They get shore leave on Braverman IV, right in time for Beeper to score tickets to Mechspo.
The rest of Dingo aren't quite as enthused about the actual trade show, but there are bars full of mercs bragging and brawling and flirting, so they find things to do when she takes another turn around the convention hall, picking up datasheets on new radio modules.
And then there's a sudden hand on the small of her back, a familiar voice saying, "Hey, baby." A hint of cologne that smells of terrible teenaged decisions, the slow erosion of trust, a long, overshadowing, estranged anxiety and eventual one-click WebDivorce4U.
Beeper reflexively clutches her bundle of glossy marketing leaflets to her chest and makes a choked noise.
"Oh, I'm still your favourite ex-wife," Julia purrs. "Let's get a drink."
Beeper's legs go where the hand on her back steers her, while her brain is still scrabbling like a startled gerbil that can't get a purchase, whimpering that they need to not. She's fuddled enough not to clock where they're headed until it's quite a lot too late, and then her voice cracks instead of managing to make noises in the shape of any kind of actual objection.
So that's how she winds up, trembling slightly, in Julia's hotel room, a drink from the minibar pushed into her hand without asking.
"You've put some muscle on," her ex says, and drapes herself on the side of the bed in a way that makes words like languorous and recline buzz in between Beeper's ears, while a truly damnable red dress rides a little way up long tanned thighs that pave the way to hell.
Beeper takes a gulp of what turns out to be a very stiff drink and tries not to stutter. "Aren't all Berwick PMC personnel persons of interest to the local authorities?" she manages. "In a war crimes investigation?"
Not that Beeper double-checked, or anything. This morning. Before she could let her guard down and enjoy herself.
Julia's eyes narrow just a little, and she pouts. "Alleged war crimes. Which the investigation posits that Berwick personnel could have been in the vicinity to witness. And if they'd asked instead of just issuing warrants to detain, then the Old Man wouldn't have dusted off without cooperating, and now it's all just men refusing to back down, for face." She shifts in a way that dries Beeper's mouth up. "Really. Are you a witness to everything that might have happened within six hundred klicks?"
"How's their signals opsec?" Beeper says automatically, and swallows another burning mouthful.
Julia softens, just for a moment, in a chest-clenching way. "Nerd," she says fondly, before sharpening back up into a high-gloss vampire. "What's a little risk? I knew you'd be here."
"Like last time." Not last year's Mechspo; Beeper steered clear for several, after waking up covered in bitemarks and bruised worse in her feelings, in a hotel room just like this; followed by a couple of months of dictatorial booty calls she somehow couldn't get herself to refuse. "Funny story, Jules: we had a job, around that time, and brass were getting edgy about the quality of the intel the oppo had on us. But then they got their asses kicked and everyone relaxed, must just have been one of those streaks of luck."
Julia sits up, and Beeper drains her glass.
"Didn't occur to me until six months later that I'd been talking shop to you. You know, in the afterglow, when you're actually nice. And I went back and checked and some of the numbers I told you, that last time; turns out I'd remembered them wrong." She takes a few steps, to carefully put the glass down. "That is sloppy and embarrassing for a nerd, so I guess I'm sorry about that. But wouldn't you know, that's when the oppo's luck broke, and you didn't call me again between then and now?"
"You don't believe I'd do that," Julia says.
Beeper meets her eyes, even though it makes her breath catch unpleasantly. "I guess you don't believe I'd phone in an anonymous tip about people wanted for questioning about war crimes, either."
She opens the door quietly, and closes it again after her quietly, and skulks in a café opposite the hotel quietly to see whether anyone checks out in a sudden hurry.
It doesn't come as a surprise, but it still hurts.
"Thought you were checking out the merchandise?" Fletch says over the noise of a barful of mercs, xer head on one side, looking at Beeper with eyes that are entirely too shrewd.
"I wanna drink cheap tequila," Beeper says flatly, because she needs the taste of more-expensive gin out of her mouth. "I wanna dance with someone. I wanna forget things that deserve it and remember fun things tomorrow."
Fletch digs around in the crowd of glassware on the table, jostling everyone's drinks, and comes up with half a bottle. "Might have to pick between this and remembering," xie says; so Beeper reaches out and takes it.
