Jenna produced a card from her purse and cleared her tab with a swipe. The she leaned over, close enough for Runstom to smell her. A mix of light perfume and the sweet scent of alcohol. She cleared his tab with a swipe, then put the bank card back in her purse and drew forth another card, clear and small.

“Now you owe me a drink,” she said, handing him the translucent square of plastic. “See you around, Stanford. The Green Man out for Justice.” With a blur of long brown hair, she twirled around and walked out the door.

The White Angle Saloon was about as close to dank as you could get in a dome bar. Which is to say, it was dark, mostly devoid of patrons, and had a lot of watered-down beer on tap. Jax was learning that last part the hard way. He was on his sixth glass and still on edge.

What made things worse was the bartender seemed to be avoiding him. Although, Jax had to admit, he was probably being just a tad too talkative. So he had a few things to get off his chest. What do they pay these bartenders for, anyway? This guy was lucky not to be replaced by a tend-bot.

Jax looked around the bar. No women, all men. He was the only one at the bar; everyone else was seated at tables. Three greasy-looking guys sat together, talking in hushed voices, occasionally bursting into raucous laughter. Two other men sipped cocktails out of straws in tall glasses and pushed papers back and forth across their table. A man sitting alone kept nodding his head, as if he were about to fall asleep in his half-full glass of flat beer. Another man had a small bottle of liquor on his table and a shot glass. He poured himself a shot and winked angrily at Jax. And one other loner was slowly drinking a beer and involved in some kind of card game with himself.

“Wait a sec—” Jax said, facing a full beer. The bartender had managed to pour him a new glass and scoot away before Jax could talk to him. So he talked to himself. “Did that one guy just wink at me?” He looked at his glass as if addressing his beer. “Wink angrily?”

He turned back around and saw a vaguely familiar face. “I think I know that guy,” he said. “Maybe I should go talk to him.” He hopped off the barstool and took a few seconds to regain his balance. The alcohol in the last several beers had finally gathered enough strength to have an effect. It joined forces with the high gravity and threatened to pull Jax to the floor. He put a hand on the bar and took a deep breath, then picked up his beer and sauntered over to the winking man’s table.

“What the fuck do you want?” the man said as Jax loomed in front of the table, looking him over.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

“Beats the shit outta me.” The yellow-skinned man poured himself a shot, dropped it into his mouth, then slapped the shot glass back on the table hard, causing the glass and the table to voice a small protest. The man stared at Jax, then winked.

Jax shrugged and sat down, a passive act that was more about succumbing to gravity than intentional motion. He looked at the man, thinking about his yellow skin. He looked around the room again briefly, and it occurred to him that he was the only white-skinned person in the bar. Outside, this being a domed city, there were plenty of pales. Jax wondered why they called this place the White Angle Saloon when white-skins seemed to avoid it. Maybe it was for the irony. Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it was just a terrible name for a bar. It sounded like someone couldn’t decide between Wide Angle and White Angel and just took something in between.

“I like your tattoos,” Jax said. The yellow man was covered in tattoos, but one on his arm in particular struck Jax as interesting. “Hey,” he said. “Is that a smart-tat?” He was struck with a strong feeling of deja-vu.

“I hate these domes,” the other man said. “Fuckin’ domes. Fuckin’ shit-ass fake air. That’s why I gotta drink, you know. They always yell at me.” The man put on a mocking, sour face. “Johnny, why you gotta drink so much? Don’t drink so much, Johnny! Stop shooting people, Johnny!” He poured himself another shot. “It’s the fuckin’ domes, man. They don’t fuckin’ get it!” He tossed back the shot and set the glass down slowly and deliberately and winked at Jax.

“You were born in a real atmosphere,” Jax decided. “I can see why the domes upset you. I lived my whole life in a dome. Only recently did I get a chance to experience real atmosphere.” He stared into the distance, remembering the blue-green grass of Terroneous. “I was only there a couple days, but still, I miss it.” He took a slow pull of his beer.

“Fuckin’ domes,” the other man muttered.

“Did you say your name was Johnny?” Jax sat up straight suddenly. “Johnny Eyeball?”

The man gave him a fiery, glaring wink.

“Yeah!” Jax slapped the muscled man on the shoulder. “We were cell-mates, man! A couple weeks ago. You remember?”

Johnny Eyeball stared at him long and hard, frowning with thought. His mouth slowly churned and curled upward. “Yeeaaaah,” he said. “You’re the fuckin’ mass-murderer!” he shouted, overjoyed in that way that only a drunk who has remembered something from more than a fortnight ago can be.

“That’s right! Jax, the mass-murderer!” Jax whooped as Eyeball slapped him on the shoulder, nearly knocking him out of his chair.

Eyeball poured himself a shot and raised the glass. Jax met the little shot glass with his beer glass and they both drained their respective drinks. The White Angle Saloon was eerily quiet.

“Hey,” Eyeball said after Jax called over to the bartender to bring him another beer. “Hey. Hey. Wait a sec. Wasn’t you my cell-mate on the prisoner barge?”

“Huh?” Jax said, turning away from the bar and back to Eyeball.

“I mean, how’d you get here? We took some recruits from the barge – and you ain’t one of them. Rest of the cons, we dropped at the asteroid colony.”

Jax’s brain tried to kick into high gear, but it was back to rusty gears churning through mud again. The alcohol had undone all the work that the caffeine had accomplished. “Uh,” he tried. “What, uh. What barge?”

“You know, the prisoner barge. The one we – DOOSH”, Eyeball said, making an explosion sound. “The one we blew up.”

“Oooh,” Jax said. “That was you? Yeah, no. We were cell-mates on Barnard-4. In Blue Haven. We were in the little jail they have there.”

“Oh,” the yellow man said. He thought quietly as the bartender brought Jax his drink.

Jax’s dulled brain didn’t want to give the other man a chance to remember that they actually were on the barge together. “Hey,” he said. “Why did you drop prisoners at the asteroid colony?”

Eyeball grunted. “They always need workers in the mines. It’s a shit job, but better than rottin’ in a cell. Plus we get a finder’s fee.”

Jax stared at the other man for a moment, not really processing his words, but trying to keep him talking. “So, uh … why do they call you Johnny Eyeball, anyway?”

Eyeball glared at him. “You probably didn’t notice,” he said in a low voice. “But one of my eyes doesn’t close.”

“Oh.” Jax thought about that for a second. “You mean, not ever?”

“Not in a very long time. War wound.”

“Oh,” Jax said again. He was about to ask What war?, but was suddenly sidetracked by another slow-moving thought process. “Hey wait a sec. Did you say ‘we blew up the barge’? That was you? Who is ‘we’?”

“Yeah,” Johnny Eyeball said, grinning widely. “Space Waste!” he shouted suddenly, flexing his arm. The smart tattoo morphed from a vague cluster of lines into the triangle of out-turned arrows.

“Wait a sec,” Jax said to himself, but out loud, the gears churning through more mud, this time actually making progress. “That symbol is for Space Waste? Fuck me, I didn’t know that.”

“Space Waste!” Eyeball shouted again. “You wanna know how we did it, Psycho Jack?”

“Uh.” Jax lost his tongue for a moment. He really hoped that nickname wasn’t going to stick. “Yeah,” he said tentatively. Then he realized he really did want to know how they pulled that raid off. “Yeah. How did you guys do that?”