Bloody Mary Bar

Like the other bars in Braddock, Bloody Mary Bar was packed with Marine rookies. The floor was laid with soft hardwood planks, covered in scorch marks and smoke stains. Some spots even creaked when stepped on.

The walls, covered in wood-grain wallpaper, displayed huge beast heads and pelts. Beside these trophies hung rusty melee weapons and wooden-handled revolvers.

Unlike the military bars, Bloody Mary's radio constantly blared fast-paced metal, local-style rap, and entire stretches of meaningless noise. The bar was so loud that people could barely hear one another speak.

Brilliant laser lights turned Bloody Mary into a kaleidoscopic world. The smell of liquor and smoke made people dizzy. Young people were easily swept up by such an atmosphere, shouting themselves hoarse, drinking heavily, and reveling wildly.

The feverish atmosphere reached its peak when several tall bar girls appeared and danced wildly on a stage made from iron frames and curtains.

As they danced provocatively, the girls stripped off what little clothing they had been wearing. Augustus had barely noticed them before they were almost completely naked. The moment they casually tossed their silk undergarments into the crowd below, a frenzied scramble erupted that was too indecent to watch. Plenty of people were willing to fight to the death over scraps of cloth no larger than a palm.

Augustus and Raynor found a long table that seated ten and began ordering food and drinks. Compared with those wanton women, who made Raynor and the others stare wide-eyed and red-faced while unable to look away, Augustus was more interested in the menu. The owner of the bar perhaps greatly enjoyed the works of the ancient Terran Shakespeare, as every page of the menu ended with a line of his poetry.

There were far more dishes here than in the military, not just fried food but beef pies, potato cakes, vegetable salads, and more. Some dishes sounded unheard of from their names alone, such as canned alien starfish, charcoal-grilled Umojan beetle larvae, and chilled Char volcanic snot slugs.

Augustus noticed that although this was a distant world sixty thousand light-years from Earth, and nearly two centuries had passed since the first colonial mothership from Earth reached Tarsonis, humanity's culture still retained countless ties to Earth civilization.

The main computers aboard the colonial motherships stored the accumulated wisdom of human civilization. Science, art, music, and humanity's other most precious spiritual treasures had all been preserved intact. Thus, people of this era still understood some "ancient" literature, while countless books about ancient great figures, mythology, religion, and history continued to circulate throughout human society in the Koprulu Sector.

Therefore, the names of people, cities, and planets could still be traced back to mythological systems such as those of Norse and Greek tradition.

Of course, that was the custom of upper-class people who fancied themselves nobles. In the frontier systems, people focused solely on surviving did not care whether the places they lived had names with any meaningful origins.

Cattle, sheep, chickens, ducks, and other major livestock widely raised in the age of Earth also existed in the Koprulu Sector. The cryogenic chambers of the colonial motherships preserved millions of embryos and living specimens from Earth, along with plant seeds, so that after the ships landed, colonists could breed livestock and establish farms in unknown new worlds. Thus, eating grilled steak and drinking barley-brewed beer in the Koprulu Sector was hardly unimaginable.

Augustus ordered fried chicken and beer. The scantily clad waitress gave him several lingering looks and repeatedly struck flirtatious poses, immediately drawing cheers from the soldiers beside him.

"Want one? We've got morphine, crab, and rat. Oh my God, baby, you're really handsome." The waitress had long pink wavy hair and a very generous figure. When she bent down to speak with Augustus, her face nearly pressed against him.

"We don't need drugs, ma'am. If you don't mind, I'd advise you not to touch that stuff either." Augustus noticed that something was off about her mental state. Her eyes were unfocused, and she was in an extremely excited state.

"What does it matter, sir? Staying for the party tonight? It'll be a beautiful night."

"We'll also need a few pretty girls from Bloody Mary." Augustus did not want to dwell on the matter any further, and he knew exactly how to ignite the enthusiasm of a bunch of horny bastards. Sure enough, the others in his class shifted their attention and began cheering.

The waitress turned and walked away, deliberately swaying her hips. Countless whistles sounded around them, and from time to time someone reached out to touch her ass.

"How many people do you think were forced to come here because of the war?" Raynor, seated beside Augustus, suddenly asked in a low voice. In the deafening noise, his voice was like a grain of sand falling into the sea, swallowed before it could raise even the slightest ripple.

"Her makeup is heavy, but she's actually much younger than she looks. There are more than thirty bars in Braddock. Between streetwalkers and strippers, there might be a thousand of them," Augustus said. "The nearest city became ruins two years ago. A million people lost their homes and jobs. But neither the Confederacy nor Kel-Morian intends to resettle them, so they can only flee at all costs."

"You know, even by maglev train, it's a long way from hell to here."

"This really is a living hell." Raynor's voice grew heavy.

"But if you've been to Tarsonis, you'd know that it's even more prosperous than before the war began." Augustus drank a glass of No. VIII whiskey, speaking with feeling.

"Those fucking bastards." Raynor thought of his family farm, which had been pushed to the brink of bankruptcy by the war, and his mood darkened. He did not dare imagine how terrible things would become if Shiloh turned into a war zone.

While the Edge World suffered beneath the ravages of war, Tarsonis's nobles were busy lining their pockets.

They soon no longer had to think about such troubles, because before the girls Augustus had ordered arrived, another group of Federal Soldiers flooded into Bloody Mary Bar, some forty or fifty of them.

Unlike Augustus's chestnut-colored uniform, these soldiers all wore white high-collared uniforms over black space-environment bodysuits. The badge on the right breast of their uniforms was an equilateral triangle with a golden eagle at its center.

"Fleets?" Londerstein, gray-haired and blue-eyed, looked at them. One of the Londerstein family business's operations supplied fuel and replacement parts to the Fleets, so such a badge was all too familiar to him.

"Hey, I don't like those Fleet boys." There were not only rookies in the bar, but also many engineers working at the base, along with veteran Marines and sergeants drinking there.

The moment they saw the Fleet soldiers, dissatisfied muttering immediately rose among them. "Look at those weak, limp bodies. How are they supposed to fight?"

The lively atmosphere abruptly stalled. Marines and the Fleets had always been at odds. Since the two branches were founded, they had never been able to stand one another and took pleasure in mocking each other.

"Does anyone know what Fleet unit has been stationed in high orbit over Turaxis lately?" Augustus asked.

"Judging by their insignia, they should be from Alpha Squadron. According to the public Turaxis II spaceport logs, the only battlecruiser that could be holding position in synchronous orbit is the Otto von Bismarck. It's a Behemoth-class vessel," Londerstein said after thinking for a moment.

In the official novels, Alpha Squadron had the Bismarck and the Napoleon, as well as a Nelson V. Most of the others were basically named after figures from Norse and Greek mythology.