Next to the Old Eighty-Six’s door, a poster is glued to the tungsten wall.

It’s that of a Chow Chow’s smiling face. The woman’s illustrated, lasciviously drawn thigh-cut qipao dress emphasizes her subhuman canine curves, her scantily clad body surrounded by blossoming jasmine flowers and assorted playing cards, her lips, tongue, jowls a glowing porcelain blue. For anyone who enters, she promises both unrigged dice games and cold beer brewed traditionally in the Chiao-Chou Bay tradition.

Inside the Old Eighty-Six, the repurposed cargo storage area hosts Hu Shih’s favorite denizens. They’re donned in their work clothes—sweat-stained button-ups and cheap slacks—arm-in-arm with their pseudo-family members: their coworkers and drinking buddies. In groups, they sit at plastic-wood tables beneath the orange industrial lights, low-lit, buzzing, always leaking glow at all hours.

Gamblers argue over mahjong tiles, belching opium puffs and spitting rice wine alcohol. The drunkards are polite enough to keep their distance, but not polite enough to avoid staring as the filly makes her entrance. Many assume Ginevra is yet another semi-professional escort card slinger, offering girlies and drugs to the professionals hunkering over their drinks after their ten-hour white-collar shifts. There they hide, taking personal time from their wives, children, and for those higher in the corporate hierarchy, their concubines.

But, out the many octagonal portholes of the Old Eighty-Six’s rear wall, Ginevra’s target idles. One of the thousands. Like lotus buds dotting a distant black pond, hung-t’ou transport vessels interlink with one another near the airlock docks of the Near Southwest Corner. In the cold space, held together with rusted tow cables and magnetic tractor beams, they lie in wait for bars and saloons to call upon them, one-by-one, to eject inebriated patrons. To deliver them home safely rather than force patrons to shuffle through Hu Shih’s narrow streets, back towards the overcrowded rail terminals, where for many drunks the journey may take too long, their horrifying destination being their offices for their next workday’s shift.

Ginevra takes a seat at one of the covered booths. It’s curtained with another plastic advertisement of the same Chow Chow, recommending beer in each of her doughy arms, elated and winking, canines sparkling, unlit cigarette dangling from jowls begging for attention. Inside, hidden in her seat, the filly rifles through the bar’s semi-automated ordering system.

It’s plastic. Bolted to the table with screws twisted too tight. Filled with pictures of food, from industrially packaged rice-seaweed quadrangles to freezerburned krab ovary dumplings, dishes numbered in lieu of formal names and descriptions. The mechanism’s thick childish buttons, when pressed, elicit bright lights and the sound of a mechanical bark. After ordering two lukewarm Chiao-Chou beers and a hung-t’ou for a half-hour’s arrival, Ginevra pauses, bitterly stuck with a broadcast from the Old Eighty-Six’s central programming array.

Evidently, the barkeeper is a fan of The Great Hunt.

Over the bar, the cycle’s broadcast. Sputtering with blipverts—subconscious advertising stills interspliced between a hand-shot gonzo-reported segment on Okapi War insurgencies. Pop-pops of televised automatic gunfire puncture ambient salaryman arguments over soap opera plotlines and karaoke girlie rankings. They pay no mind to the onscreen corpses, subtitled with tribal rankings, labeled with diagrams describing bullet penetration velocity, angle, and where similar ammunition can be purchased at wholesale value with retail ease.

Another blipvert flashes, advertising an eerily familiar sandy-beached resort planet—Alto Manzanillo—before disappearing from the filly’s view.

Leisurely, Ginevra finishes her second bottle and swallows two more pills as her hung-t’ou arrives. Earlier than expected. Visible through the stuffy airlock arrays and octagonal portholes, docking along Hu Shih, it’s wholly unremarkable. Cramped, its single K’uai-K’uai engine sputtering, discolored aluminum exterior lacking paint. Safe for short-term travel, yes, and overpriced. But at least its registration is up to date, automatically checked and recorded by the Old Eighty-Six’s systems, charging another micro-cost passed to the consumer—a recent ordinance put in place to crack down on shady black taxi scams.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Ginevra lingers at the airlock, patiently waiting for the hung-t’ou to complete arrival protocols. She looks into the window’s grimy reflection, staring back into the bar. Freed from her copy-paste Chow Chow enclave, she sweats on edge. Ready to strike. Vulnerable near the center of the bar, on the tips of her hooves.

A different filly—a different copy of the same filly—stares back from the airlock’s reflection. Scowling, only pelt and skeleton from deterioration, eyes but cavernous holes, she whispers into Ginevra’s tall ear, demanding to bum just one more cigarette. Then another, lingering near the nearby mahjong table, same sorrel coat as Ginevra, a familiar Tiangong mercenary cradling a three-of-a-kind and bleeding from a cantaloupe-sized hole in her midsection, knowingly staring past her fellow gamblers towards the airlock, hoof tap-tapping with a certain impatience. Another mare flirts at the bar, sneering at Ginevra over a dislocated shoulder, faux-feathered and sequined showgirl outfit torn and sullied, claw marks fresh across her back, elastic fabric peeling with skin, rolling her eyes at the compliments of yet another possible aggressor purchasing her another drink.

Ginevra blinks, stuffing two more pills in her maw. She focuses harder on the hung-t’ou sputtering into view, on the trap she’s set. From the Regimental, her pursuer must have followed, whoever they may be. But more importantly, following her pursuer…

And on cue, the Old Eighty-Six’s door swings open. It’s a gingerly pull. One that squeaks the ancient freight container’s tungsten hinges. Even through the saccharine Yellow Music belting from the overhead speakers, tapered with arguments over rice wine and televised insurgencies, high-pitched chittering is heard. The feminine voice oscillates, drawing attention to itself, a shrill laughter and husky chiding complete with the performative jerking shoulder motions of enrapturing conversation.

In walks Miss Cinnamon.

The doe shoots lacquered smiles at the leering salarymen, handing a flier to one as she sashays into the bar, patting him on the back, investigating his mahjong tiles and pointing strategy with a manicured finger. All while babbling, never removing a hand from her ear, squeezing the manual talking receiver to snapping. She, too, arrives at her destination—the airlock, where she lingers at the filly’s side.

Directly in Ginevra’s trap.

The doe smiles in the reflection, polished fangs begging attention, pointing towards her earpiece and pretending to whisper, practically shouting.

“Hey girlie,” Miss Cinnamon plays. To the naked eye, to the drunks staring over pint-rims, they’re pals. Just two women alone with Hu Shih. “You headin’ out already?”

“Don’t know,” Ginevra replies. “Haven’t decided.”

The filly pauses. The six-shooter at her waist is heavy. A single sorrel thumb hooks into her waistband, the two beers in her veins screeching for murder. Ginevra allocates fifteen more seconds before she’ll begin shooting.

“Well,” the doe brays from pursed lips, saucy smile dripping with subtext, “can I steal your ride? I really need to see a friend. Or, I guess I should say a friend really needs to see me. You know?”

“Sure,” Ginevra replies.

“Mean it?” Miss Cinnamon giggles. “Oh, you’re just the best. And don’t you worry, my guy’ll cover the cost for you. Maybe even get you a couple drinks,” the doe puts a hand on Ginevra’s shoulder, marking her for friendship as women do in bars every evening, all across the galaxy, since the dawn of time. She departs with a shrill thank-you, click-clacking hooves along the grimy tiled dock. She shouts once more on her way out, “Ding how!”

The doe chitters nonstop, her hoofsteps bouncing against the multi-centimeter-thick airlock glass, her high-pitched tonality disappearing only after the grimy doors close, pressurizing. She gives a cursory wave of thanks, individually wiggling every finger as she enters the gull-wing doors. Miss Cinnamon laughs and looks away, towards the endless expanse outside Hu Shih.

She smiles, as if the fake person over her receiver has given her a compliment, before disappearing from view.

Ginevra chews her lips. As planned, she’s locked in the Old Eighty-Six, the next hung-t’ou escape vessel lingering just out of reach, grouped in their clutches and reflecting against the sunlight like shooting stars. The filly is a sitting target, surrounded by laughing, voluptuous Chow Chow apparitions—smiling copies of one another—the computer-generated girlies imploring Ginevra to relax, spend, and feel at home.

Once back in the booth, Ginevra unholsters her six-shooter and places it atop the chipped plastic table. She orders two more Chiao-Chou lagers with a pair of bark-bark’s. Unlike before, sans transport.

With her pursuer’s imminent arrival, that’ll take care of itself.