Sure, you could get a drink at The Jewel casino, or Betty Abel’s brothel, but they didn’t have the amiable sit-down atmosphere where you could bring the family, let alone order a meal cooked to order. Not to mention that both of the aforementioned establishments catered to a rather unsavory clientele. On Donovan—when it came to the social center of the planet—Inga’s was urbs et orbis: City and world.

Kalico Aguila perched on her usual bar stool. She had flown in with the weekly rotation of workers from Corporate Mine, having worked out a deal with the triumvirate years back. Her people needed the skills, manufacturing, and amenities of Port Authority, such as they were. Port Authority needed the production of her smelter, access to Freelander’s free-fall manufacturing, and the additional income from Corporate Mine. One couldn’t survive without the other.

In the beginning, when Aguila had arrived on Donovan, she’d almost destroyed Port Authority’s independent-minded leadership. Had actually arrested Talina Perez, Shig Mosadek, and Yvette Dushane. Was going to convict them of treason and shoot them down in the street as a lesson meant to put the rest of the local hardheads in their place. The memory brought a smile to Kalico’s lips. She lifted her glass of whiskey in a salute to her scarred image where it reflected from the back bar. “To lessons well learned,” she toasted herself.

The scars were proof of that. She’d been a ravishing beauty before the mobbers sliced her into ribbons. They would have killed her but for a handy sialon crate. She had barely managed to dive into it. Even as they continued slashing her open and chewing on her flesh, she’d had to stomp, strangle, and crush the hideous beasts she’d trapped inside the box with her. Not all of her people had been as lucky.

Behind her, Inga’s was half-filled with patrons who sat at the long chabacho-wood tables. Outside, night was falling. For the most part, the families had retreated to their domes and houses, but the boisterous element was here. Sheyela Smith sat with Tyrell Lawson and Toby Montoya, mugs of beer in hand as they hovered over a tablet. Some sort of skull session to cobble together a jury-rigged kind of machine for Lee Halston’s sawmill.

As Kalico pondered that, Shig Mosadek climbed onto the bar stool beside hers. She gave the Indian a sidelong appraisal, taking in his brown face, mushroom-mashed nose, as well as the wild and unkempt hair that was graying at his temples. The comparative religions scholar barely stood five foot three. One of the triumvirate, he was the last person one would expect to be in a leadership position in hard-knuckled and rough-and-tumble Port Authority.

“How’s life?” Kalico asked.