Junebug didn’t lower the semi-surreptitiously aimed weapon until the conversation ended. Her face blank and unmoving as an insect. She didn’t judge Sven likely to shoot them in the back, but then there was no point in making more risky assumptions than you had to. Her life had enough chances in it already. 

They found the Red Dwarf only after asking a few of the itinerant spacers for directions. Even then the directions were cursory and filled with nervous glances and quick departures. The bar was located in a slightly more upscale area. A vast holoprojection of a Red Dwarf star, ten meters across blazed in the entryway. Every thirty seconds the holo star went nova, scattering coherent light which congealed into the name Red Dwarf and then collapsed back into its burning protoplasmic namesake. It was a neat effect. Patrons lounged at outdoor tables in front of the place, almost all of them were armed and many bearing crimson start mark, either in tatoo or painted onto armor.

“Nice place,” Sayeeda said in a deliberately neutral tone, noting the bullet holes that picked the facade of black marble. The impacts were heavy calibre, vehicle mounted almost certainly. Neil glanced back over his shoulder at her with a slightly guilty expression on his face.

“Yeah well, nice people aren’t buying what we are selling,” he said with a weak smile.

The bouncers, both human and covered from head to toe with gang tattoos, didn’t give them any more trouble than an unfriendly grunt. They were carrying short shot guns and riot batons, both of which would end a fight very, very quickly. They did spare a look for Junebug’s weapons and armor but it was more skeptical than afraid.

The interior of the place thumped with synthesized music, it was almost loud enough to be painful. The bar was being operated by a trio of completely naked human women and one alien, also naked, that might have been either male, female or a combination of the two. Large clear tanks sectioned off areas of the place. They were filled with a shimmering slightly bluish liquid in which swam strange creatures, somewhere between birds and fish, they seemed to be almost gem like in their sparkling magnificence.  

Men and women gyrated together on a central dancefloor enfolded by table that rose by gentle increments to allow every present to see the action, the fluid in the tanks ran down the incline in slow cataracts, more like petroleum than water. Sayeeda decided it might be liquid helium, though she had never heard of anything living in the stuff as these fish creatures clearly did. There was a large fenced off area to the rear where a knot of muscle, more heavily armed than the rest, controlled a broad ramp which lead up to private viewing boxes with black one way glass.

Junebug slid her helmet down over her head, the built in noise cancellation gear immediately muting the tumult to a dull roar. She flipped the faceshield  up, knowing from experience that people found the dull reflective surface to be far more intimidating than a bare face.

“Alright,” she said, “lets find ourselves a Formian.”
[@POOHEAD189]