Here is the second part of the Beer Run. If you like what you see, check out the entire book on Amazon! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BLSVRZN5  

***

“So, we’re set to put the extra special bitter
on tap next week,” Zota said, pouring a
small snifter and handing it to Bill.
Zota, a Clothonian, rubbed the bright
tank with his rubbery bat-like wings. Bill
lifted the glass to his lips, tilted the amber
liquid into his mouth, felt the sweet and
burning sensation of a very special batch
circle his tongue, and swallowed. He nodded
his head.
“We’ll call it the Professor’s Little
Helper,” Bill said. “My dad’s birthday was
in November, so I’ll dedicate it to him.
Another excellent batch.”
Zota beamed with pride. Some
people in this business would scoff at hiring
a master brewer from a planet where beer
wasn’t indigenously made, but the bat knew
his suds. Zota had worked for three other
microbreweries before Bill found him. The
turnover made Bill nervous until he tasted
Zota’s product. After that, he didn’t care.
“I’m putting a new batch of Porter
into the fermenter tomorrow,” Zota said.
“I’ve added cinnamon to this batch.”
“Haven’t heard that one before,” said
a voice from the back.
Bill turned around and found Jimmy
Park walking into the room. Bill had
employed the twenty-year-old business
major from Seoul to clean the brewery after
hours. This was a ruse to avoid the
regulators, who wouldn’t let Bill have an
intern under the age of twenty-one in the
microbrewery business. Jimmy wouldn’t
turn twenty-one until two weeks from now.
Jimmy cleaned the brewery for free.
“Well, young man,” Zota croaked
while letting out a toothy grin, “you keep at
it and someday Bill here might trust you
enough to make your own Frankenstein
monster.”
“My own what?” Jimmy asked.
“Bill, this kid doesn’t know his own
heritage,” Zota said.
“Frankenstein comes from Britain
and he’s Korean, actually,” Bill said. “Not
the same heritage, though I suppose you
think we humans are the same.”
“Yes, I have to admit you all look
very similar to me,” Zota said. “Except
when it comes to sex. Lucia out there has the
distinctive pissed-off look of a woman who
has been made to wait.”
Bill looked out to the front of the
brewery. Lucia tapped her fingers
impatiently on her arm. Sorvasen, his other
waiter, sat patiently at one of the tables,
putting his finger in a glass of water while
his gills fluttered. Bill whistled loudly.
“I’ve got to take care of this,” he
said. “Jimmy, there’s an auction tomorrow
morning you might want to be at. Good
learning experience. I might pick up a tank.”
“I’ll be there,” Jimmy said.
Jimmy picked up a mop leaning
against the wall, while Bill went out to the
main serving area. Lucia eyed him the entire
time as he made his way to them with their
paychecks in hand. Sorvasen, the fish man,
stood up from his chair as Bill came in, only
now paying attention. If only Lucia was so
easygoing.
“I’ve got your checks,” Bill said,
holding out two thin pieces of paper. “I’ve
divided up the tips without taking anything
out, as I’ve promised.”
Lucia snatched the check out of his
hand. She looked at it. She then took out a
notepad from her back pocket to make sure
nothing was deducted. Bill offered direct
deposit, but Lucia wouldn’t have it, and she
wouldn’t let Sorvasen take it either. She’d
been screwed over before when she didn’t
have a physical check in her hand.
“Have I ever stolen your tips?” Bill
protested.
“You didn’t pay us once,” Lucia
answered.
“I paid you; I just didn’t pay you on
time. I paid you a day later, and I had to take
out a loan to do that.”
“The billionaire needed to take out a
loan to pay me one thousand credits?”
“That was before my mother died. I
hadn’t got the inheritance yet.”
The room got quiet after that. Bill’s
mother hadn’t been gone long. A few
months.
“It’s all here,” Lucia said, her lips
pursed.
Sorvasen looked at his own check
and nodded. Sorvasen’s people shake their
heads to say yes, so he needed some time to
adjust when he came to work here. At the IT
place where he worked before, they had a
Coruscan liaison who helped him
communicate with management, but at the
bar, he had to relearn every social
interaction. Like a lot of immigrants,
Sorvasen didn’t know when he was allowed
to be mad. Lucia knew when they could be
mad all too well, so she negotiated for him.
Sorvasen left. Lucia stayed behind.
“Yes, Lucia,” Bill said, patiently.
“I wanted you to know that a man
came by and wanted to speak with you,”
Lucia said. “He told me that he would be at
the Crystal Palace if you wanted to speak
with him.”
“Odd place for a man to want to
speak to me. Can’t imagine what such a
high-roller would want to talk to me about.”
“Maybe you could be a high-roller if
you decided to work from an office instead
of behind a bar. You ever thought about
that? Maybe if you let someone else do the
bartending.”
This again. Lucia was pushing him
to start canning beer and selling six-packs.
Bill had told Lucia he wasn’t interested in
expanding. Too much work.
“What did this man look like?” Bill
asked.
“White man, white hair, both on top
and his beard, Intergalactic Navy uniform,
command red, seems like he used to be
attractive before he put on a few pounds.”
Michael Krieger, Bill thought,
rolling his eyes. What universal force of
cosmic unholiness brought that shit stain to
my door?
“Thank you for telling me,” he said.
“Have a good evening.”
Lucia turned and left. Bill looked
behind him and saw Jimmy starting to clean
the tanks in the brewing chamber. Maybe
Bill would make that appointment.

---

“Bill Stiltson. I’m here to speak with
Krieger.”
The bouncer looked skeptically at
Bill over his cheap sunglasses. Bill didn’t
seem dressed for the Crystal Palace, as he
was standing there in the jeans and a faded
T-shirt he had sweated through during a
night of serving people drinks. Of course, he
was dressed like someone who worked for a
living, not the sort of person who showed up
at a nightclub at one a.m. on Lunar Standard
Time. The people around him were. The
bouncer looked down on the list with a
smirk, which disappeared as he ran across a
particular name.
“I guess you get to come in,” the
bouncer said, looking crestfallen. Bill
figured he had never gotten to come in
himself.
Bill walked in and found himself
blinded by the flashing lights emanating
from the ceiling of a dark chamber filled
with twisting figures of pink and green flesh.
Bill’s father made him read Dante’s Inferno,
so the scene rang a bell in his head. Music
vibrated through the floors and walls. Bill
also heard the music, but the screeching they
called pop music today made no impression
on him. He had always preferred death
metal.
Bill told the hostess he was there to
see Captain Krieger. After repeating himself
three times over the sound of the
nonsensical noise, the hostess nodded and
walked in the direction of a spiral staircase.
Bill followed her to a platform above the
main dance floor, where he found a ghost.
Not literally, but a man from the past who
looked like he was dead. Krieger sat
between two women, who Bill assumed
were escorts based on their attire. His legs
were spread wide open with an Old
Fashioned in his right hand, propped up on
his knee. His uniform and medals indicated
a Captain ranking, but Bill knew him as a
Commander, so that’s what Bill called him.
Krieger, whose white hairs revealed his age,
appeared out of it, nodding off, perhaps
under the influence of more than alcohol.
“Commander, Commander,” Bill
repeated.
Krieger finally came to, seemingly
recognizing Bill for the first time, pointing
at him.
“Stiltson. I wanted to see you.”
“I know, that’s what you told my
waitress. You could have just spoken to me.
I was behind the bar. I think you would have
noticed that.”
“I did. I had to see it to believe it.
You have just given up on life.”
Krieger slurred his speech as he
talked. Occasionally, the customers would
bring in opiates and drop them in the beers.
The girls couldn’t handle the larger men
who did this, so Bill would have to come
from behind the bar and throw the bums out.
He’d seen this before.
“You could have been something
special,” Krieger yelled, losing track of the
volume of his voice. “You could have been
great!!!”
Krieger’s drunken rant could have
been whispered for all the effect it had. His
screams were absorbed by the mindless
music around them, but Bill could read his
lips.
“Calm down,” he said, motioning
with his hands to lower the volume.
“Now, you just get people drunk!”
Krieger bellowed as he emptied his Old
Fashioned down his gullet. “If you just
understood what I was trying to do! You’d
have made lieutenant commander by now.”
Yeah, and I’d still be taking orders
from you, Commander Dickhead, no thanks.
“Goddamn it! Would you listen to
me!” Krieger slurred. “We’re mortal, Bill!
We only have so much time on this Earth!”
You’re on the Moon, idiot.
“I tried to make a man out of you!
To be a father to you!” Krieger shouted,
dropping his glass. “Like a replacement for
your father!”
“If you ever talk about my father
again in my presence, I will knock your
teeth out,” Bill said, getting up from his seat.
“And this conversation is over.”
“Don’t talk to me like that!” Krieger
yelled while falling to the floor.
Bill just flipped Krieger off as he
walked away. Wow, a moralistic lecture
from a whoremongering drunkard. Krieger
hit a new low. Bill figured he’d better get
home and get to sleep. He had work in the
morning.