IT WASN'T MUCH OF A TOWN - STRICTLY MAIN-STREET frontier, run-down and dirty - and it wasn't much of a bar, but at least the place offered cold beer (even if it was locally brewed and bitter-tasting), shade, and a singer backed by a decent pickup band.

    After all of the battles are over After
    all of the fighting is done
    Will you be the one
    To find yourself alone with your heart
    Looking for the answer?

Rook Bartley lifted her glass and toasted the singer.  The song was soft and downbeat, just what she needed to ease herself into the blues, trip through memories she couldn't do anything about.
Rook took a look around the place over the run of he mug.  It was dimly lit and poorly ventilated but surprisingly clean and tidy for a joint in the wastes.  There was the usual assortment of types, Foragers mostly, keeping to themselves in the corners, nursing drinks and private thoughts.  A couple or two wrapped around each other on the cleared space that passed for a dance floor.  And several bad boys on the upper tier, boots up on the table, midnight shades.  Rook judged they were locals from the way they were scanning the room for action, your basic rough trade feeling safe on the barren piece of turf they had secured for themselves.  Rook returned to her drink, unimpressed.

She was a petite and shapely eighteen-year-old with a mane of strawberry-blond hair and a face that more than one man had fallen in love with.  She was wearing a red and white short-sleeved bodysuit that hugged her in all the right places.  It was set off by forearm sheaths, a blue utility belt, and boots, an outfit styled to match the mecha she rode, a red Cyclone she had liberated from an armory just after her split from the Blue Angels, the as-sault by the Snakes....

    When it feels like tomorrow will never come
    When it seems like the night will not end
    Can you pretend
    That you're really not alone?
    You're out here on your own
    (Lonely soldier boy)
    You're out here on your own
    (Lonely soldier boy)