Dark Sky (Keiko)

by Mike Brooks

  He was abruptly tired of the game. Cheap trick by the youth in the sarong or not, he had become convinced that the bald security guard standing against the wall opposite was watching him, and he didn’t like it. Nothing good ever came of having security interested in you. He was dealt his next cards, checked them – the ace of spades and the queen of clubs – and came to a decision.

  The cigar-smoker checked his cards, as unreadable as ever, and pushed in his bet: 5,000 stars. It was a hefty opening gambit, and one probably designed to intimidate, but it didn’t work.

  ‘All in.’ The woman in cream shunted her entire stack forwards, close on 15,000 stars. The cigar-smoker’s eyebrows climbed a little, but he said nothing.

  Drift scratched the skin around his right eye for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Go big or go home, I guess.’ He pushed his stack in too, and looked enquiringly over at the bald man. ‘Are you game?’

  The cigar-smoker just grunted. He did, however, push his remaining chips in to match Drift as closely as he could. Everyone was in and the winner would essentially take all.

  They all turned their cards over, since betting was now at an end. The woman in cream had queens in hearts and diamonds and the cigar-smoker had … kings in diamonds and clubs. A faint smirk crossed his face: they all knew he had the best chance of taking this hand. The woman in cream swallowed slightly, and Drift thought he caught the faintest beginnings of translucency in her clothes. A pair of queens was a strong starting point, but it looked like she’d played aggressively at the wrong time.

  The dealer flopped the next three cards.

  The seven of clubs, the queen of spades and the three of spades.

  The woman in cream puffed her cheeks out and gave a small, semi-nervous laugh, while the cigar-smoker’s already stony expression fell a fraction. Three queens on the table suddenly made her the huge favourite, and Drift’s paltry two queens meant he could almost see his pile of chips sliding across the table in her direction.

  The turn card revealed the four of spades, and suddenly Drift breathed again. Any spade for the final card would see him sweep the table with a flush, which meant the cigar-smoker had only one hope left: the king of hearts, to give him three kings without Drift getting the spade he needed. However, the woman in cream was still winning as it stood.

  The dealer, with a disappointing lack of drama, turned over the river card.

  The two of spades.

  ‘Motherfucker! Seriously? On kings?’ The cigar-smoker shot to his feet and stormed off without a backwards glance, his implacability finally crumbling away. The woman in cream simply smiled ruefully as the dealer pushed the pile of chips towards Drift’s waiting arms.

  ‘Well played, sir.’ She quirked an eyebrow at him. ‘Although I think you have luck to thank for it.’

  ‘A win’s a win,’ Drift grinned at her, sliding a couple of thousand-star chips back the dealer’s way as a tip. ‘I admire your confidence in your wardrobe, by the way.’

  ‘Oh, it would take more than this table can offer to get me excited,’ she replied, not without a hint of mischief.

  ‘Well, I seem to have an abundance of cash,’ Drift said, getting to his feet. ‘How about I use some of it to buy you a drink and test that theory?’ She might have quietly sneered at his clothes when they’d first met, but Drift wasn’t the sort to hold grudges. Well, not when the other person had the kind of features you’d expect to see in a fifty-foot hologram advertising make-up, anyway.

  She opened her mouth as if to respond, but then something in her face changed. She composed her features and took a step backwards. ‘Perhaps another time.’

  Drift blinked in surprise. He’d been almost sure she was going to …

  A hand landed on his shoulder. Startled, and not a little annoyed, he looked around to see which of his crew had spotted him and come over to interrupt his flirting.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the bald Grand House security guard, two of his colleagues standing at his shoulder. ‘I must ask you to come with us.’

  A NEW PLAYER

  ‘EXCUSE ME?!’ DRIFT found his voice rising more than he’d have liked, and not one part of it was a result of play-acting the drunk. ‘I think there must be some mistake.’ He turned back towards the beauty in the cream dress but she’d already disappeared, presumably not wanting to risk being caught up in whatever this was.

  ‘No mistake, sir,’ the guard said, his expression not shifting by a jot. ‘Please come this way.’

  With three guards in close proximity, Drift didn’t really have an option. He pocketed his chips, ruining the line of his suit in doing so. ‘Can you at least tell me what this is about? I can assure you, I won that game fair and square.’ Their little group garnered several curious glances from players at tables as he was shepherded across the floor, and he briefly wondered how many games they’d mildly disrupted before his mind went back to windmilling through the possibilities. Was this some sort of trick played by the person in the sarong? But what purpose could it serve now the game was over?’

  ‘I apologise, sir,’ the first guard said quietly from his left, ‘but Mr Orlov has told me to ask if you will accept an invitation to meet with him.’

  Drift didn’t exactly stop dead, but he certainly stumbled a little as his train of thought was thoroughly derailed. ‘Wait … Mr Orlov? Mr Sergei Orlov? The owner?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ the guard replied neutrally.

  Drift chewed the inside of his cheek for a second, the mild pain helping him to focus his thoughts slightly. Sergei Orlov, owner of the Grand House, was what you got when a gangster was so respectable he barely counted as a gangster anymore. He was a businessman with enterprises that stretched far beyond the establishment where his family had first made their name, and was probably immune from ever being arrested, even without the fact that he had the slickest lawyers around. If Sergei Orlov’s businesses started to struggle, then a third of the system’s population might find themselves economically disadvantaged in one way or another.

  Sergei Orlov was very much the big fish in the New Samaran pond, and by comparison Ichabod Drift was … some sort of water beetle, perhaps? Maybe a fly larvae. Old Earth biology had never been his strongpoint.

  ‘Just so I’m clear on this point,’ he said slowly, looking sidelong at his escort and with a sinking feeling that he already knew the answer, ‘is this invitation an “invitation” or an invitation?’

  ‘I assure you sir,’ the guard replied, ‘you are free to choose whether to see Mr Orlov or not. If you do, we will take you to him. If not, you are free to go. However, he suggests that seeing him would be more profitable.’

  Drift digested that and thought furiously. His first instinct was to cut and run, to bring his crew’s stay on New Samara to an abrupt end and get the hell away from whatever had brought him to the attention of Sergei Orlov. Was it simply a velvet-lined trap, enticing him with soft words and financial rewards instead of disrupting the House’s atmosphere by having him dragged away? Playing on his ego by claiming that Sergei Orlov wished to see him personally when that was about as likely as the planet’s twin moons dancing a hornpipe if he played the flute?

  He sighed. If someone in authority, be that Orlov or no, wanted him removed from the House floor then he would be removed. He might as well play along on the off chance that this was actually as benign as it sounded. Besides, if it genuinely was Orlov who wanted to see him then he was intrigued despite himself.

  He gave the bald guard his best smile. ‘Lead on, then.’

  The guard nodded to the others, who melted unobtrusively away. Drift blinked his one natural eye in surprise, a motion his remaining escort apparently picked up on.

  ‘Mr Orlov wished to give the impression of you being removed from our establishment when you left the table,’ he explained, extending a hand in front of him to direct Drift towards an elevator situated in a curve in the wall, ‘but there is no need for my colleagues now.’

  ‘Curiouser and curi
ouser,’ Drift muttered, falling into step alongside him, then adding, ‘said Alice.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Mmm? Oh, nothing.’ Drift waved a hand dismissively. No one appreciates the classics anymore.

  The elevator shaft was as curved as the rest of New Samara’s architecture, with a mainly oval footprint that was flattened at the narrow ends. The guard entered a security code on a pad, shifting his body to block Drift’s view, before pressing the floor button. Drift supposed that this was to prevent just anyone from dropping in to see Sergei Orlov, then bit his cheek again at the realisation that yes, perhaps he was about to see the Grand House’s owner. What were the odds?

  Well, he was in a casino. Whatever the odds were, they were almost certainly against him.

  The elevator rose, passing through two other floors judging by the display above the doors, before slowing to a halt with a ping.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ Drift’s companion muttered, seconds before the doors slid aside and he was confronted by a short, narrow corridor and two more guards, each pointing a pistol at him.

  ‘Well, this is depressingly familiar,’ Drift sighed. His own guns were back in his hotel room, since the Grand House took a very dim view of patrons going armed onto the gaming floors. However, to his shock the two guards holstered their weapons after a second’s scrutiny and stood back, one against each wall.

  ‘Sir?’ The guard beside him stepped forwards, quirking the fingers of one hand to motion Drift to follow him. After a moment of checking that he was certain this wasn’t some elaborate trick, Drift did so.

  ‘Roman? Did he come?’

  The voice was rich, with a faint burring of the initial ‘r’ but not an extravagant roll. The Russian accent was strong, but it was a statement of identity rather than an inability to adapt to a different language’s vowels and consonants.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the man called Roman replied, stopping at the point that the corridor opened into a room and extending one hand to invite Drift forwards.

  ‘I suspect you already knew that I came,’ Drift said, stepping out, ‘or you’d have probably said that in Russian …’

  He tailed off, impressed despite himself. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d been expecting, but being shown into Orlov’s personal penthouse suite certainly wasn’t one of them. This was the top floor of the main casino, narrower than the rest of the building below but still considerably larger than the entirety of the Jonah, Drift’s Carcharodon-class shuttle currently sitting in New Samara’s spaceport. He experienced a burning moment of envy at the opulence and size, and briefly wondered exactly why he’d spent most of his adult life in the relatively cramped conditions on board spacecraft instead of settling on a planet where your home didn’t need to also contain engines and cargo holds.

  Oh yeah. ‘Freedom.’

  ‘Captain Drift!’

  Sergei Orlov was rising to his feet from a recliner and approaching him, a glass tumbler in one hand and the other empty, his arms spread wide in greeting. Drift sized him up in a second: late forties from his looks, with a peppering of dark stubble across cheeks that were starting to sag into jowls, and thickening slightly at the waist while still being physically fit. Orlov’s hair was cut short at the sides and slightly longer on top. He was wearing loose, pale trousers, gathered at the ankle in the Arabian style, paired with a dark green roll-neck top, and his bare feet sank into the plush carpet on the floor.

  All in all, he hardly looked like a man seeking to make an intimidating impression; not that he needed to, of course. Regardless, Drift’s spirits rose a little further and he accepted the warm handshake which was proffered.

  ‘Thank you for accepting my invitation,’ Orlov told him sincerely, looking him in the eyes while they traded grips for a second or so, ‘I hope you do not object too much to the manner of it?’

  ‘I’ve experienced considerably ruder ones,’ Drift replied with a smile. ‘So, um … what can I do for you?’

  ‘Captain Drift, I hope you may be able to help me with a small problem I have,’ Orlov said simply, standing back. ‘Roman, you may go.’

  Drift caught a very slight tightening in the guard’s features, but this was clearly a man who knew better than to question his boss’s orders, certainly in front of strangers. Roman simply nodded and turned to leave. However, this brief distraction did little to take Drift’s mind off what Orlov had just said.

  ‘I see,’ he replied, trying to keep his voice level despite his surprise. ‘Well, I’d be happy to help, of course.’

  Orlov chuckled. ‘You seem a little confused, Captain, and without wishing to be arrogant, I can understand why. After all, I am Sergei Orlov, yes? I have dozens of starships at my disposal. But, if you will, walk with me outside and I will explain why I have taken an interest in you.’ He pulled aside a sliding door and stepped out onto the flat, white-tiled roof of the main casino, under the stars.

  Drift followed, for lack of any other real options, and felt the cool kiss of the night air against his skin. It was this air, the naturally occurring oxygen-rich atmosphere, that made New Samara such a haven for the Red Star’s moneyed classes. Set comfortably inside the habitable zone of the Rassvet System’s star, New Samara had needed the barest touches to be able to support plant life. Virtually the entire planet was an agriworld, devoted to producing food crops in bulk and, with the exception of the thinly spread farming crews, the majority of the human population lived at the cold poles or on the edges of the baking deserts where plants struggled to grow. The Confederate had allowed for one temperate city on the entire planet, the capital which shared its name, and with land at such a premium outside its borders it was no surprise that only the rich could live here.

  ‘Firstly,’ Orlov said as he trailed his fingers through the fronds of a line of soft, ornamental conifers, ‘let me address who you are. Ichabod Drift, captain of the Keiko, who arrived here in my city some two weeks ago and immediately went to the main bank to withdraw funds which did not, by any reasonable standard, belong to him.’

  Drift froze in place, but when Orlov looked around his expression was not mocking but mildly amused. ‘Please, Captain. You are aware of who I am. It should not come as a surprise to you that I have contacts in many places, no? And as a result of who I am, I have no great concern about who takes money from whom, so long as it is not taken from me. On this occasion the money was taken from an account belonging to a man named Nicolas Kelsier.’

  Drift bit the inside of his cheek and didn’t trust himself to answer.

  ‘Word travels across this galaxy, Captain,’ Orlov said, turning and walking back towards Drift, ‘especially to someone like me. I hear of unusual events on a small Europan backwater world involving a shoot-out in a market between two groups of off-worlders. Not particularly noteworthy in and of itself perhaps, but when eyewitnesses suggest that the Laughing Man was there … well, then anyone notable enough to perhaps one day fall under that der’mo’s crosshairs is far more likely to pay attention.’

  Drift swallowed. He’d lost a crewman to Marcus Hall, the cold-hearted bastard of an assassin better known to the galaxy at large as the Laughing Man. Micah van Schaken had been … well, he’d been an abrasive, easily dislikeable mercenary, but he’d been reliable, and he hadn’t deserved to die with Hall’s razor-edged stardiscs puncturing his throat.

  ‘And then,’ Orlov continued, ‘the Europans announce that they’ve taken action against the man who was behind that explosion in the North Sea on Old Earth, that botched bombing attempt? That man was Nicolas Kelsier, would you believe? One of their former ministers. And here you are, spending his money, with your bright hair and your metal eye, your colleague Miss Rourke with her hat and coat, and your big Maori friend with those distinctive tattoos of his; all people mentioned in that shoot-out in the marketplace. Captain, this leads me to one, simple conclusion.

  ‘You are quite clearly not a man to piss off.’

  Drift blinked. ‘Er … what?�
�

  Orlov chuckled again. ‘I’m sorry, that lead-up probably sounded a little menacing, didn’t it? I assure you, I was simply proud of my own deduction.’ He raised his glass to Drift and took a small sip in salute. ‘I don’t believe you are Europan agents, Captain Drift, but you must have been involved in some way with the downfall of Kelsier, or how would you have got his account details? I strongly suspect that he angered or provoked you in some manner and you brought down retribution on his head. Suffice to say, I have no intention of making the same mistake. I do not like to underestimate people. I believe you and your crew can be fearsomely capable when the need arises. This makes me simultaneously want to hire you, and to ensure that you do not see any need to make my life difficult in ways I could probably not even imagine.’

  ‘That’s … very good of you,’ Drift managed, still stunned at what he was hearing. Here was the most powerful man on New Samara, arguably the most powerful man in the entire system, basically saying that he was going to tread carefully around the crew of a battered freighter. It was welcome, but he wasn’t sure he believed a word of it.

  Then again … he and his crew had ruined Nicolas Kelsier, based on nothing but an epically ambitious web of bullshit and the fact that they’d had no other option. It had been him or them, and by the time Kelsier had worked out what game they were playing he’d pretty much already lost. If Orlov had heard the right parts of it he might not have realised how tenuously desperate the whole mess had been.

  ‘So that, Captain Drift, is why you,’ Orlov said, pausing for a moment to look up at the few stars above them that could be seen through the capital’s light pollution. To one side of them a muffled booming grew in volume before fading again: the sound system of someone in an open-topped hovercar. ‘I must say that I was also impressed with your play in the casino tonight. You showed an admirable mix of caution and risk-taking.’