Free Dark Sky (Keiko) by Mike Brooks

prisoner. ‘How about the rest of you walk out that door, and then I’ll let him go.’
    ‘And if we don’t?’ the woman spat. Apirana winced internally and readied himself to step in.
Shit, do
not
try to call his bluff …
    ‘Just get out the fucking door, Lena!’ the man called Dugan wailed, clearly reluctant to be the subject of this confrontation.
    ‘I’ll remember this,’ Moutinho snarled at Drift, but he was backing away.
    ‘See that you do.’ Drift’s face was thunderous. ‘Maybe you’ll think twice about trying to throw your weight around when other people are just trying to have a quiet drink.’
    Moutinho scowled, but chose to drag his groaning burden towards the door instead of answer. Lena and the man in the turban followed, the latter still moving like someone who’d overindulged in the bar’s wares. The door banged shut behind them, although Apirana could see them waiting on the other side of the darkened glass.
    ‘So, your name’s Dugan, right?’ Drift said to the man he had at bottle-point.
    ‘Fuck you!’
    ‘Listen, there’s nothing personal here,’ Drift said seriously. ‘I’m just going to give you some advice. First of all, stop flying with that man. Second, if you don’t take that advice, find out who it is he wants you to intimidate before you start doing it. You’ll live longer.’ He pulled the broken bottle away and shoved Dugan hard in the back in one motion, sending the larger man a few lurching steps across the floor. Apirana stood back to give him room, but Dugan didn’t seem inclined to linger. He was through the bar’s door a second later, and Apirana breathed a sigh of relief as the shapes of Moutinho and his crew turned away instead of coming back for another go.
    ‘
Cristo!
’ Drift threw his hands up as soon as the door had banged shut for a second time. ‘Why’d you have to start a fight, A.?’
    Apirana fought down a brief impulse to slap Drift, but he knew where that would end: Drift had made very clear before that if Apirana ever laid a hand on him again then he would find himself out of a job. Still, he didn’t keep the bass out of his voice. ‘He pulled a fuckin’ knife on me, bro! What was I supposed t’do?!’
    ‘He did?’ Drift’s eyebrows rose. ‘Ah. Didn’t see that.’
    ‘
Da!
’ To Apirana’s surprise, the landlady was now holding a length of metal which might have been a decapitated broom handle. ‘I saw it!’
    Drift turned to her with an apologetic expression on his face. ‘Madam, I am so, so sorry—’
    ‘Hssht!’ She held her hand up. ‘They been in here too many times, last few months. I don’t like them. Bad people, rude. Not polite like you.’ She lowered her voice, leaning forwards a little. ‘Sometimes come in here with others, too: local people, but troublemakers. Won’t be sorry if they stay away now.’ She picked up a comm handset. ‘You want I call
politsiya
?’
    ‘Ah, no. No, thank you,’ Drift assured her hastily, ‘we’re kind of pushed for time here, and we need to leave before the next storm. We’d rather avoid having to give statements, all that sort of thing. Uh, have you got anything I can clear this glass up with? I seem to have made a bit of a mess …’ He smiled and, as it usually seemed to, it did the trick. The landlady smiled back and waved him away.
    ‘See? Polite. Don’t bother yourself, I do it.’ Then, to Apirana’s surprise, she turned to him. ‘You.’
    He frowned. ‘Me?’
    ‘You ever need job, you come see me about security work,
da
?’
    Apirana smiled at her, on the basis that it seemed to be a good plan. ‘Sure thing, ma’am.’ He registered a presence at his elbow and turned to find Jenna standing there, and was suddenly acutely aware that he’d ended their previous conversation by beating down two men.
Smooth, A.
    ‘You okay?’ she asked him, brushing one of her disobedient strands of hair back from her face as she looked up at him.
    He smiled. ‘Yeah,