Undercurrents Read Online Free

powers, and they were within twenty years of one another in technologic development. Yavet lagged Earth in just one discipline, but it was a honker. Only Earth had starships.
    The Trueborns let anybody and anything ride their ships, because they believed everybody should be free. Of course, “free to ride” didn’t mean “ride for free.” Open access made Earth rich. And the access wasn’t entirely open. The Trueborns refused to carry military. Except their own, and the Legion, which was an Earth-based independent contractor. Both of whom were, of course, even-handed peacekeepers.
    This infuriated Yavet, which was overpopulated, overpolluted, and proud to be both. Yavet needed lebensraum worse than a teenaged boy needed a free full body massage.
    But without starships, Yavet could no more expand than a sixteen-year-old without a car could get laid.
    So the Yavi did what they could get away with to grow their influence. They smuggled military to the outworlds aboard Trueborn starships. The Trueborns let them get away with it as long as the influence growth was minute. When any Yavi project posed a greater threat to Earth, GIs on both sides died restoring the balance in chilly, undeclared brushfire wars. There had been so many such brush fires that the Trueborns called the arrangement Cold War II. The only things a GI hates more than getting killed in an undeclared war are the people who are trying to kill him. Trueborn soldiers hated Yavi soldiers, and the Yavi returned the favor.
    The Yavi stood, hefted his glass mug like a Trueborn baseball, and spilled his beer.
    As the two soldiers glared at each other, I smiled at the Yavi. “Let me refill that for you. On the house.”
    The Yavi ignored me and wound up to peg a fastball at the gunny.
    The gunny snatched a bar stool and turned it legs-up, like a bat. The legs trembled in his bony hands. “I remember my pugil-stick drill. You remember yours, ‘salesman’?”
    Brawls weren’t so much bad for business as hard on furniture. My friendly offers of freebies weren’t defusing the crisis. I drew the shotgun and clicked off the safety.
    A salesman wouldn’t recognize the click, but a soldier would. Both men froze.
    I shifted the saloon gun’s stubby barrels back and forth from one torso to the other. “Free City of Shipyard Municipal Ordinance 6.21 authorizes the use of deadly force by a licensed establishment owner in defense of property. I own this place. That’s my beer stein and my bar stool. So can’t we all just get along?”
    Neither man budged, while their breath rasps echoed off the bar’s hewn nickel-iron walls. The gunny gave away too much in age and bulk to the Yavi to win the fight. However, if he managed to break a chair over a Yavi, he’d brag at the Shipyard VIW Post for years. But if the Yavi blew his cover, his superiors would cashier him, or worse. And he knew it.
    The Yavi slammed his mug back down on his table. “Fuck it.” Then he spun on his heel, walked out the open door into the passage, turned right, and was gone.
    “Gutless weasel.” The gunny snorted. He replaced the barstool on the floor with quivering hands, nodded to me, and stalked out, too.
    The Gunny turned left, and I exhaled audibly.
    My third—and now only—customer had sat silently at a corner table during the flap.
    He watched the door until the sound of both mens’ footfalls faded. Then, while I slid the shotgun back underneath the bar, he stood and carried his glass back to me.
    I had noted when he came in that he was as militarily erect as the other two and carried himself with that sense of entitlement that outworlders immediately recognize in any Trueborn. When he had come in, he had said he was a cruiser tourist. However, the only cruiser due for the month was still inbound, so that was a lie. But the Free City of Shipyard ran on cash in the fist, not on truth. Therefore I had shut up and poured.
    The liar laid a bill on my bar. “For the whisky.”
    I pointed