“You should be, slut,” he snarled when she dropped his chip back on the table. The new balance glowed on the side. “The price of these drinks, you should be on the fucking house.”
He reached out, obviously intending to grab her ass. She didn’t let him. Grabbing his wrist before it could reach its destination, she yanked him around and slammed him face-first against the table, his cheek mushed up against the battered steel. It groaned against the bolts that held it firmly against the floor.
“Oh for fucks sake, Merv. Do you have to be such a twat?”
“Merv, you fucking idiot. I like the beer here!”
“No means no, asshole. I won’t tell you again. You’re barred.” She looked up at his friends, her glare hard. They all leaned back, their hands raised in surrender. It wasn’t just the Star Lounge that had a rep. She had her own.
“Get him out of here,” she ordered. “I don’t want to see him again. The rest of you, consider this your final warning. Any more trouble and I’ll ban you too. Now... fuck off.”
She let go of Merv with a hard shove and walked away from the table, spinning her tray in one hand. The other customers suddenly found their drinks the most interesting things on the planet. And so they should. None of them would risk pissing her off, and not just because she could bar them from the Star Lounge.
Sector 4-B wasn’t the lowest rung of the ladder. Even down here, shit sank to the bottom. If you were out of luck, out of money, or owed someone, the only place left to go was the Cages—a place where the desperate went to pay off a debt or earn some cash in brutal, hand-to-hand combat.
Nat was neither desperate or in debt, but she was the queen of the cages. And no one crossed the queen.
The rest of her shift passed without incident. By midnight, she wiped down the bar for the last time with a sigh. Dropping the rag in the recycler, she grabbed her jacket and bag to head out.
Knox grinned as he held the door open for her. A former cage fighter, he was brutally scarred down one side of his face. She recognized energy lance burns when she saw them but she’d never asked. Professional courtesy.
“Great move on that asshole earlier,” he offered. “When you gonna throw some of that sugar my way, sweet stuff?”
She chuckled and flipped him off as she skipped down the steps in front of the bar. Even though she liked Knox, she always stayed out of reach—anyone’s reach.
“Get in a cage with me, handsome, and I’ll throw you around all you like. But last I heard, you’d gone soft and don’t fight no more.”
He shuddered in delight at her words. “Oooh, you say the nicest things. You sure you don’t want me to walk you home? Nasty bastards out this time of night. A lady like you needs protection.”
She laughed as she walked off down the street. “You tell that to the Vroala loader I beat last week. He’s in Mercy Medical unit while they figure out how to pin his limbs back on. See you on the flip side!”
“Yeah, laters sweet stuff.”
She turned left at the top of the street and headed for the nearest mag station.
“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me,” she groaned as she reached it and found a security guard shuttering the doors. “Don’t tell me it’s fucking out again?”
“Yeah.” The guard didn’t even look at her. “Relays down on Fourth are out. Maintenance say it’ll take all night.”
“Fuck it,” she hissed and then sighed as she pulled her hood up against the slight drizzle. “Okay, thanks. Night.”
“Night,” the guard replied absently, still locking up. The light over the station door changed from "Metro Station Four-Seventeen" to "Station Closed."
It took her an hour to walk back to the habitat-pod she was currently renting. Not that it needed to take that long, but she’d long ago learned never to be predictable or take a direct path to where she lived. That just invited trouble. And that was just for the name on her current identity papers. If anyone found out her birth name...
Yeah, that was a whole level of shite she didn’t want to wade into and the reason she had a second set of papers in a completely different name hidden under her floorboards along with an escape plan if she needed to cut and run.
However, nothing was out of place when she reached her building, nor had anyone followed her home. She sighed as she disengaged the triple locks on her door, a security upgrade she’d added when she’d moved in, and then closed the door behind her.
The locks automatically re-engaged as she dumped her bag on the floor and shrugged out of her coat. Walking across to the sideboard, she poured herself a scotch.
“Lights on, half brightness,” she ordered. “Screen display Heath five seven, please.”
The lights in the pod swelled to life, casting warm illumination over the small space. The picture "window" that made up one wall blinked on, showing a large fireplace on the left, and a pair of French doors on the right. The view from them was a range of snow-covered mountains. Of course, it was all electronic trickery; the only thing on the other side of that wall was another tiny habitat-pod like this—a single-roomed dwelling with a kitchenette in one corner and a small bathroom cubicle in the other.
Dropping onto the low couch that also served as her bed, she half-closed her eyes. If she let her vision slide out of focus, she could almost believe she was in a little mountain lodge in front of a roaring fire.
Taking a drink of the cheap scotch, she tipped her head back. She should sleep. She had a long day tomorrow at the bar and a fight at the end of it. If she won this one, she might finally have enough money to get off the planet.
If she didn’t die in the cage first…
The cage was a thing of brutality—a place where she had to put everything else aside and survive.
Nat stood in one of the fighters' enclosures, looking through the one-way glass as she slowly wrapped her hands. Her gaze didn’t leave the octagonal construction in the center of the hall. A decommissioned factory, it had been repurposed for the fights. They were totally illegal, but since half the police force was either out there in the baying crowd or paid to look the other way, legality meant nothing here.
The hall had begun to fill rapidly as the headline fight—her fight—got closer. She ignored the crowds. Some fighters played up to them, but she never did. They weren’t her goal and never had been. She’d never wanted the notoriety of being the "Cage Queen," her face plastered over walls and screens. For her, it was all about the money. It had only ever been about the money. With that, she could get off this rock once and for all and retire somewhere in the outer rings where no one knew her.
Somewhere her father could never find her.
She’d never met him, but she knew who he was. And if anyone else ever found out his name, they’d sell her out to him quicker than blink. No honor among thieves or residents of Sector 4-B.
The current match ended as she finished wrapping her hands with simple wraps, nothing fancy. She never fought in the weaponized bouts, only ever hand to hand. It was bloody and brutal, but she was more likely to survive. She’d seen what an energy lance did to the human body. There was no coming back from that.
“Queenie, you ready?” a voice asked from the door. It was Sallac, one of the ushers who would escort her down to the cage in place of the trainer she’d never had and the compere she refused to hire.