With his hands still raised, Jack scans across the new set of faces in his bar. Game faces. Hard faces. Not a soft or sympathetic line among them. Their jaws are set, their eyes cold. Focused. Stone sober. Professional.

Looking at their weapons and tune-ups, he does a quick tally. Three close combat, two mid-range. One sniper. Balanced crew. Good call pullin’ the snipe inside. Too tight outside to cover the exit. He remembers the hole in the wall behind Tretch. Both exits.

Of course, mercs like this blow through town all the time and they all come to the bar at some point. They just tend to be more relaxed, less sober, and have a lot less “let’s hurt Jack” in their eyes. This is the second time he’s seen mercs with that look today. Hell, it’s the second time in an hour. That must be some kind of record.

Jack turns back to Tretch, still stuck under the trusswork from the roof.

“For what it’s worth, I kinda get now why twenty percent was a bit on the high side for you.” He feels his stomach gurgle as he puts on a fresh smile. “But hey, bygones. Right? Nothing that can’t be settled over a couple bottles of my special house cornshine. Can’t get anything like it anywhere else.”

Tretch shakes his head. “Kid, nomad traders don’t even have this many hustles going.”

“What? Naw man. I’m just trying to make things comfortable for everyone.” Jack tilts his head back to address Corva. He can’t see her or Zeke, but Jack’s pretty sure they haven’t moved since no one’s shot at them yet. “Even for you. Let’s see if we can’t strike a deal where everyone lives.” He looks around the carnage of weapons, barroom furniture, bodies, and body parts in his bar. “Everyone left, that is.”

Oh yeah, and there’s that giant gaping hole in the floor. Jack tries to block out his thoughts about the time and cost of repairing the place. First priority has to be on living long enough to even get that far. As Jack thinks, Corva still doesn’t reply. Of course, why would she? She’s been fighting these bounty mercs for who knows how long and here he is trying to sell her out for the cost of some trusswork and a whole mess of bleach.

It’s no fun to be sold into someone else’s keep. It wasn’t for Jack. That’s even knowing how lucky he was to be bought by an old man looking for a barhand in a remote canyon town. A bar’s a shitty place to spend ten years growing up, but it’s not as bad as most get, and this girl Corva sure isn’t going to get any kind of fair treatment from these goons or whoever they’re tasked with delivering her to. Maybe he can get her out of this. However, first he’s got to get everyone to a table with glasses in their hands instead of guns and whatever other kinds of weapons they’ve got. Like the old man used to say, “Nothing lubricates a negotiation like a cuppa shine.”

Arms still up, Jack cranes his neck a little farther back to address his own barhand. “Hey Zeke, you think you could check the shelves up by the ceiling? See if any bottles of the good cornshine ain’t busted. I dunno ’bout glasses, but our guests look like they might be straight-from-the-bottle types. So maybe it’s not a big deal.”

He returns his attention to Tretch. “Your crew alright with sharing? Not sure we’ll have enough bottles to—”

His voice trails off one slow word at a time as he starts to register the look on Tretch’s face—on all the mercs’ faces, actually. Their looks have gotten harder, more focused, and they’re not paying Jack any attention at all. All eyes and guns are trained on the space behind him.

Forgetting to keep his hands up, Jack spins around. “Zeke, what the world is goin’—Oh. Oh damn.”