Playing at Grown ups

A Pink Dormouse Production

Chapter Twenty

Marianne

The Sprocket and Piston had changed little while she had been away. Spotting Avon at the bar she tapped him on the shoulder.

"Another couple of decimetres height and people might mistake you for a local."

Avon turned round, obviously torn between showing his amusement and glaring at her.

"You can talk. Any taller and Vila would need a stepladder."

So you missed me then? I’d never have guessed.

"Vila’s over there. I assume you want to see him," Avon continued.

"Let me get a beer first." Marianne waited her turn at the bar then took her drink over to where the men were sitting.

"... so I left them back at Arnos Two. They should pick up another assignment no problem. Crews are scarce these days, good ones more so."

"I hope you plan on hiring again before you leave Base." Avon looked more worried than she would have expected.

"Probably. I’m just planning a few local runs for now, make sure that detector shield of yours works before I go back into the war zones."

"I could always come with you," said Vila, who had been unusually quiet so far in the conversation.

"No!" The other two turned to look at Avon. "Well," he continued more calmly, "Mac would not want you just taking time off at random."

"Oh, he won’t mind. ’Sides it’s about time I had a break from this place."

"I... Vila, you know I..."

Marianne took pity on Avon and changed the subject.

"Who are those two? Pretty boys snogging by the pool table?"

"Alternakids," said Vila. "There’s a few of ’em bin hangin’ round here this week."

"Probably because Vila feeds them," commented Avon. "One would think he had enough strays to look after already, without encouraging more." He twirled the stem of his glass between his fingers and stared into the meniscus of the claret.

"You don’t know what it’s like for them." Vila looked at Marianne. "Those two are about the oldest, the ones who are three or four years younger don’t have much to fall back on. An’ wi’ most of them livin’ down by the docks... well they aren’t what you would call streetwise."

"I was not particularly innocent at that age and nor were you, I seem to remember." Avon continued to stare into his wine and it was obvious to Marianne at least that the conversation was heading in a potentially dangerous direction.

"Yeah well there’s a difference between kids’ stuff an’-" Avon stood up suddenly, looking as if he planned on walking out.

Marianne also stood up and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Look, I don’t care what this is about: I’ve only just got back and I want a nice quiet evening without any fights. How about you get another round in and then I’ll tell you guys the story about how I met Jayrel? Vila’s been wanting to hear about my misspent youth for long enough."

"I suppose that would be acceptable," said Avon, glaring at Vila then walking over to the bar. Marianne sat down again and gave Vila a quizzical look.

"Oh. Shit."

"Something you didn’t know about?" Marianne took Vila’s hand in hers.

"No, I mean, Avon, he’s-"

"Unpredictable, emotionally unstable, paranoid even by anyone round here’s standards?"

"Yes, but, well, when I’ve sort of asked before..."

"He changed the subject?"

"True..."

Vila finished his drink.

"He knows enough about my stuff: why couldn’t he tell me?"

"Because he’s Avon? We shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions anyway."

"Hard not to," Vila muttered as Avon came back.

"So, Marianne, you were going to tell us about Jayrel?" Avon set the drinks down on the table.

"It was when I was working on one of the Federation’s Outer Worlds..."

The end of another hard week: Marianne opened her third beer of the evening and leaned back in her chair. Living within Federation space allowed her less flexibility than she was used to but she was earning good money instructing civilian pilots and money was the main thing she needed right now. She had painted over the insignia on the sleeves of her trenchcoat and cropped her hair as short as the men she worked with; they were prepared to accept her as one of them so long as she acted the part and did not spout any of her ‘fancy ideas’.

"If you can pay."

"What you after? Flying lessons?" Some of the men laughed when the young woman nodded. "Come with me; you don’t want them interfering."  Marianne led the way to a quieter table. "So what do they call you?"

"If you can pay."

"Oldest trick in the book," said Vila. "Teach her to fly so she’s full of admiration for your skills then seduce her."

"It was never like that. I was struggling to make the final payment on the Sappho so I wasn’t going to risk my reputation for a casual fling. Besides you make it sound like I was some predatory older woman. There’s only a few years between us. Now where was I?"

When they got back from the run, Marianne gave Jayrel a farewell hug and kissed her full on the lips for longer than could be considered strictly platonic. Then they went their separate ways...

"You could have invited her to stay with you," said Avon. "She was a legal adult, I take it." Maybe the earlier altercation was still on his mind as that last seemed a little too barbed a comment, even for him. Marianne gave him a brief smile of reassurance.

"I was planning on bringing the Sappho back to Astbury, there were modifications I needed to make and the guys who could help were all at Base. No way was I going to drag some diplomat’s kid along with me, no matter how cute she was."

"Besides," said Vila, "that would’ve been too much like settlin’ down, wouldn’t it? You obviously saw her again, though, so what happened next?"

A spacer bar again. Marianne was planning on leaving in the morning and it seemed courteous to say goodbye to her old drinking pals. They had barely started on the first round when a messenger approached the table.

"I don’t know. Most of my family are on Earth, I doubt they’d want to know me, even if you could take me back."

"So you brought her here?" asked Vila.

"I didn’t really have much choice. She didn’t stay long: crewed on with another freighter while I was upgrading the Sappho. But by then we were involved and it lasted quite a long time, all things considered. She ended up with her own ship within the year- I never asked how she came by it- and started finding customers who weren’t too bothered whether they paid import duty on their goods. It suited me to not be in competition with her but she was always after me to team up and do the same thing."

"So why didn’t you?" asked Vila. "you could’ve made plenty of money that way."

"I had some pretty big contracts myself, with people who weren’t necessarily honest but needed certain cargoes to pass through the proper channels for one reason or the other. Including Dariel’s predecessor: I still owed him for... certain things and I wasn’t going to risk angering him. Besides, I always thought Jayrel’s real motive was that she wanted to keep an eye on me."

"Not hard to understand why, said Vila. The other two looked at him. "Well, Jayrel was only a kid really, she probably didn’t appreciate that some people can play the field and still have someone special to come home to."

"That’s not quite how I’d have put it," said Marianne, noticing that Avon was keeping out of the discussion. "But suffice to say, we drifted apart and she moved on to work back in Federation Space. Eventually I heard she was concentrating on the systems around Earth and had reverted to her given name. We kept in touch when we could, right up to last year when the reports came in that she’d been killed running a blockade. I don’t know why I ever believed it: I was the one that told her, if you ever want out of a situation, do something that looks either very heroic or very fatal. Trust her to make it look like both.

"I’m still not sure what she really wanted to achieve by it: from what she told me, her ex never treated her badly and she still wants to have his children if she can find someone who’ll take on a ready-made family." Vila was studying Marianne intently. "Not me: I made that perfectly clear to her."

"But you considered it?"

"Very briefly. I can’t deny that Jayrel and I still have something but I could never see myself raising the kids of some dead guy I never met. Not when she’s so obviously still in mourning for him." Plus I like being able to come back here whenever I want and I can’t see Jayrel standing for that. The fireworks if she ever finds out Avon’s here aren’t worth thinking about... "Your round, isn’t it, Vila?"

"Not for me." Avon stood up. "I’ll see you both tomorrow." Marianne watched him walk out of the bar.

"Is he ok?"

Vila shrugged.

"Is he ever? One thing I’ve bin meanin’ to ask you about..."

Soolin

"I’ve reached a decision." Grant’s door had been open so she had walked straight into his office. He looked up from the report he was compiling.

"Are you going to take me up on my offer?"

"No, I’ve decided to go with Mylo. The Alliance needs a representative on the fleet and I think I’m more suited to that than to working with you. History may get in the way one day."

"You know I don’t hold anything that happened on Gauda against you."

Yes, but you know I’m lying about it, don’t you? And one day that will affect our working together, like it or not. "Thank you for that vote of confidence but I’ve made the choice. I’ll still report in to you from time to time and I’ll drop in on Dayna and Tarrant when I can. I’m going to tell them next."

"Good luck then." Grant stood up and extended his hand, Soolin shook it.

"Thanks, I’ll probably need it when we reach the main battle zone." That went better than expected. Just hope the other two take it as well as he did...

On to Chapter Twenty One

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