Finally Rekir was alone! Now was his chance.
He popped the cap off the lubricant. He applied a generous coating until the surface glistened, then used a sliding motion to make the coverage complete and remove all friction. Grinning lustily, he pursed his lips, leaned in...
…and blew the first note from his lovingly-maintained trombone.
The first sound was a foghorn blast, a brassy statement of intent. The second slid readily into a scale. Another scale, one-half-step below, followed, then another, stepping down with each recursion until Rekir was a full octave below where he'd begun.
"That'll do for warm-up," he said. He replaced the cap on his small vial of slide oil and placed it aside. His eye wandered to the small birdhouse mounted to the wall. A candy-apple-red, canary-sized robot bird (which Rekir, in a fit of creativity, had named Red Bird) was glaring at him. "How do I sound?" he asked it.
"Tweet tweet!" it declared.
Rekir's shoulders slumped. "Well, what do you know anyway." He jerked his head at the birdhouse door. "Go home."
With a final, disdainful "tweet", Red Bird retreated into its birdhouse.
There wasn't much else in the room. Assistant Squad Leaders in the Maverick Hunters didn't have much in the way of accommodations. The room was barely nine meters square, and separated by the thinnest walls from more rooms just like it, but it was his, and that was good enough. It was certainly more than the rank-and-file got; they were jammed in three-to-a-room. He didn't have much in terms of possessions to fill the room, anyway. Then again, wasted space was its own kind of luxury.
Aside from the trombone, birdhouse, and recharge tube, the main feature of the room was a display case for Rekir's decorations. Someone versed in the pageantry of the Hunters would have noted an unremarkable number of individual citations, but a staggering number of unit citations and campaign ribbons. Such an observer might have concluded that Rekir was in the mix of all the fighting, and his units always won, but he was never singled out as the reason why.
That was just how Rekir liked it. It was safer that way.
At present, fighting wasn't directly on his mind. Playing the trombone was. He had fifteen minutes before he'd need to get in his tube and recharge, but that was fine. His lips could only hold out for about ten minutes of continuous playing before he lost his "chops" and the sound wandered. Things would work out.
When he began playing again, it was in the form of a gentle serenade—as gentle as a trombone could get, anyway. Which, apparently, wasn't gentle enough.
"Again? Seriously?!"
The complaint reached Rekir through the barely-there walls from the next Azzle's room. It must have been quite a holler to be heard even above the music. "Get over it!" Rekir shouted back at about the same volume. Without waiting for a reply he launched into a march Sousa would have loved, with a rhythm so powerful and driving that a wheeled reploid could have moved in time with it. It was bold and brassy, as a march should be—qualities Rekir's neighbor didn't seem to appreciate.
"Cut out that racket! Shut up! Hey, I said shut up! Stop torturing that thing and cut it out!"
Rekir ignored it as best he could. It didn't last. His neighbor was banging on the walls before he reached the march's trio. Exasperated, Rekir pulled the trombone from his lips. "You're fine!" he hollered.
"I'm not fine, I can't think with that scrap playing!"
"You're not supposed to be thinking!" said Rekir, well aware of his neighbor's schedule. "You're supposed to be in the tube!"
"Well, I'm not!"
Now a new voice joined in, from the room on Rekir's other side. "Too much yelling! Stop it! I can't stand it!"
"Then turn your ears off!" Rekir shouted.
"I don't wanna!"
"And I don't wanna hear your whining!" Once more he blotted out the complaining with more music—this time a dirge, dark and leaden, eerie and unpleasant. It was more of a message for his neighbors than something he found pleasant.
They got the message.
"That's rusted solid!"
Rekir played it louder.
Another interruption—a knock at the door this time. Reluctantly, suspiciously, Rekir lowered the trombone and went to answer.
The door revealed an on-duty Hunter—not an Azzle—and Rekir was instantly annoyed; he could see the interloper struggling to keep a straight face. "Can I help you?" he asked acidly.
"Just checking up," said the duty Hunter, cheeks twitching. "Is everything alright in here?"
"Yeah, why?" said Rekir. He wasn't bothering to conceal his surliness; the duty Hunter was cracking up.
"They sent me to ensure everyone's safe here. We got a report of a sonic weapon being deployed in this area…"
"I'll give you a 'sonic weapon'!" Rekir bellowed. He charged; the duty Hunter, laughing like a hyena, fled down the hall towards the exit from Azzle country. Rekir chased him a few steps to ensure he left. Then, reviewing his situation, he decided there was something he had to check. He turned and went back to his neighbor's door.
It was locked, but that was a minor obstacle. Rekir had been a major participant in the work that had converted the former Cain Labs into the temporary Hunter Headquarters, and then further into the permanent Hunter Base. He knew all the codes. The door opened for him.
Three guilty faces looked back at him.
"I knew it!" Rekir exclaimed. "I thought there were different voices coming from here. I mean, seriously? You came here and sacrificed some tube time just to whine at me?"
The other Azzles recovered quickly. "It's a rare treat to hear something so awful," one said.
"Hearing you play makes me feel better about myself."
"But can you go back to your room? I like your music better the less I can hear of it."
Rekir shut the door again with a sigh. "Recreational heckling," he muttered as he returned to his room.
Well, fine, then—if they weren't sincere, if they were going to complain no matter what, then who cared what they thought? He was going to play for himself. It was time to play his favorite song—the sort of song that fully justified playing the trombone as opposed to, say, a flute.
Not that his fingers would have let him play flute. Fine, trumpet, then.
He swung into with gusto once his door was shut. He started with the background track, up-tempo with a Latin flavor and heavy swing. Eight bars in, he transitioned to the melody line with its exaggerated jazz rhythms, and barreled right on in to the chorus.
Ba-dut ba-waaaaarble faaall,
Ba-dut ba-waaaaarble faaall,
Ba-dut ba-waaaaarble faaall,
Dut da-dut da-dut-dut blatt.
"Tequila!" he shouted.
Without any gap, the voices started. "What the rust is tequila?"
"Please say it's flammable!"
Rekir sighed. "I empty my spit valve in your general direction," he murmured, and he did, in fact, perform that bit of maintenance, though without malice. His chops were gone anyway. It was time to be done.
He began to disassemble the trombone, to a non-musical accompaniment from the next room. ("Keep playing—I think someone in the Base is still asleep!" "That was your best performance yet—I give it two outta ten!" and so on.) He tuned them out, and eventually they got bored as it became clear he was done.
His thoughts wandered as he cleaned and stored his trombone. He played the music for self-gratification, but it was so hard to do that privately, not in the compressed environment of Hunter Base. It was a shame, because lugging the trombone around to other locations took up that much more of his free time. Still, if he wanted to have his fun without an audience, he'd have to do something. Maybe he could borrow a transport from the hangar and find a nice, quiet spot where he could have some solo time…
He slid the trombone case beneath his recharge tube. As he clambered in, he saw that Red Bird had emerged and was staring at him. Feeling suddenly awkward, Rekir asked, "Did you enjoy the show?"
Red Bird turned in place, flared its tail "feathers", and gave a derisive "Tweet!"
Rekir sighed. "Everyone's a critic."