Adam hasn’t really been to a bar. He’s way too young. But he’s seen Western movies and cop shows and stuff. He thinks he knows what to expect. This place doesn’t look too different.
This place isn’t arranged like bars on Earth, where people build in squares and rectangles. Everything here is a circle, from the serving area at the center, to the rings of tables around it. There’s even a second bar area and set of tables on the ceiling, facing downward. The artificial gravity has been inverted to allow more people to be crammed into the space, and there’s a lift system to allow people to move between the two gravitational regimes.
Adam and his friends fan out as they enter. They move between tables, torn between wanting to look at the numerous alien beings here and not wanting to make eye contact or otherwise antagonize anyone.
Jaycee spots a table big enough for everyone, and beckons the others over.
They find themselves seated between two groups of bar patrons. The first are a group of humanoid aliens with bird-like beaks, four wings, and four legs. Their eyes are orange and emit light, and they whisper to each other in squawks and chirps. The second are a a diverse group - no two individuals look to be from the same species. What they share are some kind of head-mounted display, and bursts of light from the devices suggest they’re linked up via some kind of digital telepathy.
It’s the waitress who looks the most familiar to Adam. She’s of the same species as Octava, the alien refugee who came to Earth fleeing the Blot. She wears the same blue bodysuit, lacks any kind of hair, and has similar humanoid-but-not-human features.
Her own translator syncs up with the ones worn by the team and managed by the Love Bug’s central computer, and she speaks in the rhyming scheme Octava used.
“Food or drink, what do you think?”
The humans look at each other. In an alien bar, nobody’s really sure what’s even safe to eat.
Space Bug speaks immediately. “Tofu salad. E-Salinoid-47, metabolic formulation ZQ981. Style it in this fashion.”
The bug extends a device, and the waitress scans it and smiles. “You know what you like, that much I can tell, so please wait a moment, and then you’ll eat well.”
“Wait–” Adam says, out of the blue, and the waitress pauses to look at him curiously.
He isn’t sure he should say anything. But he wants to. “Why do you speak in rhymes?”
The girl pauses, and looks around her nervously for just a moment. Adam can feel her fear, however much she tries to repress it. But her smile returns. “It is our way, both night and day.”
“I knew someone of your species,” Adam says quietly. “She came to my planet to escape the Blot.”
The waitress takes a step back, and Adam realizes he’s overstepped himself. He says no more, and the girl returns to her duties.
He feels a surge of emotion, and reaches for a mental resource he didn’t want to have to tap.
Tau, when a Shard speaks through people, they become more emotionless and stuff. Can you take charge of how I express my body language, and keep it neutral?
I comply, Adam Amari.
Freed of the need to control his emotions, Adam thinks back to his experiences with Octava.
She was one member of a group of alien refugees who had come to Earth. Jason somehow got wind of the performances she was putting on to raise awareness for her peoples’ cause. A Blot strike team had attacked one such performance, and Adam had been tracking their arrival from orbit and arrived in time to help repel them.
Since then, Adam had struck up a strange friendship with the girl. He wasn’t from space, but he was the closest thing she could find to someone who knew what she was talking about when she talked about it. Other planets, places she’d been, beings she met - Adam could at least relate.
More than that, he liked being around her. It was fun just to listen to her talk, in that constant rhyming. It was fun to listen to whatever she had to say, because it was her saying it. It felt wonderful to answer her questions about Earth. And it hurt when the agents of SPATHA - The Solar-Planetary Alien THreat Alliance - had come to take her and her people into protective custody.
Did he have a crush on her?
He’s not really sure what a crush is supposed to feel like. He’s felt weird emotions with no names ever since he came into possession of a Concordance Shard. It’s sometimes hard to separate those from regular human feelings, which are already messy and complicated.
English doesn’t really help to explain what he feels. “Like” and “love” are words that cover so much. He loves his parents and he loves his little sister, even in the moments when he doesn’t like them for whatever reason. He likes cheese and grapes and stuff on charcuterie boards. He loves reading certain books - although which books he loves has fluctuated as he’s grown up.
Maybe I should try to see Octava again, so I can figure it out.
He notices, too late, that Space Bug isn’t at the table.
The creature is actually at another table, across the bar. They’re gesturing frantically at the table where Adam and his friends are sitting. The aliens Space Bug is talking to get up, and begin walking with deliberation toward Adam’s group.
This isn’t good.
The biggest and burliest of the bar patrons looks down at Adam.
“This little bug here says you lot think you can take us in a fight.”
“Probably,” says William, before Adam can intervene.
“Says we’re gonna find out, because you’re gonna go steal our ship after you’re done drinking.”
“That’s right!” squeaks Space Bug from behind them.
“Guess we can’t let you finish drinking,” the burly brawler announces.
“This individual is too young to drink,” says Tau through Adam’s mouth, before Adam can regain control over his voice.
“Oh? A child is gonna beat me?!” the alien demands. Adam can tell this is the tipping point.
There are six aggressive aliens. The leader has purple skin, an extremely muscular build, four arms, and what look like antennae for ears. Adam dubs him Muscles.
The next are nearly-identical beings that look sort of like rainbow-colored praying mantises from Earth, only they’re as tall as Adam is at 15. These two are the Bug Brothers.
The fourth is a creature dressed almost entirely in black veils, and wearing a hat that Adam has to compare to a ten-gallon hat on Earth. They are lithe, seemingly built for speed rather than strength, and Adam thinks of them as Cowboy.
The fifth is a blob-like mass of protoplasm, held together by some kind of surface tension. It extends pseudopods from time to time, and its mass is pinkish. This is Jello.
The final alien looks more like an animal to Adam’s Earthly eyes. It has a vicious maw full of sharp teeth, and what Adam thinks must be clawed hands are just more mouths on the ends of flexible arms, also full of teeth. Adam thinks of it as Fang.
Muscles opens the fight by kicking the table from beneath, intending to send it painfully into Adam’s face. Tau reacts automatically, raising the briefest of barriers to render it motionless.
Everyone else moves, all at once.
William is out of his chair. He doesn’t draw his sword from its sheath. Instead, he leaves it in, wielding the sword plus sheath as a club. Cowboy darts in to strike at Jaycee, and William knocks their first arm out of the way, then the second, with lightning speed.
Jaycee, used to William’s fighting style as his trainer and sparring partner, levels a punch at Cowboy’s abdomen in the opening William left for her. The alien slides backward across the floor, but regains their poise almost immediately.
The Bug Brothers lunge with scythe-like forearms at Peri. Adam, mindful that she doesn’t have Anty’s protection right now, is ready with a barrier. Jordan eeps. Adam can see her fumbling to get hold of her Continuum Sword.
Fang makes the mistake of going after Keri. The hostile alien leaps at her, slavering mouths ready to eat her, but Keri just lets him bite down on her arm. The creature seems very surprised that it’s not able to bite down through her flesh. In the moment it takes Fang to process this new state of affairs, Keri has thrown it far enough up into the air that the other half of the bar’s gravity takes over - and Fang falls to the ground above her.
Jello starts to engulf her. Adam can tell Keri isn’t quite sure how to respond.
Around him, William is keeping busy dueling with Cowboy - dodging their attacks, striking back with his sheathed sword as a baton or club - but he doesn’t have capacity for much else.
Jordan has her glowing sword out, and the Bug Brothers seem to realize that things have escalated with her. They wave their sharp arm-scythes menacingly, but don’t make a move just yet.
Muscles takes the opportunity to throw punches in succession at Adam. He dodges, rolls and back-flips out of the way, not yet ready to manifest his own sword. Maybe he can tire the alien out?
Jaycee steps in to help Keri out. Thinking outside the box, she’s realized that if Jello can engulf an arm, it can absorb other things in turn. She’s grabbed hold of every glass, stein, and other drinking vessel within reach, each full of some kind of intoxicating or debilitating beverage, and is shoving them through the surface of Jello’s body as fast as she can. The combined effects of the drinks starts to take its toll, and the creature slides limply off Keri’s arm. The two girls share an appreciative smile.
Adam can sense his sister’s overwhelming confusion. She’s used to her ideas about fighting crime on Earth. But here?
“Peri, Bubble!” he instructs urgently. His sister, finally catching on, shields herself with a barrier. The Bug Brothers try their hands at it - literally - but after a few strikes bounce off, they realize this is not a target they can hurt. They turn their attention to Jaycee.
“Lamb - big guy!” Adam calls. Keri understands and leaps in front of Muscles, taking the pressure off Adam. The aliens’ powerful fists rebound off her invulnerable skin, and she flashes a shark-like grin in response.
Now free to concentrate, Adam throws up a barrier around Jaycee, just in time for the Bug Brothers’ strikes. Again the paired aliens find themselves thwarted by an impenetrable barrier.
Fang is making its way down the lift from the bar above. Jaycee grabs one of her blasters off her hip, aims, and fires at the lift mechanism. It sparks, and Fang finds itself stuck. It growls angrily, and starts manually trying to climb between the two gravity zones - but it’ll take time.
Cowboy has a speed advantage over William, even with his training. He’s being pushed back. Adam leaps across one of the intervening tables and unleashes a light blast of energy. The alien is able to dodge it.
Keri, meanwhile, punches Muscles square in the face, sending the alien sprawling over and through several other tables. He’s down, but he’s not out - instead, he starts rising to his feet, unsteadily grasping his jaw in one hand.
The Bug Brothers have realized who their most dangerous target is: Adam. But this time they don’t bother trying to pierce his barrier. As he’s aiming another blast at Cowboy, the twin insects come into his field of vision and begin waving their arms in a strange, even hypnotic pattern.
Adam can feel his concentration waning and his consciousness slipping. A mental attack!
“Tau, mind shield,” he instructs. Immediately, Tau engages a barrier of mental, rather than physical, force. But the distraction keeps him from helping William.
It may not matter. William has realized the thing that’s slowing him down: the sword. He tosses it away, and drops into a bare-knuckles boxing stance, feet constantly in motion, fists ready. Now, when Cowboy comes, he’s ready with lightning-fast blocks and feinting jabs.
Fang has managed to climb down the lift, and now leaps. Jaycee can see it coming. While the creature’s in the air, it takes three heavy mugs to the head, courtesy of the girl’s expert aim. It falls with a yelp among the far tables.
Muscles is back on his feet. Keri strides angrily towards him. Along the way, she grabs hold of the Bug Brothers, still busy trying to hypnotize Adam, and smashes them violently together. The aliens collapse.
Jello is not getting up. It seems content to bubble drunkenly on the floor of the bar.
Cowboy comes in for another fast attack, and William slips to one side. Two left jabs distract the nimble alien, and a powerful right hook connects with their head. They stagger back, and William presses his advantage.
Muscles, meanwhile, stomps toward Keri just as quickly and aggressively as she approaches him. Adam can feel all her hate and spite welling up, overwhelming her caution. But Muscles isn’t a particularly subtle attacker. He extends all four arms, trying to grab hold of her and crush her. Keri drives a series of body blows into him with both fists, then picks up the bulky being and pile-drivers him into the floor of the bar. The alien’s head pierces the floor, and he goes limply unconscious.
The whining buildup of an energy weapon leads to a loud discharge. All eyes in the bar turn to look at the source.
One of the bartenders has fired a shotgun-like weapon into one part of the wall. The wall is considerably blackened and pock-marked, indicating it’s been used plenty of times in the past for this same purpose.
“Those ain’t Concordance bubbles, are they?” the armed bartender asks quietly.
Adam, finally, flashes his Continuum Sword into existence, and prepares a shield.
But there’s someone else next to the bartender - someone with an air of authority. The owner?
“Look at the swords,” he advises the bartender. “The group that uses those - they’re okay here.”
The bartender squints, and lowers his weapon at last. “Guess so. My mistake, strangers.”
Space Bug finally approaches Adam, a big smile on its face. It rubs hits hands together in gleeful anticipation.
“You started a fight,” Adam tells them accusingly. “I thought you were going to sell us out.”
“Audition! Tryout! Examination!” the bug protests. “Now everyone knows we can fight! Watch - just wait–”
Sure enough, the bar’s owner approaches the toppled table. “You six. How are you going to pay for the damages you did to my bar?”
“Work! Mercenary! Violence!” Space Bug says immediately.
The owner doesn’t seem at all fazed by this.
Adam suddenly realizes the ritual at work here. Newcomers are tested - and become indebted to the owner. This is what they meant by a “patron” when the Love Bug entered the star cluster.
“Very well. You’ve got a berth for a week. Eat and drink - I’ll put it on your tab. Come to my office tomorrow and we’ll see if there’s any jobs you can do to square up.”
The owner takes his leave, and Adam nods reassuringly to his traveling companions. The owner recognized the Continuum Swords and their users. That means they’ve made some kind of progress toward their objective.
But what will it take to get any further?