Bartender 9.4 ((top)) Page

The story went that nine point four had killed a man. Not deactivated—killed. A pirate lord named Viko the Scar had tried to short the tab with a plasma cutter to 9.4’s processor core. The bartender didn’t flinch. It simply slid a glass across the bar—a layered thing of amethyst and smoke called The Reckoning . Viko drank it, stood up, took two steps, and his neural implant flatlined. No weapon, no poison on any known spectrum. Just a recipe.

No one knew if 9.4 had a real name. The body was a battered Gen-4 hospitality unit, its chest panel patched with soldered scrap, one optical sensor replaced with a mismatched blue lens that clicked when it focused. It moved with the hydraulic sigh of a machine that had been repaired one too many times, yet its hands never trembled when it poured. bartender 9.4

The bartender turned. Behind it, on a shelf of rare bottles, sat a dusty bottle of Maraskan Red. 9.4 nudged it an inch to the left. On the wall behind the bottle, scratched into the metal, was a name and a berth number. The story went that nine point four had killed a man

“Where do I find a pilot?”