss to see it go and sighed as he stood. “Do you even know what game they’re playing?”

  “I’ve seen it once or twice, now sit tight.” He leaned close, voice dropping low enough for only her to hear. “And try not to make a scene, sis.”

  The truth was he knew exactly what game they were playing because every martian old enough to read learns to gamble by it, and since no martian had money, and few had bits, they always bet with what they had—drinks, food, cigarettes—Roman sniffed the liquor once and hoped that the tradition stood the test of time.

  If they were playing Nomad, then maybe they knew other things too. Things about what happened to Mars in the past century. Once he had those answers, he could answer his own questions about what to do with the crew and Occam afterward. His mission had been to get The Dragon and his new meck into Martian hands…first he had to figure out where those hands were.

  Roman fell into his old training returning to him. He slouched his shoulders, and pinched his face slightly, then squeezed uncomfortably into a seat between two of the gamblers. They watched him feral eyes as he set the glasses down on the table.

  “A game?” Roman said, mashing his words, “I love games.”

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