Chapter Eight
Show no fear, show no confidence, be the fucking expressionless Sphinx. Give your opponents nothing.
Harry knew all four of his remaining opponents were ruthless; he’d taught one himself, and his teaching hadn’t stinted in the dirty tricks department. The rest were familiar with his wiles and traps; they’d watched him destroy two other challengers. Ruthlessly eliminated, the vanquished sat on the sidelines waiting to see who would fall next.
Harry Tapper, tribal warlord, ex–Navy SEAL, and ersatz time traveler, considered his cards and then glanced again at the large pile of poker chips, pharmaceutical ampules, and sparkling gems that represented the single largest pot so far that night.
Or even that month.
Maybe the past year.
Jesus, has it been that long?
The stakes lay on the improvised green felt tablecloth stretching between players, individual precious items glinting in the hard electric glare that was the trademark lighting of a RockHound habitat. The bright stainless steel, duraluminum, and composite structures making up the common areas provided even more reflective surfaces, bouncing the light about. With care, an astute player might even catch sight of a hole card.
To that end, Harry casually glanced around and caught his own reflection instead.
Shaggy, dark brown hair hung past his ears, gathered by a strip of supple whinnie-hide. Like most of the spacers, he kept his face smooth shaven, simplifying the fit of the oxygen masks required for many off-station maneuvers. His exposed skin was darkly tanned, courtesy of extended tours planetside. Black boots and the closed pouches on his equipment belt betrayed no additional information. His improvised utilities had started life as a SpinDog-issue dove-gray uniform. Devoid of rank or qualification badges, its sole decoration was a worn khaki breast patch that read TAPPER.
Not that there was much chance of mistaking Harry for anyone else, either seated or shuffling sideways through the press of the infamously tight confines of the comparatively tiny station. The uniform was drawn in tight lines across his broad shoulders, biceps, chest, and thighs. Nearly every RockHound enjoyed at least a ten-centimeter height advantage over Harry, but he’d yet to meet one he didn’t out-mass by thirty kilos, often considerably more. The uniform fabric needed to accommodate the muscular frame of men raised at the bottom of a gravity well and shaped by hard service exceeded the capacity of a standard-issue SpinDog shipsuit. As a result, Harry had been forced to draw two suits for each set he wore, sacrificing one for the extra material.
And hadn’t that pleased the SpinDog quartermaster assigned to support the Terran guests.
Harry appraisingly met the eyes of the next player in the betting order along the rectangular refectory table. This was an opportunity to eliminate another contestant in the traveling, never-ending, pointlessly high-stakes poker game that had begun shortly after the Terrans’ arrival in the 55 Tauri system.
“See you,” he said, and, keeping his voice even, Harry dropped an uncut blue stone onto the table. Then, carefully affecting an air of indifference, he dropped another. The second thumb-sized gemstone thunked into the pile, starting a twinkling mini-avalanche. “And raise you.”
Harry took advantage of the lighting to watch the faces of his shipmates, fellow time travelers, and the one, mostly housebroken barbarian as they considered his addition to the pot. The stones, like much of the wealth in the space habitats, came from R’Bak. Harry had made several trips to the planet, which circled the same star as the dense asteroid belt that hid the RockHounds and their sometimes allies, the SpinDogs.
Sitting adjacent to him was Pilot Officer Volo “Crash” Zobulakos, a tall, spindly interface-craft skipper. He’d been along for Harry’s first mission to the surface. Against the preferences of his Family’s Elders, Volo had helped ensure the success of the mission and survival of the Terrans. Having burned his bridges, the young SpinDog joined the newcomers and cross-trained to fly the exoatmospheric craft under Terran leadership. His bright orange, space-rated flight suit was covered in patches, the largest of which was embroidered with a stylized golden leonine carnivore. The original, found in the grasslands that covered a fair bit of R’Bak, had a well-earned reputation for reckless ferocity and a taste for human flesh. It was also the unofficial symbol of the squadron reconstituted from the few survivors of the Terran-led air raid that destroyed the Kulsian interplanetary comm system under the leadership of Kevin Bowden. Volo had replaced one of the pilots from that op, which lost two-thirds of the attacking force. In a sane world, that kind of loss rate would mean a new CO.
This isn’t such a world.
“I’ll see you,” the pilot said, frowning at his cards, “and raise you this.” Volo withdrew a small, transparent sampling tube decorated with red and blue stripes from his zippered breast pocket and paused to consider it one last time. Then he delicately added it to the pot, drawing a collective murmur from the card players.
“Holy shit!” blurted the normally taciturn Frazier, who was next along the table. “That what I think it is?”
The six-foot-five-inch African American sergeant was another soldier abducted from Earth, though from an earlier time than Harry. Staff Sergeant Elroy Frazier, late of the Military Assistance Command—Vietnam/Special Operations Group, had been plucked by the Ktor from a hopeless firefight in the Vietnamese highlands. Like every Terran in the system, he’d been propelled forward almost two centuries and deposited in the middle of a rebellion between the planets of a binary star system, combining brutal, close infantry combat with spaceships and lasers. And, like everyone else, he’d participated in the repetitive briefings on the various drug precursors harvested from R’Bak.
In which regard, the markings on Volo’s tube were particularly distinctive.
“As you like to say, Sergeant Frazier, the pure quill,” Volo replied confidently. “Ten milliliters of distilled londau’d. Assayed and sealed. Diluted for use, it’s enough for a hundred doses.”
The sound of soft exclamations around the table was nearly universal. Harry’s poker face might have wavered a trifle as he considered the bet.
Londau’d belonged to one of the rarest families of R’Bakuun pharmaceuticals, so scarce that their collective value and utility made the expense of interplanetary conflict worthwhile. Unlike most of the drugs already on the table, londau’d was so precious it was strictly controlled and centrally stored. Harry had never seen it in private hands. Until now.
“Hey, Ha-ree, are you planning on making another blood challenge?” asked Grevorg al-Caoimhip, laughing. Nonchalantly leaning against the refectory bulkhead as an observer, the tall, sandy-haired R’Baku warrior wore an outfit much like Harry’s, complete with leather headband and Terran-style utilities made from SpinDog materials. “If you win the pot, you can ask Mother to patch you up again!”
Harry spared Grevorg a genuine smile. His presence was a rare concession by the RockHounds, who normally did not allow the surface-born on their hidden outposts.
“No table talk!” Major Korelon’va snapped.
This RockHound officer fit what was said to be the classic Ktoran mold of his distant ancestors: tall, chiseled, and arrogant. The carefully tailored midnight black shipsuit was set off by silver piping. Korelon’s annoyingly heroic good looks were accentuated by pale amber eyes that were almost yellow and a shock of closely cropped blond hair over an aquiline nose and thin lips. The latter were pursed in distaste.
A pucker like a cat’s asshole. And a very punchable face.
Harry thought Korelon a posturing, empty suit, but this evening was supposed to be a team-building exercise. In fact, when defending the gambling practices of the Lawless, Harry had won over his boss by extolling the cross-cultural benefits of gaming, highlighting the need to strengthen bonds by building personal relationships with the other factions in their alliance of convenience. In other words, the usual bullshit. Korelon, a RockHound salvage captain, was the perfect example of how impossible the Ktor castoffs were. He’d asked to play socially, which was ridiculous. You either played poker to win, or you were a patsy. Naturally, it had turned out to be a clumsy ploy, and he had proven to be anything but unknowledgeable about the game only recently introduced to the system. Korelon’s remaining chips, stacked next to the half-full tumbler of mystery-root vodka, were a fraction of their original sum, most of which had gone to Volo, the lucky bastard.
Harry could tell, social player or not, Korelon was irritated. His features—no doubt perfected to some closely held ideal of the geneticists his Ktoran ancestors had fled—shifted to a sneer.
“Relax, Korelon.” Harry kept his tone easy and relaxed as he used his elbow to point at Volo. “Way back when, the skinny git with all the winnings was supposed to help us make first contact with the R’Bakuun tribes who were fighting the satraps. It was my first trip down; in fact, it was the first time any of us Lost Soldiers set foot on R’Bak. Volo, being the youngest son of one of your own SpinDog Family leaders, had the bona fides that helped us build that first alliance.”
Korelon had looked up sharply at Harry’s contraction of his surname. Omitting the honorific was something that mattered only to another Ktoran has-been, and judging from Volo’s stifled snort, not all of them. Korelon shot a murderous glance at the pilot. A moment later, he smoothed his features, presenting the same condescending expression he’d worn from the first hand.
“A SpinDog Family leader,” he snorted derisively. “Never a Family and hardly a leader.” There was no RockHound love lost for their richer cousins and Ktoran fugitives who had settled the rubble-strewn limits of the binary system of 55 Tauri.
“Am I telling this story, or are you?” Harry asked, quirking an eyebrow.
He paused, awaiting further editorial from the only RockHound present. The RockHounds and SpinDogs were cordially antagonistic to each other at the best of times, both unable to confront the Kulsians directly, and consigned to hiding in the rubble of the system. That antagonism occasionally flared into something more serious. That they had common cause against a third, stronger faction had done little to endear one to the other.
Korelon glanced up, then back down, ostensibly studying his plastic cards.
“So, as I was saying,” Harry drawled. “No shit, there I was, with the dubious honor of leading the first Terran mission to R’Bak. Almost blew it when our local contacts, the Sarmatchani, claimed an honor debt against Volo’s older brother. I ended up having to fight that over-muscled, under-brained, broke-ass barb sitting over there.”
He nodded to Grevorg, who grinned back.
“And he was a little overenthusiastic with his knife. Gave me this.” Harry shifted on the built-in bench to turn his right side toward the table. He tugged up the folded sleeve of his utility blouse, displaying a fine white line that curved across his bicep, disappearing upward and out of sight.
“A scratch.” Korelon looked at the scar, sniffing.
“Doesn’t look like much now,” Harry said, refuting the implied dismissal. “Grevorg carved me all the way up into my armpit, nicked the brachial artery. I damn near bled out. But thanks to Grevorg’s mother—”
“She’s yours, too!” Grevorg interjected. “Little brother!”
“—but thanks to my mother-in-law, the local field surgeon,” Harry continued with some asperity, “and a generous dosing of pure londau’d extract, I woke up two days later with the wound well on its way to what you see now. A week later I was a hundred percent.”
“No shit?” asked Frazier, lifting both eyebrows. “I’ve seen R’Bakuun drugs do amazing things, and I’ve heard the story, but I figured it was at least fifty percent exaggerated. You know, SEALs and their bullshit.”
Harry used his free hand to offer Frazier a casual one-finger salute, softening the gesture with a tight smile. Frazier had seen the elephant, too. And londau’d was an amazing drug. Harry recalled perfectly the sight of his arm gaping all the way to the pinkish humerus. He’d seen enough battlefield trauma to recognize the deadly trifecta of septic shock, blood loss, and neurological damage. Harry had known, known, he’d lose the arm. On any other primitive battlefield, the loss of the limb would’ve been followed in short order with death from sepsis and shock. But between the miracle drug and a tribal shaman who knew her business, he’d lived. Instead of an infected wound leaking blood and lymph, his arm had been unwrapped to reveal a healed-over, red seam that led from his triceps deep into his armpit. Of course, it wasn’t all down to the healer’s skill or the powerful drug she’d made from a local plant.
It had more to do with the not-so-secret-anymore connection between the alien cold sleep process and every Terran’s newly discovered biocompatibility with the R’Bakuun pharmacopia.
Harry didn’t know how many other Terrans suspected a connection between the technology that had brought them forward two centuries and the uncanny drugs on this otherwise unremarkable planet. Naturally, the Terran mission commander had strictly forbidden further talk on that topic.
Then again, Colonel Murphy’s grudging concession to allow gambling had also included a strict admonition to exclude the use of R’Bakuun drugs as stakes.
And yet, here we are.
“The point is, I know what londau’d is worth,” Harry stated flatly, glancing toward the RockHound officer. “The bet is legit. Too rich for your blood? That’s your problem. You in or not?”
“Personal possession of londau’d is prohibited,” Korelon proclaimed, turning to glare at Volo. “It is strictly controlled and therefore the flight officer has made an improper bet and must forfeit.”
The arrogant tone, the gall, the sheer weasel-dicked nature of Korelon’s answer stung Harry hard as a slap. Already keyed up, he knew he was but a short nudge from fighting anger.
Stay cool, don’t let this jackass screw up the night.
“Give it a rest, Korelon,” Harry said, rapping the knuckles of his empty hand on the tabletop, perhaps a touch more briskly than intended. He put it in terms a RockHound understood: “And take the stick out of your ass. No rank in the mess. You wanted to play, fine. You follow the house rules. And the house rules are just like Family rules.”
Harry waited a beat.
“And here, I’m the house.”
Harry watched as Korelon’s fine features reddened. Whatever Korelon’s strengths might be, a consistent poker face wasn’t among them. It wasn’t hard to understand why. Technically, Korelon was the senior man present. He was also playing poker for money with a variety of lower ranks, a violation of the strictly enforced RockHound hierarchy. A Terran enlisted man, a non-officer who could never hold honor in a RockHound’s eyes, was seated at the table. Worse, a soft, degenerate SpinDog was daring to claim spoils from a RockHound ’ah. And, intolerably, a surface dweller, a member of the barbarian R’Baku, was breathing RockHound oxygen. And now, yet another Terran had just called him out in a manner that demanded a true RockHound issue an honor challenge.
Harry, tamp it down, you idiot. Breathe. Look at the pot. Remember the plan.
“Just a friendly game, Korelon,” he breathed out through an underplayed yawn.
Harry watched Korelon surreptitiously glance around at the brief rumble of chuckles, gauging the lack of sympathy, before he schooled his face back into immobility, and laid his cards facedown on the green felt. Korelon selected a credit chip from his meager pile. The double gold chevron denoted a fixed denomination equivalent to a tenth of the salary that was digitally paid to Harry in a year, or perhaps as much as Korelon earned in a week. But its value wasn’t equal to Volo’s ampule. Not even close.
“I’ll match the bet.” He flipped the chip into the pot.
Korelon triumphantly met Harry’s eyes and then Volo’s as he slid his hands out of sight, presumably wiping sweaty palms on his immaculate uniform.
“Ante’s a little light, Korelon,” Harry said. “A hundred doses of londau’d are worth enough for a share in a salvage shuttle, not just a weekend in a pleasure hotel.”
Harry was grateful that Volo kept his mouth shut, but there was more than one grumble of agreement.
Grevorg chuckled through a curse in Sarmatchani that Harry sincerely hoped remained untranslatable. Frazier might have muttered something about fucking officers as well.
Korelon glared about the table and locked gazes with Harry.
“Most of the salvage opportunities have been negotiated away, thanks to the alliance you Terrans have foisted upon us,” Korelon said, anger lurking in his yellow eyes. “And londau’d is worth whatever you can sell it for, which is to say nothing, because no one is supposed to have it. If anything, my clear duty is to halt these proceedings. Indeed, my bet is generous. If you do not care for it, fold.”
For a moment, silence reigned. Harry felt his adrenaline spike. He was old friends with rage.
No. I am not going to rise to this asshole’s bait. He’s not worth it.
And…
Yes, he’s worth it. What’s the worst that can happen? Get shanghaied across a hundred and thirty years and a slightly greater number of light-years, losing my family in the process?
Grevorg began to laugh even louder from the sidelines. Volo, no doubt influenced by his origins in the SpinDog caste system, started to say he’d be happy to withdraw his bet. Korelon looked down his nose at them and made his play.
“Let us not forget that I am a RockHound’va,” the RockHound said, proclaiming his blood lineage to the original Ktor founders that had led his family’s wave of forced migration to R’Bak. “For generations, we have mined the system, endured the hardships incomprehensible to the planet-bound barbarians, refined the metals that made possible the comfortable life of the Spin-dwellers. We understand mercantile value. It is based on our blood and sacrifice, after all. It is not for a R’Baku surface-dweller, let alone a pampered SpinDog, to tell me the worth of a thing.”
And he laid his right hand, holding a distinctive baton, on the felt.
Harry recognized the thumb-thick gleaming black cylinder, perhaps twenty centimeters long, from the early Dornaani-supplied intelligence briefings. It was the mark of RockHound aristocracy, among the smallest microminiaturized devices still permitted to the members of extirpated Ktoran houses, and then only to those of high rank. It was a personal data store, a recording device, a display of privilege, and a personal weapon. Traditionally, the batons were used to lightly chastise the lower castes among some Ktor houses. However, they were capable of a lethal discharge.
“Easy, sir,” Sergeant Frazier said. “It’s a friendly game, right?”
“So much for vaunted RockHound honor, eh, Korelon?” Harry asked. His own words sounded odd to him, as though they were somehow being uttered by someone far away. “No personal weapons on the station, isn’t that right?”
“Fool!” Korelon spat, beginning to raise the baton. “A RockHound’va may carry what he wishes, where he wishes it. That is what it means to be domina—”
Well, shit, you already knew he was going to do something stupid.
Before Harry could process that unbidden thought, well before Korelon completed his proclamation, Harry dropped his cards. He drove his left hand downward and snatched the hem of his blouse upward as his right hand dipped just enough to snatch the hideout from his belt. He gave his wrist the slightest flick as he stood, thighs threatening to rupture trouser seams as he pushed his upper body across the table. He froze there, well short of full extension, the slender black leaf blade of his gravity knife laid backhand across the left side of Korelon’s slender neck. Quivering.
Total elapsed time: seven-tenths of a second.
For about twice that duration, all motion froze. Then—
“Ho, ho, ho, ho!” Grevorg boomed. “Your faces! You should see your faces!”
Harry’s eyes never left Korelon’s. His focus was so intense he could distinguish the strands of color in the other man’s perfect yellow-amber eyes.
“This is my table,” he said calmly. “We may be guests on your station, but you are a guest at this table, in this space. Here, we don’t make threats over money. Here, whoever you are out in the world is unimportant. There are only the players at this table. And players don’t fuck each other over. The universe out there is ready to do that at any moment, so here, here we refrain.”
Despite his focus, Harry maintained enough peripheral awareness to hear Grevorg’s chuckles tailing off, to hear Volo’s heartfelt if stuttered offers to forfeit abruptly end. He sensed Frazier subtly twist away, right hand carefully out of sight. Harry could feel Korelon’s thumb tense ever so minutely on the baton’s tiny stud.
Time stopped.
Don’t do it. Please, don’t do it.
Oh please, please yes; do it, please…
“AT EASE!”
The booming voice rebounded so loudly from the hard metal surfaces of the cafeteria that it almost didn’t register on him as feminine. It did arrest all attention.
Major Mara Lee, aka “Bruce Lee,” was like that.
“Major, withdraw that knife now.”
Yeah, he knew that voice.
Harry hesitated, then gently lifted the knife away, automatically flicking it upward. The silver edges of the black blade seemed to flicker reluctantly as it slid back into the grip. The rictus smile he hadn’t known he was wearing relaxed, his lips sticking minutely to his teeth.
“Put it down.”
Instead, Harry pocketed the knife as he sank back into his seat and turned to face the door.
“And your baton, Major Korelon’va, if you please, sir,” the voice continued.
As expected, he saw Major Lee standing a few meters away, hands on her hips, eyes slitted.
A few paces behind her, having just entered the large room, was his boss. In fact, the officer in question was everyone’s boss, Colonel “I’m-In-Charge-And-Don’t-You-Forget-It-Now-Let-Me-See-You-Smile” Rodger Murphy.
Well, shit.
Even knowing how much trouble he was probably in, Harry couldn’t suppress the beginnings of a smile.
Murphy’s Law. Every fucking time.