The Brown Bag
By Jess Faulks
Captain Rhiannon McDonnell wasn't halfway between the swinging, stainless steel doors and her intended stool when the brick-shithouse-of-a-man behind the bar noticed and sized her up. Gloss-black , featureless eyes made his exact focus less apparent but she knew the look: it was the one everyone in a position of authority gave in these off-route, interstellar truck stops.
Every Alliance refueling station was a marvel of two-hundred-year old technology, a mass-manufactured, mile-wide ring interspersed through deep space. Culturally, that never seemed to do them any favors and local, 'portie' bloodlines would not leave one for generations, raised on a limited and latent flow of Alliance regulated, corporate entertainment products and messaging. Each was a self-sufficient, backwater town of a few thousand, floating in the middle of nothingness, a light year away from the next one.
Rhiannon stopped with an unamused glare, presenting herself for judgment, her palms out and open at her side to show she was unarmed, at least visibly. The bar was kept a blue-hued darkness but for some colored, neon lights and maybe he wouldn't notice anything else. A long moment passed of him appraising her from head to toe and when he found what he looked for, he started shaking his head before he opened his mouth.
"We don't serve your kind here. You gotta go." Thick, pythons of powerful arms crept across his broad chest to fold, presenting tribal patterns nano-tattooed on them in high contrast to his dark skin, their smooth edges turning sharp and the greens and blues shifting to reds and oranges, in a display of some wealth or at least, extreme dedication to the art or lifestyle. Most porties couldn't afford such tech. Heads turned from the other four patrons in a barroom which could seat ten times that many.
Rhiannon deflated with a sigh, sizing up the scene and her eyes naturally found the one woman in the bar first. A thin, cute blonde, hardly old enough to be here sat with a pair of folded glasses sitting next to her clear, iced beverage . Alliance Stations like these were absurdly strict about liquor sales. They were inspected randomly and frequently so this girl had to be at least 21.
She wore a grey, civilian jumpsuit and studied Rhiannon with another familiar sort of attention: the shocked, never-seen-her-kind-before face but minus the "'..and I hate you' part. This was the kind of longing stare which typically came before a backalley romp with some spacer floozy looking to expand her horizons, whose name she never bothered to ask. Seated at the far end of the bar, furthest from the others, she didn't look like she quite belonged either.
This was no time for flirting. Not yet. She had to run the gauntlet first and her attention moved on. Two of the other patrons were dockworkers by their beige jumpsuits, in their forties or fifties and drinking on their lunch break. At the far end of the bar sat an old man, at least seventy and sickly, with his jaw halfway to the counter under eyes that had latched on her tits.
Should things turn violent, the barman was the only real threat in here but she couldn't afford a fight. Her ship, The Hecate needed to be hooked up for refueling for the next three hours, and she needed to stay out of the brig for that long.
A stray clump of auburn hair fell into her face, the ends brushing her chin as she moved subtly, fighting against taking defensive body language. She was a Captain, not a troublemaker. At least not anymore. "My kind?" Sometimes playing dumb worked when the lighting was low.
The man stabbed an arm out toward a sign behind the bar without having to take his eyes off her. In capitalized, bold red letters it read:
NO SPLITS SERVED.
"You're being a bit presumptuous, don't you think?" she said curtly but the barman didn't waiver.
"I can see your fucking freak, donkey dick down your pant leg. Why don't you try actually dressing like a woman if you want to pass for normal? Though your fat, cow tits would still give you away. "
Like any split had never tried that, Her clothes weren't directly revealing: a tailored, brown three-piece suit of trousers, a blouse and a tailcoat. There was only so much she could conceal with the extremes of her build beneath, short of wearing a burlap sack and why should she have to do that? it wasn't her fault. These were the people who had the problem.
"She could be from Proxima B!" the old man at the end of the bar barked up with a shaky voice. The barman glared sideways without moving his head.
"Jesus, Bob. Can't you see she's got a fucking dick bigger than mine? People are gonna wonder about you if you keep staring."
"I'm not asking you to suck it. I just want a drink."
"Then go somewhere else."
"Is there another shithole bar in this shithole station?"
"No."
Rhiannon took another deep breath and turned her attention to the others. The blonde had put on her glasses now for a better look at her and her expression had gone from
interested
to
please fuck me
. Repressed, porties curious about Split lovers were the saving grace of places like this and Rhiannon had three hours to kill.
'Portie girls party,' one of her younger crew-girls would joke, and she wasn't wrong. It was also one of the reasons why their counterparts, portie boys liked to try to beat up splits like her. Those boys were often oblivious to how many of her kind had been sent off to military school by disappointed parents when they started to develop in ways they had not anticipated. Many of those girls had grown up to fill out the more dangerous companies of the Army, Space Force or Marines and if portie boys knew what most split veterans had survived, they would reconsider crossing them.
With a tilt of the head and a sliver of a smile, Rhiannon acknowledged and the younger woman caught exactly what was being thrown. First, she needed to be allowed to the bar and hopefully soon after, a restroom stall with this lovely, young thing.
The two dockworkers watched the confrontation as any bystander would, curious but not getting involved. The old man was undeterred in his leering.
"This place is dead and you need the business. I'll buy a round for everyone."
"No dice, lady. Go back to your ship and wait with whatever freak crew lets you serve."
"It's my ship."
"Go back to it. I'm not gonna ask again."
Something changed in the scene. A chip card appeared on the counter in front of the blonde, waiting to pay with expectant eyes on her. Her amorous demeanor was only more obvious and Rhiannon smiled only enough to not offend the barman. "Fine. I'm gone." On her boot heel, she turned sharply and walked back out through the double, swinging doors into the poorly lit, hexagonal hallway of whatever this place was called. These pipe and ducting-lined corridors were generally well-lit on stations closer to the Sol system but out here it was normal for the sunlight-frequency lighting to have every two or three fixtures, saving power but kept the hallway a dim yellow. She continued far enough to not be seen from the scratched up and dirty windows of the bar. Out of sight of the barman, she leaned back against a pipe-covered wall and waited.
Less than a minute passed before the young woman burst out the doors and she exhaled with relief to see the Captain waiting for her, pushing off to stand upright. "Hi there," Rhiannon purred, a sultry layer added now to her alto voice. "Something I can help you with?"
The girl lowered her head slightly and brushed a curly, blond lock from her face. "I've never met a real split before. I've never even seen one outside of... pictures."
She raised a brow and held back her grin. "Pictures? I can't think of any intersex celebrities in the UA. I don't think they'd broadcast any that were."
The girl blushed. "They say that Serena Stardancer is a split."
"The singer? They just say that because she has a huge rack."
