The Mercenaries’ Tale – 1.11 Drinking

The bar was attached to a dancehall. The heavy bass of a techno soundtrack reverberated throughout the hall. The room was kept dark with the exception of pulsing coloured lights set up around an expensive looking DJ deck which lit up in time with the beat. Tables and chairs lined the sides of the room, a dance floor taking up the majority of the centre of the hall. It was still early so the hall was mostly empty, only a handful of young couples occupying the tables.

The bar was hidden behind a partition, allowing anyone looking for a quiet drink to hold a conversation while the music bounced off the wall, giving a muffled heartbeat to the ambient background noise.

Blaise didn’t have a hard time finding the boys; she could hear the distinct sound of Doug’s hearty laughter, even over the constant thump thump of the music behind the partitioning wall. She found them sitting at the bar, Gratin was sitting in silence enjoying a drink and a packet of nuts whilst Doug talked at him and the barman. The barman was not taken with Doug’s brand of small talk, much like most barmen exposed to the inquisition that was Doug’s means of breaking the ice by trying to pry into their private lives, while simultaneously not giving a shit and expositing all manner of humorous and slightly lewd anecdotes. Doug was halfway through the sentence “and my trousers were around my ankles and he had a gun pointed at my joy department”¹, when he noticed Blaise and became worryingly quiet. The barman took this as his opportune cue to go and clean some glasses at the other end of the bar, reprieved of forced conversation with a clear lunatic.

Blaise sat down on a stool to Doug’s left. The trio sat in silence for a few seconds, giving Blaise the time to take in Doug’s appearance. He had removed his bionic arm and presumably left it in his room, the stump that was the remains of his biological left arm having been covered in bandages in order to hide the scarring. It wasn’t so much that Doug cared what other people thought of his scars, he just felt that covering them was more inconspicuous. At least, that’s what he claimed – perhaps there were some feelings of consciousness regarding his amputated, ruined stump of a limb.

Eventually, Doug lost interest in the bottom of his glass and took the risk of glancing up to look at her, as if making eye contact ran the risk of blowing his brains out through the back of his skull. He’d ran head first into blaring gunfire with less anxiety.

“Can I get you something, Red?” he asked. She could tell that he was trying not to upset her. He didn’t like their disagreements any more than she did.

“Yeah, whiskey on the rocks, thanks,” she replied. Doug nodded, called the barman back with a flick of his finger and placed the order. The barman set to work making the drink. Blaise stopped him just as he finished pouring the whiskey.

“Leave the bottle,” she instructed. The barman nodded and went back to the other end of the bar to serve some new customers. Doug chuckled nervously.

“Looking to do some heavy drinking?” he asked in a bid to start some conversation.

“I like to forget my problems,” Blaise replied.

“Well don’t we all,” Doug added. An awkward hush fell again as the two mercs busied themselves with their drinks. It was Blaise that broke the tension, unable to resist making a comment.

“So…missing something?” she asked, prompting Doug to acknowledge his stump.

“Heh, yeah. Sometimes it’s nice to walk around free of extra weight, you know? I mean, sure, there are supports built in to the arm, a counterbalance grafted to my other shoulder and I’ve had my collarbone plated so it’s easier to lug the arm around, but it’s still around 50 pounds of metal I’m carrying around and it can get tiring,” he explained. Blaise smiled and nodded, adding an “I bet” as she took another swig of her whiskey.

There was another long silence, which was this time broken by Doug.

“Look Blaise, I’m sorry if you feel like you were shanghaied into coming-”

“No, Doug, I’m sorry I reacted the way I did-”

“But I should’ve respected your decision instead of harassing you-”

“You were right about the money though-”

“That doesn’t make up for it-”

“Forget about it-”

“But I-”

“-I said forget it, Doug. I’ll forgive you if you forgive me for being a bitch,” she joked. Doug grinned at her.

“Deal,” he agreed. Gratin took this moment to raise his beer.

“I believe you humans believe renewed alliances must be toasted to. Am I mistaken in saying that this is such a moment?” he asked. The other two chuckled and raised their glasses.

“To friendship,” Gratin toasted.

“To money,” Blaise added as the group downed their respective drinks.

The evening rolled on, the bar slowly filling up as more passengers sought night-time entertainment. The mercs eventually left the bar and claimed a table in a quieter corner of the hall in order to escape the crowds, the music hammering the partitioning wall even louder as the DJ got more excitable.

“Well this is a real party,” said Doug sarcastically, sipping at his pint and interrupting another lingering silence in the process. Opposite him sat Gratin, ever the stoic mountain of concentration, currently focusing on some point above Doug’s head. Every so often one of the mage’s fingers would twitch in time with the muffled music pumping through the bar. Blaise stared off into the distance, absent-mindedly twirling her finger around the edge of her tumbler of whiskey.

“What were you expecting?” she asked.

“What about you, Archie?” said Doug. “How do you feel ‘bout our current course of action?”

“I’m indifferent.”

“…And?”

Gratin didn’t reply. His head bobbed slightly in a sort of half-shrug. Doug sighed.

“I keep the most interesting of company. Well, there’s only one thing I can do. You’ve forced my hand.”

Doug waggled his fingers to emphasise that he meant his human hand as opposed to his currently missing robot hand, got up from the table and walked away. The other two mercs were left in silence for a few moments, before Blaise broke it.

“I guess it’s too much to ask that he’s given up on us and pissed off to his room?” asked Blaise, shifting in her seat to face the mage.

“…Optimistic,” summarised Gratin. “He’s far too keen on forcing us to socialise. I admit I’m slightly curious as to what he’ll try this time. I’m guessing drink.”

True enough, Doug shortly returned with a tray full of glasses and bottles of various shapes and sizes, each full with liquids of various colours and consistencies. He set it down on the table in front of the other two, before sitting down and resuming his pint. He didn’t comment on the tray of drinks, or even utter a comment of explanation. Blaise looked at him quizzically.

“What’s this?”

“Hmm? Oh, these? Just thought I’d get tonight’s rounds in.”

Blaise leaned over the tray and looked through the selection of drinks.

“What’s in them?”

“A little sample of everything at the bar. Help yourself.”

“Oh no, I don’t think-”

“-And if you don’t want anything, then you can sit there and watch me drink through this lot.”

Doug necked the last of his pint with a few gulps, and placed the glass down. His fingers eagerly hovered over the selection in front of him, and he plucked out a tumbler of murky brown liquid. Blaise watched him as he put the edge of the glass to his lips and sucked at its contents. He smacked his lips a bit.

“Any good?” enquired Blaise.

“Bloody awful, but I’ve had worse,” said Doug, going for another sip. Blaise eyed the booze selection and was surprised to see that Gratin already had a bottle in his hand, rotating it as if he was deconstructing every molecule.

“It’s beer, Archie. You put it in your mouth, swallow and go ‘mmm’,” stated Doug.

“Don’t call me that,” murmured the mage. He swirled the bottle in his hand a little bit and then placed it to his lips. Doug and Blaise watched attentively as he sampled it. A low “hmm” came from the mage as he swallowed.

“What do you reckon?” asked Doug.

“I think someone’s urine sample got mixed in at some point during the brewing process,” stated Gratin. He took another sip.

“That good, eh?” chuckled Doug. “Probably an acquired taste.”

“Indeed, unfortunately to acquire this particular taste one must first pass it through their bladder.”

“I didn’t mean – oh, never mind. I’ll take your pissy beer and raise you-” he snatched another bottle out of the selection and read the label, “Colonel Gillady’s Old Firewater Reserve.”

Chugging it down, Doug paused to splutter as his eyes watered. Blaise grimaced as Firewater Reserve dribbled down Doug’s chin as he gagged.

“Hhhh-hot!” wheezed Doug.

“Don’t like it then?” said Blaise.

“Not t-too *hack* bad! Wanna try?”

Blaise waved her hands in dismissal, but Gratin’s newfound alcoholic curiosity prompted him to take the bottle from Doug. He noted the smoke emerging from the top of the bottle, and then drank it back without a second thought.

“Definitely an improvement,” Gratin offered in appraisal. “I could get to enjoy this beverage.” The mage passed his half-empty piss beer back to Doug, whose eyes were now red and running. “I think you’ll find this beer will be more within your tolerances.”

“Sod off,” coughed Doug, rooting in his jacket for his cigarettes. Bringing out his lighter, Blaise put her hand on his arm.

“I wouldn’t risk an open flame near your mouth given what you just drank,” she said.

“…Fair point,” replied Doug, closing his jacket.

“My turn, I suppose. I’ll raise you two this” said Blaise, grasping a curious black bottle labelled ‘Zoy Zauce’.

Thus began the small drinking game that would keep the mercs occupied for the rest of the evening, until it inevitably escalated into the big drinking game that would occupy their time for most of the night.

* * *

The room was dark, with the exception of the glow from the computer monitors around the edge of it. Figures in darkly-coloured security uniforms could be seen hunched over each monitor, intently and fervently watching security feeds and monitoring databases². The drone of several newsfeeds could be heard over the hum of computer cooling systems.

One of the security officers was trawling through a database marked with the familiar blue diamond that was the Salmanic Inc logo. He was reading the new additions to the Salmanic database when he paused, re-read a section and turned around to face the centre of the room. There was a staircase there that led up to a gantry that connected to a glass encasement that contained an office. On the gantry stood two identical female silhouettes in lab coats. It was these two women that the security officer addressed.

“We have a hit,” he announced. The women nodded in contemplation.

“You know-”

“-What to do,” they replied in turn. The officer nodded, turned around and grabbed his workstation’s phone. He looked up a number on his computer and dialled it.

“We’ve found him. It’s time…”

---

Post by Sean Patrick Payne | November 8, 2013 at 12:00 pm | The Mercenaries' Tale | No comment

Tags: alcohol, Blaise, Doug McCracken, Gratin, the Mercs

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