“Fifty,” the semicat added, “and fifty more.”
“Give me two,” Mose said, sliding discards toward the dealer. Daivid dealt him fresh cards. “I’ll see your hundred credits.”
“I’m out,” Lin grunted.
“Me, too,” Meyers said.
“See you,” Haalten chittered.
“Raise a hundred,” Daivid said. He held a safe three sevens and a queen. His hand could only get better. It was good to be handy with cards; it was better to be lucky, and he was lucky. His nanny had always told him so. “Trust it,” Randy said. “Trust it and it will never let you down.” The bidding went around twice more, until Ewanowski called.
“Let’s see ’em,” the semicat said. Obligingly, the others laid out their cards.
“A pair of queens!” Meyers announced.
“Ace high nothing,” Mose said, with the gambler’s air of ‘win some, lose some.’
“Three threes,” Haalten hissed with pleasure.
“Three sevens,” Daivid said, pulling the pot towards him.
The semicat looked him straight in the eye. “You stacked the cards.”
“Prove it,” the lieutenant said. “I’m just lucky. I don’t have to be dishonest.”
“Or the cards are marked.”
“Which he did while you watched?” Mose asked, scornfully. “Forget it, Puss in Boots.”
“I want to deal,” Ewanowski insisted.
Daivid pushed his cards into the center. The semicat gathered the deck with his eyes fixed on the lieutenant as he shuffled and dealt. Daivid almost crowed as he gathered up his cards. Trust luck, and it will never let you down. He set the cards face down and raised every time the bid went past him. The others dropped out in turn, leaving only him and Ewanowski in the round.
“Okay, sir,” the semicat said. He spread out his hand. “Three aces.”
“Three twos,” Daivid said. Ewanowski started to reach for the pot. “And two threes.”
“A natural full house!” Lin gasped as he flipped the hand over. “Damn!”
“The fate gods love you, sir,” Ewanowski said, with respect. “I dunno what yet, but they’re keeping you for something.”
Not every hand went his way. He lost seven hundred credits on one big hand, including a chance at two markers, when his two pairs of queens and jacks were beaten out by Lin’s straight.
“Ha HA,” Mose said, taking his turn dealing, a couple of hours later. “Aces for me, and garbage for the rest of you.” He looked at his cards, then his stakes, which were growing meager. “Er, ten.”
“Raise you twenty,” Lin said.
“Me, too,” Meyers added, with a fat look of satisfaction on her face. “Twenty more.”
“Fold,” Aaooorru bubbled.
“Fold,” Ewanowski echoed.
“Fold,” Daivid made it three.
Mose glanced at his bank. “Twenty.” Nothing was left but his marker. Lin and Meyers looked at one another.
“Raise fifty,” the chief said, with a mischievous expression.
“Fifty more,” Meyers said.
With a disgusted look, Mose threw in the marker. Lin folded. Meyers pounced. “Call.”
Mose put his cards down. “A straight.”
Meyers laid hers out in a tidy line. “A flush. Mine!” She gathered the chips in and stacked them, placing the plastic marker on top of her own.
“Well, I’m out,” Mose said, pushing back slightly. “Anyone want to take my place?”
“No, thanks,” Boland said, speaking for the rest of the Cockroaches. They had their eyes fixed on that marker on Meyers’s bank.
Meyers did not have a poker face. When her hand was good, it showed in her eyes. The next deal made them light up. She threw in fifty to start. The corlist folded at once. His fortune had not been good that evening, and he was nearly stripped. Ewanowski stayed in. Daivid watched the other players and peeked at his own cards. Three threes! He made sure his face didn’t twitch. The other two cards were a two and a four. He threw in the fifty and twenty more. Meyers matched him, and raised. One by one the others dropped out. When the bet came around to him again Daivid signed for two cards. The first was an eight. The second was the fourth three. Holding his breath he put in a hundred then turned to Meyers.
She drew two, too. Her expression still said she was holding a terrific hand. She looked at the lone fifty-credit chit to the left of her smaller change, then at the two plastic tags. Suddenly, she tossed Mose’s chip into the center. Daivid held his breath as the bidding went around to him again.
“Call,” he said.
“Full house,” Meyers said.
Daivid didn’t say a word, but set down the cards one at a time.
“Goddammit!” Boland howled.
“I’ll take that,” Daivid said, raking in the pot. He picked up the marker. “Unless you want to redeem it?” he asked Mose. “Three hundred.”
Mose grimaced. “I don’t have it. You can see that.”
“Then, pay up, trooper,” Wolfe said, making himself comfortable with hands folded behind his head. “Tell me all about yourself. How’d you get here?”
“I don’t want to tell you my life story,” Mose said, settling back as Lin cut the cards and Aaooorru began to deal.
“No fair, no fair!” the others shouted.
“That’s not the deal,” Boland boomed. “You agreed, like the rest of us.”
“Now, now,” Mose raised his voice over all of theirs. He held up his drink and twisted the glass from side to side to admire the warm gold of the contents. “I’d rather tell you a hypothetical tale of things that can happen to an innocent person. The traditional way to begin a tale is “once upon a time.” Once upon a time there was a meek little lieutenant who worked in the Central Command intelligence service. He was an observant little lieutenant, who did his job and went home at night to his quiet little hobbies and his quiet little friends. But along the way, the meek little lieutenant observed,” Mose stressed the word, “that security procedures in the CenCom intelligence service were laughably ineffective. He went to his superiors, who were big bad bureaucrats, and explained to them what he had seen, and gave them some practical suggestions on how to solve the problems, for little money and with very little fuss. But the big bad bureaucrats decided in their experience and wisdom that to change things was to suggest that they were being done wrong to start with. Other people might notice that the big bad bureaucrats were not perfect, and make fun of them in public. So nothing changed. And bad things happened to lots and lots of innocent people, all of which could have been prevented if only they had listened to the meek little lieutenant.
“Now, even meek persons can become outraged. This lieutenant sat down one day while he was on his meager annual leave, and wrote a tell-all book about the intelligence service. The very first publisher who read it was just as outraged as he, bought it, and brought out millions of copies, with royalties being paid to a blind trust, because one thing the meek little lieutenant had observed was that the bureaucrats knew how to follow the money, so he made sure none of it ever appeared to reach his hands. So, the one thing that the service cannot prove is that he did it. He’d been with them long enough to know how to cover his tracks. If they can prove he wrote this naughty book, he will go to prison for a long time for blabbing state secrets, even though the book helped to spur the system to change because they came to light, but so far they can’t, and they can’t get him to confess, not even with drugs or mind control, because they themselves taught him how to resist those. They hope that a stretch in a punishment detail will change his mind, or he might get himself killed, thereby taking the problem out of their hands forever. Either way he has nothing to lose by keeping his mouth shut.” Mose swished his drink and took a swig. “But that’s just a story. That little lieutenant and I have nothing in common except a literary bent and an outraged sense of justice.”
Wolfe was silent for a moment. “That was a good story,” he said. “I t
hink we all agree it was just a story, don’t we?”
“Always have,” Boland agreed.
The room seemed to take a deep breath, then exhaled as a unit. Daivid felt a measure of triumph that had less to do with his winning over three hundred credits of his troopers’ money and more to beginning to crack the wall of silence that kept him from understanding the people themselves.
“I’ve got a new name for Sourpuss Cleitis,” Jones declared, over his minitorch from across the room, as the cards went around again. “I think we should call him Love and Kisses. For XO, get it? If there was ever a man who was less likely to get either, I think he’s it.”
The others chuckled. “He’s got to file forms to have an orgasm,” Okumede laughed. “You wouldn’t believe the paperwork, like form OOHBABY-435. In triplicate.”
“Him? Three in a row?” Ambering asked, with a hearty chuckle that went all the way to her ample midsection. “Not even with me on top of him, honey.”
Aaooorru didn’t join in the laughter. In order to stay in the current hand he had to throw in his personal chip or fold. The dilemma showed in the way his round black eyes rolled and his antennae waved. Daivid waited patiently, like a cat about to pounce. His hand was weak, a pair of queens, but he sensed no one else had much, either. Now that he had won one life story, he was playing mostly for fun. Lin, now out of the running, browsed around the table. She glanced at his hand, then looked him in the eye with a wry squint. Daivid shrugged playfully.
He stayed with the bidding to the bitter end, fixing his companions with a confident stare. One by one they dropped out.
“Mine, then,” he said, slapping his cards on the table face down. He reached for his winnings.
“Wait a minute,” Ewanowski said, reaching for his hand. “I want to see what you had that was so hot. One lousy pair of queens! I had two pair.” Disgusted, he threw the cards away.
“He psyched all of you out,” D-45 snorted.
Daivid chuckled. “Psychology is a big part of poker. Trooper, pay up.”
“No.” Aaooorru’s eyes lowered and drew close together. He pushed back from the table, hopped down from his chair and tottered toward the door on his delicate little feet.
“Hey, you can’t refuse,” Meyers said. “It’s a debt of honor.”
“I care nothing for debts of honor,” he bubbled angrily. “What good has honor ever done me?”
“I’ll tell you, for free,” Ewanowski said, halting the corlist before he could get to the door. “People make all sorts of rotten comments about the two of us, even saying we’re perverts, crossing species. I’m his bodyguard. I used to be a bouncer in a bar in the capital city on Vom on the dry side of Mishagui, the trading area. His folks got in touch with me when he went into the service. Aaooorru’s royalty.” The corlist protested, his round eyes bobbing in alarm. “Shut up. These are the best friends you ever had in the universe, and I’m including those so-called buddies you had back at the palace. You’re a hell of a lot safer here than there. He’s like the 200th offspring, not real close to the throne, but still in the succession. Corlists have big families, but only a few make it to adulthood because of disease and lots of natural predators, and they don’t have real long lifespans.” He strongarmed the protesting Aaooorru back into his chair and pushed a drink toward him. “Think. Don’t go off like that. Anyhow, he was head of a regiment. I was his ADC. I dunno if you know anything about the politics going on, but Vom’s fallen out of favor in the TWC senate. The system’s close to the lizards, and there are people who want to make nice, not fight back. If you know anything about the lizards, you know they don’t make nice, they make lunch. His family’s on the wrong side of the argument. Every one of them’s a target for assassination, and about fifty of them have already gone down. So, his folks thought it’d be safer if he got transferred to a unit where he would be out of the way until the tide changes. Hah! If they knew the crap they assign us to do, they’d yank him out of here and pack him in bubble wrap!” Ewanowski showed all of his impressive teeth in a mirthless grin.
“You make me sound like a weakling,” the corlist murmured, his words muffled in his water collar.
“Hell you are,” the semicat growled. “Do you know how easy it would have been to get sucked down that gap in the hull the other day? At your size? And that’s only the most recent example. He jumps right in there like any other trooper, sir. His unit loved him. I bet they’re still wondering what happened to him.”
“Is there anyone in this unit who wasn’t busted down from officer?” Daivid asked in astonishment. “I knew I was the most junior crew member, but I had no idea everyone outranked me.”
“Just most of us,” Lin smiled.
“I didn’t,” Streb said shortly. “But you’re gonna have to win my marker to hear.”
“I look forward to it,” Daivid said. He stood up and stretched his back. “I might take you up on reprogramming my CBS,P—for therapeutic backrubs only.”
“Sure thing,” Boland said. “Just leave it here with us any time.”
“I’ll do that. I’d better get back to my endless paperwork. I left half a dozen queries beeping at me on my infopad. Everyone wants their reports now. Thanks,” he said to Mose and Aaooorru.
“You won it, fair and square,” the poet replied, with a half grin. “You are a hell of a player.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” the corlist added.
“License to republish,” Daivid said, “was not included in the original purchase price. Don’t worry. I’d never snitch on a fellow-in-arms.”
Aaooorru nodded. Ewanowski offered him another toothy grin.
“Come on back tomorrow,” Meyers called, as he headed out the door. “We want a chance to get our money back.”
***
Chapter 11
Wolfe had answered the summons with alacrity. The executive officer wished to see all of the unit commanders on board, at 1100 hours in the briefing room. Wolfe had gulped his lunch without tasting it, and arrived more than fifteen minutes early out of sheer excitement. All of his wardroom colleagues were present, all spring-loaded with the energy that went with the anticipation of action. At last they were going to receive their assignments. Wilbury caught Daivid’s eye and gave him a fierce grin. This was what they were all there for. The ship’s officers sat in a row against the front wall. Behind the podium Executive Officer Cleitis cleared his throat.
“I know all of you have been waiting a long time for gen on the upcoming missions. Captain Harawe and the command staff of the Eastwood have been acting under sealed orders until now.”
A few of the officers glanced at one another. The Captain’s voice came from the back of the room.
“We have had suspicions that there is a leak somewhere in the operation.” All heads turned to track Harawe as he stalked forward towards the lighted dais. “To that end, there has been a controlled release of information, including misinformation on the subject of the trade ships and our escort service. In other words, we let it out that those ships were going naked. Since it panned out that there was an Insurgency attack on the flotilla, word is coming from somewhere, but since you all knew about it and the Surgies came anyhow, you’re all in the clear.”
Wolfe raised his eyebrow. Harawe couldn’t be as naïve as that. He personally knew twenty-three ways to extract data while appearing to be in another place. It had been part of his upbringing in the Family. At the time he’d thought it was cool. He suspected that his unit could amass another twenty-three hundred among them, if it interested them at all. He also knew half a dozen historical examples to prove that it was possible for one side of a war to sit on a piece of information in order not to give away the fact they had spies on the other side. Harawe seemed to divine his thoughts.
“The actual info was never on this ship, Mister New-in-town,” he said, biting off each syllable. “I received my briefing in person at a remote location. The test message released aboard the Eastwood has not been transmitted or r
ecorded, but the break showed through elsewhere. It could not have come from one of you. The spy has been identified. So it is time to give you your assignments. Cleitis?”
Subdued, Daivid sat back. Harawe had his number. He wasn’t seeing the bigger picture. Lt. Ti-Ya was right about the captain being a careful man.
The ascetic XO took his place behind the desk. “Commander Christophle.”
“Sir!” A tan-skinned woman of thirty or so with very dark lips responded alertly, turning interesting caramel-colored eyes forward. Wolfe admired the length of her black lashes. On the screen behind Cleitis, a star map appeared. The point of focus zoomed in on a small primary star, red-orange, with orbits marked out for five planets, two of them gas giants, and two of them small rocky worlds spaced out in between.
“When we break into normal space, you will take the number six auxiliary. Admiral Banks awaits you. She is reestablishing TWC control of the Nonnen system, now that she’s driven the damned Insurgents out of there. Because of the diversion we’re a couple of days later than she was expecting, but that’s war. You’re relieving Commander Harris Boone, who’s going back to Central Command for debriefing.”
“Sir!” Christophle’s eyes shone. He signed to her to turn her infopad toward his aide, who would beam her site maps and more detailed orders.
Wolfe envied her. He’d heard of the siege of Harrim, Nonnen’s capital city, a domelike space station orbiting a gas giant at 2 a.u. from the Nonnen primary. The pirates had taken over several of the smaller city-domes and were holding them hostage, trying to force the Nonnen government into surrendering. Banks had managed to stretch the navy forces she had brought with her to attack on several fronts until other Space Service ships had arrived to assist. It had been said there wasn’t one trooper on board who hadn’t been decorated. The pirates, somehow not getting the message, had kept trying to retake Nonnen. Someone, maybe the legendary General Sams herself, had decided it was too important to lose, so there continued to be plenty of action. Daivid gave an imaginary one-two punch to Sams, thinking what he would do if he had been in Banks’s place.
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