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Dylan looked up from his quiet Valentine's Day drink as the bar room was engulfed in a wave of violence that surged around him. Predictably, his engineer was somewhere in the middle of it all. He sighed and muttered, "It's never easy," as he put down his beer, ducked a platter that went flying over his head, but failed to duck the half-filled schooner that followed it. He sighed again and waded into the fray.
He told himself he should have known better. After all these years, he should have known that if he wanted a quiet glass of beer, he should leave his two most trouble-prone crew mates behind. Sure enough, one of them came sailing out of the crowd now, propelled by an angry N'Granthian trader.
Once Rhade hit the ground, Dylan hurried to his side and helped him up. "What happened?" he asked, dusting him off and holding him steady... and incidentally preventing him from charging back into the fray.
"Nothing," Rhade answered tersely, carefully not looking at his Captain and flinching as another tankard came too close to his head.
"I said, **What Happened!**" Dylan repeated, giving Rhade a shake for emphasis. He'd seen that look in a pair of Nietzschean eyes before and it was *never* a good thing.
"I might have given Harper a few pointers on pick-up lines," the other man admitted sheepishly.
They were interrupted and forced to duck behind an overturned table before anything else could be said, but Dylan wasn't about to let this little chat go at that. "Oh--purely out of friendship, I'm sure," Dylan said sourly. "But, if this all started with Harper, why are so many of these people trying to hit you?" As if to emphasize his point, a dagger suddenly sprouted from the other side of the table. Dylan pulled it free while Rhade was occupied with a charging drunk roughly the size of a rhino. Nimbly reversing the blade, Hunt used the hilt to knock out their attacker and tucked him safely away under the booth behind him. Before Rhade could protest his innocence in the beginnings of the brawl, the High Guard Captain waded into the fight searching for his beleaguered engineer.
Of course, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stay out of the fight--there were too many people in the crowd who seemed to see his face and say, "target!" He was busy fending off three of them when he felt a tug on his trouser leg. Glancing down hastily, he saw Harper crawling on all fours, weaving deftly between what was left of the tables, the chairs, and all the other detritus that had been the bar's furnishings. The little Human motioned him down, then slithered back into a little cave formed by a massive table and three broken chairs.
"Hey Boss, what's up?" he asked, grinning cheerfully in spite of a split lip and an eye that was already swelling.
"Our insurance rates, by the looks of it," Dylan grumbled. "Come on--let's see if we can get out of this with our hides intact. Rhade's over by the door--follow me."
"Aww, come on--you never let me have any fun!" the engineer whined.
His protest was swallowed in a blast of gauss pistol fire and the grin faded somewhat. "Uh, okay. Since you insist," he said, tucking his head and worming his way earnestly through the crowd, its noise unabated above him. Dylan started to stand but thought better of it and followed in Harper's wake. The kid might be trouble-prone, but he generally had good instincts when it came to the pinch.
* * *
"Now, gentlemen," Dylan said once they'd made it back to the safety of the Andromeda, "I'll ask you both again, what started the fight? Telemachus? Care to go first?"
"I told you; all I did was give the little one some pointers on pick-up lines," the Nietzschean answered sulkily. "He said he wanted to try his luck with the waitress."
"Oh yeah, sure," Harper retorted. "What he gave me was a sure-fire recipe to get myself killed! Even I know you don't *ever* tell an N'Granthian female she has nice pincers!"
"So, what happened?" Dylan was fast losing his patience.
Harper grinned again. "I told the waitress just what Rhade said. It worked like a charm, too."
"Mister Harper..." Dylan blinked as the engineer's words all filtered through his adrenaline-flushed mind. "Wait--you just said you *knew* better than to say that. Are you now telling me that you *did* say that?"
"Not exactly," Harper answered, edging toward the nearest means of escape. "I told her that my buddy the Nietzschean said I should tell her that, 'cause he's too shy to speak up for himself...."
His last words were tossed over his shoulder as he disappeared down the ladder to the next lowest deck. Hunt restrained Rhade from following, although the Nietzschean showed his displeasure with murderous growls and grinding teeth.
"I ought to..."
"You *ought* to know better!" Hunt told him; "And Rhade, do me one big favor? If you boys decide to go out to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day, remind me that I need to stay home and wash my socks or something!"
* * *
The End