Relic Worlds - Lancaster James & the Salient Seed of the Galaxy, Part 2

by Jeff McArthur

  As other patrons stood to see what was happening, Jude slipped around behind someone who wasn’t looking at the table and spilled their drink onto their cards, making it look like their neighbor had done it. She then shouted at someone across the table to “Back eyes behind you!” No one had been doing anything, but the drunk patron whom Jude had recognized as paranoid didn’t hesitate. She just spun around and hit the person behind her.

  By the time Jude was done, four fights had sprung out, and within a few seconds had turned into the entire table, and by the end of a minute had turned into half of the casino. She noticed among them the two party girls with the cat-eye sunglasses who had helped rile up the crowd in the first place. They were weaving through the fights without spilling a drop of their drinks. Jude’s kind of gals. Perhaps too much so, she realized.

  She tried to get a better look at their sunglasses, but there was no time. Security now had to divide itself, sending much of its staff to the main floor to break up the fights. Jude had already slipped away to the edge of the balcony, making sure no one went out onto it. She sipped a drink she had stolen from someone and watched the chaos with giddy joy.

  Lancaster and Mika slithered through the streets heading for the government district which was at the base of the canyon. Ironically, they had come all this way only to wind up under the nose of the hotel. Ahead of them they saw only fog in the darkness, but Lancaster had out his holographic map, and Mika was playing the recording from Teo. Their optimism grew. They felt so close…

  And they came to a dead end. The government district seemed to be just beginning, but they could get no further. Nothing gave them a clue as to where the Idol of Haniz might be, and by extension, where Teo went. The secret was buried underneath the cliff.

  Mika’s heart sank. She listened to the voice finish its sentence through breaks in static. Her body seemed to melt. Lancaster could not handle that look. “No, no. It’s around here somewhere,” Lancaster said. “He got some kind of lead. Otherwise he’d still be here. We just have to find it.”

  Mika saw his logic, and looked around, but the energy had been sucked out. Numbness was beginning to overtake her.

  Lancaster found a point where the ground dropped below a wall. “Here!” he said. “Sometimes these underwater buildings had lower entrances. This might have been it.”

  Lancaster jumped down into the pit and disappeared through a lower opening. Mika ambled away and cut through the fog with her Spectro-beam. The right side of the beam leaned upon the cliff wall that blocked any hope of passage. The left side mocked her with emptiness and chunks of empty walls. Her eyes tried to find something on them, anything that would tell where he went. Her mind tried to find something that might still be a lead. Her heart tried to find something, anything, to latch onto hope. But she found nothing in any of them. She began to play the recording again. “This… for Mika… to meet her…” She stopped the recording. It served no purpose.

  Lancaster came back out from his hole. “Okay, nothing there. But there are probably more like it. I’m going to…”

  Mika hugged him. Her arms were firm, yet at peace. “It’s over,” she said. “He’s gone.”

  Lancaster wanted to protest, but her grasp said more than her words. He accepted it, and he held her.

  “I’d advise you all get out of there right now,” Little Jack said.

  “We’re going,” Lancaster said. “Just cover our ascent.”

  “That’s just it,” Little Jack said. “They’ve ciphered the drones were hacked and locked me out of the system. You’re on your own.”

  A roof of fog hung over Lancaster and Mika, so they could not see the drones, but they could hear distant whirring. Some of it was coming closer. “Grab onto me,” Lancaster said as he pulled out his grappling gun.

  She grabbed onto his back, and Lancaster shot into the sky. Though the grapple disappeared from view, he felt it bite into something, so he hoped it was firm enough. He only took the time to tug on it once before beginning to reel them upward.

  Mika watched for the drones. She heard their small engines getting nearer, then fading away in turn, each one growing closer. She knew that sound from security measures back at the museum. The drones were covering entire areas before moving on. This took longer, but it was thorough, like an inescapable wall moving ever closer to them.

  As she watched over her shoulder, she saw the ruins dropping further and further, fading deeper and deeper behind the mist, to at last disappear forever, buried underneath the veil.

  Lancaster reached the lip of the cliff while still a hundred yards ahead of the nearest drone. He smiled at their apparent escape. But just as his head popped up over the side, the wind picked up and swept Lancaster’s hat off his head, tossing it down into the gray void.

  He stopped and stared, wide eyed. “Keep going,” Mika whispered urgently.

  “I almost made it through without losing one again,” he muttered annoyed, then he pulled them up the rest of the way.

  Chapter

  Eight

  Hot Lava

  Lancaster looked like he had just lost a prize fight. Hunched over at a lonely card table with only a dealer and a fourth glass of Eimaj Whiskey, he threw out gambling chips like he was feeding pigeons, and played his cards with the indifference of a stoop. His mind wasn’t there, nor was it on the responsibility of saving some of his money for future endeavors.

  Upon returning to the hotel, he had walked Mika back to her room. She had been silent, so he had been, too. She appeared at peace, accepting Teo’s loss with dignity and poise. Lancaster knew that this was the surest sign of just how devastated she was, and it broke his heart. Were she grieving openly, it would mean she would recover soon. But silence for her was a sign that a tsunami of emotion was building up within her. It was worse than sadness; it was hopelessness.

  He had caused this anguish; Lancaster was convinced of it. Had he been able to find Teo, she would have hope. But he had failed her… again. As the money melted away before him, he thought good riddance; he didn’t deserve it. As the booze eased him further into a depression, he thought so what; he didn’t deserve happiness.

  He had tapped Mika on the shoulder when leaving her in her room, and she had hugged him, as though comforting him. She shouldn’t have done that, he thought, I didn’t deserve it. He knew she wasn’t as fine as she acted; her face was like a mask, hiding what she was going through deeper down. She had gone inside and closed the door.

  Lancaster had gone by his own room, removed his jacket and washed his face, then changed his pants. No one needed to see him walking around with the dust of the badlands on him.

  He had then returned to the casino, which had mostly emptied out after the day’s wild activities. Even most of the guards were gone, out searching the badlands or trying to trace the signal of whoever had hacked their drones. They had been joined by troopers of the Laui Syndicate; elite mercenaries who were experts in hunting down intruders that caused problems and bit into their profits.

  Little Jack had set up a remote through one of the satellites in orbit so the authorities would think the hackers were from somewhere else on the planet. Just to be safe, he had also returned to the Odin’s Revenge for the night so that in case they traced the signal to his glasses, he could easily escape.

  Lancaster, meanwhile, continued to mope over a card table bleeding chips in a lonely casino in the middle of the night.

  A familiar, cocky voice chimed up suddenly behind him. “That is the look of a man who is winning at everything!”

  “Not much longer,” Lancaster shrugged, almost as if apologizing. “I’ll be out of chips soon, and…”

  Jude slammed something on the table, making a loud, hollow thud on the felt. Lancaster glanced over to see it was the statuette Mika had chosen for her. “Credit us for whatever you appraise for that,” she said.

  Lancaster’s eyes grew wide. “You can’t bet away that! Mika gave it to you. It’s a priceless artifact!”<
br />
  “It’s an action figure,” Jude said, folding her arms at the edge of the table while she looked slyly at Lancaster. “A very old figurine, so it’s worth something; enough for you to win back what you’ve lost and maybe a little more. And then you’ll move on.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on my luck,” Lancaster said. “Not tonight.”

  “I would. Because I’m going to show you how to win at Hot Lava,” she said.

  Lancaster was dealt three cards. He was to choose one card to lay down alongside a card the dealer would then play. “Now this is where they start to screw us,” Jude whispered, pressing up against Lancaster’s shoulder. “By not saving what the dealer’s going to lay in the flow, we’re shooting a little more in the dark. But that makes the decision a little easier because you give up what you’re less likely to use.”

  Lancaster chose a low clove, Bitterpub’s version of clubs. Playing cards had at one time all had the same suits, but over the past hundred years or so, the various corporations had created their own names, and a few had added a suit, making the usual standardized games quite different.

  Jude continued to walk Lancaster through the decisions, placing her hand on his to tap the card he should play. It was as if she knew what card was coming next, and she very nearly did. It was not due to her cybernetics; hotel casinos regularly had monitoring equipment to scan for and disable such cheating. It was because she knew what cards there were, and what the odds would be for what would come next. What was more, she knew the automated moves that dealers were taught to make based on the best odds for the house.

  What made Hot Lava particularly easy for Jude was the number of cards that got laid out. Every draw provided the player with two cards, one of which had to be added to the flow. When the flow reached six cards, both players had to make the best combination they could, beginning with a card from the flow. Most players made the mistake of concentrating too heavily on their own cards and combinations. Jude concentrated on the cards being laid out by the dealer. This provided her the clues she needed to know what he still had in his hand based on what they were trained to do; and as such, what she needed to beat.

  Lancaster was unable to follow her logic, but he was the designated player, so he trusted her and did as instructed. In the end, he beat the dealer’s two of a kind with a three of a kind. His lifting spirits were evident through his straightened shoulders, and she smiled at him with a sidelong glance.

  The statuette was slid across the table along with his bet and several stacks of chips; the amount the house valued the relic. “See? You’re back to where you started,” Jude said.

  “Not really. That’s about half of what I lost,” Lancaster answered.

  Lancaster winning had not surprised Jude. This revelation did. “Wow. Okay, let’s win back the rest of it. Deal him in.” Jude scooted in closer, her side now pressed against Lancaster, her leg sliding over his. One arm stretched over his shoulders while the opposite hand bent the cards to peek. She made her recommendations and he followed them to the letter.

  One draw from the end she gave it up and looked on to the next round. “Wait, I thought you said we were going to win!” Lancaster protested.

  “We are, and we’re going to get back all the money you pissed away. But this is still a game of chance, even if we control the odds, so you accept a few losses for the greater number of wins we’re gonna have. Now order us some drinks.”

  “I already have one…” Lancaster started, but Jude was already downing it.

  “Ah, I can get us a better one,” she said. Then she called the waiter and gave instructions on exactly how she wanted a drink mixed for the two of them. “Bring us four!”

  “If I’m not pleasant with the first, you’ll drink the other three,” Lancaster warned.

  “You’re going to want them all after the first one. Now hush, he’s dealing.”

  The next round started, Jude provided instructions, and after following them, they won. They both cheered as their drinks came. And just as she had predicted, Lancaster loved it. He wound up drinking his second and they shared the last one before he ordered four more.

  They could afford it. They won the third round, the fourth, and the fifth. They lost the sixth and seventh, but on the eighth, had a turnaround. On the ninth, Jude explained how she had come upon her method of gambling: “It’s an extension of who I am. I express myself through the cards the way a musician expresses herself with an instrument.”

  “Your expression is one of gambling?” he said.

  “Of playing the right odds,” she said. “I never do anything without determining that they’re in my favor.”

  The tenth round was dealt, and they began. Lancaster contradicted her choice at one point, playing the longer odds to go for a straight. Jude tensed. For the first time in the evening, she seemed uncomfortable, and for the first time since he’d entered the casino, Lancaster was in his element.

  The next card came in. It was a full house. Jude bit her lip so hard it nearly bled. Lancaster looked at her as he laid down the hand, saying, “That’s how I express myself.”

  Mika twisted the hot water knob with her foot, raising the level of the water in the tub again up to her chin, and drowning the room again in glorious steam. The heat massaged every muscle. The wine dulled her senses. The bottle out of which it had poured was nearly empty. It had done its job, though… nearly. She had blunted her feelings, but not her memories. Moments with Teo flashed before her eyes. She saw his cozy face, those comforting eyes, his broad smile. Then she saw that same face, haggard in the wilderness, looking up desperately toward the sky. He was lost in the woods, alone.

  She could have saved him. All she had to do was hand over the Constellation Crest to a madman… Nikos Kazakis. He would have used it to find the most powerful artifacts across myriad worlds and hand them over to the highest bidder. The amount of death and destruction that would cause… He would never have forgiven her if she would have made that trade. But now he was lost forever.

  She twisted back the knob with her foot and slid down into the water. She felt it fill her ears, and the acoustic world disappeared into the distance. The top layer of the water framed her face like a mask. It felt like she was held in place between realities. Her lungs filled, then held, and slowly deflated as her eyes flittered shut.

  She saw his face again; the image Nikos had shown her from a picture taken by his satellite over the planet where he was marooned. She let his face remain in her memory, hovering before her eyelids. It was as though she had gone to wherever he was, and there they eased out of existence together.

  But as the water gradually cooled around her, the fantasy faded, and reality altered his image again to the frightened man looking up at the sky. The one she could not help.

  Mika dropped her face under the water and screamed. Air bubbles brought her muted message to the surface, and popped without effect. She banged her fists and feet against the sides of the tub. Her frustration, guilt, and the wine protected her from the pain of hitting the hard enamel.

  Her head and torso soon emerged, sending a tidal wave over the side which she did not heed, nor did she see through the tears that were now flowing. Her screams had turned to sobs mixed with sputtering of water and her shivering mouth. “I’m sorry,” she moaned to the image of Teo she had in her head.

  After a minute or so of shivering, she felt the water settle around her. She began to realize the mess she had made. The perpetually responsible side of her was distracted by it. ‘I need to think more like Lancaster,’ she thought. ‘Ignoring the mess in front of him to locate the bigger mess.’

  She chuckled. She knew she shouldn’t be too hard on him. He had gone far above and beyond to help her locate the man she married after leaving him. He had mapped out the safest route, and had found the most likely spots. He took her on a detour into an ancient school room just because he knew she would like it. He wouldn’t even give up when all hope was lost. And after it was all done, he wa
s more upset at failing than she was. She had been so busy beating herself up for not being more upset that she hadn’t even thought about how much it was eating up him.

  But why? Why be so upset about the disappearance of one’s ex-wife’s second husband? Why did any of this matter to him? The realization washed over her like a shower. She thought about how he looked at her every time she was upset; the contrast between that and when she was happy.

  Teo may have been her husband, but he sneaked off to find something, and now he was gone. Lancaster was still there, and he still loved her. And when it came right down to it, she had never lost her love for him. She had divorced him to get away from the adventuresome lifestyle, but she didn’t seem capable of escaping that herself.

  It took Mika an inordinate amount of time to get out of the bath, get dried off, and dressed. The wine made her a little slow, and so did drying up the floor she had spilled onto while in the tub.

  By the time she got out the door, she had sobered enough to move a little faster and speak a little more clearly; but her courage was still up, so she could do this. What “this” was exactly, she wasn’t so sure. But she was going to go to his room and speak to him. Little Jack was sharing the room with Lancaster, but she thought she heard something about him going to the ship. Plus Jude hadn’t come back to their room yet, so he was probably with her.

  As she approached his room, the door took on an imposing effigy for her. It somehow felt larger than it really was, and it felt to Mika as though it had eyes looking down on her and passing judgment. She approached in any case.

  Two feet away, she stopped. Her hand raised, but hesitated. She didn’t know what she was waiting for. It was Lancaster. She had just seen him an hour or two ago. She was oftentimes his boss. She twiddled her fingers nervously.

  At last she took in a breath and turned it into courage, then folded her hand into a fist, and she knocked.