TWO HOURS AFTER I LEFT AOPD, I stepped through the hatch into Mousetrap’s consolidated Officers’ Club, with a brown paper bag under one arm. Mousetrap’s O Club served all branches of the Human Union Forces, which looked suspiciously like the U.S. Army and the U.S. Space Force, with a sprinkling of Brits of all stripes, Euros, Asians, Afros, and Outworlders.
The O Club’s decor was early Neon Beer Sign, with a pool table and bowls of plausibly nonhydroponic cocktail peanuts on the tables, and the place was half-full of the swabbies who had flooded Mousetrap like a tsunami.
My quarry, alone at a table with a neat whiskey and a paperbook history of the Boston Red Sox, looked up and smiled. “Jason!”
He waved me over, and I sat.
He pointed at the bag I held. “Whazzat?”
“A congratulations present on the occasion of your new command, Eddie. And I owe you for Tressel.”
“Nothing happened on Tressel.”
“Of course not.” If there was a rule bender to be found on Mousetrap, it was Eddie Duffy.
Eddie’s cheeks glowed redder than usual. “The Abraham Lincoln’s a great ship. But I’ll miss the Tehran .” Then he frowned. “Not as much as I suppose you miss things. I heard about the retirement.”
I shrugged. “I miss not getting a ticket to the finale. I’ve earned my seat. I don’t miss the responsibility. I just want to see it, not be it.”
“After what you’ve been through, I don’t blame you. If there was anything I could do…” He reached across the table, tugged at my brown paper bag, then raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Hewitt’s! How did you know?”
“We killed the last bottle I bought you six years ago.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You needed a favor then.”
I stiffened and widened my eyes. “Surely you don’t think I-”
“As long as it’s a small one.”
I held my hand up between us, with the thumb and fore-finger so close together that a cocktail peanut wouldn’t fit between them. “Tiny.”