Шарон Ли - Agent of Change

She was grinning and leaning a bit forward, eyes squinted against the smoke. In a moment, she turned to him, grin undiminished.

"Tough Guy, you're a genius. Let's go." She started forward.

He dropped his hand, gently encircling her wrist. "Tell me."

"Part of that mob in there's the Gyrfalks—my old unit." There was no missing the excitement in her voice. She jerked her wrist and he let it go. "C'mon, Tough Guy."

He followed, afraid of losing her in the press of bodies and the eddying smoke as she pushed and wove her way through, moving with the stride of a person with a goal in sight.

What the goal was, Val Con couldn't tell. He was satisfied to keep her in sight, and re-established himself at her left shoulder when she caught up against a temporary body-jam.

The jam sorted itself out and she moved on, he maintaining his position as they broke out into the center of the room.

There it was less crowded, though a goodly portion of available floor space was taken up by the biggest Terran that Val Con had ever seen: Eight feet tall if he was an inch, shoulders wider than Edger's shell, chest and ribcage said his planet of origin had been just a tad light on oxygen, and there was not an ounce of fat on him. His shoulder-length blond hair was tied back with a black cord. His full beard was curled and very likely perfumed. He was drinking something brownish from a liter pitcher, an arm draped possessively across the shoulders of a slender dark woman who would have dwarfed any man but this one.

Miri strode straight up to the blonde godling, Val Con just behind her; she stopped with legs braced and hands on hips, head craned upward.

The godling finished the contents of the pitcher and extended a long arm to deposit it on the bar. His lapis gaze fell upon the face of the woman before him.

"Redhead! By the highest, iciest, most diamond of the Magnetas! By the deepest hellhole of Stimata Five! By—"

Words failed him and he reached down, encircled Miri's waist with his huge hands, and threw her upward as if she were a doll; he caught her and gave her a kiss that might have drowned someone less alert.

She captured his ponytail, yanking on it and smacking the side of his head with the flat of her hand.

"Jason! Put me down, you overgrown bumblebear!" She swatted him again and Val Con winced with the force of the blow. "Put me—"

"Down," Jason finished, placing her with the utmost gentleness atop the bar. "Of course, my darlin'. Down it is, and nicely, too. Ah, it's a sight for a man's heart to see you, my small—but there's something amiss! Barkeep! A kynak for the Sergeant, on the double! Or will you have a triple, my love?"

"A single," Miri said, collapsing crosslegged to the bar and waving a hand at Val Con. "And one for my partner, too."

Jason's eyes lit on the little man in dark leathers, noting the gun belted for a crossdraw from the right, but seeing no other hardware. The stranger was slender, though with a certain whippiness about him that said he'd do well for himself, hand-to-hand. A fighter, and no nonsense. The sort of person one would want at Redhead's back.

He shifted his attention to the beardless golden face, encountering eyes as warm and cuddlesome as shards of green glass: Jealous, then. Not the best trait possible, since partners were not always lovers, but who cared, if it kept him sharp?

"Partner, is it?" he drawled, turning back to Redhead. "Bit exotic for your taste, I'd have thought . . . ." No reason not to hone the little man a shade finer. He looked around. "Barkeeper! Ah, here we are, my love . . . ."

The barman shoved a glass into Miri's hand and held the other out to Val Con, who looked into the dark depths and dared a sip. He was not quite able to control the shudder that ran through him.

Miri laughed. "Like this—" she told him, knocking back a quarter of hers. "Don't taste it, for pellet's sake! It'll kill you."

"It may, in any case." He tipped a brow, half-smiling. "How well does it burn?"

She laughed again, then turned where she sat, holding both hands out to the woman who approached.

Small by Terran standards and built along the lines of a bulldog, her very short hair a glossy, unrelieved black, her blue eyes set at a slant in a rosy-cheeked, plain face, she looked efficient and practical. She took Miri's hands, leaned forward, and kissed her gently on the mouth.

Miri returned the kiss with evident pleasure and kept one of woman's hands captive as she turned back. "Tough Guy, this is Suzuki. She's my friend and Senior Commander of the Gyrfalks." She waved a casual hand at the blond godling. "That's Jase."

"Oh, cruel, my small," the godling cried. "Heartless, heartless. When I think of the nights I spent sleepless without you—"

"Without me what, you noshconner—on guard?" She turned back to the woman. "Why do you put up with him?"

Suzuki appeared to give it some thought. "I believe," she said finally, in a voice that should have been too soft to carry through the surrounding din, "that it is because of the beard. The care he takes of it! The hours spent grooming and perfuming it! Even in the heat of battle have I seen him fondle it. Yes." She nodded. "I do think it's the beard. Though, of course," she added, as one being completely impartial, "the snoring is nice, too. Do you remember, Redhead, when we were on that frontier—Sintathic?—and we needed to set no guards at night, because the animals were so frightened of Jason's snores?"

There was laughter from the group that had gathered around them and Jason dropped his massive head into his hands and moaned in mock agony.

More laughter from those around and Val Con allowed himself to relax infinitesimally, putting aside also the desire to set a knife into the godling, for the principle of the thing. He acknowledged a liking for Suzuki: It would be an honor, indeed, to serve in a troop of her command.

He shifted position to the left of the bar, put down the glassful of horrible stuff—and became aware of someone standing much too close, trapping him next to the counter. He turned the slight amount he was allowed and frowned at her.

She grinned: a mid-sized Terran; large, the way a lifter of weights is large; a gun on each hip and the hilt of a survival blade showing at the top of the right boot; breasts straining taut the cord that laced her shirt. Her grin broadened and she extended a blunt hand to stroke his arm from shoulder to elbow.

"A pretty toy, Sergeant," she said over his head. "We fight for him, yes?"

Miri laughed, snapping off another quarter of her drink. "We fight for him, no. Go away, Polesta."

"Come, Sergeant, you know me. It will be fair, this fight—a thing for the songs, eh, no matter which may take the prize. Would you pass the chance of a meeting between two such as we?"

"With pleasure. Where's your partner? You're drunk."

Sensing an opening, Val Con shifted balance cautiously, but, drunk or not, Polesta was alert and blocked the escape route with a casual hip.

"The Sergeant will not fight me?" she demanded. There was a strong feel of ritual about the question. Val Con tensed, anticipating Miri's answer.

"Now you've got it!" she said admiringly. Then, dropping her voice and putting a snarl in it, she said, "Get out of here, Polesta. I don't fight drunks and I don't fight crazies, so you're safe on two counts."

"The famous Sergeant will not fight," Polesta announced to the room, which had grown much too quiet. "So, I take my prize by forfeit."

He dove, trying to get around to the right of her, lower than her normal reach—and was blocked for an instant by a pair of leathered legs. He felt her fingers knot in the hair at the nape of his neck to jerk him back, throat exposed.