My hand hurts
15 Oct 2017Greybeard LXI
My hand hurts.‘Course, that’s an occupational hazard for the bouncer at the Golden Rivet, a dive on the edge of the industrial zone in Gurney Orbital, Zemetii.
Today some guys tried to rough up a customer. That’s the sort of thing I was hired to prevent. Usually a quiet word is enough to calm things down, but there were six of them and only one of me. The wimp doesn’t count.
When they left, without the wimp, one was knocked out, two had broken arms and two others were limping. Imperial Navy hand to hand training is better than the muggings these guys had done previously.
We found one on the floor when security showed up. It seems my size 10 hit just right to really put him out of the fight. He was known to security, a member of the Zemetii Crew. That and the witnesses kept me out of the lockup.
After security left I saw a clean shaven muscle watching over a suit talking to Charley, the bartender.
It seems Charley doesn’t actually own the Rivet. He just works for the Bolonii Empire Pact.
The suit, Luigi, bought me a beer and we talked a while. He asked about my flight boots, the last part of my Imperial Navy uniform left. They look a bit out of place, spit shined while my jump suit was faded, worn and never of decent quality. I admitted I’d served, and he understood I didn’t want to talk too much about it.
He also commented on my grammar and accent. The grammar is too educated for most of the people in that area and the accent … well, lots of people have off system accents. It’s also not the right type of place to pry into people’s stories, you can get hurt doing that.
Luigi did seem to be impressed by my pride in Dad’s being the sixtieth in a line of pilots, all of whom had successful Navy careers. And he said that I was still proud of my time in the Navy, as shown by my boots. He thought that keeping where I came from and where I’m going in mind would help keep me from living out the rest of my life in a dead end job like this. He recommended recording the little lessons learned each day and I would find a better purpose for my life.
It helps to keep the boss’ boss happy, so I found a guy that sold me a “used” refurbished Imperial Navy Pilot Log for 35 florins. And I recorded what happened today.
And now my head hurts too.