Mayliki had been at the bar for a few hours now and had spent large portions of the previous two days here also. Recently arrived, it was a mystery why she would come when so many of her kind were leaving in the face of the Peacekeepers. Perhaps she had no where else to go. In fact, she'd been so penniless that the money for her drinks the first day had come from a burly man, now in the hospital, who'd accepted her wager of 100 credits on who could pin the other to the ground. Since then, men had been more wary of the fiesty punk girl. No one had yet dared to inquire about the strange-looking sword she carried strapped to her back.
Today she was quiet and morose. She always ordered vodka, straight up, in a glass, not a shot, not a double. She was hunched over it alone, occasionally taking it down in large gulps. In other bars, male bartenders would sometimes add a splash of this or that for color or flavor, but that was their own decision, usually an attempt to impress the sulking beauty. She herself couldn't care less.
At the word "poker," she looked up, suddenly animated. She sidled over to Muriel, only stopping after getting a little too close, the way drunks always seem to do. "If you're looking for new blood, here I am," she slurred simply and stood waiting for an answer, eyeing Muriel with a slightly disconcerting level of intensity.
She glanced over when the prophet entered, ignored his speech and subsequent conversations, so focused she was.

"Your loss," Mayliki shrugged at Muriel's veiled refusal. How she hated the way certain people never come out and say what they mean, but she could maneuver in such games as well as anyone when she had to.
Gathering up her glass, she moved off toward the stairs, muttering, perhaps a bit too loudly, "Waiting list my ass..."
However, it did seem that an opening had appeared in the game upstairs. She'd already played and broke even there, but been banned for conduct inappropriate even for that rowdy bunch. Now short a player, however, they might be slightly more amendable to letting her back in.

"Ok... thanks guys..." 
Mayliki, still enibriated but smiling, emerges from the poker room, apparently a winner this time and chuckling at the other players' dismay at her leaving so quickly with their money.
She saunters over to the bar, slowly, just taking in her surroundings, enjoying a rare moment of peace.
"I can pay you now," she says to Adriane, tossing a few credits onto the counter. Adriane had been worrying a bit about this sword-bearing danger who always seemed to have some excuse for not paying for her drinks right away.
"I've got them all figured out," she goes on, not caring if Adriane were listening or not. "They're not good at poker, even worse when drunk, not like me..." She fixed her eyes momentarily, a look of fierce pride, then went on, "I'm better. And with my gun and sword too, not just cards. The drink gets me into flow, you know? Speaking of which, fill this, will ya? I need more of a challenge, if not in poker, then in bar fights, I'm sure you don't want that, so.... what's a chick gotta do to get into that old lady's game?"
Her voice was a guttural drawl, quite low for a woman's, but this did not seem to prevent many of the male patrons from glancing at her from time to time. She knew well the effect her skin-tight black leather pants had on men, and she used it to good effect.
There was a method to her madness in other ways as well. Secretly sent ahead by the coming Peacekeeper commander, she was brawling and gambling her way into the confidences of the station underground, attempting to uncover any signs of rebellion or discontent. Not that she didn't enjoy such activities, for she did, wholeheartedly!


"Suit yourself..." Mayliki said dismissively. She was drunk enough that the anger, normally seething just below the surface ready to lash out at even imagined slights, lay buried, happily comatose in a warm blanket called Vodka.
"I've gotten in bigger games than that," she muttered to herself as Adriane turned away from her. Mayliki didn't like female bartenders.
"Bitch," she muttered, watching Adriane and wondering if she'd heard, not caring either way. Men were so much more fun. The sexual and violent instincts seemed to remain undiminished in them even out here, centuries after they'd developed warp technology--apes in space. 
"Hey, bitc... er, bartender, give me another vodka!" she called out.


"Oh no, here it comes," thought Mayliki when she saw the look on Ariadne's face as she poured her vodka. She much preferred sparring of the martial variety rather than verbal, and the verbal usually wound up becoming martial in a kind of perverse foreplay. To Mayliki, verbal sparring with a non-fighter was just frustrating, and she rolled her eyes.
"You can kick me out anytime..." she retorted, shrugging her shoulders dismissively, looking off casually to the right. She saw Owain enter, then saw Maurice. Whoa! Now that guy she wouldn't mind sparring with.
Absently, she snatched up the glass and then turned toward Maurice as she brought it to her lips. She downed it slowly in one gulp, all the while fixing her eyes on him, issuing a silent challenge. Ariadne had become like a non-entity to her, so engrossed she was in her new obsession. 
Though she'd made many muscle-bound giants cry "Uncle!" she'd never seen a man quite this large and longed to test him in combat. Beating him at a drinking game would be fun too, she thought as the final drops slid down her throat. Either one would be way more fun than poker.


Mayliki saw that Maurice had ignored her challenge. That it was "ignorant of" rather than "ignored" was never a possibility in her mind--the man, afterall, worked in a bar. Such things were par for the course in his profession, though this bar wasn't like the dives Mayliki normally frequented. However, it had just enough seedy or rowdy patrons for her to feel at home.
As Maurice turned and moved away, Mayliki smiled to herself smugly and considered it a victory. In her world, an ignored challenge was a refused challenge and sign of cowardice and submission. Deep down, she knew this was not always the case, but she took a half-hearted pleasure in it nevertheless.
She turned and leaned against the bar, striking a casual pose as she surveyed the room, boredom already creeping back into her mind. She was lonely though, of course, she'd never admit it. Unable to control the anger that was always seething just below the surface, she was caustic at best and a violent whirlwind at worst. Consequently, she had few friends. Only a few things were able to assuage her loneliness. One was the forced comraderie of a dangerous mission. Others were the heckling at a card table and the illusiory intimacy of a one-night stand. Then there was the intimacy of a very different kind found in a brawl, duel, or wrestling match, when she found herself rolling on the floor in desperate passion, fighting for position, clutching and being clutched.
Maurice would serve nicely for any of these roles, she thought to herself, but she also found herself wondering about Kedder's words earlier. He'd spoke of someone coming who'd "like her," but he'd left so quickly, she hadn't had time to react. She pondered it a moment but then dismissed it an inconsequential. Whoever it was, she'd deal with it then. Hopefully it would alleviate her boredom in the very least.