The shot tastes like green apple, tart and tangy with azingthat goes straight to my head. Vera is a lot shorter than me, so she has to stand on her toes to deliver my round, which means she kind of misses my mouth and gets half the gelatin on my chin, but I don’t care. She’s giggling, and I’m smiling, and Jester’s visor is a long chain ofhahahaha, and for the first time since arriving at Skyhub I feel like maybe this day won’t be a complete disaster after all.
“Youvu Hum and Youvu Hum should be here soon,” Vera says as we manage to snag a booth, which we accomplish by hovering menacingly over its former occupants and diving in as soon as they leave. “Toph is a maybe—he’s got a spacecraft repair to finish—but Avi should be coming, too.”
You invited Avi to a bar?Jester arches an eyebrow over the rim of his visor.Isn’t she a bit young?
Vera shrugs. “It’s not like she’s going to be drinking.”
They’ll stop her at the door.
Vera snorts. “They’ll try.”
Youvu Hum and Youvu Hum are the first to arrive. Confusingly, they’re not twins or clones (cloning is strictly forbidden in Romothrida Galaxy),but they look identical, each with blade-straight black hair, oval faces, and flawless skin. No one really knows how it happened, but the prevailing theory seems to be there was some kind of convergence between two parallel universes that brought the Youvu Hums together. Technically, this means they’re the same person, but that’s even harder to wrap my head around, so I try not to think too hard about it.
“Hello,” they say in unison.
“Hello,” is my reply.
Dilpert “Overlord” Toph arrives next, a huge muscle of a person with a booming voice and a beard that looks coarse enough to sand wood. At thirty, he’s the second oldest member of the Sixth behind Illiviamona. (I haven’t met her yet, but she’s either one hundred and five or five hundred and one—her species uses a complicated number system for recording age that leaves this up to interpretation.) Toph doesn’t fit into the booth, which is apparently not uncommon, and everyone seems perfectly at ease with him standing at its end. Avi Heplex is the last to appear, a snub-nosed button of a human who (as I’d learned from my stalker research) is eleven years old.
“The bouncer wouldn’t let me in,” Avi complains as she slides into the booth.
“Well,” Youvu Hum says consolingly, “they have an age limit.”
“There’s an age limit for drinking. No such limit exists for sitting beside people who are drinking.”
“So how’d you get in?” I ask.
Don’t encourage her, Jester warns.
“I blackmailed him,” Avi replies.
I squint an eye at her. “You have dirt on the bouncer?”
“I have dirt on everyone.”
Avi is the youngest member to ever enter the Legion, Jester interrupts in an apparent effort to redirect the conversation.She’s our pyrotechnician.
Avi tips her head back and forth. “That’s code forspymaster.”
“No,” Vera sighs, “it’s not.”
“I’m confused,” I admit.
“She’s our pyro,” says Youvu Hum.
“Starfield Fleets don’t have spymasters,” the other Youvu Hum emphasizes.
“Officially speaking,” Avi adds with widened eyes.
Vera buries her face in her hands.
“You know,” I tell Avi, “pyrotechnics isn’t that far-off from gunning. You and I probably have a lot in common.”
“You mean, we like destroying things?”
“Avi.” Vera.
“Ah, no.” I flounder. “That’s not what I meant.”
