A wiry ex-privateer captain named Slack Dog stumbled into the hotel bar with his luggage early one morning and didn't leave. Normally Buttercup would have been back in the kitchen helping prep breakfast, but she was the only one around who knew the bar.

It didn't take her long to learn Slack Dog's story; the moment he sat down he began slurring on about his grand adventures and his startup deep-space exploration and adventuring company. What a nut. In just two hours she must have poured him a dozen drinks, and each time he ran out—

"Another," Slack Dog grunted, and pounded his empty mug down. He fished a black coin out of his pocket and rapped it repeatedly against the wooden bar while Buttercup refilled his mug. She waved away the coin—it was the third time he'd tried to pay with them. Everything was done in credits on the Core worlds.

"It's on your tab, sir," she reminded him. Old ex-captains always liked to be called sir. "Credits, remember."

"Ah, mm-hm," he said, completely ignoring her as he watched her fill the mug.

Buttercup poured until the pink foam just crested the lip. The deep red beverage, dubbed "lotus beer," was the local intoxication of choice, deriving its properties from a psychoactive fruit called the lotus which grew exclusively on Surface. Lotus beer gave a pleasant body buzz, mild euphoria, and a sense of relaxation. At high doses it induced naps. Slack Dog slid the mug in front of himself with bony fingers and slurped the sweet, fizzy bubbles from the top with a half-lidded look of bliss.

Hargrove had stocked up on lotus beer in preparation for the upcoming Fated Lovers Festival celebrating the approach of a pair of comets with boring official scientific names Buttercup couldn't remember. Everyone called them Orpheus and Eurydice.

Supposedly their trajectory indicated that the comet in the lead, Orpheus, would make it safely around Lux, their system's star; but Eurydice would at last, after hundreds of years following the same orbit as Orpheus, plow straight into the inferno and be absorbed by Lux.

Apparently it was just like some old story from Earth and everyone was raving about it.

"Used to be a privateer cap'n, y'know," Slack Dog mumbled. "The starship Wanderlust. She were a fickle ship, she were—"

"Yes, sir," Buttercup said, nodding. "You told me all about her."

"Oh, howbout that. Did I tell y'about Cap'n Slack Dog's Deep-Space—"

"—Adventuring Company, yes," she finished for him.

He belched and made a monosyllabic grunt of recognition, glancing over his shoulder at the entrance to the bar. Buttercup knew he'd been looking for someone all day, checking anyone who walked through the doors. There weren't many other guests up that early, so the only people he'd seen were other hotel employees.

"You want anything to eat?" she asked.

His eyes shot open wide, the whites stark against tributaries of spindly red veins.

"To eat? Yes. Food."

Slack Dog rummaged through his pocket for more of his odd black coins, and scattered them across the counter before Buttercup could protest again.

"Food please," he said.

Buttercup suppressed a sigh and tapped an order into the viewscreen in front of her, suspecting the highly intoxicated man didn't much care what he was served. She slid most of the coins back to Slack Dog, but left two for herself in absence of a tip; Slack Dog was apparently not used to the custom. She wondered from where the inky black coins might have come. They were all uniform in size and color, but they didn't seem to weigh enough, which puzzled her as she rolled them in her fingers. Around the edge of the coin was a thin silver band.

Slack Dog noticed her examining the coins.

"It's real," he said. "G'head, take a bite."

"Oh, it's just I've never seen these before. We do everything in credits here. Where are they from?" she asked.

"Outer rim," he growled, and tossed another two coins down. "Lemme know if you see any spacefarin' types come in—anyone looks like they ain't from the Core somewhere. Be a couple more in it for you every day."

She nodded and pocketed the coins but didn't ask him to elaborate, and a moment later Slack Dog abruptly stumbled out of the bar, dragging his luggage behind him. She tried to get his attention to see if he wanted his food brought up to his room, but it was futile—he moved with the determined, wayward gait of a drunkard on his way to bed.

Buttercup decided she'd just bring it up to him when it was ready. She figured she could just leave it at his door if he didn't answer; the man had drank an astounding amount.

"Order up!" came a shout from the kitchens.

Buttercup hipchecked the door behind the bar open, grabbed the two plates of food she had ordered for Slack Dog, and placed them on a wheeled trolley. She took two silver lids and covered the plates. Time for room service.

"Hey Gunther," she called to the chef. "I'm gonna take this up to 302. Bar's empty."

Gunther gave an unintelligible yell of confirmation.

After a brief elevator ride, Buttercup arrived on the third floor and pushed the trolley out in front of her toward room 302. She decided she would just knock and leave it for him, but when she got to the door it was already open.

Buttercup tapped a knuckle against the door cautiously.

"Mister, uh—Slack Dog?" she said.

No answer.

As she edged into the room she heard him snoring and rolled her eyes. He'd fallen asleep with the door open. Careless. She wheeled the trolley through the rest of the way. The snoring emanated from the bathroom, and when Buttercup glanced inside she saw Slack Dog, pantsless, passed out on the toilet. His chin rested against his chest, rising and falling rhythmically with each breath.

She stifled a laugh and whirled out of the room, leaving the trolley behind. She shut the door behind her, and when she looked up there was a large, square-jawed man wearing an oversized trench coat standing directly in front of her. He made no effort to move out of her way.

She noticed the hard glint of metal underneath the man's coat—a black nullsuit. She thought she recognized his face, but before she could process that the man's stench reached her nostrils. He reeked like sweaty pickled vegetables. When a man stinks through his nullsuit you know it's bad.

The man's lips parted in a lecher's grin, and his beady brown eyes spent too much time looking her up and down. "Full service, eh?"

Buttercup shot him a glare and crossed her arms. Spacefarin' types, Slack Dog had said. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She wished she were still inside the room, with the safety of the locked door between them. She'd been close to men like this before, in a different life. But then, she used to carry a knife.

"This room's occupied," she said, holding his gaze. "Can I help you find yours?"

"Oh, I was just looking for something to eat," he said, remaining exactly where he stood. He leaned closer to her and drew in a deep breath through his nose as he put his arm out to block her in. "I smelled something delicious and savory. You wouldn't know where I could find something like that, would you?"

Buttercup gagged as he leaned closer, fanning the offending fumes away from her face as she backed away as much as she could. The muscles in her gut clamped tight as she retched.

"Did you bathe with hot cat piss?" she heard herself say.

The man was completely caught off guard. He backpedaled as if she'd struck him. "Wh-what, no?"

Buttercup rolled with her advantage, moving away from him against the wall, well out of his reach. The elevator was right next to Slack Dog's room. She thumbed the button without looking and kept her eyes locked on the man. Luckily it hadn't been used since she took it up and the doors slid open with a chime.

The man stood with his back against the wall opposite Slack Dog's room, shaking his head with envy, leering openly at her chest and legs even in the more or less formless magenta uniform. She stared without blinking at his face, committing it to memory, searching for defining characteristics—a chunk was missing from one of his front teeth, his nose was crooked, and he had a naked patch in one eyebrow from scarring. She definitely recognized him. His eyes finally made it back up to hers and he straightened up a bit when he saw her intense scrutiny.

Buttercup smiled coldly at him as she held the door close button and they shut with mechanical obedience. She selected the ground floor, and her stomach dropped a bit as the elevator started with a slight jolt. She took a deep, slightly trembling breath. Must have gotten a bit of adrenaline flowing, she realized, shaking out her hands. They got some shady customers from time to time, but generally the clientele at the hotel was pretty... mellow.

Buttercup knew she'd gotten used to the relative safety of the hotel and felt a twinge of wounded pride. A few years ago if a guy had gotten in her space like that she'd have been more than ready to defend herself. But it had been months since she even set foot on the city streets. The hotel had everything she needed, and had become a kind of sanctuary for her.

First Slack Dog, and now the man in the black suit—outliers in the usual monotony that had become her life. Two was only a coincidence, but she felt that something was wrong. As the elevator doors opened to the ground floor she resolved to find Hargrove. The old bear had chased out belligerent guests before. She didn't think it would come to that, but worry gnawed away in her gut.

#

As Buttercup passed the bar area on her way to the front desk she glanced over to see if any other guests had wandered in and noticed something catch the light on the bar where Slack Dog was sitting.

Upon closer inspection it was Slack Dog's phone. She hadn't noticed it before while she was behind the bar, but he must have left it. Buttercup pocketed the palm-sized device and turned back to the lobby, figuring she'd take it up to him with Hargrove. She'd make Hargrove go in and actually give it to the old man—she shuddered at the thought of seeing Slack Dog's... slack dog.

By chance Hargrove was escorting an elderly guest out the front doors and passed right in front of her as she left the bar. Buttercup followed him through the lobby to the entrance and stood nearby while he gave the woman his usual jovial goodbye treatment. A young doorman took the woman's bags from Hargrove and the big man came back inside.

"Hey," she said to him.

"Hey yourself, Bee," he replied. He jerked a finger toward the empty bar. "Is a man supposed to serve his own drinks around here?"

"Actually I wanted to talk to you," she said. "You saw that guy at the bar earlier, right?"

Hargrove curled his lip. "What is it? Pirate?"

"Ex-privateer."

"Phah!" he waved a hand. "I knew it! Pirate, privateer—if there's a difference I have yet to see it. Bunch of ruffians! Phah!"

Hargrove harbored a deep-seated distaste for anyone who reduced themselves to such barbarism. The thin line between piracy and privateering was merely a legal distinction—the latter was authorized by the government, the former was not, but the work they carried out was the same. Pillage and plunder. Pirates just didn't follow the rules on who to target.

"Well, some weird guy was hanging around his room when I went to bring him some food he ordered," Buttercup said. Then she added, "Oh, and he didn't pay his tab. He kept trying to use these. Says he's from the outer rim."

Buttercup showed him the coins Slack Dog had given her. Hargrove retrieved a pair of inspectacles from his inner jacket pocket. He slid them onto his nose and poked at the coins in her hand with one thick finger as the computerized lenses analyzed the coins' markings and composition.

"Outer rim, eh? Hmmm," he said. "Technically still legal tender, though we don't often see this stuff here. Outer rim folks make physical money from nullsteel—they don't trust digital money like we do."

Hargrove removed the inspectacles and replaced them in his jacket pocket. Buttercup put the coins away.

"Oh," she said. "I didn't know. Pretty valuable then? I mean, they make ships out of it, right?"

Hargrove shrugged. "Well, each coin only has a small amount. Depends how much he's got. Why?"

"Well I'm pretty sure that guy I told you about was trying to get into 302—"

"Whoa, whoa, what kind of weird guy are we talking about here?"

"Tall, pretty built, kind of a jerk. Scar on his left eyebrow. The weird thing is he was wearing a nullsuit underneath a long coat," she said. "And he stank like he's been wearing it for weeks."

Hargrove pointed over her shoulder.

"That guy?"

Buttercup followed his finger and saw the man in the brown coat briefly before he disappeared around a corner. He was headed to the hotel's back exit—it was the only thing down that hallway. His face nagged at her again, like she'd seen him before, but a man like that was sure to make an impression. He wasn't someone she'd seen at the hotel, of that she was certain.

"That's him," she said.

"Well, he's gone now. Problem solved."

"Let's go check on 302," she said, and moved to the elevators before Hargrove could argue. He followed her anyway with an exasperated huff.

"It's probably just your imagination getting the better of you," Hargrove chided her as they entered the elevator.

She punched the button for the third floor.

"No, I'm not imagining things, Hargrove," she said. "You just don't like dealing with stuff like this. Something's up."

The elevator rose with a lurch.

"Something's up," he repeated. "Something's always up."

Buttercup opened her mouth to say something else, but was silenced by a thump in her chest followed by a deafening roar. The elevator stopped with a violent shake, and she was thrown—luckily—against Hargrove's considerable bulk. He grabbed her and pushed her into a corner, protecting her with his body. All she could hear was the ringing in her ears.

Hargrove was already dialing the emergency number into his phone. She could see his lips moving from frantic shouting, but could not hear him. He wasn't talking to her anyway. Buttercup shook her head to clear it and wondered if it was a bomb.

Then it hit her like a slap in the face.

The man in the nullsuit had an outstanding bounty. That's why she'd recognized him—she'd flicked past his face on her viewscreen over a dozen times! She felt so stupid. If she'd only made the connection sooner she might have warned Hargrove.

"Hargrove," she said, only half-able to hear herself. "I recognized him. I know who he was. He's wanted. He's got a bounty."

"Hang on," Hargrove said to the dispatcher, covering the receiver. "The name, girl, speak up and give me the name!"

"Jensen Lee!" she shouted. "His name's Jensen Lee!"

#

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