Gunda Riehl swaggered into the hammer, Helmet cocked against her waist. She had the dead-eyed accusatory stare of someone for who the world didn't quite flow downstream, but damnned if she wasn't going to follow the current. She punched her flightglove on the hardwood - the only organic matter on the station that wasn't manflesh or rats. "Bier." She growls - it's not just the thirst corrupting her voice anymore.


In the darkest corner of the hammer, Richard Riedler sat with multiple empty bottles of Rheinbier, head hanging low. He seemed down, but alive, as seen by his occasional sighs.

Riehl handed over her credit chip as if she was trying to embed the hard edge in the barman's hand. The material was mostly plastic but it didn't keep off the suspect, sweaty scent of copper and questions best left unasked. "Thanks, there." She drawled, taking her tankard by the the handle. "Riedler." Gunda grinned, squeaking herself down into the bar couch beside him, feet jacked out under the table, against the airproof resistance of the undersuit. "You drink like that you're going to be crapping bread."

"I can handle it.." Riedler said slowly, not looking up at her. "Disappointment is my companion and I have to drink for him..."


The old, grizzled man known as Karl Reise makes his way into the Drunken Hammer, the most scummy place to be in all of Pacifica. He orders a Rheinbier from the bar and finds someplace to enjoy it.

Riehl was never one for bonafide compassion, and she elbowed him adroitly in the ribs. "Here - take this." She slid a bloodied credit chip over the countertop. "Original owner isn't going to make much use of this. Get another round - I don't share space with unhappy drunks."

Richard barely flinched, slowly rising up and looking at the chip in exhaustion. "Frau Riehl, I don't care about money anymore. You know that. What I care for is the Union, and the failure of my operation... our operation for recruitment was a complete failure."


Reise notices some of his more frequent companions in the Hammer, but pays little heed to them as he is more focused on enjoying the fine products of Hamburg's bier industry. He wasn't usually an introverted man.


Riehl shrugged. "Ops fail all the time. You're a Unioner - we all have our first duff operation. It's like your first lay. You don't get to fly into combat wearing the man-pants till you've screwed somebody higher up the chain."

He chuggs the last half of his only not-empty Rheinbier, slamming it on the table
"I thought more of the Unterwelt and our men... And our numbers are still dwindling. How can you be so calm?" He mumbled, shoving Gunda's shoulder lightly.

Gunda grimaced. "Yea', well - lucky for your ass, the brass is got too many rods in the fire to come and burn you out over it. We've been in tighter clogs, c'mon." She reflected - only to realise her sagacity was lacking in substance. "Wait, no - no we havn't. Well crap."

Reise, still at the bar, slowly chuckles to himself as he watches his fellow patriots confound themselves with philosophical dilemmas.

Richard seemed to have gotten annoyed at the situation, rather aggressively waving the barman to bring 2 of "something" to the table. He turned over to Gunda, locking eyes with her. "Frau Riehl.. You 'n me... We're gonna think of something... We need Rekruten. And we need them schnell."

"Yeah. Yeah, I know." She suddenly thumped him on the arm. "Enough misery talk - I get that enough when I come back with three rooks dead and the fourth with a wing chewed off." She raps the table, waving at the man at the bar, impetuous. "Reise! Stop neglecting us! Come over here you anti-social ass."


The Barman brings two strongly smelling shots, taking the bloodied credit chip from the table
"And you're gonna drink with me until we find a way to fix that."
He takes one of the two shots, raising the glass.
"For the Union?"

She grinned, clinking close. "I'll take what I can get. For the Union."

Reise trudges himself through all the scraps and detritus literred around the bar and takes a seat with the others.

"Mmm."

When Gunda comes up for air long enough to wipe the suds from her mouth, you can see the flight coolant lacing her cheeks. Not so much as a clothes change had got between her, the Hangar, and the bar. "Reise - why were you lookin' all deep in melancholia'? I had you pegged as the resident good news guy."


He chugs his glass, letting out a grunt due to the liquor's burn
"Arhh.. Reise! Sit down and help us fix things."

Reise scoffs. "Good news? No, the Rhein continues to disappoint me every waking hour. "


He takes another swig of his high quality Hamburg RheinBier. " So what seems to be the problem this time?"


Richard gestures him to sit down again.
"The same as always, these days. Our numbers are decreasing and we're having Probleme getting new people. There sure aren't any Freiwillige, you know?"


"I think what we are lacking in is gut Patriots. It is no problem to give people guns and tell them to shoot at Federalists for a quick batch of credits. Many want to do that. But ja, finding those with the heart and cause in them is a hard affair. Ja?". He mutters under his breath: "No wonder die Rhein is so sick..."

"We just need more people for now. We can't afford to only rely on true Patrioten, when we're losing them twice as fast as we can get them."

"We seriously have to think about taking hostages soon, if this keeps up, Frau Riehl..."

Gunda nodded - eyeing the table leg as if she was contemplating upending it. "Hold up - you're conflating seperate issues. A lack of combat pilots and a lack of labour force ain't the same."


"And we don't have a lack of pilots. We've got a lack of will to go and die against the Communists. Some punk don't want to throw themselves into hell without conviction. Throwing yourself into the hellfire won't make you rich, won't make me rich."

She grimaced, emptying her glass with grim elan. "I've heard similar proposals thrown around the grimouire. Warbands playing God, thirsting for prisoners. I don't mind them so long as they don't try to stab you in the kidneys with a spoon they've spent several months sharpening on the back of a toughened cockroach."


Reise consumes a bit more of his beverage before the conversation continues. "Mmm. Brutal, but effective. If it's arbeit we need, the chains will prove useful. "

Gunda nudged him. "You think it's going to come to that? Grand theft people? They're gonna' have to ration us way more bier than this before I start running a chain-gang."

" The yards do not run themselves, nein? We may not need to engage in such dirty work ourselves, but someone will have to."



The lead arbeiter reclined her feet against the desk pushing out, nearly upsetting the table. "Getting the trees to rake their own leaves. You're all full of ideas, Reise."




The old vanguard of the Rhein laughed. "I won't get the credit, though. The breweries will."


He takes another swig of bier.



Gunda groaned. "Hph."


Bier and chains. Such was the life of those who deal in flesh.
  

The door opens and a Mary Dross walks into the Drunken Hammer, she takes a place in the back and waits for someone."Bring me a damn Rheinbier, everything on my bill”.


The barman blinks, rubbing the heavily corroded taps. "Your warshare, you want to put it into the drink? I won't stop you."


"Sure, whatever." She takes out a old metal lighter and grabs a Cigar out of her Jacket. The barman brings her the beer and she takes a huge sip. "Damn that stuff still tastes like piss." Bring me something stronger for sake!

The barkeep checked the flight officer over with her eyes, and fantasised over the repercussions of getting the sentinel bot to haul her out on her ass. "Sound it out, then. Whatcha' want? Whiskey, Rum, Stillwater, Prussic Acid, Sidewinder Fang, a new attitude, what?"(edited)

She sticks the Cigar in her mouth and light it up "Give me Rum and watch how you talk to me douchbag or I will shoot you a second asshole!" She puts her feet on the table and leans back against the steel.


Reise claws his way into the Hammer. He needs something strong to drain his memory of the absolutely stupid things he has just done out in the depths of space.

The bartender grimaces, staring the vitrolic Arbeitern down out of one, highly yellowed, biomechanical eye that looked older than he was. "If you shoot me a second asshole, you'll get perforated by every man, woman and dog in the bar."


Still letting out a quiet, frantic giggle, a certain woman entered the drunken hammer. The place was kind of stinky and crowded as it always was, but today she did not care. For what just happened had baffled Zelinksy as much as it filled her with insane joy - she’d been privy to Reise’s flight.


"So what's it to be? Sidewinder Fang, or what?" Spits out the bartender, hairy arms a-crossed, still eyeballing the Arbeiter.

Reise waits for his fellow Arbeiters to finish getting verbally abused before he places his order.

"I said Rum, you idiot. And please say that again ?!" She stands up pulls her gun out and punches the Bartender right in the stomach "Want to loose your other eye too ?" The Bartender goes on his knees and Mary aims for his eye. "Hm, say that again !"

Gleefully strolling over to the bar, almost getting more amused with every step Sofia takes into the guest room, she finally leans against the counter as she reached it. In a move that was intended to get her the attention of whoever was working the bar today she was about to knock on the table, when suddenly a voice about as loud as harsh reached her ears. Looking over to the women having her little standoff, she shook her head. "Hey, over there! What the fuck's the holdup? I'm sure everyone here wants to get his drinks, so why don't we just get hammered and then beat up someone else?"

The Barkeep fixes her at length before deciding she's not worth the trouble, hauling a bottle the colour of virgin earth out from under the recesses of the bar, flashing a keycard to take the alcohol out of the restraints of the lockup. "Here". The wizened Arbeiter intoned, sans enthusiasm. "Do you want it by the glass, or by the bottle?"




She pulls her gun back "Bottle and thanks." She smiles, sadistic-eyed.


The bartender looks implacable. He's scarred enough to break any peturbation that might have otherwise streaked his face. "Don't get yourself operated, Texas Cowgirl. I'm not a one shot man and my bar's a one-shot bar. You put a round between my eyes and there'll be twelve bullets coming right back at you. Dead man's switch to the pressure valve. Moment my heart stops beating the compartment gets its atmosphere pumped into the Tanner. Pay yer' dues and plush your ass on a stool." He spat, his breath hitting like rocksalt. "Seven credits."

Mary traces a conniving smile over everyone that walked in. "Arbeiters your drinks go on my bill, today." She walkes back to the last corner, sits down and puts her feet again on the table "I think you know who I am and you know where you can stick that words, right ?" She takes out her Datapad and makes a show of scanning her flight records.


The bartender hauls out a cloth that looks like it'd been pre-marinated in engine coolant. "That better be credits you're sending my way, or you're getting incarcerated. I don't care if you're Garen fricking VonHimmel." he looks up at Sofia, searching her eyes, hoping that at least somebody in the damn bar was going to pay their way. "Oai, you. Do you want something?"


Sofia’s occasional, quiet giggle turning into a full on laugh, she nods at the bar tender who semeed to just now have solved the issue of the rather unwilling guest. "Of course I want something, why the fuck would I be here otherwise?" Giving the man a respectful nod, she added "Bring me a Bautzen Buster, stat. But do me a favour and don't put ice cubes in. Just ruins the taste".


The man grinned, a grin wide enough to crack mirrors. Or reasonably reinforced coconuts, if he hit them at the seams. "Right atcha'." He pulled out a vial, Rheinland green, corked with ceramic. It had a certain dissonance about it with the grime of its surroundings that caused it to appear... liberated. Tells lined its artisnal curves. The bartender's saucepan hands delineated the contents of the vial with tinctures of unspeakably scented liqour, and something that could have barely passed as battery acid to the average Unioner indoctrinant. "Bautzen Buster. Neat. Seven credits - prices went down since some warkiddy hit a trainfull of luxuries. Don't discharge at me when they rock up again - but I'll drop it to five if you can make that bitch in the corner pay." he thumbed a gesture towards Mary in the corner.


A Bullets hits the Bar table next to the Hand of the Bartender "I can hear you , douchbag" Mary’s words rang above the concussion. She didn’t appear to have looked out above her data pad, gun in hand.


"Oh, neato!", Sofia proclaimed enthusiastically upon receiving her drink, although as she looked over to whom the barkeep actually was referring to for just one second, her joyful face was ruined by a frown. "Wait, she'sthe one not paying?" Just as she said that, a bullet zipped passed, causing her to instinctively just flinch a little. " You know I might as well just pay the 7 bucks. She's a madwoman. Fun if she's mad at others, but not so much if you're the target..."



An older man wearing a suit that doesn't quite fit him enters the room. Eyeing his surroundings, Gerd walks over to the bar.


The bartender fingers the bullet hole with a stub of a hand. "I'm the only one with the sodding keycode to unlock the bar. Fricking Pippi Longstocking over here aught to take herself down a few pegs and pay up before I have you hauled on your ass to the directorate! You aireate me, and kiss goodbye to getting any alcohol in this crap-shanty." He grimaces up at Sofia. "If you want to cover her, sure. If she keeps that up I'm pressing the panic button and in comes the bruiser droids and out goes her entrails."

Disregarding the bullet that was just shot through the room, Gerd tries to get the bartenders attention. "Hey bartender. What's the drink you serve that comes closest to white wine?"


Mary sticks the gun back. ”Do what you think Kid" The smoke of the Cigar covers the reek of her breath. She ignores the last words of the bartender because she know how hard it is to get new good bartenders.


He raises a hand as scarified as a beached beluga to show he's attentive. Money talks. The man in the suit appeared to be uncharacteristically rolling in it. "Closest we've got to white wine is white wine."


Sofia cut in before violent words met violent ends. ”Hey, I'm not going to lie, that sounds like a handful of fun. But hey, maybe things don't have to escalate just that far". With that she raised her voice considerably, intending to drown out the background noise and reach the Dross woman not all too far away from her.

"Hey, the fuck is your deal today? Why are you trying to mess up the dude who's handing out the sweets?! Why not have a drink together instead? Come on!"(edited)


Gerd seems surprised. "You actually have some? That's nice to hear. I'll have a glass then." He turns his back to the counter, leaning on one ellbow. "Most of my assets have been frozen, but there's certainly worse things to spend your leftover credits on than a good drink.”


Tender squints down at the fug of fog being sucked steadily into the ventilator - circulating carcinogens through Pacifica's breathing gas, and gives a noncommital shrug that could have moved a halftonne of bricks. The kid comment hit him like a square tent pet through a needleye - it didn't fit. He looked about fifty eight and built like a concrete crap house. "Yea'." He moves his hand into the rustiest of bulletproof cabinates lining the walls. "A glass? You want a glass? I remember the last time somebody in here asked me for a wineglass. Twenty third of Jan'. Four years ago."


Mary puts down the Pad and focuses Sofia. "Hey, who are you ?"


Tender sizes up Gerd and wonders why on earth he's not somewhere with cleaner seats. The tell was scrawled all over his features, garred scars or not. Eventually, he put voice to it. "So what's a man in a jacket doing in a place like this?"


Gerd chuckles. "What can I say. Old habits are hard to get rid of." He pulls out a metal case, pulls out a cigarette and lights it.


The Tender rifles through the inventory. Calling it a wine "list" would have been excessively generous. "We've got... uh. These." he guestures, manhandling the cabinate around with a defined scrape.



Sofia scraches her head, as if for a moment she was seriously thinking about an answer to Mary's question. "Does it matter who the fuck I am? I just don't like to have my flow of alcohol be cut short. So, pretty please, shooter woman, will you stop punking up that poor fucker?"




Gerd turns back to face the bartender "Well I'm here to fight for a cause, like everyone around here. Don't let my appearance fool you, not all fights are fought while wearing armor or a pilot suit." He slides the scrap of paper over with two fingers and takes a short look at it. "I'll have the Chardonnay please."

Mary takes a last sip out of the rum bottle ""Another, one douchbag!" She points on the seat across from her "Would you sit down, or have I force you ?" She smiles, sarcastically sadistic.


The bartender nodded with great sagacity. He looked like he'd been quite a few fights without armour or a pilot suit himself - it accounted for all the scars.He pulled out the bottle of rum and slid it over the bar. "Another twelve Credits." He grimaced, staring meaningfully at Sofia.

Gerd looks around the dimly lit room. "Ive certainly seen worse places than this shithole. I'd almost go as far as calling it homely."


The grizzled bartender grunts by way of reply. "It's pressurised and the air isn't stale. That's enough for most. 'Sides, most of these cruisers roll up here because it's only a bare deck up from the return hangars. Raid parties need somewhere to spit the lucre out - get so drunk they wake up having intercourse with somebody else's cactus. It's enough for some. Makes me a tidy share."


Raising her hands in a gesture of resignation, Sofia made a few steps to cover the distance between her an d the Dross girl. "Don't have to force anything on me, don't worry babs". After slipping onto one of the barstools next to Mary, She had a sip on her drink, all the while conveniently ignoring the barkeeper's glare - she understood that very well, she just did not care.

"So, what the hell's the deal with you today? Got shot in the wrong foot by some Socialist cuck?"


Gerd raises an eyebrow. "That's an oddly specific reference."

Gerd could see the bartender physically balk. "Oddly specific agony to slap your cock against. Don't screw cacti, mate."

As the bartender finished speaking Gerd breaks out in a long and hearty laugh. He wipes a tear from his eye. "Ah, I can't remember the last time I laughed this sincerely. Or laughed at all for that matter."

Mary ignored them, eyes affixed to her fresh challenger. " In which Armada do you fly, Sofia?” She does something on her Data Pad, under the tabletop.


Only mildly irritated at her own, if slightly sarcastic, inquiry Sofia put down her drink on the counter, replying to Mary's counter question with nothing but a shrug instead. "Ugh...Chort's Forge. Why you asking?", she finally added

He grimaces, clunking down an only slightly crackled bottle covered in indecipherable gallic scrawl. "Here. Hand me your credit chip - I'll deduct the tab."


Gerd pulls out a stack of cards and hands the bartender one after rifling through them for a short while. "There you go.”


The Bartender grunts his thanks, combing the chips in under hirsuit arms, pressing them against the deduction unit. "Good. Your credit's valid.”


A women walks in the bar and heads directly to Mary - officious, well-made. As far from Dross as teeth to an arsehole. "Frau Oberstarbeiter, Ship is loaded with Ammunition and Fuel. Also all repairs are finished." She turns around and while she is leaving Mary checks out her Body. "I need to get her too..." She stands up, walks towards the Door and looks at Sofia. "Not anymore, welcome to the Nightcrawlers, if you refuse.."she lets a dramatic pause. "I kill you!" She leaves a few Hundered Credits on the bar table. "Douchbag, it was fun like always." Mary leaves the Drunken Hammer.

Gerd grabs the glass by the handle and takes a sip. "There's not many things those gauls are good for. This is something they excel everyone at though.”


The Barkeep fidgets audibly where he stands. He's not accustomed to being the chat-to-customers type, and Gerd's slightly-to-social demeanour was wearing on his tenacity. "Suppose." He intoned. Idly, he wondered if he should be charging Gerd for the service.


Looking over to the bartender, Gerd announced "I know what you are thinking about. You can do it, but I won't be happy about it."

"I...err....well alright then...!", Sofia uttered, not too sure about what the fuck just happened. As she watched the woman who had just 'recruited' her exit the bar the glass in her hand found its way to her lips again, flushing downthe scepticism at least for a moment. "At least she paid", Sofia concluded with a shrug, noting that that meant an extra cheap price for her drink.


The bartender grinend wordlessly before stomping off into the recesses of the bar. "And that's why we have customers." He grunted, gathering the drained mess of glasses and bottles up in his long-suffering arms.