Hard Bargain, page 14
So Valentinian was a little surprised when Butler raised on the first round.
“Five,” the M’Rai bully said with a semi-triumphant growl and a disdainful flick to toss the chips into the pot.
The two cards up were a Wedgestone and a Threshold, so he was already bluffing, pushing people to expect an Arcade later.
Valentinian held his internal commentary tight and let his face show a curious disbelief. That sort of thing had worked well with the punk. It tended to work well with players who substituted intimidation for skill.
He had three Columns. Possibly he could build an Arcade, depending on how the cards went, but still a winning hand by itself, one time in five.
The other players called and play continued.
Valentinian smiled and dealt. He didn’t have to beat the man at the table. His was just the pretty face that distracted you while the bad people went to work in the shadows.
26
Bayjy
The damned ship hadn’t changed one iota since she left. Didn’t even look like Butler had bothered to clean anything, from the thin smear of dust starting to settle.
Bayjy let herself growl as she looked around the kitchen area.
“Problem?” Kyriaki asked from close by.
That chick hadn’t put her gun down since they boarded, and held it in a way that told Bayjy she’d shot people before. Maybe a lot of them. Plus Dave had taken Bayjy aside yesterday and given her the complete low-down on everything that had happened on a planet named Tartarus. So Kyriaki was trouble cubed.
At least the cop was on her side.
“No,” Bayjy replied. “Offended at bad housekeeping. We kept this place spotless. Butler’s a slob.”
She moved to the refrigerator and opened it, but that was mostly to confirm the obvious.
All the fresh fruit was gone, as well as the salad fixings they used to grow in the hydroponics bay. Only things in there were one liter beer bottles now. The freezer held nothing but frozen meals in huge trays, enough calories for an angry M’Rai male.
“That’s it?” Kyriaki asked, standing next to her.
Bayjy grinned. You could bond with people over the silliest things, like a bachelor’s idea of good nutrition.
“That’s it,” Bayjy agreed. “Wanted to make sure Butler really was the only person aboard. You can hide lots of things, but all the evidence will be in the refrigerator.”
“Good to know,” her tiny brunette partner nodded. “Now what?”
Bayjy let herself scowl at the room where she and the gang had had such good times. All the birthdays and card games. The lies, the drinking, and the occasional tumble in a bunk after a good run.
All gone.
She’d been the last one left at Bohrne Station, after the others gambled on other ships, other jobs, so Bayjy didn’t figure she’d ever see the other six of her friends again, unless she got really lucky with Valentinian, or she went looking.
They were nice enough folks, but nobody she was pining after.
“Personal quarters,” Bayjy said aloud, letting her mind wander.
Lucky for them, Butler had been too lazy to close up any of the interior frame bulkheads, so she didn’t have to spoof any more of his security.
Being a Cutter meant that you had to know security systems, both physical and electronic, so you could get into wrecks without having to blast them apart first. Not a skill she had expected to make her a living, back when she was a squirt, but good enough today to help her with revenge.
Crew deck.
Technically, all of this was crew deck, since Butler’s suite and the bridge were up a level by themselves, but everyone always referred to this hallway as the crew deck. All their personal cabins were here.
Had been here.
She decided to skip any of the others for now. It would just make her angry, seeing their stuff left as they had put it when they walked away. Her cabin was going to hurt enough that she should stay away from power systems and the engines, at least until she was calm enough to not sabotage them.
“Here,” Bayjy said, facing the hatch.
“You okay?” Kyriaki was suddenly standing right next to her, almost offering a shoulder to cry on.
“Angry,” Bayjy sighed.
“If this doesn’t work, I’ll help you shoot him instead,” the cop offered with an evil grin.
“Thanks.”
Bayjy reached up and keyed her personal code into the door, just on the off-chance that Butler had been too lazy to change them all when he dumped his crew and ran.
The hatch opened. She muttered a particularly colorful curse and thought about finding a voodoo doll of her old captain that she could stick pins into when she felt bad.
Inside, the room was spotless. Impersonal. All of her shit was gone. Her fist impacted the sidewall away from Kyriaki before she realized what she was doing.
That girl’s pistol was up and her head was on a swivel as she pivoted and prepared to kill everything that moved.
“Sorry,” Bayjy offered. “Overreacted.”
“Oh,” Kyriaki nodded and rose back up to her full, short height, half a head below Bayjy or the captain. “Room looks cleaner than your cabin on Longshot Hypothesis.”
For some reason, that broke the band of ice starting to wrap around her chest. Bayjy laughed. Not quite hysterically, but all the pent-up pressures of suddenly being abandoned bubbled up briefly, overflowed, and then receded.
She found herself being held by Kyriaki with no memory of how she got there, when her mind settled back down.
“Thank you,” Bayjy wiped her nose and sucked a huge breath into her lungs to purify everything.
“So maybe he packed it all up and stowed it somewhere?” Kyriaki asked. “If he had a major sale coming up, he might want the rest of the shop looking presentable. Plus, you never dump gear you might need later, especially if you have to recruit a new crew tomorrow.”
“What would he tell the new people?” Bayjy felt her brow furrow. Bad, that. Good way to get wrinkles. Shouldn’t do that in the future.
“Oh, major accident, maybe,” Kyriaki shrugged. “Explosion killed everyone over there and he only survived by being here. Without witnesses, anything might be plausible. Where would he put boxes?”
“Primary bay,” Bayjy decided. She looked around the room that had been her home for so long and growled.
Forward now, out of the aft end of the ship to the big airlock in the main corridor. This hatch slid sideways into both walls, revealing the huge room where the whole crew could suit up at once, ten meters on a side.
A rainbow on the left caught her eye, and her mind. Bayjy found herself with her arms wrapped around her old heatsuit, crying.
Seriously, she needed to stop that. But this was her heatsuit. Done in ten centimeter, horizontal stripes from ankle to neck. A rainbow in space. ’Cause that was how she rolled.
“Is that…?” Kyriaki had snuck up on her again.
“Yeah,” Bayjy grinned.
“So why weren’t you wearing it at Bohrne?” the woman asked.
“Because I was going shopping for clothes,” Bayjy laughed. “And this thing is a pain in the ass to get on and off in a changing room. And too damned expensive to buy a second one when I was looking at starving.”
Gods, she could be warm again. Put it on like a second skin and turn the heat up to the point she could get by with just cute pants and a tight T-shirt to show off her amazing ass and muscles, if she had a knit cap on her bald skull. No more stupid layers and constantly freezing her butt off anyway.
And rainbow stripes when she walked.
“Here,” Kyriaki said, digging an oversized bag out of a nearby bin.
In it went.
If Butler still had her heatsuit, he probably had the rest of her gear somewhere close by, too lazy or cheap to get rid of it yet.
And Bayjy knew hope.
27
Dave
Dave was deeply concerned that he might actually learn how to play Arcades at some point, if he kept this up. Leaned against the bar, sipping slowly at the cheapest, thinnest beer they sold. Watching.
It was obvious that the gray giant considered himself a better player than he really was, but most of the rest of the table were probably only as good, if that.
Not counting Valentinian.
Dave watched his captain put on a show, but one that almost everyone would miss, unless they knew what to look for. Or had watched him do it before.
The first man out hadn’t been that good. The other two were better, but both were down to perhaps half the money they had started with at this point, winning maybe one hand each to three or four that Vee and Vidy-Wooders took.
Interestingly, Valentinian wasn’t betting heavy on good hands, although he would back out and fold on bad ones. Just enough to keep everyone playing.
But Valentinian wasn’t trying to clean everyone out. He was providing hours of entertainment while the women did their job and Dave acted as a lifeguard.
Hopefully, the gray giant would sit here all night, and then go back to his ship, no wiser. If an alarm suddenly went off and the man fled, Dave’s job would be to either distract him somehow, or attack him.
Anything to give the women time to make their escape, even if Dave ended up spending the night in the drunk tank and had to pay a fine in the morning.
It was hard to judge an opponent who was seated. The man was built like Valentinian, just scaled up fifty percent. Tall and big, reasonably muscled, but not an oversized, muscle-bound bodybuilder who looked like he could tear bulkheads with his bare hands.
Not like Dave.
The man would still be enormously strong, if you got in close. Probably had one hell of a bear hug, if he got you grappled.
But Dave had studied movement under a man who was more than a head shorter than he was, maybe fifty-five kilograms, and approaching eighty years old at the time. Stauracius had had skin like leather and the softest touch of any human Dave had ever met, especially when he got out the acupuncture needles to fix some issue.
Dave had met perhaps three other men in his life who might be as deadly as Stauracius.
Might.
Dave wasn’t one of them.
Facing Vidy-Wooders barehanded would be like wrestling with Stauracius. With him in the role of the weasel, rather than the wolf.
Dave smiled at the ancient memory.
“Ha,” Dave heard the M’Rai bark triumphantly as he turned over his cards and started to reach for the pot.
“Just a moment,” Valentinian interrupted, turning over his own cards to show a Mixed Arcade that beat the giant’s Corridor.
Dave was watching the back of Vidy-Wooders’s head, so he could see Vee’s face. The man’s shoulders flexed in that way they did when you suddenly focused all your energy down into the ground.
Dave poised, shifting his weight forward just enough that he could be on the man’s back in two steps if the M’Rai pirate suddenly exploded in violence. The plastic mug of beer wouldn’t be a useful weapon, but the liquid inside would blind the man long enough for Dave to hammer soft spots in his back.
The head and neck would be too high to reach effectively, not without drawing his pseudo-sword baton, which he didn’t want to do without provocation. However, kidneys would be at shoulder height and nobody’s knees were invulnerable unless you had Caelon armor over them.
They were back at Bohrne again. This had been the point where that punk had lost his temper and almost gotten himself shot by the Sheriff. Dave could smell the stink of adrenaline wafting off the M’Rai, along with curses and muttered disbelief that Valentinian had drawn the winning card he needed with his Build.
But he settled. Didn’t grab the edge of the table with both hands and flip it over onto Valentinian as a prelude to a fight. And dueling wasn’t legal on this station, so if the big man decided that he wanted an honorable standoff, they would all have to drop down to the surface of the planet first.
Dave wondered how quick Valentinian really was, if it came to a gunfight. Vidy-Wooders had a pistol on his hip, but so did everyone else at the table. And most of the room. The law was thin out here, and the station folks were mostly concerned with keeping a lid on problems.
Not bothering with fights between off-worlders.
The other spacer dropped out of the game now, close enough to broke after the last hand as to not matter. The merchant took the opportunity to do the same, as the emotions were running far higher than normal for what was supposed to be a friendly game of poker by well-met strangers.
Dave wanted to send a message to the other team, but he waited, unwilling to look down right now.
“So, what’ll it be, stranger,” Vidy-Wooders growled loud enough that the whole bar heard him.
There was enough menace in his voice that Dave was surprised that Valentinian kept both hands on the table. In other places, many men might have reached a hand down and rested it on a pistol. Just in case.
“How about dinner?” Valentinian asked in a neutral voice. “Arcades just isn’t nearly as much fun with only two and we’ve been at it a while. Some steaks might hit the spot.”
The giant paused, probably watching to see if he was being mocked, since Vee wasn’t cringing at the potential for violence.
“You’re a cool one, aren’t you?” Vidy-Wooders asked.
Dave watched Valentinian shrug.
The two men were alone at the table now, as the three others had wandered off, with no great showdown imminent.
Dave watched like a hawk. The gray giant would happily take off like a jackrabbit right now, if an alarm sounded on his ship.
“I’m just here killing time,” he said so nonchalantly that Dave almost grinned. “Looking for some distractions away from my crew. You?”
“Got no crew,” the M’Rai pirate said harshly. “Paid ’em off after the last salvage job because I got tired of all their grousing and whining. Better this way.”
“That would be so nice, some days,” Valentinian agreed with the man. “Mine are a group of pain-in-the-ass refugees that all probably deserve to be in a jail cells somewhere. Let’s have dinner. My treat, since the other three were so happy to provide us funds tonight.”
That got an enormous laugh out of the giant.
“I like the way you think, Captain,” Vidy-Wooders turned to flag down a waiter with a snap. “Menus.”
Dave caught Valentinian’s eye as the pirate turned away from Vee. Saw the shell fall away and the cold, hard man he knew emerge, for just a second. It was a message.
Dave turned away from the scene and leaned his weight against the bar. There was a mirror he could use to track issues, but the place was a boring weeknight right now. Money went elsewhere, as did trouble, for the most part, according to Vee’s scouting and recon.
He pulled out his card-reader like he was looking something up and sent a quick message.
Ordering dinner now. Game completed friendly.
Hopefully, the women had already found everything they needed.
28
Kyriaki
The boxes, stacked up neatly and stashed in an equipment locker along with a number of heavy suits on hangars, reminded Kyriaki of nothing so much as coffins in a mausoleum. Sixty centimeters wide, thirty tall, stacked up with names visible on the ends. Seven of them.
Leftovers from lives abandoned in space without probably so much as a pang. Probably a smirk, from what Bayjy had told her.
The mauve spacer was down on her knees right now, just touching the box with “Endon, B” on the end, middle of the right hand stack.
Kyriaki let Bayjy have a moment to herself. This had to be worse than running away from the White Hats, because at least Kyriaki had agency then. It had been her decision to protect the two men at the cost of her own career.
Bayjy had been abandoned, like a cat left behind in an apartment when the owners moved out abruptly. She was soldiering pretty well, but Kyriaki could tell how fragile the woman was underneath.
That was okay. Kyriaki would take care of her friend. That was in the job description, at least the one she was writing in her head. If Bayjy could teach a hard-ass cop how to not flinch while wearing bright red panties with white hearts on them, then Kyriaki could hold Bayjy’s fragile psyche together as she confronted her own past.
“You ready to move things?” Kyriaki asked.
“Yeah,” Bayjy’s voice was just above a whisper. “I think so.”
Kyriaki grabbed the top box and lifted it. Well, slid it forward enough she could get her hands under it and stagger backwards.
“Sorry,” Bayjy suddenly rose and held the other half. “He was a pack rat, so I should have mentioned that one would be heavy.”
It also didn’t help that the narrow box itself was about a meter long, reinforcing the coffin-like ratios in Kyriaki’s head.
Together, they rested it to one side and pulled out Bayjy’s box. This one was lighter. Opening it, saw mostly clothes, with a few knick-knacks and a reader-slab, an oversized card-reader. Beat to hell, from the looks of it.
Bayjy started crying again as she picked it up.
“This belonged to my grandma,” she said between sniffles.
Kyriaki nodded in mute sympathy. She had even less, as most of her gear was either aboard Dominion-427 in a similar box, or back on Dominion Prime waiting in long-term storage, where she didn’t think she would ever get any of it back. Even the space suit she had been wearing when she boarded Longshot Hypothesis had been jettisoned into warpspace as a precaution by the boys.
If she had a higher opinion of her looks, Kyriaki might have been tempted to compare that moment to Aphrodite Rising From The Sea, but she knew she was, at most, cute. Not the kind of face that stopped traffic. Maybe the right bottom, in the right circumstances, but you have the butt you deserve, if you’re willing to work for it.
