“Very good. I sold two squash to finally pay what I owed Rude Marsdome for these new boots.” He pointed to the knee-high quetzal-hide footwear that shot rainbow patterns of light up and down their length. “The old ones were getting a little worn.”

“Understatement of the year, Shig. Your old ones looked like hell. How long you had them?”

“Let’s see. Ten? No, must have been twelve years at least. Wait. It was before the arrival of the Tableau. That was what? Fifteen years ago?”

“No wonder they looked like you’d stolen them off a corpse. But then, you’ve never really been a slave to sartorial perfection.” She took in his use-polished quetzal-hide cloak, the embroidered claw-shrub-fiber shirt and scuffed-and-stained chamois-leather pants.

He ignored the barb. Said, “You had an amused look on your face. Am I to interpret that to mean that things at Corporate Mine are running with unusual efficiency?”

She laughed, studied the light reflected in her glass of whiskey. “Hardly. The Number Three has us at wits end. It’s a nightmare of shoring, mucking, and driving rod. My people are half-spooked to work it, and I don’t blame them. But it’s paying, and if we can drive that bore under the Number One, it will make everyone’s life so much easier.” A pause. “And richer.”

Kalico lifted a finger when Inga glanced her way. The burly blond woman was pouring beer from a tap in one of her kegs. Kalico pointed to Shig. Inga jerked a short nod and went back to her pour.

“Actually,” Kalico told him, “I was thinking back to the time that I had you, Yvette, and Talina arrested for treason. I was sitting right there.” She pointed to the backside of the middle of the bar. “Holding court. Ready to sentence the three of you to death.”

Shig smiled wistfully. “We did teeter on the edge of disaster, didn’t we?”

“Talina stopped it. It would have ended in a bloodbath. Only the marines would have made it, and not all of them, I suppose.”

Shig smiled at Inga as she brought him his customary half glass of wine. Kalico had rarely seen the man even drink that much, and never had he had a second glass. He treated the drink more like a toy, something to amuse himself with.

Shig tossed out an SDR coin that Inga snapped up. She dropped it in a pocket, took a couple of swipes with the bar rag she had slung across her shoulder, and asked, “Anything else? Supervisor, you all right?”

At Kalico’s thumbs-up, the woman hurried back down the bar—an irresistible object in motion.