The First Nova I See Tonight by Jason Kilgore (best ereader for pdf and epub TXT) 📗

a piece of pussy. He needed to get away from her… and this new guy. "How about that drink, Eow. What'll you have?"

Laughter erupted from the hookah couches, and Eow's right ear pivoted toward it as she turned her attention to him. "I'll take a glass of Terran rum. No ice." She looked back to Dimitri and smiled again.

Dirken nodded. With a last irritated glance at Dimitri, he pushed through the crowd of aliens and leaned against the bar.

A gorgeous, human bartender saw him and immediately came over, ignoring a pale, lanky Tau Cetian with a cybernetic ear implant who was trying to get her attention to place an order.

She swept a lock of blond hair out of her face. "Don't get many humans in this joint," she said to Dirken with an Australian accent. "What'll you have?"

"You, if you're willing. I may have just lost my date."

She smiled. "Sorry, not for sale. You'll find that out in the hallway, loverboy. How about some alcohol instead?"

"I'll take a glass of Terran rum, no ice, and a shot of Heraclean grog if you've got it."

Her eyebrows raised at the mention of the grog. "That's quite an order, mate. Better sit down after that shot. At least you know better than to get a pint."

As she stepped away to work on his order, Dirken noticed a branded "A" on the underside of her wrist.

"Say, what's that symbol?" he yelled over the music.

She put the glasses down in front of him and leaned into him. "What did you say?"

"That symbol." He pointed to her wrist. "What is it? I've seen it somewhere."

She started to open her mouth, but the Tau Cetian yelled at her with his species' characteristic polyphonic voice, "Hey, bitch. Where's my drink? I've been waiting forever!" He reached out and grabbed her sleeve.

She reacted immediately, yanking him first forward, then pushing him backward, all in one smooth motion. The Tau Cetian went flying backward into the crowd with a yelp and crumpled to the floor. The aliens around him laughed and kicked at him until he got up and slunk away, cursing in his language.

When Dirken looked back, the bartender was at the far end mixing another drink and smiling at a customer as if nothing had happened. He decided not to bother her further. He plopped ten UW chits onto the counter then pushed his way back through the crowd to the middle of the room.

Eow and Dimitri were nowhere to be found.

"Well, shit. The bastard ran off with my girl!" he said to no one in particular. Or was it her who ran off with him?How much sex could she manage in a day? The thought made him chuckle. Probably more than me, to be honest. He shook his head. She's not 'my girl.' What the fuck is wrong with me?

He downed the shot of grog. It smelled and tasted like overripe bananas and burned his throat, but the aftertaste was sweet like candy. He put the shot glass on a table, then looked around some more.

At the back of the room were gambling tables. As he watched, a fistfight broke out between a Rigellian and a Proximan, jabbering at each other in their own languages. The Proximan, who was in an atmospheric suit and helmet, nimbly hit the Rigellian with each of his six arms, but then the Rigellian got one of his flap-like arms past the Proximan's defenses and hit the Proximan's helmet, tearing it off. The Proximan retreated without his winnings, coughing and cursing, and struggling to get his helmet back on so he could get back to the hot sulfur dioxide atmosphere he needed to breathe.

On a dais at the very back were two massive Eridani with their own hookah. Dirken grimaced. The Eridani were basically gigantic maggots, each easily six meters long and two meters in diameter. They had a dozen beady black eyes arranged around a circular mouth. Their bulging white, translucent bodies rolled in segments back to their ass, and they moved with a slow, worm-like motion. Four long tentacles extended from under their mouths to manipulate the hookah tube. On the dais with them was a Morlani translator and a female Aquarian centaur guard decked out in mirrored armor to deflect lasers and armed with sword and blaster.

In the water of the Eridani's hookah swam a six-legged Nüwan "frog," known for exuding a toxin from its skin that would kill any human and most other species. But the Eridani species was famous for their strong tolerance for poisons of all sorts, and the frog toxin gave their smoke an extra punch. It was this tolerance that made their species the galaxy's premier chemists, and the Eridani society had quickly grown rich from their development of chemical substances, most notably explosives and drugs, both the legal and illegal sorts. Grimmag Ruby-Eye came from a long line of mafia dons that exploited this reputation and traded in drugs that were banned on the United Worlds Federation planets and hundreds of others. He had made a name for himself by expanding the empire and branching out into other "goods," but that decision didn't sit well with other crime syndicates. Open warfare had broken out in many sectors.

"Dirken Nova!" someone called out over the crowd in a metallic voice, pulling him out of his thoughts.

Dirken turned and spied an avian species sitting at a gambling table. A Corthian. Blue-white feathers. Orange bill as long as Dirken's forearm. Feathered wings that ended in three-digit hands.

One of those hands held goron'oc cards.

The other held a blaster… pointed at Dirken.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

'TAKTRAK

Dirken instinctively pulled his own blaster, too, sloshing the glass of rum in the other hand and spilling half of it. They eyed each other, then the Corthian lowered his blaster and clacked his bill in a staccato rhythm with a shrill whistle — a form of laughter for the species — and stood up, one winged arm raised.

Dirken relaxed and